Hurricane Ike Information Embargo: Politics, Economics and the Media

AP photo

Within hours of hurricane Katrina’s passing all the major TV news organizations had crews on the ground and in the center of the disaster.

It has now been four days since hurricane Ike made landfall and where are the major news teams? Has anyone seen even a 15-minute report on MSNBC, CBS, ABC Fox or CNN on the aftermath of Ike over the past four days?

Of course the financial news that broke on Monday and is continuing to break every day this week is the new big story but the only other major interest of the media apart from economics at the moment is politics, in the form of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Well, Ike is a significant economic story that is being excluded from the news.

Whilst Fannie Mae and AIG are being promised collectively around $100 billion in taxpayer bailouts the cost of Ike is currently roughly estimated at about $18 billion which is hardly chump-change.

It is unclear if that estimate includes the damage to the inland oil-processing plants and the offshore rigs that comprise 20% of the national oil infrastructure. If there’s any significant damage to the facilities will the oil companies demand taxpayer-funded disaster relief proportionate to that being offered to individual citizens? Given that they’ve consistently been handed tax breaks over the last few years despite making record profits I see no reason for them not to claim poverty once again—and of course bolster such claims as being an issue of “national security”.

Ike is also a significant political story.

In 2005 Bush staged a photo-op in NOLA to deliver “the message” he said he was going to deliver at an earlier Rose Garden press conference which he’d already iterated, and then having delivered the message he left, turning out the lights he’d brought with him and leaving NOLA in the dark again.

On Monday Bush said to the press:

“I'm going down tomorrow. I'm looking forward to going down. Members of my administration will be going down. We're looking forward to hearing from, you know, the local folks. I'm confident there will be people that are very frustrated because their lives have been severely affected by this storm. My message will be that we hear you and we'll work as hard and fast as we can to help you get your lives back up to normal”.

Once again, anyone with a working television and an interest in what the President had to say would have heard Bush’s message then, without Bush visiting the area where most of the victims of Ike wouldn’t be there to hear his message personally due to them either having evacuated days before and having been instructed not to return or due to them still being stuck in the attics of their flooded homes and without power.

There is also the political issue of how authorities are treating Galveston and its environs compared to NOLA. Toxic FEMA trailers apparently haven’t been deployed this time. The hardest-hit communities of Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula had no higher-ground stadium in which to gather for relative safety so there have been no scenes of huddled masses desperate for aid. This time the mass evacuation appears to have been more organized and pets, the elderly and infirm and those without their own transportation were accommodated. It would seem that the DHS and FEMA have learned at least something from Katrina.

The authorities were quick to report to the Associated Press that some 2,000 people stranded by flood water had been rescued by Monday.

I watched one such rescue live on MSNBC; a fit-looking man about 25-30 years old who had decided to stay-put despite all the warnings and despite the fact that his home sat atop a bait-shop that stood on stilts at the end of a low jetty that jutted-out about 100 yards into the Gulf. The jetty had vanished, the shop had been completely demolished and the second floor apartment was left perched precariously on the remaining stilts most of which were far from upright. When he was brought to shore by the helicopter the MSNBC reporter at the scene asked him about his decision to ‘ride-out’ the hurricane but at that point he dismissed the question and quickly walked away (and got a friendly lift in a police car to points unknown).

On Tuesday evening ABC ran a 5-minute (at the most) report interviewing a couple (or three) of people who had stayed behind and were now trying to pick up the pieces. One reported that he had already encountered some break-in attempts at what was left of his property and declared his intent to shoot anyone else who might try the same. This was repeated with the others interviewed in the piece and their attitudes were greeted with a chuckle by the ABC anchor back in the studio as the report was wrapped-up: “Well of course, it’s Texas!”

Such a report contradicted earlier statements by local interviewees elsewhere claiming that everyone would help each other in the circumstances. Obviously an attempted break-in would have to be conducted by another local. The word ‘looting’ never passed the lips of the interviewees or the reporters, in contrast to its judicious use regarding events in NOLA.

