Isn't the United States of America's history one of fighting war criminals not Be-ing War criminals?
Since when did the belief in justice become an "extremist" view in the United States
?
Showing posts with label Bush Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush Administration. Show all posts
Monday, July 13, 2009
Friday, June 27, 2008
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005, Part Four
Here is my Fourth article generated by my recent tour of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana to inspect 2005 hurricane damage and what has been done in the aftermath. This series was published at OpEdNews.com in the Spring, but I want to continue to bring Mosquito Blog readers up to date, because government on all levels is still agressively working against the basic interests of many of the disenfranchised in New Orleans, particularly Blacks. There is tremendous injustice going on and charges of racism are rife, but skewed ideology and private business sector avariciousness are equal suspects here.
It will be interesting to compare the pathetic government efforts at recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans to how government will now react in southern California to the wild fires devastation. Stay tuned for that.
In this report I have now waded into the heart of hurricane devastation in New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward, where I found government relief efforts practically invisible, and only some hearty volunteers and social activists present there to help the victims of Katrina survive day to day.
****************************
May 8, 2007
Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward, Where Tragedy and Hope Meet
By Mac McKinney
Along the Gulf Coast, Post Katrina, Part 4: The Lower Ninth Ward
Devastated house in the Lower Ninth Ward
After wandering through Orleans Avenue (which was recounted in Part 3) on this increasingly warm and sunny Friday the 13th, I headed on to downtown New Orleans, somewhat disoriented by the unfamiliarity of the streets after some 28 years, but I finally found myself on the end of St. Charles Avenue. I stopped at the nearby St. Charles Bar and Pool Room and ordered a Hurricane, which I sat sipping through a straw like a slow milkshake while I watched an old Gunsmoke episode on the nearest screen. I figured I could use a good shot of rum to get me through the rest of what would surely be a taxing afternoon.
I started walking up busy St. Charles, taking photos, diverting momentarily over to Camp Street, where, surprisingly, I came across the Zen Center of New Orleans, unaware that the city even had a Zen temple. It would take the compassion of Buddha, I thought, to heal all of New Orleans. I walked through Lafayette Square, photographing the statue of school children with John McDonogh, the philanthropist, also unaware that the plight of the public school system would be brutally brought home to me soon in the Lower Ninth Ward.
I eventually reached Canal Street, where I bought some trinkets and took more photographs. You could never guess, looking at downtown New Orleans, that a major hurricane had devastated the city some 20 months ago. Repairs had been relatively quickly and efficiently made, even though parts of downtown had been flooded up to four feet high, as a hotel clerk explained to me. She also told me the easiest way to get to the lower Ninth: drive east on Poydras, right on Claiborne, and just keep going until you cross over a big drawbridge.
So that's what I did. However, once upon S. Claiborne and merged onto N. Claiborne, I was so struck by significant damage right on this major boulevard that I parked and took more photographs. Why, I thought, hadn't such an amazing eyesore as the one shown below been leveled after so long by the city? But again, this was in a predominantly Black district. Is that answer enough?
An eyesore along N. Claiborne Avenue
After about a ten minute drive I was rolling over the large and rusty looking draw bridge spanning the Industrial Canal, the canal whose levee system had been breached in three places, two of these breaches directly flooding the Lower Ninth, a levee system that investigators have emphasized was one in name only.
As I got off the bridge, I pulled into a close by gas station, jumped out and asked a fellow gassing up to his truck if I was actually in the Lower Ninth right now, which he confirmed. "Where can I find the major damage?" I asked, explaining that I was here to take photos.
"Just turn right at the light two blocks up or take the next right here and start looking," he replied, "The damage is everywhere."
So I turned right, or north, and began what became a two hour plus sojourn up and down the still devastated streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, where some 25,000 people once lived, worked, played and worshipped. On the northside at least, very few people have moved back in. You see a few operable-looking cars parked in front of a few houses, as opposed to the hundreds of abandoned cars all over the place. On the southside, less badly hit, several thousand people have moved back in I am told, and I did see more people out and about, although, due to time constraints, I focused primarily on the northside, where I barely saw a person all afternoon, except for a few city workers, several homeowners, and a handful of contractors, that is until I went by the Common Ground Community Center later on.
You can visit my photo album on the Lower Ninth Ward, by the way, at any time by just clicking here. You can view the photos singly or as a slide show. You don't have to sign in either. There are 176 photos, so take your time.
Almost every house on the northside looks abandoned and damaged, with windows half or all the way out and the front door usually open or loose on its hinges. Some of the front doors or facades had X's on them, ominous reminders of the horrific days of the flooding, when rescuers were putting X's on a house to indicate that it had been checked for people or pets. But many if not most houses had no X. Does that indicate they were never checked?
Gone, obviously, are all the bodies. Gone too are the egregious piles of putrid garbage that had accumulated throughout the Lower Ninth as the floodwaters abated. Determined crews of volunteers dressed in Tyvek suits and respirators came in, from both the Lower Ninth and beyond, to eliminate them. None of this was organized by the city, mind you, despite Mayor Nagin's wonderful-sounding rhetoric, the city acting more like an absentee landlord in a detective series than any kind of leader in the rebuilding efforts here, which just reinforces the viewpoint some residents hold that the city only wants to drive off the black community, so that realtors and carpetbaggers can seize all their property. Or is it just the inertia of bureaucracy and regulations that paralyzes government?
Schools and Churches
In March of 2006 students and organizers also "raided" (since it was off-limits) the Martin Luther King Elementary School on the southside. To quote from an article by Kerul of Common Ground Collective:
New Orleans --In an historic act of solidarity, around 85 students and organizers from across the country risked arrest today by entering Martin Luther King Elementary School in the devastated Lower 9th Ward. Outside the school, a crowd of around 300 gathered wearing Tyvek suits and respirators, holding hand painted signs and chanting to oncoming traffic. In an ongoing effort to rebuild New Orleans, residents of the Lower Ninth Ward requested that these supporters clean the school out....
After raking the leaves and debris littering the entrance to the school, the crowd of volunteers pounded their tools on the pavement, as police observed from across the street. The students made their way into the building, and began sweeping and scooping piles of mud and debris from the lobby, carefully avoiding personal effects and sensitive items, such as plaques and framed pictures that had fallen from the walls in the storm. Among odd findings, an 8 inch dead fish was found in the stairwell leading up to classrooms.
Of the 117 public schools operational before Hurricane Katrina hit, only 20 are open. No plans exist to open schools in the Ninth Ward, giving residents no opportunity to rebuild their community. (March 16, 2006, source)
Unfortunately, over a year later, the school has not reopened, prompting protests. Instead the school has been "moved" uptown, in name only and as a charter school, to the former site of Edgar P. Harney Elementary School in Central City, which does absolutely nothing to help the repopulation and rebuilding of the Lower Ninth. The Louis Armstrong Elementary School, also on the southside, has likewise not reopened. Charter schools, I might add, are looked upon as the Messiah for a new educational paradigm, but the jury has not even formed on this count.
