Warning, political. Yet partly funny!
Aug. 31st, 2006 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
buggeryMostly I'm selfishly using all your friends pages to remind myself to add the get your war on webcomic to my webcomics bookmarks when I get back on my own computer. Muahahaha!
But this provides me a convenient opportunity-cum-kick-in-the-pants for a couple of political things I've been wanting to blog about, even though I mostly use my LJ as a fannish vehicle more than as a blog in the loaded sense that term has come to have.
Cut from here down, partly because I get ranty and long-winded, partly for those who get hives from political stuff; I'm hippie enough not to want to harsh anyone's buzz, man.
Firstly, Iraq.
So, not too long ago, I was talking with someone offline about the continuing US-corporation-led occupation of Iraq, and how little pretence is being made even now of even getting conditions for Iraquis as good as they used to be pre-invasion, much less improving the situation. (Never mind getting proper safety equipment for the American soldiers in Iraq so that fewer of them get maimed or killed; apparently the Defense Department is still focussed on finding every last way to cut benefits for active, reserve and veteran soldiers and can't waste time on such fripperies as armour.) And of course we talked about the shameful apathy of many Americans (and to a lesser extent those in other countries who aren't speaking out against the Bush regime and/or its allies in their own governments, and/or who aren't advocating that their own diplomats or military act to end the US colonialist presence in Iraq, because realistically it's hard to imagine an international coalition which could or would stand up to the US and its corporate backers) in doing little to even support the end of the occupation.
Anyway, in the context of things which might shake Americans out of some of that apathy, we discussed deadly-force attacks on civilians and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Which are of course horrifying, but what are the images and events that have *really* stirred up public opinion in the context of bloody, drawn-out conflicts in other parts of the world?
Well, rape. Rape of women, especially. The fact that US soldiers raped and otherwise assaulted innocent civilians at My Lai village and in similar events during the course of the VietnamWar Conflict WAR horrifies sane Americans (and others) to this day. (Unless they don't know what I'm talking about. My Lai? Is that like Friendster? History is boring!) Reports, and the stories told by later-exhumed corpses, of sexual assault and murder of civilian women by different factions in the former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s helped motiviate people to motivate politicians like then-US-President Clinton to at least say appropriate things about putting an end to "ethnic cleansing," even if the military response from the world community was too little and far too late.
And then it occurred to me... how likely was it that there *haven't* been instances of Iraqi women (or girls) being raped by American soldiers?
Now I support our troops in the sense that I want them not to have to be in danger of being shot or blown up for no better reason than (somebody else's) corporate posturing and (somebody else's) macho posturing, and I want them not to be faced with horrible moral dilemmas the likes of which I don't want to even imagine, and I want their families not to lose their homes and health insurance back home because the government allows their employers to stop holding their positions for them if they're required to remain on active duty longer than they signed up for, and I want their families not to be insulted with a reduced death benefit every time one of them does die over there, and I want them and those who have served in the past to have their pathetic and dehumanising VA health-care benefits improved rather than being made into an even greater disservice to the brave men and women who volunteered (or were drafted and chose not to dodge) to -- as they thought -- defend their country; I want them to come home precisely because I *do* support them. (Unless they've committed war crimes, in which case, they go directly to the Hague, do not pass go, do not collect any Vaderland Security bullshit excuse about some kinds of torture are okay.) You won't see me tying any yellow ribbons on anything, though. Substituting symbols for actual thought processes and discourse is kinda what keeps getting the world in a lot of these messes.
But I've digressed. Soldiers. Rape. It's kind of hard to believe that there wouldn't be a single instance of American-male-on-Iraqi-female (as differentiated from what the mass media has reported about abuses at Abu Ghraib) sexual assault, even once, in the last five years. Heck, *just off the top of my head*, there was that scandal 10-15 years ago where US servicemen stationed at a base in Japan were charged with sexually assaulting Japanese citizens who lived near the base. And, well, look at the statistics about how often American men commit sexual assault at home. Sure, I want to believe that our soldiers join up for the right reasons, or at least for mostly good ones, but even mostly-good people can fuck up horribly, even when they *aren't* stuck in a nightmarish situation and trying to cope with levels of stress most of us can't imagine. (Not that I'm suggesting Iraq made them do it, or anything as asinine as that.) People have moral failings. It happens.
