September 5, 2005âLast Friday, a grateful US State Department officially thanked the countries whose governments had offered help in relieving the distress on the Gulf Coast caused by hurricane Katrina.
Cuba was not on the list.
A sorrowful Fidel Castro, reporting to the people on Saturday, minutely traced the evidence that documented the official trail left by their offer made shortly after 11:32 on the morning of 30 August, when President Castro asked Exterior Minister Felipe Rodriguez to issue an immediate communique to the US Special Interests Section in Havana and through the equivalent Cuban office in Washington, promising medical support for the US victims of a hurricane the tail end of which had already hit Cuba, raising sea levels that battered the island's northern coast, leaving behind punishing torrential rains, while slamming its rage against the Florida coast. In the aftermath of this ordeal, when the hurricane was reaching category 5, Cuba thought of her threatened northern neighbors and offered instant helpâas it had done on 9/11, an offer firmly but politely refused.
On this occasion, however, there was not even the politeness of an acknowledgment. Result? Cuba's embarrassment before the world, which had come to expect and witness its people's unfailing and prompt commitment, to anyone, anywhere, regardless of ideology or diplomatic tiffs.
#4
What drives Fidel bonkers is that the US just doesn't treat him seriously. Doesn't really care what he thinks. Sneers at him as a buffoon and mericon, instead of the hombre he pictures himself. Reminding him that he is minor league.
Chavez is much the same way. They defines themselves by how much he can get America to pay attention to them.
Wes Pruden, Washington Times
George W. finally gets it -- in more ways than one. The tardy president was back on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bucking up the spirits of the damned and stiffening the resolve of the slackers.
He's getting it as well from his critics, many of whom can't believe their great good luck, that a hurricane, of all things, finally gives them the opening they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch.
The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn't do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late, but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water. Then the governor, Kathleen Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial law, and her dithering opened the way for looters, rapists and killers to make New Orleans an unholy hell. Gov. Haley Barbour did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi, and looters, rapists and killers have not turned the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.
The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues even after the president flooded the city with National Guardsmen from a dozen states, paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly abandoned city, some of them from as far away as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day, is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon. Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems to think she's cute when she's mad, even threatened on national television to punch out the president -- a felony, by the way, even as a threat. Mayor Nagin, who you might think would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov. Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the right word of thanks to a nation pouring out its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe the senator should consider punching out the governor, only a misdemeanor.
The race hustlers waited for three days to inflame a tense situation, but then set to work with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self-appointed twin ambassadors of ill will, made the scene as soon as they could, taking up the coded cry that Katrina was the work of white folks, that a shortage of white looters and snipers made looting and sniping look like black crime, that calling the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the rumor that the starving folks abandoned in New Orleans had been forced to eat their dead -- after only four days. New Orleans has a reputation for its unusual cuisine, but this tale was so tall that nobody paid it much attention. Neither did anyone tell the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.
Condi Rice went to the scene to say what everyone can see for himself, that no one but the race hustlers imagine Americans of any hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid pouring into the broken and bruised cities of the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the flickering television images are black, true enough, and most of the helping hands are white.
Black and white churches of all denominations across a wide swath of the South stretching from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday schools into kitchens and dormitories. In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church, cradling tiny black infants in compassionate arms so their mothers could finally sleep. The owner of a honky-tonk showed up to ask whether the church would "accept money from a bar." A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters, dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and a promise to see that it is spent wisely on the deserving -- most of whom are black.
The first polls, no surprise, show the libels are not working. A Washington Post-ABC survey found that the president is not seen as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make him out to be. Americans, skeptical as ever, are believing their own eyes.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/06/2005 14:08 ||
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#1
Bush is not seen as the villian? That's not what the Reuters headlines say! Oh, wait... Are they American, or just leftist?
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/06/2005 15:05 Comments ||
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#2
Me thinks the GOOD(BITCH)Sen. Mary Landrieu(BITCH)
Should make a formal apology or be arrested for a felony!!!(and for being the BITCH she is)
On August 6, as her 15 minutes of fame was just beginning, Cindy Sheehan used an odd term in a TV interview with Mark Knoller of CBS. She referred to the foreign insurgents and terrorists in Iraq as âfreedom fighters.â Knoller cut those words out of his report, he told me, because he âreally wasnât interested.â He should have left them in. In fact, alarm bells should have rung in his brain. First of all, itâs startling that an antiwar mother would talk that way about people who blow up children and who may have killed her own son. Second, âfreedom fightersâ in this context is the telltale lingo of the hard, anti-American left. When the grieving mother starts talking that way, itâs news.