Joseph Hardin Elementary. Louis Armstrong has yet to reopen on the southside
Things are even worse on the northside, where the Joseph A. Hardin Elementary School has never even been gutted. I can attest to that after stumbling across the school as I drove down St Maurice Avenue. It seemed so disheveled, with weeds and twisted chain-link fencing marring the entrance, that I grew curious and started exploring the premises, soon realizing that no one, apparently, has bothered to do much of anything to this neighborhood tragedy. An overwhelming pathos struck me as I gingerly stepped through semi-dark rooms taking pictures. You'll see what I mean when you look at my photo album. Room after room was trashed, with the ceiling panels falling down, insulation hanging, the overhead trim rusting, trash and desks and books strewn all about, yet, thankfully, there was not a lot of structural damage visible. Can this school be salvaged? I would say yes, but there has to be the will to do so. And unless the schools are all cleaned up and rebuilt, how can the Lower Ninth Ward be revived?
The lobby of Hardin Elementary in April, 2007
There is a similar problem with the churches on the northside. The two I saw and photographed, the Holy Family Spiritualist Church and The Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, have both been gutted, thank God, but they still await reconstruction, and for the Ward to be revived, the houses of worship must also be revived.
I continued to drive about, stopping to take photos every few blocks or so. There were crazy juxtapositions such as a boat atop a rusted out truck, fairly intact houses right next to completely shattered ones, a tour bus sitting in a weed-grown lot right next to a house, parked as if it was the family car. After rambling though most of the northside, I finally doubled back toward the direction I had started from, driving south on tree-lined Tennessee Avenue, but then turned right a block, then left again onto Deslonde Street, where I could immediately see some activity in the distance ahead.
Common Ground Collective
The bright color blue caught my eyes as I approached, this anomaly gradually transforming into a house covered with a blue tarp that extended out over the large driveway and, past that, another, corner house whose siding had been painted the same blue tint. This was the ward headquarters, so to speak, of Common Ground Collective, a truly amazing volunteer organization that I can't do justice to in this piece alone, only delineating it here.
Common Ground Community/Distribution Center in the Lower Ninth Ward
Common Ground was founded in the tumultuous days after Katrina struck by social activists Brandon Darby, Scott Crow, King Wilkerson and Malik Rahim with a treasury of $50 and the awareness that, to quote from a March 2, 2006 Alternet article by Billie Mizell, "they could do a better job at helping people than the government of the most powerful nation in the world. Their small monetary investment has grown; the collective now has hundreds of members who have fed, housed and provided medical care for nearly 20,000 people (many more than that in the year since this was written-Mac).
"How did they do it? They went to the houses that were standing and asked the people who were still around, "What can we do to support you?" What they kept hearing: You can't rebuild a community that's buried under tons of garbage. So they started by picking up trash and decomposing animals, and then moved on to putting tarps over homes.
"They began to envision a relief organization radically different from those that had come to Louisiana in Katrina's aftermath. They wanted to bring together people of every background, race and economic level -- doctors working alongside garbage men working alongside cooks working alongside lawyers working alongside kids, all for one common goal. Space in a local mosque was secured for their headquarters, and soon, monetary assistance started pouring in and volunteers started lining up. A medical clinic was opened, and Red Cross immediately began pointing people in need to Common Ground. (Yes, the Red Cross turned the sick away in droves, instead sending them to a tent run by kids and volunteer nurses.) A legal aid clinic was established to offer immediate assistance to those trying to rebuild their lives and to put pressure on the authorities to focus on relief and rebuilding." (source)
Common Ground eventually divided into two separate organizations: Common Ground Relief and Common Ground Health Clinic. Quoting from Wikipedia:
"Common Ground Health Clinic had its beginnings when four young street medics, who had heard Malik Rahim's plea for support, showed up in Algiers a few days after the hurricane. They began riding around on bicycles asking residents if they needed medical attention. Locals were apparently surprised to be approached in this way, since no representatives of government agencies or of the Red Cross had appeared up to that point. The medics offered first aid, took blood pressure, tested for diabetes, and asked about symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other disease.
"After forming as a more cohesive organization, Common Ground began recruiting volunteers to help rebuild homes and provide other free services in the Lower Ninth Ward.... Thousands of people have volunteered for various lengths of time, creating an unusual social situation in the predominantly black neighborhoods, since most of the volunteers have been young white people from elsewhere. An ABC News Nightline report described the volunteers as "mostly young people filled with energy and idealism, and untainted by cynicism and despair, and mostly white, [who] have come from across America and from countries as far away as Indonesia."
"In addition to providing free food, water, cleaning supplies, protective gear, diapers, and health and hygiene goods, Common Ground has offered legal assistance, day care, tutoring, soil and water testing, and Internet access. Although much of their housing remediation work has been in the Lower Ninth Ward, they have a larger station across the Industrial Canal in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans." (source)
So I stopped here and started asking a few questions. Since it was already late afternoon now, I didn't ask many, and later decided I would come back Sunday to ask some more. I then walked to the corner and started talking to a handful of people sporting "I Love New York" tee-shirts. They were all church volunteers from New Jersey, and apparently the corner of Deslonde and N. Derbigny in front of Common Ground was a sort of volunteers' rendezvous point. Countless volunteers from around the globe must have met on this same corner since Katrina hit.
When I cam back Sunday I interviewed Jesse and Dan, two hard-core volunteers who had given up their normal lives and homes to serve the people of the Lower Ninth Ward. Jesse explained how they realized, as the Katrina tragedy unfolded, "that there was something from our government that should have been done, but wasn't, so we stepped in and will help as long as needed."
Both felt that the city of New Orleans was not only not helping, but clearly trying to drive people out of the Lower Ninth while maintaining a PR façade. Consequently a lot of Common Ground's efforts are in the legal arena, educating residents about and protecting them from government and private business ill-intent and dishonesty. A hotline was created for residents to report police corruption and brutality.
Jesse himself explained how he had been cold-cocked and beaten up by five of New Orleans' finest after he accidentally wandered into a melee that the police were starting to break up. Jesse explained how there was really a terrific community fellowship and an old, old culture in the Lower Ninth Ward. Generation after generation of families have lived here and everybody on a street knows everybody else. So what a compound tragedy it will be if this community is not revived.
I asked about the levee system, because I had noted how low it looked to me. Jesse anecdotally described how if one is a good jumper, you can stretch your arm up, leap up and barely touch the top of the levee in certain places. Not very encouraging. That is why, ultimately, New Orleans needs an entirely new engineering project to offer this invaluable city flood and surge protection to suit the challenges of the 21st Century. But that would take a massive New Deal Era TVA-style project, something totally beyond the thinking and capability of the atomistic, corporate-minded Bush Administration.
