Category: Society + Environment

What is America going to do without NPR?

Sitting in my car during lunch break, I was listening to This American Life, a weekly program aired every Saturday on NPR. I am glad I caught the first two acts of the program. These are the stories the American mass media never bothered to investigate and report.

The first act was about a woman’s expericne at the New Orleans Convention Center. Other than describing just how terrible the conditions were there, she also shared other stories relating to the situation. The mass media (CNN, NBC, Fox News… etc) has been reporting that some looters were gang members taking advantage of the lawlessness in New Orleans. But what the mass media failed to uncover was what really happened with the looted goods!

The woman described that the only people who were looking after the sick, elderly and women with children were none other than the gang members with guns. Those gang members organized themselves and took on responsibilities to patrol various areas of the Convention Center and made sure that people were being cared for. They looted food, water and juice for children and the elderly. They also wore yellow raincoats so that they could be easily recognized for assistance.

Sounds like they were more organized than any local or Federal law/emergency agencies. It throws a different spin on the phrase “organized crime”.

The second act of the program was about a paramedic who was in New Orleans for a convention. She told of a story of how her group of people were repeatedly lied to about the rescue buses that never showed up by different police agencies (just to get them off of their backs). Worst yet, when they tried to cross a bridge to go to a neighboring town for shelter, the Sheriff Department of that town had already set up a blockade at the bottom of the bridge to stop refugees from seeking shelter in their town.

The Sheriff told them, “I am not going to let our town turn into another Super Dome”. Translation: If you are poor or black, back off. Worst yet, the Sheriffs were pointing their guns at the people and firing warning shots in the air to fend the refugees from crossing the bridge. Later, the woman and her friends went to a different highway to setup temporary shelter. Yet another Sheriff came screaming and ordered them to get off the bridge. Shortly after, a police helicopter came and flew just low enough to the ground to make sure everything was blown away from the camp so that they couldn’t stay. WTF! Assholes. Yeah, “racism-is-not-an-issue” my ass.

All we heard from the mass media is that police were shot at. But now this gave me a different perspective as to why they were. I wonder why the mass media is not picking up stories like this. Instead, it is infacuated with the sensationalism of the politics and the material destruction of the hurricane. Isn’t journalism about investigating the truth from all perspectives?

In many ways, some police officers are really jackasses to begin with. They don’t act like the public servants they were sworn to be. They act more like bullies with a license. They are rude, mean and impolite (ones I have seen and dealt with… not to mention all the stories I have heard from friends and relatives). And oh, don’t forget that 60% of the New Orleans police force who abandoned their posts. Some servants of the public, huh?

中午下課在車上吃午餐的時候, 美國國家公共廣播電台正好在播放 “美國生活週記” 的節目。節目的第一段講到一個婦女在紐奧良會展中心所經歷的一切。最令我覺得感慨的是, 在社會秩序的大亂之下, 幫忙維持秩序的反倒不是所謂人民保姆的警察, 而是平時人人又怕又恨的流氓和小混混。這些混混團結起來輪流巡邏會展中心。掠奪回來的贓物不但不是自己留用, 反而是將所有民生用品公平分發給老人和小孩。這些都是美國媒體新聞不可能花時間和經歷來調查的故事。當地方和聯邦政府都對暴風留下後的災難不知所措的時候, 這些流氓都已義務信的做了這些政府機構該做的工作。

另一段故事是講到警察。另一個婦女和她的朋友想跨過一條連接鄰鎮的公路逃難, 但想不到連公路都還沒上就被一隊鄰鎮的警察在槍口下攔了下來。這警察的其中用意是不希望這些窮困的黑人到多數為白人的地方。後來這些人令外找了一個沒有人的公路搭棚等待救援, 但是想不到又有一堆警察用槍指著強硬他們離開。不久後來了台直升機在半空中故意把他們搭棚的用具等全部吹走以確定這些人不會逗留下來。

什麼世界嘛…. 一場大風吹走了美國掩蓋已久的種族歧視醜象。一場風把隱藏在警察內在的流氓吹翻了, 但卻也把流氓淺在的道德心吹了出來…

New York Times reported (free registration required) the U.S. Department of Education conducted a research to see if bilingual education benefits non-English speaking children to learn English better. Unfortunately the DOE has refused to publish the findings of the data due to the political sensitivity of the issue.

The study, which has been talked about for years, is still not out. But it is known that the researchers conclude that bilingual education is helpful to those learning English. That conflicts with the views of some powerful Republicans and conservatives who view such programs as useless or downright harmful.