Knoller recalls that other reporters on the scene were watching his interview that day in Texas, but apparently they werenât any more interested in Sheehanâs little linguistic adventure than he was. Apparently none bothered to report it. The âfreedom fighterâ remark reached the public only because an antiwar group, Veterans for Peace, filmed the CBS interview. It was picked up by an anti-Cindy Sheehan website, sweetness-light.com, where bloggers and conservative commentators noticed and circulated it.
Sheehan, before and after her arrival in Texas, said a great many colorful things that failed to interest mainstream reporters. Some of her acid comments registered with the public mostly because of George Willâs powerful column of August 25 and his similar comments on the Sunday ABC TV news show This Week. A few made it on to cable news. Others simply failed to make it into the mainstream media. Itâs worth reviewing what she said: The neocons deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks of 9/11. American soldiers are âbeing sent to kill innocent peopleâ in Iraq. Her son, Casey Sheehan, âdied for oilâ and was âmurderedâ by President Bush. The United States is ânot worth dying for.â The president, who âstole the election,â is part of the âBush crime family,â a âlying bastard,â a âfÃŒhrer,â a âfilth spewer,â âthe biggest terrorist in the world,â and an âevil maniacâ who is guilty of âblatant genocide.â Sheehan also compared Lynne Stewart, the radical lawyer convicted of aiding terrorists, to Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer who battled racism in the book and movie To Kill a Mockingbird. She has been accused of making vaguely anti-Semitic remarks, but she attributes those remarks to her political opponents. On Hardball, she said the American attack in Afghanistan was âalmost the same thingâ (i.e., just as evil) as the invasion of Iraq.
Extreme politics. The mainstream mediaâs lack of interest in these little verbal grenades is astonishing. According to a computer search, not one of them made it into news coverage by the New York Times. The Times has a public editor, or ombudsman, who might want to ask why. One explanation for the news failure is that the media wedded themselves early to a simple narrative line-the president, holed up on his ranch, refuses to meet with and comfort a grief-stricken mother. This narrative became frozen in cement when columnists of the left began talking about the âmoral authorityâ of a parent who loses a son in war. This story line-moral mom versus stone-hearted president-didnât allow much room to note Sheehanâs great contempt for America. There is also the vituperation she has been showering on Bush for years. She campaigned against him in 2004, vigorously promoting his impeachment, not seeking a meaningful heart-to-heart chat with the âevil maniac.â Nor did reporters point out that Bush would set himself up for more abuse if he sat down with Sheehan, probably in the meeting and surely in the press conference afterward. By sticking to the anguished-mother story line and declining to publish her outlandish verbal abuse, mainstream reporters protected the public from an inference that would otherwise been obvious: that Sheehan had either gone around the bend psychologically or, more likely, had simply thrown in her lot with the extreme America-hating left. Whenever the mainstream media inched toward actual information about what Sheehan was up to, they employed the familiar âconservatives are claimingâ construction, not directly reporting Sheehanâs odd comments and extreme politics.
On the whole, the mainstream media depicted Cindy Sheehan as a moral figure without blemish. Maybe reporters and editors felt paralyzed by the âabsolute moral authorityâ rhetoric or justified by polls showing declining support for the war. Some reporters, of course, detest Bush and oppose the war. For whatever reason, they werenât able to break from the original soft narrative line about a motherâs grief and tell us what was really going on.
Posted by: ed ||
09/06/2005 11:26 ||
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#1
Some of her acid remarks???? Is that what she's on?? That would splain a LOT!!!!
#2
The pristine PR image of her is still there in the minds of alot of lemmings who have no idea because the media has ignored the uglier side of Mrs. Sheehan. Most anybody, save the politically blindered, would consider the words that didn't make the nightly news important and telling.
#3
The liberal media protects its own. Still - it was one thing to protect John Kerry, who really stood a chance of becoming the President. Why the heck is the media protecting Cindy Sheehan? They are really selling their credibility cheap.
#1
Those are the convenient divides, between liberalism and conservative; or judicial activism and constitutional construtionism. But they might not be the best description of what is taking place.
The political landscape is one where the republican party has achieved ascendency, and the democratic party has been effectively crushed. This is an extreme of a normal cycle of politics in the US. As such, the extremists of both parties hold power for the moment. The far left's control of the democrats is obvious, but the far right can thwart much of the republican's agenda.
The republicans are also reduced by their party's RINO voters. So what happens from here?
Or really, what political change is coming that will be reflected on the Supreme Court?
Democrat moderates will, over time, evolve into taking control of the party's leadership. This will be because by cooperating with republicans, these moderates will get largesse denied their radical peers. And with these democrat votes, the republicans will be able to marginalize their own extremists. The RINOs will also be neutralized in the process of both parties moderating what they do.