In fact according to a combined ABC/Associated Press report

“During house-to-house searches in Galveston, about 1,500 people were found to be safe, according to ABC News affiliate KTRK. Five dead bodies were also found. Eleven looters were arrested, and one person was airlifted out of the area with hundreds of mosquito bites. “

In 2005 MSNBC reported: “With much of the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina, looters floated garbage cans filled with clothing and jewelry down the street in a dash to grab what they could.

In some cases, looting on Tuesday took place in full view of police and National Guard troops. At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

Looters filled industrial-sized garbage cans with clothing and jewelry and floated them down the street on bits of plywood and insulation as National Guard lumbered by.”

Whilst grabbing jewelry and clothing in such circumstances is certainly looting in my view, grabbing food, water and hygiene products isn’t—especially when such products would be claimed on insurance anyway, as the DHS and FEMA weren’t supplying people properly and as the National Guard stood by and let it happen (and quite rightly). I note also the repetition of the “jewelry and clothing’ claim and the addition of “industrial-sized” adjective to the original and ordinary “garbage cans”.

Further in the article it was reported:

“At a drug store on Canal Street just outside the French Quarter, two police officers with pump shotguns stood guard as workers from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel across the street loaded large laundry bins full of medications, snack foods and bottled water.

“This is for the sick,” Officer Jeff Jacob said. “We can commandeer whatever we see fit, whatever is necessary to maintain law.”

As Dr. Greg Henderson wrote in an e-mail on August 30^th, 2005

"I am now a temporary resident of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New Orleans.

[…]

We have a group of armed police here with us at the hotel that are admirably trying to exert some local law enforcement. This is tough because looting is now rampant. Most of it is not malicious looting. These are poor and desperate people with no housing and no medical care and no food or water trying to take care of themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the people are armed and dangerous.

[…]

The health care situation here has dramatically worsened overnight. Many people in the hotel are elderly and small children. Many other guests have unusual diseases

We have set up a hospital in the the French Qarter bar in the hotel, and will start admitting patients today. We are anticipating to dealing with multiple medical problems, medications and and acute injuries. Infection and perhaps even cholera are anticipated major problems. Food and water shortages are iminent.

The biggest question to all of us is where is the national guard. We hear jet fignters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no salvation army.”

So the police rallied to the needs of an ad-hoc hospital and maintained a sense of perspective given their own limited resources.

From the MSNBC/AP report:

Another officer, D.J. Butler, told the crowd standing around that they would be out of the way as soon as they got the necessities.

“I’m not saying you’re welcome to it,” the officer said. “This is the situation we’re in. We have to make the best of it.”

Right-wing radio in particular insisted that all the NOLA looting was criminal in intent despite the evident appreciation of the police and Dr. Henderson (amongst others) of the realities of the situation. So what’s the situation in similarly devastated Galveston and Bolivar now?

Well, clearly in Texas some looting has been attempted and has occurred as reported above.

But the fact is that the rest of nation has no idea of what is really going because the federal authorities are applying one lesson learned from Katrina that has nothing to do with their ability to provide aid and relief to victims of a natural disaster and everything to do with controlling media access to their activities so that no comparisons may be drawn between Ike and Katrina, between Galveston and New Orleans, between Texas and Louisiana or between the Federal Government’s actions of 2005 and those of 2008,

Media coverage of Ike has been embargoed.

In looking at the web-site reports about the Ike-afflicted area it appears that every MSM outlet—FOX, MSNBC, ABC. CBS, CNN---has AP attached to every single story. There appears to be not one exclusive report from any of these national news organizations and typical of these reports are paragraphs that read as follows:

“…emergency crews feared they would find more victims than survivors.

It was the first time anyone had gotten a look at the damaged resort barrier island of Bolivar Peninsula, just east of hard-hit Galveston.”

“Crews had no idea what they would find on Bolivar Peninsula, which from the air, revealed house after shattered house. “

“Search and rescuers from the Sacramento Metro Fire Department found 60 survivors on the Bolivar Peninsula, the sliver of sand that sits across Galveston Bay from the city of Galveston, according to the Associated Press.”

The AP appears to be functioning as the middle-man between officials and the MSM and the MSM seems to be acquiescing to this arrangement. The FAA has restricted over-flight of Galveston and the Bolivar peninsula to 2000 feet “to provide a safe environment for disaster response and relief operations” and disallowed helicopter-borne news crews from landing in the worst-affected areas.

According to one ABC News/AP report (referenced here earlier)

"The storm's fatal reach extended beyond Texas: Six people died in Louisiana, two in Tennessee, six in Indiana, three in Missouri, one in Arkansas and three in Ohio."

As hurricane death-tolls in general go that’s a bit above average, but then Ike was 900 miles across and most of its death-dealing potential still stretched over a 550 mile radius.

However…

“Emergency officials estimate that 400 to 500 of the 30,000 residents remained on the [Bolivar] Peninsula during the storm.

Bolivar may have been the hardest hit by Ike's 110 mph winds and estimated 16-foot storm surge. Towns all along the peninsula were virtually flattened by the treacherous winds, rain and floods from Hurricane Ike.

Over the town Gilchrist, seen from a helicopter, a single home stands alone, behind it a long stretch of waterfront homes have disappeared, pulverized by the wind and the storm surge. The bridge to this coastal area has buckled and officials found a car wrapped around a house. “

In Crystal Beach, the scene was even grimmer. A camper that had been ripped to shreds lay submerged in the canal alongside a mobile home and a giant sailboat that had both been destroyed.

Despite the devastation and reports of residents who decided to ride out the storm, Gov. Rick Perry would not confirm any deaths on Bolivar. “

The AP reported that according to Galveston City officials at least at least a third of the community's 60,000 residents remained in their homes.

We know that 60 were rescued at the last minute after being cut off and we’ve heard since that another 2,000 (as of Monday) were also plucked from dire straits. Others certainly changed their minds at the last minute whilst they still apparently had the means to evacuate so it is likely that the 1/3^rd figure was reduced though it is impossible to say by how much, but assuming that the official estimate of 1/3^rd were halved just before Ike made landfall that would leave 10,000 behind. Would it not be reasonable to imagine that 10% of those may well have been killed? That would mean a thousand people dead, despite all the warnings and the evacuation facilities laid on by the authorities.

Currently the Texas death toll is being reported as 30, the overall perhaps 60. Hopefully it really is that low. Michael Chertoff’s warning to those still resident during Ike’s landfall that they “may face certain death” would appear to be an exaggeration in hindsight but at the moment we the public just don’t know and the authorities aren’t willing to say.

Of course when so much is blown to smithereens it’s not fair to expect the precision of reporting that, for example, followed the California train crash of Sunday; but recall the effort in reporting on Katrina or the Eastern Seaboard blackout—that level of interest, effort and communication regarding Ike seems remarkably lacking in comparison, especially when it is surely a major economic story too.

Within the media reports I’ve found there have been some complaints about FEMA’s services. Oil pollution has been briefly noted and the occupants of graveyards have been disinterred by the flood-waters and are floating around with the usual storm detritus. These are as yet seemingly small details, but as yet, on the fifth day, even the larger picture is not being revealed as one might have expected by now.

When Katrina hit, authorities were so spectacularly unprepared they didn’t think of controlling media access and they were burned, rightly, by that over-sight but now it seems they have learned at least that lesson.

With Katrina the religious right immediately blamed the event on the inherent wickedness of NOLA’s civilians and pointed to subsequent looting as proof of it.

The likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage embraced that meme and added that those who stayed had only themselves to blame for their subsequent plight.

Certainly with the apparent press embargo of Ike’s aftermath the right-wing is being denied sources for political hay-making and so too is the political left, but consider which side might gain if the MSM were to report from Texas with the same commitment and given the same access as they had in New Orleans?

Texas is a staunchly Republican state. Anywhere from 40,000 to 90,000 Texans, presumably mostly Republicans, ignored their Republican governments warnings to evacuate.

Are they now being blamed for their current destitution as so many of NOLA’s citizens were? Apparently not.

Are the reported lootings (as noted above) being used to condemn the entire community on Galveston? Apparently not.

Has Ike been declared a holy retribution from God for Texans’ wickedness? No.

The right wing media has kept its mouth shut this time for political reasons (just as it opened its mouth for political reasons during Katrina). The MSM has once again dropped the ball to focus on a new shiny object and once again let the authorities serve them the news as they see fit as has been allowed without significant protest since the beginning of the Bush administration, even now.

