"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln
Young. Old. Black. White. Christian. Muslim. No homes. No clothes. No food. No Water. The promised-land of the free and the American way of life is in very dire trouble indeed.
Hurricane Katrina has left America in the midst of a desperate crisis on a multitude of levels as the disaster, listed for some time as one of the top disaster threats faced by the United States, has finally happened.
Once again, it is the innocent who suffer at the hands of State and Federal administrations who knew long in advance about the magnitude of the threat. They choose instead to spend tax dollars on killing more innocents in Iraq, simultaneously tossing the lives of millions of Americans to the mercy of imminent flooding. In this there is a message encoded for the American people from those who profess to protect them.
Hurricane Katrina has stripped millions of Americans of everything but their bodies and their lives. Martial Law has been imposed and thousands of enforcers have been sent to prevent those with no food, no water, and only the clothes they were swept away in from salvaging what little water, food and clothing they can pick out from the devastation.
Death tolls, much like the actual death tolls in Iraq, are conspicuously absent from the reports of the world's media, the majority of whom would rather focus on portraying the fundamental desperation of the basic human need for food, water and shelter as horrendous acts of 'looting' and 'crime'.
This media set-up, of course, paved the way nicely for Gee Dubya's sickly, staged condemnation of the 'lawlessness' that is nothing more than human attempts at survival when faced with horrific odds against that survival. Add to those horrific odds a government more interested in continuing to over-stretch its war efforts around the world than allowing its own people to eat and drink and, just maybe, a brief glimpse can be gained of what people attempting survival in the wake of Katrina are going through.
The global superpower that manifests itself all over the world as a conquering imperial force of destruction cannot use the considerable resources it ploughs into global domination to save its own people in their time of need.
The victims of Hurricane Katrina are, quite understandably, very, very unhappy at being left without food and water for four days in a way that 'disenfranchised' doesn't quite cover. They join the ever growing anti-Bush, anti-war throng of those that have lost faith in their government to act in the interests of the people it serves.
"No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it."
- Samuel Johnson
Undeterred by this, the message sent by Bush and his kaballistic administration to the people of New Orleans, the people of America, and the people of the world via his Katrina rhetoric, is clear: "
Do not dare endeavour to help yourselves. We are the providers for your appetites, your moral and sensual needs, and you must wait, dying, watching your children and loved ones dying around you, until we come."
Those in New Orleans who follow orders to flock to the great dome of salvation are rewarded with tens of thousands more hungry, thirsty people to contend with and nowhere near enough food and water to go round. In their efforts to centralise control and distribution of essential resources, the authorities are contributing to a dramatic worsening of an already catastrophic situation.
Aside from the immediate challenges posed by the recovery operation, the words of Mr Bush are falling on the deaf ears of a starving population. Those that hear him still aren't buying it. On a grander scale, the people of America aren't buying it, and the watching peoples of the world aren't buying it either.
Bush and the U.S. Administration however are 'buying it', and they're buying it big-style on a daily basis to the tune of $187 million for the invasion, continued occupation and globally managed heist of Iraq and its geological and human resources.
As Bush appears on the world's television screens forcing platitudes through an angst-filled smile, almost as fake as the presidency he stole and the administration behind which he hides, rest assured that it is not empathy with the pain and suffering of those Americans whose lives have been devastated by Katrina, but instead the angst of knowing that his deluded vision of an omnipotent and omnipresent America is just that, a deluded vision.
With the arrival of Katrina on American shores and America's ongoing failure to remedy the situation, Bush's vision has been emasculated and exposed by nothing more than
a whim of Mother Nature.
No bombs. No terrorists. Not even any Muslims to blame. Perhaps Al Qaeda will rush-release a badly-dubbed tape of a New Orleans Muslim claiming that the Winnowing Winds of Allah were sent to bring devastation to the infidels and that the chief infidel would last be seen pleading with the people to maintain their unnatural dependence on the state that sends its troops to ensure suffering victims endure their suffering still further while waiting for help that isn't arriving.
The Bush adminstration has for five years failed the American people and in the aftermath of Katrina it is failing on a scale that will not be tolerated for very long. More and more rapidly, and in ever greater numbers than before, the people of America are recognising that it might be time to bring a bit of freedom and democracy to their own country before attempting to export it anywhere else.
The people know it and the administration knows it and the fear fills the face of the President.
Throughout history, men far greater than George Walker Bush have spoken words of knowledge, wisdom and insight that resonate more loudly today than any of the monotonous monologues that Bush and his team of
charlatans scriptwriters could hope to invent. One such man is Malcolm X whose words Bush may not have heard but which have certainly been listened to at some level in the corridors of power:
"I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those doing the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I dont think it will be based on the colour of the skin."
- Malcolm X
Tony Blair appears to have noticed too.
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