Strasse kunst: Weimar

We're in exciting, grimy Berlin now, living for the next 10 or so days in the bohemian/Turkish enclave, East Kreuzberg, and thanks to our host (we're renting from a guy name Jeff who, I think, is an expat American and a sound tech for a band that's on tour, but it's so cheap—200 Euros for three weeks—that it's almost like he's hosting us) I've got full-time internet access. So, some pix from Weimar. These were found on a wood fence behind the Bauhaus.

More street art: Weimar

This one, image borrowed from the Wooster Collective, shows the gray wall of the new library at the Bauhaus University. I've passed it each day I've been here and thought it a rather lame piece of public art, but Wooster tells me different: protesting the bland gray wall, someone aimed 10 eggs--egg matter sucked out via hypodermic needle and replaced with paint--at it, and followed it up with an original artwork label:

Street art: Weimar

Shifting the blame.

I'm pretty much off the political beat while I'm on vacation, but this is too noteworthy to overlook: a leaked Department of Justice document suggests the Bush administration is seeking to blame environmentalists for the devastation of Katrina. Seems to me like a more likely culprit is the "tax-cut zealotry" of the GOP.

News from over here:

German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is using an image of five flag-draped coffins bearing US soldiers killed in Iraq in his re-election posters. The tagline, "She would have sent soldiers," is targeted at his conservative challenger Angela Merkel. "As long as we are in office, German foreign policy will be made in Berlin and not anywhere else," said Schroeder at a rally this week, adding that Merkel lacked the strength to stand up to "the kind of pressure" he had to face in opposing involvement in Iraq. I'll see if if I can snap a photo of a poster when I'm in Berlin next week.

Berlin bound.

I'm heading to Germany for a few weeks—Weimar, Frankfurt, and Berlin—so posts will be less frequent and will likely take a more touristy direction. Auf wiedersehen.

[Image: Benjamin Raimbault]

The Secret Diagrams

German cartoonist Gerhard Seyfried has a curious part of his website, The Secret Diagrams. A comic mapping of themes, nefarious organizations, and Bush cronies, it vaguely reminds me of the late Mark Lombardi's hand-drawn maps of business relationships, including the Bush family's ties to the bin Ladens (below). I suspect Lombardi's work was more painstakingly researched (a show of his work at the Whitney after 9/11 earned a call from the FBI, who wanted to view the works).

G.O.Pee.

From Reuters, a NOT-Photoshopped photo taken over the shoulder of George W. Bush. The note, to Condi Rice, seems to ask permission for a presidential potty break. (Verified by Editor & Publisher.)

Fiscal conservatives? Compassionate conservatives? Patriots?

No, no, and no.

Get this: the Iraq War has cost nearly $200 billion so far and doesn't show any signs of letting up. A deadly hurricane has devastasted the Gulf Coast, and the cost of rescue, relief, and rebuilding will likely exceed $100 billion in government funds. In response, what do the controlling party in Congress want to do?

Expand tax cuts for the rich!

House Republicans promise that the dividend tax cut and the capital gains tax cut will both be extended. As Dennis "Don't Rebuild NOLA" Hastert says, we really need more tax cuts to "stimulate the economy," a tactic that, if I recall correctly, failed miserably last time it was used to justify padding the pockets of the rich when the rest of the country was facing dark days.

(Thanks, Jim.)

Media speaks truth!

(From jzawodn, via John K.)

Location, location, location.

(Via w-m-m-n-a.)

NOLA victims may be victimized by bankruptcy laws.

Hurricane Katrina's victims may be the first casualty of bankruptcy reforms, foisted upon us by Bush, the GOP, and the credit card industry several months ago, says Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI). The new rules require, among other mandates, a "means test" for bankruptcy filers--proof that those filing for protection don't have means to pull out of their debt--which may prove problematic for people whose records (or assets) may not be located by the time the new rules go into effect October 17. Feingold says hurricane victims should be exempt from the rules for one year, an idea opposed by the Republicans and chairman of the judiciary committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).

Presidential priorities: power to MY people first.

Before Bush finished his vacation, the White House had called power utilities in hurricane-struck areas to repair fuel piplines that supply the northeast. "That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt."

Meta: mediating the mediation

"Product placement, already common in TV programs, movies and video games, now is being seen in yet another medium: commercials. Marketers are pushing products in other marketers' commercials."

(Via the MIT brand lab.)

Good.

