On Hurricane Katrina: Three Fundamental Lessons

[destruction]

ON HURRICANE KATRINA: THREE FUNDAMENTAL LESSONS

Three fundamental things to be learned from what has been happening, including the role of the government, in relation to hurricane Katrina:

1. The real nature of those who rule over the people, and real weaknesses of this ruling class, have been further revealed before the world. The “superstitious awe†that people are conditioned to have toward the powers-that-be and their state—their whole machinery of rule, and of repression—has been dramatically shaken through these events and in particular through the actions of the government itself. In the eyes of large numbers of people, the ability to rule as well as the right to rule of this current regime, and indeed of the ruling class as a whole, has been called into question in significant ways. Things which this ruling class attempts to keep hidden, to deny or to distort and misrepresent—including the oppression and the extreme poverty of large numbers of Black people in the U.S. itself—has burst through the “normal†web of deception and the iron hand of suppression. What does and does not matter to the powers-that-be—and in particular their complete lack of concern for the masses of poor and oppressed people, and indeed for the people in society in their great majority—has stood out for all to see, throughout the U.S. and all over the world. At the same time, it has been graphically illustrated that, even though they remain very powerful, the rulers of the U.S., and their armed forces and other machinery of oppression, are not all-powerful.
   
2. Not only the need but also the possibility of revolution, and of a radically different society, shows through in these events—once they are understood in their true light. Masses of people, in the areas most immediately affected, were being left by the government to suffer, day after day, in conditions not fit for human beings, yet they showed their humanity in many ways and put the lie to the slanders that portrayed them as criminals and animals. Where they took matters into their own hands, the great majority did so with right on their side, in the attempt to meet needs that could be met no other way. Overwhelmingly, the people trapped in these conditions have responded by supporting and helping each other, especially those in most desperate need, while expressing outrage at the indifference and inaction of the government; and in this they have been supported and assisted by people all over the country. In all this can be seen the potential for masses of people to be mobilized to bring into being a society in which relations among people are radically different than the daily dog-eat-dog that this capitalist system pushes people into. Yet what has also stood out very clearly is that the masses of people are not fully aware of and organized on the basis of an understanding of how the whole operation of this system is in direct and deep-going conflict with their real and fundamental interests. When they gain that understanding, and are organized to act on that basis, then a revolutionary struggle of millions and millions of people, combined with the development and sharpening of certain objective conditions, could make it possible to break the hold of the class of cold-blooded capitalist exploiters who rule over this society (and much of the world) and to bring into being a new society and a new state which would put the interests of the great majority of the people at the foundation and at the center of everything it stands for and everything it does. But for this to happen, the masses must have revolutionary leadership. And that points to a third and final crucial point.
   
3. There is such a revolutionary leadership—the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and its Chairman Bob Avakian. But to put things squarely and honestly, while the Party has been exerting real efforts to take up its responsibility in relation to the events surrounding hurricane Katrina, the ability of the Party to actually lead in these dire and urgent circumstances has been far short of what it needs to be. If the influence of the Party and its organized ties with masses of people had been much greater, leading into these events surrounding hurricane Katrina, the Party would be able to play a far greater role in raising the understanding of the masses of people as to what was happening and why: why the government and the whole ruling class reacted the way they have—with the loss of thousands of lives, and terrible suffering for hundreds of thousands more, much of which could have been prevented or significantly lessened—and what this says about the nature of their system and why we need a radically different system. The Party could have been playing a far greater role in enabling masses of people, in the areas immediately affected and throughout the country, to be organized to respond to these events and to wage organized political struggle, on a much higher level and in a much more powerful way, to force steps to be taken immediately to save hundreds and probably thousands of lives that have been, and are still being, needlessly lost. And all this could be having the effect of raising the consciousness and the organized strength of masses of people to a far higher level, with the necessary goal of revolution more clearly and sharply in view. These events surrounding hurricane Katrina and all that has been forced into the light of day in connection with this, has shown the great need for the Party to rise to its responsibilities and play its leadership role in this way, on a whole other level, and for masses of people to rally to, to support, to join and build, and to defend—this necessary and crucial revolutionary leadership, as embodied in the Revolutionary Communist Party and its Chairman Bob Avakian.
   

[drlogic]

ATTN: DESTRUCTION....

YOU HATE MONGER!!! LOL

An Unnatural Disaster:

> A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

>

> by Robert Tracinski

> TIA Daily -- Sept. 2, 2005

>

>

> It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure

> out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them,

> because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is

> going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if

> you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

>

> If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials

> is

> obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation

> to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop

> the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists,

> natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary

> people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of

> doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up

> and rebuild.

>

> Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have

> to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if

> they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself

> included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind,

> and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

>

> But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

>

> The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by

> federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane

> Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television

> channel has gotten the story wrong.

>

> The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not

> happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four

> decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

>

> The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

>

> For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be

> confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave

> in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved

> in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they

> have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In

> fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

>

> When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.

> They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously

> organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in

> America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own

> initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care

> of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small

> town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens

> to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops,

> directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the

> spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

>

> So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

>

> To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a

> description from a Washington Times story:

>

> "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,

> knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets;

> and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

>

> "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen

> poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and

> gunfire....

>

> "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened

> Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with

> shoot-to-kill orders.

>

> " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the

> streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded.

> These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing

> to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

>

> The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this

> article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests,

> riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a

> rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling

> at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

>

> What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for

> an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs

> to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing

> the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes

> people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super

> Dome?

>

> Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further

> destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help

> them?

>

> My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a

> sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox

> News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She

> studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is

> located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert

> Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in

> America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for

> uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since,

> mercifully, been demolished.)

>

> What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a

> whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the

> informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news

> channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the

> residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane,

> and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the

> city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an

> additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated

> that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the

> city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a

> significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large

> number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects,

> and vice versa.

>

> There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when

> the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of

> people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state,

> people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and

> self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on

> whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of

> wolves.

>

> All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of

> the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of

> the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a

> city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to

> ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to

> political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in

> case of emergency.

>

> No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact,

> some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for

> example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New

> Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is

> an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious

> Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the

> truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that

> was the exact opposite of individualism.

>

> What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of

> the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency

> is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the

> responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond

> to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to

> overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and

> complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use

> the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

>

> But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about

> saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own

> anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their

> businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried

> about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But

> living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

>

> The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains

> and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral

> ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no

> one is reporting.

>

> Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005