Wednesday, September 7th, 2005And Jay-Smooth breaks down the Kanye reaction.
Hey – Bashy’s coming over here today to film the Clones video. We’re gonna do green screen. I think green screen is just like blue screen. But don’t quote me on that.
PS – Goliath means, like, big, not a nasty bully. You funny mob.
Tuesday, September 6th, 2005
“A Thousand Kisses Deep is that fundamental intuitive understanding, usually wordless, which is beyond opinion and belief. It is the unspoken conviction that things are unfolding according to a pattern that the intellect or the emotions cannot discern. This conviction is accompanied by a loosening of the unconditional affirmation that an individual entity exists and that it determines its own fate”.
Leonard Cohen, October 2nd 2001
So, the elder Bushes were on Larry King.
Barbara, in a 2003 visit to the show, said, “you can criticize me, but don’t criticize my children and don’t criticize my daughters-in-law and don’t criticize my husband, or you’re dead.” Today?
“So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, [she chuckled slightly at this point] this is working very well for them.”
“I don’t see those on the roofs complaining,” said Daddy.
Dead eyes do not see.
And where is Dick Cheney? Well, right now we don’t know. One dreads to think. But we do know, that on the 9th, he will be visiting Fort McMurray’s oilsands facilities, ” to discuss energy security”.
Bwa ha ha ha!
I was rather moved by an email I received today. And I have been being moved a lot lately. This. This. Anyway. I, reprint it here:
Hey ATD,
i know you get a million emails all the time, and maybe you remember me, or not.
i am one person in the millions.
let me tell you i’m a very shy person. i communicate best by email and other things like that.
i just got a new job, and it’s been going well. i work at a printer, doing what i went to school to do. I finally got this perfect job, after eight months of unemployment, getting by on my daughter’s support check and the wonderful guy i live with and love.
this job is really important to me. it’s not like i went and got any job, bagging groceries or some shit.
still, why didn’t i say anything when my boss (guy who owns the place) started listening to this really crass republican talk radio show, when he wanted to know what was going on in New Orleans? why didn’t i say anything when he started saying we should leave the ‘thieves’ to drown? why didn’t i say anything when he quipped that “we ought to just bomb the whole place and start over, build a ‘good’ city!”. “it’s one of the poorest cities in America, the dregs of society live there, nothing but poor people – who cares?”
i just wish i could grab you and shake you and keep asking “why?” until it comes to me.
maybe you could shake me back and it would come to me faster.
i think, maybe, next time… i’ll just say the ‘net-radio is distracting me. maybe he’ll turn it off.
thanks for listening,
Kat
New Hampshire USA.
If any of you have friends, family members, or colleagues, that think as does Kat’s boss, please show them this. I beg of you. I do not believe that anyone who has not been rendered dead by those that seek to enslave us can see this and hold those opinions, let alone their tears.
Later, Kat sent me the following story, removed from the Kansascity.com website. (Kansas is home to the school-teaching of “Intelligent Design”, tragically enough)
A lot of stories are being “removed” at the moment.
I cannot imagine why. It seems almost as odd as FEMA cutting people’s emergency communications lines (see yesterday’s post).
Forsooth:
French Quarter Holdouts Create ‘Tribes’
By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS – In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming “tribes” and dividing up the labor. 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.”
While hundreds of thousands fled the below-sea-level city before the storm, many refused to leave the Vieux Carre, or old quarter. Built on some of the highest ground around and equipped with underground power lines, residents considered it about the safest place to be.
Katrina blew off roof slates and knocked down some already-unstable buildings but otherwise left the 18th and 19th century homes with their trademark iron balconies intact. Even without water and power, most preferred it to the squalor and death in the emergency shelters set up at the Superdome and Convention Center.
But what had at first been a refuge soon became an ornate prison.
Police came through commandeering drivable vehicles and siphoning gas. Officials took over a hotel and ejected the guests.
An officer pumped his shotgun at a group trying to return to their hotel on Chartres Street.
