Bill Templer writes:

"The Uses of an Earthquake:

Rereading Harry Cleaver"

Bill Templer

Harry Cleaver's extraordinary piece "The Uses of an Earthquake" (Midnight Notes 1988) on the response by Tepito (a barrio in Mexico City) to the 1985 earthquake and its aftermath — and the building of grassroots autonomous self-organization and militancy by the Tepitenos — is especially relevant in the wake of Katrina.

As Cleaver reminds us:

"In dozens of the poorer barrios of Mexico City, the movement of the earth sparked movements of people using the devastation in property and the cracks opened in the structures of political power to break through oppressive social relations and to improve their lives. […] For those of us outside of Mexico, the people of Tepito have an important lesson to teach, not only about the uses of an earthquake, but about the use of crisis more generally. […] We should always be ready to take advantage of any crack or rupture in the structures of power which confine us."

Have a look:

http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/earthqu ake.html

Rarely has the chasm between people and Power in America opened so wide. We need fresh left-green and libertarian argument about the whys and hows of people’s autonomy, far beyond what Naomi Klein sketches in "Needed: A People’s Reconstruction." Many eyes and ears have been opened, however momentarily.

nolympics writes:

"Hurricane Katrina: Our Experiences"
Larry Bradshaw & Lorrie Beth Slonsky

[ An eyewitness report by two paramedics trapped in New Orleans while
attending a conference. ]

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's
store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked.
The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It
was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The
milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree
heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water,
pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's
windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized
and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an
alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and
distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized
and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours
playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

phollings writes:

"Iran Next, By Way of Charleston?"
Peter Hollings

In the summer of 2002 . . . I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He . . . told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' — Ron Suskind

Last January an article appeared in the New Yorker by noted investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch. In his article, "The Coming Wars" Hirsch quotes a intelligence official as saying:

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone," the former high-level intelligence official told me. "Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah — we've got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism."