Monthly Archives: September 2005

This column from day before yesterday

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[This is the column that appeared in my local paper, the Prince George’s Sentinel, on Thursday (Sept. 22). The day following, a bus carrying elderly people from an assisted living facility – the one my mother stays in — was thrust into the Texas highways with hundreds of thousands of other vehicles fleeing Houston at the same time. The bus exploded and burned up, killing 24 of the elderly and injuring several others. ]

 

A CITY CANNOT EVACUATE OVERNIGHT

 

There’s no such thing as an evacuation plan

 

Last week, a new version of an old joke was making the rounds: “Q. What is George W. Bush’s position on Roe vs. Wade?  A. He really doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.”

 

Now we’re hearing in the media and elsewhere that an “evacuation plan” is needed.

 

Is anyone using the words “evacuation plan” really thinking about them?

 

In all the legitimate fault-finding about Katrina, criticisms of Mayor Nagin and others for failing to evacuate New Orleans are ill founded. There is no way to evacuate a big city overnight. Unless you’re talking about beaming up a few million people as in early Star Trek, there is no such thing as an emergency “evacuation plan.”

 

Let’s leave out the fact that, until a day before the storm hit, nobody knew exactly where it would hit. Leave out the fact that individuals trapped in the city did not know, once the storm swung eastward, that the levees were going to break. Bending over backward, let’s even leave out the fact that state and local governments have been starved and overloaded by the Bush team for years.

 

The fact remains that even a few days’ definite foreknowledge, of the sort never available, would still not suffice to evacuate every person in a metropolitan area of a million or more. To get everyone out of a big city, any big city, would require using literally every form of transportation – not just the family car, but every subway, bus, train, plane and boat. Such use of all transportation would require interrupting regular activity and commerce, at least three or four days ahead of time. And that effort, unprecedented in this country, would require the effective commandeering of all transportation by some centralized authority.

 

Okay, let’s try it. Let’s say you’re the president, or the governor, or the mayor. It’s three or more days before a major storm is predicted to make landfall, with all the usual meteorological caveats about how any deviation may change the course of the storm. In spite of all the caveats, you decide to evacuate every living person from a big city.

 

How? Well, you would have to start by ignoring all voices of opposition from everyone who stands to lose business for several days, with losses totaling billions. You would have to ignore all the laments from thousands of people worried about their property with the owner absent, and from hundreds worried about caring for the frail or ill.

 

First, you would have to get the word out, believably, to everyone in every condition, including those without communications equipment.

 

You would then have to figure out modes of transportation. If you recommend that everyone with a car or other vehicle get in it and leave – well, so much for the roads and highways out of town. So presumably even citizens provided with their own vehicles would have to be placed under some sort of staggered evacuation order – one sector waiting, while another clears out first, etc. That’s armored-guards time.

 

Let’s say you really want to speed things up, meaning that you must make use of mass transit. Will the railroad companies actually place all their passenger trains at your instant disposal, and hold all railroads vacant so that the loaded passenger trains can leave the city?

 

Buses would be a reasonable conveyance – assuming that you could commandeer all buses without regard to usual activity, and could get the largest possible number of citizens onto buses. People with cars would be advised to take their own vehicles – so, with the roads clogged, how do you get the buses out? Do you order all smaller vehicles to wait until the loaded buses have left? That’s martial law.

 

Similar questions abound with regard to planes and jets. Do you commandeer all airborne vehicles locally or nationally, load them up with (for example) the sick and the disabled, commandeer the airports they will need to land in, and override existing air traffic routes to do so?

 

Questions like these could develop almost infinitely; use your own imagination. But even this scenario is made artificially easy by the fictional hypothesis of several days’ warning, as in a hurricane with an unusually steady course. In an actual emergency (from “emerging” or “emergent”), there would be little or no advance warning. In a chemical explosion, spewing toxins into the air, water and ground for miles around, there would be none.

