and eventually, when interest in them flags, we can use the two big footprints for parking
So, after watching four years of people fighting over the big hole, we’re now to have nothing more than some dreary architecture sheltering a theme park for the dead, a high-rise corporate office park and a Wal-Mart.
The World Trade Center is back in business.
I’d weep, if I could care any longer.
[image from thinkandask]
Category: Politics
Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated”
what do you think?
The Times-Picayune headline and story appears only after almost a full month of reports that the New Orleans victims of hurricane Katrina had acted like murderers and animals.
As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.
“I think 99 percent of it is bulls—,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. “Don’t get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn’t see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. … Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved.”
. . . .
Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.
We should have known all along that racism would be a key part of the disaster response. What has surprised us most, the original reports or the news that they were spurious?
[image dated September 2, of crowd awaiting evacuation from the Superdome, by David J. Phillip from AP via Times-Picayune]
White House arrests Cindy Sheehan
dangerous woman
Cindy Sheehan has been arrested for not moving from the sidewalk in front of the executive mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue. White House press secretary Scott McClellan:
“it’s the right of the American people to peacefully express their views. And that’s what you’re seeing here in Washington, D.C.”
And it’s the right of a pseudo-authoritarian regime to arrest us if we try it without asking permission.
[image of Molly Riley from Reuters via Yahoo!]
Bush has made beatings and torture very American
An Iraqi detainee at a jail in the outskirts of Baghdad, 2004. Troops from the army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely beat and mistreated Iraqi prisoners at a base near Fallujah in central Iraq with the approval of their superior officers, a New York-based human rights group said [AFP caption]
“3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine”
The prodigious fool and duplicitous monster who let a very gullible nation believe Iraq was responsible for September 11, and who then told its very frightened citizens that Iraq was about to drop nuclear bombs on them, is the one who did this. Our natural proclivity for violence was the perfect instrument.
If we are citizens of a democracy*, we are all guilty, but the beatings and torture which continue today began four years ago at the very top, with the commander-in-chief himself.
*
perhaps a dubious assumption today
[image by Jewel Samad from Agence France-Presse file via Yahoo!]
don’t expect freedom of speech or assembly in New York
bedlam immediately followed the arrest of the organizer of Cindy Sheehan’s appearance in Union Square [the guy in the yellow shirt is a plainclothes punk “kid” who tried to start trouble before the rally began, according to a witness, Kim Arnold, one of the principals of the site where this image was spotted, tanasimusic]
Barry has a very good take on what happened when Cindy Sheehan tried to speak in Union Square on Monday.
No innocent in the ways of our benighted republic, including its most worldly city, he suggests, “They should have added some religious content”. [“worldly” is a relative thing here in America]
Incidently, the secondary headline on Sarah Ferguson’s Village Voice article reads:
Citys Finest pulls move even Bush wouldnt have tried
[image courtesy of Mike Fleming via tanasimusic]
after the flood, waiting for the new owners?
where Dumaine crosses North Roman, central Treme after the flood, sometime late last week
The title of Jordan Flaherty‘s latest letter is “Shelter and Safety”, but the context is racism, a racism exacerbated by the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, a racism which continues even today in “rescue” and “shelter” operations and which is built into the plans for tomorrow’s New Orleans.
The sections I’ve excerpted below describe just a little of the desperate struggle of a poor, almost-powerless, displaced community to remain a community. [The entire text includes much more detail on the specific horrors of “Shelter and Safety” today in Louisiana, and I expect it will soon appear on leftturn].
Just north of the French Quarter . . . is the historic Treme neighborhood. Settled in the early 1800s, its known as the oldest free African-American community in the US. Residents fear for the post-reconstruction stability of communities like Treme. Theres nothing some developers would like more than a ring of white neighborhoods around the French Quarter, said one Treme resident recently. The widespread fear among organizers is that the exclusionary, tourists only atmosphere of the French Quarter will be multiplied and expanded across the city, and that many residents simply wont be able to return home.
. . . .
Diane “Momma D” Frenchcoat never evacuated out of her Treme home on North Dorgenois Street, and has been helping feed and support 50 families, coordinating a relief and rebuilding effort consisting of, at its peak, 30 volunteers known as the Soul Patrol.
. . . .
Asked about her plan, Momma D had these words, “Rescue. Return. Restore. Can you hear what I’m saying, baby? Listen to those words again. Rescue, return, restore. We want the young, able-bodied men who are still here to stay to help those in need. And the ones that have been evacuated, we want them to come home and help clean up and rebuild this city. How can the city demand that we evacuate our homes but then have thousands of people from across this country volunteering to do the things that we can do ourselves?”
Community organizers like Momma D in Treme and Malik Rahim, who has a similar network in the Algiers neighborhood, are the forces for relief and rebuilding that need our help. The biggest disaster was not a hurricane, but the dispersal of communities, and that’s the disaster that needs to be addressed first.