Not long after this conversation (the offline one? about apathy re the occupation of Iraq? I know, it seems like that was several rants ago, I guess I need to vent this stuff out more often) I was reminded of it by something I caught on Link TV and went googling. (It's actually easier to find the sort of thing I did using a regular Google search right now, because Google News is inundated with stories about the one case currently being tried both in regular US criminal court and court-martial, the rape and murder of one Iraqi teen and the slaughter of her family.)
It's widely known in Iraq, and in some other parts of the world, that many, *many* Iraqi women and girls have been raped by US soldiers during the occupation, both detainees in places like Abu Ghraib and Iraqi citizens who just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong place in the presence of the wrong soldiers. And yet it's damned hard to find anyone *talking* about the fact that this is going on, much less evidence -- even though photos (and even purported video) are known to exist.
Why? There is still a horrible stigma attached to being a victim of rape, even today, even in the most forward-thinking and equality-minded societies (and no, actually, I don't count America as one of those). It is part of the nature of sexual assault that its victims tend to feel ashamed for what has been done to them, even when they know it is not their fault. And nearly every report of surviving Iraqi women raped by US soldiers in Iraq mentions that they do not want their families to know. Not their husbands, not their siblings, not their parents, not their children. I'm not qualified to express an opinion about the current sociopolitical climate of Iraq and how it relates to such victims' unwillingness to speak publicly or even officially about their experiences of being sexually assaulted. But the lack of women coming forward to accuse soldiers is no excuse for those of us who aren't Iraqis who see armed foreign troops in their home towns every day.
Where are the mass-media reports? CBS apparently showed some of the images of female Iraqi victims of sexual assault at the hands of US soldiers, but since then they've dropped the ball into the Marianas Trench. Where are the other mass-media outlets? Where is the world press? Where are the public figures -- retired or actively employed diplomats, politicians, or military personnel; religious leaders; aid-organisation spokespersons; ethicists; psychologists, sociologists or political-science analysts; medical doctors; authors, actors, musicians? Where is the feminist leaders' outcry?
Where are you?
I'm here, and I'm making a noise. I may not be able to reach more than a few hundred people, and that's if the internet winds are blowing just the right way; but I am damned well not going to sit by and say nothing.
The "katrina" tag link at the bottom of the post will eventually take you to a spiffy site where you can find contact information for American political officials at every level of government, if you click the right links. I may dig the link out and repeat it here if enough people can't find it easily. There's no reason those who are not US rsidents or citizens can't lobby an American politician of their choice on this issue, if one is so inclined.
But don't leave it there. Contact media outlets you use and ask them why they're not investigating or even reporting on news of widespread rape of Iraqi women by US troops. It's harder than it used to be to influence politicians and their activities by force of public opinion alone, but only an informed public can even develop an opinion to express.
And now, on to Hurricane Katrina!
This will be shorter and less ranty. Last year at this time, the Gulf Coast, New Orleans most visibly, was devastated by the combination of Hurricane Katrina, a legacy of shamefully underfunded public works projects which should have protected the area, and an even more shameful federal response to the ensuing natural disaster. (Yes, there were and continue to be problems with state and local response to Katrina, but it was FEMA turning away aid donations, using volunteer aid workers for photo ops instead of the work they volunteered for, and sending aid applications to evacuees' hurricane-destroyed former addresses.) Last year, at this time, I was about to spend two weeks devoting as much time as I was physically and emotionally capable of to finding and disseminating as much information as possible about the horrors unfolding for those caught in Katrina's path.
Today, much of New Orleans is still uninhabitable, waiting to be razed, decontaminated and rebuilt. Today, New Orleans' legacy of corruption and violent crime continues. Today, New Orleans continues to be the focus of media reports and public opinion regarding the Katrina disaster and its aftermath, to the exclusion of the hundreds of square miles around it which were also devastated and still struggle to recover. Today, New Orleans and its evacuees continue to be demonised in the minds of many, blamed for the extent of their suffering and for not having gotten back on their feet already.
