Sept 2K5

Torture Mutha*****!

I view my torture as I view my death penalty. If it really absolutely has to be done, I'll be the one to do it, as a private citizen, consequences be damned. Obviously, if I've been aggrieved to the point that I load up the jeep with carbines, thumbscrews, and nerve gas, and head off to a far away land to level a village and pluck out the eyes of the town elders, then I'm way past the point of negotiation. It will mean that someone or some thing has pissed me off to the point of insanity, to the point that I must disregard civilized behavior to exact my vengeance. Hey, I'm but one private citizen and we all freak out every now and then.

It's a whole different ballgame when democratically elected governments get into torture as participants. Evolving standards of civilized behavior demand that our actions rise above those of Al Queda. They are the barbarians in wish and deed. They seek a return to the middle ages where women and gays are arbitrarily stoned, and every man must grow a ragged beard to express their virility. Us civilized folk wish to move forward and better our lot and spread peace and freedom across the world. But when we stomp, peel, and kill detainees we send a message that we are not so different from them assholes who televise beheadings or lay down IED's to blow apart our brave soldiers.

Since the Abu Garib scandal erupted, we've been receiving a steady stream of information which identifies a longstanding and government approved torture program approve by our regime. It doesn't help international religious relations that the torturers are Christian and those being tortured are Muslim. The torture policies are being sanctioned and approved by a supposed evangelical Christian, G.W. Bush, while many if not most evangelicals, especially the ones who take the New Testament seriously, hates the notion that anyone would sanction torture in their names.

Brave soldiers are now starting to speak out against the US policy of abuse, to their peril. Below is the text of a letter from Army Captain Ian Fishback (vetted to be a very upstanding and morally healthy man) to Senator John McCain:

Dear Senator McCain:

I am a graduate of West Point currently serving as a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry. I have served two combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, one each in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I served in the Global War on Terror, the actions and statements of my leadership led me to believe that United States policy did not require application of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. On 7 May 2004, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's testimony that the United States followed the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and the "spirit" of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan prompted me to begin an approach for clarification. For 17 months, I tried to determine what specific standards governed the treatment of detainees by consulting my chain of command through battalion commander, multiple JAG lawyers, multiple Democrat and Republican Congressmen and their aides, the Ft. Bragg Inspector General's office, multiple government reports, the Secretary of the Army and multiple general officers, a professional interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, the deputy head of the department at West Point responsible for teaching Just War Theory and Law of Land Warfare, and numerous peers who I regard as honorable and intelligent men.

Instead of resolving my concerns, the approach for clarification process leaves me deeply troubled. Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is a tragedy. I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard.

That is in the past and there is nothing we can do about it now. But, we can learn from our mistakes and ensure that this does not happen again. Take a major step in that direction; eliminate the confusion. My approach for clarification provides clear evidence that confusion over standards was a major contributor to the prisoner abuse. We owe our soldiers better than this. Give them a clear standard that is in accordance with the bedrock principles of our nation.

Some do not see the need for this work. Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda's, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Others argue that clear standards will limit the President's ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable.

Both of these arguments stem from the larger question, the most important question that this generation will answer. Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is "America."

Once again, I strongly urge you to do justice to your men and women in uniform. Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for.

With the Utmost Respect,

-- Capt. Ian Fishback

1st Battalion,

Fishback is currently in detention for selling out his comrades, and especially for going against the directives of the White House and the Pentagon. They are trying to break him for doing the right thing, but that's how these things tend to work.

That Rumsfeld supports this barbarity is no surprise to me. He is, after all, a former collegiate wrestler and corporate CEO. Destroying people happens to be something Rumsfeld has excelled at for ~600 years. His people are better than other people, and he's the kind of man who assigns dollar value to human life. That President Bush supports these heinous abuses just goes to show that he is a hypocrite on top of his multitude of other glaring deficiencies. You think Jesus would sanction torture against enemy combatants? Me neither. Bush talks about love and compassion, but those who violate our social contracts deserve nothing but scorn, hatred, and death...by lethal injection or beatings with cudgels, whatever's appropriate.