FEMA chief Michael Brown resigned. About two weeks too late, if you ask me.

His replacement, R. David Paulison, actually has experience in emergency management--three decades worth. But is it enough? Keith Olbermann reports that Paulison was the guy whose expertise had so many flocking to hardware stores to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting in preparation for terrorist attacks.

A poster for NOLA.

To raise funds for Katrina's victims, Northland Poster Collective is selling this poster, desiged by Ricardo Levins Morales. Under ten bucks, good poster, great cause. Buy one here.

[If you can't read it, the text says, "If living were a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die."]

Lenticular versus testicular.

Working in a marketing department, I get lots of catalogues for schwag you can put your logo on: keychains, lenticular prints, change purses, pencils, inflatable animals, deal-a-meal–style data charts, etc. But, as it's a marketing department in a contemporary art museum, nothing seems appropriate for our logotye. I mean, what giveaway tchotchke clearly says Cremaster? (For those not in the know, that's the name of artist Matthew Barney's five-film series; it's also the name of the muscle that raises and lowers the testes when air temperature changes).

Well, here's the closest. From BoingBoing, a giveaway item that's truly appropriate—painfully so—to the occasion:

The epitome of Freedom.

From yesterday's "Freedom Walk":

One man who registered for the walk was detained by a Pentagon police officer after he slipped a black hood over his head and produced a sign that read, "Freedom?"

The man was removed from the Pentagon registration area, handcuffed and taken away in a police car. It was not clear whether he was charged or simply detained and the police did not respond to messages requesting more information.

Ann Grossman, 56, from Silver Spring, Md., also carried a homemade sign, which read "Honor Our Troops, Respect Their Lives," that was confiscated by police at the Pentagon.

(Via Americablog.)

NOLA doctors euthanized patients.

Those who worked feverishly to prevent Terri Schiavo's death, but sat on their hands while New Orleans flooded, should consider this:

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

More.

The Iraq War March (which happens to fall on 9/11)

We've already got solemn days of remembrance and recognition for the military: Armed Forces Day (May 21), a Veteran's Day (November 11), and a Memorial Day (May 30). So when the organizer of today's military-style Freedom March argued on NPR today that politics had nothing to do with it, it seems a bit disengenous. But, we don't need to speculate; Mark Robbins from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management makes the flawed link--that foreign wars could've prevented an attack on our soil: "To commemorate the events of 9/11, especially for the men and women overseas who are making sure 9/11 doesn't happen again." For the families of 9/11's victims, it's too bad the Bush administration can't refrain from leveraging a grief that's probably still potently raw.

Other perspectives on the 9/11 anniversary:
Bill Moyers on "9/11 and the Sport of God"
Mark Benjamin for Salon: "Let's Iraq and roll: In a surreal twist on the public demonstration, the Pentagon put on a show Sunday to mark 9/11 and honor U.S. troops serving in the war"
Michael Moore: "A Letter to All Who Voted for George W. Bush"

New, improved beggar signs.

Also from Populism, Jani Leinonen's Anything Helps is "a line of plastic wall signs designed by authentic beggars. The signs have been collected from real beggars in San Antonio (USA), Frankfurt (Germany) and Helsinki (Finland). The production of the signs has been outsourced to the home country of the beggar to insure the authenticity. The beggars were Kurdistanian (in Germany), Russian (in Helsinki) and american (in San Antonio). 10% of each purchase goes to the poor."

Danes for Bush!

Flying the banner "Save us from Old Europe," Danes for Bush, a two-man Denmark-based NGO traveled the US during the 2004 elections in support of extending Bush's rule. As their site says, "Today it is obvious that Denmark chose the right side of the playing field."

The group is another fiction created by artist Jakob Boeskov, whose ID Sniper, a proposed rifle that would shoot GPS surveillance chips into the flesh of unsuspecting citizens from a distance, was featured in China's biggest weapons fair, China Police 2002. Danes for Bush, which is featured in the multi-venue exhibition Populism 2005, includes a comprehensive visual identity that includes everything from campaign buttons to an over-sized, inflatable pig mascot.

Some good news.

It looks like the death toll in New Orleans won't near the 10,000 figure predicted by the mayor and others. While no count exists yet, NOLA homeland security chief Terry Ebbert says, "Numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire projections of 10,000."

And: Al Gore, activated by a request from a neurosurgeon who operated on the former VP's son after a car accident in 1989, airlifted 270 people from New Orleans on September 1. By using his influence to cut through red tape, and paying $50,000 for each of the flights, sick patients from Charity Hospital were evacuated to Knoxville.