Amputations and Iraq

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Amputations in Iraq

 

 

Most recent word about Walter Reed Hospital’s former trauma nurses is a mixed bag. The good news is that at least some of them have been sent home from Iraq, physically intact. The stress of their work there has taken such a toll that even the Pentagon has seen the light re not keeping nurses working at peak pace for too many months at a time and has placed limits on the calendar time they’re forced to serve in a single stint in Iraq. The other way of operating, namely forcing lengthier stays in some of the worst conditions for medical work, was resulting in too many breakdowns and too few individuals re-upping when the time came that they could get out.

 

That’s the bad news. One relative of a nurse who just got back from Baghdad recounts that she won’t talk much about her experiences there to most of her family members, particularly not the younger ones. Even the nurse’s limited accounts of what occurred, however, suffice to hint that the reporting Americans are getting via their government and major media outlets is, shall we say, less than full and forthcoming. The crop of incoming patients kept coming around the clock, seven days a week, without let-up. To their credit, they also work sometimes on injured Iraqis.

 

They averaged at least four to five amputations a night, and still always heard the planes overhead, bringing in new patients. The worst of the work was just to get patients stabilized sufficiently so that they could be crated over to Germany or the U.S., with inevitably mixed results.

 

Every sign indicates that, while the official tally of deaths mounts steadily though gradually week by week, the official tally of injuries is less than the actual rate of injuries.

 

Where is our Congress? Do we have NO civilian oversight of the military any more, after 30 years worth of pandering to the military by bogus media warriors like Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Kristol and the rest?

 

When is our Congress going to remember that it has the constitutional power to find out things even in wartime, including the numbers of the wounded in this war the White House wanted so much that it was willing to lie to achieve it? Where are the congressional hearings inviting medical whistleblowers to come in and testify?

We’re paying in New Orleans, we’re paying in Iraq

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[This piece also appearing in this week’s Prince George’s Sentinel: ] 

 

After the scandals of Watergate, with a Fourth Estate somewhat revitalized around the idea of investigative journalism – you don’t get a much better pep pill than having a big-name reporter played by Robert Redford – there was a fairly widespread understanding that the press should check governmental malfeasance, corruption, and excesses.

 

This broad concept came with some congressional attention to problems in the CIA and in the Pentagon, and with the thorough discrediting of the manipulations behind the Vietnam War, even with periodic scandals, public discourse sustained some general concept of governmental accountability through the seventies and even into the eighties.

That concept, muted and beleagered though it already was, is exactly what was attacked by a hideously well-funded right wing. The very notions of government accountability, individual judgment and participatory democracy were attacked root and branch with a savagery sometimes stealthy though often flamboyant, by an increasingly effective propaganda machine calling itself “conservative.”

 

By the time Clinton got into office, every voice for the poor and every fiscally rational policy for preserving a huge middle class were on the defensive. To strengthen the middle class, after all, you have to soak the rich and help the poor – but any candidate saying so would have had his assassination called for, jestingly of course, in mass media. They do but poison in jest.

Meanwhile, in the media and in behind-the-scenes think tanks and spuriously academic conferences, a well-subsidized faction spent ten to twelve years boosting (1) economic policies to erode any security for the vast majority of our population; (2) political tactics to splinter any moral opposition and to silence and intimidate genuine populism; and (3) extreme militarism in foreign policy and in budget priorities.

 

One result is the immoral, illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq. In all the war-boosting over Saddam’s oppression – brought up only to justify invading – there was little mention of progressive and secular facts about Iraq, where oil revenues paid for infrastructure, healthcare and education, without taxes, and where women were comparatively advanced. The first Gulf War destroyed the infrastructure and was followed by sanctions that harmed the Iraqi people rather than Saddam Hussein, further undermining their ability to oust Saddam themselves.

 

More fundamentally, in all the talk about “democracy,” no prominent person in the news media said publicly that one country has no right to remake another country. Nobody said it: there is no such right, absent a threat requiring self-defense.