To add injury to insult regarding the levees, Jesse and Dan conveyed how Mississippi River cruise ship lines were attempting to build docking facilities on the far northern end of the Lower Ninth on a natural hurricane barrier called the Cypress Triangle. This would destroy much of this natural defense against flooding and put residents at even greater risk. To compound matters, they also want to construct dangerous and garish high-voltage towers in the ward, an example of the utter callousness and folly of corporations untethered from social needs. The Army Corps of Engineers' proffered advice to residents in light of all the above is: Put your houses on stilts.
Returning to Friday afternoon timewise, after talking to volunteers, I hopped back in my car and drove over to the southside to survey the damage there. I saw much of the same, but with less destructive intensity, and there were more signs of life, functioning houses here and there, neighbors talking, more cars and trucks driving about, so this was a hopeful sign of progress.
By now it was late afternoon with the sun low on the horizon, so I slowly turned back onto N. Claiborne Avenue and up and over the draw bridge, headed for a look at the French Quarter, which I soon discovered looks completely recovered from Katrina, a stark, stark contrast to what I had just witnessed.
I left the Lower Ninth Ward with competing emotions flowing through me. On the one hand, the enormity of the destruction was unnerving and depressing. On the other hand, the spirit of love, selfless service and dedication among the volunteers I met was absolutely inspiring. If this spirit is contagious enough to spread throughout America, then New Orleans and the Lower Ninth will survive and flourish. But if the current paradigm of privatization, "halliburtonization" as some call it, prevails down here, then the Devil will get his due.
It will be interesting to compare the pathetic government efforts at recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans to how government will now react in southern California to the wild fires devastation. Stay tuned for that.
In this report I have now waded into the heart of hurricane devastation in New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward, where I found government relief efforts practically invisible, and only some hearty volunteers and social activists present there to help the victims of Katrina survive day to day.
****************************
May 8, 2007
Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward, Where Tragedy and Hope Meet
By Mac McKinney
Along the Gulf Coast, Post Katrina, Part 4: The Lower Ninth Ward
Devastated house in the Lower Ninth Ward
After wandering through Orleans Avenue (which was recounted in Part 3) on this increasingly warm and sunny Friday the 13th, I headed on to downtown New Orleans, somewhat disoriented by the unfamiliarity of the streets after some 28 years, but I finally found myself on the end of St. Charles Avenue. I stopped at the nearby St. Charles Bar and Pool Room and ordered a Hurricane, which I sat sipping through a straw like a slow milkshake while I watched an old Gunsmoke episode on the nearest screen. I figured I could use a good shot of rum to get me through the rest of what would surely be a taxing afternoon.
I started walking up busy St. Charles, taking photos, diverting momentarily over to Camp Street, where, surprisingly, I came across the Zen Center of New Orleans, unaware that the city even had a Zen temple. It would take the compassion of Buddha, I thought, to heal all of New Orleans. I walked through Lafayette Square, photographing the statue of school children with John McDonogh, the philanthropist, also unaware that the plight of the public school system would be brutally brought home to me soon in the Lower Ninth Ward.
I eventually reached Canal Street, where I bought some trinkets and took more photographs. You could never guess, looking at downtown New Orleans, that a major hurricane had devastated the city some 20 months ago. Repairs had been relatively quickly and efficiently made, even though parts of downtown had been flooded up to four feet high, as a hotel clerk explained to me. She also told me the easiest way to get to the lower Ninth: drive east on Poydras, right on Claiborne, and just keep going until you cross over a big drawbridge.
So that's what I did. However, once upon S. Claiborne and merged onto N. Claiborne, I was so struck by significant damage right on this major boulevard that I parked and took more photographs. Why, I thought, hadn't such an amazing eyesore as the one shown below been leveled after so long by the city? But again, this was in a predominantly Black district. Is that answer enough?
An eyesore along N. Claiborne Avenue
After about a ten minute drive I was rolling over the large and rusty looking draw bridge spanning the Industrial Canal, the canal whose levee system had been breached in three places, two of these breaches directly flooding the Lower Ninth, a levee system that investigators have emphasized was one in name only.
As I got off the bridge, I pulled into a close by gas station, jumped out and asked a fellow gassing up to his truck if I was actually in the Lower Ninth right now, which he confirmed. "Where can I find the major damage?" I asked, explaining that I was here to take photos.
"Just turn right at the light two blocks up or take the next right here and start looking," he replied, "The damage is everywhere."
So I turned right, or north, and began what became a two hour plus sojourn up and down the still devastated streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, where some 25,000 people once lived, worked, played and worshipped. On the northside at least, very few people have moved back in. You see a few operable-looking cars parked in front of a few houses, as opposed to the hundreds of abandoned cars all over the place. On the southside, less badly hit, several thousand people have moved back in I am told, and I did see more people out and about, although, due to time constraints, I focused primarily on the northside, where I barely saw a person all afternoon, except for a few city workers, several homeowners, and a handful of contractors, that is until I went by the Common Ground Community Center later on.
You can visit my photo album on the Lower Ninth Ward, by the way, at any time by just clicking here. You can view the photos singly or as a slide show. You don't have to sign in either. There are 176 photos, so take your time.
Almost every house on the northside looks abandoned and damaged, with windows half or all the way out and the front door usually open or loose on its hinges. Some of the front doors or facades had X's on them, ominous reminders of the horrific days of the flooding, when rescuers were putting X's on a house to indicate that it had been checked for people or pets. But many if not most houses had no X. Does that indicate they were never checked?
Gone, obviously, are all the bodies. Gone too are the egregious piles of putrid garbage that had accumulated throughout the Lower Ninth as the floodwaters abated. Determined crews of volunteers dressed in Tyvek suits and respirators came in, from both the Lower Ninth and beyond, to eliminate them. None of this was organized by the city, mind you, despite Mayor Nagin's wonderful-sounding rhetoric, the city acting more like an absentee landlord in a detective series than any kind of leader in the rebuilding efforts here, which just reinforces the viewpoint some residents hold that the city only wants to drive off the black community, so that realtors and carpetbaggers can seize all their property. Or is it just the inertia of bureaucracy and regulations that paralyzes government?
Schools and Churches
In March of 2006 students and organizers also "raided" (since it was off-limits) the Martin Luther King Elementary School on the southside. To quote from an article by Kerul of Common Ground Collective:
New Orleans --In an historic act of solidarity, around 85 students and organizers from across the country risked arrest today by entering Martin Luther King Elementary School in the devastated Lower 9th Ward. Outside the school, a crowd of around 300 gathered wearing Tyvek suits and respirators, holding hand painted signs and chanting to oncoming traffic. In an ongoing effort to rebuild New Orleans, residents of the Lower Ninth Ward requested that these supporters clean the school out....
After raking the leaves and debris littering the entrance to the school, the crowd of volunteers pounded their tools on the pavement, as police observed from across the street. The students made their way into the building, and began sweeping and scooping piles of mud and debris from the lobby, carefully avoiding personal effects and sensitive items, such as plaques and framed pictures that had fallen from the walls in the storm. Among odd findings, an 8 inch dead fish was found in the stairwell leading up to classrooms.
