When The Levees Broke - An American Tragedy

Wow. It’s hard to say more right after watching one the finest documentaries I’ve had the pleasure of viewing. Just wow.

This is HBO’s When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts.

I’m not a big fan of what I know of Spike Lee the person. He’s displayed a tendency to see race as the defining fulcrum in pretty much everything he comments on. Because of this, I was worried I was going to be treated to four hours of how whitey kept the blacks down once again.

Instead, director Spike Lee has delivered an extraordinary film about one of the most important events of this generation - a wonderfully sophisticated and yet commonly direct review of the natural disaster known by its instigator, Hurricane Katrina. And perhaps his finest achievement is how balanced and nuanced he is in painting this masterpiece. His details are 100, nay, 1000 shades of grey from the broadest spectrum possible. He refuses to gloss over the ugly results of the disaster: the senseless looting, the shootings, the fear that grips individuals when society breaks down. He tells stories of blacks and whites alike, all whipped together by an event far beyond their control, each with differences, to be sure, but each with far more similarities that serve to instruct just how much we have in common with those we distrust as much as those we do.

And then, when we step step back to view the painting as a whole, it becomes starkly black-and-white: a tale of the worst kind of indifference, inaction, contempt, and, yes, racism, by the Bush-controlled federal government possible. This film puts the keystone in the edifice of the truism that the Bush-Republican government currently looting our public treasury has but one constituent: the top 1% of America. It’s simply impossible to conclude otherwise. New Orleans has nothing to offer a Bush America, and, in fact, its blackness is the very thing begging to be erased. The Bush cabal gives doing so their best, responding with the typical slothness and incompetence that has defined George W. Bush’s entire life.

New Orleans is one of the most important cultural cities - some might even argue institutions - of America. Now, a year after the improperly designed-and-built levees failed and let Lake Pontchartrain flood the birthplace of jazz and the defender of “laissez les bons temps rouler”, vast portions of the city look no different than they did just after the flood waters finally receded. Bush continues to pontificate about how much he wants to rebuild the Crescent City, but the federal response remains amazingly intransigent where it’s not completely non-existent. The black population of New Orleans has been dispersed, real-estate speculators and developers are snapping up properties for pennies on the dollar (after which, of course, will come the aid), and the Bush cabal and their dutiful army of corporate bought-and-paid-for Republican hacks in Congress couldn’t be happier.

This week, Bush has embarked on yet another mission to attempt to rewrite history; that he supports rebuilding NOLA and his administration is doing everything it can to make that happen. This is, of course, a lie of the grandest proportion. And while he continues to pour over $2 billion dollars each and every week into Iraq, he refuses to marshal even an ounce of the broad executive powers he’s claimed for himself to help the people of New Orleans, the city itself, and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

You must watch this film. Beginning to end, all four hours at once, if possible. If you don’t get HBO, find someone who does and commandeer the remote. He will thank you when it’s over.

And to director Spike Lee - thank you for writing a history of the aftermath of Katrina that even Karl Rove and all the other professional right-wing corporate/political spinmeisters attempting to convince America that the president is wearing clothes will never be able to remotely touch. Enjoy your Emmy next year.

The Dictatorship Continues

President Decider, with the ever-abiding help of his legal lapdog Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has repeatedly asserted that he can do whatever he wants simply because, well, he’s the president.

Recently, however, the Supreme Court, now further radicalized by President Decider’s own handpicked right-wing legal contortionists, told him that what he almost never hears: the word no. In Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, Bush was informed that he can’t just make up military commissions to try detainees at Gitmo under rules that defy both American and international principles of jurisprudence, rules that only the most nefarious dictator would entertain as fair.

So what’s President Decider’s response? Rather than admit he went too far, he’s going to try to get his Republican-controlled Congress to overrule his normally sympathetic Supreme Court and make what they said was illegal legal. Here’s an explanation from the ACLU, along with an online opportunity for you to oppose this further spiral into an abyss where the rule of law can no longer be found.

In response to its loss in the Supreme Court’s recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, which denied President Bush any authority to create military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees, the White House is now floating a proposal that would ratify its illegal military commissions and deny detainees basic due process protections that are guaranteed under U.S. law.

During Senate hearings yesterday, even the Pentagon’s top military lawyers agreed that no one should be convicted based on secret evidence and that every defendant has the right to be present at his own trial. They also made clear that coerced evidence — such as “confessions” beaten out of witnesses — has no place in any trial.

Your Senators and Representatives need to hear from you that Americans want the rule of law restored. Tell them that any legislation on criminal trials of detainees being held indefinitely must protect the Geneva Conventions and maintain basic due process protections respected by all Americans.

Click on the link above and spend a couple minutes telling your federal representatives that such legislation is unacceptable in America. And while you’re at it, remind them you vote. That’s a fact that has many of them scared witless as November approaches.

Ending The Farce

On July 30th, Democratic Congressional leaders united in demanding President Bush accept the need for a new direction in Iraq. Among these leaders were Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and John Murtha, the Ranking Member of House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and a highly decorated veteran Republicans have repeatedly attempted to smear for having the temerity to point out what a failure the American misadventure in Iraq has been.

It’s hardly a secret that President Decider has no strategy for either stabilizing Iraq so it can function as an independent, sovereign country nor ending American investment in this disastrous experiment in nation-building, an investment that has cost our country over 20,000 troops killed and wounded and $300 billion dollars.

The letter these leaders sent Bush is well worth reading, and you can also add your name and political voice to it. Here are some excerpts.

... U.S. troops and taxpayers continue to pay a high price as your Administration searches for a policy. Over 2,500 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice and over 18,000 others have been wounded. The Iraq war has also strained our military and constrained our ability to deal with other challenges. Readiness levels for the Army are at lows not seen since Vietnam, as virtually no active Army non-deployed combat brigade is prepared to perform its wartime missions. American taxpayers have already contributed over $300 billion and each week we stay in Iraq adds nearly $3 billion more to our record budget deficit.

... (W)e continue to believe that it is time for Iraqis to step forward and take the lead for securing and governing their own country. This is the principle enshrined in the "United States Policy in Iraq Act" enacted last year. This law declares 2006 to be a year of "significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq." Regrettably, your policy seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

We believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq should begin before the end of 2006. U.S. forces in Iraq should transition to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and force protection of U.S. personnel.

It’s time to for the United States to finally recognize the Iraqi invasion for what it is - a woefully misguided attempt by a select few radical right-wing ideologues to impose their screwed-up vision of how things should be in the Middle East by any means necessary, including lying to the American public, using the military outside the defense of our country, and saddling our nation’s children with the debt assumed to execute this catastrophic blunder.

Enough is enough. It’s time to turn Iraq over to Iraqis, brings Americans home to America, and begin to repair the damage done to our country from the past four years of a completely unnecessary war.