Thought y'all might appreciate a perspective from Australia concerning all that flooding and looting you got going on up there. Aussie Bob is an amusing bloke.
Best to yaz, Mike B)
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Via a process of heroic press conference after heroic press conference it seems the Big Lie about The Big Easy is finally taking shape.
"There was no state of emergency... There WAS a state of emergency.... There was no request for help... There WAS a request for help... Nobody was at the Convention Centre... We've been supplying the Convention Centre with food and water for days... No-one had any idea that we'd have a hurricane and a flood... Who could have predicted such a double-whammy?... It was all the governor's fault... No, it was FEMA's fault... We need someone to take the fall: blame the Mayor! He was rude to the President on TV... And that rapper guy. We all know about rappers... We're spinning like crazy to make ourselves out to be heroic, caring, efficient. But if anyone criticises us, well then, that's "partisan"... Now is not the time for recriminations. That's later on. Much later. Hopefully... never."
>From the fog of electronic babble he's received over here in Australia - cable
suits with the hair and the teeth, sitting in studios, waving their hands so
casually, so lazily lying; desperate reporters pleading for help for the people
around them, shamed by the knowledge they have an escape if it gets much worse;
the phalanx of bobbing heads that always seem to surround Bush; the photo-ops;
the gradual packaging of the tragedy with flashy TV graphics; slick sound
bites; endless re-runs of some poor unfortunate stealing food for himself and
his friends and family, so easily condemned as a "looter" - Aussie Bob's
thanking Whoever Up There That There Is To Thank that he has at least the
Pacific Ocean between him and Bush World.
We're hearing stories of functioning communications lines being deliberately cut off by FEMA operatives; of convoys of trucks with food and refreshment being turned around; eager rescuers forbidden to rescue... all manner of disaster relief denied... until the cameras are set up and ready to roll. It's as if they're trying to prove how difficult it is to get into New Orleans by systematically closing the place off. Make it hard to relieve the disaster and then go on TV and say how hard it is to help, just like they told us it was.
"See? We weren't lying. It really is hard to help. We would if we could. Honest!"
A clear day at last. Four days late. But never mind.
"Here comes the President. Find some helicopters. Get those rotors turning. Grab a couple of black kids. Drop some sandbags. Where are those bobbing heads? No ties! Open necks only. Don't forget to thank everyone. Especially Democrats. They're in it with us now. Up to their necks. If we go down, they go down. All finished? Now, watch this drive...
And FEMA's Chertoff always by his side, the Reaper's twin.
(Photo at site)
The man at the top. King George. He loves Death. Whether it be the condemned cell at a Texas prison, or New York on 9/11, or Iraq - Fallujah, Abu Graib, practically anywhere in the Central Front Of The War Against Terror (did anyone ask the Iraqis if they minded?) - and now New Orleans, Death energizes him. Mass death even more so. Soldiers, guns, looters, evil doers, bodies eviscerated, floating, shackled to a table awaiting the pressing of a button. It's all a photo opportunity to prove what a man, what a leader he is. Resolute. In command. Ruthless. Parsing death. Apportioning it. Sharing it about. Rewarding people with the opportunity to die for him, civilians and soldiers alike in Iraq (we owe them more death, to honour those already dead), the victims of New Orleans, left un-rescued for days so that when eventually saved he could take the credit... maybe not for the actual rescues, personally (we don't get our hands too dirty), but for appointing the battalions of cronies, hangers-on, dead-weights, clueless flunkies and yes-men that he rewarded with high salary, high profile "employment" that achieve little, and that grudgingly, and late. Too late. Death is his friend and his prop. It has served him so well in the past, and now, in the Delta, it is by his side again. Stage-managed. Laid on. Thousands of bodies: so much fodder for his fascination with lives lost for some always "greater good"... his own.
Yeats wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
full: http://aussiebobpd.blogspot.com/
****************************************************************** "Be careful. When we're indecisive, the wishes of others gain." from THE GREAT FIRE, by Shirley Hazzard
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