Of the 117 public schools operational before Hurricane Katrina hit, only 20 are open. No plans exist to open schools in the Ninth Ward, giving residents no opportunity to rebuild their community. (March 16, 2006, source)
Unfortunately, over a year later, the school has not reopened, prompting protests. Instead the school has been "moved" uptown, in name only and as a charter school, to the former site of Edgar P. Harney Elementary School in Central City, which does absolutely nothing to help the repopulation and rebuilding of the Lower Ninth. The Louis Armstrong Elementary School, also on the southside, has likewise not reopened. Charter schools, I might add, are looked upon as the Messiah for a new educational paradigm, but the jury has not even formed on this count.
Joseph Hardin Elementary. Louis Armstrong has yet to reopen on the southside
Things are even worse on the northside, where the Joseph A. Hardin Elementary School has never even been gutted. I can attest to that after stumbling across the school as I drove down St Maurice Avenue. It seemed so disheveled, with weeds and twisted chain-link fencing marring the entrance, that I grew curious and started exploring the premises, soon realizing that no one, apparently, has bothered to do much of anything to this neighborhood tragedy. An overwhelming pathos struck me as I gingerly stepped through semi-dark rooms taking pictures. You'll see what I mean when you look at my photo album. Room after room was trashed, with the ceiling panels falling down, insulation hanging, the overhead trim rusting, trash and desks and books strewn all about, yet, thankfully, there was not a lot of structural damage visible. Can this school be salvaged? I would say yes, but there has to be the will to do so. And unless the schools are all cleaned up and rebuilt, how can the Lower Ninth Ward be revived?
The lobby of Hardin Elementary in April, 2007
There is a similar problem with the churches on the northside. The two I saw and photographed, the Holy Family Spiritualist Church and The Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, have both been gutted, thank God, but they still await reconstruction, and for the Ward to be revived, the houses of worship must also be revived.
I continued to drive about, stopping to take photos every few blocks or so. There were crazy juxtapositions such as a boat atop a rusted out truck, fairly intact houses right next to completely shattered ones, a tour bus sitting in a weed-grown lot right next to a house, parked as if it was the family car. After rambling though most of the northside, I finally doubled back toward the direction I had started from, driving south on tree-lined Tennessee Avenue, but then turned right a block, then left again onto Deslonde Street, where I could immediately see some activity in the distance ahead.
Common Ground Collective
The bright color blue caught my eyes as I approached, this anomaly gradually transforming into a house covered with a blue tarp that extended out over the large driveway and, past that, another, corner house whose siding had been painted the same blue tint. This was the ward headquarters, so to speak, of Common Ground Collective, a truly amazing volunteer organization that I can't do justice to in this piece alone, only delineating it here.
Common Ground Community/Distribution Center in the Lower Ninth Ward
Common Ground was founded in the tumultuous days after Katrina struck by social activists Brandon Darby, Scott Crow, King Wilkerson and Malik Rahim with a treasury of $50 and the awareness that, to quote from a March 2, 2006 Alternet article by Billie Mizell, "they could do a better job at helping people than the government of the most powerful nation in the world. Their small monetary investment has grown; the collective now has hundreds of members who have fed, housed and provided medical care for nearly 20,000 people (many more than that in the year since this was written-Mac).
"How did they do it? They went to the houses that were standing and asked the people who were still around, "What can we do to support you?" What they kept hearing: You can't rebuild a community that's buried under tons of garbage. So they started by picking up trash and decomposing animals, and then moved on to putting tarps over homes.
"They began to envision a relief organization radically different from those that had come to Louisiana in Katrina's aftermath. They wanted to bring together people of every background, race and economic level -- doctors working alongside garbage men working alongside cooks working alongside lawyers working alongside kids, all for one common goal. Space in a local mosque was secured for their headquarters, and soon, monetary assistance started pouring in and volunteers started lining up. A medical clinic was opened, and Red Cross immediately began pointing people in need to Common Ground. (Yes, the Red Cross turned the sick away in droves, instead sending them to a tent run by kids and volunteer nurses.) A legal aid clinic was established to offer immediate assistance to those trying to rebuild their lives and to put pressure on the authorities to focus on relief and rebuilding." (source)
Common Ground eventually divided into two separate organizations: Common Ground Relief and Common Ground Health Clinic. Quoting from Wikipedia:
"Common Ground Health Clinic had its beginnings when four young street medics, who had heard Malik Rahim's plea for support, showed up in Algiers a few days after the hurricane. They began riding around on bicycles asking residents if they needed medical attention. Locals were apparently surprised to be approached in this way, since no representatives of government agencies or of the Red Cross had appeared up to that point. The medics offered first aid, took blood pressure, tested for diabetes, and asked about symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other disease.
"After forming as a more cohesive organization, Common Ground began recruiting volunteers to help rebuild homes and provide other free services in the Lower Ninth Ward.... Thousands of people have volunteered for various lengths of time, creating an unusual social situation in the predominantly black neighborhoods, since most of the volunteers have been young white people from elsewhere. An ABC News Nightline report described the volunteers as "mostly young people filled with energy and idealism, and untainted by cynicism and despair, and mostly white, [who] have come from across America and from countries as far away as Indonesia."
"In addition to providing free food, water, cleaning supplies, protective gear, diapers, and health and hygiene goods, Common Ground has offered legal assistance, day care, tutoring, soil and water testing, and Internet access. Although much of their housing remediation work has been in the Lower Ninth Ward, they have a larger station across the Industrial Canal in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans." (source)
So I stopped here and started asking a few questions. Since it was already late afternoon now, I didn't ask many, and later decided I would come back Sunday to ask some more. I then walked to the corner and started talking to a handful of people sporting "I Love New York" tee-shirts. They were all church volunteers from New Jersey, and apparently the corner of Deslonde and N. Derbigny in front of Common Ground was a sort of volunteers' rendezvous point. Countless volunteers from around the globe must have met on this same corner since Katrina hit.
When I cam back Sunday I interviewed Jesse and Dan, two hard-core volunteers who had given up their normal lives and homes to serve the people of the Lower Ninth Ward. Jesse explained how they realized, as the Katrina tragedy unfolded, "that there was something from our government that should have been done, but wasn't, so we stepped in and will help as long as needed."
Both felt that the city of New Orleans was not only not helping, but clearly trying to drive people out of the Lower Ninth while maintaining a PR façade. Consequently a lot of Common Ground's efforts are in the legal arena, educating residents about and protecting them from government and private business ill-intent and dishonesty. A hotline was created for residents to report police corruption and brutality.
