SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
hypocrisy
Louisiana Climate-Deniers Who Refused Sandy Victims Now Want Federal Flood Relief
Hypocrisy of lawmakers on display following disaster
Aug 23, 2016
As residents of Louisiana this week struggle to recover from "one of the worst floods in modern history," there is a chance that federal aid may not be so forthcoming thanks to a trio of Bayou State Republicans, who back in 2013 voted against helping victims of another storm: Superstorm Sandy.
House majority whip Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. John Fleming, and Sen. Bill Cassidy all cast their votes against the $50.5 billion relief package because of their dogmatic adherence to austerity economics. At the time, Scalise said, "Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive."
But, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik and others noted this week, that decision may come to haunt them.
"No one is saying that the flood-stricken communities of Louisiana don't deserve all the assistance that the U.S. government can provide them," Hiltzik wrote. "But so did the residents of the Sandy zone. How do the lawmakers' 2013 votes to deny relief to those Northeast communities square with their demand for emergency flood assistance now?"
All three signed onto a letter sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month calling for a disaster declaration and requesting "that vital federal resources be made available in an expedited manner."
Though that aid has already been appropriated, the damages are extensive and will likely require supplemental funding from Congress.
"That extra money is going to be needed to cover costs that aren't met by insurance and to provide for other needs, such as providing vouchers to contractors who can gut houses," The Advocate's Jeff Adelson reports. "But its availability is dependent on the willingness of lawmakers to go along with the plan, something that's hardly a sure thing."
While it is too early to assess the total damage from the 1,000-year-flood, Nola.comreported Tuesday:
Gov. John Bel Edwards' office has estimated 60,646 houses were damaged and 30,000 people rescued; other people escaped on their own. The [Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)] says 109,398 people or households have applied for housing help, and 25,000 National Flood Insurance Program claims have been filed.
In a Tuesday op-ed, Louisiana Public Service commissioner Foster Campbell, who is running to replace Republican Sen. David Vitter, pulled no punches in laying blame on the GOP lawmakers.
"[I]f Congress denies Louisiana the aid funds necessary for recovery, it will be because some of our own congressional delegation turned their backs on the victims of Sandy," Campbell said. "Our 'leaders' have forgotten that their actions have consequences beyond election day--they've abandoned common sense priorities for our people to promote the political message of the day."
Not only are Scalise, Fleming, and Cassidy purveyors of "extreme, tea party ideology,"--as Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who lost to Cassidy in 2014, put it at the time--they are also, as Hiltzik wrote
climate change deniers, a sign that they're unable to process evidence in front of their own eyes. Fleming has claimed that evidence of climate change is the product of a "radical environmental agenda." Scalise has griped that it's an effort by radicals "to prop up wave after wave of job-killing regulations that are leading to skyrocketing food and energy costs." Cassidy in 2014 claimed that global temperatures had not risen in 15 years, which happened to be untrue. Remarkably, both Fleming and Cassidy are medical doctors.
As for how the Republicans reconcile their vote on the Sandy package with their current demands for assistance, T.J. Tatum, a spokesman for Scalise, told Hiltzig that the relief claims amount to "Apples and oranges."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Let Orlando Drive Us to Action, not Fear
Jun 21, 2016
As the debate and the raw emotion of June 12 subsides and the discussion moves into a second week, I find myself still reeling. I am not among those grieving the personal loss. My family and friends in Orlando are safe and the depth of my gratitude reflects this haunting and pronounced awareness that it might not have been so. That life must not be taken for granted. The grim reality that the news that shook mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters from their sleep last Sunday could have been mine. I feel this from far away from Orlando, and it is not lost on me that I write this waiting to retrieve a dear friend from the Brussels airport, where yet another tragedy, just months ago, shook so many.
As I consider the grief of those in Orlando, what shakes me the most is the moment those doubtlessly beautiful and brilliant lives were taken. My mind keeps drifting to the last moments for those murdered -- ordering drinks or texting their mothers from bathroom stalls -- and the thought that keeps haunting me is that it was just after "last call." The night was almost over.
The paradox is unrelenting, and it's the moment of their death that compounds my empathy and grief. I know what it feels like to be free on the dance floor at 3:00 a.m., working it out, happy, with friends, lovers and potential lovers. So many of us know that feeling -- that joy, that relative bliss and the vulnerability that comes with it. It is human. I imagine and remember the reprieve from work, from the 9-5, 11-3, or 6 until closing shift, a break from the other complications of life. I also know, as many LGBTQ people know, the sweet feeling of release from having performed our best drag all day to conform to the expectations of the dominant culture. The freedom found in some dark and crowded place where we can shake defiantly, kiss passionately and grind on the dance floor with abandon. The taunts, ridicule, and all manner of violence held at bay by the beats that feel as much within us as round us.