Though Amnesty International pisses me off on several fronts, the fact that they are unequivocally against torture and the death penalty resonates with me, and thus I remain a member of their very flawed organization. There is no wiggle room on these things. Once you enter the world as a human being, governments must never conspire to maim or kill you, ever. Even if you break all the social contracts, part of being an advanced society is having the resources and moral clarity to put your terrorist ass in a cell for good instead of seeing electrodes clamped onto your ballsack on CNN.

If we allow our government to torture detainees, than the moral high ground we claim in this war on terror is significantly compromised. We show that we are not a nation of laws but a collection of zealots who'll use whatever means needed to impose our vision across the world. I thought it was that kind of thinking that we were fighting in the first place. This is not a band of private citizens out seeking vengeance for a terrible wrong-- something I can morally accept, but an elected body that is speaking for us through their policies. We gotta stop this madness. The repercussions are already guaranteed to haunt us for years.

- k

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27sept05

Y Distractions ptIV

Flint's downtown Y is part fitness center and part flophouse, well, residence hall. Folks fresh from jail, various transients, or those simply without better options, live upstairs from the pool and gym, and when they can, prowl the streets. It's interesting to see. These people can have access to the fitness center too, and I suspect that a workout regimen does many of them a world of good, especially if it means staying off the black tar smack.

There's a few old-timers who have been in the residence hall for decades. A couple I know personally, and they both work out religiously, and look pretty healthy and well kept. As mentioned, there are those who wander the streets at night doing everything you'd imagine a near-vagrant in downtown Flint to be doing, but they've never bothered me, so live and let live. And then there are folks like Russell-- the talker.

To hear this tall, dark, well-coifed 40-something fellow speak, you'd think he'd not only seen the world a few times but conquered the damn thing as well, and then, you know, shit happened and he wound up at the Flint YMCA residence hall. I'm not busting on anyone for living at the Y, by the way. I've had my share of shady living arrangements, and life takes some crazy turns. IOW, stuff happens. But what irks me about Russell, and this is prolly just my hang-up, is that he spends hours at a time in the gym chatting everyone up about nonsense, performing maybe one set of something or other every 20 minutes. He hits on every female, to the point of driving some to the locker room early.

I find it odd that Russell is living in a YMCA residence hall AND has all this spare time to bug the dedicated fitness buffs, bullshit about his past, and do absolutely nothing with the time he has left. Does he like it at the YMCA Residence Hall? Some do, but these folks have no illusions about anything. They are real, they walk it like they talk it, admit their mistakes, and generally exude a certain inner peace that the rest of us might wanna emulate. Again, there are some folks like that inside them halls. Russell claims to have played football for the Dallas Cowboys, slept with 100s of cheerleaders, and traded dope for dollars with the Columbians. Used to be a high roller baby until the one-time caught up with him and when he got out of the Arizona pokey he figured he'd come up to Flint for a fresh start. Read that last sentence again.

There ought to be a point where you stop bullshitting yourself and make an effort, you know, to contribute something or at least be honest with yourself, and ideally, with others. Russell behaves like a 20-year-old pothead without a care in the world, but the dude is getting up there and he hates where he's at cause he's always conjuring these immense fantasies to place himself in a better light. Obviously this is all old hat to anyone who's spent any time on an elementary school playground, but you gotta move up from that. But what do I care, right? I guess waste bothers me. Russell's a charming guy in his own way and he for sure can be in a better place without too much effort...and he want's to be in a better place, yet he just doesn't get how to make that happen-- setting goals, doing the work, being hard on yourself when you mess up, and rewarding yourself with a nice fatty after a job well done.