Jesse himself explained how he had been cold-cocked and beaten up by five of New Orleans' finest after he accidentally wandered into a melee that the police were starting to break up. Jesse explained how there was really a terrific community fellowship and an old, old culture in the Lower Ninth Ward. Generation after generation of families have lived here and everybody on a street knows everybody else. So what a compound tragedy it will be if this community is not revived.
I asked about the levee system, because I had noted how low it looked to me. Jesse anecdotally described how if one is a good jumper, you can stretch your arm up, leap up and barely touch the top of the levee in certain places. Not very encouraging. That is why, ultimately, New Orleans needs an entirely new engineering project to offer this invaluable city flood and surge protection to suit the challenges of the 21st Century. But that would take a massive New Deal Era TVA-style project, something totally beyond the thinking and capability of the atomistic, corporate-minded Bush Administration.
To add injury to insult regarding the levees, Jesse and Dan conveyed how Mississippi River cruise ship lines were attempting to build docking facilities on the far northern end of the Lower Ninth on a natural hurricane barrier called the Cypress Triangle. This would destroy much of this natural defense against flooding and put residents at even greater risk. To compound matters, they also want to construct dangerous and garish high-voltage towers in the ward, an example of the utter callousness and folly of corporations untethered from social needs. The Army Corps of Engineers' proffered advice to residents in light of all the above is: Put your houses on stilts.
Returning to Friday afternoon timewise, after talking to volunteers, I hopped back in my car and drove over to the southside to survey the damage there. I saw much of the same, but with less destructive intensity, and there were more signs of life, functioning houses here and there, neighbors talking, more cars and trucks driving about, so this was a hopeful sign of progress.
By now it was late afternoon with the sun low on the horizon, so I slowly turned back onto N. Claiborne Avenue and up and over the draw bridge, headed for a look at the French Quarter, which I soon discovered looks completely recovered from Katrina, a stark, stark contrast to what I had just witnessed.
I left the Lower Ninth Ward with competing emotions flowing through me. On the one hand, the enormity of the destruction was unnerving and depressing. On the other hand, the spirit of love, selfless service and dedication among the volunteers I met was absolutely inspiring. If this spirit is contagious enough to spread throughout America, then New Orleans and the Lower Ninth will survive and flourish. But if the current paradigm of privatization, "halliburtonization" as some call it, prevails down here, then the Devil will get his due.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005, Part Three
Welcome to Orleans Ave, New Orleans, or what's left of it
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A house on Orleans Ave demolished by Katrina
Here is my third article generated by my recent tour of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana to inspect 2005 hurricane damage and what has been done in the aftermath. This series was published at OpEdNews.com in the Spring, but I wanted to bring Mosquito Blog readers up to date, because, as I write, the government is moving to completely shut down and level the still functional housing projects in New Orleans. This move is not about helping the Katrina survivors. This is about cynical politics and greed.
In this report I have finally made it into New Orleans, specifically Orleans Ave, which becomes, when you turn right instead of left toward the French Quarter, a glaring eyesore, to the physical eyes as well as the soul.
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Along the Gulf Coast, Post Katrina, Part 3: Orleans Avenue, New Orleans
On Friday, April 13, 2007, after surveying hurricane damage in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I high-tailed it up to Interstate 10 and headed due west. An hour plus later I was passing the state line into Louisiana and soon bearing down on Slidell as I-10 gradually curved south. Even before Slidell I began to get glimpses of Katrina's wrath out of the corners of my eyes as I sped on - torn up trees, piles of debris or damaged buildings in the distance. By time I had passed Slidell and was hitting the Huey P. Long Bridge, all kinds of questions were percolating in my head – how many towns and cities were hard-hit, how many people displaced; how much had been repaired; what have been the overall costs? And on and on.
As I drove over Lake Pontchartrain and gradually began the downward descent on the southern end of the bridge, the image of the far shore rising out of the vast blue lake waters rammed home to me just how fragile and isolated New Orleans is, and how low. You gained the distinct impression as you reached shore again that you were almost dropping into the lake, and in a sense you are, because, of course, the Crescent City is actually below sea level. And when you realize how the city and parish are bordered on the north by the lake, and east and south by the Gulf of Mexico, that is vulnerable indeed.
At last the skyscrapers of downtown New Orleans began looming into view, introducing some verticality into the geography, as if that was somehow reassuring as the next hurricane season approaches. I was getting more excited now, because I hadn't been to New Orleans since 1979, when I was on leave from the military, and had truly missed the place, which I had found magical and romantic.
Finally, I slowed down and began signaling left to take the exit for Vieux Carré (Old Square), the original French term for the French Quarter. Down I went, until the off-ramp suddenly drops you right onto Orleans Avenue, which runs parallel to better known Canal Street, which takes you smack into the French Quarter. But I had flown in here before, not driven, so I was disoriented. Should I turn left or right? My instincts told me the French Quarter was to the left and what I was really interested in was to the right, because I hadn't come down here to party, but to investigate the aftermath of Katrina. So I turned right.
A fortuitous decision. I hadn't driven two blocks before I was muttering Jesus under my breath. And I hadn't driven but several more before I was parking the car and grabbing my camera. My worst fears were materializing, based upon reports I had read, that the Polyanna depictions of New Orleans on the mend were greatly exaggerated. Now reality was staring me in the face, an entire, devastated neighborhood pretty much left to its own devices, as well as actually sabotaged, I would learn over time, from full recovery by the powers that be.
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Another victim of Katrina
So I began walking around taking pictures. At the time, I didn't even know the controversial story about the Lafitte Housing Project, so it was fortunate that I happened to take a few incidental photos of the Project apartment houses, so I could include them in this photo-essay. I otherwise ignored the Lafitte complex, because it was in pretty darned good shape, although boarded up and peppered with NO TRESPASSING signs. In the back of mind I wondered why, if so many citizens had been displaced or relocated, hadn't these been reopened to ease the suffering and return some of the exiled?
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The Lafitte Housing Project, with minimal hurricane damage, but locked-up anyway
What Orleans Avenue immediately reminded me of was sections of Naples, Italy that I had visited way back in 1980 while in the Navy, for there were still parts of Naples that had never been rebuilt after enduring all the carnage of World War II, as American forces wrestled Italy from German control. So in Naples, you incidentally walked up on a bombed out building every now and then and stared.
Well, I was staring now at street after street that looked like they may each have received a few rounds from Howitzers too. That there was this much damage still visible after some 20 months was shocking and embarrassing, embarrassing for a nation that claims to be the greatest super-power in history. A few trucks, work crews and sledge hammers could remove many of the hideous eyesores marring the neighborhood in a few weeks. Is City Hall, the State of Louisiana and FEMA incapable of something so basic, simple, and inexpensive? Or is something else going on here?
