Walter Wolfgang and the man of Straw.

Tsk! Tsk! It seems I can’t leave the Asylum for ten minutes without the place going to Hell in a Handcart…

I had to take a little compassionate leave this to look after my euphemistic dog, Spike, who has been laid low with a painful middle-ear infection, poor thing. Temporarily deafened and with diminishing balance, he’d been staggering around the Nurse’s Quarters, bumping into the furniture, snarling at the occasional visitor, yelping frequently and making those pitiful Puppy-dog eyes at me. He also re-damaged the knee he dislocated earlier this year (Yes, I KNOW dogs don’t have knees… he’s a euphemism, remember?). The correct medical term for this condition is “Poorly”.

Anyhoo, I finally got him to the Vet who hoovered several pounds of vile gunk from his ears, and he’s now on the mend, thankyouverymuchforasking.

But what a godawful mess greeted me on my return! I had left Nurse Kravitz in charge of the British Annexe – especially inmates “Phoney” Blair, Gordon “Prudence” Brown and Jack “The Knife” Straw. All she had to do was keep the buggers heavily sedated, but you know what she’s like… memory of a goldfish, poor dear.

Inmate Brown distracted Nurse Kravitz from her 'Jumbo Book of Sudoko' with the vague promise of something sparkly (that wasn’t), and next thing she knew Blair had rounded up all the other patients, herded them all into Brighton Ward, and was holding a rally so everyone could agree how absolutely marvelous he is, how he loves us all so much that he’s NEVER going to leave, and how HIS shit doesn’t smell at all!


Suffering as they do from the grave misunderstanding that a Labour Party Conference nowadays has the slightest resemblance whatsoever to a proper democratic process involving debate and dissent, some of the braver Inmates naively tried to ask questions about the murderous occupation of the Ottoman Wing, only to be criticized and silenced by the party aparatchicks who were lurking in the shadows at the fringes of the ward waiting to pounce at the first signs of Democracy, on the orders of the leadership.


Things started getting a little nasty when Foreign Secretary Jack “The Knife” Straw was on centre stage, spouting his usual mealy-mouthed propaganda about how jolly decent it was of us to have joined in the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children, how happy the Iraqis are that the British were in occupation again - just like the last time - and how he has no intention of leaving Iraq until George Bush and Ariel Sharon are satisfied that the entire region is engulfed in internecine conflict and is totally destabilized by civil war, abject fear and grinding oppression, making it easier to justify the absolutely outrageous theft of all their oil.

Getting into the full swing of his Fantasy Foreign Policy, Straw began to claim that in regards Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain had “worked hard to avoid war”.

This was all too much for one of our older residents, 82 year old Walter Wolfgang, who had fled from one set of fascists in Nazi Germany in 1937, and who, on recognizing a liar when he saw one, dared to shout two words - “Liar” and “Nonsense” - from the very back of the hall whilst Straw was in full conceited spurt.

Within seconds Walter was literally pounced upon by three goons who literally dragged him out of his seat by his jacket lapels, despite his urgent protestations that he had heart disease. They proceeded to throw him and a friend (who had dared to complain at the disgusting treatment of an old man) out of the Ward and onto the street. When Walter tried to get back in he was arrested under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Yes, that’s right… the Prevention of Terrorism Act.


By tea-time yesterday, when the entire National Media was getting ready to show the entire country what a disgraceful sham the Labour Party Conference has become, the Labour Party issued a statement claiming falsely that Mr. Wolfgang had been warned three times about heckling.

The ensuing blistering criticism of this event temporarily humbled the mighty Party, and today saw a succession of slimy photo-op apologies being made in the general direction of Walter, even by Saint Tony himself.


Pie-loving Party Chairman, Ian McCartney insisted on being filmed shaking Walter’s hand today as a gesture of goodwill, and Blair made comments about how the event stewards were all volunteers, and sometimes maybe got over-zealous. He didn’t mention that a sizeable proportion aren’t volunteers at all… they’re professional bouncers. Bouncers aren't noted for giving a shit.

In interviews today Walter – a keen member of the Stop The War Coalition and Vice-Chair of Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - made some very pertinent points about the over-management of Labour Party conferences under the Blair regime, and the fact that the leadership had completely side-lined any discussion of Iraq.

(Incidentally, serving MP Austin Mitchell had his camera confiscated and the memory ilegally wiped by the police outside the venue for the heinous crime of photographing a queue...)

Another 80 year old was thrown out of a fringe meeting for sporting an anti-Blair badge on his jacket.

Elsewhere in Brighton the police were seen detaining a man wearing an anti-war T-Shirt, and bundling him into a Police van.


Watching all this on the battered TV in the Nurse’s Lounge, those of us who are older than the average boy band were given good cause to remember very lucidly how Labour Party conferences from the 1950’s to the 1980’s used to be very lively, exciting events.

Loud, impassioned debate on the floor was the order of the day. Ethics were king, and control-freakery by a leadership (who should be standing in the dock at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague instead of maintaining the criminal occupation of a sovereign state whilst sucking on the Chimp’s teats) was unheard of.


Previous Labour Prime Minister were often given a very hard time by the party delegates at these conferences, and that’s how it should be if we want to have a living, breathing democracy… which we obviously don’t have.

As a surreal footnote, the musical theme played over the PA system at the conference when Blair took the podium was (very bizarrely) Sham 69’s punk anthem “If the kids are united”, taken by pundits to be a dig at Gordon Brown’s aspirations to step into Blair’s shoes when he steps down.

Later that night BBC’s Newsnight programme invited the matured-but-not-cowed Sham 69 to perform an unplugged version of their classic. Taking the opportunity, Sham’s bemused front-man Jimmy Pursey had tweaked the lyrics appropriately for the benefit of our glorious Prime Minister:

For once in my life I've got something to say,
I want to say it now, but
now it's today.
Life has been given, to grab and enjoy,
So come on Tony,
let's all enjoy.

Oh Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause it
was Tony who was elected.
And Mister Blair will take us there,
Just bring
'em Home, don't leave them there.

Just take a look around you Tony,
what do you see?
People with feelings, like you and me.
Understand him,
he'll understand you,
For you are him, Tony, and he is you.

Oh
Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause it was Tony who was elected.
And
Mister Blair, we know you care,
So bring 'em home, don't leave 'em
there.

Freedom is given, to speak how you feel,
I have no
freedon, Tony, how do YOU feel?
You can lie to my face, but not to my
heart,
And if we stand together, Tony, this'll be the start.

So
Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause your Nation was elected.
And
Mister Blair, we know you care,
So bring 'em home, don't leave 'em
there.

Yes, If the kids were united, they would never be
divided.
Yes, If the kids were united, they would never be divided.

...that's for Walter Wolfgang

I just thought I'd tell you all this so our American visitors can appreciate that they're not the only ones suffering from the creeping cancer of supression, and that we want the same end result from this as YOU do...

That's all for now, dear Visitors. I've got to go back to the Nurse's Accomodation Block and take Spike for his walkies!

I never voted for YOU, Murdoch!

It's outrageous, don't you think, that the elected Prime Minister of this country kow-tows at the rancorous feet of the Tax-avoiding, anti-democracy, arch-fascist Rupert Murdoch?

It transpires that Tony Blair, in his rush to jam his head so far up Rupert's wrinkly, withered fundament that his Personal Private Secretary has to hold on to his ankles, has been slagging off the BBC's outstanding coverage of the aftermath of Katrina.

Murdoch, addressing a conference of influential media figures in New York last Thursday, told the assembled guests that our sycophantic Prime Minister had confided to him that he had been shocked at the way the BBC had covered the disaster in Louisiana.

Murdoch told them "Tony Blair told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week and he turned on the BBC World Service to see what was happening in New Orleans, and he said it was just full of hate at America and gloating about our troubles."

Hmm... maybe the reception in Delhi isn't very good, or maybe Delhi sits on the other side of a tear in the Space-Time Continuum and what Blair heard was broadcast from an Alternative Reality, but I can't think of a single thing that was reported by the BBC in all these weeks that could be construed as anti-American or untrue.

To smear the BBC like this is totally dishonest, but it's all we can expect from our very own war criminal Prime Minister, who has hated the BBC with a vengeance ever since the BBC first reported that Blair and his henchmen had "Sexed-Up" the Intelligence on Iraq, and used the phoney intel to mislead Parliament to justify the absolutely disastrous, criminal War in Iraq.

The BBC also covered the now-infamous Downing Street Memo which proved that the Intelligence was "fixed" to fit the intentions of Bush and Blair. As many of you will be aware, the Downing Street Memo is crucial to current attempts by the brow-beaten,    American Left to bring about Impeachment proceedings against George Bush Jnr.

The BBC coverage of Hurricane Katrina was absolutely first-class and accurate. They were there on the ground documenting the plight of the dispossessed poor, the disparity between what was happening on the ground and how it was being initially reported by the right-wing spin machine, and the fatal incompetence of FEMA, as it happened, day by day.

At no point did the language used in the BBC's reportage come anywhere near the vitriol and indignation expressed by the hitherto fawning American mainstream media when the veil was FINALLY ripped from their collective eyes, and the Bush Administration's incompetence and complicity was laid bare for the entire world to witness.

If Tony Blair seriously expected the BBC to spin the tidal wave of death and misery to spare the political blushes of the arse-scratching baboons whose corrupt policies contributed so massively to the final outcome, he was rightly disappointed.

If he expected the BBC to toady up to George Bush by praising his inept FEMA pal "Brownie", who was instantly savaged by the domestic media and finally fell on his own sword, he was understandably let down.

If he expected the BBC to lie to the world and support George Bush's lie that "No-one could have predicted the damage caused", or "No-one could have predicted the Levees would fail", when it is a matter of documentary proof that both were predicted, then it is right that Blair felt let-down.

If he expected the BBC to lie to the world and say that the authorities had handled the aftermath with even the slightest hint of competence, I'm glad he felt betrayed.

If by "gloating" he meant the bits where the BBC reported that A) the budgets for levee repairs were decimated by Bush to pay for his imperialist adventurism in the Middle East, despite expert predictions that the levees couldn't withstand a category 4 Hurricane, and B) the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA operations in Louisiana was fired from his previous job overseeing horse shows because he was incompetent at even THAT, then I think Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch can't tell the difference between "Gloating" and "Anaphylactic Shock".

And if by "Hate" he means that people watching the BBC in the UK might be given the impression that the USA is a deeply divided country shocked at the unprecedented delay and inaction of it's government to bring help to the poverty-stricken poor population who paid for that with their lives, then Murdoch and Blair can't tell the difference between "Hate" and "Compassion for the suffering of the victims of Katrina".