“This is our block,” he said, pointing the gun down a side street. “Go that way.”
Jack Jones, a retired oil rig worker, bought a huge generator and stocked up on gasoline. But after hearing automatic gunfire on the next block one night, he became too afraid to use it — for fear of drawing attention.
Still, he continues to boil his clothes in vinegar and dip water out of neighbors’ pools for toilet flushing and bathing.
“They may have to shoot me to get me out of here,” he said. “I’m much better off here than anyplace they might take me.”
Many in outlying areas consider the Quarter a playground for the rich and complain that the place gets special attention.
Yes, wealthy people feasted on steak and quaffed warm champagne in the days after the storm. But many who stayed behind were the working poor — residents of the cramped spaces above the restaurants and shops.
Tired of waiting for trucks to come with food and water, residents turned to each other.
Johnny White’s is famous for never closing, even during a hurricane. The doors don’t even have locks.
Since the storm, it has become more than a bar. Along with the warm beer and shots, the bartenders passed out scrounged military Meals Ready to Eat and bottled water to the people who drive the mule carts, bus the tables and hawk the T-shirts that keep the Quarter’s economy humming.
“It’s our community center,” said Marcie Ramsey, 33, whom Katrina promoted from graveyard shift bartender to acting manager.
For some, the bar has also become a hospital.
Tryphonas, who restores buildings in the Quarter, left the neighborhood briefly Saturday. Someone hit in the head with a 2-by-4 and stole his last $5.
When Tryphonas showed up at Johnny White’s 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.
The neighbors knew the man only as Jersey.
Tribe member Dave Rabalais, a clothing store owner, said he thinks the authorities could restore utilities to the Quarter. But he knows that would only bring “resentment and the riffraff.”
“The French Quarter is the blood line of New Orleans,” he said. “They can’t let anything happen to this.”
On Sunday, the tribe of 12 became a tribe of eight.
Four white tour buses rolled into the Quarter under Humvee escort. National Guardsmen told residents they had one hour to gather their belongings and get a ride out. Four of the tribe members decided to leave.
“Hallelujah!” Teresa Lawson shouted as she dragged her suitcase down the road. “Thank you, Jesus!”
For Mark Rowland, the leaving was bittersweet.
“I’m heart-broken to leave the city that I love,” Rowland said as he sat in the air-conditioned splendor of the bus. “It didn’t have to be this way.”
The article was saved by Kat’s people on “an Ishmael posting forum”.
“Have you ever read Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael”?” asked Kat.
I have not.
Perhaps I shall.
Today James and I recorded the vocals for Bankers, my song about Those. It will be but a drop of blood in a piss-spoiled ocean. I am just one person in the millions. And so are you. Together we are goliath.
Monday, September 5th, 2005
“As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of ever sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.”
Leonard Cohen, October 2nd, 2001
“We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…
I want to give you one last story and I’ll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.”
Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, New Orleans, on Meet the Press yesterday, from the transcript.
Nothing left to do
when you know that you’ve been taken.
Nothing left to do
when you’re begging for a crumb
Nothing left to do
when you’ve got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come.
Leonard Cohen, Waiting For The Miracle
If you were a heroin addict, you’d be smashing shit within a day of a New Orleans.
If you were a boozer, maybe a little longer.
If you were just anybody, two or three days would do it.
If you were a baby, or an old person in need of medicine, you’d just die quietly, in the piss and the shit, like a good citizen.
I hear Condoleeza Rice went to see Spamalot the other day, while our people rotted. She didn’t get to see it, though. She was booed out of the place.
So it goes.
I fell asleep this morning to the sound of genocide, coming out of the computer, and the television.
And I awoke today to the sound of protest, coming through my window.
I heard When The Saints Go Marching In, and repeated chant: “Drive out the Bush machine. New Orleans can’t wait. The world can’t wait.”