To understand what I am talking about, please visit my photo album on Orleans Avenue by clicking here. You can view the photos singly or as a slide show. You don't have to sign in. Here are a few more of the album shots:
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The abandoned Carver Medical Clinic
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An abandoned grocery store
A massive, abandoned laundry plant behind Orleans Avenue
Why hasn't the Carver Medical Clinic been reopened? Why haven't the local grocery stores been repaired? These are core necessities. To Hell with making the owners jump through insurance and legal hoops! Subsidize them and get the establishments reopened, and reopen the Lafitte Housing Project as well to repopulate the neighborhood, even if only temporarily reopened.
But there are agendas at work here. The poet Edward Sanders has a great online article about this in a piece explaining why and how he wrote his latest book of poetry, Poems for New Orleans (click here to read). To quote him:
What happened in New Orleans and the Gulf after Katrina is fairly widely known- the ineptitude of FEMA, the callousness of Bush, Karl Rove and the White House, the privatization of much of the recovery- which resulted in massive excess pain for the victims, and profits aplenty for the sharks that grabbed control of, or siphoned off cash from, the recovery.
The Bushies and their ilk fervently believe in turning over as much of our government as they can get away with to the so-called "private sector." Thus, the running of the war in Iraq was considerably "privatized," or halliburtonized, with U.S.-paid mercenaries and companies in key positions in the prosecution of the war. The neocons, in the same mode, tried to privatize as many government functions as possible in the post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans and the Gulf.
In New Orleans in particular, the halliburtonized recovery has been a post-disaster disaster. It's a complicated story, but its essence is that the "Privatizing" of post-Katrina reconstruction and assistance has led to enormous bottlenecks, anger, despair and frustration. (Reference)
So New Orleans' citizens have had to fight two battles, the first against the horrors of Katrina, the second against the "halliburtonization" of the recovery, to adopt Sanders' term. After the American Civil War they called this latter phenomenon "Carpetbagging", taking advantage of disaster to disenfranchise and rob the citizens of the South. This is going on today at the hands of greedy, hateful and unconscionable individuals and organizations, be they insurers, realtors, contractors, speculators, politicians or ideologues.
Sanders had this to say about irresponsible politicians in particular:
Historian Doug Brinkley called it "Lethal Ineptitude" the way Bush, Homeland Security honcho Chertoff, FEMA political hack Brown, Louisiana Governor Blanco, conservative republicrat New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, and others, dripped malice & do-not on New Orleans and the Gulf.
Mayor Ray Nagin, in particular, seems to be a disciple of the kind of privatization-batty neocons who helped ruin the Chilean pension system after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. He is the halliburtonizers best friend. Governor Blanco of Louisiana is not much better, especially in her caving into the forces of unregulated rip-offs by the insurance companies. (ibid)
Now one can begin to understand why Orleans Avenue still looks the way it does. Things would apparently be even worse if the citizens of New Orleans hadn't been fighting back. Too many of them have roots in New Orleans going back generations, too deep to let themselves get screwed over by silver-tongued politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.
For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to demolish all the major housing projects in New Orleans, claiming that in between hurricane damage, old age and crime infestation, they have got to go, to be replaced by "mixed-income" remodeling, an urban renewal strategy anchored in HUD's Hope VI grant program, which has had only a mixed record nationally where it has been implemented. That the Bush Administration and Republican apparatiks are eager to bring HUD's plan to fruition is obvious. Who can forget Rep. Richard Baker's callous statement in the aftermath of Katrina that, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
A veteran advocate of public housing in New Orleans, Endesha Jaukali, has this retort to HUD's plans:
Mixed income is a pie in the sky illusion...What you're going to do is mix poor people and middle income people right on out of here. (from "New Orleans Housing Fiasco" by Anya Kamenetz click here)
It has been my own experience in Norfolk, Virginia that when the poor and lower middle class are dispossessed and displaced from an area, what fills the void is condominiums and luxury apartments affordable only by the upper middle class, the rich or corporations, the latter two buyers often from outside the area. The displaced are further marginalized, some to the point of homelessness and despair.
So Jaukali and others have launched a class action lawsuit against government agencies to stop the demolition of the projects:
The current class action suit alleges racial discrimination and violation of the 1937 Housing Act, which requires public hearings before demolition of any public housing. HANO (the Housing Authority of New Orleans) has used everything from steel shutters to barbed wire fences and armed guards to keep residents from reoccupying their former units. Resistance has taken many different forms. Since June, for example, the St. Bernard development has had a "Survivor's Village," a tent city of 20 or so residents on the neutral ground outside. Juakali says he modeled the Village on the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, which built a tent city on the Washington Mall. (ibid)
There has also been civil disobedience at the Lafitte. For example, on August 28 of last year, this transpired:
At 2pm today Gregory "DJ" Christy, a resident of the Lafitte housing development, joined by more than 70 supporters entered his apartment with the intention of reoccupying it for the first time since August 2005. 9 supporters of Christy were arrested in the attempt to reopen public housing. All 9 have been bailed out of the Orleans Parish Prison....
Christy's apartment was opened by a group of activists including C3/Hands Off Iberville, the United Front for Affordable Housing, and other community activists. Legal observers from the Common Ground Collective were onsite to monitor the police response. Using a ladder to scale to the second floor window, the activists climbed in, walked downstairs into Christy's unit, and opened the heavy steel door from the inside.
After the door was removed Christy entered his apartment along with several more supporters. Housing Authority police were on the scene when the door fell. City police arrived shortly after preventing others from entering or leaving the apartment. While these 7 were occupying the apartment more than 70 supporters rallied outside. (by Darwin BondGraham, click here)
But as you can see from my photos, unfortunately the Lafitte is still locked up. However, continuous protests have caused authorities to backtrack some, HUD temporarily reopening some housing units in the city to allow some of those scattered to the winds to return. Congress has also weighed in to slow down the demolition plans, and the legal showdown over the class-action lawsuit is scheduled to take place this November. But the hard-pressed citizens of Orleans Avenue, not to mention the rest of the city, especially the Lower Ninth Ward, can use all the support they can garner nationally and internationally in the meantime. Here is a list of organizations that Edward Sanders has come up with that you, the reader, can contact if you feel inspired to help in some way. See his full article for more info on each one:
1. Common Ground Collective
2. Neighborhoods Partnership Network
3. People's Hurricane Relief Fund
4. Rethink (Google them)
5. DNIA, dniaofneworleans@yahoogroups.com (to email)
6. St. John #5 Baptist Church, 635 Hamburg St New Orleans, LA 70122, (504) 288-3272
7. Greater New Orleans Foundation
8. ACORN
(from http://www.woodstockjournal.com/neworleans.html )
Please help the citizens of New Orleans recover their dignity, fundamental rights and heritage. And again, to see the photo album, you can also click here.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Another Republican is speaking out.....
Alan Greenspan, a staunch Republican and recently retired U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, states in his memoirs that the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion--OIL--is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” Greenspan says. (Source)
He also criticizes Bush for not paying attention to financial discipline. Bush ignored Greenspan's advice to veto "out-of-control" bills that sent the U.S. deeper into debt. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes of the Bush administration. Greenspan is a Republican who believes his party deserves to lose control of Congress because the Congressional Republicans "swapped principle for power" and "ended up with neither. (Source)
I respect Greenspan for finally speaking out. I wonder why these Republican critics usually wait until they retire to do it? It sure would have been helpful if they had spoken out before we invaded Iraq.....buzz, buzz.