I should explain at this juncture that it is not only the American Annexe which has a very, very serious problem with the toxic pollution that spews from the Murdoch Empire. Here in the British sector the once-Australian Machiavelli, Rupert Murdoch, has his fingers jammed very tightly up our Dear Leader, who has been deeply in debt to Murdoch since Murdoch agreed to support him in every election since 1997, through his rabid, low-brow daily newspaper The Sun, and the once-respected broadsheet heavyweight, The Times.

But what was the cost of this gigantic volte-face from the previous champion of Margaret Thatcher? What on earth did Tony promise Rupy to guarantee that fabulous dowry?

It's always been difficult to pinpoint to what extent Murdoch has poisoned British politics, but in the past week there have been a couple of revelations which are causing understandable outrage in the UK:

A non-Murdoch-owned (but appallingly right-wing, nevertheless) newspaper, the Mail on Sunday has published extracts from the memoirs of Lance Prince, the Prime Minister's former deputy media adviser, who, whilst he was serving Blair between 1998 to 2000 was also keeping a revealing, candid diary.

Though he was ordered to amend his diary prior to publication by the Cabinet Office, The Mail on Sunday has obtained the original entries, and we discover that not only did Blair "relish" the power-trip of sending the RAF on their almost daily bombing missions over the Iraqi no-fly zone in 1998, we learn that despite publically stating that he was taking action "with a heavy heart", he nevertheless felt it part of his "Coming of Age" as a Leader.

More significantly, Lance Prince also reveals that Tony Blair promised Rupert Murdoch that he would be consulted on any change to Britain's policy towards Europe... in fact one entry described the atmosphere at No. 10 Downing Street as "very edgy" after pro-Europe comments by the then Secretary of State for Trade, Peter Mandelson "because we have promised News International we won't make any changes to our Europe policy without talking to them."

Pardon me if I pause a moment to puke... thank you…

I remember a time almost twenty years ago when the British Labour Party in opposition still had integrity, when Murdoch's journalists were banned from all Labour Party press conferences, in solidarity with the printers and other employees summarily sacked by Murdoch when he moved his whole operation from Fleet Street to Wapping in East London.

photo: Nic Oatridge, 1986

The party policy at that time was that once in power, a Labour government would break Murdoch's stranglehold on the British print media by forcing him to sell at least one of his national daily papers.

Because of this threat to his corrupt ambitions for world-wide domination and influence, Murdoch set about doing everything he could to cripple any chance Labour had of getting re-elected, until one day, in 1994, two of Blair's closest advisers, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, went to a secret meeting with the editor of The Sun.

Alastair Campbell & Peter Mandelson

Later that year Blair flew half way around the planet to speak at Murdoch’s annual conference for his senior executives in the Australian luxury resort of Hayman Island, and to comfort and assure Murdoch that “New Labour” were no threat to his undeniable power, and in return Murdoch 'introduced' his most trusted emissary - Sunday Times columnist Irwin Stelzer - to keep a close, advisory eye on Blair and to report back to Murdoch.

Soon afterwards Tony Blair shocked everyone by announcing that despite everything he had promised previously, he would not sign Britain up to the proposed EU Constitution without a referendum.

This satisfied the agressively anti-European Murdoch, because he knew that with that much advanced warning he had plenty of time to flood his press with anti-European sentiments, and to stir up prejudice and resentment. Murdoch had won, and on that basis he was instrumental in sweeping Tony Blair into power.

I could go on to discuss Blair's alleged failed attempt to influence the sale of an Italian TV station to Murdoch, or the fact that The Sun published the date of the 2001 Election before the Deputy Prime Minister knew it, or the fact that when she discovered she was pregnant, Cherie Bliar rushed off to tell The Sun about it before  the rival Daily Mirror could scoop the story, but I won't…

Sorry... got to puke again... it's all the betrayal that does it, you know...

American readers may get some cold comfort to discover that Murdoch is as corruptly insinuated and is as dangerously manipulative in the UK as over there, and for us there's some comfort knowing that we'll never have to suffer the mentally-ill rantings of a Bill O'Reilly on UK television because we have laws to stop people like that, but nevertheless Murdoch is all over the media like a cloud of mustard gas, and I'm sure you must agree that makes him a very, very dangerous man because he makes a absolute mockery of any semblance of democratic process.

When I voted for Tony Blair in 1997 I was voting for policies which we were promised, but which it turned out didn't suit Rupert Murdoch's personal bigotry/greed, so now we can't have them!

If Rupert Murdoch wants the right to dominate the lives of millions of people and influence political policy making, then he should stand as a political candidate which at least implies a degree of accountability. Instead what we have is a devious, greedy, manipulative monster lurking in the shadows, pushing his personal agenda all over an enormous amount of international territories, and revelling in the fact that wherever he goes he'll never ever need to wipe his own withered anus again, because there'll always be a long queue of politicians with their tongues drooling, at the ready to do the job.

And that just makes me sick.

A Psychologist's first-hand account of Katrina victims

I was sent this first-hand account by friends in the US today, and have been asked to help make it public:

First-hand reaction to Katrina refugees

Anne Gervasi is a licensed psychologist. She donated her time and her talent working with Katrina refugees, at first in the Reunion Arena and then the Civic Center in Dallas. This is her first hand account and reaction to what she had to deal with.

