Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Condi needs a new pair of shoes, Kanye calls out Dubya...plus: honoring Labor on Labor Day weekend
You know, the Red Cross has millions of dollars left over from 9/11 donations that are not going to anyone right now, and are not being used, why can’t that money go to survivors of Katrina?
Posted by Christine Hamm on from not in my backyard 09/04 at 10:23 AMThere’s one problem with your question, Christine. You are applying logic and compassion to the issue. That’s a no-no.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 10:45 AMHi Christine and Mickey....I like the suggestion made this morning by the gentleman, I forget his name, who ran the 9/11 compensation board. I believe that he said that this should not be done like that was, and that each victim should receive the same amount of money. I have always believed that compensating the wealthy more, as was done with the 9/11 victims, was wrong. Also, I have seen too many of these disasters where the individual people receive nothing and ALL of the money goes to beaurocracies and organizations. I hope that, this time, the money goes directly to the people with no middle men. It won’t.
Posted by rosemarie jackowski on from crossing the line 09/04 at 11:16 AMFrom the Marshall Plan 60 years ago to the Gulf Coast clean-up today, a major chunk of that re-building money will serve to make the rich richer. For the poor, there might be a New Deal-style gig shoveling shit...and they better not complain.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 11:22 AMSadly, I think that you are right, Mickey. I wonder if they will figure a way for Halliburton to profit from this. On the brighter side, the eyes of the entire world are on this and a lot of them must be thinking...hummmm, is that what happens under Extreme Capitalism.
Posted by rosemarie jackowski on from crossing the line 09/04 at 02:03 PMHi Mickey & Rosemarie & Christine -
Mickey, perfect line: “You are applying logic and compassion to the issue. That’s a no-no”This “great” nation could not have gotten to where it is today if we allowed the widespread application of logic and compassion to interfere with the great lootings and deliberate injustices of the State. Truth, Justice, Reason: “Das ist Verboten!”
Yes, I imagine that, if they actually come to compensate these folks, there will be a “many-layered bureaucracy” set up to skim off as much of the coin as possible, before it actually reaches those it’s misunderestimated to reach…
Johnson’s “Great Society” supposedly set aside billions for the poor. Democratic Party Elites and their minions all got their chance to feed freely at the trough, before it ever reached America’s poor. And, once it arrived, they had to grovel and dance and, finally, genuflect, before the “generous hand” of the State finally tossed a few bucks at them.
Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/04 at 02:12 PMI just finished an article by Noam Chomsky, about our bombing of Afghanistan, after 9-ll. He said that the population of the country was very, very dependant on food and aid from other countries and organizations, and that these countries and organizations warned us that the bombing would be catastrophic. I think the following quote speaks volumes about the current situation in the Southern US:
“...As to the facts, the basic story is this. On Sept. 16, five days after 9-11, the NY Times reported that Washington delivered to Pakistan a series of demands. Among them, Washington “demanded...the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.” It is worth reading and re-reading that statement. It would have been extraordinary if, say, 1000 people in Afghanistan’s civilian population were relying on the convoys that the US ordered be eliminated. But it wasn’t 1000. The numbers were estimated by the agencies at about 5 million. Simply think for a moment about what those orders meant...”Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/04 at 04:54 PM5 million here, 5 million there...pretty soon we’re talking about real numbers.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 05:15 PMJoe, I have not read that report. I will have to search it out but I don’t see how it can be denied that it has been U.S. policy to use the deaths of civilians as a strategy of war. It doesn’t seem to bother anyone that that is a war crime. That’s why we won’t join the International Court.......... If 9/11 was Blowback, maybe these U.S. deaths are Backfire. If the money was not diverted to kill Iraqis, the levees would have been maintained, maybe.
Posted by rosemarie jackowski on from crossing the line 09/04 at 05:16 PMHere’s some video of the police looting a Walmart in New Orleans:
http://www.zippyvideos.com/8911023771013466/countdown-looting-in-walmart.Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 05:25 PMInteresting “foot-age,” eh Mickey? Well, police are frequently ill-treated and poorly paid. Odd that the Elites have been able to hypnotize police forces throughout the US, into believing that the Elites care about them, and that they should cast their lot with the rich and powerful, and against their own people… against their own self-interest. Again and again we see hundreds of millions of people, siding with the Ruling Class, against their own - rather obvious! - best interest. Maybe we should all get together somewhere and study the latest publications on the subtleties of hypnotism… What we don’t know is obviously destroying us.
Great peice on the Lowell Mill girls, Mickey. This strike must have had a huge effect upon union organizers everywhere, at the time. I was reading about Big Bill Heywood, a couple months ago, and about the IWW, generally. These people paid for our recent “labor rights,” in blood, and lots of it. Yet, since Reagan, people have been giving them all back, with barely a whimper…
( More hypnosis. See paragraph 1, above. )Also, I wanted to say how relieved I am to see that people are deliberately saving the animals, down there. Some of the scenes I’ve seen, of critters standing, alone, on roof tops, as people and boats rush past, have really, really, really bothered me. I guess it’s kind of inappropriate to speak in great detail, “publicly,” about these poor creatures, when so many people are in such a wretched condition -
but I’ve been deeply tormented by the thought that so many of them will be simply abandoned.
Thanks much for your ongoing attention to their plight, Mickey.Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/04 at 06:02 PMYeah, I’d get a kick out of some cops joining in the fun at a Walmart IF the civilians doing the same weren’t being demonized or, in some cases, shot (http://seven.com.au/news/topstories/104822).
