<n>This draft was buried, nearly complete in the earthli archives. It has been published now ... well because it's still relevant.</n> <bq>True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.</bq> <div align="right"><n>Martin Luther King</n></div> <div style="clear: both"><h>How's it Going, Mr. Bush?</h></div> <img attachment="2005-08-31t184426z_01_nootr_rtridsp_1_news-weather-katrina-bush-col.jpg" align="left" class="frame" caption="Bush Views New Orleans from Air Force One">Why doesn't Bush come up with a better persona for the Katrina aftermath? Americans don't really have high standards for veracity in reporting, a fact that he's used often before. What's the problem this time? Instead of swinging in, hanging from the side of a helicopter and handing out food in the middle of the Dome, Team Bush releases a photo of him peering out the window of his <i>jet</i> as he soars over the wreckage of New Orleans. As noted in the article <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/620901.html" source="Haaretz" author="Daniel Rabinowitz">Catastrophes don't just happen</a>: <bq>On Wednesday he ordered Air Force 1 to circle in the skies of New Orleans and had his picture taken gazing out the window. Afterward he continued to hide in the White House and spout cliches.</bq> <a href="http://www.sundayherald.com/51622" source="Sunday Herald">Bush's Blunders</a> puts it quite scathingly: <bq>He overstayed his holiday when he should have been at his desk in the White House, and he was slow to react, only flying over the disaster areas in Air Force One two days after the hurricane had struck. Derided by the Democrats as an 'imperial tour', his flying visit attracted the wrath of Senator Frank R Lautenburg of New Jersey who issued a stinging rebuke: 'It was not enough for the president to bank his plane and look at the window and say: 'Oh, what a devastating site.' Instead of looking out the window of an airplane, he should have been on the ground giving the people, devastated by this hurricane, hope.'</bq> It's not the first time that he thought it appropriate to have his overarching concern photographed in this way: <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020625-4.html">a visit to families in Arizona</a> was conducted and recorded in a similar way. "Flyby Compassion" is nothing new to our elected leader. While Bush and his administration were spouting cliches, others were busy documenting the disaster from a much closer viewpoint. <a href="http://unclegreggy.blogspot.com/2005/09/one-week-in-new-orleans.html" author="Uncle Greggy">One Week in New Orleans</a> has a chronology in photos of the week of the hurricane. <h>Other priorities</h> The Bush administration has been very busy with its own agenda in the last five years. This aggressiveness on several other fronts didn't leave much time or money for mundane contingency plans for natural disasters---especially in extremely poor districts like Louisiana. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050912ta_talk_remnick" source="The New Yorker" author="David Remnick">The White House Under Water</a> rolls out some exact "before and after" budget numbers highlighting what he calls <iq>the President's priorities ... an indifference to questions of infrastructure and the environment</iq>. This roll of the dice, in which the risk of a complete flooding of New Orleans was ignored, involved only lives of people whose voices of complaint and suffering are not heard all the way up in Washington. <bq>...Bush consistently slashed the Army Corps of Engineers' funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain. This year, he asked for $3.9 million, $23 million less than the Corps requested. In the end, Bush reluctantly agreed to $5.7 million, delaying seven contracts, including one to enlarge the New Orleans levees. Former Republican congressman Michael Parker was forced out as the head of the Corps by Bush in 2002 when he dared to protest the lack of proper funding.</bq> Though the blame is placed on Bush, it sullies the facts. It is the Bush administration and the über-capitalist free-market mindset that is at fault here. Bush is simply the current figurehead of an ugly undercurrent of America in which the underprivileged are stuffed into one end of this great nation and spit out at the other as corporate profit. <h>They're Poor for a Reason</h> Why don't Bush and his administration care about poor people? <dl dt_class="field"> Bush doesn't think he has to Bush doesn't have another term to win; he's cocky from having his way all the time; he doesn't want to mingle with blacks and the poor. There are a myriad of possible reasons. He's not allowed to His minders and keepers on the right may have decided he doesn't need to waste time on New Orleans when he can now focus on the Supreme Court He's scared Like any other dictator with low popularity in a extremely split class-based society, he's scared shitless to go in among the plebescite. He thinks (probably rightly) that he'll be greeted not with roses and big ol' toothy smiles of thanks, but with a public disemboweling. </dl> Why not help the poor? We've been brought up with the constant message that people are poor, not because of misfortune, but because they are too stupid or too lazy to make something of themselves in our eminently free society. Usually both. You can help the well-off because (a) they might be able to help you sometime, (b) if they didn't help themselves, then it really was misfortune (instead of stupidity or laziness). Altruism doesn't come easily; nor is it easy to avoid wanting to punish people for their suffering---for making you feel bad about not feeling bad for them. The article <a href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054719" source="Editor & Publisher" title="Barbara Bush: Things Working Out 'Very Well' for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans">Things Working Out 'Very Well'...