From: marilyn
Date: 9/18/2005
Time: 1:17:40 PM
Remote Name: 192.168.7.4
Don't know about anyone else, but the possibiity of deliberately blowing those levees in N.O. should give us pause and once it sinks in, should cause universal outrage. Sure, sadness and heartfelt depression over loss of life and community is a first response; but what follows? Shouldn't it be to get at root causes? Jerry Springer on Air America radio said a couple months ago that the country was showing no outward, obvious signs that we were engaged in a homicidal war with thousands of deaths on both sides. Walk down the streets of smallville, USA; the occasional yard flag can be seen to break the monotony of "normalness." And in those yards displaying the Stars and Bars after the 2004 national election, you would always find Bush/Cheney standards. Support for our troops meant raising a flag and buying a ribbon for your gas-guzzling choice of vehicle. What is wrong with this picture?? Supporting a needless war meant logically that you had to support the war party; others were "unpatriotic," left-leaning pinko socialist (or worse), anti-Christian and definitely anti-American. Anyone recall the McCarthy era--not Eugene, but Joseph, the Wisconsin Senator who whipped up old anti- Stalinists factions, seeing communists in every nook and cranny in government? He ruined a lot of careers but ended up disgraced, dying a craven alcoholic's death prematurely. Poetic justice? But I digress. The point I am making is if you turn on your commercial media outlets today, you will find intense verbage (and video) recaping Katrina's wrath. You will hear officials who were before pointing fingers in the opposite direction, drawing in their claws long enough to expunge the record, "moving on"--no point in placing blame where it lies. But let me point out some facts that are being shoved under the putrid water in N.O.: dark tales are emerging...that the after-cleanup will be no less tainted with fraud, indifference or corruption than the run-up to the disaster. Bush has by executive order overruled the legislation passed by Pres. Hoover before he was booted from office. I am talking 70 years of protection in the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandated that if federal funds were used to address domestic spending projects, then the prevailing wage must be paid to workers by employers. Now the workers who will be summoned to clean up and do the grunt work in Gulf rehab, will be at the mercy of corporate largesse--which translated means no protection from business- as-usual with a cold eye to the bottom line. Here is another point, cited by a journalist who had returned from N.O. She said that she felt a sickening feeling that the dislocation and breaking of black familiies, who are being placed strategically across the country is an attempt to use the old slave system's defense mechanism to weaken dissent. Babies at the Dome were passed upfront, taken from the nuclear family and now are unaccounted for. Of the 2000 or so missing children, only about 800 have been reunited with their family. Where are those babies? What will be their fate? We are only privy to the "feel good" images that the Bush cabal will allow on corporate TV. Everyone wants to feel safe, conatented that the system is working for their benefit and that what was allowed to transpire in N.O. will never happen to them; while it is human nature to grasp onto hope, it is folly to ignore the undercurrents of stealth patterns. Naomi Kline, noted journalist coming from the Left, says she witnessed a sobering trend in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. The boat people who inhabited and fished off the shores of valuable beachheads were put into gov. controlled refugee camps patrolled by armed guards and are forced to stay. Their property is now being sold off to international corporations which will turn it into glitzy, profitable tourist meccas for the rich and famous. And I have heard that children of these poor, wretched evacuees are being sold into forced labor situations and prostitution. So we just cannot sit and get too comfortable about what the future may hold; we have met the enemy and it is us. (As in US; forget who said that but it does have a certain sobering ring.) Private armies of armed militia are protrolling the streets of New Orleans; they are well-paid and are protecting the interests of the white community which holds ownership of the high ground. They are being protected from those black squatters who may turn again to looting in order to survive. marilyn