The bottom line is that the Court will moderate its views. Less inclined to decisions that are major wins and losses to each side. More willing to follow the constitution, but less willing to upset precedent that challenged the constitition. An intent to overall give the people what they want.
It will appear that the court is ducking the serious issues, also that it writes narrow decisions, avoiding the "slash and burn" approach to jurisprudence. There may even be a greater unwillingness to overturn lower court decisions, even to accept so very many cases in the first place.
The Supremes may also provide opinions to congress as to the much overdue reorganization of the federal court system, and such things as term limits for judges, and mandated jurisdictional limitations--that is, restrictions placed on the types of cases heard by the courts.
So the court, too, after the liberal excesses of the Warren Court, and the rightward shift of the Rehnquist Court, may, like congress, shift back towards moderation, in its purest sense, and calm administration, instead of ground-breaking decisions effecting millions of Americans.
The gloating editorial in yesterday's Le Monde typified a common strand of European thinking. "At this moment, America discovers or rediscovers that she shelters the Third World in herself," the daily wrote. "'L'hyperpuissance,' as a former French foreign minister said [of the U.S.], in spite of its economic and military potential that it's quick to deploy abroad, is unable to handle a domestic catastrophe of this size." (The French, for the record, don't blame Bienville for founding New Orleans below sea level in the first place.)
The BBC trotted out one of its veteran foreign correspondents, Charles Wheeler, who covered the 1960s race riots in the U.S. and declared, on the evidence of the TV footage from New Orleans, that "nothing has changed." In Saturday's Financial Times (of London), Edward Alden blamed the levee's break in New Orleans on Ronald Reagan and the "orthodoxy" of small government and low taxes.
By this view, Katrina slew Reaganism; by another, Katrina ended the post-9/11 era, as if terrorism has suddenly stopped being a threat; and in yet others, it banished the myth of American greatness. "One storm and they're finished," a Londoner told CNN, talking about a hurricane that inundated an area the size of Great Britain.
Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro took the opportunity to grandstand for the Third World. For the German Greens, Katrina was nature's revenge for America's refusal to sign the Kyoto "global warming" pact. For the world's Islamists, she was Allah's punishment of the infidels. "The terrorist Katrina is one of God's soldiers, although she's not an adherent of al Qaeda," Mohammed Youssef Al-Malaifi, a director at Kuwait's ministry of religious affairs, wrote in Al-Siyassa daily.
We suppose such Schadenfreude is inevitable given America's economic vigor and current global dominance. The temptation to see the U.S. humbled is great, especially when that humbling can be exploited to justify assorted domestic political agendas and to bash a Bush Administration that is unapologetic about asserting U.S. power.
That America has flaws is hardly breaking news, of course, least of all to Americans who debate their weaknesses endlessly in public and in a fashion the rest of the world can hear. In the weeks ahead, Americans will debate the handling of Katrina and adapt, as it always has, and we suspect the verdict that it is "finished" will prove to be as exaggerated as the glee at its temporary misfortune.
#1
(The French, for the record, don't blame Bienville for founding New Orleans below sea level in the first place.)
Oddly, the French Quarter is on relative high ground. Google Maps has a "Katrina" feature that shows a photo from last Wednesday; the Vieux Carre looks dry to me.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/06/2005 8:55 Comments ||
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#2
I wonder if the French drew the proper conclusion from the fact that the Third World part of the US is the only part that was colonized and administered by the French.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/06/2005 9:08 Comments ||
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#4
Wonder if they'll remember all of this nonsense when the US has rebuilt New Orleans in record time. They've already plugged the levee and the water is draining.
Things get broken all the time, the difference between first world and third world is the ability and willingness to clean up and restore things.
#5
It's not just furriners. Huffer Hooman Majd (who really needs to get a new picture taken; he looks like a sunburnt Igor) is displaying a truly unseemly glee over "The End of Empire". I'll bet he needed a cigarette and a kleenex after writing that.
#6
If there was a Third World city in the US it was "Nawlins" in the first place. Did we see unbridled looting in other areas hit by Katrina. While I am sure there was some I doubt it met the scale in NO. Lets face it there are plenty of heads to place the blame on in this. From the local to the federal level. But as the buck gets passed it will eventually get passed up the chain to the Feds. Who incidently were buying boats for this in Wisconsin on Friday befor it hit.
#5
CM, I 'll let the guys who run the burg say what their feeling is about posting blogs. I've done it, but I usually lable it as such for reader information. Otherwise, I assume what I read here is from some sort of publication with some credibility for factual reporting. That's why DEBKA posts usually have a sodium warning.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/06/2005 14:24 Comments ||
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#6
if you're not citing "hard" news sites (like your own blog) - Fred's ettiquete is to post to Pg 4
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/06/2005 14:24 Comments ||
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The real crisis isn't about nuclear weapons, but Iran's determination to reshape the Middle East in its own image.