Today, many Americans still can't accept that the federal response to Katrina, as regards New Orleans in particular, and the reactions of many non-federally-employed Americans (exemplified by, though not exclusive to, many elected officials, employers and other pre-Katrina citizens of Houston, Texas) are based in part on racism. I'm not an African-American and I'm not brown-skinned, but neither am I so white that I can't see the racist nature of ideas such as, "the evacuees are just lazy and want a handout," "the evacuees were probably on welfare or other assistance before Katrina anyway1," "evacuees are criminal-minded and will rob, rape and/or kill each other or us given the chance," "evacuees were so stupid they lived in New Orleans in the first place and were surprised by a hurricane and a flood," -- I could go on and on, and that's just from an hour or so of surfing around casually for what's being said about what things are like on the Gulf Coast and in places evacuees wound up twelve months later. I could also go through and link each of the paraphrases above to an actual blog or news article stating its position, but 1) I'm tired, 2) there's still a crisis but not an emergency of the sort where every hour counts as was the case for so many a year ago, and 3) related to #2, I expect different people doing their own Google searches or other research to see for themselves what is being reported and opined will lead to more understanding than having everyone who reads this click on links to the same four or five articles I pick out.
Today, were a disaster of even one-tenth Katrina's magnitude -- whether of natural origin, caused by human misjudgment or incompetence, or inflicted by terrorists -- to strike the United States, it would probably be handled no better by FEMA/DHS than Katrina was. And that is truly what horrifies me most.
For those who really need a link to click,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
interdictor (The Survival of New Orleans blog) continues to be a good source for a variety of Katrina-related information, even if I don't always agree with Michael's politics otherwise.
Speaking of which, there's no cut-text for Lebanon (or anything else) because I am currently all ranted out.2
One last note about my choice of icon for this post. I thought hard about using my "Screw zen. Stay angry" Katrina icon. It's not stretching it too far to cover my feelings about Rant the First. But the Katrina icon has been my default for a year now, and is likely to stay there indefinitely, at this point, as I doubt I'll feel it's time to take it down until things are so much better I can barely *imagine* it from here. Plus, the IMPEACH BUSH message needs to stay visible.
It's not too late. It's *never* too late to do the right thing.
Yes, if only Bush is removed, or only Bush and Cheney, or even only Bush, Cheney and everyone else in the chain of succession who's both constitutionally impeachable and guilty of impeachable charges that can be proven (not in Congress, even, just proven, which isn't that hard given how arrogant the fuckers are), even then that still leaves us with hundreds if not thousands of Bush regime appointees and other allies infecting the federal bureaucracy busily categorising golf courses as nature preserves and pouring money into the further crippling of the education system and stuff like that. Yes. Undoing the damage inflicted on America during the Bush regime will undoubtedly take decades. All the more reason to start early.
And as someone currently living in a state whose chief executive (former governor John Rowland -- I know, there've been a spate of governors going down in recent years) was finally ousted from office after years of literally criminal misgovernance, I feel I am qualified to say, yes, it *does* help. We were fortunate to have a statutory successor (Rowland's Lieutenant Governor, Jodi Rell) who was not involved in her boss's corrupt activities (largely related to cronyism, funnelling public funds to pals through means including no-bid contracts, and just plain taking money out of our pocket when it suited him -- nothing the Bush regime is innocent of) and, partly due to the smaller nature of both the state and its government, has made tremendous progress in rooting out and replacing the other crooks appointed by her predecessor.
Either way, our house will need to be cleaned out once the Bush regime is ousted. (Let us all hope that happens smoothly and no later than January, 2009.) Why not get an early start if we can?
Even if it isn't possible to remove enough of the members of the Bush regime that meaningful change can begin before the next election, it remains important to have Congress bring articles of impeachment against Bush at the very least. If we can't manage that, what will history say of us -- and how will we explain it to our grandchildren?
Speaking of *that*, those who want something political they can feel (mostly -- he does explain in some detail which crap it was that drove him to change his mind) good about might check out this Apology From a Bush Voter. It made me feel better.4
1. Part of the reason I got so involved in following, and posting about, the Katrina disaster last year was that, as a disabled person myself, I was acutely aware of the logistical impossibility facing most physically disabled people in Katrina's path even if they wanted to evacuate, and I began looking through reports of what was happening with the specific intent of finding out how many such people were left to drown, starve, dehydrate, or die from lack of medical care or due to violence when most everyone who could get out did so. There still hasn't been near enough reportage in this regard, but as we all know, many people who physically could not walk out were indeed left to die.
