|
|
|
archived: 4 - 10 Sep, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: September 6, 2005 THE TEMPEST
Prospero
Ariel Revenge and rightful political restitution drive the plot of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, The Tempest. Prospero conjures a tempest to reverse the polarity of the political world of his enemies. Just as surely as the tempest did the bidding of the injured Prospero, Katrina has cut Bush, Cheney, Rice and their neocon cronies to their knees. Even so, there has been no rival voice to emerge from the Democratic ranks to inspire America and strike a chord with the righteous anger that is boiling over in the volcano of public opinion. Hurricane Katrina triggered a whirlwind of political revenge on George Bush. In one fell swoop, Katrina lashed George Bush and his coterie of neoconservatives. While thousands in New Orleans were left to their own devices to escape death, pillage and plunder, George Bush actually plucked the strings of a guitar conjuring images of Nero, megalomaniac of Rome, who played his stringed instrument while the eternal city burned. To counteract the rising chorus of criticism, Bush and his neocon cronies called for the shooting of “looters” on sight. People stranded in the flooded city with no access to transportation, food, water or power sought sustenance from their local shops, and Bush’s first move authorized a ruthless crack down by martial law. Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi echoed the official policy of ruthlessness. Were these men actually authorizing the torture of looters? Time will tell. This draconian footprint struck a sour note, and Bush became the focus of intense international media coverage. Bush had spent the previous weeks of his Crawford vacation dodging, weaving, hiding and fleeing Cindy Sheehan and her troops led by Martin Sheen and Joan Baez that were fortified by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. When Katrina gave Bush the alibi to get out of dodge, he quickly made his getaway in Air Force One and did a dutiful ‘flyover’ of New Orleans on his way back to the White House. This outrageous stunt enraged the people on the streets below who had been reduced to foraging for food, shelter and clothing on the flooded streets of New Orleans. The people spoke directly to the television cameras, shouting obscenities about the lack of presidential support. Someday, the looting of New Orleans may be equated with the storming of the Bastille that became the triggering event for the French Revolution. One voice rose above others, and the Mayor of New Orleans leveled his sights to condemn Bush in the strongest terms used to date by any government official. In a series of lacerating interviews, Ray Nagin blasted Bush and the federal government for their insipid and unconvincing excuses. Filled with righteous anger, Nagin exploded during a radio interview. "Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here - they're not here. So get off your asses and let's do something and let's fix the biggest crisis in the history of this country. We authorized eight billion dollars to go to Iraq, lickety spit. After 9/11 we gave the President unauthorized powers, lickety spit, to take care of New York and other places. Now you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique that you can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need?" Nagin’s anger burned into the brains of those left behind, now deeply disturbed by Bush’s pandering to the rich and strumming while they drowned in their thousands. Because of the New Orleans flood, Ray Nagin emerged as the articulate voice speaking from the heart of America. Nagin strikes a sharp contrast with Rudy Giuliani who was lionized after 9/11. Giuliani merely served as a prop for George Bush when he presided over the most disastrous terrorist attack in US history. Nagin went straight for the president’s exposed jugular and shamed him for doing nothing to help Americans in their hour of crisis. Nagin is infinitely tougher than Giuliani and far more worthy of national respect and international renown. Soon enough, even the Republicans realized that the jig was up. Louisiana Senator David Vitter a card-carrying Republican gave the federal government a grade “F” for its handling of the Katrina crisis. A chorus of Democrats rose to criticize Bush. Dennis Kucinich made a brilliant floor speech in the House of Representatives to denounce Bush’s priorities for war and terrorism and his complete lack of preparedness for natural and environmental catastrophes. With mounting fears that the death toll will surpass 10,000, the political aftershocks of Hurricane Katrina will be colossal. With a fearful symmetry, Katrina incapacitated a fistful of petroleum refineries tightly clustered around New Orleans. Was this nature zeroing in on the burning of fossil fuels that cause global warming that multiply the number and elevate the intensity of storms, hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes? Since Katrina struck New Orleans, the American business community has been paralyzed with fear about the price of crude oil. Due to American panic buying in Europe, the price of Brent crude spiked to more than $100 per barrel. Shortly thereafter, following the prompting of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, OPEC offered to alleviate the supply situation and the price of crude has dropped. With withering irony, Chavez offered to provide petroleum for the “poor” sections of America. In the aftermath of Katrina, Bush and Cheney should be regarded for what they truly are: hijackers of the most powerful government on earth driven exclusively by their obsessive greed for oil and corporate profits through the abuse of political and presidential power. After flinging hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of preponderantly black troops into the jaws of Iraq, the world is shocked as it witnesses what it sees as the premeditated extermination with malice aforethought of the Afro-American underclass, the shredded remnants of slavery now left to suffer and die in flood of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina exposed the failures of a weak president and his deeply misguided policies. When he finally put down his guitar long enough to make a statement about the greatest natural disaster that has ever befallen America, Bush sounded like the village idiot that he truly is. It is unfortunate for him that Katrina struck at precisely the moment when his approval ratings had hit the floor. Cindy Sheehan had done her work. Cindy’s bruising barrage of verbal attacks, day after agonizing day, slammed and stunned Bush into a dazed stupor; then Katrina swept away any hope he might have harbored for a political recovery after Labor Day. History will indubitably record that when Katrina struck New Orleans with hurricane force and left thousands dead and tens of thousands without homes, food or water, George Bush plucked his guitar to mimic Nero, the psychopath who passively allowed Rome to burn to the ground. Re-enforcing the image of a White House with all the wrong priorities, Condoleezza Rice pranced through New York’s most opulent boutiques, where she splashed out with some heavy spending of her very own totaling nearly $10,000 on new shoes in one shop alone. Later that evening, the audience booed Rice when she was recognized in a theatre. Rice’s extravagant spending spree became a public outrage with shouts taunting her, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!!” These incidents and others like them have hit print and the airwaves in America driving Bush’s approval ratings through the already deepening hole in the pit of the crater that imprisons the darkening phases of his radical and calamitous presidency. SOURCES
Ray Nagin explodes on air
Senator Vitter (R-LA)
gives the Bush government a grade “F”
Condi Rice
booed for extravagant purchases while thousands die in New Orleans __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