By Amir Taheri
Newsweek International
Sept. 5, 2005 issue - Eight years ago a pirated translation of Samuel Huntington's celebrated essay "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order" appeared in Tehran. The publisher received an order for 1,000 copies, half the print run. "We wondered who wanted them," recalls Mustafa Tunkaboni, who marketed the book. The answer came when a military truck belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrived to pick up the books. Among the officers who received a copy was Yahya Safavi, now a general and commander in chief of the Guards. Another went to one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Reserve officer in the Guards who is now president of the Islamic republic.
Iran is grossly misunderstood in the West. Given headlines in Europe and America, you would think that the crisis in relations is about nuclear weapons. But the real cause is far broader: Iran's determination to reshape the Middle East in its own image¡ªa deliberate "clash of civilizations" with the United States. This is bound up with a second misconception about Iran, the idea that the regime is divided between "conservatives" who oppose accommodation with America and the West, and "moderates" more inclined to return their country to the community of nations. The real power in Iran, punctuated by the ascent of Ahmadinejad as president, is now the Revolutionary Guards.
During the past few years, the Guards have in many ways become the government. Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, a former IRGC officer, says this new military-political elite has staged a creeping coup d'etat. While former president Mohammad Khatami traveled the world trying to impress Western audiences with quotes from Hobbes and Hegel, the Guards built an impressive grass-roots network throughout Iran and created two political-front organizations: the Usulgara(fundamentalists) and the Itharis (self-sacrificers), each attracting a younger generation of military officers, civil servants, managers and intellectuals. In 2002, the network captured the Tehran city council and elevated Ahmadinejad as mayor. Two years later he emerged as the Guards' presidential candidate, besting former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a midranking mullah-cum-businessman who represented the fading old-guard mullahs.
Ahmadinejad's victory is the beginning of the end of the clerics' dominance. He is the first non-mullah to become president since 1981. The holder of a Ph.D., he is also the best educated of the six Islamic presidents so far. His humble background and populist discourse have won him a genuine base, especially among the poor who feel let down by corrupt religious leaders.
That's the good news. The bad news is that, if anything, he can be expected to be a far more formidable enemy of the West¡ªand of America in particular. A month ago General Safavi declared before an audience of senior naval officers that Tehran's mission was to create "a multipolar world in which ¡ªIran plays a leadership role" for Islam. Recently Ahmadinejad announced one of the most ambitious government mission statements in decades, declaring that the ultimate goal of Iran's foreign policy is nothing less than "a government for the whole world" under the leadership of the Mahdi, the Absent Imam of the Shiites¡ªcode for the export of radical Islam. As for the only power capable of challenging this vision, the United States is in its "last throes," an ofuli (sunset) power destined to be superceded by the toluee (sunrise) of the Islamic republic. Geopolitical dominance in the Middle East, the tract unequivocally stated, is "the incontestable right of the Iranian nation."
Westerners might be tempted to dismiss this as rhetorical saber rattling. It is not. Iran has always played a leading role in Islamic history. It is one of only two Muslim nations never colonized by the Western empires. It occupies a central position in the "Islamic arc" stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. It has the largest economy and the strongest military in the Muslim world; it sits atop vast pools of rapidly appreciating oil wealth. The only other Muslim country capable of rivaling it¡ªTurkey¡ªhas decided to abandon the Muslim world and join the European Union.
The stage is thus set for a confrontation with the United States. Iran is confident it can win, and history hasn't given it much reason to fear otherwise. Student radicals like Ahmadinejad watched in 1980 as the United States did nothing but issue feeble diplomatic protests over the seizure of its embassy. They saw Ronald Reagan fulfill Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious dictum¡ª"America cannot do a damned thing!"¡ªwhen Lebanese suicide bombers recruited by Tehran killed 241 Marines near Beirut in 1982. Bill Clinton talked sanctions but then apologized for unspecified "past wrongs."
Even George W. Bush's war on terror, which initially worried the mullahs, has turned to their strategic advantage. Enemies on either side¡ªthe Baathists in Baghdad and the Taliban in Kabul¡ªare now gone. The expulsion of Syria from Lebanon under U.S. pressure has left Iran as the major foreign influence in the country. Bush's advocacy of democracy has undermined Washington's traditional allies¡ªand Iran's rivals¡ªlike Saudi Arabia and Egypt. "The Americans have their so-called Greater Middle East plan," Supreme Leader Ali Hoseini Khamenei said in a speech recently. "We, too, have our plan for the region."
