“9th ward diagonal car 1″ Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
Last year, I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” and linked various phrases to images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The degree to which Dylan’s words fit the events unfolding before us was uncanny.
Of course, only a fool would think that that has been an accident. Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the administration’s post-Katrina strategy, an act of bad faith of such magnitude that one recoils from the sheer monstrosity of it. As Dan Froomkin noted at the time:
Rove’s leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush’s image.
That is Rove’s hallmark.
And that is exactly what has come to pass: a bungled recovery process that has allowed the wreckage of the storm to fester under the hot Louisiana sun. And it’s all being done with political objectives in mind, as Frank Rich noted in the The New York Times this past Sunday:
Douglas Brinkley, the Tulane University historian who wrote the best-selling account of Katrina, “The Great Deluge,” is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. “I don’t think anybody’s getting the Bush strategy,” he said when we talked last week. “The crucial point is that the inaction is deliberate — the inaction is the action.” As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans’s opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees (“Only Band-Aids have been put on them”), the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. “Out of the Katrina debacle, Bush is making political gains,” Mr. Brinkley says incredulously. “The last blue state in the Old South is turning into a red state.”
All across the media landscape, the Bush administration is being shown for what it is: a callous political machine that cares only for its own survival.
That is going to be brought home over the next two days, as President Bush attempts to whitewash his response to the storm with a series of PR stunts. After all, you don’t introduce new products in August: you just shine up the old lies and put them out on the shelf in some new packaging.
As noted here a few days ago, Matt Cohen, who blogs at 1115.org, decided to take a first-hand look behind the Bush administration’s spin. Traveling down to New Orleans with his camera, Matt has posted a powerful set of pictures on flickr that document the all-too-slow recovery of New Orleans (I thank him for granting me permission to use a few of his images here), and he has just written a searing account of his trip through the 9th Ward.
But all of that is just the least bad part. What remains of Lakeview and the Lower 9th Ward is a national embarrassment. One year after Katrina, and some houses rest off their foundations and in the streets. Cars sit upside down or crushed, some even under buildings washed away by flood waters. Water-damaged and mud-caked objects are distributed inside houses and in yards. Block after block, the damage appears infinite. The fact that $44 billion has been released for recovery, yet the ruins of the 9th ward are allowed to stand almost frozen in time, is nothing short of disgusting. With so many of our ruling Republican majority subscribing to the “Broken Window” theory, it’s amazing that the ultimate broken window is the flood damage allowed to remain across New Orleans.
It’s an amazing post that showcases the best of what blogs can do. Please go and read it.
Of all of the images that Matt has posted, the one below struck me most deeply:
“HOME This was HOME,” the spray-painted eulogy reads. The house still stands, but the home inside it is gone, for now. It will be vanquished permanently, if the Bush administration has its way.
And that is something that we will never forget.
Update: Please visit Shakespeare’s Sister for many more perspectives on the first anniversary of Hurrican Katrina. In her post, Shakes argues convincingly that “Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.”
Update: The director of the ad showed up on Eschaton and had this to say:
I’m glad there’s so much positive reaction to the video I made with Howie’s music. If you know of a campaign out there that wants a version have them contact me and I’ll make it for the same low low price I did this one…free. Let’s follow the bouncing ball as it kicks the Republicans out of Congress. If you like the video, please donate to Coleen Rowley’s campaign. Maybe they can buy some airtime to run this on TV.
Mike McIntee | 08.28.06 - 12:06 am | #
If Democratic politicians know what is good for them, they’ll hit him with a deluge of email. . . and cash.
“If our President were black, we would not be at war right now. Not because a black person wouldn’t have done something like that — just because America wouldn’t let a black person do something like that without asking them a million questions.”
Two stories from the past week highlight the dangers (and idiocy) that attend the use of racial profiling, at least in its bastardized, populist form. In both cases, unreasonable security actions were taken more in the interest of mollifying the stoked-up fears of crowds than of truly protecting airline passengers from harm.
“People here in the U.S. don’t understand these things about constitutional rights”
That’s what a Jordan-born man says he was told by airport security personnel when they asked him to remove his T-shirt before boarding a flight to California at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The man, whose name is Raed, says he was told “People are feeling offended because of your T-shirt.” Raed was wearing a shirt that said in both Arabic and English, We Will Not Be Silent. He was asked to put on another shirt instead, but all of his other shirts were in his checked baggage.
“Isn’t it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?” was Raed’s question, to which one of the security people replied, “”People here in the U.S. don’t understand these things about constitutional rights” Raed’s answer: “I live in the U.S., and I understand it is my right to wear this T-shirt.”
“You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank,” was the security man’s rejoinder.
Rash, unreasonable, and unconstitutional action based wholly on ignorance, that violates the rights of American citizens — this is George W. Bush’s version of “The Great Society.” Feel safer yet?
And here’s another story from the past week, told by The Daily Mail:
British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
Writing on Orcinus, Sara Robinson notes the direction in which we, and our British allies, are moving:
Let’s see. A frightened mob selects a couple victims, accuses them of being would-be criminals without any evidence whatsoever, forcibly robs them of the cost of transcontinental airfare, and threatens anyone (pilots and airline personnel) that questions either their verdict or their right to exact “justice.”