</a> quotes a Barbara Bush, who shows us all how it's done by voicing her opinion loud and clear: being evacuated out of their shitholes in New Orleans is actually a step up for many people. <bq>What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. ... And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this---this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.</bq> Psst, Mom! Ix-nay on the making fun of the oor-pay. <img attachment="bs050903.jpg" align="right" class="frame" caption="From Ben Sargent">Meanwhile, Cristie Weber responded differently and just asked buses to start driving <a href="http://www.doorcountycompass.com/news/050904-katrina.htm" source="Door Country Compass">Wisconsin's Katrina bus caravan sparks nationwide response</a>. She took the reins out of government hands and can take credit for the BBC noting in their <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/shared/player/player.stm?title=AidbeginstoarriveinNewOrleans&clipurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da6800242f8/nb/09012da6800242fc_16x9_nb!asx&cs=news">BBC Report video</a> from 5 days after the storm that <iq>the superpower is finally behaving like one</iq>. <h>Contrast Two "Disasters"</h> The first is, naturally, New Orleans, summed up here in <a href="http://www.plastic.com/comments.html;sid=05/09/01/08374533;cid=168" source="Plastic">Hundreds Abandoned? Media Censoring Itself</a> by NBC photojournalist Tony Zumbado, who was in and outside the convention, covering the ongoing degradation of conditions. <bq>Babies were becoming dehydrated and dying. Old people in wheelchairs were wasting away. The sick were not getting their treatments. Neither the police nor the National Guard nor clean water nor food was anywhere to be found. The only vaguely official personage who had come to visit these forlorn, and now angry, people was Harry Connick Jr. ... They were told to go to the convention center. They did, they've been behaving. It's unbelievable how organized they are, how supportive they are of each other. They have not started any melees, any riots ... they just want food and support.</bq> The other disaster? Israel, of course. <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-to-be-asked-for-gaza-aid/2005/07/11/1120934186059.html" source="Smh.com.au">US to be asked for Gaza aid</a> tells us that <iq>Israel will ask the United States for $US2.2 billion ($2.9 billion) to pay for its planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip</iq>, which, for 9000 families, works out to about $250,000 per family. Let's hope the US government can find similar largesse for the transplanted families in the South. One would hope the US citizens driven out of their homes by an act of God would rate just as high as Israelis who've been forced out of homes they illegally occupied. See <a href="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1081952201569_77361401" source="CTV.ca">Q&A: The Gaza Withdrawal</a> for more information. Somehow, I doubt it. <h>Different Strokes for Different Folks</h> The US media has unwittedly given voice to a racism that is usually more subtle: looters vs. finders. Distinction by nomenclature is hardly new: most are quite familiar with the overnight metamorphosis of freedom fighters into terrorists and vice versa as the US changes alignments. This new specimen comes in the wake of people helping themselves to worldly goods that have been abandoned and/or ruined (and likely covered by insurance). Black people are <i>looters</i>, for whom the <iq>300 members of the Arkansas National Guard have been given orders of 'Shoot to kill'</iq> (heard on CNN on September 2nd) and white people are <i>finders</i>. This <a href="http://www.flickr.com//photos/20716669@N00/39665030/" source="Flickr">photo comparison</a> provides an example. <img attachment="tmate050903.jpg" align="left" class="frame" caption="from Ann Telnaes">Bush's main concern is for the nation as a whole and, naturally, that includes the many large corporations that are the primary drivers of our trickle-down economy. We need to make sure they don't suffer unduly or they won't be able to make profits, expand their businesses and provide new jobs for those displaced by the hurricane. It's a long and difficult road and will require several injections of gajillions of taxpayer money into the free, open market. <a href="http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_24634.shtml" author="Arianna Huffington" source="Yubanet">The Flyover Presidency of George W. Bush</a> made sure from the first day that the even the Katrina disaster would advance the political agenda of his backers. <bq>... the president discussed the ways his administration was moving to help ease the suffering of profit-soaked oil companies impacted by the storm, pointing out that he had instructed Energy Secretary Sam Bodman to work with refineries to "alleviate any shortage through loans" and that the EPA had waived clean air standards for gasoline and diesel fuels in all 50 states</bq> Don't hold your breath waiting for those clean air standards to get re-enabled. Or rather, perhaps you should. The oil companies will be paid one way or another: they can just raise prices too. It's just nicer to see homage paid in a single lump sum. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/vest09052005.html" title="It's Looking a Lot Like Fallujah: The Battle of New Orleans" author="David Vest" source="CounterPunch">The Battle of New Orleans</a> offers up the following thought experiment: <bq>Imagine the reaction if --- rather than ordering the National Guard to "shoot to kill" the desperate the angry and the unlucky --- the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, or the president of the United States had instead declared that anyone so selfish as to be caught "protecting private property" during a humanitarian crisis would be shot on sight.</bq> How can anyone be angry with a human stupid enough to steal a <iq>television out of a flooded store --- with nowhere to take it and nowhere to plug it in?