Now comes the nuclear issue. The EU recently broke off negotiations after Tehran resumed its uranium-conversion program, even as the International Atomic Energy Agency last week released a report concluding that traces of uranium found in Iran two years ago came from contaminated equipment supplied by Pakistan¡ªa finding that will figure large when the U.N. General Assembly takes up the issue in September. Meanwhile, America has yet to develop a coherent policy on Iran, aside from standing aside or criticizing others attempting to cope with the fast-emerging threat.
The prospects for resolving the nuclear standoff are not good. The new Iranian elite feel free to speak openly because they are convinced America will soon depart the region. Iran's strategy will most likely be to wait Bush out, stalling on the negotiations while bleeding America to the maximum in Iraq and Afghanistan, working to prevent a settlement in Palestine and sabotaging U.S. hopes for a democratic Middle East. Iranian-sponsored surrogates could try to seize power not only in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Azerbaijan and some Persian Gulf states. As for Washington, neocons may dream of regime change from within¡ªbut the chances of that happening, particularly with the Guards' hold on the military and security forces, are almost nil.
The situation is not hopeless. Deft diplomacy could produce a measure of detente. That would not grow out of some "grand bargain" of the sort Clinton hoped for, whereby Iran would forswear its nuclear program or sponsorship of terrorism in exchange for better relations and a security guarantee from the United States. Instead, it would be more a mini-bargain over issues on which Washington and Tehran can hurt each other. Such a course was not workable before, chiefly because Iran's religious leadership was divided among factions that sabotaged each other's policies. But with the Guards in command, a dialogue may be possible.
The problem is that Tehran feels no pressure. Thanks to rising oil prices, Iran is earning almost $200 million a day and can now throw lots of money at social and economic problems. More important, the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign will soon heat up, diverting attention from problems abroad that American voters (and policymakers) would prefer to ignore. In the meantime, Iran will either have, or would be close to having, its first atom bombs. The next American president may find himself in the un-enviable position of either offering Iran an even grander "bargain" or facing a much bigger war against a much larger adversary than either Afghanistan or Iraq. Professor Huntington, meanwhile, might want to ponder the law of unintended consequences.
#1
The Arab world has been getting edgy about Iran. The Gulf sheiks are very worried about Iran's capability and the rhetoric about the "... government for the whole world under the leadership of the Mahdi, the Absent Imam..." is in-your-face heresy to the Sunnis. There may be a 'subclash' closer to home.
#2
The Mahdi, the Absent Imam, is an understatement, a misunderstanding due to translation. This is the same as the Occult Imam, or Hidden Imam, regarded as the Islamic reincarnated Messiah. A charismatic tyrant that could inflame the Islamic masses to rise up and further the Islamic New World Order wherever they have colonized is the real crisis, not nuclear weapons, but they certainly up the ante. This multi-polar world sounds like something Al Qaeda has dreamed up and similar to Zawahiri's reference to a Golden Islamic Empire, living in Palestine with Jerusalem the capital. Some Absent Commandos should put an end to this before all civilization is caught in the clash and sucked up into a mushroom cloud.
The 9/11 Attack (blessed Osama and Azzam) - 9.07% (46 votes)
Resistance in Chechnya - 22.49% (114 votes)
Resistance in Palestine - 4.73% (24 votes) READING OF THE QUR'AN AND AUTHENTIC HADITH - 24.65% (125)
Kafir torture of Muslims in their lands - 9.66% (49)
My environment - 9.66% (49)
School religion and morality textbooks - 0.79% (4)
Learned people, sheikhs - 2.76% (14)
TV and Internet Jihad Videos - 9.27% (47)
I can't remember - 2.37% (12)
I'm not yet acquainted with it - 4.54% (23)
My choice isn't listed - 7.69% (39)
All those poor misled people who somehow think the Holy Koran of the Religion of Peace™ somehow encourages jihad. Maybe Saudi Arabia needs to send teachers over there.
Registration required (I think), so posted in full.
It was the climax of George W. Bush's video introduction at the Republican convention: the moment at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series when he threw a pitch all the way to home plate. The video ended, and the conventioneers cheered as Mr. Bush strode onto a stage shaped like a pitcher's mound.
Well, live by the pitch, die by the pitch. When you campaign as the man on the mound, the great leader whose arm rescues Americans in their moment of need, they expect you to deal with a hurricane, too.
Mr. Bush made a lot of mistakes last week, but most of his critics are making an even bigger one now by obsessing about what he said and did. We can learn more by listening to men like Jim Judkins, particularly when he explains the Magic Marker method of disaster preparedness.