The only thing at the Y more annoying than Russell is the horrible music they play over the PA. Staff manages to find radio programming that displays its creativity by playing the worst of every genre. I freaking hate doing a tough bench while Russell's flapping his pimp gums to some lonely lady trying to sweat off 20 as Maria Carey makes her comeback by biting Beyonce. Y'all might say bring yer goddamned mp3 player to the gym, moron, all your distractions will go away. Tried it, doesn't work for me. I do ~20 minutes of stretches and yoga, ~40 of vicious cardio, and then freeweights (and I still can't get rid of this little friggin pouch on my belly...time to call lipo-man, what the hell, why not throw pride into the teeth of advancing age before the big retreat....). Having headphones and wires on me is an even bigger distraction than Russell or the made for SpEd music coming from the PA. So why do I bitch? Because I can. Because this is America, and folks like Russell are free to do what they do. Ungh.

- k

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Localized Musings

If the local commercials are any indication, the Flint area is overflowing with deadbeat debtors looking to cash out previously finagled structured settlements and land an automobile with disaster credit DUI history that'd make Darryl Strawberry blush. In the span of 20 minutes, on Spike at ~9:30pm, there were no fewer than six localized adverts begging potential clients to mortgage further their already doomed future and 'get on down to Fast Finance and drive away with PLPD...no matter what your driving record looks like.'

Summer went out dark and angry today. Strong thunderstorms came through from 2pm through sundown, flooding small streams everywhere...causing happiness to wash across the land again. Can't wait for winter, really. I'll either spend half the cold days in Mexico or develop a serious drinking habit here. Come to think of it, I'd prolly lose to my hedonistic side in Cozumel too, ah sweet escapism-- that's, by the way, how the locals cope. Oldest trick in the book: terrible weather? get wasted. no job? get wasted. wife left you and the mortgage man wants his due? you know, get smashed baby. Dive bars are booming around here...titty bars too, can't forget that, though the difference between a classic dive bar and titty bar in these parts is easy to obfuscate. If you've lost your wife, house, and job, than $2 PBR's during the day at any number of nearby establishments is just the ticket. For just pennies extra, you can have a crackhead remove her clothing on the privacy of your own lap. I'm telling you, Flint is the land of bargains if not opportunity. But maybe the worm is finally turning.

Some area colleges and our largest hospital, along with some interested businessmen are joining forces to redevelop a long swath of land along the Flint River between Kettering University and downtown, about a mile or in length, and currently covered with cracked pavement, discarded automobiles, and the occasional cadaver. The idea is to place bike paths, park space, and cafes and the like in this area. It's what the city should have done 25 years ago but better late than never. Redevelopment of dilapidated areas always comes in increments, just like any restoration project, and assuming that the Autoworld fiasco was going to do the trick was silly. You need smaller things first. It helps that Flint has three large colleges within a couple miles of each other: Kettering University, UM Flint, and Mott. That's a lot of students, and students have the will and energy to venture out into gritty environments if there is a decent place to go. If it's going to happen, that's how it'll start.

That said, I'm not sure if the localized malaise will ever go away. The Flint area has been part of an abusive relationship for a long long time now, and as it is with individuals, recovery either happens at a snail's pace or doesn't happen at all. Again, with the large and growing student population and beyond that the coming up of younger generations, maybe the rebirth of Flint only happens when those who remembered the downfall die off. Sometimes that's how it works...time and energy and whatnot. Right now there seems to be too much predation and not enough cooperation. Those commercials directed towards the destitute and depraved appear for a reason, the shysters involve smell a buck. They look at the stats and see that sizeable minority of the Flint area's inhabitants have weak educations, shoddy credit, and non-yearning for escapism. The results, as always with such human factors, are predictable.

- k

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Man and monkeys

Seems like them evangelicals are damn serious about inserting creationism into our public sphere. I love it when archaic dogma causes society to rehash long-settled arguments. Can't think of anything more deserving of our time and energy.

We are meat and bones. We've been meat and bones for a couple billion years. Dogs, cats, rats, apes, and people-- meat and bones. Look back far enough, and you'll see that dogs, cats, rats, apes, and people all have a common ancestor. Not only does Darwin predict this, but modern genomic science confirms it. Everything in the animal kingdom has the same genetic code. Humans and mice share over 90% of the same genomic markers. The evidence for evolution is staggering, akin to the evidence available that all of humanity lives on a sphere, primarily covered with water in much the same ratio that our bodies are composed of water.

