UNDERNEWS

UNDERNEWS
SEP 5, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
KATRINA
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

STEPHEN J. HEDGES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE - While federal and state emergency
planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities
stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been
cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the
effort.

The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in
amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and
water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And
it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring
ashore.

The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore,
awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some
of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.

But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms
and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors
could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't
been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of
any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the
ship.

"Could we do more?" said Capt. Nora Tyson, commander of the Bataan.
"Sure. I've got sailors who could be on the beach plucking through
garbage or distributing water and food and stuff. But I can't force
myself on people.

"We're doing everything we can to contribute right now, and we're ready.
If someone says you need to take on people, we're ready. If they say
hospitals on the beach can't handle it ... if they need to send the
overflow out here, we're ready. We've got lots of room."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

BOB HERBERT, NEW YORK TIMES - After days of withering criticism from
white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from
Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act,
however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters
demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a
whole is so much better than this administration.)

Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed)
that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who
were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk,
reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New
Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but
that it would be replaced with "a fantastic house - and I'm looking
forward to sitting on the porch."

Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a
president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as
clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the
dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human
suffering of the president and his administration. . .

Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush
has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to
minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his
ineptitude.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opinion/05herbert.html

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

ERROL LOUIS, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS - In far too many cities, including New
Orleans, the marching orders on the front lines of American race
relations are to control and contain the very poor in ghettos as cheaply
as possible; ignore them completely if possible; and call in the troops
if the brutes get out of line. By almost every statistical measure, New
Orleans is a bad place to be poor. Half the city's households make less
than $28,000 a year, and 28% of the population lives in poverty.

In the late 1990s, the state's school systems ranked dead last in the
nation in the number of computers per student (one per 88), and
Louisiana has the nation's second-highest percentage of adults who never
finished high school. By the state's own measure, 47% of the public
schools in New Orleans rank as "academically unacceptable."

And Louisiana is the only one of the 50 states where the state
legislature doesn't allocate money to pay for the legal defense of
indigent defendants. The Associated Press reported this year that it's
not unusual for poor people charged with crimes to stay in jail for nine
months before getting a lawyer appointed. . .

The rot included the New Orleans Police Department, which in the 1990s
had the dubious distinction of being the nation's most corrupt police
force and the least effective: the city had the highest murder rate in
America. More than 50 officers were eventually convicted of crimes
including murder, rape and robbery; two are currently on Death Row.

The decision to subject an entire population to poverty, ignorance,
injustice and government corruption as a way of life has its ugly
moments, as the world is now seeing. New Orleans officials issued an
almost cynical evacuation order in a city where they know full well that
thousands have no car, no money for airfare or an interstate bus, no
credit cards for hotels, and therefore no way to leave town before the
deadly storm and flood arrived.

The authorities provided no transportation out of the danger zone,
apparently figuring the neglected thousands would somehow weather the
storm in their uninsured, low-lying shacks and public housing projects.
The poor were expected to remain invisible at the bottom of the pecking
order and somehow weather the storm.

But the flood confounded the plan, and the world began to see a tide of
human misery rising from the water --- ragged, sick, desperate and
disorderly. Some foraged for food, some took advantage of the chaos to
commit crimes. All in all, they acted exactly the way you could predict
people would act who have been locked up in a ghetto for generations. .
.

Ten billion dollars are about to pass into the sticky hands of
politicians in the No. 1 and No. 3 most corrupt states in America.
Worried about looting? You ain't seen nothing yet.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

CONGRESSMAN BOBBY JINDAL - People who want to volunteer for search and
rescue operations, police from outside the state who want to help, all
should be able to come to New Orleans without fear of wading through
bureaucratic red tape. My constituents don't care who brings them food
and water, or take them to safety; just help these people.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html 7:42 P.M.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL MAYOR, 3:32 P.M. - We are still hampered by some of
the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away
generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from
our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be
damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off,
and tired of this horseshit"

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

WWL, 3:11 P.M. - Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief,
but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water,
ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut
emergency power lines. Why? FEMA has not explained. . .

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

LA TIMES - In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of
refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a
5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if
he were their leader. They were holding hands. Three of the children
were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old
girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her
14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and
he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050905/ts_latimes/
heheldtheirlivesinhistinyhands


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

SEATTLE INDYMEDIA - Mayor Nagin told ABC news that citizen refugees who
were attempting to walk out of New Orleans in search of aid were stopped
at the Jefferson Parish line by police with attack dogs and machine
guns. The chief law enforcement officer of Jefferson Parish is Sheriff
Harry Lee, who is notorious for his views on racial profiling by his
officers. He once said his men would stop blacks in 'rinky dink' cars in
white neighborhoods at night.

Nagin explained that he suggested the mostly black people at the
convention center try walking out because there were no supplies in the
city to relive their suffering, and no buses for their evacuation.

http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/247797.shtml

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||


BRANDON BAILEY, KNIGHT RIDDER - Like thousands of her rural neighbors,
72-year-old Gloria Jean Watts said she sympathizes with those suffering
in the coastal cities. But she's hot, hungry and almost out of blood
pressure medicine after a week of camping in a neighbor's sweltering
living room and subsisting on a diet of little more than canned
sausages. "They've completely forgotten about this town," said Watts,
who said she hasn't seen any state or federal aid workers since the
storm hit her trailer home in nearby Wellstown, Miss., about 70 miles
north of Gulfport. "It's a disgrace."

While they escaped the devastating floods that hit Biloxi, Gulfport and
New Orleans, inland residents suffered damage to their homes and have
spent the last several days without power or phones - and perilously
short of drinkable water and gasoline. But while state and local
authorities, including some detachments from the Mississippi National
Guard, are distributing ice, water and food in larger towns, the
residents of smaller communities are helping one another.

"They are getting food in town, but there are a lot of people out in the
country who don't have enough gas to drive in," said Blythe Odom, a
veterinarian who was waiting outside a store in Poplarville, Miss., on
Saturday morning. She spent a day and a half earlier this week using a
chainsaw to clear the trees that had blocked the road to her home.

WWL - Isolated with no communications and none of the social structures
and services that existed in New Orleans before Katrina, people who
remain in the French Quarter are forming "tribes" to survive. As some
went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect
property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn
ear of a robbery victim. While mold and contagion grew in the muck that
engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent
of American neighborhoods - humanity. "Some people became animals,"
Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in
Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. "We became more civilized."
. . .

When Tryphonas showed up at Johnny White's [bar] with his left ear split
in two, Joseph Bellomy - a customer pressed into service as a bartender
- put a wooden spoon between Tryphonas' teeth and used a needle and
thread to sew it up. Military medics who later looked at Bellomy's
handiwork decided to simply bandage the ear. "That's my savior,"
Tryphonas said, raising his beer in salute to the former Air Force
medical assistant.

A few blocks away, a dozen people in three houses got together and
divided the labor. One group went to the Mississippi River to haul
water, one cooked, one washed the dishes. "We're the tribe of 12,"
76-year-old Carolyn Krack said as she sat on the sidewalk with a cup of
coffee, a packet of cigarettes and a box of pralines.

The tribe, whose members included a doctor, a merchant and a store
clerk, improvised survival tactics. Krack, for example, brushed her
dentures with antibacterial dish soap. It had been a tribe of 13, but a
member died Wednesday of a drug overdose. After some negotiating, the
police carried the body out on the trunk of a car.

http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/katrina/stories/
090405cckatrinajrfrenchquarter.26851646.html


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LABOR
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

NORTHWEST AIRLINES STRIKE

ALEXANDRA MARKS, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR- As Northwest mechanics begin
Week 2 of a strike, the stakes for the union are rising fast. The
airline is talking about hiring its replacement workers permanently, and
it insists that it's running "adequately" without the strikers. No new
talks are scheduled.

If Northwest rides out the strike and succeeds in breaking the union, it
could be a watershed in the history of the American labor movement, many
analysts say - a key event in a long string of setbacks that have
weakened the role of organized workers as a political and social force
in the country.
Others, particularly representatives of major unions themselves, say
that is nothing more than hyperbole.

They believe this mechanics' strike is unique to Northwest and to the
Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents the 4,400
striking workers. Indeed, AMFA is something of a pariah in the labor
movement, because it built its strength by luring workers from more
established unions, such as the International Association of Machinists.
Leaders inside the AFL-CIO, in fact, often don't refer to AMFA as a
union at all but as, in the words of one, an "organization started by a
bunch of lawyers that has touted elitism instead of solidarity."

Some labor experts go so far as to infer that Northwest isn't alone in
wanting to break AMFA, speculating that Big Labor, which has not come to
AMFA's aid, would not shed too many tears if it fell.

"This is payback time for AMFA. That's the way the labor movement is
looking at it," says Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations
at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "Raiding is a sin, and [they
believe] AMFA raided and won [by] saying it would never accept
concessions. It'll be much easier for other unions to tell members that
they must accept concessions if AMFA was killed for not doing it."

The major unions dispute that view, insisting that they support the
mechanics wholeheartedly. It's just the AMFA organization they have
trouble with.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0829/p02s01-wmgn.html

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

BRENDAN COYNE, NEW STANDARD NEWS - Three weeks before the scheduled
founding convention of the new labor coalition, Change to Win, six
Minnesota unions announced last week that they were forming a local
chapter. The unions immediately pledged to offer support to mechanics on
strike against Northwest Airlines. "We support the airline workers and
their families as they stand up for their right to have job security,
adequate benefits and a living wage," Unite Here International Vice
President Jaye Rykunyk said in a statement announcing the new Minnesota
Change to Win Coalition. "Furthermore, the tactics being used by
Northwest Airlines to break the will of the striking workers will have
dire consequences for all unions. We have to help the airline workers
succeed for the future of our own members.". . .

At the national level, Change to Win unions represent about 5 million
workers. The group came together in opposition to the direction the
AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, and three members left
the Federation at the beginning of its annual convention.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2327

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
READER COMMENTS
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

NOTE: You can post your comments on any of the above stories by going to
our Undernews site and searching for the headline. Once posted, a copy
is immediately mailed to the Review and we pick some of the most
interesting to publish here. http://prorev.com/indexa.htm

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

IRAQ WAR MAY HAVE COST US NEW ORLEANS

A READER - Why confine the loss to New Orleans? The Iraq War has cost us
the United States. Our reputation. Whatever moral imperative we once
held. Our Constitution and the freedom it once guaranteed. Need one go
on? Maybe there is cosmic justice after all...

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

THE DISASTER THEY KNEW WAS COMING

A READER - Do you suppose this was just perceived as an opportunity for
urban renewal via hydraulics?

A READER - If I was one of New Orleans million homeless refugees, I
would head to Crawford. Plenty of room to camp on Bush's ranch.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||