Mr. Judkins is one of the officials in charge of evacuating the Hampton Roads region around Newport News, Va. These coastal communities, unlike New Orleans, are not below sea level, but they're much better prepared for a hurricane. Officials have plans to run school buses and borrow other buses to evacuate those without cars, and they keep registries of the people who need special help.
Instead of relying on a "Good Samaritan" policy - the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors - the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.
"It's cold, but it's effective," Mr. Judkins explained. That sounds like something an RBer would come up with.
That simple strategy could have persuaded hundreds of people to save their own lives in New Orleans. What the city needed most was coldly effective local leaders, not a president in Washington who could feel their pain. It's the same lesson we should have learned from Sept. 11 and other disasters, yet both liberals and conservatives keep ignoring it.
The liberals bewailing the insensitivity and racism of Republicans in Washington sound like a bad rerun of the 1960's, when urban riots were blamed on everyone but the rioters and the police. Yes, the White House did a terrible job of responding to Katrina, but Democratic leaders in New Orleans and Louisiana didn't even fulfill their basic duties.
In coastal Virginia - which, by the way, has a large black population and plenty of Republican politicians - Mr. Judkins and his colleagues assume that it's their job to evacuate people, maintain order and stockpile supplies to last for 72 hours, until federal help arrives. In New Orleans, the mayor seemed to assume all that was beyond his control, just like the mayors in the 1960's who let the riots occur.
They said their cities couldn't survive without help from Washington, which proceeded to shower inner cities with money and programs that did more damage than the riots. Cities didn't recover until some mayors, especially Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, tried self-reliance.
Mr. Giuliani was called heartless and racist for cutting the welfare rolls and focusing on crime reduction, but black neighborhoods were the greatest beneficiaries of his policies. He was criticized for ignoring social services as he concentrated on reorganizing the Police and Fire Departments, but his cold effectiveness made the city a more livable place and kept it calm after Sept. 11.
Yet Mr. Bush, with approval from conservatives who should have known better, reacted to Sept. 11 by centralizing disaster planning in Washington. He created the byzantine Homeland Security Department, with predictable results last week.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, often criticized for ineptitude, became even less efficient after it was swallowed by a bureaucracy consumed with terrorism. The department has spent billions on new federal airport screeners - with no discernible public benefit - while giving short shrift to natural disasters.
The federal officials who had been laboring on a one-size-fits-all strategy were unprepared for the peculiarities of New Orleans, like the high percentage of people without cars. The local officials who knew about that problem didn't do anything about it - and then were furious when Mr. Bush didn't solve it for them. Why didn't the man on the mound come through for them?
It's a fair question as they go door to door looking for bodies. But so is this: Why didn't they go door to door last week with Magic Markers? How in the world did the NYT let this guy get published?
#1
Must be the token intellect. His bio includes -
His 1996 article, "Recycling Is Garbage," which called recycling one of the most wasteful activities in America, attracted a record number of letters from readers of The Times Magazine.
He is the author of "The Best-Case Scenario Handbook" (Workman Publishing, 2002), which explains, among other things, how to deal with a broken ATM spewing cash, how to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and even how to cope with a polite teenage child.
Stuff we all need to know!
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/06/2005 13:28 Comments ||
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#2
I would assume that an ATM spewing cash would involve ethical considerations, heh heh. Actually, from your card, they would know who made the jackpot withdrawl, and from the camera, they would get and ID or at least a picture. So you would not get the money. Best thing would be to call the Po-leese, as any witnesses, especially thugs, would be attracted to your transaction like flies on sh*t.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/06/2005 17:04 Comments ||
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#3
Hmmm yes that's an effective strategy to convince people who don't want to leave.
But wasn't the real problem that many people didn't have the means to leave and the city failed to provide for them?
FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Spencer: Thank you, Jamie. FrontPage is one of the few media outlets, liberal or conservative, that is willing to allow honest discussion and exploration of the roots of Islamic terrorism, and I am honored to be a part of that.
FP: Thank you Mr. Spencer. So tell us, what is the politically correct guide to Islam?
Spencer: Unfortunately, there are many such books. Among the most notable, and egregious in their whitewashing of Islamâs theology, history, and present-day reality, is Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong and The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? by John Esposito. One that is more like my latest book in format is The Complete Idiotâs Guide to Understanding Islam by Yahiya Emerick. A popular new PC guide to Islam is No god but God : The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan.
FP: What is your inspiration to speak the unspoken truths about Islam?
This kind of thinking is flawed in many ways. In the first place, pretending that anything false is true is not ultimately going to get us anywhere. And if we refuse to allow honest exploration of what it is about Islam that is making so many Muslims violent today, we are not really helping sincere moderate Muslims: in fact, weâre cutting the ground out from under them by denying that there is anything about their religion that they need to face and combat if they wish to establish a lasting framework for peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims.
