> The axis of evil has finally come to roost.
> Or is it the banality of evil?
> Well, I donıt think itıs banal.
> With few exceptions say during and since the Reagan era U.S.A. Federal,
> state and local governments have been bought by corporate and religious
> interests. Call them ³outside contractors.²
> As a consequence little is being managed from inside the Government.
> As David Brook an unquestionably conservative columnist totally astonished
> more than just me last night on the PBS News Hour when he declared there was
> a line from Enron to Abu Graib to New Orleans, calling it the failure of
> Government to perform.
> One can be optimistic and say this fissure is so deep, so painfully
> transparent, that an eruption has begun.
> One that will ignite a restoration of the right of a transcendent Public
> Interest. Yes, there is global warming. No, sexual abstinence is not the rule
> of the land nor the cure for AIDs, etc., etc.
> I do believe this is the tipping point, the start of the total Bush implosion.
> It will probably not be pretty. This is going to be a big shakedown (economic,
> political, etc.)
> This flood in New Orleans is going to spread right through Washington and on.
> Not pretty because this Governmentı will attempt to use ³Home Land Security²
> to repress the opposition.
> (The ultimate irony will be if the troops withdrawn from Iraq will be used to
> patrol the streets of this country).
>
> Excuse me if I sound a little crazed and 1/3rd my age. I am not predicting
> results. I am saying that like those big pieces of ice that are breaking up in
> the Artic, something big time is finally breaking apart in this countryıs
> government certainly, what is already broken has become totally transparent.
> The Bush era is dead meat.
>
> Old regime irony of the day is that FEMAıs website the agency responsible
> for national disasters, whose leader Mr. Brown was formerly Director of United
> States Arab Horse Organization lists Pat Robertsonıs Church as one of the
> number one places to send charitable donations during disasters. Pat
> Robertson, who may be called a ³Christian jihadist² recently argued that his
> government ought to assassinate Hugo Chavez, the President of oil rich
> Venezuela. FEMAıs Mr. Brown, by the way, publicly acknowledged that he was
> unaware of the magnitude of the New Orleans disaster until Thursday a few
> days after the fact.
>
> Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi John----
>
> I'm trying to figure out exactly what the polemical point of this poem is.
> I mean, I think I get the basic gist of it, relating to "the chickens come
> home to roost" perhaps?
> But "taking away/ designer clothes, the bright crop" as a start,
> well, I don't think that's the reality of the tragedy in this case,
> if it's meant to contrast the "rich Americans" with "the poor third world"--
> I think that's certainly a valid point to make for alot of things,
> but who's getting screwed the most in New Orleans is the poor,
> especially in a city that in many ways was about as "unamerican"
> (in terms of its concern for designer clothes, etc) as one could find in
> america.
> Anyway, just wanted to say that; I can't really talk about aesthetic niceties
> now,
> but would be happy to talk about what you intended with the poem
> as I could be misreading it....For me, it's not just a nationalistic level,
> The US govt's attitude towards New Orleans' tragedy is very similar
> as it has been toward the other places (and I think that's part of you point,
> but the designer clothes image still gives this sense of decadent rich
> New Orleans americans, and sure there's some of that there, but in
> the broader picture, that's not what the heart of neworleans was about--
> and in contrast to alot of other american cities, new orleans did have a
> heart that wasn't about "capital intensive" bullshit)....
>
>
>
> Chris
>
> ----------
> From: John Wilkinson <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: New Iraq, New Orleans
> Date: Sat, Sep 3, 2005, 7:08 AM
>
>
>> This morning's fit, another in a set of Condoleeza outbursts. Only the
>> Miltonic will do now.
>>
>>
>> New Iraq, New Orleans
>>
>> Once more, it strokes once more, taking away
>> designer clothes, the bright crop. Her swipe
>> was more effective than double entry columns,
>> humvees packed with news filters, shotguns
>>
>> jolting across desert, lumbering through flood,
>> once more, the same strokes for different
>> folks naked in burkas, naked in wet hoods:
>> will this do, sure, this is accepted everywhere,
>>
>> her swipe that charged to China, to Korea,
>> that takes care to the cleaners, that deferred
>> payments for forty years on a burning lake,
>> Molloch smiles & flexes that platinum card
>>
>> she authorised. Deep in the bubbling asphalt,
>> deep in the shit, crystal meth addicts thrash
>> for gleams of hope foreshortened, for the here
>> to be now, while hungry kids gag on heritage
>>
>> grits for food: corn contributes their futures
>> marching in green files for Baghdad. Poised
>> in cute clothes that sour, that never will dry,
>> wheeling to & fro the idol in the White House,
>>
>> Condoleeza chews her lip & the levees collapse,
>> the levees she levies, the levees she levels,
>> & the flares go out across the Gulf of Mexico
>> as the flares sink back into sand beyond Basra.
>>
>>
>>
>
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