There are so many words that come to mind. As a scholar I am thinking Diaspora, social displacement, systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic and unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at something that we have never been trained to handle in this country - a level of victimization and its resultant psycho-social ripples that mandate a whole new field of clinical practice-mass victimology.

Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social termite's nest that has been growing beneath the ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for that matter, faith and hope. Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that augurs a second and more terrible level of social disruption and anger not far down the road.

Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after Reconstruction. Over and over, people said, "everyone has been so wonderful, thank you, thank you." When I said, "there is no need to thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want to help you - American to American," there would be a long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.

They are angry and it is growing. The system failed them. For that matter, there is no system because all the safeguards and preparations that we thought were in place aren't there. I have been begging anyone who would listen over the past two years for a program in mass victimology to prepare for the next tragedy after 9/11. Now it is here and the lack of organization, science, and preparation are going to result in terrible consequences for us as a nation.

Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable demographic population in America into cities an d towns all over the US who are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation and their support needs. The lower Gulf States have a language, a history, a social dynamic, a faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system unlike any other in America. These people have lived in and been acculturated to this system for generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries, we are going to see all over America, a nation that will lose patience with the needs of a foreign refugee population. Abandoned once again, the fury and the trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the outpouring of empathy and support post-crisis, will arise larger and more terrible than we have been equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over and over, in the survivor stories, in the loss of self, and the need to reclaim dignity and power.

Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical thinking. "People want me here - here is better. I think I'll stay here." What is going to happen when reality sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay don't understand the system here. Even though we abut borders, we are a vastly different nation. At least we are southerners. What is going to happen to the thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey? They are being offered free apartments, furniture etc, by generous and well - meaning people who haven't thought the long term consequences through very well. A lot of the apartments are in areas where they won't have transportation or jobs. What is going to happen six months down the road when the magic wears off and the help slowly fades? How about the holidays for a people who thrive on ritual, tradition, and celebration?

The trauma they are experiencing is so profound that we have no cultural term or machinery set up for it. The dead and nameless bodies by the thousands rotting in the water, arriving dead on the buses with them, or dying next to them in the shelters are a huge festering wound that no one dares mention. This is a true Diaspora the likes of which we haven't seen since Reconstruction. The immediate needs that are being addressed ignore the greater traumas yet to be spoken. No governmental system can survive the number of wounded and disillusioned people that we are going to see sprouting up all over America. Something far greater and more organized has to be done.

Then to the helpers and what is happening there. Turf wars have already sprung up. In the name of "I know better than you do," chaos and wasted energy are multiplying. The Red Cross was initially in charge of certifying the credentials of the helping therapists. After Oklahoma City and the pretenders who arrived there, this seemed like a wonderful clearing house. Everyone who wanted to help had to go through a brief orientation and a thorough checking of credentials.

Only licensed professionals were allowed. Driver's licenses were checked for criminal records. This seemed to be a common sense excellent approach to the question of rapists, pedophiles, and other thugs being denied access to a vulnerable population. Actually, things ran better than I expected at the beginning. Then in came the physicians who I guess felt that their non-existent coursework in this area qualified them to better run things. Immediate chaos, disorganization, and all sorts of ersatz "helpers" began running around. They grabbed our current Red Cross badges and then stopped us from going back on the floor to finish seeing our patients without the new badges, which they just happened to be out of.

We had an optometrist with prescriptive lenses but no glasses or readers and no idea when he'd ever see any. We had a deaf booth but no deaf helpers. In the midst of all this chaos, thousands and thousands of the walking wounded mixing with the powerless well-intentioned came the whispered word, pandemic.

Lots of people are suddenly getting sick, and we have to have precautions. Don't eat or drink or touch the patients. We only have one bottle of disinfectant in the mental health section, so come back here--the length of the Convention Center--after each patient. "What of the people who are being cycled out of here?" "What are we sending into the population?" If people are sick and contagious, where are the precautions to separate the vulnerable? What of precautions such as masks and gloves to keep the medical professionals and first responders safe? All the here and now is suspended in the hope that maybe tomorrow will take care of itself and the worst won't happen. Those are the questions we asked on the first day.

NO ONE IS IN CHARGE

Therefore, there is no consistent answer or approach or forethought. I am no infection guru but as soon as I heard on day one that people with no water were forced to drink water with bloated bodies, feces, and rats in it, the thought of cholera, typhoid, and delayed disease immediately occurred to me. What if the fears of disease are correct? People are fanning out throughout America. Where is the CDC? (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

In the age of computers, we are doing worse than the pencil squibs and the rolls of paper to log in the displaced after World War II. Literacy and computer access seems to be considered as a given for people who have lost it all. Accessing FEMA is through a website. People are in shelters waiting for FEMA to come "in a few days." "Be patient." The Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana pumped my hand and replied to my desperate queries about how to help people find their parents and babies, "Be patient--give us a few days."

The mothers who have lost their children, and there are many, and the children who have lost their parents, have had it with the "be patient" response. The shelters are surprisingly silent. It is hard to find the traumatized mothers because they cry silently. One mother asked how patient I would be if my five-month-old was somewhere unknown for over a week. Over and over, others would ask," Do you think my baby has milk and diapers?" "Do you think they are being kind to my baby?" And then, so softly that I would have to ask them to repeat, "Do you think my baby is okay?" My response--the convenient lie. Every time I said, "of course"; I prayed to God that it was true.