Wait a minute… What data does the politicians have to back up their claims? Why don’t they just leave the researchers alone and publish the data independently? This reminds me of earlier controversies on Bush Science and global climate change and how the Republican (specifically Bush) White House tempers with scientific data to suit its own political agenda. Sounds familiar? Wasn’t the Iraqi War started by such information manipulation?

President Clinton faced impeachment hearings over a personal matter. How come the Democrats are sitting on their asses on the biggest con artist/liar of the American political history?

Bush may be a jackass, but the Democrats are truly cowards. They should really collect their balls strengths and look into impeaching Bush for all his wrong doings (which is clearly harming the country). And this would be the perfect time to do it since his popularity is now at its all time low. But then again, maybe they just want to get things done and not get caught up with all the sensationalism of impeaching the biggest moron of all time.

Here’s another thing, whenever there’s something to do with poor or minorities, the Republican politicians are almost always against it in modern America. How come people still keep voting for them? Does that really reflect the views of Americans as a whole? Or does this mean all those elections have been fixed? It’s f*cked up if the answer to either question is true.

Four days after Katrina left a disastrous trail, Federal aid finally arrived in Louisiana and Mississippi. President Bush took a tour of the area (god knows how much trouble local officials went through to secure THAT trip) and was apparently caught with his pants down when a journalist asked him why the aid arrived so late. To that, he answered, “I am satisfied with the speed of response. But I am not satisfied with the results.” Jack ass comment.

Download the video clip (3.2MB)

Kanye West said it best regarding the media coverage:

“I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food.”

That comment took Mike Myers, standing right next to him, by surprised a little. But what really shocked Myers was this one-line comment by West:

” George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Leave it to the Republicans to take care of crisis of any kind, man- or nature-caused. The worst crisis of both types took place under the watch of the same Republican White House. The first crisis (911) took this nation to wars despite lack of evidence (and reliable reports planning for the wars even before 911) . The second crisis, Katrina, left thousands of people dead and dying with federal help arriving too little, too late.

I am willing to bet that if exactly the same thing happened to a rich white, Republican neighborhood in Texas or Florida, federal aid would have arrived within hours. Damn it, I am sick of that jack ass in the White House.

Katrina has been a mess on many different levels.

CNN (in the United States at least) has been reporting it nonstop as if there’s no other news in the world, adhering to the true CNN reporting fashion (and American mass media in general). Every single report after another has been about the aftermath and other related news of Katrina and very little of anything else (on BOTH of CNN’s channels). MSNBC and Fox News are not any better.

It’s f*cked up to see how New Orleans is literally under water, which could have been prevented had not been Bush Administration’s budget cut on flood prevention plans for the city. And like Mark said, the gas prices are now in ridiculous levels. Worst yet, some businesses are totally taking advantage of the situation with price gouging practices (six-dollar-a-gallon gas, $200-motel rooms… etc). Jack asses.

Images of people looting, dying (or just plain dead) and being homeless are disturbing (and the mass media is not shy of showing them repeatedly). To think that this level of lawlessness and the disorganization of the rescue efforts can happen in the United States is hard to stomach. The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, was on the WWL Radio expressing his frustrations, probably the only politician who’s not afraid to question the slowness of rescue deployment to New Orleans. More and more people are beginning to wonder why rescue has been slow in coming. My humble conspiracy theory tells me that a Republican White House most likely doesn’t really give a rat’s ass to a city where majority of the population is African American.

Coming back to the gas prices, Bloomberg has reported:

Heating oil for September delivery climbed 7.64 cents, or 4.2 percent, to $1.913 a gallon. Futures surged to $2.0137, the highest in 27 years of trading on the exchange. Heating oil is 67 percent higher than a year ago.

The profit margin for turning a barrel of crude oil into heating oil and gasoline is $14.79, based on futures prices in New York. That is up 24 percent from Aug. 26 and more than double a year ago.

Hello? Higher profit margins during the time of disaster and war? By any stretch of imagination in the definition of the word “gouging”, the practice by the oil companies and refineries should easily fit within it.

UPDATE: As I was putting Bryan to bed and about to go to sleep (at 4AM!), I caught a section of a CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien grilling a FEMA official as to why people in New Orleans are dying of hunger and lack of medication several days into the disaster when victims of the Southeast Asian Tsunami received air drops of food within two days of the disaster. Kudos to Soledad for asking tough questions.

My favorite quote from that interview:

Do you look at the situation at New Orleans now and say to yourself, “I am proud of what is being done”? Or do you say to yourself, “There’s a lot of room for improvement here”?

That guy is never speaking to the press ever again.