Even now the main stream media is still making political and economic decisions that favor the Republicans. The Republican presidency and its appointees are still making political and economic decisions that favor its own vested interested—to not get found-out for incompetence and self serving actions. Together, by the latter controlling information and the former acceding to that control in a partnership that extends for almost 8 years they are both still controlling not just the public discourse but life and death and the fortunes of all just so they can maintain their own relevance and elevated positions for the present and the future.

These are the politics and economics that surround the embargo on the aftermath of Ike. It may not be worse than Katrina but it is surely just as bad and cognizant of that the authorities and their surrogates in the media would far prefer that the rest of us not know that--especially with a presidential election looming on the horizon. .

National (Lampoon) Vacation

(Above 'photoon' is original to this blog but if used by others a credit/link would be appreciated)

If it’s August (which it is) then it’s that time of year again when George W. Bush puts down his deluxe armadillo-skin Veto-Matic-brand Unitary Executive pen (the one with the silver spoon clip and that uses oil for ink) to take yet another lengthy official vacation.

What with rising unemployment, failing banks, record gasoline prices, record foreclosures, a record national debt, a record budget deficit, record manufacturing losses, a record number of under-insured and uninsured, record incarceration (even for politicians!), record price increases on basic foods, records in produce contamination, record lows for the dollar on the international market, record domestic spying and two continuing wars draining money from the economy at record rates, you might think that the President maybe doesn’t deserve a vacation.

You would of course be wrong (and probably a gay Nazi socialist Islamo-fascist pro-tree librul fringe America-hater as well).

To paraphrase George Bush in the aftermath of 9/11: “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!”

When Katrina cut its deadly swath through New Orleans the president’s actions spoke volumes; “When the going gets tough, the tough go barbecuing!”

When the death toll of US troops in Iraq hit 4000 without any appreciable result for their sacrifices the President essentially declared “When the going gets tough, the tough give-up golfing!”.

Ordinary people might take stock of such situations and work towards mitigating their deleterious effects, but George Bush is no ordinary people…person…---he’s a leader and as a leader his primary job is to maintain his optimism and thus the nation’s optimism, in the face of adversity. Maintaining such optimism is “hard work” and as everyone should appreciate the obvious reward for hard work is a nice long vacation.

But George Bush isn’t just taking a vacation for himself---he’s selflessly relaxing on behalf of the whole country! That's just the authentic kind of guy he is!

As non-working citizens leave their foreclosed neighborhoods every morning to prove American competitiveness with illegal immigrant workers, they will be inspired by George’s example:

“One day” (they will say to themselves), “I too will be able to free myself from the bonds of servitude, the constraints of arbitrary search and seizure, the tyranny of taxation without representation and the suppression of inalienable human rights by a distant power-elite, and as the Intelligent Designer is my witness, I shall take a vacation again!” (I swear this reminds of something, but I can't think what!)

With the US on the verge of a psychological breakdown (as astutely noted by Senators John McCain and Phil Gramm) it is essential for the security and future of the nation that George W. Bush takes a vacation not just for himself but for all Americans...and America's allies too!.

If George weren’t so dedicated to the welfare of this nation and instead failed to take a vacation, there’s no telling what might happen if he stayed behind his desk in Washington.

As Bush himself has pretty-much said one way or another over the last eight years:

“You don’t change horses in the bottom of the ninth when you’re on the last down and you’ve got a free throw with two seconds on the clock that’s attached to a dirty bomb set to explode in Punxatawney when your first-responders' radios don’t work because Arabic-speaking FBI agents threaten Republican marriages because their gayness makes the baby Jesus cry and prevents gynecologists from practicing their love due to frivolous lawsuits that drive up the price of oil and encourage socialized animal-human cloning by Cadillac-driving welfare queens.”

For years now libruls have been trying to get Bush out of the Oval Office, but when he does take a vacation they then complain he should be back at work!! Hey libruls, hypocriticize much?!

In these difficult times libruls should stop their obstructionist shenanigans and let Bush lead the nation towards a deserved vacation from not only present problems but the last 7-1/2 years of “hard work”.