My friend Nate sent me an NYT article that describes how creationists fancy descending on natural history museums and peppering various curators with questions about the validity of evolution. I mean if the Bible says so it must be true, no?

The Bible is a creation story that came from the Middle East. The Navajo creation story, the Dine Bahane, came from the North American Southwest. The stories themselves contain an amazing number of similarities, attesting to the common threads of the human experience. There are tales each of cataclysms, overcoming adversity, and pleasing your masters. There are also stories about morality. All ancient creation stories have these things. However, the Dine Bahane never swept through the world because the Navajo never tried to conquer the world-- for one thing they didn't have the resources to grow a mighty population or domesticate many animals. That Christianity spread the way it did should not imply anything besides the might and resources of those who came under the spell Christian creation stories.

Most humans need something to believe in. That's what agnostic conservatives such as Jonah Goldberg tend to say when gigged on such things as evolution and creationism...and there are truckloads of agnostic conservatives out there who keep their mouths shut because they don't want to upset the Conservative base. Ends and means. Why do we need to believe in a divine creator? Why do we have to set ourselves as something above and apart from the rest of nature? I do think that there are forces much greater than us, even sentient forces, but I don't expect that these forces care about us one way or another.

The miracle of humanity is that we've done everything on our own, with no help. Once the first lightbulb went off inside some caveman's head some 30 or 40 thousand years ago, we were off towards building villages and cities, boats, exploring the world, and taming animals. We've done some amazing things, and some evil things, and in large part we've done these things to survive and create better lives for ourselves and our families. That's how it all started,. The Bible was just another way of trying to explain these kinds of things for people who lived in a dark and scary world, where the thought of being alone against the red claws of nature was maybe too much to bear. That was then. We don't need the security blanket any more.

Humanity is moving away from the current brands of monotheism, but it'll be a long and agonizing process. Many people dislike change, and they hate being proven wrong on issues they base their lives on. Many of us understand that while morality is vital to the growth of a civilized society, we do not need imaginary edicts from creation stories to give ballast to our sense of right and wrong. It's going to take a while for all this to play out, and there will be some horrific hiccups along the way.

Evolution: It's not only a good idea. It's the law.

- k

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Gaps, NYT, Reconstruction Time Again

Gaps, gaps, ye be damned, too many gaps.

Sometimes I'll go a few days too long between posts because I'll have nothing to say, and other times I'll have stuff to say but maybe not something suitable for mass consumption, i.e. stuff that stays in emails between me and my family / friends. For the past few months, about 90% of my computer time has been spent putting together the cartoon-- Motorheadz (well shit, it does take place in Flint, and there may be a meth reference or two, so I did what I had to do). When I decided to create my own toon, I took it as a creative and spiritual challenge and I don't really wanna talk much about it till it's posted on da front page of these here site, and thus received by the world at large, or at least my large and generous circle of friends...and that's how these things start off anyway.

It's not that I think of nothing else but the cartoon, but close. Most of my remaining brain power is geared towards family and girlfriend stuff that way, and now that I think about what the hell I'm trying to say, all I'm doing is making excuses, trying to pull a Sienfeld and conjure something from nothing. Well both Jerry S. and Modest Mouse managed that trick so why the hell not.... I'll be like other sensitive web journalists, like Kos, Sullivan, and Lileks, and just spew all over this space once a day, see what happens.

Clicked on to the New York Times and saw that they want surfers to pay for the privilege of reading their opinion dealers. I like Kristof and Brooks, a lot, and I like Friedman most of the time, but not quite enough to pay to read what those three write. Writers for great magazines I already subscribe to say roughly the same thing, but with more richly illustrated points, ie. Kaplan for The Atlantic, Lexington in The Economist, Remnick and or Hersh in The New Yorker. The NYT also plays host station to MoDowd and Frank Rich, who's hysterical diatribes are the stuff of bad comic books. Apparently it works for the core readership.

