thisland

It looks like Armageddon may already be here.

I protested this last weekend. There were 10 of us marching together:4 designers / business ownders, a writer, an English professor, 3 kids - two only 15 months and on their first march, and an arms specialist.

We joined somewhere between 100,000 (lower DC estimates) and 300,000 (organizer estimates) to register our disaproval for the war and this administration. The press in Washington was great. I hope it was around the country too.

The march basically bottlenecked at the whitehouse - people stopped, shouting and shaking their signs. You could almost taste the anger. Bush lies people die, this war brought to you by Halliburton, die monkey puppet, Make Levees not War. There was even a fantastically satirical group called Billionaires for Bush. We all stood there yelling at a vacant White House run by a vacant man.

Of course George Bush wasn't there. He was in Texas. He is the president who has spent the least time in DC, and the most on vacation but that's old news.

It felt really good to be doing something. Since we have no representation in the Sentate or Congress (really), I feel that marching is one of the only ways I can really have a say. Although only a day later the Senate confirmed John Roberts. Those same senators confirmed Brown to run FEMA. Thanks guys for looking out for our interests, Republican and Democrat alike.

And then more horrendous news from this pathetic government. They are looking to sell National Parks to finance rebuilding from Katrina. Get out of Iraq, idiots.

God bless America - sometimes it easy to forget how lucky we are.

With the biggest protests we've seen since before Iraq taking place last weekend*, at least here in the US we can agitate out in the sunlight in wide open spaces.

Sure, it's falling on dumb ears. Bush wasn't even at home. But, when is he?

And Cindy Sheehan did get arrested because she wouldn't get off the lawn. But she was smiling, because she knew the only real danger she faced was more good press. A fellow protester added, "it's an honor to be arrested with this group of people," as he was hauled away too.

I would take this jerry springer shit any day over not being able to write about it at all.

Don't you think?

*District of Dunces was there as part of at least 100,000 protesters strong (post forthcoming)

The Conservatives have defined the debate for quite some time.

They've done a good job of inverting liberal words. Like (cough) compassionate (cough - I think I just threw up in my mouth) conservativsm.

They've also been really good at spewing crazy shit that the media is dumb enough to respond to. Scott McClellan, anyone?

But wait. Katrina has changed things.

Last week. The Boston Globe runs an excellent op-ed crowning the All NEW Affirmative Action - you know, the one where Bush and his rich, incompentent* buddies run the government.

Also last week. I get an email from UCLA Alumni Assoc. Turns out this very vanilla named organization is actually protecting the student body from Radicalism. Student Radicalism. And the stakes have never been higher warns Andrew Jones, the genius behind this very necessary organization.

Jones masterminded the first ever Affirmative Action Bake Sale on UCLA Campus in 2003, wherein the same cookies cost Latino and Black females 25 cents, on a scale all the way up to $2 for white and Asian men.

Come on, that's kind of funny.

This is what some silly Democrat said, "I am deeply saddened and disheartened at the activities of the Bruin Republicans." And then The Daily Bruin ran an article quoting that silly Democrat. But that was then.

This is now. I propose a NEW Affirmative Action bake sale, wherein only oil barons, rich texans and Arabian horse show judges get cookies.

And no matter how much Andrew Jones licks their boots or votes for them, he will never, ever get a god damn cookie.

*Except when it comes to blowing lines off hooker boots - I'm sure Brownie is a champion horse at that one.

New Orleans firms aren't getting the no bid contracts to build New Orleans. Halliburton is. The administration has lifted minimum wage requirements for the rebuilding effort. Looks like everyman gets screwed again.

I can only laugh to save my sanity. Then cry. And, this weekend I will March.

Tonite, I watched the Vegas season opener on NBC. Did you notice, or how could you not notice, that Laura Flynn Boyle got possibly the worst lip job in Hollywood?

Saturday night, a 34-year-old was out walking his dog on my street. Less than a block away from my house, he was shot dead at 10:30pm. There were tons of sirens; I was annoyed they would wake up the baby. Little did I know someone had died. Combing the papers for more information, I hoped it was not a random killing.

Dick Cheney's office called Southern Pines Electric on August 30 to divert electricity to Northeast oil pipelines. As a result two rural hospitals, that served areas hard hit by Katrina, did not receive power.

The focus of the news is shifting and the new network season has arrived. But I am still mad as hell.

Sent to me by my Aunt, from Creators.com.

Pictures in this Monday's Post (Washington that is) showed 'thousands' participating in the "Freedom Walk" Sunday.

This was a Pentagon sponsored event. You had to preregister over 24 hours in advance and make it on the list before you were able to enter the march. Press were restricted to only certain areas and could not enter the march path. From the Post - "What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest ."(for anyone acting out of the ordinary)

Everyone who marched got a free T-shirt. Picture it, one big Pentagon photo op with Donald Rumsfeld walking through as the grand poobah.

Doesn't sound to much like a Freedom Walk to me. The staged PR event was essentially a Party Parade. I've seen plenty in Communist China and Vietnam and other places run by authoritarian regimes. All that was missing were the uniformed school children chanting the name of their Good Leader.

