————Update————
Rumsfeld said in his comment over the looting in Iraq at that time.
It’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things.
Guardian April 12, 2003 Free to do bad things.
Today on the Washingtonpost, there is an article called Iraqi Envoy “Sees Parallel in New Orleans Looting”, Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who served in Baghdad in 2003 said:
“I would like to see Mr. Rumsfeld stand up and say that to the people in New Orleans,”.
———-End update———-
I told this story before and I will tell it once again now.
At the first days of the American attack on Iraq employees from the ministry of industry managed to save important documents, computer disks and data’s of the ministry from looting and burning by taking them to their houses.
After few weeks and when the situation getting calm they organized a parade inside the ministry to deliver what they took with back to the ministry, so they contacted my sister who works as journalist for Iraq’s TV at that time asking for media coverage of the parade because it shows the world that not all Iraqis are looters and this parade can set a very good example for the other Iraqis.
My sister took a cameraman with her and filmed the parade, interviewed the employees their.
My sister went back crying after she gave her resignation.
Yesterday sister send me an email with this text:
Did you saw Katrina?
[Thanks to Nadia for this link. Via making light]
White people find thingsmessage board of Yahoo, there are many comments on the subject].
Dont’s miss Michael Moore’s letter to G. Bush:
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It’s Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren’t there to begin with?
ok, here’s my results…
Your Type is
INTJ
Strength of the preferences %
Introvert — 11%
Intuitive — 38%
Thinking — 25%
Judging — 33%
I guess this makes me a Judgemental Intuitive asshole who likes to Think to myself alot (Introvert) :-)
INTJ example:
holy shit! That explains everything!
Jeff– “Your Type is INTJ”
Thought so! You remind me too much of me. Scary!
“I guess this makes me a Judgemental Intuitive asshole”
Not an asshole, we’re just misunderstood!
“can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand”
Jeff– You’re obviously a vampire like me too. Only two people posting at this hour from the US.
Yeah, that’s it :-) I’m just misunderstood!
Yep, My bedtime is usually around 6am or so. I can get more done in the middle of the night.
Jeff– “Yeah, that’s it I’m just misunderstood!”
*nog nog nog*
“I can get more done in the middle of the night.”
I know what you mean. Better without all those annoying _people_ around all the time. ;-)
Everybody’s gonna git pissed at us for treating this place like a chat room. ;-)
They just get in the way…
I just posted something over at my site that you might get a kick out of.
Click Here…
Sorry ladybird, don’t mean to piss you off about the chat thing.
Jeff– “I just posted something over at my site that you might get a kick out of.”
That’s terrible! You should be ashamed of yourself! Not that I didn’t put that in my “Save” folder or anything though. ;-)
I’ll post this to make up for it. ;-)
CLICK HERE
Good one, but I’ll counter that with this clip… ;-)
Click Here
“I’ll counter that with this clip…”
Man, that’s sad. Cops are the most entirely messed up individuals I’ve ever seen… and I can say that because I used to be one. There are the odd one or two that joined up to help people and whatnot, but taken as a whole, they are a messed up breed.
Now that’s pretty weird, I’ve been tossing around the idea of becoming one! I’m even scheduled for a test next week.
Jon writes “If people don’t go out and make for themselves, then evolution says that they are not fit to survive and should die off. It’s sad, but that’s what caused Australopithecus Afarensis to evolve into Homo Sapiens.”
Well this is exactly what we’ve seen in New Orleans. Seems to me the US already has a Libertarian Gov.
here
The real costs of a culture of greed
Robert Scheer
September 6, 2005
WHAT THE WORLD has witnessed this past week is an image of poverty and social disarray that tears away the affluent mask of the United States.
Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts even Third World rulers to shame. The well-reported litany of mistakes by the Bush administration in failing to prevent and respond to Katrina’s destruction grew longer with each hour’s grim revelation from the streets of an apocalyptic New Orleans.
Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans’ flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long’s ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.
Now we have a president who wastes tax revenues in Iraq instead of protecting us at home. Levee improvements were deferred in recent years even after congressional approval, reportedly prompting EPA staffers to dub flooded New Orleans “Lake George.”
None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower– and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by “quasi-socialist” government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone — education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services — in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.
And, although the wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline by sending their kids to private school, building walls around their communities and checking into distant hotels in the face of approaching calamities, others, like the 150,000 people living below the poverty line in the Katrina damage area — one-third of whom are elderly — are left exposed.
Watching on television the stark vulnerability of a permanent underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans ghettos is terrifying. It should be remembered, however, that even when hurricanes are not threatening their lives and sanity, they live in rotting housing complexes, attend embarrassingly ill-equipped public schools and, lacking adequate police protection, are frequently terrorized by unemployed, uneducated young men.
In fact, rather than an anomaly, the public suffering of these desperate Americans is a symbol for a nation that is becoming progressively poorer under the leadership of the party of Big Business. As Katrina was making its devastating landfall, the U.S. Census Bureau released new figures that show that since 1999, the income of the poorest fifth of Americans has dropped 8.7% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year alone, 1.1 million were added to the 36 million already on the poverty rolls.
For those who have trouble with statistics, here’s the shorthand: The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe populist language of Louisiana’s legendary Long, the shaft.
These are people who have long since been abandoned to their fate. Despite the deep religiosity of the Gulf States and the United States in general, it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. Case in point: The crucial New Orleans marshland that absorbs excess water during storms has been greatly denuded by rampant commercial development allowed by a deregulation-crazy culture that favors a quick buck over long-term community benefits.
Given all this, it is no surprise that leaders, from the White House on down, haven’t done right by the people of New Orleans and the rest of the region, before and after what insurance companies insultingly call an “act of God.”
Fact is, most of them, and especially our president, just don’t care about the people who can’t afford to attend political fundraisers or pay for high-priced lobbyists. No, these folks are supposed to be cruising on the rising tide of a booming, unregulated economy that “floats all boats.”
They were left floating all right.
Michael– “Well this is exactly what we’ve seen in New Orleans.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… poor black folks vote Democrat. Bush was just trying to widen then margin for future Republican candidates.
I’m believe the delay in response to the Katrina disaster has what we call “the mark of Rove” on it.
“The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe populist language of Louisiana’s legendary Long, the shaft.”
Viva la revolución!
Jon,
What do you make of this story
Thursday, September 8
Major Garrett updates us on the Red Cross AND the Salvation Army being blocked from helping by Louisiana state officials
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