2. FOR NOW.
3. Or, for those with no inclination to reproduce or raise children, other young people in our families or of our acquaintance, once a generation born after 2010 grows up.
4. Of course, it also helped motivate me to rant at length...
But this provides me a convenient opportunity-cum-kick-in-the-pants for a couple of political things I've been wanting to blog about, even though I mostly use my LJ as a fannish vehicle more than as a blog in the loaded sense that term has come to have.
Cut from here down, partly because I get ranty and long-winded, partly for those who get hives from political stuff; I'm hippie enough not to want to harsh anyone's buzz, man.
Firstly, Iraq.
So, not too long ago, I was talking with someone offline about the continuing US-corporation-led occupation of Iraq, and how little pretence is being made even now of even getting conditions for Iraquis as good as they used to be pre-invasion, much less improving the situation. (Never mind getting proper safety equipment for the American soldiers in Iraq so that fewer of them get maimed or killed; apparently the Defense Department is still focussed on finding every last way to cut benefits for active, reserve and veteran soldiers and can't waste time on such fripperies as armour.) And of course we talked about the shameful apathy of many Americans (and to a lesser extent those in other countries who aren't speaking out against the Bush regime and/or its allies in their own governments, and/or who aren't advocating that their own diplomats or military act to end the US colonialist presence in Iraq, because realistically it's hard to imagine an international coalition which could or would stand up to the US and its corporate backers) in doing little to even support the end of the occupation.
Anyway, in the context of things which might shake Americans out of some of that apathy, we discussed deadly-force attacks on civilians and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Which are of course horrifying, but what are the images and events that have *really* stirred up public opinion in the context of bloody, drawn-out conflicts in other parts of the world?
Well, rape. Rape of women, especially. The fact that US soldiers raped and otherwise assaulted innocent civilians at My Lai village and in similar events during the course of the Vietnam
And then it occurred to me... how likely was it that there *haven't* been instances of Iraqi women (or girls) being raped by American soldiers?
Now I support our troops in the sense that I want them not to have to be in danger of being shot or blown up for no better reason than (somebody else's) corporate posturing and (somebody else's) macho posturing, and I want them not to be faced with horrible moral dilemmas the likes of which I don't want to even imagine, and I want their families not to lose their homes and health insurance back home because the government allows their employers to stop holding their positions for them if they're required to remain on active duty longer than they signed up for, and I want their families not to be insulted with a reduced death benefit every time one of them does die over there, and I want them and those who have served in the past to have their pathetic and dehumanising VA health-care benefits improved rather than being made into an even greater disservice to the brave men and women who volunteered (or were drafted and chose not to dodge) to -- as they thought -- defend their country; I want them to come home precisely because I *do* support them. (Unless they've committed war crimes, in which case, they go directly to the Hague, do not pass go, do not collect any Vaderland Security bullshit excuse about some kinds of torture are okay.) You won't see me tying any yellow ribbons on anything, though. Substituting symbols for actual thought processes and discourse is kinda what keeps getting the world in a lot of these messes.
But I've digressed. Soldiers. Rape. It's kind of hard to believe that there wouldn't be a single instance of American-male-on-Iraqi-female (as differentiated from what the mass media has reported about abuses at Abu Ghraib) sexual assault, even once, in the last five years. Heck, *just off the top of my head*, there was that scandal 10-15 years ago where US servicemen stationed at a base in Japan were charged with sexually assaulting Japanese citizens who lived near the base. And, well, look at the statistics about how often American men commit sexual assault at home. Sure, I want to believe that our soldiers join up for the right reasons, or at least for mostly good ones, but even mostly-good people can fuck up horribly, even when they *aren't* stuck in a nightmarish situation and trying to cope with levels of stress most of us can't imagine. (Not that I'm suggesting Iraq made them do it, or anything as asinine as that.) People have moral failings. It happens.
Not long after this conversation (the offline one? about apathy re the occupation of Iraq? I know, it seems like that was several rants ago, I guess I need to vent this stuff out more often) I was reminded of it by something I caught on Link TV and went googling. (It's actually easier to find the sort of thing I did using a regular Google search right now, because Google News is inundated with stories about the one case currently being tried both in regular US criminal court and court-martial, the rape and murder of one Iraqi teen and the slaughter of her family.)