Out my window, marching down Broadway, were a hundred or so people. I put on a hat and some trousers and went outside. They waved banners, sang, and shouted as they marched along the road, into the oncoming traffic, to Union Square. I was overcome, and wept, quietly.
I talked to some people, and helped hand out flyers. There is to be a march on November 2nd. Soon sirens waliled and blooped, and the Square was surrounded almost entirely by a wall of police. Their mood was not as ugly as I have seen, in the main, although something happened behind a tree which I did not see, and two ambulances soon came.
Jokingly, a few days ago, I quipped that they’d be getting in Haliburton for the New Orleans “clean up.”
Guess what?
I got an email from someone calling themself “trueplaya”, that read
“Akira… would you shut the fuck up about depressing shit and write about Jimmy Ivine [sic] or something?
Oh, the hilarity.
You cannot stand what I’ve become.
You much prefer the gentleman I was before.
I was so easy to defeat.
I didn’t even know there was a war.”
Leonard Cohen, There Is A War
One of the lucky ones, who only lost the contents of their home to the floods, noted last night – at the end of a missive adding to The Red Cross’ report that the National Guard are refusing to let supplies into in New Orleans:
“…part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke – they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house – not Katrina, but our government .”
The picture, if you’re wondering, I did earlier, and it made me smile, and it made me a bit sick. It’s from the animated Clones video, marching on. We started filming the live action video yesterday. I was running round the Bronx in a huge orange jumpsuit. So it goes.
I saw you this morning.
You were moving so fast.
Can’t seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much.
There’s no one in sight.
And we’re still making love
In my secret life.
I smile when I’m angry.
I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do
To get by.
But I know what is wrong,
And I know what is right.
And I’d die for the truth
In my secret life.
Hold on, hold on, my brother.
My sister, hold on tight.
I finally got my orders.
I’ll be marching through the morning,
Marching through the night,
Moving cross the borders
Of my secret life.
Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
And the dealer wants you thinking
That it’s either black or white.
Thank g-d it’s not that simple
In my secret life.
I bite my lip.
I buy what I’m told:
From the latest hit,
To the wisdom of old.
But I’m always alone.
And my heart is like ice.
And it’s crowded and cold
In my secret life.
Sunday, September 4th, 2005
“If the CIA slips me something and next week you don’t see me, you’ll all know what happened”
- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin
Big up Kanye.
So big up Kanye. You were the first person I have seen express actual emotion over the genocide currently being executed here in the United States Of America. None of this dead eyed, fake ass, truth-avoiding bullshit.
Watch the thing. Look at his eyes! It is All about the eyes. There lies truth. His eyes were red, wet, like mine, he was shaking, he was stuttering, and he was not about to CloneRead no Skygoddamned autocue.
He hasn’t been coopeted. He has reached the higher echelons of the “alternative elite” they turned music into, and he has kept his humanity. He spoke the truth, that everybody else in his position was either too scared too, or too dead to. The truth.
They are out there shooting at our people. Our hungry ass, terrified, desperate, abandoned people. And the media is making out like they some Skygoddamned savages, who deserve all they get.
And George Bush does not give a fuck about black people.
Now I’m hearing these arguments, “he did it to sell records”, “its a poor thing, not a race thing.” Yadda yadda.
1: Dixie Chicks.
2: The vast majority of those left to rot in piss and shit have been black.
Now, it is a poor people thing. This NeoCon freakshow has deliberately engineered a huge slave class, by driving illegal immigrants over the border to work for peanut shells, by destroying industry, by raping welfare, outsourcing, downsizing, privatising. They don’t care if your Mexican, African, European – they will pimp your ass until it breaks and it bleeds.
But, since Abe freed those black slaves to wander the streets homeless, they have been Poor. And before that they was Slaves.
Racism never went anywhere. It just had to change its face a little. The end result is the same.
Even Fox can’t lie All day. Watch this! Watch it!