Sorry but I don't want a penny of mine to go towards dangerous hacks like Dowd and Rich...you notice I don't lump Krazy Paul Krugman in there if only because he means well and I respect that-- if you read his poetry you find that Mao meant well too, it's just that too much opium makes your weird after awhile, and though I can't yet pin down Krugman's debilitating vice, rest assured one exists. So farewell for now ol' NYT, I'll never get the scoop on how everything post-Katrina would be spotless and purty if'n we had politburo and leader with his or her own little red book in DC instead of that drooling asshole fratboy Texan.

Case you haven't heard, Bush is certainly spending like a Democrat, no that's not quite right, because Clinton was a budget genius (damn I miss that guy). Bush is spending like Mike Tyson, circa the Buster Douglas fight-- white elephants and alternate realities in every room of the mansion. I understand that the Gulf region needs substantial help, and certainly those displaced by that hurricane, and those displaced by the hurricane who had been hitherto displaced by life in The Hood (New Orleans style) deserve a shot at the American dream. I absolutely support that.

Thing is, Bush comes across a wee too political by throwing a quick 200 billion at catastrophe his FEMA botched early, before the long-term assessments come in. Big government is throwing that kind of money into Iraq reconstruction and by all accounts it's a total cluster...even in the quiet regions, especially in the quiet regions. Bush knew that given the opposition to invading Iraq his legacy depended on getting it right, and he didn't pull it off, despite the best efforts of our military and millions of Iraqi citizens. I'm not sure post-Katrina would be different. There is a basic incompetence that gimps the effectiveness of the Bush Administration. They have ideas, oddly enough, since most folks don't groups the words Bush and visionary into the same node of their brains, but when it comes to execution-- approving pork-laden spending bills, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, half-ass attempts to pacify Iraq and turn it into the new South Korea (but with more and cheaper petrol), and now the initial underresponse followed by the financial overresponse to Katrina, BushCo flails.

Like Paul Krugman and Jesse Jackson, Bush means well, he really does. Little Darryl down the street means well too. But little Darryl has a bad case of the Downs, so governing a department or a nation would be a bit much for him. Yet I would only be mildly surprised if Darryl were called to DC for a high government post to reward campaign contributions made by his group home.

Now that assistance is flowing to the displaced, with huge private contributions everywhere, why not take a step back to figure out, rationally, the best way to reconstruct the Gulf. Let's have a little bit of National Dialogue, of the honest variety if possible. Because right now that 200 billion reconstruction figure is a large and budget-busting sum that Bush has simply pulled from his ass, and I'm tired of my government running the country in that very manner.

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More Pop Musings: Beatles and SFA

Last week I was driving home from my girlfriend's place early in the a.m., fighting through numbing rush hour interstate traffic with one gray concrete structure after another. Even the waterways had cement linings, pouring towards a distant downtown skyline shrouded in haze. It had been a somewhat depressing stretch of time, as the previous two posts in this blog will attest. From the jeep's radio, Stern was bleating his special brand of rancor which helped to lock me into the boring drive and the asshole surprise lane changing speed up slow down drivers I always share the road with...while never, as of this writing, resorting to armed violence, or even a ramming an offender into a ditch. Where's MY medal of freedom, Mr. President. So, I was driving and laughing at Stern's silliness and seething a little under the surface when I heard a fantastic version of I Am The Walrus-- the bows and strings, the uber-nasal Lennon Voice, the horns, all of it on point yet strangely original, and very heavy, like a psychedelic plantation. Someone was playing live in Howard's Studio, and they knew the Beatles like J. Edgar Hoover knew dresses, and everything seemed to brighten up.

When the band finished I Am The Walrus, Howard's studio erupted in applause, Stern himself sounding like a kid at the rare comic book store-- "Unbelievable, fantastic...wow." Turns out the cats who played I Am The Walrus, and who went on to play Tomorrow Never Knows and Strawberry Fields, are the Faux Four, a Beatles tribute bands. They take Beatles material and play it in the same fashion Pearlman or Tilson Thomas would play Bach-- with passion and reverence but with personal touches. After that the Stern show moved on to the pros and cons of granny porn and dick jokes. I was bummed that I didn't have any Beatles inside the car with me. It's so simple sometimes-- when there's too much ugliness around you, find something pretty, and interact with for a bit.