We know by now that there was no such threat. The claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were false. The accusations that Iraq had been behind 9/11 were false. The claim that Saddam was in league with Islamic fundamentalists was false. The anticipation that Iraqi was behind the anthrax mailings was false. The story that Iraq tried to purchase “yellowcake” uranium was false. The story of the aluminum tubes was ludicrously false. The story of Iraqi “mobile labs” for germ warfare was false.

 

Yet these claims and others were assiduously pushed by well-paid media personalities, while anyone who debunked or questioned them was vilified like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix, or marginalized like me.

We know now that the “war on terror” has been used as a good-times substitute for the Cold War rather than for genuine defense or genuine attention to issues of public health and public safety. Contractors, lobbyists, George W. Bush’s cronies and even some of his relatives have made money off it. Big media outlets have made money off it. But it has not advanced the most sensible and inexpensive measures to preserve and safeguard our major cities, our waterways, and our petrochemicals sector.

 

As New Orleans demonstrates again, anything that makes for huge “defense” contracts and macho posturing gets Bush’s attention. Anything that could genuinely benefit the country at large does not.

 

The current emergency must be addressed for now, with whatever help can be provided by people at all levels.

 

But for the future, a continuing question will have to be addressed: why are the people who brought about this disaster still in their positions? Obviously, most of Bush’s political appointees will keep their jobs rather than be given an impetus to drop the dime on him. Each of his nominees knows the miserable job done by his own agency and the culpable motivations behind his getting the job in the first place.

 

But why are the paid propagandists who boosted this war still appearing on major television networks?

items for possible donation currently up on eBay

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Ordinarily I don’t do product placement. But in the interests of saving time and energy, and since I’ve already done some of the scoping out online anyway, I am forwarding the information below to anyone who might be interested in long-distance purchase for delivery or drop-off.

 

You can shorten the process of donating by checking out some of the following item numbers on eBay. Go to www.ebay.com and type or paste the item number given into the search box:

 

FOOD:  4390221628 (raisins in 60-box lots); 4390222414 (72 applesauces per lot); 4390222718 (24 mixed fruit cups per); 4403384224 (72 strawberry applesauce); 4403384689 (24 fruit cups per); 4388782738 (Famous Amos cookies, 36 packs); 4386649704 (cinnamon bars 36 packs); 4398749159 (fat-free cereal bars); 4388783402 (granola bars, 12 boxes of 10); 4388784937 (cracker & peanut butter packs, 120 per); 4388758281 (cheese & crackers, 50 packs per).

 

Note: most of the above can be bought in lots up to 100, for about $25-$30 per lot. These are all “Buy it now” listings rather than auctions – somewhat more money and less time involved than for auctions.

 

BABY:  7710962976 (5 packs of 80 wipes); 7711032419 (20 lots of 25 pacifiers apiece); 8308244954 (wholesale nipples for bottles); 7706328388 (24 jars baby food, 96 lots); 7706493472 (18 baby washcloths); 7702767766 (hooded bath towels); 4403633818 (10 toddler chairs).

 

HEALTH & MEDICAL CARE:  5611133622 (2 first aid kits); 5612659035 (adult diapers, 96 lots of 12); 5612644448 (braces and ankle supports, 20 lots of 10).

 

Et cetera.

Paying is probably easiest through PayPal, but other options are available.

Roberts as Chief Justice? — more firsts

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Ever since Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the courts as the arbiter of what the written law says, a core principle of U.S. government has been the independence of its judiciary.

 

There is not time enough in a single blog to list all the actual limits on that theoretical independence. In fact, there’s not that much time in the universe. Most administrations have tried to bend the courts to their will; countless members of Congress and other officeholders, federal and state, have attacked courts and judges; many if not most judgeships have been awarded on bases other than, or at least along with, judicial merit.