I am sure that there is a special ring of hell for the media: The survivor stories end-on-end for the titillation of the public. I heard Soledad O'Brien say something about the still unrecognized need to address the psychological trauma. I sent a response to the CNN tip-line that there were hordes of every manner of mental health professional working 24/7. CNN's response? "Dr. Phil and the stories of the survivors" on Larry King. They went to the guy who lost his clinical license for serious professional infractions to tell the stories? I could see the "entertainer" down there gathering tales of the already exploited so that he and Larry could both pimp their ratings.

The real unsung mental-health heroes, the counselors, psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists dealing with un-medicated psychosis and severe traumatic responses were represented by Dr. "Keep-It-Real"? We don't need tabloid help from the media. Scream about accountability and point fingers for those who can't. Where is the real help from the media? Help us find those babies and parents and missing family. We have a man in one of the shelters who is caring for four kids. They call him uncle. He is actually the cousin of the fiance of the mother who is probably dead.

The children are silent. They sit and play and weep with open mouths that can't scream. Where is the media to scream for them?

Finally, to hell with this "no blame game." The stories that I know to be true are enough to make me boil. The compassionate foreign doctors who can't find anyone to validate their credentials, the expensive mobile hospital still sitting parked waiting for federal paperwork to move into Louisiana, the five C130s sitting on the Tarmac in San Diego since the night of Katrina, still waiting for orders to move. Where the hell are the beds? We have some old people sleeping on hot plastic pool floats with no sheets. They are still no showers for people who have walked for hours through fetid waters. Their skin is breaking out in rashes. Still no showers. Where the hell are the DeCon showers bought with Homeland Security money that can shower 30 people at a time. The convention centers have no bathing facilities so the filth and skin reactions are getting worse. What of lice? There are no clothes for the really heavy and large. I was reduced to writing the women I knew who went to Weight Watchers to comb their attics for "before" outfits. When I arrived with the sack of my gatherings, I had to engage in a full scale battle and puff myself up to all my red-headed doctor fury to get them distributed to the women still sitting there in their stinking clothes.

The survivors are like the Mayor of New Orleans who apologized to George Bush for his anger. "If we tell the way we feel, maybe help will stop." All the apologists on the air distancing George and his co-vacationers and idiot appointees should be impeached. I liked Nagin when he called it all bullshit. He was right. How about Haley Barbour complaining about the lack of support for his state? Did he so soon forget his past life and what he did to set up this government of spin artists? If they had acted like a government the body count would be less. The aid would be better managed. The days of filth, and faeces, and death would have been ended sooner. God help all of the poseurs in charge when these folks finally get in touch with their justifiable rage. Did you see the White House's logo for the hurricane? George and some asshole in a ball cap against a background of Katrina waving the flag. They had the energy and time for a nice logo but no time to get the elements of help in gear?

The tragedy is leavened by some moments of farce, the guy who arrived with a case of Gucci shoes in various sizes that he "saved" from his closet. The man wearing twelve expensive watches up his arm. I guess he is a punctual sort. There are the too-poignant-for-words vignettes. I saw a lady sitting on a blanket holding a photo of two children that she had pulled from the water. She kept crying and looking at it. I thought they were her children. She didn't know whose they were. They were just losses and she mourned them.

Of course there were the criminals, thugs, and mobsters. One of the greatest indictments of the "spin machine" that is going to come from this situation will be the repeated characterizations of the victims as lawless and criminal. Over and over I heard people tell me about how ashamed they were to be portrayed that way. Ninety-nine percent of these people never were characterized as anything but lawful and good citizens. In their most desperate hours to be reduced to taking food and water to survive and then to be lumped with the television thieves and the shooters is too shameful for most of them to bear. I heard from hospital employees that survived on a cup of watered grits so that the patients could make it. And then I heard how they had to hide the ones that didn't in closets to keep up the morale of the others.

The people that survived this tragedy and the people who help them all know one truth. The help and the love and the care that has been extended to them have been on a citizen-to-citizen basis. The churches, doctors, therapists, and ordinary citizens who are giving all they can in time and resources are managing to band-aid at the most elementary level-neighbor to neighbor. The government has failed We are more vulnerable now than before 9/11 because faith in the system is gone. No system can sustain itself as a viable entity when the citizenry are the walking wounded. Victims implode a system from within and expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end unless we can get a drastic change of philosophy and restore the government to a system "by the people for the people." Right now nobody down here believes we have that.

Anne Gervasi

New Orleans - Who stands to benefit?

There’s been quite a debate going on these past few days in the Nurse’s Lounge about all the hidden agendas which will be perfectly served by the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina, and the surreal behaviour of the Federal authorities who didn’t lift a finger for two and a half days after the hurricane passed, thereby ensuring maximum havoc, disruption and disorientation for the victims who were too dirt-poor to get out.

We’ll never know how many people would still be alive if the U.S. Administration hadn’t purposefully condemned those people to inevitable death, and had instead done the job they were elected to do, which is to care for the people of the United States… ALL of them, not just the fat, corrupt, greedy, racist elite who paid to have that blithering, psychopathic chimp installed in the Whitehouse to do their criminal bidding.


Despite all the lies and spin gushing out of the Whitehouse Lying Machine to the contrary, the Administration was told in graphic terms before the hurricane hit exactly how much damage was going to be done.

It’s a matter of documentary fact:

Warnings were loud and clear - but still the city drowned

“If there is a smoking gun in the Gulf Coast wreckage, it is the hurricane warning issued by the New Orleans office of the US National Weather Service soon after 10am on August 28, the eve of Katrina’s arrival.