While I took my daughter to the Sackler Museum to view relics of Yemeni art, when Yemen was at the height of its power (around 400 CE) , I saw a few people with the 'Freedom Walk' shirts on. No one seemed particularly inspired, as they do at traditional, true-marches, on Washington. And, most seemed to be military. I inferred, as it is with Party Parades in other countries, the people who attended were requested to.

PS - Does the Pentagon really have the time to stage a "Freedom Walk"? Shouldn't Donald Rumsfeld be too busy on the Gulfs to attend this? Aren't we in a war? And those T-shirts, why not spend thos $'s on Tank Armor for the troops being maimed and dying, or for buying needed clothes for people displaced by the storms.

A tale of 2 cocky Radio DJs, an angry listener & a tshirt.

On Monday morning, September 5th, The Kevin And Bean show on KROQ FM dedicated a good chunk of its morning show to the character assasination of Kanye West, who had famously spoken out on national live television the Friday before.

One listener decided to speak his mind to Kevin and Bean, as well as almost EVERY single DJ on the KROQ roster, Kanye's fan club and Kanye's talent agent.

Below is their saga.


---------- Forwarded message ----------

From:REDACTED@gmail.com
Date: Sep 6, 2005 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: Kanye Stands up, KROQ mocks

To: bean@kroq.com
Cc: kevin@kroq.com, ralph@kroq.com ,rodneyontheroq@kroq.com, jason@kroq.com, john@kroq.com, sluggo@kroq.com , savage@kroq.com,kurt@kroq.com, likewecare@kroq.com, Loveline Questions<>, kanye@fanessentials.com, REDACTED@caa.com

Dear friends,

As some of you might know, Kanye West went off the scripted teleprompter on live television for a benefit for the Relief Efforts for Hurricane Katrina. It was an impassioned speech and Kanye was nervous, human, real. Watch it here.

Today on my long commute to work, The Kevin and Bean show on KROQ devoted most of their show to discussing Kanye. They mocked him for owning pink polos and Bentleys. These rich, angry white men (my favorite, most empathetic demographic) even had their black friend call in and say Kanye put "race relations back 50 years".

They pretended to have an open forum, but as most talk show radio hosts do, anyone who disagreed with the hosts Kevin and Bean was mocked and cajoled. They could admit that most of the people left behind were black but this was only because they were poor. They contended that these two things have nothing to do with one another.

The response to Hurricane Katrina has shown us how little progress has come in the last 50 years.

Kanye's new album came out last week. Let's get it to number one on the charts. Please buy his album to support a hero who stood up for his beliefs and took great personal risk at the height of his career to help people without a voice.

Thanks,
Tyrrell

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: bean < REDACTED@earthlink.net>
Date: Sep 6, 2005 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: Kanye Stands up, KROQ mocks

To: REDACTED@gmail.com
Cc: kevin@kroq.com, ralph@kroq.com ,rodneyontheroq@kroq.com, jason@kroq.com, john@kroq.com, sluggo@kroq.com , savage@kroq.com,kurt@kroq.com, likewecare@kroq.com, Loveline Questions<>,kanye@fanessentials.com, REDACTED@caa.com

i support tyrell's efforts and have already bought my copy of kanye's cd. just so you know, this cd will debut at ..1 already with or without our help. it has already sold more than enough copies to do so.

also, it was a listener's email that mocked kanye's polos and bentleys. i like them, being rich and white.

tyrell seemed to have a problem with several of theother listener comments too if they did not agree with his. sounds like instead of an open forum what hewould like is just to hear himself talk uninterrupted.

as you were,
bean

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Kevin
Signed-By: earthlink.net
Mailed-By:earthlink.net

To: REDACTED@gmail.com, kevin@kroq.com,bean@kroq.com, ralph@kroq.com,rodneyontheroq@kroq.com, jason@kroq.com, john@kroq.com, "sluggo@kroq.com", savage@kroq.com,kurt@kroq.com, likewecare@kroq.com,questions@lovelineradio.com, kanye@fanessentials.com, REDACTED@caa.com

Date: Sep 6, 2005 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: Kanye Stands up, KROQ mocks

It's a real shame that people like kanye, and yourself, try desperately to prove that everyone out there is racist, and if anything bad happens forwhatever reason, it's automatically "racist". That's pathetic. There are thousands of reasons that things happen, and to simplify it by shouting "racism" is foolish, and childish. And more importantly, there are people out there that are unfortunately victims of real racism, and those of you that "cry wolf" over everything are hurting them the most.

Kevin

P.s. I bought the Kanye album...it's brilliant...and he's racist.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: bean < REDACTED@earthlink.net>
Date: Sep 7, 2005 1:15 PM
Subject: it's all because of you, tyrell!
To: REDACTED@gmail.com

KANYE WEST took Number One this week with his secondalbum, "Late Registration," selling an impressive 860,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The latest CD from the hip-hop super-producer almost doubled the first-week sales of his debut, 2004'sGrammy-winning "The College Dropout."

