HuffPo: "scene of so many people abandoned by all legally constituted ...

[understandinglife]

... authority."

MSNBC photojournalist Tony Zambado talking about his horrific experiences inside the New Orleans Convention Center, started referring to the footage he'd shot. The anchor, who until two years ago worked at MTV, said, "We couldn't air that." Zambado said, "I didn't shoot half of what I saw. I thought what I shot we could air." He and a reporter for CNN, who was an eyewitness to the Convention Center scenes this morning, have barely been able to contain their outrage at the scene of so many people abandoned by all legally constituted authority.

From We Can't Handle The Truth by Harry Shearer on September 1, 2005

Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/we-cant-handle-the-truth_b_6622.html

The verb is ABANDONED.

Would seem that that WE extends into the blogosphere, as well.

However, the brave folk at the New York Times online edition have been showing this photo for more than an hour:



James Nielson/ AFP -- Getty Images -- The body of a victim of Hurricane Katrina floats in floodwaters in New Orleans.

Not Mogadishu. Not Fallujah. Not somewhere in Darfur. Right here in the USA.


Peace.

[understandinglife]

1. Rep Major R Owens: "Washington looters still running loose"

New Orleans will not be lost forever like Atlantis. Salvaging New Orleans could prove to be a process which fuels the revamping of the corrupted Washington decision-making process. It could spur the salvation of all cities which collectively constitute the core of our modern American civilization. The process must begin with less focus on bread and water looters and more scrutiny of the Washington leadership which has for decades allowed the continuous looting of the federal treasury to enrich the small percentage of the population not dependent on cities.

New Orleans has presented us with a hysterical profile which shows that in many vital ways, despite our impressive skyscrapers, we are an underdeveloped civilization. Our masses live in our cities (or the dependent exurbias and suburbs). To foster our nation's security, prosperity and greatness we must expend taxpayer resources on planning, programs and projects which provide the greatest benefits for the greatest numbers. The Washington looting mentality must be replaced with a new Washington creative leadership imperative.

THE WASHINGTON LOOTING OF NEW ORLEANS

Washington looters still running loose
Abusers of New Orleans
Embezzlers of canal repair dollars
Big shot necks too big for a noose.
For the Mardi Gras
Neo-con domestic shock and awe
Bush budget blunders trapped in the crayfish claw.
Grandmothers and babies cry
Urban peasant victims die;
Oh when the Saints come marching in
Judgement will fall on merciless men.
Put street looting logs away
Only political atrocities on the dock today.
Washington looters still running loose
Big shot necks too big for a noose.

Link to much more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-major-r-owens/the-washington-looting-of_b_6627.html

As I posted in Swamp Rats thread early this morning, the rebuilding of New Orleans, and our help to the UN and others in the rebuiling of Iraq (with all our troops and corporatists out of their country), are how we will restore and nurture the America Bush and the neoconsters have destroyed in the past five years.


Peace.

[understandinglife]

2. "the fragile chasm in this country between rich & poor ... black & white"

Ms. Noonan casts Mississippi mayor and longtime Republican hatchet man Hayley Barbour in what she calls ‘the Giuliani model’ in her column, short-handing for us the cost-benefit analysis political gurus like Ms. Noonan do whenever a crisis arises that they have no stake in – working overtime to steer the grazing herd of conservative sideline-shills into championing Barbour, or someone/anyone from their camp – QUICK - before the real focus of the tragedy becomes the people who actually deserve the media attention – those angry, frightened, abandoned non-white victims of hurricane Katrina coming to a righteous boil under the glare (and stench) of the Superdome.

Oh, and speaking of guns – Ms. Noonan even sees fit to touch on that prickly subject, advocating firing on the so-called looters – ‘I hope the looters are shot’ - in the same paragraph she trivializes the terrible conditions people are experiencing there as a ‘bad time with Mother nature.’

And then, with all the usual hubris she has learned to pack in her pristine diatribes she obviously believes are making a difference in somebody’s life, Ms. Noonan patriotically chastises the victims she’s just had executed: ‘I wonder,’ she writes ‘if the cruel and stupid young people who are doing the looting know the power they have to damage the country, I wonder, if they knew it they’d stop it.’

Let’s turn that question around a moment for our own big finish. I wonder, Ms. Noonan, if the readers who swallow your self-righteous pap realize you write this nonsense from an ivory tower light-years removed from the poor people fighting for their very lives in the underwater hellhole formerly known as New Orleans, I wonder, if they’d beg you to stop.

From High Noon-an by Scott Mehno on September 1, 2005

More at the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mehno/high-noonan_b_6629.html

The evil in this Nation knows no bounds -- the haves and have mores only want more, at any cost to anyone.


Peace.