 

But never before in American history have we had a judgeship so blatantly under the wing of a thoroughly politicized White House that a judicial candidate marched out to podium with a president as though he – the nominee for a judgeship – were the president’s spouse.

 

Details matter, politics matter, and visual details matter, especially in this White House. Generally, the announcement of a president’s nomination for the Supreme Court has been made quietly, in a manner so dignified as almost to seem ex cathedra. With some exceptions (such as Nixon with Rehnquist), presidents historically have not put themselves forward much in the event, have not appeared prominently and markedly in the announcement, much less accompanying the judicial nominee. It may be generally understood that political factors are involved, but those are played down physically at least, in deference to the American system of justice and its core tradition of judicial independence. The scene is set minimally, to convey a proper distance from the man seated on the bench and the political process that put him there.

 

Not with these guys, though. Granted, Bush’s typical on-camera short walk to the presidential podium is probably ridiculous to start with. Television cameras could just as well be set up to show a president already in situ, and probably with more dignity. That tiny, tiny little one-man procession from an extremely nearby entrance to the podium, evidently so beloved by Bush and his crew, adds little or nothing to make an occasion more imposing. It does not augment the gravitas, though they seem convinced to the contrary.

 

But this latest paired stroll, slight a gesture though it might seem, has to be the ultimate twist of what has become an almost dementedly tin ear. Roberts might as well have come out arm-in-arm with GWBush, like two ladies in a Jane Austen novel taking a turn around the room.

Ways to help, besides cash: part 2: Houston

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DistributorContacts

 

 

Timely distribution of essentials is key. Thousands of the refugees in Houston are being sheltered at the Astrodome, which does not have refrigeration facilities adequate for the crowd. So any food donations for the Astrodome need to be non-perishable snacks, ready-to-eat or shelf-stable bottled juices. Drop off supplies at Gate 11, between McNee and LaConcha streets, on Kirby.

 

Aside from the Astrodome, here are more Houston destinations for food and other donations:

 

Houston Food Bank-New York Pizzeria partnered with M.E. Taylor Trucking Food Drive September 5th – September 12th: Donation Drop-Off Site: corner of Westheimer & Chimney Rock, Houston 77035

 

ACE Hardware Food Drive: Donations taken at all ACE Hardware locations, through September 10th

 

STAR OF HOPE Mission at 1811 Ruiz, Houston 77002 or 419 Dowling, Houston 77002, and 6897 Ardmore  Houston, TX 77054  (713-748-0700)

 

Urgent needs for Star of Hope Mission include:

  1. for children: diapers and pull-ups, children’s underwear and socks of all sizes; strollers; infant and children’s Tylenol and Pedialyte; baby formula
  2. for women: deodorant and toiletries including soap and hand and body lotions; OTC (non-alcoholic medications); women’s underwear and socks of all sizes; women’s clothes in plus sizes; feminine products; women’s watches; insulated travel mugs with lids
  3. for men: men’s socks and underwear; dress shirts, suits and sport coats in large sizes; duffel bags

Star of Hope Mission also requests Bibles, including large-print Bibles.

 

The following is a listing of local food pantries for the Houston Food Bank that will provide food for individuals affected by hurricane Katrina who are in the Houston area. Contact phone numbers are for business hours:

 

Gulf Coast-North Point Station
123 Northpoint  Houston, TX  77060
Contact: Debra Nichols  (281-272-1555)

 

GulfCoast -J.D. Walker Multi
7613 Wade Road  Baytown, TX  77521
Contact: Sheila Saltibus  (281-426-4757)

 

GulfCoast Pantry

5000 Gulf Freeway Bldg #1  Houston, TX  77023
Contact: Debra Nichols  (713-393-4700)

 

Gulf Coast-Kashmere Multi-Svc
4802 Lockwood  Houston, TX  77026
Contact:  Sharon Martin  (713-674-1301)

 