It's widely known in Iraq, and in some other parts of the world, that many, *many* Iraqi women and girls have been raped by US soldiers during the occupation, both detainees in places like Abu Ghraib and Iraqi citizens who just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong place in the presence of the wrong soldiers. And yet it's damned hard to find anyone *talking* about the fact that this is going on, much less evidence -- even though photos (and even purported video) are known to exist.
Why? There is still a horrible stigma attached to being a victim of rape, even today, even in the most forward-thinking and equality-minded societies (and no, actually, I don't count America as one of those). It is part of the nature of sexual assault that its victims tend to feel ashamed for what has been done to them, even when they know it is not their fault. And nearly every report of surviving Iraqi women raped by US soldiers in Iraq mentions that they do not want their families to know. Not their husbands, not their siblings, not their parents, not their children. I'm not qualified to express an opinion about the current sociopolitical climate of Iraq and how it relates to such victims' unwillingness to speak publicly or even officially about their experiences of being sexually assaulted. But the lack of women coming forward to accuse soldiers is no excuse for those of us who aren't Iraqis who see armed foreign troops in their home towns every day.
Where are the mass-media reports? CBS apparently showed some of the images of female Iraqi victims of sexual assault at the hands of US soldiers, but since then they've dropped the ball into the Marianas Trench. Where are the other mass-media outlets? Where is the world press? Where are the public figures -- retired or actively employed diplomats, politicians, or military personnel; religious leaders; aid-organisation spokespersons; ethicists; psychologists, sociologists or political-science analysts; medical doctors; authors, actors, musicians? Where is the feminist leaders' outcry?
Where are you?
I'm here, and I'm making a noise. I may not be able to reach more than a few hundred people, and that's if the internet winds are blowing just the right way; but I am damned well not going to sit by and say nothing.
The "katrina" tag link at the bottom of the post will eventually take you to a spiffy site where you can find contact information for American political officials at every level of government, if you click the right links. I may dig the link out and repeat it here if enough people can't find it easily. There's no reason those who are not US rsidents or citizens can't lobby an American politician of their choice on this issue, if one is so inclined.
But don't leave it there. Contact media outlets you use and ask them why they're not investigating or even reporting on news of widespread rape of Iraqi women by US troops. It's harder than it used to be to influence politicians and their activities by force of public opinion alone, but only an informed public can even develop an opinion to express.
And now, on to Hurricane Katrina!
This will be shorter and less ranty. Last year at this time, the Gulf Coast, New Orleans most visibly, was devastated by the combination of Hurricane Katrina, a legacy of shamefully underfunded public works projects which should have protected the area, and an even more shameful federal response to the ensuing natural disaster. (Yes, there were and continue to be problems with state and local response to Katrina, but it was FEMA turning away aid donations, using volunteer aid workers for photo ops instead of the work they volunteered for, and sending aid applications to evacuees' hurricane-destroyed former addresses.) Last year, at this time, I was about to spend two weeks devoting as much time as I was physically and emotionally capable of to finding and disseminating as much information as possible about the horrors unfolding for those caught in Katrina's path.
Today, much of New Orleans is still uninhabitable, waiting to be razed, decontaminated and rebuilt. Today, New Orleans' legacy of corruption and violent crime continues. Today, New Orleans continues to be the focus of media reports and public opinion regarding the Katrina disaster and its aftermath, to the exclusion of the hundreds of square miles around it which were also devastated and still struggle to recover. Today, New Orleans and its evacuees continue to be demonised in the minds of many, blamed for the extent of their suffering and for not having gotten back on their feet already.
Today, many Americans still can't accept that the federal response to Katrina, as regards New Orleans in particular, and the reactions of many non-federally-employed Americans (exemplified by, though not exclusive to, many elected officials, employers and other pre-Katrina citizens of Houston, Texas) are based in part on racism. I'm not an African-American and I'm not brown-skinned, but neither am I so white that I can't see the racist nature of ideas such as, "the evacuees are just lazy and want a handout," "the evacuees were probably on welfare or other assistance before Katrina anyway1," "evacuees are criminal-minded and will rob, rape and/or kill each other or us given the chance," "evacuees were so stupid they lived in New Orleans in the first place and were surprised by a hurricane and a flood," -- I could go on and on, and that's just from an hour or so of surfing around casually for what's being said about what things are like on the Gulf Coast and in places evacuees wound up twelve months later. I could also go through and link each of the paraphrases above to an actual blog or news article stating its position, but 1) I'm tired, 2) there's still a crisis but not an emergency of the sort where every hour counts as was the case for so many a year ago, and 3) related to #2, I expect different people doing their own Google searches or other research to see for themselves what is being reported and opined will lead to more understanding than having everyone who reads this click on links to the same four or five articles I pick out.