“Devastating damage expected,” the warning stated. “Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks . . . All gabled roofs will fail . . . All wood-framed low rising apartment buildings will be destroyed . . . Power outages will last for weeks . . . Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards . . . Trees will be snapped or uprooted. Only the heartiest will remain standing.” Another forecast, issued six hours later by the National Hurricane Centre in Florida, said that the levees in New Orleans could be “overtopped”, and predicted the precise depth of flooding that would result.

A day later the city drowned. Hundreds, if not thousands, have died in the chaos. Some casualties were inevitable but many were not, and this much is clear about those in authority who might have minimised the losses: they had been warned.

With hindsight, it is clear that the seeds of what one Republican senator called yesterday the “woeful” government response were sown with shoddy planning. Despite decades of lobbying by local politicians and media for stronger levees, those that ruptured on the night of August 29 had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

Despite calls since the September 11 attacks for a comprehensive new evacuation plan for New Orleans, the one in place last week had last been updated in 2000, according to the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. The vaguely worded plan stated that “the primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles” even though an estimated 100,000 residents did not own their own cars.

It was also implemented by Ray Nagin, the Mayor, too late for buses to reach those without cars, or to prepare the Superdome to receive them. By the time he did, on August 28, it was clear from the National Hurricane Centre’s flood warnings that federal assistance would be needed swiftly and on a huge scale. Yet it took four days to materialise, largely because of the inertia of the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

…Read full article HERE

Quite what Inmate Bush and his lick-spittle flunkies think they’re going to achieve by making statements like “No-one could possibly have guessed this was going to happen” and “No-one could have predicted the levees would break” is beyond me. They’re lying through their back teeth, and everyone knows it.

Then there’s the rather strange matter of Upsidedownland.

“…I thought I'd find out for myself exactly which Louisiana parishes were and were not included in George W. Bush's declaration of emergency effective August 26th, which you can also reach by clicking the map itself.

I checked the parish map against the White House's own press release, posted on their own site. I have tried to figure out how this is my own mistake, but I can't find it. And the results are frankly so bizarre I had to make the graphic in order to properly show you.

Welcome to upside-down-land: the areas at risk for Katrina were quite remarkably the areas not included in Bush's declaration of emergency.

What the hell?

Compare and contrast with the full and specific statewide list of parishes and the services they will receive issued after the storm hit.Is this really what Bush authorized before the storm hit? Are they really that incompetent?

…full article HERE

You’ve got to admit that to the untrained eye it might look like someone powerful and maliciously has been quietly setting up the whole "what-if" scenario - knowing beyond doubt that "The Big One" would hit New Orleans one day soon - to ensure maximum chaos, destruction, loss of human life and massive national dispersal of the poor black population, who have long been an irritating thorn in the porcelain-white foot of the Ruling Elite.

You see… Rich White People loathe Poor Black People, because Poor Black People tend to get stroppy about the fact that they’re still massively discriminated against, and they get treated like shit ALL the time. Nothing really changes. The rich elite have put on a facade of caring ever since Kennedy upset the racist applecart in the 60's, and now here's a chance for a bit of pay-back.

Rich White People, who cower in their obscene Gated Communities, are frightened of contact with Poor Black People, because they know that the Poor Black People probably hate their guts, and they know they’re guilty of disgraceful racism and bigotry towards them.

Because of its notorious place in American history, the region has a very high proportion of poverty-struck African Americans, and this has become a matter of distaste to the White Elite who have OTHER plans for the area, now that “God” has created the scenario which justifies imposing Martial Law, evacuating all the remaining Poor, and bulldozing all their Public Housing Neighbourhoods. The Black Problem for them is about to turn into a very profitable land-grab, and believe me when I say that Delroy and Letisha won't be let back in…


White Rich elude Orleans chaos, don't want poor blacks back

"The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline."

How do they want the city rebuilt?

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."
Not every white business leader agrees, Cooper notes.

"Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, says, "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.

…full article HERE

So we see here quite clearly that the wealthy whites are threatening to up sticks and bugger off to Maryland if there’s so much as a whiff of all those nasty black people being allowed to come back home, where they and their ancestors have lived ever since they were brought over the ocean as slaves. No conscience. No shame. No morals. White Capitalist Pigs.

But what keeps these White Masters in the area, anyway? Yep! You should have known, silly. Oil, Refineries and Shipping, with barely a whiff of cotton!

Rebuilding New Orleans for Big Oil

It sounds callous to even suggest it, but what if they were actually using the disaster to get rid of thousands of inconvenient poor, black people and to demolish an entire city? What would be accomplished to benefit Bush/Cheney and their friends?

The port where New Orleans sits is one of the most important on the Gulf Coast, if not the most important. A huge amount of oil, gas, and other commerce moves through this port. On top of this, for years now, the Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) industry has been trying to get past strict environmental regulations to try to establish a LNG terminal somewhere along this coast, but has run into nothing but roadblocks. It's just too damn dangerous to have such a facility located anywhere near so many people. It has its own inherent dangers, being that there would be such a huge amount of explosive gas moving through the area, but it would also be certain to attract terrorists.But what if they could get rid of one of the biggest roadblocks, the people?

Enter Hurricane Katrina, and you have the perfect opportunity.