Katrina update.

• Tom DeLay wondered if being a hurricaine victim is "kind of fun." So he asked some of them.

• As Bush works to link Katrina and 9/11 (I wonder if Katrina's victims will get the massive government payout that WTC families got?), the Freedom March is another vehicle in the fake connector between 9/11's victims and the war: when you walk, something you can only do if you pre-register and stay within the fences, you get commemorative military style dogtags.

• Bush loves the poor of New Orleans. Which is probably why he signed an executive order temporarily repealing the minimum wage there. (He must be reading from John Stossel's playbook. The 20/20 correspondent says that "price 'gougers' save lives.")

• As Republican Rep. Richard Baker of Baton Rouge proclaims, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did," a Florida gated community is refusing to allow its residents to house (most-likely-black) hurricane victims.

• And unlike Dick Cheney (who told Pat Leahy where to stick it on the Senate floor, the guy who told Cheney to "go fuck" himself yesterday--Dr. Ben Marble, an emergency-room MD who lost his house in the hurricane--was allegedly cuffed and detained for his free-speech foray (he tried to sell footage of his voiceover on eBay, but the auction site pulled the plug).

NRA silent as guns are seized.

As police in New Orleans begin confiscating private citizens' guns, the NRA isn't talking about their cold dead hands anymore. In fact, they aren't talking about anything, as TalkLeft reports.

Update 9/12: With Bushian tardiness, the NRA leapt (slow-motion-like) to the defense of NOLA's gun owners, three days late!

Cheneyed!!

The master of civility gets a dose of his own medicine. Video here.

(Thanks, Jim.)

The Nero Meme.

The image of George W. Bush honkytonkin' with country singer Mark Wills while New Orleans residents were dying on August 30 is sure to become one of the defining images of his presidency. Bloggers have been juxtaposing the image alongside photos of what was happening in Gulf states during the same hours, but now the meme is taking on a new pictorial form: Photoshoppers are editing Bush into the scenes of suffering—to devastating effect. The fusion seems to say something that, to me, feels pretty true about this president's frivolity and focus, and the feverish spin that's following the White House's early inaction after Katrina seems to bear it out.


I've seen several such images, but can't find them now. If you spot more, please email me the link.

Emergency radio.

Our friends at the Prometheus Radio Project (who were involved with Radio Re-volt last summer) are taking their fight for lower-power, community FM into a place where it's needed most, the survivor's camp at the Houston Astrodome. Prometheus has petitioned the FCC—and been granted, with almost unprecedented speed—the right to build a 30-watt radio station in the dome to provide critical information to people displaced in the area. An audio bulletin board, of sorts, it'll broadcast news and logistical information about finding resources and reuniting with family members, etc. One stumbling block: a Harris County official is requiring that volunteers provide 10,000 radio recievers before they are allowed to begin setup of the station equipment. Click here to learn about donating radios or to donate funds.

Hear Prometheus' Hannah Sassaman discuss the project on Democracy Now!

(From Off-Center.)

In the right light.

While some of the photos inside the New Orleans Superdome when it was housing hurricane victims bordered on the mystical, BAGnewsNotes questions, "[W]eren't any "non-romanticized" photos taken inside the Dome after the first day or so? And if so, why haven't we seen any? And if not, why not?"

The photos they don't want you to see.

Just as it banned photography of GI's caskets returning home from Iraq, the White House doesn't want you to see photographs of the deceased victims of the hurricane. While many would agree—who wants to see such sadness and gore?—the refusal to allow journalists to document the human cost, when paired with the White House's hyper-control of its own image and its track-record of dishonesty about the reasons for war in Iraq, is highly suspect. One report estimates that 40,000 people in New Orleans alone were killed by Katrina and its aftermath—and wherever blame is placed, it happened on Bush's watch, the era of "Homeland Security."

Plastic Turkey, part the third.

A thousand firefighters, eager to help the victims of the hurricane, found themselves in a role they hadn't bargained for, according to the Salt Lake Tribune: as photo-op props for FEMA and George W. Bush.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency...

... Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

(Via Kos via TPM. Image via Horkulated.)

See the whole trilogy! Plastic Turkey Part 1 and Plastic Turkey Part 2.

Lifted from Cursor:

Yikes.

The Battle of New Orleans: With 50,000 troops now in the "Katrina zone"; and business set to boom for "gunmen loyal to the corporate bottom line," Public Enemy's Chuck D wades in and the mayor of Slidell warns of a possible armed standoff with FEMA.

Norm's conquest.

The Blotter writes that Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman is becoming "a sort of trial-balloon politician for the neo-con agenda's most egregious proposals," and the next one he'll float is about reframing the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina as "an historic opportunity to revitalize the Gulf Coast, while providing for economic incentives that will ensure massive investment in intellectual, physical and technological infrastructure."

How? Wait for it...

"Tax credits to encourage recovery and restoration by businesses and corporations in the region," according to a Coleman press release. And: "Tax credits for human resources technology development."

The release ends with the admonishment that Coleman "felt strongly that federal assistance to the region cannot simply be viewed as government mandates and hand-outs."

What Brown's surrounded by.

On Minnesota Public Radio this morning, I heard host Kerri Miller either defending FEMA director Michael Brown's credentials or playing devil's advocate with the guest. The gist: does it matter if the FEMA head has direct emergency-management experience, or is it more important to be a good leader who knows enough to surround himself withi a talented staff? Fair enough question, and one I recall was posed about Bush when he was running the first time (let's not get into the answer to that one). Tonight ThinkProgress goes beyond the fact that Brown got his job not through any relevant experience but through a college buddy, and looks at those under him at FEMA. Not pretty:

The Chief of Staff is a guy named Patrick Rhode. He planned events for President Bush’s campaign. Rhode has no emergency management experience whatsoever. From Rhode’s official bio:

"His first position with the Bush Administration was as special assistant to the President and deputy director of National Advance Operations, a position he assumed in January 2001. Previously, Mr. Rhode served as deputy director of National Advance Operations for the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign, in Austin, Texas."

The Deputy Chief of Staff is Scott Morris. He was a press flak for Bush’s presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush’s campaign commercials. He also has no emergency management experience. From Morris’s official bio:

"Mr. Morris was also the marketing director for the world’s leading provider of e-business applications software in California, and worked for Maverick Media in Austin, Texas as a media strategist for the George W. Bush for President primary campaign and the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign."

These guys make Brown look qualified. And that’s no small feat.

Silent Norm.

As the GOP works to place blame for the wretched response to Katrina back on cities and states affected, let's recall Sen. Norm Coleman's rhetoric about Kofi Annan, whom Coleman blamed for the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq because Annan was "at the helm" when it happened: "The massive scope of this debacle demands nothing less. If this widespread corruption had occurred in any legitimate organization around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in disgrace." My guess is he'll refrain from applying such logic to the CEO in the White House.

We will, see those teeth a chatterin' later this week, when the UN oil-for-food report comes out. I wonder how he'll navigate the hypocrisy of what comes out of his mouth?

[Image via Raw Story.]

Anti-Bush spot axed in Manhattan borough race.

The New York Fox affiliate WNYW (Channel 5) refused to air a campaign commercial by Brian Ellner, a Democratic candidate for Manhattan borough president. Is it because at the end of the spot Ellner introduces his partner, Simon Holloway (the first time, Ellner's campaign claims, that a candidate has introduced a gay partner in a political spot), or is it his emperor-has-no-clothes criticism of George W. Bush? Channel 5 was the only local station to reject the advertisement out of 15 network or cable affiliates approached by the Ellner camp. See the spot here.

Gothamist pipes in: "The funny thing is that this controversy is exactly the kind of thing that the Channel 5 News at Ten would cover... Well, clearly, Channel 5 doesn't remember such programming as "The Littlest Groom" or "When Animals Attack." Perhaps Ellner needed some lesbians in the ad to make it Fox-worthy."

(Via SpeakSpeak.)

Gold vortex.

Architects Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues created a golden vortex in the courtyard of Materials & Applications in Los Angeles. Constructed from gold-tinted Mylar (reinforced with bundled Nylon and Kevlar fibers), the work, representing the "deadliest force in the Universe," is called Maximilian's Schell, after the actor Maximilian Schell, who played Dr. Reinhardt’ in the Disney film The Black Hole. "During the day as the sun passes overhead, the canopy casts colored fractal light patterns onto the ground while a tranquil subsonic drone from an integrated ambient sound installation by composer James Lumb (Electric Skychurch) entitled Resonant Amplified Vortex Emitter, lightly rumbles below the feet of visitors." The view from the underside:

Reseeding sandals.

A sandal that seeds the earth as it wears out: nice idea. Johnny Applesandal, by design house Lift, engages in phytoremediation. That is, as the tread of the footwear gets thinner through use, embedded seeds that actually clean up the soil are left behind. When they're completely worn out, just send what's left back to the manufacturer for "disassembly and material reclamation."

(Via WMMNA.)

"Some poor feared charges for rescue."

From Atrios, a CNN story that's really shocking:

I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a "ticket." Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn't believe these people were afraid they'd be charged for a rescue.

And Bush, salt-of-the-earth guy that he is, has suggested that those who are now suffering deserve it because they "chose" to stay...

The FEMA Files:

DailyKos links all these headlines:

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations

FEMA turns away experienced firefighters

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food

FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid

FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board

FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck

FEMA turns away generators

FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"

AND: Announcing FEMA Failures, a watchdog blog.

By contrast...

Nearly 600,000 people were successfully evacuated from China's coastal province of Fujian to escape Typhoon Talim.

Rove's blame game.

I just wrote my own letter to the Star Tribune. Simplified, as these things must be, it reads:

Paul Karlberg of New Brighton writes in that "liberals seem to have only one objective: Blame Bush!" Funny, The New York Times reports that Karl Rove's plan is just the opposite; his PR strategy is to "shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats." But consider all the delays in leadership from the very highest offices in the land: It took Bush three days after the storm hit to cancel the last two days of his five-week vacation. It took Cheney another three days after that. Condi Rice was yukking it up at a Broadway musical when people were huddling on rooftops in New Orleans, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert couldn't cast his vote on emergency funds for Katrina's victims because he was at a fundraiser. With more than 10,000 dead and an estimated $100 billion in damage, getting to the bottom of why our systems failed so completely in the week following this disaster is not some liberal invention but an absolute necessity. It's clear there's plenty of blame to go around, and, having lived with five years of Rove's spin, I suspect Americans will know where to place it.

After hitting "submit," even more evidence comes to my attention that local leaders did their best, mostly, in Louisiana and it was the feds that dropped the ball.

As Larry Johnson writes (and cites), Louisiana's Gov. Blanco did everything right, declaring a State of Emergency on August 26. The next day she followed it up with a letter to the White House invoking the Stafford Act, which would turn the affair over to the federal government. She wrote, in part, "I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance, Individual and Household Program (IHP) assistance, Special Needs Program assistance, and debris removal." With the ball so squarely in the federal government's court—read her letter; she dots her i's and crosses her t's—it seems slanderous for Rove to spin things against the prepared state government of Louisiana. Now, it has been charged that mayor Ray Nagin (a lifelong Republican up until moments before his election papers: who knew?) has a bunch of buses that went unused in evacuation operations, and his plans for evacuating the poor were inadequate (and possibly nonexistent), but with the procedures followed by Blanco, attempts to blame it all on local officials can't possibly fly.

The Not So Big House.

From CNN:

A London home, in dark paint at centre, which is just 5ft 5ins (162.7 cm) wide in places has gone on the market for 525,000 pounds (dlrs 945,315 US), it emerged Tuesday Aug. 30, 2005. The property, which is in Goldhawk Road, Shepherds Bush area of London, measures 9ft 11ins (298 cm) at its widest point and is described by the property agent as "utterly amazing". The bathroom is so tiny that it only contains the bath and a bedroom has a built-in bed to save space.

National priorities.

A letter published in today's Star Tribune gets it right:

Imagine if the doctrine of preemption had been used for Hurricane Katrina. Imagine if all the resources of the armed forces and the government were brought to bear in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama before the disaster instead of after it. Imagine all the lives that would have been saved.

Russell Peterson, St. Michael, Minn.

Plastic Turkey redux.

In a repeat performance of his 2003 fly-in to Iraq with a theatrical (rather than edible) turkey in hand, Bush has opted for a photo-op instead of real relief for Katrina victims. Sen. Mary Landrieu, speaking of the infamous breached 17th Street levee, said, "Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government."

It's not the first time the president's personal needs have hindered relief aid: on Saturday, his visit to St. Bernard Parish grounded helicopters loaded with three tons of food; and a Friday photo-op featured several rescue helicopters as a backdrop, prompting some to wonder why they weren't in use.

Perhaps Tonka will create a Bush-themed heavy equipment toy to commemorate the occasion. It'd join the faux-turkey Bush "action" figure:

Ax Brownie.

Even the detestable Michelle Malkin thinks FEMA head Michael Brown should be fired.

Bamiyan's Laser Buddhas.

Six months before radical islamists affiliated with Afghanistan's Taliban got our attention on September 11, 2001, they outraged the world by blasting 1600-year old Buddha statues off the face of the Bamiyan Valley cliffs. Now California-based artist Hiro Yamagata has plans to put them back.

At the request of Afghanistan's government, he'll install a permanent laser projection system in the valley to superimpose 140 faceless, overlapping Buddhas. To be completed by June 2007, the project will utilize 14 laser projectors powered by windmills and solar panels to create the nearly 200-foot tall images. While Yamagato says "I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose - not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement," the medium of light, a theme in most major religions, seems perfect for illustrating the ethereal and ultimately indestructible nature of what underlies not only Buddhism but most spiritual traditions.

Hi new readers,

Please sign my guest map, willya?

File under: Doy.

AdJab writes: "The tremendous flooding in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina means that travel and tourism in the city is non-existent." In fact, total economic losses are now estimated at over $100 billion, a number that exceeds the GAO's estimated economic impact of 9/11 on New York City (~$83 to $95 billion).

Fear of information.

2004 was a banner year for info-banning: not only were there 20% more attempts to ban books from library shelves but the federal government broke all-time records for classifying documents:

In 2004, federal officials classified 15.6 million new documents, which is 81 percent more than in 2001. Over the same period, the cost of classifying those new documents rose from $4.7 billion to $7.2 billion. These figures do not include documents classified by the CIA, as such information is itself secret.

The callous administration.

If Bush, Rice, Cheney, and Hastert can't muster the kind of compassion the hurricane calls for, maybe Rumsfeld can:

Today, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Louisiana and toured a medical facility at the New Orleans international airport. He spoke to and shook hands with military and rescue officials, but walked right by a dozen refugees lying on stretchers just feet away from him, most of them extremely sick or handicapped, Reuters reported.

Nope.

(Strike five.)

Calvary and the cavalry.

An image from Jesus' General.

"Bureaucracy has committed murder."

"Bureaucracy has committed murder here," says Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard before relating this horrifying story, told through choking sobs:

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.

[transcript/video]

An Bob Schieffer offers this personal commentary:

We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America's history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it was created to serve. There is no purpose for government except to improve the lives of its citizens. Yet as scenes of horror that seemed to be coming from some Third World country flashed before us, official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.

Only at Powerline...

From the partisan apologists at Powerline: "The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude."

OK, here goes.

(Via Norwegianity.)

Times-Picayune calls for firing of FEMA head.

An open letter from the Times-Picayune to George W. Bush calls for the firing of FEMA director Michael Brown. I say, take Bush with him. An excerpt:

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, [Brown] said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

Brown's credentials: "The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows," writes the Boston Herald of Michael Brown, formerly an estates and family lawyer who was canned from his job as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. The Herald continues: "And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position. The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA. "

And on top of it all:

Chief Justice William Renquist has died. Rest in peace, and God help us...

He lives!

What the hell is wrong with these people? It took the Vice President of the United States six days following the hurricane to cancel his vacation and fly back to the Washington! (Bush's strummin', Condi's Spamalot outing, Cheney's R&R: Three strikes, you're out... If they were allowed four strikes, it'd go to Dennis Hastert, who skipped the House vote on Katrina funding to attend a fundraiser.) Hm, but judging from his website, he hasn't been briefed on Katrina yet.


(Via Petrelis Files.)

Flip side of the "race meme."

Another far more sinister "race meme" is afoot, promoted by the likes of David Duke, American Rennaissance magazine, and posters at the Free Republic, among others. Read David Niewert's "The New Orleans race vampires."

The incompetence continues...

As early as Sunday, Chicago mayor Richard Daley offered the federal government the following resources for the hurricane effort:

36 members of the firefighters' technical rescue teams, eight emergency medical technicians, search-and-rescue equipment, more than 100 police officers as well as police vehicles and two boats, 29 clinical and 117 non-clinical health workers, a mobile clinic and eight trained personnel, 140 Streets and Sanitation workers and 29 trucks, plus other supplies.

What the government accepted: a single tank truck. Insane... (Update: apparently that's not all. CNN reports that "Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina.")

Why are they turning down free help and at the same time quickly inking a Navy repair deal with Halliburton?

The BBC writes, "The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation... was that a foreign dictator would have responded better." And one did: on Tuesday, when Bush was still out west a-strummin' his guitar, Cuba's Fidel Castro made an offer--refused!--to send us no less than 1,110 doctors.

And: "If Katrina had happened last year, Bush would certainly not be President right now."

Death and Taxes.

Grover Norquist is calling on senators to not let Hurricane Katrina delay their vote to repeal the estate tax. Frist has complied, calling for a vote on Tuesday. So let's be perfectly clear what's going on: the GOP slashed Corps of Engineer funding for flood protection in Louisiana, and now they want to repeal a tax that affects only the very wealthiest, when our nation is at an hour of great need?

"10,000 dead."

The first estimate comes from Sen. David Vitter, and he's talking about Louisiana alone.

Shout out to Shearer.

Arianna's blog mall Huffington Post is a mixed bag: mostly cool, it's got the loose and smart writings of Harper's contributing editor Thomas de Zengotita mixed in with seeming doofuses like Randall Robinson (who, without any supportive evidence whatsoever, asserted that "black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive"). But my favorite writer is the prolific Harry Shearer. Best known as the voice of Mr. Burns (and others) on The Simpson's and Derek Smalls in (and co-writer of) This Is Spinal Tap, his incisive, well-researched, and frequently updated HuffPo blog is here. And here's his personal site.

Race-based evacuation?

Rightwing columnist Jonah Goldberg pooh-poohs the notion that there's unfair treatment of blacks and the poor in New Orleans: "The 'poor and black have been left behind' meme is now in full swing on CNN and MSNBC." But how can he explain this? Yesterday, as the evacuation of 20,000 people trapped in the Louisiana Superdome since Sunday finally began, the line stopped for awhile so that 700 guests and workers from the Hyatt hotel could jump the line and get in waiting schoolbuses. The AP reports: "'How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage." And this morning, with all but 2,000 people remaining in the dome, the National Guard has suddenly and inexplicably stopped the busing. (No wonder rapper Kanye West deviated from the script on an NBC hurricane relief benefit yesterday: "George Bush doesn't care about black people.")

It's in full swing on Fox too, Jonah: Here's a an amazing segment from Fox News reporters Shepard Smith and Gerald Rivera, lividly describing the dire straits and the unexplainable lack of help for people still trapped (actually locked) in the dome.

Death by small government.

Evan at Alternet

I want you to do something. Every time you hear Grover Norquist's "Americans for Tax Reform," "the Heritage Foundation," and the Bush administration (I suppose I could put them in quotes too) mentioned in the papers, on the radio, on TV, I want you to think about the tragedy in New Orleans.

One of the central principles in their ideology, to "starve the beast," means providing less funding for crucial preparatory projects (such as shoring up the levee and ensuring that adequate disaster response networks are in place), first response, and rebuilding.

Make no mistake: this went down the way it did because of a conscious decision derived from a cruel ideology.

Art. Fart.

Adbusters #51, with cover by Banksy

I cringed when I heard from Adbusters editor/ founder Kalle Lasn that he wanted to call the current issue "Artfart." The term seemed so dated, dismissive, and...flatulent. But the issue turned out to be one of the more nuanced and, I think, interesting in a long time (full disclosure: I was the the art editor). But little did I know how much traction the term artfart has on the 'net:

It's the name of a Dutch street-art site in the spirit of Streetsy and Wooster Collective.

It's the name of a German art site featuring graphically bold "kreative flatulenz."

It's the URL for a page that hosts Nikki's graduation pictures (congratulations, Nikki!).

Throw in an apostrophe—Art's—and its a gag gift emporium specializing in "dog doo keychains" and whoopie cushions.

Kidding aside, I thought it was a great issue, and I'd be curious what you think of it. ( Click here to buy it)

Fuddrucked: A meaty lesson in intellectual property.

Game developer Robb Briggs came up with a game so popular, people all over the internet were playing it, some—as he discovered looking at his site stats—who were linking to it on their own sites. But one linker, attracted by the themes of BurgerTime, stood out: restaurant chain Fuddruckers. He explains:

They didn’t even bother to download the game and host it themselves. They linked to my game, using my game and my bandwidth to promote their restaurant. Which is not only stealing from me, but it’s also really, really stupid. I mean, passing someone else’s content off as your own is nasty. But actually linking to it means that I can change it to whatever the hell I want. Which is dumb, dumb, dumb on their part.

Now, if you go to the Fuddrucker's website and click on the "Fuddrockers" link, you can find the BurgerTime icon. But click it and the BurgerTime you find isn't about stacking patties in a game interface; it's opens up a series of webpages showing grisly slaughterhouse photos, plus this note in a pop-up:

He adds: "But did I do this right away? No! I waited until the Friday evening before a three-day weekend. So either it’ll be up for three days, or someone is going to have to go in during their vacation to fix it."

(Via Linkfilter.)

Pardon the frivolity, but...

When did Howard Zinn become the spokesman for Alaska Airlines?

Travels through "Liberal" America.

After the 2004 election, independent journalist Rose Aguilar decided to leave her "liberal bubble" of San Francisco to embark on a 6-month tour of red states, including Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Montana. Her travels, chronicled on her blog Stories in America, have taken her all over the place, even to Liberal, Kansas (alas, as a domestic tour, she didn't make it to Fucking, Austria, a town British tourists apparently can't get enough of). With gas prices going through the roof, drop by to let her know the project is worth every penny, and, if you can, kick in some cash for gas money.

(Via Cursor.)

N.O. mayor: "I am pissed!"

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is so angry that he's telling it like it is. Listen to this entire mp3 and hear the frustration and rage and courage and conviction and emotion:

There is nothing happening. They're feeding the public a line of bull, and it's spinning, and people are dying down here... We authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq, lickety-split. After 9/11 we gave the president unprecedented powers, lickety-quick, to take care of New York and other places. And you're telling me... that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died, and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man!

...I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamned press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences, don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city and stand with us... Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here! They're not here. It's too doggoned late. Now get off your asses and let's do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

Here's a transcript for the mp3-impaired.

And: Excellent commentary from Sadly, No!.

Mr. President: Bring Home the Southern Guard

Dear Mr. President: I'm a lifelong Democrat and you're a Republican on the ropes, but for the good of the country I will give you a little advice. If you do not want to see your already shrinking Presidency disintegrate into political nothingness, you will get every National Guardsman from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on the first thing smoking out of Baghdad. They joined the Guard with this very sort of catastrophe in mind, not to dodge IEDs in some far-off desert.

The righteous white Southerner is all that is left of your base and if you do not bring their boys home on the double I promise you they will join our side, oppose this reckless war, and oppose you.

Signed,
Trey Ellis

Condi's concern

So Bush was playin' a guitar while the Gulf Coast sank. What was Condi doing? Watching the Monty Python musical in NYC. From Wonkette, who links, as I won't, to the Drudge Report:

Random bits.

Pop pants: Levi's is enlisting the ghost of Andy Warhol to promote its new $150 to $250 jeans dubbed Warhol Factory X Levi's. They sound perfectly trashy: "The silver jeans will have silver threads and the Levi's logo in silver... The interior will be lined with Warhol images that can be seen when you fold up the cuff... Another pair ...has dollar signs on them, an image Warhol used in his paintings." As trendspotter Irma Zandl writes, "If they stopped trying so hard to be cool, they actually might be more successful."

notmyTunes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation confirms what we already know (and already know how to get around): that digital rights management technology in online music purchases doesn't, as iTunes touts, allow you to "Own it forever and a day." Still, an interesting report: The Customer is Always Wrong: A Users' Guide to DRM in Online Music.

But can it stop IEDs? Proclaiming to make a nearly bulletproof laptop, Hummer has signed a deal with Spokane-based computer manufacturer Itronix, to make a branded laptop for sale only its showrooms. The GM subsidiary will sell two models, for $2,988 and $3,329, respectively.

On top of NOLA's other horrors, ant balls?

Floating bodies, toxic chemicals, sewage, and now this? From the Times-Picayune's weblog:

Ant balls not an urban myth:

In addition to all of the other horrors befalling New Orleanians during the flood was the creepy discovery that red ants form themselves into floating clusters to avoid drowning. As Dante Ramos and I paddled along Carrollton Avenue on Wednesday, I saw two glittering, golf ball-sized masses of ants floating beside our canoe.

- Doug MacCash

[Image via BugGuide.]

Subway projections.

Very cool: Berlin media artists have created a portable graffiti projector that adheres to the side of a subway car with suction cups and projects active-media imagery on the usually darkened tunnel walls. Fittingly, it's called Parasite. See a video of the projector at work here. Here's a still from one of the projections:
A nice addition to the hand-held SMS Guerilla Projector, mentioned in April.