Rev. Jackson Makes Second Rescue Mission into New Orleans

CHICAGO – One day after rescuing about 450 students stranded in dorms and on thoroughfares in New Orleans, Rev. Jesse Jackson returned to the predominantly black city with more buses to transport some of the hungry and desperate citizens who remained in the city five days after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

“President Bush has come very late with very little,” said Rev. Jackson, describing the dire scene in New Orleans as looking like “the hull of a slave ship.” “I’m leaving once again from the City of New Orleans and there still is no plan to rescue, nor is there a plan to relocate them. The president has not put together a federal program or a coordinated effort to address this massive crisis. Mr. Bush came today and did what can be described as a ceremonial tour of the area. He would not touch the ground in New Orleans where suffering black people are dying”

Ending the Impunity of the Bush White House

The man in the Oval Office is fond of condemning “killers.” But his administration continues to kill with impunity.

“They can go into Iraq and do this and do that,” Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said on Sept. 1, “but they can’t drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It’s just mind-boggling.”

The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare.

The problem is not incompetence. It’s inhumanity, cruelty and greed.

Media outlets have popularized some tactical critiques of U.S. military operations in Iraq. But the administration is competent enough to keep the military-industrial complex humming. It’s good at generating huge profits for “defense” contractors, oil companies and the like. First things first, and first things last.

Why shore up levees when the precious money it would take can be better used for war in Iraq? Why allow National Guard units to remain

Global Warming and Widespread Blackouts Are Just as Deadly as Terrorism

Two years ago this month, a Blackout plunged 50 million people in Northeastern U.S. and the Canadian province of Ontario into total darkness for more than a day, wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Now, it's the devastation in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi wrought by Hurricane Katrina that has killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

The common thread in both disasters is that energy and environmental experts sounded early alarms about the potential for catastrophes like this unless the White House immediately took the necessary steps to upgrade the country's aging power grid to stave off widespread power failures, and in the case of Hurricane Katrina, backed the Kyoto protocol, which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for severe climate changes that is no doubt the reason Katrina turned from a relatively small hurricane to a destructive monstrosity due to high sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Weather Service.

While supporting the Kyoto treaty would not have done anything to prevent an act of God like Hurricane Katrina or the destruction left in its

Solidarity Forev ... ooops, make that, Solidarity Later

Organized labor is weak, but unorganized labor is a hell of a lot weaker. That's what's splitting the AFL-CIO. You may think this is none of your beeswax, but if you work in this country, you owe labor, big time. And I'm talking to you, white-collar worker.

This is not about the old stuff ? 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, health benefits, safety regs, etc. This is about right now, today. The money that controls this administration is out to screw you ? it's your pension on the line, your salary on the line and your job on the line. If your company can replace you cheaper, you are gone, buddy. And this administration is pushing jobs overseas just as fast as it can.

The split is not a case of good guys versus bad guys ? it's good guys versus (we hope) some better guys.

Real consequences

AUSTIN, Texas -- Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

New Orleans after Katrina

Tuesday night, as water rose to 20 feet through most of New Orleans, CNN relayed an advisory that food in refrigerators would last only four hours and have to be thrown out. The next news item from CNN was an indignant bellow about "looters" of 7-Elevens and a Wal-mart. The reverence for property is now the underlying theme of many newscasts, with defense of The Gap being almost the first order of duty for the forces of law and order. But the citizens looking for clothes to wear and food to eat are made of tougher fiber and are more desperate than the polite demonstrators who guarded The Gap and kindred chains in Seattle in 1999. The police in New Orleans are only patrolling in large armed groups.

IRAQ

Death by Public Relations

WAR MADE EASY
How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
By Norman Solomon
John Wiley & Sons ISBN 0-471-69479
$24.95 314 pages

In "War Made Easy" Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of an independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression. Although strictly focusing on the shameless history of media cheerleading for the principal post-World War II American wars, invasions and interventions, he calls into question the entire concept of the press as some kind of institutional counterforce to government and corporate power.

Rev. Jackson comments on personal meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

Rev. Jackson offers support for Chavez’ proposal to provide low-cost heating oil to US communities

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, issued the following statement today, following his personal meeting with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.  Following conservative Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson’s recent call to assassinate the  Venezuelan President, the two leaders discussed Venezuela’s role in the world, moving toward diplomacy and dialogue between the US and Venezuela, and President Chavez’s proposal to provide low cost heating oil to poor communities in the U.S.

Members of the Rainbow/PUSH Delegation to Venezuela, including son Jonathan and daughter, Jacqueline; Professor Ron Walters, and Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis, held a wide ranging discussion with President Chavez this afternoon.  Rev. Jackson’s statement follows:

The mothers are coming!

"Sarah,  if the people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets  and lynched."
-- Bush 41 to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992

It's an amazing thing. Doctors' offices in New York and Washington will likely be standing-room-only in a couple of months. I can see it now -- the look on a nurse's face when she asks the vacuous, target-eyed media twits when they are "due," and each one chirps happily, "May 25th!" As she comes to the end of the line, the nurse notices a slender, auburn-haired woman fast asleep, her lips slightly open in a half-smile. She is snoring gently.

Hesitating to awaken her, the nurse spies a blonde whom she recognizes as CNN's "White House" correspondent, Dana Bash, "What about her?" the nurse asks Bash, pointing to the woman. "Is she due on May 25th too?"

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