There’s only one word for this. It’s vigilantism, pure and simple. It’s no different than any other kind of lynch mob. And it is beneath the dignity of a civilized society.
The reasons for and righteousness of the anger on display here are under furious discussion on both the left and right sides of the blogosphere. (See The Mahablog and Glenn Greenwald for two useful perspectives.)
But there’s far more at stake here than meets the eye. If these vigilante mobs are allowed to get their way on airplanes, what’s to stop them from taking their show on the road? Are we going to see subway mobs assaulting brown people on train platforms to “prevent” subway bombings? Are restauranteurs going to find themselves under pressure from upset diners not to hire — or seat — certain “frightening” classes of people? Will neighborhood groups press realtors to stop selling local homes to specific ethnic groups, for fear property values will drop? Or will they, perhaps, subject “undesirable” neighbors to harassment campaigns until they’re forced to move on?
This all sounds far-fetched — until you realize that we’re hardly forty years past an era when most of this was standard operating procedure in much of America. Vigilante justice, racial segregation in public accommodations, real estate redlining, and sundown towns are part of a past that we’ve worked hard to leave behind. It will be a disgrace to all of us if we allow a few irrational bullies on airplanes put us on the road to bringing it all back.
Walter: Were you listening to the Dude’s story?
Walter: Sure you’ll see some tank battles. But fighting in the desert is very different from fighting in canopy jungle.
Dude: Uh-huh.
Walter: I mean ‘Nam was a foot soldier’s war whereas, uh, this thing should be a fucking cakewalk. I mean I had an M16, Jacko, not an Abrams fucking tank. Just me and Charlie, man, eyeball to eyeball.
On to the FRT. To play, put your digital music player on shuffle, click play, and list the first ten songs that show up. Leave your list in comments or trackbacks. If you click past the bad or embarrassing songs, I’m gonna make you watch Electric Company videos until you’ve straightened yourself out.
Here’s my list:
1. “Something Extra,” Roky Erikson (Never Say Goodbye)
2. “Ecstasy,” PJ Harvey (4-Track Demos)
3. “Children’s Story,” Slick Rick (The Great Adventures of Slick Rick)
4. “You’ve Changed,” Billie Holiday (Fine & Mellow)
5. “Good Boy,” Big Bill Broonzy (Whiskey and Good Time Blues)
6. “Blue and Wonder,” Ben Gibbard (live Richard Buckner cover)
7. “Count Me In On This One!” Richard Buckner (Impasse)
8. “Stop Breathin,” Pavement (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)
9. “The World at Large,” Modest Mouse (Good News For People Who Love Bad News)
10. “Everybody’s,” Low (live, Great American Music Hall)
Favorite Song: “Children’s Story” Least Favorite Song: “Something Extra” (love that album, though) Favorite Album:Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Matt Cohen, the founding force behind the political group-blog 1115.org, has traveled down to New Orleans for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Matt promises to strike through the mask of lies that the Bush Administration will be pedaling over the next few weeks as it attempts to whitewash its horrifying response to the storm last year.
In his first post from New Orleans, Matt writes:
You have no idea how bad it is down here.
The President plans to swagger down here on Monday to brag about how he’s keeping his promise to the people of New Orleans.
I’m going to bring you reality.
I have no doubt that he will. In addition to being a passionate, fiercely intelligent writer, Matt is also an ace photographer. Keep your eye on 1115 and on Matt’s flickr stream in the coming days to see what’s really going down in the Big Easy.
This is the paradox of waging an unpopular, morally ambiguous war.
What happened to 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Matt Solowynsky at the beginning of this year shows another aspect of the strain. The process of dehumanizing the enemy — the sine qua non of every war in human history, and crushingly obvious when a war grinds on without a clear strategic objective — sooner or later backs up on itself.
Part of the toxic waste of war embeds itself in the emotions and the soul of the combatants. That Guantanamo energy, that gusto to terrorize helpless detainees, to humiliate unarmed civilians, isn’t so easily contained, and begins corrupting the whole system. When a designated enemy isn’t available, anyone — a new recruit, say — will do.
“He didn’t do anything but be a gung-ho Marine,” said Tod Ensign of Citizen Soldier (citizen-soldier.org), the organization that eventually came to Solowynsky’s aid. Indeed, he was the highest ranked recruit in his class when he graduated from Marine Corps Basic Training last September. How odd that, a few months later, he was AWOL, fleeing Camp Pendleton, Calif., as though he were a POW.
It’s an unbelievable story, and Koehler is exactly right that it is the inevitable blowback of the Bush administration’s championing of torture. Read that Wikipedia definition and try to tell me that that is not what is going on here.
Philadelphia Daily News journalist and blogger Will Bunch has the low-down on CNN’s latest obsession: Rockey Vaccarella, the “plain-spoken guy” whose house was destroyed after Hurricane Katrina. Vaccarella travelled from New Orleans to D.C. in his FEMA trailer, with a documentary film crew trailing him, on the off-chance that Dubya would meet with him to discuss the recovery efforts.
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9th ward this was home, Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006