FP: If Islam is truly a religion of peace and tolerance than why is it so dangerous to say what you want about it? You have received death threats over the years for instance. Can you talk a bit about this?
Spencer: Yes, these threats are in effect saying, âSay that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, or weâll kill you!â I have received death threats, but I am not going to stop telling the truth because of them. If everyone who tells truths that others donât want people to know gives in to violent intimidation, what kind of world would it be?
FP: It is interesting you say this because the numerous death threats I have received entail the same irrational paradigm. Let me explain:
While it is a given that many Muslims are on our side against extremism, that we must ally ourselves with them (i.e. Free Muslims Coalition, Sheikh Palazzi etc.), and that Muslims have the power to collectively reform and change their religion into one of tolerance and peace (and that we must promote this effort), I have at times shed light on the elements of the Islamic religion that, as you show, legitimize and promote violence. Because of this, I have often encountered email correspondence of the following nature:
[a] A Muslim emails me and tells me to never say again that Islam ever advocates violence because this is not true.
[b] I answer in an email that I am not saying such a thing off the top of my head but simply just gathering conclusions from reading the Qur'an (i.e. the Verse of the Sword, Sura 9:5, 9:29 etc.) -- a source from which Osama and al-Zarqawi receive their inspiration.
[c] Then the Muslim writes back saying that he will kill me.
The logic here is very twisted. How does the individual who threatens me rationalize his step c with step a? If his effort is to convince me of the inaccuracy of my own findings, he is not doing a very successful or convincing job, to say the least. What is the psychology here?
Spencer: This is a strange contradiction from a non-Muslim perspective, but not from that of a Muslim who believes in traditional Islamic legal directives calling for the deaths of unbelievers who are at war with Islam. From the perspective of such a man, Islam is indeed a religion of peace: the peace that will prevail over the world when Sharia is the supreme law of every land. To bring this about, he believes he is commanded by God to wage war â not undifferentiated mayhem, but war for specified purposes, under specific circumstances and for particular ends. When you invoke the Qurâan and other Islamic sources to make that point that elements of the Islamic religion legitimize and promote violence, you are doing so as an infidel. Even if what you say is correct, you are approaching it all as an infidel and are thus insulting Islam. And this insult must be avenged. It isnât that you are inaccurate, it is that you are critical. You are mistaking what they see as justice for undifferentiated violence. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
09/06/2005 07:48 ||
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In the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, Robert D. Kaplan went to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other failed jurisdictions of West Africa and concluded that many of the "citizens" of these "states," roaming the streets raping and killing, belonged to a phenomenon called "re-primitivized man."
Anyone watching TV in recent days will have seen plenty of "re-primitivized man," not in Liberia or Somalia, but in Louisiana. Cops smashing the Wal-Mart DVD cabinet so they can get their share of the booty along with the rest of the looters, gangs firing on a children's hospital and on rescue helicopters, hurricane victims being raped in the New Orleans Convention Center. . . . If you're minded, as many of the world's anti-Americans are, to regard the United States as a depraved swamp, it was a grand old week: Mother Nature delivered the swamp, but plenty of natives supplied the depravity.
Not all of them, of course. But it doesn't really matter if it's only 5 percent or 2 percent or 0.01 percent if everybody else is giving them free rein. Not exactly the most impressive law enforcement agency even on a good day, the New Orleans Police Department sent along some 80 officers to rescue the rape victims trapped in the Convention Center, but were beaten back by the mob. Meanwhile, the ever more pitiful governor was, unlike many of her fellow Louisianans, safe on dry land but still floundering way out of her depth, unable to stand up to the lawlessness even rhetorically or to communicate anything other than emotive impotence.
With most disasters, it's a good rule to let the rescue teams do their work and leave the sniping till folks are safe. But in New Orleans last week the emergency work has been seriously hampered by actual literal sniping, as at that hospital. The authorities lost control of the streets. Which one of Tom Ridge's Homeland Security color codes does that fall under?
After Sept. 11, many people who should have known better argued that it was somehow a vindication of government.
"One of the things that's changed so much since Sept. 11," agreed Vice President Dick Cheney, "is the extent to which people do trust the government -- big shift -- and value it, and have high expectations for what we can do."
Hard to see why he'd say that. Sept. 11 was an appalling comprehensive failure of just about every relevant federal agency. The only government that worked that day was local and state: The great defining image, redeeming American honor at a moment of national humiliation, is those brave New York firemen pounding up the stairs of the World Trade Center. What consolations can be drawn from the lopsided tango between slapdash bureaucrats and subhuman predators in New Orleans?