If we don’t all take whatever opportunity we have to speak the truth, and say what we actually fucking feel, not what we think is appropriate, about this genocide, we are SLAVES. Our fate is a big dome full of piss and shit and death. And I ain’t fucking kidding. If those goons see they can get away with this, do not doubt it will happen again, and soon.
From the website of the American Red Cross, their disaster FAQ:
Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
Saturday, September 3rd, 2005
“I’m not a Christian but I respect Jesus for saying that no one is His true follower who does not do right by ‘the least of these’.”
Cassandra, writing on Jeff Wells’ blog
“Ring the bells
That still
Can ring”
Leonard Cohen, Anthem
In a dramatic turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance… However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid. Offers have been received from Russia, Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Venezuela, Jamaica, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, NATO and the Organization of American States, the spokesman said… Still, Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”
“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”
MSNBC
As tens of thousands of our people rotted in that Skygoddamned dome, as bombs tore across the riverfront, as the National Guard finally ran in, guns blazing, as that poor mayor called out Bush, as the aforementioned Resident told our brothers and sisters to “hang in there”…
As the truth of this administration’s grotesque, inhuman contempt for our people was made clear for all to see, as genocide made America its home:
I was having a wonderful time in New York City.
New York doesn’t have long, by the way. Have a look into how this city is powered. And how thin a thread that power hangs upon. And consider who’s famous former “President” father made the decision not to fix it, and instead, spent the money on slaughtering Iraqis, way back at the dawn of the nineties. New York is one explosion away from becoming New New Orleans.
These are ugly thoughts, on so beautiful a day, but that is what we must all accept, and deal with. This is happening, and will continue to happen. This administration must be impeached. The Federal Reserve must be abolished. We need to listen to our scientists and our historians and our thinkers, not these freakish, loud, bullies. We need drastic change, otherwise it is all over for most of us. I want to live, and I want to spend my life with you, all, because I love you, and there are monsters in suits and ties who think of us as nothing but cattle, or less than cattle, as ants, as bugs, as parasites. They will let us burn in the fire.
This does not have to happen. We have more power than we know. I am filled with sadness in here with this computer, then I step outside onto Broadway and am filled with wonder, as I walk amongst my fellow man. It is the eyes. Our eyes meet, and we smile, we nod, we acknowledge our shared humanity with a few words. The proof, and the truth, of our vast power is plain to see in our eyes.
There is nothing in the eyes of those that have denied our people the help they need, and as people, have a right to. Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rice, Robertson, O’Reilley, the dead masks of the evil that seeks to throw us into bondage. They are dead, they are not us. We love. This is what we do. We have not gotten this far with war, and hate, and lies. We got here with us, and with love. It is this that will get us out. I believe that. I don’t believe we are doomed, for a second now, because I step into the street and eyes of people whose stories I will never know meet mine, and it is a power so vast I am awed, I am undone, and I am more sure now than ever that there IS “a crack in everything”, and the light will come.
Today I exercised hard at ten am, and was sick in the road because of it. Now my muscles hurt but I feel fantastic. I laid down the vocals for Thanks For All The AIDS this afternoon, bought attire for tomorrow’s Clones video shoot, and hooked up with Emile, who makes huge, beautiful music. I try to do that. So we are going to make some huge, beautiful music.
Goodnight, oh my peoples. Sweet dreams be thine. The future is ours.
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us … And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
– Nelson Mandela.
And, like Bill and Ted said: we should all be excellent to each other.
Try telling that to Cheney. 100,000 dead niggers? So what! 400,000? Now, that’s a result.
I keep thinking of all my – our – people rotting up in that cursed superdome. What is it, five days now? That freak child president playing fucking guitar on television. They’ve known this was going to happen since August 2nd. Go read LaRouche’s take. Dude speaks truth. Aside from the FACT that this wouldn’t be happening, like this, had that crazy Bush administration not taken all the money out of New Orleans flood prevention programme and stuck it into slaughtering Iraqi babies and “destabilising China”. And if there was, like, a National Guard, not currently dodging fucki
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