We haven't heard from Dick Cheney through this entire ordeal. Suddenly he emerges from his Wyoming hideaway, and he is being dispatched to New Orleans to oversee the reconstruction. How telling. How convenient. Just the man for the job, that is, if it involves furthering the interests of Big Oil/Gas rather than rebuilding for the little people, and poor black ones at that.

President Bush's own mother recently toured the Houston Astrodome and remarked that all those poor people housed there are "so much better off" now than what they're used to, and that many want to stay in Texas!

From the beginning of the evacuations, many of us were skeptical that these hurricane victims would ever be allowed to return home. Barbara Bush's comment should be a big signal to us of the intentions of our government to prevent these people from returning. I expect we'll hear one excuse after another as to why it's not "safe" or "expedient" for these evacuees to return to New Orleans.

It shouldn't come as a big surprise as we watch New Orleans transformed into the biggest oil/LNG port on the Gulf of Mexico.Perhaps they'll throw in a few big convention centers and rebuild a portion of the French Quarter so the rich, like our president in his youth, can continue to have their playground and meeting place.

…see original article HERE

Still… it must have been so comforting for all those poor bastards that the Bushes finally deigned to be photographed with the more 'presentable' victims. Hell, even Poppy and Barb stooped to get their lily-white hands momentarily soiled for the noble cause of Photo Opportunism.

How lucky you Americans are to enjoy such super-duper Patronage from ALL the Bush family in times of National Crisis. Who needs Vague Kings and Cruel Emperors, eh?

American Enterprise Institute : "Poor in America doing pretty darn well"

This smug, self-satisfied weasel by the name of Kevin Hassett, from the American Enterprise Institute was being interviewed by satellite link this evening for the BBC's Newsnight programme, during a feature regarding the levels of poverty in the United States following some shocking statistics released today.

The following words crawled out of Hassett's mouth:

“I don’t think there is an unusually high level of gnashing of teeth over poverty at this moment.

The poor in America are doing pretty darn well compared to most people in the rest of the world, and to assert otherwise would be, again, to mislead… in fact people below the poverty line in the United States, by many measures, live much better than the average person in France.

They’re more likely to have a car, they’re more likely to have appliances like a washer/dryer and a television, they’ve got a bigger home…”

The full programme streaming video can be seen HERE for the next 24 hrs only.

I don’t have software to grab the stream and reduce it to the relevant clip, which starts at 7min 35secs, but I've sent it to Crooks and Liars and the wonderful Tom at Information Clearing House, so maybe they'll pick it up.

Oh! We're all going on a... Summer Holiday

I must begin with apologies to all the Visitors and Relatives for my absence – I’m afraid we’ve all been stuck like limpets to the Tannoy Speaker in the Nurse’s Lounge every spare minute we can, waiting for the latest news on the disaster in the American Annexe as it filters through to our hospital radio station Asylum 700 FM - “You’re here ‘cause we say so”.

…And unless you’ve been living under a rock, or have been in Isolation with Pat Roberts, you’ll have seen and heard hours and hours of media commentary and opinion on what’s been happening; the sheer human misery, the heart-rending bravery, the criminal incompetence of Federal Authorities, the clamour of sleazy Whitehouse dis-information specialists lining up the Scapegoats, and the ever-growing roar of the political Tectonic Aftershock which, if there’s any justice in this Flying Spaghetti Monster Universe we live in, could be the beginning of the end for Inmate Bush and his fellow Mafia Parasites - Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheyne and Donald Rumsfeld- who between them, in the midst of the Carnage of Katrina :

• Played golf,
• Gave a speech in San Diego comparing the War (that he started) with World War II
• Strummed a guitar onstage, with Country Creep Mark Wills
• Shot off in the opposite direction to a Republican Party fund-raiser,
• Snuck off back to Texas to finish his holiday
  

Or…

• Caught that absolutely HILARIOUS Monty Python musical ‘Spamalot’ on Broadway - after the hurricane.
• Shopped for $1,000 ‘Fuck-Me’ Shoes from Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue, (...and had some Uppity, lower-class Bitch kicked out by Security) after the hurricane.
• Knocked about a few tennis balls with Monica Seles, after the hurricane.

Or…

• Squeezed in a spot of Fishin’, Shootin’ and Plottin’ on keeping his hideous arse dry.
  
  Did a bit of House-Hunting in St. Michael’s, Maryland, to be nearer his pal Rumsfeld…
• Whilst planning a jaunt up to Fort McMurray oilsands complex
• and whilst he’s there he’ll putting in a bit of arcane ‘Us’ Time with his pals at the shady… sorry… Independent Fraser Institute.

Or…

• Popped up to San Diego to see a Baseball game!

Yes, you heard me right. It’s all true. Latoya and Cherenise from Halli-Mart Cleaning Services (Beijing) had been digging through the Inmate’s waste bins looking for scraps of food, and, with the help of thirty rolls of Scotch Tape and quite a bit of falling over, were able to show me and Maureen the irrefutable proof of this sordid business.

Now… whilst I fully appreciate that this is a Lunatic Asylum, there’s got to be a limit to the amount of abuse and disregard that can be dished out by the Category A Inmates, before we can haul them down to the Electro Shock Unit. They're not even sorry for their arrogance and incompetence. This is just beyond the pale!

I just have this to say: If the Visitors wanted to form an angry, howling, torch-waving Lynch Mob, and storm Frankenbush's Castle and burn it to the ground, I think I would have to... *cough*... look the other way until the sounds of slapping and squealing died down!

Well! You've all been very good today, so as a little reward, and to celebrate the (relative) brevity of today’s Blog, we’re going to have a little Mental Health Quiz:

Q1) Who is being quoted here?

(New Orleans Astrodome - Monday) …and along the way she opined that many of the refugees from New Orleans were so poor to begin with that they ought to be pretty happy with their temporary digs in Houston. "What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," B*** B*** said in comments first aired on the public radio program "Marketplace" and reprinted by Editor & Publisher. "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

In the midst of that last line, you can hear the former **** **** chuckling.

CLICK HERE FOR CLUE

Q2) And who said this on “Good Morning America” on March 18^th, 2003, just 36 hours before Bush declared his criminal war on Iraq?

“But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer."

NO IDEA? CLICK HERE

Q3) Who said THIS on CNN’s Larry King Show, Sept. 6^th, 2005?

"I think any time there's a crisis people want to blame someone. I've never been much for the Monday morning quarterbacking and to be very candid, Larry, I think some of the criticism had been grossly unfair, particularly when they suggest the president doesn't care and all of that.

"You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize. I thought President Clinton put it pretty well today when he said 'Let's get on with it and then there will be plenty of time to assign blame.'

"But you know the media has a fascination, Larry, and you know this, I'm not saying you but the media has a fascination with the blame game and instead of looking for what can we do to help now there's a lot of why didn't we do something different?"

Click HERE for ANSWER

Q4) Who was THIS describing?

“The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time, so be patient”, the drowning are told...

R*** took a break to tell the hurricane victims dying hourly in their homes that their prolonged suffering is God's will, not the government's fault, and to
lecture them on the virtue of patience:

Asked to say a few words from the pulpit, R***, a preacher's daughter, said: "The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time." She added: "If we just wait."

Earlier at the same church service "R*** nodded in agreement as the Rev. Malone
Smith Jr. advised the congregation, "Wait for the Lord." Rev. Smith and
Secretary R*** were playing on the words of a beloved gospel hymn that says, "He may not be there when you want him but he's right on time." They should both be ashamed of themselves.

The blame is not God's, or nature's, or fate's, or that of statistical happenstance. Whatever your conception of a Higher Power may or may not be, the United
States was given everything it needed to cope with this disaster better than it has. God was on time: it is Rice and her colleagues that were too late. And when human beings are dying, it's a sin to suggest that we - or anyone - "wait."

Somewhere, as I write, there is an American drowning while R*** and her boss suggest that he or she "wait." That's not God's will, it's this Administration's. They should not hide behind God's skirts. And they should be ashamed of themselves for trying.

No? Can’t believe your eyes? CLICK HERE

How’re you all doing so far?

Q5) Who is THIS article talking about?

B*** had raised eyebrows on his first trip by, among other things, picking Sen. Trent Lott, (Repub., Mississipi) instead of the thousands of mostly poor and black storm victims - as an example of loss. "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch," B*** said with a laugh from an airplane hangar in Mobile, Alabama.

NEED A CLUE?

SCORING: 5 Correct - Top marks! You'll be excused latrine duties all week
3-4 Correct - Not Bad! You get to wear the Ward's underpants all day!
1-2 Correct - Pathetic! No pudding for you today.
0 Correct - Miserable! It's your turn in the Barrel of Love!

Join Nurse Riches' Asylum First XI today!

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Oops! Apocalypse! (or Why Did The Levee Break, George?)

I'm going to start off by adding my heartfelt sympathy to the devastated and ruined populations of New Orleans, Biloxi and everywhere in between. I can only try and imagine what it must feel like.

I'm curious to know, though, why Yahoo News, when showing a photo of a black guy dragging a refuse bag full of provisions through the water labels the photo :
" A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday"


...yet when showing two white people doing exactly the same thing labels the picture "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans".


This kind of blatant racism is completely unacceptable, especially in the midst of such a horror story. Whoever captioned those photos should be sacked.

Considering the fact that tens and tens of thousands of the poorest people of the region (mainly coloured, who could never afford to buy a Humvee and a U-Haul to flee the county in good time along with the other Rich White Folk from the Country Club), and who have lost absolutely EVERYTHING - Husbands, Wives, Children, Friends, Homes, Clothes, Food, Water... I mean EVERYTHING, why are the Police being diverted from rescuing those still stranded, and instead being sent out by the Governor to stop people helping themselves to food and clothing?

Compared to the tide of human misery in New Orleans, who in their right minds gives a toss about people helping themselves to food and bottled water and clothes when the entire area has been wiped out? This is utter peanuts. It's petty. It's nasty. It's Capitalism at it's most ugly.

Explain to me again how it's more important to protect a store full of perishable goods when the relief effort hasn't even started properly, and no-one's got any food or clean clothes? That food's going to rot anyway. People need food TODAY. The contents of those stores are insured.

This is all part of the REAL cost of Little Nero diverting money earmarked for reparing and maintaining the Levees to pay for his Circus of Death in Iraq.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

...rest of article here

These people are in deep, deep trouble. Federal help, when it eventually trickles down to the very bottom of the food-chain, will be too little too late. The need for housing is enormous. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to be searching for loved ones. It'll take weeks to gather up all the dead bodies, including those poor bastards who are dying as I speak, whilst the Police and National Guard do the All American thing and rush around threatening to kill people with shotguns because they're stealing food.

As long as there is a higher value placed on possessions than on the Right to Life, there will never be justice in this World.