Today, were a disaster of even one-tenth Katrina's magnitude -- whether of natural origin, caused by human misjudgment or incompetence, or inflicted by terrorists -- to strike the United States, it would probably be handled no better by FEMA/DHS than Katrina was. And that is truly what horrifies me most.
For those who really need a link to click,
interdictor (The Survival of New Orleans blog) continues to be a good source for a variety of Katrina-related information, even if I don't always agree with Michael's politics otherwise.Speaking of which, there's no cut-text for Lebanon (or anything else) because I am currently all ranted out.2
One last note about my choice of icon for this post. I thought hard about using my "Screw zen. Stay angry" Katrina icon. It's not stretching it too far to cover my feelings about Rant the First. But the Katrina icon has been my default for a year now, and is likely to stay there indefinitely, at this point, as I doubt I'll feel it's time to take it down until things are so much better I can barely *imagine* it from here. Plus, the IMPEACH BUSH message needs to stay visible.
It's not too late. It's *never* too late to do the right thing.
Yes, if only Bush is removed, or only Bush and Cheney, or even only Bush, Cheney and everyone else in the chain of succession who's both constitutionally impeachable and guilty of impeachable charges that can be proven (not in Congress, even, just proven, which isn't that hard given how arrogant the fuckers are), even then that still leaves us with hundreds if not thousands of Bush regime appointees and other allies infecting the federal bureaucracy busily categorising golf courses as nature preserves and pouring money into the further crippling of the education system and stuff like that. Yes. Undoing the damage inflicted on America during the Bush regime will undoubtedly take decades. All the more reason to start early.
And as someone currently living in a state whose chief executive (former governor John Rowland -- I know, there've been a spate of governors going down in recent years) was finally ousted from office after years of literally criminal misgovernance, I feel I am qualified to say, yes, it *does* help. We were fortunate to have a statutory successor (Rowland's Lieutenant Governor, Jodi Rell) who was not involved in her boss's corrupt activities (largely related to cronyism, funnelling public funds to pals through means including no-bid contracts, and just plain taking money out of our pocket when it suited him -- nothing the Bush regime is innocent of) and, partly due to the smaller nature of both the state and its government, has made tremendous progress in rooting out and replacing the other crooks appointed by her predecessor.
Either way, our house will need to be cleaned out once the Bush regime is ousted. (Let us all hope that happens smoothly and no later than January, 2009.) Why not get an early start if we can?
Even if it isn't possible to remove enough of the members of the Bush regime that meaningful change can begin before the next election, it remains important to have Congress bring articles of impeachment against Bush at the very least. If we can't manage that, what will history say of us -- and how will we explain it to our grandchildren?
Speaking of *that*, those who want something political they can feel (mostly -- he does explain in some detail which crap it was that drove him to change his mind) good about might check out this Apology From a Bush Voter. It made me feel better.4
1. Part of the reason I got so involved in following, and posting about, the Katrina disaster last year was that, as a disabled person myself, I was acutely aware of the logistical impossibility facing most physically disabled people in Katrina's path even if they wanted to evacuate, and I began looking through reports of what was happening with the specific intent of finding out how many such people were left to drown, starve, dehydrate, or die from lack of medical care or due to violence when most everyone who could get out did so. There still hasn't been near enough reportage in this regard, but as we all know, many people who physically could not walk out were indeed left to die.
2. FOR NOW.
3. Or, for those with no inclination to reproduce or raise children, other young people in our families or of our acquaintance, once a generation born after 2010 grows up.
4. Of course, it also helped motivate me to rant at length...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 11:39 pm (UTC)Sadly, part of what allows so many people to ignore/remain in denial about the racist nature of our national response to the Katrina disaster is bias in media coverage -- which is of course not unrelated to the Bush regime's spin.