Just because President Bush already holds the record for the most frequent and the longest vacations doesn’t mean he should relax in his efforts to relax---that would be like Barry Bonds quitting steroids once he’d beaten Hank Aaron’s home-run record!

At a time when the US faces economic problems not seen since the Great Depression whilst it fights a war as pointless and expensive as Vietnam the last thing America and the world needs is a president, denied a well-deserved vacation, being forced to make executive decisions when he knows in his gut that there’s still brush that needs a-clearin’ at the old homestead.

If the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t just an old-timey way of saying “hey kids, we’re all going to Wally-World!” then I don’t know what is!

And besides what’s more fundamentally American than enjoying yourself in the present whilst you can and letting the future take care of itself?

So to all the nattering nabobs of negativism I say let the President take the kind of vacation from the White House that we all can only dream about---six months sounds about right. If we all let Bush have his own way, just this once, then we’ll all be better-off.

Pardoners In Crime

If the RESTORE Act arrives on Bush’s desk without an immunity clause for the telecom companies that enabled his impeachable, illegal (under FISA) and unconstitutional (4th Amendment) warrant-less “wiretapping” program, he will have to veto it not so much because of the telecom’s investment in him but more because if he doesn’t he will expose himself to the same kind of lawsuits and criminal charges that the telecom companies fear.

The telecoms are complaining that without immunity they risk bankruptcy from lawsuits. This argument is stupid. For a start they’d be subject to a class-action suit, (and possibly half a dozen individual suits at best) so they wouldn’t be sunk by lawyer’s fees and court costs. Secondly there’s no way a court would allow the total bankruptcy of any one of the telecom companies—it would be too disruptive.

If he hasn’t already done-so, Bush will likely write-up a pardon for the telecoms. It won’t matter to him that a pardon is supposed to apply only after a guilty verdict and time served. His father “pardoned” Caspar Weinberger for his indictment in Iran-Contra, thus averting a trial and exposure of G.W. Bush’s own important role in the affair, thus allowing Bush to effectively pardon himself--and he got away with it!
(The sub-headings of the NYT article—Bush Diary at Issue and 6 Year Inquiry into Deal of Arms for Hostages Swept Away)


The power to pardon falls under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:

"The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."

That’s all there is to it. It can be applied to a corporation as to an individual, and no standard of justification is required.

"Should I decide to grant pardons, I will do so in a fair way. I will have the highest of high standards." (George W. Bush, Feb 22nd 2001)

Ri-iight, George!

If history is any guide, George Junior is going to get away with it, just like his old Dad, though just to be sure he’s going to have to pardon is entire administration, and with all those pardons there’ll be just enough room in his presidential Library for “The Pet Goat” and a torture memo.

Who Is Burying Ciara Durkin ?

On Thursday, September 27th Massachusetts National Guard Spc. Ciara Durkin, 30, was found with a single gunshot wound to her head behind a building--apparently a “church”--in a “secure area” at Bagram Airbase.

On Friday, September 28th, The Washington Post recorded in their simple Faces of the Fallen roster that Ciara Durkin: “Died of injuries suffered from a non-combat related incident at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.”

By Monday October 1st, ‘everyone’ had received the AP “wire” report on Iraq/Afghanistan casualties, which included Ciara Durkin, listed as having died from a non-combat related incident”

On October 1st, RTE (Radio-Television Eire) reported:

"Ciara Durkin, 30, originally from Eanach Mheáin in Connemara, died as a result of a single gunshot wound to the head within the Bagram airbase, according to information the military has released to the Durkin Family. Speaking on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta this morning Pádraig Ó Conghaile, Ms Durkin's brother-in-law, appealed to the [Irish] Department of Foreign Affairs to participate in the investigation into her death."

On Tuesday, October 2nd the Boston Globe reported:

"The Department of Defense said in a statement yesterday that Ciara Durkin's injuries came from a "non-combat related incident" that is under investigation. The statement contradicts a Sunday statement from the Massachusetts Army National Guard that said Durkin, an Army specialist, was killed in action. A guard spokesman said the term was meant to imply that Durkin was deployed in Afghanistan at the time of her death".

On Wednesday, October 3rd The Boston Herald reported:

"The Quincy soldier mysteriously slain by a bullet to the head on a secure Afghanistan airbase feared something might happen to her after discovering “something she didn’t like,” her devastated family revealed."

At this point the story was being spread through the US liberal blogosphere. There was nothing on the right-wing blogs.

On Thursday, Oct 4th ABCNews/GMA reported the story, as did CBS News, and the Washington Post and the New York Times amongst others.

On Friday, October 5th FOX News reported that "Marion Jones admitted using steroids before the 2000 Olympics in a recent letter to close family and friends" ---which Greta Van Susteren (champion of dead blondes everywhere except Afghanistan) blogged about, and about which Bill O’Really opined too.

On Monday, October 8th on FOXNews.com, under “The Big Story w/Gibson and Nauert” (which you have to carefully click-on, otherwise you just get the only obvious content—Gibson’s 'My Word') and then under “Heather’s Big Headline” there is this:

"Unfortunately, on Friday night we had to cut Douglas Kennedy's story about a U.S. soldier who mysteriously died in Afghanistan short. News on Olympic medalist Marion Jones' use of steroids broke just as Douglas's story was airing and we needed to break away to cover it. We are posting the entire story here:
[...]
We sincerely hope that Spc. Ciara Durkin's family will soon learn what led to the death of the 30-year-old woman, daughter and sister who had eight siblings. Spc. Durkin and the many other brave men and women give up a great deal to serve our country in remote and often dangerous places. Her family deserves answers soon."

So, just as FOX News finally gets around to reporting on what looks like a murder of a US National Guard soldier on a US base, one of Fox’s worst-rated feature shows (Gibson) HAD to cut away to live coverage of an Olympic athlete admitting steroid use and lying about it. And then, they buried the video report on Durkin (which does actually cover most of the salient points in a minute and a half) beneath a generic link, THREE DAYS later, along with an unctuous note of “sympathy”.

The only reason I found this story was because I already knew about Durkin from the blogosphere and I searched FOX to see what coverage they’d given it. But just to make my outrage complete I decided to see how much coverage FOX’s closest competitor, CNN had provided.

NOTHING! Here’s the search result string:

http://search.cnn.com/search?query=ciara%20durkin&type=news&sortBy=date&intl=false

There is much to be drawn from all this, but for whatever reason Ciara Durkin died, the likes of CNN and FOX and those they enabled buried her and thousands of others years ago, and they are burying her once again whilst avoiding the customary respect of soiling their hands to toss dirt into the grave they reserved for her.

There's No Cancer Like Snow Cancer Like No Cancer I Know!

Tony Snow is planning to write a book on how to deal with cancer.

Finally! Why didn’t anyone think of that before?!

[Google Results 1 - 10 of about 2,140,000 for dealing with cancer]

One way to deal with cancer is to write a book about how to deal with cancer.

You know, a lot of people think cancer can happen to just anybody, but they’re wrong! It can happen to important media-personalities as well, and when it does, their cancer is important too!

So how do important well-paid people deal with their important cancer? They write a book about it! It makes them feel just a whole lot better.

If YOU have cancer you may have thought about writing a book about how to deal with cancer, but don’t bother because you probably aren’t dealing with cancer as well as Tony Snow does so you really should buy his book instead of writing your own, because if you don’t, well then you’re just a heartless bastard who doesn’t care about people who have cancer.

Sobriety Test

Who would you rather have a beer with?

That was how the competition for the Presidency was summed-up by our press in 2004 and the electorate supposedly chose to have a beer with an un-recovered alcoholic who wouldn’t shut-up, never made a lick of sense, never bought a round, lost every bar-bet and refused to pay up and then challenged everyone to a fight.
Now, as the bell for last-orders is being rung, our drinking buddy is preparing to piss on the juke-box and throw-up by the front door just before catching a stretch limousine home whilst we have to pay the tab and clean-up.

It’s weird; he seemed like such a decent, regular guy when we first met him. And as we stagger home feeling the onset of a massive hangover, we swear, on three-thousand eight-hundred and something graves, that we’re never going to do that again!

