Dujodu Blog

Can anyone tell what the hell he is mumbling about after he says “defeat that” ? (~1:55)

I haven’t updated in awhile, I’ve been really busy. First with school ending and then the holiday marathon, which in my family is like a never ending party until new years. There is always at least one christmas party somewhere to be going to, it’s pretty insane.

Anyway, I was trying to think of something to blog about and then I realized that I never linked/mentioned Democracy Now! I’m sure you’ve probably heard about it before plenty of times, but what I’m specifically talking about is their daily show that I’ve been watching for the past month or so. I would highly recommend watching it if you have the time (approximately 1 hour/day). They cover a lot of international news (and national news for that matter) that never shows up on the major news networks here. There are tons of options for watching/listening to it, so I’ll go through a few of them. It’s mainly a radio show, so if you can find a station in your area then that is debatably the easiest way to (literally) tune in. They do apparently air it on some TV stations as well. If that isn’t an option or you missed an episode, then you can listen to the show streaming or a grab a copy in mp3 format from the democracy now website using real alternative (or real player, I guess), winamp, itunes, etc. The advantage of using the website over the radio is that you can watch the video, albeit a very low quality video. My favorite way to watch democracy now though is by using bittorrent, which is a kind of p2p app which allows for fast distribution of files, but I’m not going to get into that. If you have bittorrent and a broadband connection I suggest watching the show this way, new episodes are well seeded and you can grab the last 3 that “aired” from the democracy now website. If you want past episodes in high quality you can check out chomskytorrents.org since they are seeded there is well, but they loose seeds fast since it is a daily event. So if you DO want to view a really old episode in high quality, you don’t know how to use bittorrent, or you want to use a chunk of an episode you saw for whatever reason, they are all archived at archive.org in multiple formats ranging from streaming mpeg4 to DVD compatible MPEG2, which is pretty fricken insane. So there you have it, tons of different ways to watch/listen to the show. Now you have no excuse, so go check it out!

Although it doesn’t accurately represent the majority of the episodes, I recommend the one from Monday, December 6th (archive.org, torrent, streaming from website). It’s a great episode and it features various people reading from Howard Zinn’s book “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.”

I was watching this on C-SPAN2 today and it was pretty interesting. They had a panel of hurricane Katrina evacuees talking about the conditions before and after the hurricane. All of them had horror stories about the evacuation and recovery, people herded by gunpoint to what they described as “concentration camps.” What really caught my attention though was the serious discussion that took place about the possibility that the levee was intentionally breached to minimize damage to the upper class areas of New Orleans. The panel cited “earwitness” reports that people heard explosions, as well as divers finding craters underwater at the foot of the levees where they were breached. The committee actually had a discussion about the possibility and agreed to investigate, the evacuees requested that it be done by an independent source and even offered to fund it but were turned down. Either way, there is apparently going to be an investigation. I don’t know if we’ll ever hear about it of if it will make any sort of national news, but I thought it was pretty amazing that they were taken seriously (or at least made to believe that they were). I’m not saying I believe that there was some massive conspiracy to breach the levees, I just thought it was interesting/disturbing. Apparently it’s fairly common practice to “guide” floods in this manner to minimize destruction though. In fact the tactic was used during the Mississippi river flood in 1927 in order to save New Orleans. 30 tons of dynamite were used to breach the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana so that it wouldn’t flood New Orleans, which was owned by powerful banking families. Following the flood 13,000 African American refugees were detained and forced into labor at gunpoint as ships came to save white women and children. They were denied food, water, pay, and access to the city without tags to prove that they were working on the levee. Nearly 80 years later, not much has changed.

Don’t take my word for it though:

• PBS: Voices from the flood: Protecting the levee
• PBS: American Experience: Fatal Flood Timeline
• Book Review - Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America

The panel will continue next week, with questions for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

You can find a screening on their website. I was suprised by how many screenings there are in the milwaukee area, at least one per day for the launch week and they are all free! There are screenings at MATC, UWM, and one of them at a coffee shop like 5 blocks away, so I’ll definitely check it out at some point. You can view all U.S. screenings here. By the makers of Outfoxed.

I’m a little late on this one, but I’ve been thinking over a lot of stuff and I thought I’d rather post about it than just let it sit around in my head. The way the Federal and Local governments handled this situation is disgusting, and now Bush is out there trying to lead the commision to investigate what went right and what went wrong. Here are a few quotes.

George W. Bush

What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong.

We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD attack or another major storm.

Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people.

There are so many things wrong with these quotes that it is unbelievable. If someone was being suspected of committing a crime, I don’t think they would be allowed to “lead an investigation” to find out who commited said crime. I really don’t think Bush will be pointing any fingers in his general direction, he was after all unable to admit to any mistakes he had made during his post 9/11 presidency as of April 13th 2004 when he was asked to think of one:
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What the hell is wrong with the “news”? I’m consistantly disgusted at their complete lack of ability to inform (isn’t that supposed to be their main job?). We all know there was a hurricane, we have seen the damage it has done, we have seen the struggles that people are going through because of it. I can understand an update on the situation every now and then, that’s perfectly understandable. Why don’t they spend a little bit of time actually examining the situation? There are so many issues that come to the top of my mind as I watch the news casters explaining to us what they see in the live video from the on-site helicopters; as if we can’t see for ourselves. Why don’t they talk about global warming? I’d say it’s a relevant topic given the situation. I don’t think I’ve heard one mention of it. Another thing they’ve talked about a lot is gasoline. Another potentially great and informing topic for them to talk about. They just cycle through every person on their station saying “gas prices have gone up” without really elaborating on it. Why don’t they talk about our oil addiction? How about lack of quality public transportation? A lot of news casters have hinted about there being an evacuation call - suggesting that everyone was warned to leave. They fail to mention (everything I’ve seen anyway) that the bus lines stopped the day before the evacuation call. How are tens of thousands of people that rely on public transporation going to run away from a hurricane? The result of course being that everyone who can’t afford to own a car are left to try and survive. How about the pollutants that are going to be seeping into the ocean and devestating the local fish industry. Even more issues for valuable discussion. The lack of preperation is also pretty disgusting. The city is BELOW sea level. How did they NOT see this happening? Was Bush too busy on his vacation to acknowledge this as a problem before it was too late? I’ve got to give it to him though, it was so corageous and commanding when he cut his (record breaking) 5 week vacation short by TWO entire days to assure everyone that everything would be ok and offered the valuable advice to only buy gas if you need it. Even though Louisianna is down a bit on national guardsmen, they are over in Iraq, they could have been ready to mobilize much faster with federal aid.

This is going into a new “Rants” category. It’s kind of like an article but with no planning, less research, more opinion, and less structure. I’ll be able to post more rants than articles.

Two anonymous U.S. officials claim that Bush is planning on bypassing the Senate to appoint John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, possibly as early as Monday. The Senate is beginning its August recess this weekend, allowing Bush to slip him in with a “recess appointment.” The Senate Democrats are very strongly opposed to Bolton however, so much in fact that 35 of them and 1 Independent sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to choose someone else. “A recess appointment is not in the interest of the country. Mr. Bolton does not have the full confidence of the Senate. Sending him to the U.N. without the Senate’s approval would send a mixed message to friend and foe alike,” said Joseph Biden, D-Delaware.[1]

Recently, John Bolton claimed that he wasn’t questioned during any government investigation in the past five years. This was later found to be false.
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