The Beatles basically invented BritPop, along with a dozen other genre's, but when I'm looking to OD on pretty, catchy, and smart music, it's usually BritPop, or UK Pop as it were, I seek. One such band, Super Furry Animals have just released one of their best albums, Love Kraft. It's a big dollop of stunning rich languid beauty in our time of war. Sure, with SFA no one outside of Wales knows for sure what Gruff's saying half the time, but the band is kind enough to sing in English ever so often, and besides they have the catchiest damn melodies and most unexpected progressions since their fab forefathers.

On Love Kraft SFA apparently grow tired of the world we live in and have decided to make on up for themselves. Love Kraft starts with a splash, literally, and you are immersed in analog synths, guitars, a glockenspiel here and there, vocorders, drums of every kind and Gruff's strange and sweet vocal talents. Part Animals, Sgt. Peppers, and Soft Bulletin, but also a little more caustic than that, and far better to look at. The terrain inside of Love Kraft is definitely one of the future, but it's a future where the worst is behind us, where the folk songs talk about silly misguided ancestors from a garden fully restored. No so much we will overcome....that's all in the past, so we'll hang out here and wait for you silly earthlings to catch up.

I'd rattle off what I like about every song on the album, but I don't feel like doing something that a dozen other reviewers are doing right now across the net. I'll just say that if you like SFA's earlier guitar albums, buy Love Kraft. If you like SFA's later beat-infused quirky funky records, buy Love Kraft. If you're curious at all as to what the very best UK pop music sounds like right now, this very minute, go to your record store or Amazon and order up. See these guys live when they come to your town. I checked them out in September 2k3, co-headlining with Grandaddy at the Fillmore, and was blown away for a week, one of those shows that sticks to you like a new character trait. I'm pissed right now that they have no current plans to tour the States.

btw: I'm not sure how Coldplay can be huge while a more talented, diverse, and melodic band like Super Furry Animals remains somewhere in the underground. Makes me wonder.

Music is the best measuring stick of modern society. Look at source material from everything southern rap, to bubble gum, folk, and metal. We can only make what we are, and our attempts at escaspism-- Pink Floyd, Beatles, Super Furry Animals, and in darker ways, Neurosis, Pelican, and Isis, tell as much about the kind of world we inhabit today as it does about our imaginations. I've always been amazed at how bands and artists across the Atlantic could take rough American forms of music, often black blues, and change them into melodic workouts. It's analagous, I suppose, to what Motown did to soul, but the Beatles and the million bands that followed their lead did something beyond watering down a coarse genre, the UK pop artists created a splendid reality where true dangers exist as always, but we can still be stunned with it's beauty despite the very dark things we've created. That an album like Love Kraft can exist in a world of mega-disasters, Fallujah, and hateful political movements guarantees that my last call is always the optimistic one.

- k

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Costs of Poverty

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, New Orleans officials unnecessarily dynamited part of a levy to send floodwaters into and across several poor neighborhoods in order to spare wealthier neighborhoods, and to please East Coast business investors who kept New Orleans in kibble. The poor took it in the browneye again. Historian, scholar and delta-dweller John M. Barry put it as this:

You know, the 1927 Flood was two stories. It was man against nature, but it was also man against man. And part of the story in man against man involved the city of New Orleans, which in 1927 was a much more vibrant and vital city than it is today. It was, by far, the leading city in the South, economically dwarfed, literally double and triple Miami, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Louisville, any of its rivals. And one of the things that the people in New Orleans who ran the city were concerned about was fear of their investors, who were mostly in New York and Boston, of what the Mississippi River might do to New Orleans in a big flood. So here, you had this tremendous flood coming down the river and, oddly enough, it didn't threaten New Orleans. And the reason it didn't threaten New Orleans was because there was no possible way that that water was ever going to make it to New Orleans. The levees upriver had to break. They had to, as, in fact, they did. For example, the river spread out 70 miles from Vicksburg to Monroe, Louisiana. But before that happened, while people in New York were worrying about whether or not they should put more money into New Orleans and invest in the port and so forth, the city fathers decided to demonstrate that they would never, under any circumstances, allow the river to threaten the city. So what they did was decide to dynamite the levee about 13 miles below the city and flood out their neighbors. Race had nothing to do with this. They were almost all poor whites who were flooded out.