Gulf Coast-Magnolia Multi-Svc
7037 Capitol, Ste. 106-C  Houston, TX  77011
Contact:  Virginia Lanham  (713-921-2960)

 

Gulf Coast-Sunnyside Multi-Svc
4605 Wilmington  Houston, TX  77087
Contact:  Doris Sullivan  (713-734-6553)

 

Gulf Coast-Southwest Station
9888 Bissonett, Ste. 135  Houston, TX  77036
Contact:  Mary Armelin  (713-393-4700 Ext. 822)

 

Gulf Coast-Acres Home Multi-Svc6719 W. Montgomery Road  Houston, TX  77091
Contact:  Hazel Piggee  (713-692-1046)

 

Gulf Coast-West End Multi-Svc170 Heights Blvd.  Houston, TX  77007
Contact:  Vronda Taylor

 

Go to http://www.sohmission.org/KatrinaHelp.html with links for more locations where donations can be dropped off or delivered.

 

Ways to help, besides cash: part 1: Houston

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Los tres presidentes will be asking for money, money, money for hurricane relief, and let’s hope they ask for some from the oil companies.

 

Meanwhile, the basic needs of water, food and shelter have to be fulfilled before financial donations can be processed. You can participate by joining a group near you to collect materials, or by starting a collection drive and helping it get to the refugees. That means getting hold of a truck and taking the essentials of water, ice, energy bars, bug spray and first aid straight to the victims, as a group in my community (Cheverly, Maryland) is doing.

 

Houston, Texas, is taking in at least 45,000 refugees. Here are some Houston destinations in need of items dropped off or delivered:

 

1. The Houston Food Bank needs volunteers and paper goods, cleaning supplies, bottled water, peanut butter, heat-and-eat foods, single-serving foods and snacks that don’t require refrigeration. (713-223-3700 or www.houstonfoodbank.org/katrina.htm)

 

2. The Astrodome in Houston needs most non-perishable items, but especially baby products like diapers and wipes. Drop off supplies at Gate 11, between McNee and LaConcha streets, on Kirby.

 

3. Food is needed at North Channel Assistance Ministries, 13837 1/2 Bonham Street.

4. Food is needed at St. Peter Claver, 6500 N. Wayside.

5. Food is needed at LangstonFamilyLifeCenter, 2814 Quitman.

 

6. The Katy Chamber of Commerce at 2501 S. Mason Road, Suite 230, is taking donations of goods and services. (www.katychamber.com or 281-828-1100)

 

7. The Houston Chapter of the Red Cross is accepting donations of bottled water in crates of 24 only. Drop them off at their office, 2700 Southwest Freeway.

8. The U.S. Coast Guard station at Houston’s Ellington Field is seeking donations of goods for hurricane victims. Call 713-578-3000 for information on their needs.

 

Products typically needed include:

Bottled water

Baby food and formula, baby wipes, diapers

Toilet paper, sanitary wipes, feminine products

Insect repellent

Socks

Flash lights with batteries

Aspirin, Neosporin, first aid kits

Plastic garbage bags

Propane tanks

Camping utensils, tarps, tents

Manual can openers

Pet food

Generators

Small AC Units

Liquid Soap

Canned goods (with can openers), trail mix, nuts, cereal bars, crackers

 

One way to help the hurricane victims: with bottled water

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Getting water promptly to the victims and refugees of Hurricane Katrina is essential. One relief effort being coordinated in the rural South is the bottled water drive through Delta State University, in Cleveland, Mississippi – on Highway 61, about an hour and a half south of Memphis.

 

The campus Student Government Association is partnering with the BolivarCountyEmergencyOperationsCenter and the local Red Cross chapter. Donations will be accepted through Friday, Sept. 9.  

 

Here are the addresses for dropping off or delivering factory-sealed containers of water, as soon as possible:

·        Delta State University, Highway 8, Cleveland MS 38733 (1-800-GO-TO-DSU or 800-468-6378). Drop off at the information booth, first floor of the H.L. Union Building

·        Knight Rider Mart, intersection of Highway 8 West and Bishop Road (664 Highway 44 North), no phone number given

·        The Bolivar Commercial newspaper, 821 North Chrisman Av, ClevelandMS (662-843-4241) 

 

N.b.: The Bolivar Commercial office is probably the best bet, for now, unless you can reach someone at the local Chamber of Commerce or through the county. “Suitcase campuses” tend to be partly closed down on weekends, especially over a holiday weekend.

 

Call the Bolivar EOC (fire dept) at 662-843-2300 before sending or giving them any more water, because as of 3:46 p.m. EST they still had some left and want to clear out the space before taking on more water supplies.

 

“The water will be transported and dispersed throughout Mississippi to victims and work crews dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”

  

Call the statement office at (662) 846-4715 for further information. [Unfortunately, phone communications will be at a minimum over the Labor Day weekend.]

Capital Plaza could have helped the hurricane refugees

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Once again, we are all paying a price for the small-time chicanery of big corporations, and not solely with regard to surging (gouging) gasoline prices. Capital Plaza, at 6200 Annapolis Road in Landover Hills, Maryland, is geographically far removed from the initial impact of Hurricane Katrina, but it is still a microcosm of what could have been done.

 

As PG residents inside the Beltway know, the Capital Plaza mall space has sat underused for several years now while its owner-manager, the Nellis Corporation, tried unsuccessfully to land a series of big stores to serve as anchors for mall development. Some of the underused space was left when Hechinger’s, the large local hardware chain, went bankrupt, some when other department store chains went under. Compounding the problem, the landlord kept the mall’s remaining tiny, struggling business tenants on month-to-month leases for more than two years, basically guaranteeing that no vibrant mall traffic could grow and develop. This year, they terminated even those leases.

 

The result:  one million eight hundred thousand-plus square feet (1,805,560 sf) of commercially developed space goes begging, almost half a million square feet of it (491,650 sf) enclosed.

 

On behalf of the victims of the dreadful hurricane, we could have made some halfway decent lemonade from this lemon. Let’s start with the most important issue:  life and death. Citizens of New Orleans, Biloxi and Gulfport among other cities have been displaced and stranded with only their lives — without belongings, without shelter, without even food and water – sitting and lying on what remains of streets and highways. The cities and their terribly poor outlying rural surrounding areas have people clinging to their last half-bottles of water. These desperate American citizens do not have facilities even for sewage, much less for ordinary amenities that usually taken for granted. Making the situation more desperate is the fact that help can hardly get to them unless it is transported by air – meaning that cargo planes and helicopters are needed. And they can hardly get out to safer havens without air transport – meaning, again, cargo planes and helicopters.

 

The Capital Plaza parking lot is big enough for helicopters to land in and is also located conveniently near the College Park airport, which serves private planes.

 

The mall buildings at Capital Plaza are not palatial, by any means. I am well aware that only desperate people would appreciate being sheltered what remains of a shopping mall.

 

But the flood refugees are desperate. And those mall buildings do have, or until days ago still had, some essentials for minimal shelter, aside from floors, roofs and walls, they have or recently had plumbing, security, even air-conditioning. The parking lot is also more than big enough for back-up generators.

 

I am aware that the logistical difficulties of conveying refugees to this area would be immense. But the local American Legion and countless other organizations stand ready to help, should any organizing ability be offered at any level.

 

Unfortunately, the Capital Plaza property has been leased by the Wal-Mart corporation, after a stealthy local lobbying campaign using tactics of infiltration and duplicity. (Wal-Mart, of course, is the source of many of those guns now being used in looting New Orleans.)

 

And now Wal-Mart has already begun demolition at Capital Plaza. Perhaps if we move fast enough, we can intervene and can still use this space for the valuable effect of saving lives and health.