Home Improvement

I've been dead-slow to post lately--just a weltschmertz phase I guess.
After two years of blogging I thought it time to re-decorate.
The new-look may not be exciting, but it's easier to read.
I have to re-establish the blogroll now and then really get back into it.

Monk-y Business

(Photo: AP)

As mass demonstrations spread through Myanamar a good deal of the media’s focus has been on the Buddhists monks who have joined the regular citizens in their protests against new government policies.

The monks provide a great image, identically dressed in bright red robes, and their peaceful philosophy and manner serves as a dramatic counterpoint to the aggressiveness and oppressiveness of the ruling Junta.

The situation looks likely to result in a classic battle of democratic people-power versus despotism, peace and humility of the monks versus the arrogance and aggression of the military. Anyone with a soul will be rooting for the monks and the public to prevail.

But the monks notable participation isn't about freedom of expression and democracy or morality or social justice--it's about a change in economics that is going to hurt the monks directly.

"The protests, sparked by a doubling of petrol and diesel prices, and a fivefold rise in the price of cooking gas on August 15, tapped a deep well of anger in a country in economic crisis. Inflation runs at 40% and most people suffer economic hardship." ( The Guardian )

If the citizens can’t afford the essentials, how are they going to afford the alms that the monks rely-on to survive? Monks contribute next-to nothing to the general economy and the general economic welfare—what they get they keep to themselves--and they are supported in that by the general population.

So don't imagine that the monks are championing democracy, they've got a significant economic interest to protect.

Death and Taxes (and Profits)

This job ad has now been removed from Serco's site.

The position is for a "Personal Effects Specialist" (67 openings available!) who;


“...receives, inventories, sorts, cleans, photographs, packages, and ships to family members (next of kin) all personal effects belonging to military service members and others, including defense contractors, who are killed or severely injured worldwide, especially incident to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

In other words not only do contractors get a guaranteed profit from their "cost-plus" deals with the Pentagon whilst their employees are alive, they charge the expenses of their deaths to the taxpayer too--and make a profit on that!

( hat-tip to Wonkette! for finding the ad--but rather missing the point of the story).

UPDATE:
I wrote a lengthier post on this at NEWSHOGGERS, where Marcie Hascall Clark left a comment with this highly pertinent information...

The Defense Base Act Insurance coverage that each contract company must provide relieves the company of any responsibility of any kind to the employee or their family.The premiums are 10% or more of the employees salary and are included in the contract (taxpayer pays). When an employee is injured or killed the DBA insurance company is reimbursed all medical, repatriation, lost wages, and death benefits they pay out by the Federal Government (taxpayer) plus a 15% admin fee under the War Hazards Act.

The Blog Factor

It’s been two years since I started my blog, and in that time oil prices, the uninsured, the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan and the number of Republicans in jail and under investigation have all gone up. The genocide in Darfur continues and ‘freedomocracy’, once thought to be on the march is actually face down in an alley somewhere being eaten by rats. (None of this is my fault; it is mere coincidence I assure you.)

So why blog, or continue to blog? Simple: Because it matters. The effort of writing a serious post forces me to think, to research, to justify my arguments and opinions. For the few who read my blog, my arguments may inform them. Their comments and their own blogs in turn inform me. And the whole informed conversation that results percolates through an engaged society.

TV news-shows now report-on and reference blogs (to a limited degree); not because they want to but because they have to—some even have their own blogs. But most of them still don’t “get-it” –their posts are either copies of existing print articles or transcripts from their shows that fail to properly exploit the medium, and where original content is offered it is often as dumb as their traditional products—poorly researched, poorly written and condescending (and offering little in the way of discussion as having posted the author often disengages from the comments and in some cases disallows comments altogether).

There’s no question that a few blogs have had an effect on public discourse and current affairs. Several prominent right–wing blogs have done a fine job in rumor-mongering, character-assassination, and in manufacturing pointless “controversy”. A few left-wing blogs have broken important stories of corruption and drawn attention to important issues the traditional media has ignored.
But such blogs are well organized and focused. What purpose then do small personal blogs such as mine, and the hundreds of thousands like it, serve? Are we all just a bunch of whining egotists, yelling at strangers in the hope we’ll get the attention we crave, demanding to be taken seriously? Do our blogs serve anyone (or anything) but ourselves?

As far as I know, no one has bothered to find out, but I suspect that individual bloggers, by virtue of the hypertext link, form a collective that does serve the community and affect change.
Consider the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections.
In 2000 e-blogger was just getting started. The political dialog was still shaped by the oligarchy of TV, Talk-Radio and the major newspapers. At that time any mention of blogs was relegated to computer columns and “tech” segments and was discussed in terms of personal entertainment or as a new-fangled marketing tool or consumer resource.
By 2004 the media oligarchy had begun to reference particular blogs as news sources on occasion (most notably the Drudge Report). Some current-affairs shows set aside air time to highlight what was “on the blogs”, though the selections varied widely in what was deemed noteworthy.
Iraq was the dominant topic and discontent was brewing, but the narrative in the traditional media remained the same and Bush returned to the White House.

From 2004 to 2006 the media oligarchy continued to parrot and promote the administration’s and the GOP’s positions. The Republicans and right-wing pundits continued to dominate in air-time and column inches and the message was always the same—tax cuts helped the economy, the economy is strong, jobs are being created, global warming is a myth, we’re winning in Iraq, if we don’t fight them over there, if the Democrats were in control there’ll be more terror attacks and higher taxes, gays threaten marriage, immigrants threaten America and on and on.

But from early 2005 opinion polls showed that the general public was becoming increasingly skeptical of the messages they were receiving. First, opposition to the war in Iraq edged into a slight majority. Then confidence in the economic outlook for workers and the middle class began to wane. Bush’s popularity began to decline as did the assessment of how well he was conducting the war. The administration’s messages were no longer molding the masses’ opinions. What had changed?

Several surveys found that the public was now more reliant on the internet for their news and information, than on TV, radio and the paper Press. But if the transition from TV, radio and newspapers as sources of information was simply a matter of convenience, and as all the big players had a long established web-presence, wouldn’t their audience simply have migrated from the traditional medium to the new medium, from Fox News to Fox News.com, for example? If the information remained the same, and the sources remained the same, opinions shouldn’t have changed. But they did. Why?

Personal experiences at odds with the optimistic assessments of the government and the pundits wouldn’t necessarily reverse an individual’s opinion of the larger picture—particularly as there was no shortage of pundits spouting grand statistics and telling the public that their problems were their own fault and not the fault of policy makers. Those reliant on the traditional media might not have believed everything they were being told, but they had little or no alternative sources of information.
The internet however provides unlimited sources of information which take little effort to discover. Furthermore the internet user can concentrate on a specific issue without distraction, observe discussions and actually participate in them. The passive news consumer becomes an engaged news user and through blog-commenting and blogging itself the ordinary citizen can disseminate news and information as well.

Between 2005 and 2006 opinion polls showed increasing dissatisfaction with not just Iraq, but with domestic policy issues as well—employment, health, environment, security, justice, corruption, energy, immigration, education and civil rights. As the mid term elections loomed, the GOP’s policy priorities were the exact opposite of the public’s priorities. Clearly the Republicans dominance in the mass media and their infamous message discipline had lost its effectiveness. The public was rejecting their message, because in their gradual rejection of the traditional media in favor of the internet, the public had the option to be better informed, and I believe even the small blogs played their part.

A blog such as mine has an irregular readership of perhaps three-dozen people. My readers tend to have their own readerships, and we all have our own blogrolls where some of the links are common but many others unique. The shared interests we have and the unique links we have create networks of exponential scale. New and useful information is disseminated quite easily, new contacts made, new communities, though mutable, established. News and ideas are transferred very quickly, far and wide. Small blogs that discuss large issues can create a “collective conscious” by virtue of their accessibility. Again, I ask; if the move from traditional media to the internet was just a change in the medium, but not the “message”, why does the message no longer hold sway over public opinion?---because the source of information is different, and because the audience is no longer passive. The public doesn’t have to put-up with being spoken-to, they can speak to each other and they can talk back—and that’s what blogs provide.

I think blogs have made a difference, and that’s why I will keep on blogging. And I hope everyone else does too.