Whether you look at the depravation caused by Katrina, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, China's Great Earthquake of 1976 (which killed almost 1,000,000 people), or the periodic and horrific floods that strike Bangladesh, those who suffer the worst are the poor-- people who tend to live in fragile houses on floodplains. People who don't have the funds to evacuate when evacuations are called, and by the way f**k Rick Santorum with a rusty claw-hammer for suggesting the New Orleans residents were to blame for their own fate...simply because they were too poor, in most cases, to evacuate with everyone else.

When it comes to battling poverty in the world's wealthiest nation, out of sight out of mind is the mantra for most, until inconvenient little piffles like Katrina roar through and expose the terrible tears in our social fabric. Folks in the projects can't afford lobbyists, they die before reaching AARP age, and since the public schools that serve them team with uninterested instructors and thug predators along the hallways, these folks have a hard time grasping layered complexities and acquiring job skills, yet seem to know that they're being screwed-- they hear about tax cuts for the rich while Junior's math teacher smokes a rock outside the cafeteria. Is it really in our best interests, economically and morally, to keep averting the eyes to tens of millions of Americans who essentially have no chance of a better life once they leave the maternity ward with their impoverished, and half the time, single mother?

Because of Katrina, pundits on both sides are suggesting a grand bargain of sorts: The Right allows increased spending in Urban Renewal while the Left admits that destructive behavioral habits create as much or more poverty than government neglect. That such a dialogue is beginning to emerge is a start, but transforming a ghetto seems like the wrong approach. The best way to lift a family up is to give resources and direction, and place said family in an environment where hard work and success is expected. Nothing like peer pressure to effect change.

David Brooks said in a recent column that while we can not do much to change human nature, we can put into place tools that can help desperately poor people improve their lot should they wish to do so. Brooks suggests one way to help things along is to integrate poor households in subsidized houses in nicer neighborhoods, instead of stacking tens of thousands of poor, uneducated, angry, and bitter people atop one another on landspace rife with the devastation that the aforementioned properties predict. Not sure how that would work out since the NIMBY crowd wouldn't stand for it, just like America wouldn't stand for busing in the 1970s. Think about it, if we couldn't get behind integrating our school systems, how will we fare in integrating our neighborhoods...a far more personal domestic fabric. It's from this tangent, and many others, that the rank hypocrisy of frothing liberalism is exposed. At least Conservatives make no bones about their loathing for social engineering, yet go to any San Francisco city board meeting and listen to the outcry when an activist suggests tearing down the public housing system and placing poor families evenly in all neighborhoods--- Pacific Heights, Nob Hill, Cole Valley, etc. Liberal kindness often ends with hyperbole and charity functions...send them my old chairs and clothes but for crying out loud keep those people out of my neighborhood.

Yet when this experiment has been force-fed into a community or otherwise carried out on a very small, and under the radar, level, the results have been encouraging. From Brooks:

The only chance we have to break the cycle of poverty is to integrate people who lack middle-class skills into neighborhoods with people who possess these skills and who insist on certain standards of behavior. The most famous example of cultural integration is the Gautreaux program, in which poor families from Chicago were given the chance to move into suburban middle-class areas. The adults in these families did only slightly better than the adults left behind, but the children in the relocated families did much better. These kids suddenly found themselves surrounded by peers who expected to graduate from high school and go to college. After the shock of adapting to the more demanding suburban schools, they were more likely to go to college, too.

