6 September 2005
Capitalist
Social Terrorism
Note by Róbinson
Rojas: Capitalist market work concentrating capital in the hand of
a minority creating capitalist economic terrorism (as I defined
it elsewhere), because capital concentration give also overwhelming
political power to the big capitalists and their political servants.
From the above capital social terrorism arises, which dramatically
polarizes society. United States is the best example of this capitalist
social terrorism in action which Hurricane Katrina uncovered for the
whole world to see. In United States like in any modern capitalist
society creation of wealth goes parallel to creation of inequality and
poverty. The readers below, taken from The Washington Post and The New
York Times, are a useful description of the main features of capitalist
social terrorism. (6 September 2005)
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From The New York
Times - 8 September 2005
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union
Street
By Dan Barry
NEW ORLEANS, - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch
of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across
from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet
jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis. Six National
Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed
themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting
snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New
Orleans, September 2005.
---
From The Washington
Post - 6 September 2005
The Lagging Poor
"The Census Bureau's annual
report on income, poverty and health insurance in the United States is
not alarming -- but neither is it cheering, or even reassuring. Rather,
the numbers underscore the lagging and uneven nature of the economic
recovery since the 2001 recession. According to the new data, 4 million
more people were living in poverty in 2004 than in 2001, and 4.6
million more people lacked health insurance."
---
From The New York
Times - 6 September 2005
The Larger Shame
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The wretchedness coming across our television screens from Louisiana
has illuminated the way children sometimes pay with their lives, even
in America, for being born to poor families.
---
From The Washington
Post - 5 September 2005
Disaster Cleanup
Halliburton Subsidiary Taps Contract For
Repairs
By Lolita C. Baldor
An Arlington-based Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized
for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million
Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine
facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
---
From The Washington
Post - 3 September 2005
Kanye West's Torrent of Criticism, Live
on NBC
"I hate the way they
portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're
looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food."
And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because
most of the people are black."
By Lisa de Moraes
---
From The Washington
Post - 3 September 2005
Oil Firms Turn Katrina Into Profits,
Clinton Says
N.Y. Senator
Criticizes Lack of National Leadership, Freedom From Imports
By Dan Balz
---
From The New York
Times - 3 September 2005
Editorial
Katrina's Assault on Washington
Do not be misled by
Congress's approval of $10.5 billion in relief for the Hurricane
Katrina victims. That's prompted by the graphic shock of the news
coverage from New Orleans and the region, where the devastation
catapults daily, in heartbreaking contrast with the slo-mo bumblings of
government.
---
From The New York
Times - 3 September 2005
United States of Shame
By Maureen Dowd
Stuff happens. And when you combine limited government with incompetent
government, lethal stuff happens. America is once more plunged into a
snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs,
suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force,
insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.
But this time it's happening in America.
---
From The New York
Times - 2 September 2005
They Saw It Coming
By Mark Fischetti
THE deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are heart-rending. The suffering
of survivors is wrenching. Property destruction is shocking. But
perhaps the most agonizing part is that much of what happened in New
Orleans this week might have been avoided.
---
From The New York
Times - 2 September 2005
From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy
By David González
The scenes of floating corpses, scavengers fighting for food and
desperate throngs seeking any way out of New Orleans have been tragic
enough. But for many African-American leaders, there is a growing
outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy
were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of
society
---
From The New York
Times - 2 September 2005
Cameras Captured a Disaster but Now Focus on
Suffering
By Alessandra Stanley
A woman in a wheelchair, her face and body covered by a plaid blanket,
dead, and left next to a wall of the New Orleans convention center like
a discarded supermarket cart. There were many other appalling images
from Hurricane Katrina on Thursday, but that one was a turning point:
after three days of flood scenes, television shifted from recording a
devastating natural disaster to exposing human failures.
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