</iq> Don't we pity this kind of desperation? That, given no one to turn to and nothing else to do, these people retain their core compulstion to consume, instilled in them since birth? Should the system not instead be proud that this man-made instinct triumphs over the search for nourishment? From <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh09052005.html" source="CounterPunch" author="Peter Linebaugh">Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot!</a> <bq>Is attempting to commandeer a boat or a truck, in the midst of a total societal breakdown, really irrational behavior, let alone criminal? ... How long, one wonders, before some New Orleans resident inevitably violates the curfew and goes outdoors in search of food or medicine, only to be identified as a "looter" and gunned down by those troops "fresh back from Iraq"? Or has it already happened? And if so, how often?</bq> <img attachment="40268914_14702e44b1_o.jpg" align="right">The people left behind in New Orleans<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen09032005.html" title="'Let Them Eat Shit...': People of the Dome" source="CounterPunch" author="Mitchel Cohen">People of the Dome</a> <div style="margin-right: 250px"><bq>90 percent of the so-called looters are simply grabbing water, food, diapers and medicines ... Those people who stole televisions and large non-emergency items have been selling them, Les reports (having witnessed several of these "exchanges") so that they could get enough money together to leave the area.</bq></div> <h>Random Impressions</h> Those in charge are terrified of the poor; they're trying to starve and dehydrate them out of the city. <bq>We need to understand that the capability has been there from the start to drive water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads have been clear --- it's how the National Guard drove into the city.</bq> <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon09022005.html" source="CounterPunch" author="Norman Solomon" title="The Smirk of a Killer: Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House">The Smirk of a Killer</a> <bq>The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare. ... There is something egregiously obscene about the people in charge of the U.S. government telling citizens to donate money for a hurricane relief effort while the administration, from the president on down, has viciously abdicated its most basic responsibilities.</bq> <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09012005.html" author="Chris Floyd" source="CounterPunch" title="The Perfect Storm: New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good">The Perfect Storm</a> <bq>Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.</bq> <a href="http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0509/S00049.htm" source="Mark Drolette">While Bodies Rot, Bush Couldn't Care Less</a> is a screaming diatribe against Bush published in New Zealand (but written in Sacramento), answering the question of "Where's Bush?": <bq>...it's obvious where he is: hiding. Doing what he's always done, not showing up when it counts, taking the easy way out, ducking responsibility, not giving a flying fig about anyone but himself. ... he sure isn't about to extend any effort now. Because, really, why bother? Most importantly, though: What's in it for him?</bq> Don't let the hyperbole throw you off; the author is doing what many other critics are doing and using Bush's name as shorthand for a deeper crisis in America. Many do so simply because they want to believe that if we somehow leave this callous fratboy in the past, America will once again soar to previous altruistic heights. That is not so; Bush is the face of the only America most of us have ever lived in, the only American government we have ever known. Everything is a calculation, including the marketing of the idea of a moral country, fighting for goodness in the world. <iq>[T]he trick is to convince enough people that you honestly care about them even while you suck their husks dry.</iq> <a href="http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,17294,00.html?tnews" source="E! Online" author="Bridget Byrne">NBC KOs Kanye's Bush Bashing</a> cites a lot of an on-the-fly diatribe given by rapper Kanye West: <bq>I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, they say, 'They're looting.' See a white family, it says, 'They are looking for food,' ... So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help---with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way...and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us! ... Bush doesn't care about black people...</bq> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4214516.stm" source="BBC" author="Matt Wells">Has Katrina saved US media?</a> takes a closer look at the media coverage of the aftermath of Katrina, in which anyone who's been watching has noticed that much of the first few days of statements from FEMA, Homeland Security and the White House <iq>were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance.</iq> <bq>But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters.</bq> <a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2005/09/03/bush_refers_to_new_orleans_as_that_part_of_the_world_and_more_praise_for_big_brother.php">News Hounds</a> <bq>"It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine. And now we're going to go try to comfort people in that part of the world."</bq> <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/09/05/katrina_quotes_2005_0505.html" source="CBC News">Quotes about Hurricane Katrina</a> <bq>'The guy who runs this building ... His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home. And every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming. Son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah. Mama. Somebody's coming to get you. 'Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. 'Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. 'Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. 'Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' 'And she drowned Friday night. [Crying] And she drowned Friday night. Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.'</bq>