As for the animals, I guess some might be annoyed that I focus on them while people are dying...but I see it differently.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 06:29 PMLee Hall just sent me this, re: animals: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/katrina.pets.ap/index.html
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 06:30 PMPOTUS
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie
Ignored the people and let them die
Now the people have this to say
Georgie Porgie you’re gonna pay
rmjPosted by rosemarie jackowski on from crossing the line 09/04 at 06:45 PMI hope you’re right, Rosemarie.
Yet, even on the more Democratic Party-oriented sites, there’s a lot of “understanding” and “compassion” for the Bush Administration: “You mean to say they could have known this would happen? You mean to say this is a racial thing or a poverty thing? Get Real! Idiot! You don’t deserve to live here, if you feel that way!”I am an idiot, and I don’t deserve to live here.
Posted by joe on from Ore-gone, trees going 09/04 at 06:57 PMNobody deserves to live on stolen land.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/04 at 08:00 PMMickey-
U brilliantly terse today, Kudos!Posted by joe on from Oregon 09/04 at 08:13 PMJoe, I know that you are right...but let me have the fantasy for just tonight. I am sure that too soon, this will all be forgotten. People will be saying how wonderful he is because, after all he IS protecting us from all of the evil-doers.
Mickey, stolen land, built by slave labor, with natural resources exploited from other countries, that’s for sure.Posted by rosemarie jackowski on from crossing the line 09/04 at 08:19 PMWhat if it was the evil- doers who destroyed the levees. Is this how our “great” nation would respond to another terrorist attack? Also, why in the heck does anybody need to spend several thousands of dollars on shoes?
Posted by Fiona on from San Diego 09/04 at 09:41 PMThanks for the transcript link, the reading links above and future “on the ground” articles, Mickey.
Is there a blogroll anywhere for NO bloggers? If there isn’t, is it possible for you to put one together?
I bet there are countless heroes amongst the survivors. I am hoping the living will inspire us and the dead will shame us into fundamentally changing this world into one that values compasson and justice.
Inspire us all to say NO (for N.O.!) next time we are asked to participate in even petty exploitation.Keep it up, Mickey. You’re a champion!
Posted by Jim on from 09/04 at 10:13 PMI liked the book excerpt on the lowell mill girls too. “keep the ‘labor’ in labor day.” it’s sad that labor day is reduced to blow out sales for textiles that are manufactured by exploited workers in sweatshops here and overseas who make less than a dollar a day and are then sold to the consumer for $100 by sales people who make $80 a week (a triple exploitation, the only people who get wealthy are the store owners and the credit card companies, many stores now carry their own special credit card with high interest rates) and backyard barbecues.
“Posing as a London fashion buyer (for the filming of my ITV documentary The New Rulers of the World) I was given a tour of one such factory, which makes Gap clothes for Britian and America. I found more than a thousand mostly young women working, battery-style, under the glare of strip lighting, in temperatures that reach 40 degrees Centigrade. The only air-conditioning was upstairs, where the Taiwanese bosses are. What struck me was the claustrophobia, the sheer frenzy of the production and a fatigue and sadness that were like a presence. The faces were silent, the eyes downcast; limbs moved robotically. The women have no choice about the hours they must work, including a notorious ‘long shift’: 36 hours without going home. I was assured that, if I wanted to place a last-minute order, that was ‘no problem’ because ‘we just make the workers stay longer’. “The workers I met later, secretly, told me: “If Gap trousers have to be finished, we don’t leave. We stay till the order is full, no matter the time. If you want to go to the toilet, you have to be lucky. If the supervisor says no, you shit in your pants...we are treated like animals because we have to work hard all the time without saying a word.’” -John Pilger describing a factory that manufactures Gap clothing in Indonesia (The New Rulers of the World 16-17)
After reading what Kanye West said it kind of made me wished i had seen the telecast just for that, but i hate those things and those stupid award shows. they usually show people i don’t want to see and i hate the reading off the telepromter. lame joke here lame joke there while we are killing people everywhere. they don’t talk about the killing. Everyone must follow the inane script that’s written in front of them otherwise they cut you off. That inanity is how they convince people everything is ok. And this is why the security folks removed that woman from ms. rice’s presence, ms. rice was only doing what every american should do in a crisis, shop. The woman was also shopping, but shopping is the only thing allowed. You’re not supposed to criticize the government while you’re doing it.
Posted by tm on from not at a barbeque 09/05 at 01:53 AMIn response to item 15, above...why would the kinder, gentler side of the business party not want to preserve the solid, ultra-american divisions along racial and economic lines that make their country the “greatest country on earth”? Because that’s what they all call the US. Can you imagine a German (or someone from France, Nigeria, Uruguay...) calling their country the greatest on earth? “I love my country” is much different…
Anyway. It occurred to me--and how would I know if this is true? I’ve never lived or fought in a war zone--that maybe the war we wage on Iraq, Afghanistan, etc etc, is like if Katrina had not stopped or moved on for, like, three years.
Posted by Keir on from The Hague 09/05 at 02:07 AMThanks for all the great additions since I was last here. I agree, Fiona, the Katrina situation hardly evokes confidence in how the nation would respond to another terror attack...especially if poor people are involved.
Jim: I’m no champion. I just wish I could do more and get more people involved at this site...and everywhere.
TM: Good point. Shopping is our national pastime.
Keir: I see you’re back in The Hague. We’re waiting for you to take over those war crime tribunals there and start issuing the arrest warrants.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 09/05 at 07:38 AM
Next entry: Katrina deaths = casualties of war...plus: cops loot, Huey Long, Mike Davis, & replacing Rehnquist
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