These spaces and moments are not perfect, but in this beautiful and sweet moment we are fully in our bodies, free in our love and desire. The more we've suffered and endured, the more the space is needed. I've always thought the song "God is a DJ" got it right, and the thought of that sacred moment interrupted by evil exacting such an unimaginable pain leaves me breathless. To the 49 souls whose lives have been lost, to the 53 injured and those who escaped, I will never again be able to dance without thinking of you.
When I've danced before, like many of us, I feel the weight of the gay clubs raided, bombed, the people beaten by police, forced to the ground while assaulted with billy clubs and police dogs. I have danced with the awareness that for the freedom we've gained and could express in Orlando, others in many other parts of our world cannot move their bodies so freely, cannot press their bodies against the bodies of those we desire without risking grave consequence. Perhaps that's what makes it all the more painful, the feeling of progress halted in one horrible instant. We had come to not expect such concentrated horror in places like Orlando.
For this reason and many, the shock of the country is understandable, and it is not at all mitigated by the fact that atrocities have happened before or persist elsewhere in similar or greater magnitude. No parent anywhere should have to feel what these parents must now feel. Yet, many have, do and will. As the war planes ready, and the soldiers prepare to be deployed, to think that the actions of this murderer will be cited as justification for the deaths of thousands is simply too much to bear. Perhaps one of the symptoms of the creeping inhumanity of our culture is our inability to mourn.
That grief drives us to action is not wrong, but for it to drive us to fear is dangerous. It is so dangerous because we are so very ill informed; we in the U.S. public are ignorant and some of this ignorance is willed. Thus, it goes that the horrible acts of a demented man serve to confirm the shortsighted convictions of ignorant people. Hypocrisy reigns, as they wrap themselves in rainbow flags to mourn lives they deemed unworthy of rights like hospital visitation.
Then comes the picking apart of the dead, perpetrator and victims. The New York Times publishes headlines like "Gays and Latinos, 2 Cultures Once at Odds," that speak of stitching together. The article eloquently chronicles the pain and homophobia of generations past. Yet this is the way the majority always tells the story, as if to be gay is to surrender your claim to Latino, as if being gay could make anyone any less Boricua, as if any of us with more complex identities could separate these insoluble aspects of our being. There is no Latino community without its LGBTQ members anymore than black or African American could exist without James Baldwin or Bayard Rustin, Alice Walker or Angela Davis. I don't wish to dishonor the victims by pointing out the violence of this reduction. Rather, I find it illustrative of a persistent problem that contributes to the creation of more victims.
Reporters, commentators and the like speak of "separate communities" reducing millions of people -- and in the case of Islam, 1.6 billion people -- to such a simplified caricature that, were the consequences not so frighteningly real in our time, it would be immediately taken as absurd. They say things like "Muslims are responsible," or "Muslims don't like gays," accepting a logic so faulty it's hard to understand how it could be said seriously. They render the Muslim gay, lesbian and trans people who have been among my friends in the United States and Europe invisible. These friends who I have, whom I've loved, also dance, arms extended, shoulders twisting. They also know the freedom of Pulse. It is true that they have struggled within their communities, as many of us have. Yet their struggle is made more difficult, not less, by bigotry and discrimination, bombs and military occupations directed at them. The W.E.B. Du Bois's phrases "What does it feel like to be a problem?" and "double consciousness" serve both LGBTQ people globally and Muslim-identified people living in Europe and the United States well. Du Bois wrote those words in 1903. Why haven't we learned?
It's all too much to deal with really. As I sit and write, my friend, Zoharah Simmons, who happens to be Muslim and feminist -- and a 50-year veteran of the Black Freedom Struggle -- arrives at Brussels Luchthaven. Following up on a conversation about nonviolence from our first event with young Belgians, our second event will be about the role of love and education in organizing for a more peaceful and just world. The airport is repaired, one does not notice the traces of the carnage that was here just three months ago. There is a part of me that wishes that I could just go from here to find a club and dance and forget it all. I'm sure I'll be able to again some day, but right now, my DJ is bowled over and weeping.
Keep ReadingShow Less
American Hypocrisy: Against Muslim Sharia Law at Home, Calls it 'Moderate' in Syria
Oct 20, 2015
I just watched the 5 pm news hour on CNN anchored by Wolf Blitzer, and the editors had decided that the lead was that the Russian bombing in south Aleppo risks creating a new wave of refugees. They also stuck to the cover story that the Russians are only attacking the "moderate rebels."
American bombing of populated areas has never been reported in that way on mainstream cable news. The US bombing thatkilled Sanafi al-Nasr said to have been the no. 2 man in the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the Support Front, was reported on the same show as a great victory. But was he in a completely deserted area? Were any civilians killed around him? It has now come out that most US drone strikes don't even kill the intended target; probably, it is the landlord's family that mainly dies. Was al-Nasr a renter?
Nor did CNN lead with civilian casualties when it covered Israeli PM Netanyahu's bombardment of defenseless little Gaza in the summer of 2014.
Russian bombing of populated areas, like all such bombing, is killing civilians, of course. The point isn't that CNN is wrong but that it is selective.
Whether Russian bombing is more or less egregious than any other can could be debated. I suspect it is less egregious than the Syrian air force, though that wouldn't be saying much. Robert Fisk reports that the Syrian Arab Army is frustrated with the Russians precisely because their air force is very cautious about civilian casualties:
"The Syrians have found that the Russians do not want to fire at targets in built-up areas; they intend to leave burning hospitals and dead wedding parties to the Americans in Afghanistan. This policy could always change, of course. No air force bombs countries without killing civilians. Nor without crossing other people's frontiers. But the Russians are now telling the Turks - and by logical extension, this information must go to the Americans - their flight coordinates."
Note that the Syrian regime has been dropping barrel bombs on civilian areas for years now, and no CNN news hour has begun with this headline. It appears to me that they mind when Russia bombs but not when anyone else does. I should underline that I oppose the Russian intervention in Syria and think it will likely go to dark places. But I also insist that it be reported and analyzed exactly as the actions of the US and its allies are. And this is not the case. The Fisk point of view should be noted, as I just did, even if one has reservations about it (as I do).
As for the "moderate rebels," who have suddenly reappeared in American official discourse only after Russia intervened, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote Congress in the fall of 2013 that he did not want to intervene in Syria because he could not be sure that the victorious rebels would support US interests:
" In an August 19 letter to Representative Eliot Engel, obtained by the Associated Press, Gen. Dempsey effectively ruled out even limited intervention, including US cruise missile attacks and other options that wouldn't require US troops on the ground. "Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides," he said. "It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour. Today, they are not."
What he was saying was that by the middle of 2013, the democratic forces in the Free Syrian Army had either collapsed or their units had joined or closely allied with one of the two major al-Qaeda offshoots, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) or the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra, which reports to al-Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri).
There are many small rebel groups in the hinterlands of Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, as well as in Idlib province, who are not al-Qaeda. But most have become hard-line Salafis a la Saudi Arabia who want Sharia law and allow how they might not kill all the Alawis, Christians, Druze, and other minorities that come under their rule but keep them as second-class citizens under a dictatorship. Some are still Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom want a Muslim state but with elections.
However, these groups are small and not very effective fighters and have been forced to ally with al-Qaeda to avoid being killed by the Syrian Arab Army and in hopes of taking more territory. Moreover, the amount of Syrian territory now held by rebels who want democratic elections and full legal equality for all Syrians would be, in my estimation, zero percent. Almost all Syrian rebels now want a society ruled by Sharia or a hard-line medieval notion of Islamic law. (Sharia itself, as private practice and individual choice, is as inoffensive as Jewish Halakha or Roman Catholic canon law, but making a fundamentalist interpretation of it the basis for national law is a whole set of human rights crimes waiting to happen).
Note the irony. The same GOP politicians who denounce all US Muslims for allegedly wanting to impose Sharia or Muslim law on all Americans are talking about the Syrian rebels who want a Sharia society as "moderates" and "US allies" being targeted by Russia. (The allegation about American Muslims, who, in my experience, love the US Constitution half to death, is incorrect).
When Wolf Blitzer interviewed Rep. Adam Schiff, he asked a leading question about the Russians attacking the "moderate rebels." Schiff concurred that that was what Moscow was doing and spoke of these forces as being backed by US allies in the Gulf. He did, however, veer off script by admitting that Russia isalsoattacking al-Qaeda in Syria. He complained, however, that Russia is not attacking Daesh/ ISIL.
Russia is, of course, occasionally bombing Daesh. However, that organization mainly holds territory in the country's far east, away from the western population centers. It is Syrian al-Qaeda that holds a great deal of Idlib Province and spearheads the Army of Conquest coalition of Salafi jihadis who control the rest of Idlib Province.
So why is it objectionable that Russia is attacking an organization reporting to al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2011? Or that Russia is attacking groups that have political or tactical alliances with al-Qaeda in Syria? Wouldn't that make them like the Taliban in Afghanistan? Is the US wrong to bomb the latter because they were only allied with al-Qaeda?
And how can the same news hour report positively on the killing by American bombing of al-Qaeda's al-Nasr and slam the Russians for bombing . . . al-Qaeda?
This isn't news reporting. This is government propaganda.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular