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.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Lessons From Hell"

John Chuckman

Amid death and destruction, Bush not as Nero, but as Caligula's horse Incitatus

If he is alive, Osama bin Laden surely is enjoying some hearty laughter. Nothing he could imagine, short of the virtually-impossible task of obtaining a tactical nuclear weapon and detonating it in an American city, compares to the damage just inflicted upon the United States by its own President.

Ten thousand dead is the estimate of New Orleans' mayor. A morticians' emergency measures organization is ready for forty thousand corpses. We won't know for weeks, maybe months, as attics, basements, sewers, canals, and dumpsters are searched. The economic damage is nothing less than colossal.

Peter Waterman writes:

"AFL-CIO and the White Man's Burden"

Peter Waterman

[Originally written in 2002 but unpublished at that time, this piece seems to me to have again become relevant in the light of the AFL-CIO's last (latest?) convention. Here its international relations came to be challenged on a national stage for the first time. Not for the last time. The 'boxes' referred to in the text have disappeared in the transmogrification from Word to this site. Interested readers or publishers can obtain the orginal from me. PW. September 1, 2005]

THE EMAIL DIALOGUES

Kim Scipes, a former trade unionist now living in Chicago, has been campaigning over the last years for an opening of the books on the international policy of the 'old' AFL-CIO, with respect to the Pinochet coup in Chile, 1973. Now he is questioning the policy of the 'new' AFL-CIO with respect to the attempted coup in Venezuela and, most-recently, to Cuba. (Scipes 2000, 2002a, b).

In response to such challenges, Stan Gacek, a leading International Department officer, issued a public response which later appeared on the AFL-CIO website (AFL-CIO 2002). The speed of this response, and its reproduction on the website is, in my experience, an innovation. But, apparently, an innovation of restricted application. In a further reply to Scipes on the Cuba funding, which has not been publicly circulated, Gacek declared that

'In response to…your e-mails, you should know that the Solidarity Center is NOT receiving any funding under the USAID/Cuba Program of May, 2002.' (Forwarded email, June 26, 2002)

Puzzled by this odd formulation, and wondering whether Kim might have maybe made a loose accusation, I re-read his email but then realized that the problem was not a loose accusation but, rather, a tight answer – a legalistic formulation which did not address the substance of Kim Scipes' question — or even the detailed US state funding data Kim had provided!

Comrade Matt, T writes:

"The Forbes Convergence"

Comrade Matt, T

While in London during1862, Dostoevsky once wrote of that "apparent disorder that is in actuality the highest degree of bourgeois order”.

Jump forward to Sydney 2005 and there is disorder — not conducive to bourgeois order — in the streets. Over the last few days from the 30th of August through the 2nd of September there has been numerus anti-capitalist and anti-war actions carried out to coincide with the Forbes conference.

The Forbes conference was a meting of around 350 CEO’s and politicians of the neo-liberal or economic rationalist persuasion, Steven Forbes, Rudy Giuliani and John Howard were all present, which give you an idea of the politics represented.