I respect Greenspan for finally speaking out. I wonder why these Republican critics usually wait until they retire to do it? It sure would have been helpful if they had spoken out before we invaded Iraq.....buzz, buzz.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005, Part Two
Here is my second article generated by my recent tour of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana to inspect 2005 hurricane damage and what has been done in the aftermath. On Wednesday, August 29, 2007, two years after Katrina hit, President Bush toured New Orleans and Bay St. Louis to commemorate the occasion, but also to play up progress in rebuilding the Gulf Coast through the aegis of the federal government. This left me rather cold and cynical, because, having written these articles only several months ago, I know that the Feds, more often than not, have subverted and perverted progress, whether through privatization ideologies and cynical demographic calculations touted by Neocon/Neoliberal think-tanks, or through racism, corruption, cronyism and just pure ineptitude. As you read this entire series, you will understand better what I mean. Here, then, is the second article, originally written in late April:
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Hidden in the Bayous
Katrina damaged or destroyed thousands of trees, including in Ocean Springs
As I continue my series about the Gulf Coast, we take a look at lingering hurricane destruction in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a typical Gulf Coast city where much of the damage is really hidden from the casual tourist. You have to go off the beaten path, so to speak.
Last Friday morning, April 13, I started driving west through Gautier, Mississippi with the planned itinerary of hitting Ocean Springs, then Biloxi, and on into Louisiana and New Orleans as I continued to survey the state of reconstruction along the Gulf Coast after the horrific 2005 hurricane season. After reaching the city limits of Ocean Springs, I found myself slowly meandering south, stopping to take shots along Beachview Drive as I headed toward the nearby Gulf of Mexico, then wandering southwest along Lake Mars Avenue and Seacliff Boulevard, roughly paralleling the coastline as I went. Looking at my watch, it became obvious to me that, if I was going to do justice to New Orleans, which I definitely had to reach this same day, I would not have time to explore Biloxi too, so Biloxi, scene of the hurled-like-toothpicks floating casinos, is on the list for my next trip.
Driving down Beachview Drive in Ocean Springs
Driving past a boat pier with its Katrina-damaged fuel pumps
It also became apparent to me, as I drove, that in a lot of these towns and cities along the Gulf Coast, the casual observer or tourist is actually not going to see a lot of the hurricane damage simply because it is hidden from view. The layout of Ocean Springs itself interweaves between the coastline and the bayous, with much of the lingering damage obscured by treelines, swamps and winding roads. So you have to take the time to look, which I did in my own small way in. If I had spent the whole day exploring Ocean Springs and interviewing people, who knows what else I would have come across.
Once off the beaten path, you begin to see the hidden damage.
You can barely see the remaining foundation slab where a house used to sit amongst the vegetation growth and the trees.
Stairs leading to nowhere.
And you see a lot of this.
Lots of families in the Bayou are living in FEMA trailers parked next to their destroyed homes, as they try to rebuild, those lucky enough, that is, to find the resources to rebuild. Others have simply had to abandon everything and move on.
So I cordially invite you to take a look at my second photo album in this series under "Mac's Slide Show". Just click here and then just click on Mac's Slide Show. It is not a lengthy one. And you don't have to sign in unless you want to. With my next photo-essay, I will move on to New Orleans itself, starting on Orleans Avenue itself, not too far from the French Quarter. This is where everything gets much heavier.
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Hidden in the Bayous
Katrina damaged or destroyed thousands of trees, including in Ocean Springs
As I continue my series about the Gulf Coast, we take a look at lingering hurricane destruction in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a typical Gulf Coast city where much of the damage is really hidden from the casual tourist. You have to go off the beaten path, so to speak.
Last Friday morning, April 13, I started driving west through Gautier, Mississippi with the planned itinerary of hitting Ocean Springs, then Biloxi, and on into Louisiana and New Orleans as I continued to survey the state of reconstruction along the Gulf Coast after the horrific 2005 hurricane season. After reaching the city limits of Ocean Springs, I found myself slowly meandering south, stopping to take shots along Beachview Drive as I headed toward the nearby Gulf of Mexico, then wandering southwest along Lake Mars Avenue and Seacliff Boulevard, roughly paralleling the coastline as I went. Looking at my watch, it became obvious to me that, if I was going to do justice to New Orleans, which I definitely had to reach this same day, I would not have time to explore Biloxi too, so Biloxi, scene of the hurled-like-toothpicks floating casinos, is on the list for my next trip.
Driving down Beachview Drive in Ocean Springs
Driving past a boat pier with its Katrina-damaged fuel pumps
It also became apparent to me, as I drove, that in a lot of these towns and cities along the Gulf Coast, the casual observer or tourist is actually not going to see a lot of the hurricane damage simply because it is hidden from view. The layout of Ocean Springs itself interweaves between the coastline and the bayous, with much of the lingering damage obscured by treelines, swamps and winding roads. So you have to take the time to look, which I did in my own small way in. If I had spent the whole day exploring Ocean Springs and interviewing people, who knows what else I would have come across.
Once off the beaten path, you begin to see the hidden damage.
You can barely see the remaining foundation slab where a house used to sit amongst the vegetation growth and the trees.
Stairs leading to nowhere.
And you see a lot of this.
Lots of families in the Bayou are living in FEMA trailers parked next to their destroyed homes, as they try to rebuild, those lucky enough, that is, to find the resources to rebuild. Others have simply had to abandon everything and move on.
So I cordially invite you to take a look at my second photo album in this series under "Mac's Slide Show". Just click here and then just click on Mac's Slide Show. It is not a lengthy one. And you don't have to sign in unless you want to. With my next photo-essay, I will move on to New Orleans itself, starting on Orleans Avenue itself, not too far from the French Quarter. This is where everything gets much heavier.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005
A shattered pier in Pascagoula, Mississippi
As we move into the heart of the 2007 hurricane season, what with monster Hurricane Dean making its way through the Caribbean and possibly headed for Texas, it would be instructive to know some of the lesser known facts about the last really traumatic season, 2005, so that we can learn from them before we get suckered by government agencies, private swindlers and media spin once again.
It just so happens that I was on the Gulf Coast twice recently, once for two weeks in April, and once for two weeks in May. I was working in Pascagoula, Mississipi, and used that as my base to explore the Gulf Coast from, all the way to New Orleans. I started taking a lot of pictures of Hurricane Katrina's massive damage and then decided to write a series of articles for OpEdNews.com, which morphed into five photo-essays. I also create five photo albums at Kodak's online photo gallery, creating an album to correlate with each photo essay. I figure I will now share all of this on Mosquito Blog now. I am going to start quietly with Pascagoula itself.