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: REDACTED
Date: Sep 7, 2005 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: it's all because of you, tyrell!
To: bean < REDACTED@earthlink.net>

Dear Bean,

And because of you, I made sure to purchase one of these yesterday -http://www.cafepress.com/postkatrinaaid - with proceeds from the tshirts going to Master P's Team Rescue for Hurrican Katrina victims.

I'll be sure to wear it at your next KROQ show!

- Tyrrell

http://www.otisproductions.com/Harlan_McCraney/harlan.html

The President denied publicly today that race factored into the Hurricane Katrina Response Efforts. He said, like the Hurricane itself, the government's response was colorblind.

Was he directly responding, ten days later, to Kanye West's charge on Friday, September 2nd, that he doesn't care about black people?

Who knows? But now that Kanye has broached the subject, the heavies have weighed in:

In Newsweek's "The Other America": this cover article points to a more dynamic, pervasive idea of race and class than to spell out R-A-C-I-S-M in relation to Katrina. In the article, "How Bush Blew It", all levels of government share blame for the chaos. Several excuses are made for the President, though the article does ultimately wag its finger at Bush.

Newsweek might be a little gun shy.

Harper's Bazaar runs a broader study of our how our culture has shifted in the last twenty-five years, with self interest winning over a desire for community. It also points out the Superdome as the epitome of the race question in this mess. They contend that Katrina was a natural disaster, but that the Superdome was created by, and then by indifference and neglect, enforced by our government. "Hell on earth," is what Geraldo Riviera called it on Fox News. You can watch the clip here.

Senator Barack Obama, the only black person in the US Senate, is quoted in the Newsweek article on Bush. I had been waiting to hear what he would say. Unfortunately, his quotes smacked of someone who was trying to mend a fence, rather than incite people to tear it down.

Today I received in my inbox a letter from Dr. Cornel West (no relation to Kanye), Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University, who gives a much more radical perspective in his the UK's Observer.

Meanwhile, today the Senate Judicial Committee began its hearings for the Roberts nomination. Pacifica Radio aired the beginning remarks on Amy Goodman's show on KPFK in LA. More than one Senator conjured the ghosts of the black poor abandoned in Katrina's wake.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said it best: this shows us "how many more miles we have to walk" before this country is the one promised by our Constitution.

Hopefully, these comments are not just rhetoric from politicians, but show that the failures of our government in New Orleans will have implications beyond magazine covers and sound bites.

Note in the post below that I did not call what happened and is happening in New Orleans a natural disaster. It is anything but.

My sister-in-law just went to check out her house yesterday. It is an early last century shot-gun shack in a 'transitional' neighborhood, a few blocks off the French Quarter. She was relieved to see that the house was intact. The roof was on. The boards were still up and only a few windows were broken. Even her double-decker-london-bus-come guesthouse was in fine shape. I asked her how the city looked. She said, remarkably the areas that she was in were relatively unscathed, just like a minor league storm.

So, she and her friend picked up her car, saved a few cats, said hi to the National Guard and headed to Nashville to camp out for a few days. Luckily she could evacuate and has a family net to help her.

But her early reports only confirm what I have suspected all along. This is not from Katrina. The New Orleans disaster was completely manmade:

1. The wetlands have been drained for development. The wetlands are essentially mother natures sponge. So, once there gone, the floods come and they've got no where to go.
2. NOLA is under sea level. The levees keep the water out.
   
3. The NOLA city government, the LA state govt, LSU, Tulane experts and just about everyone under the sun has been begging, pleading and harassing the federal government to help them shore up the levees. They did not. Instead they focused their dollars on a war about oil and revenge on foreign shores.
   
4. LSU experts predicted that even a minor storm could put pressure on the levees and cause this type of situation. The army corp and other feds "snickered in the back" when the report was made. (see ABC nightly news a week ago)
   
5. Mayor Nagin evacuated the city and called for help to the Feds. Please note it is called the FEDERAL Emergency Management Association, not New Orleans EMA.
   
6. FEMA said they would come. A few did and were at the Dome. They then left when the few National Guard sent went to TX.
   
7. Every day the people who could not get out were told the 'cavalry was coming'.
   
8. Instead, trucks of water and assistance from other states and countries was turned away.
9. People who were told to go to the dome to be safe, were left completely vulnerable. They starved, drowned, and died. Looting, rapes, murders occurred in the lawless insanity.
   
10. The cavalry arrived - but too late.
    
11. Now the National Guard is not allowing the press to film the bodies being drudged out of the flood waters.

Nothing about this disaster was natural. Katrina was minor player. The Federal Government is whose to blame.

Oh, thankfully the Bush Administration fired Brown at FEMA yesterday. How did they expect the decade long President of the Arabian Horse Association to handle the largest disaster in American History, anyways? About as well as a Baseball team owner.

For a variety of articles looking into our District of Dunces, aka the Federal Government's handling of this calamity - read Mark Benjamin on Salon.

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