Duty to Warn

Nature really kicks the door down once in a while and lets us know how humans have made a mess of things. A few years ago, Hurricane Mitch laid waste much of Guatemala and neighboring countries. The hills crumbled and topsoil sluiced into the sea. There were politics, class politics, in that sluicing, same way there's politics in most "natural" disasters. The United States had crushed land reform in Guatemala in the 1950s, with the CIA overseeing a coup against Arbenz and launching decades of savage repression. The peasants had to surrender the good flat land to the United Fruit Co. and scratch small holdings for subsistence into ever steeper hillsides, which in consequence got more and more eroded. Then came Mitch, and the hillsides and the small plots were washed away.

Hurricane Katrina . the aftermath is payback time for decades of stupidity, greed, pillage and racism. My thought is that the tempo toward catastrophe really picked up in the Reagan era. That's when the notion of this society being in some deep sense a collective effort, pointed toward universal human betterment -- the core of the old Enlightenment -- went onto the trash heap.

Calls for firing Michael Brown are understandable. Aptly described as “the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA” by columnist Maureen Dowd a few days ago, he’s an easy and appropriate target.

President Bush met with Brown last Friday and publicly told him: “You’re doing a heck of a job.”

In the grisly wake of the hurricane, Brown’s job performance cannot be separated from Bush’s job performance. To similar deadly effect, the president has brought to bear on people in New Orleans the same qualities that he has inflicted on people in Iraq -- refusal to acknowledge basic realities, lethally misplaced priorities, lack of compassion (cue the guitar), and overarching arrogance.

The Bush administration is guilty of criminal negligence that killed thousands of people last week.

Estimates of the death toll in New Orleans are now in the vicinity of 10,000 people. Whatever the number, many would be alive today if the federal government had given minimal priority to evacuation of those who had no way of exiting the city.

Now, key issues involve accountability and decency.

Reverend Jesse Jackson is working in the Louisiana region with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Last week, Rev. Jackson and a Rainbow/PUSH delegation visited Venezuela, and are grateful for the relief aid offered by President Hugo Chavez. Below is Rev. Jackson's statement on the tragedy.

CHICAGO- The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition released the following statement regarding the tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina:

All of us share the pain of those hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina. All of us will do what we can to help ease the burden of the families who have lost their loved ones, their homes, and even their towns and cities.

Even our amigos y amigas in Venezuela have generously offered their assistance. President Hugo Chavez himself told me in Caracas earlier this week, as we watched the flooding on television, that Venezuela would provide millions in aid, as a gesture of compassion from the people of Venezuela, to ease the pain and suffering of the victims of Katrina. We thank President Chavez and the Venezuelan people for their generosity.

In the wake of the New Orleans disaster, I thought of an article I read about Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s other yacht. The 300-foot Tatoosh carries a 30-person crew, two helicopters, a swimming pool, a spa, a private movie theater, six other surface boats (including a separate 54-foot racing yacht and two Hobie catamarans) and a submarine. Reading about the Tatoosh and a third yacht just slightly smaller made me wonder about Allen’s yacht of choice.  Did it have two swimming pools? Four helicopters? Twelve other on-board boats? And what was Allen doing with two yachts, when he could only ride on one at a time?

President Bush has evaded Cindy Sheehan’s question, “What was the noble cause that my son died for?” But he provided a partial answer on the day that the New Orleans levees gave way.

The media coverage was scant and fleeting -- but we should not allow the nation’s Orwellian memory hole to swallow up a revealing statement in Bush’s speech at a naval air station near San Diego.

In the Aug. 30 speech, moments after condemning “a brutal campaign of terror in Iraq,” the president said: “If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks. They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions.” In other words, the U.S. war effort in Iraq must continue because control of Iraqi oil is at stake.

Would U.S. troops be in Iraq if that country didn’t have a drop of oil under its sand? Most politicians dodge that kind of question. And for years, the U.S. news media -- with few exceptions -- have elided the oily obvious. Such denials go back a long way.

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AUSTIN, Texas -- Happy Labor Day, comrades. Hail to all who have yet to be outsourced, downsized, zero-budgeted, streamlined, cut back, laid off, globalized or otherwise pre-shrunk. Those of us who are lucky winners in the employment lottery can still enjoy our stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and collapsing pension plans. What, us worry?

Not that I want to start off one of my favorite national holidays on a bummer note, but it's enough to make Joe Hill rise from the dead yet again. One of the handicaps Americans have when it comes to discussing labor is that about 90 percent of us think we're middle class. Upper-class people are quite as likely to self-identify as middle class as are working-class folks. And middle-class folks do not think of themselves as "labor."

How could you be part of labor when you don't wear a hardhat or carry a lunch bucket? When you live in a suburb and own a bass boat, as well as an SUV? When you wear a suit and tie or high heels to work? When you're management, for pity's sake? Because that's what American labor looks like now -- just like you.

The death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the deaths of some 10,000 or more American citizens in New Orleans and Mississippi have come virtually at the same time.

We thus face one of the most important moments of decision in all US History---the appointment of two new Justices to the Supreme Court, including a new Chief Justice.

Such decisions are too momentous to make amidst the chaos and crisis that is today's United States. There is only one thing that can be done under the circumstances: postpone the appointments.

The nation is reeling from what may be its deadliest weather-related disaster ever. In effect, the country has lost an entire city, and it has done so in ways that could have been avoided.

New Orleans will almost certainly be rebuilt. But what emerges will be a very different place from the one America has known and loved for so long.

The implications of what has happened there are enormous and unique. The last time the nation and world lost entire cities in one fell swoop was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.