To be fair, next door, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has been the Giuliani of the hour, and there are many tales of great courage, like the teams from the Children's Hospital of Alabama who've been helicoptering in to New Orleans to rescue newborn babies.
The comparison with Sept. 11 isn't exact, but it's fair to this extent: Katrina was the biggest disaster on American soil since that day provoked the total overhaul of the system and the devotion of billions of dollars and the finest minds in the nation to the prioritizing of homeland security. It was, thus, the first major test of the post-9/11 structures. Happy with the results?
Muhammad Yousef Al-Mlaifi, director of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowment (and no, I've no idea what that means, though feel free to do your own jokes), wrote a hurricane essay arguing the novel line that "The Terrorist Katrina Is A Soldier Of Allah." You could sort of see his point. Imagine if al-Qaida were less boneheaded and had troubled themselves to learn a bit more about the Great Satan's weak spots. Imagine if they'd decided to blow up a couple of levees and flood a great American city. Would local and state government have responded any more effectively than they did last week? After all, Katrina, unlike Osama, let 'em know she was heading their way.
The nation's taxpayers will now be asked to rebuild New Orleans. The rationale for doing so is that it is a great city of national significance. Fine. But, if it's of national significance, what have all the homeland security task forces been doing these last four years? Why is the defense of the city still left to a system of levees each with its own individual administrative regime? If it's of national significance, why did the porkmeisters of the national legislature and national executive branch slash a request by the Army Corps of Engineers for $105 million for additional flood protection measures there down to just over $40 million, at the same time they approved a $230 million bridge to an uninhabited Alaskan island? Given that the transport infrastructure's already in place, maybe it makes more sense to rebuild New Orleans in Alaska.
One thing that became clear two or three months after "the day that everything changed" is that nothing changed -- that huge swathes of the political culture in America remain committed to a bargain that stiffs the people at every level, a system of lavish funding of pseudo-action. You could have done as the anti-war left wanted and re-allocated every dollar spent in Iraq to Louisiana. Or you could have done as some of the rest of us want and re-allocated every buck spent on, say, subsidizing Ted Turner's and Sam Donaldson's play-farming activities. But, in either case, I'll bet Louisiana's kleptocrat public service would have pocketed the dough and carried on as usual -- and, come the big day, the state would still have flopped out, and New Orleans' foul-mouthed mayor would still be ranting about why it was all everybody's else fault.
Those levees broke; they failed. And you think about Chicago and San Francisco and Boston and you wonder what's waiting to fail there. The assumption was that after 9/11, big towns and small took stock and identified their weak points. That's what they told us they were doing, and that's what they were getting big bucks to do. But in New Orleans no one had a plan that addressed levee failure, and no one had a plan for the large percentage of vehicleless citizens who'd be unable to evacuate, and no one had a plan to deal with widespread looting. Given that all these local factors are widely known -- New Orleans is a below-sea-level city with high crime and a low rate of automobile ownership -- it makes you wonder how the city would cope with something truly surprising -- like, say, a biological attack.
Oh, well, maybe the 9/11 commission can rename themselves the Katrina Kommission. Back in the real world, America's enemies will draw many useful lessons from the events of this last week. Will America?
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Steyn:Readers may recall my words from a week ago on the approaching Katrina: "We relish the opportunity to rise to the occasion. And on the whole we do. Oh, to be sure, there are always folks who panic or loot. But most people don't, and many are capable of extraordinary acts of hastily improvised heroism."
What the hell was I thinking? I should be fired for that. Well, someone should be fired. I say that in the spirit of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, the Anti-Giuliani, a Mayor Culpa who always knows where to point the finger.
For some reason, I failed to consider the possibility that the panickers would include Hizzoner the Mayor and the looters would include significant numbers of the police department, though in fairness I wasn't the only one. As General Blum said at Saturday's Defence Department briefing: "No one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans."
Indeed, they eroded faster than the levees. Several hundred cops are reported to have walked off the job. To give the city credit, it has a lovely "Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan" for hurricanes. The only flaw in the plan is that the person charged with putting it into effect is the mayor. And he didn't.
Congressman Billy Tauzin once said of his state: "One half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." Last week, four fifths of New Orleans was under water and the other four fifths should be under indictment - which is the kind of arithmetic the state's deeply entrenched kleptocrat political culture will have no trouble making add up.
lol. there you have it.
I might add that some credit should be givin to Katrina, she was a full blown bitch of a storm and I'm sure she's a registered Democrat.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/06/2005 1:12 Comments ||
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#2
"some credit should be givin to Katrina, she was a full blown bitch of a storm"
The mayor has a new defense, in the spirit of Marion Barry.
Posted by: Dave ||
09/06/2005 21:15 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