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Along the Gulf coast, Post-Katrina, Part 1: Pascagoula
April 21, 2007,
I've just returned from the Gulf Coast with several hundred photos of Pascagoula and Ocean Springs, Mississippi, as well as of New Orleans, particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward. If you think the Bush Administration is paying anything more than lip service to revitalizing the Gulf States, then think again. The only true priority in their minds is colonizing the Middle East. That is where all the badly needed funds for reconstruction are going, into the Pentagon cesspool, despite what officials say. Carpetbaggers, crooks, and inefficient bureaucrats are sucking up the rest of the available funds.
To let you see what's going on along the coast, I am going to invite you to view several photo albums of the reality down there, starting with Pascagoula's still rather scenic waterfront in this first article. Pascagoula wasn't hit anywhere near as hard as New Orleans, but it was still hammered. Ingalls shipyard, for example, was devastated. Much of the city is back on its feet, but there are still miles and miles to go, as you will see in this first photo album. And I think it's important that we know what the situation is from as many sources as possible, including my own.
All but the foundation of this house was wiped away.
Another house stripped to the slab
Only the briars and birds are left to inhabit this chaise lounge and the empty slab and lot it overlooks.
What you see in just these four photos is a glimpse at the slow progress, when there is any at all, in rebuilding the Pascagoula waterfront. Rich and poor alike got hammered in this district, although only the rich are able to bring their wealth to bear to get some results. Most egregious are the shattered piers all along the several miles of waterfront, some 20 months after Katrina hit. and then there are scores of citizens living in oft toxic FEMA trailers, that is if they haven't been evicted yet.
There are more of these photos under "Mac's Slide Show" at the Kodak Gallery, so if you are interested, check them out at: (click here). Then just click on Mac's Slide Show. You don't have to sign in unless you want to. With my next photo-essay, I will move on to Ocean Springs, Mississippi and into the Bayou.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Full of Sound and Fury
In regards to the hanging of Saddam Hussein, I am reminded of Gandhi's statement that violence will vanquish violence only when darkness can dispell the darkness. In other words, if anyone thinks that executing Saddam Hussein in the middle of a civil war is going to curtail the mutual slaughter, this isn't going to happen. Violence is only going to "surge". Many Sunnis were devoted to Saddam and will likely want revenge in the form of assassinations and bombings of Shiites and Americans. Perhaps the Bush Administration will welcome this as an excuse to escalate its attacks on Anbar Province further. But we also know that even our good buddies, the Saudis, are financing Sunni insurgents and organizations in Iraq, to keep them from being exterminated by the Shiites. The confragration will only grow.
Furthermore, everyone knows that Saddam's trial was a cariature of justice by American legal standards, with bizarre goings-on from beginning to end, with the not so hidden hand of the Bush Administration influencing the entire process. This trial, however, was not so much about justice as it was about Shiite revenge, a Roman-style trophy for American audiences and the shutting up of Saddam before he could be questioned about the complicity of American officials in arming and directing him during his war against Iran, as well as other obscenities.
If true justice against Hussein, who was indeed a bloody tyrant, was the goal, why was he executed so hastily, before the trial over his massive slaughter of the Kurds had even taken place, leaving millions of Kurds without any sense of resolution? Hussein should have been tried before an international tribunal. The thousands of Iranians who also lost loved ones because of Hussein's war with Iran should have also been invited to press charges, especially in reference to his chemical attacks on Iranians. But then uncomfortable inquiries about alleged American chemical and biological weapons sales to Hussein might have been brought up during the proceedings, not a welcome idea to George Bush Senior and Donald Rumsfeld, to name a few players. (see Wayne Madsen's revelation on this at: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_wayne_ma_061228_why_the_bush_crime_f.htm )
As for the poetic symbolism of this event, even though President Bush must certainly feel ecstatic now at fulfilling his obsession to get Saddam, what has transpired with Saddam's hanging is the equivalent of the three fateful witches in MacBeth throwing another bat's wing or spider into their witches' brew, so as to make it all the more potent. Our benighted President, acting out his pathetic version of MacBeth, can't wait to drink another cup from their black cauldron, again mistaking it for the Holy Grail.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
We Need a Congress that Represents our Values...
So Speak up and Speak up now.
Let your Senators know that Torture, in whatever form in UN-American....If your Senator decides to support Torture...then that Senator no longer deserves your support....
Let your Senators know that Torture, in whatever form in UN-American....If your Senator decides to support Torture...then that Senator no longer deserves your support....
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The True National Debt is not being reported...
According to the official U.S. Financial Report, released by the Treasury Department:
* The true 2005 deficit is $760 billion, not the $318.5 billion Bush reported
o This is 6.2% of the GDP, not 2.6%
o That's $156,000 for every citizen, or $375,000 for every working American
* The true national debt is $49 trillion, not the $8.3 trillion Bush reported
o This figure has more than doubled in the past five years
o We paid $327 billion last year on interest alone
* It's all getting worse
Due to the Government using a cash accounting basis this does not include future spending promises like Medicare and Social Security, or even future spending guarantees like veterans' benefits and federal employee pensions.
So the Debt is even bigger than this report.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) released the report in the form of a book--What the White House Does Not Want You To Read--so the public can get the facts. Cooper said, "I think [the report] is the most powerful critique of the Bush Administration....No Republican can deny this attack (The report was produced by the Republican Administration)."
The Bush White House attempted to keep this report out of the public eye. They distributed the report to less than 20 members of Congress during the Christmas holiday season with no press release or media announcement. What do you want to bet that those 20 members were Republicans? (Or maybe the pseudo-democrat Joe Lieberman "might" have gotten a copy of the report.)
Hopefully progressive accountants will get a copy of this report and educate us some more.
Source of information
* The true 2005 deficit is $760 billion, not the $318.5 billion Bush reported
o This is 6.2% of the GDP, not 2.6%
o That's $156,000 for every citizen, or $375,000 for every working American
* The true national debt is $49 trillion, not the $8.3 trillion Bush reported
o This figure has more than doubled in the past five years
o We paid $327 billion last year on interest alone
* It's all getting worse
Due to the Government using a cash accounting basis this does not include future spending promises like Medicare and Social Security, or even future spending guarantees like veterans' benefits and federal employee pensions.
So the Debt is even bigger than this report.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) released the report in the form of a book--What the White House Does Not Want You To Read--so the public can get the facts. Cooper said, "I think [the report] is the most powerful critique of the Bush Administration....No Republican can deny this attack (The report was produced by the Republican Administration)."
The Bush White House attempted to keep this report out of the public eye. They distributed the report to less than 20 members of Congress during the Christmas holiday season with no press release or media announcement. What do you want to bet that those 20 members were Republicans? (Or maybe the pseudo-democrat Joe Lieberman "might" have gotten a copy of the report.)
Hopefully progressive accountants will get a copy of this report and educate us some more.
Source of information
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