And a word on the whole racial thing that's been reheated in Katrina's aftermath. In personal relationships, when you screw someone over, it takes a long time and a sustained honest effort to regain that trust, and frankly, sometimes said trust is never regained. This applies to race relations as well. No one reading this was a slave-owner, and hopefully no one reading this ever supported Jim Crow, but the fact is that many blacks feel perpetually screwed over for reasons I've already mentioned in this piece and because whites initiated the historical wrong, and because whites, generally, still control the levers to power and wealth, it's then on whites to do 80% of the work of healing. I'm not saying it's fair, but that's what it is. We can actually avoid these uncomfortable things to a degree and aim our mighty resources on all of poverty irregardless of race...you'd be amazed at the healing power that rose up with all them little boats in our metaphorical harbor. We can make this a poverty thing and take care of the racial thing along the way.

Life will go on even if we don't learn a thing from Katrina and the US becomes a feudal state with a sizeable minority living in 3rd World conditions. Indeed, we could go on for another 1,000 years in that way and we'd be beasts for doing so.

We are our brother's keeper. For real.

- k

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So Much For Government Assistance

I've been waiting, and waiting, until my head cleared from the sadness, angst, and anger before writing anything about Katrina's aftermath. To paraphrase Andrew Sullivan, others were writing quite nicely about it, and I didn't think I had much to add. I'd sent off my donations, which was going to be the extent of my active participation in the relief effort. But it's still welling up inside me, and I must open the valve a bit, along with a half-million other dimestore pundits. What's unfolded along the past few days has been so shocking, so hurtful, that I'm given to alternate visions:

Imagine. You are the government of the wealthiest nation on the planet. You are alerted that an oft forecasted major hurricane is about to come down upon New Orleans and the surrounding area. You call for an evacuation of the area in question. Most leave, others do not-- often because they don't have the means to leave. The disaster then strikes more or less as predicted.

200 miles of the Gulf Coast is leveled and water begins to rise in the Big Easy. It becomes obvious that folks will be stranded. Time to fly choppers around the city with huge bullhorns attached: food and water will be brought from military storehouses and dropped at the following collection points-- Superdome, Convention Center, and a few other spots well above ground. For several hours there will be no one to distribute the supplies, but at least the supplies will be on the ground, just like those bullhorn- equipped choppers advertised. There will be enough food and water for 100,000 people, all yawl need to do for now is break open the pallets.

Hours later, law enforcement and relief agents are on the ground near the collection points as 80 percent of the city falls below the waterline. Refugees stream towards the collection spots and everyone has something to eat and drink. Plans are made in those hours to bus and airlift the refugees out from the collection spots to various shelters outside the hurricane zone. People are scared, some hurt, some ill, but hope is not lost.

72 hours after Katrina strikes, and 48 hours after it's apparent that New Orleans will need to be cleared out, the last refugee boards a bus for Houston or Baton Rouge, or Memphis, and shelter. The dire portion of the humanitarian crisis is over...

That's how I picture the government of the wealthiest country on the planet handling an oft-predicted disaster. So forgive me if I write as though I'm in a dream because surely this can't be happening. This is the kind of disaster response one expects in Iran or Indonesia, where heart and the intent for relief outweighs the resources available. Pardon the expression, but we're supposed to 'wargame' for certain eventualities, like terrorist attacks, earthquakes out west, and major hurricanes flooding New Orleans. If we're given notice of impending catastrophe and boggle it up, how do we respond to something dire and yet unforeseen?

Officials on every level have bungled things post-Katrina and thus New Orleans is in chaos. People are dying on the streets, and food and water must be looted from flooded business spaces. Armed thugs roam the waterlogged streets, shooting and raping bystanders. A swath of our nation has been cast into the 3rd World and by all appearances our elected officials are twiddling their thumbs, looking into the camera like shy children about to give a recital of poorly practiced material.

In case anyone needed further proof, being poor and black in America is detrimental to your health and dignity. One of the highest callings of government is to protect the weak from disaster and predation. As the New Orleans descends further down Dante's circles, it seems that our government can do neither. Blacks in America, and there are about 30 million of them, will remember this. Other minorities and the non-wealthy very well ought to remember this. Our government's inept response to an event that cried out for a steady and reassuring hand is the kind of thing that gives rise to revolutions.

See, if you can't count on your government when government is needed, then why exactly must you tolerate government in the first place? Millions of Americans are asking themselves that question right now.

- k

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