Yesterday a friend told me through tears, I just want to go back as if this never happened. I want to go back to my friends and my neighbors and my community. Its our community that has brought us security. People I know in New Orleans dont feel safer when they see Blackwater mercenaries on their block, but they do feel security from knowing their neighbors are watching out for them. And that’s why the police and national guard and security companies on our streets havent brought us the security weve been looking for, and why discussions of razing neighborhoods makes us feel cold.
When we say we want our city back, we dont mean the structures and the institutions, and we dont mean law and order, we mean our community, the people we love. And that’s the city we want to fight for.
[image by Ted Jackson from the Times Picayune]
getting into New Orleans, with some paper and some attitude
back at Duke, Sonny Byrd, David Hankla and Hans Buder
“It made no sense whatsoever that reporters were getting in and out of New Orleans, but the National Guard couldn’t remove those people from the convention center,” said Mr. Hankla, 20, a sophomore. “All we knew was that we were sick of being armchair humanitarians and that we intended to help get people out.”
So he and two dorm mates, Sonny Byrd and Hans Buder, set out in Mr. Byrd’s Hyundai sedan for a road trip and rescue mission. [read the whole story in the NYTimes]
That’s the can-do spirit which seems missing in most of the country these days. It’s also the spirit (and the devices) we used in ACT UP, especially in the early 90’s: Sometimes you just have to figure out how to make your own credentials if you want to help people.
Hey, these dudes weren’t arrested, and they even got media coverage – key in any action!
[image by John Loomis for the Times]
anyone care what the owners of those houses think?
not everything’s in the French Quarter
I obviously haven’t seen everything being written about the reconstruction (or, gasp, “urban renewal”) of New Orleans, but I know I haven’t read a single word about who actually owns all those unique, traditional/vernacular style houses we’ve seen throughout the flooded older, poorer neighborhoods. I suspect they are mostly owner-occupied or rented from people who live in the neighborhood.
I certainly don’t think Halliburton or the developers own them – yet. Why are we talking about these neighborhoods as if their ownership had evaporated, as if the governments which failed them can now decide their disposition in a vacuum?
[image of two shotgun houses from Ingolf Vogeler]
was “mission accomplished” even in Afghanistan?
in Afghanistan the Taliban remain an enduring threat, freedom only clings to life, especially for women, and more Americans are dying than ever before
Sixty-nine American service members have been killed in Afghanistan this year, the NYTimes reported today in an article discussing Pentagon and military officials’ plans to start pulling out of the country which was the site of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in 2001.
The first paragraph of the article tells us that the contemplated reduction, as much of 20 percent of our current troop level of 20,000, would be “the largest withdrawal since the Taliban were ousted [my italics] in late 2001.” Check that verb. Not untypically the paper is being a bit disingenuous, since the article continues for four long columns packed with the disconnect of these phrases I’ve pulled out from the text. They describe the current very real insurgency and why our allies don’t want any part of a combat role:
“handle the counterinsurgency mission”
“where much of the fighting is occurring”
“the American combat operation”
“contribute troops to counterinsurgency”
“small special forces involved in combat”
“where American troops have clashed with Taliban”
“anticipated spike in insurgent attacks”
“attacks against American forces”
“stepped-up American offensives in areas sympathetic to the Taliban”
“commander of daily tactical operations in Afghanistan”
“soldiers to fight throughout the winter”
“keep the pressure on Taliban fighters”
“effort to impress villagers in the Taliban heartland”
The total count of U.S. military fatalities since the beginning of the war which “ousted the Taliban” almost four years ago is 231. According to at least one site* which breaks down the statistics by year, the numbers have been going up each year since 2001:
2001: 12
2002: 43
2003: 47
2004: 52
2005: 77
The caption for the photo above as it appears on the Times site reads:
A patrol vehicle from Company A, 508th Infantry, casts shadows in a town in Paktika Province, [southeast] Afghanistan.
*
whose statistics were compiled from Department of Defense and Central Command press releases [the discrepancy in its 2005 total and that in the Times may be due to different ways of measuring the years used in the calculations]
[image by Scott Eels for the Times]
brilliant move on the part of the White House
brilliant?
Maybe we’ve just been watching the latest sally in the radical conservatives‘ continuing campaign to dismantle the government. The results of a Newsweek poll released a few days ago suggest that it’s working.
But Katrinas most costly impact could be a loss of faith in government generally, and the president, in particular. A majority of Americans (57 percent) say governments slow response to what happened in New Orleans has made them lose confidence in governments ability to deal with another major natural disaster.
The only complication for the Bushies is that an even larger number of people are also convinced their own special damn fool – and his entire party – is a very big part of the problem.
Reflecting the tarnished view of the administration, only 38 percent of registered voters say they would vote for a Republican for Congress if the Congressional elections were held today, while 50 say they would vote for a Democrat.
Even showing up on a [helicopter] carrier again, as he did yesterday, won’t change those numbers.
Thank goodness we can’t afford still another war.
[image by Ron Edmonds from AP via Yahoo!]