This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Reviewing the AM radio news on Katrina on the East Coast:

Amerika was thinking about baseball and football

by a MIM comrade

Hurricane Katrina exposed many truths about capitalism and Amerikkkan capitalism in particular. The night and morning before the disaster of August 29 2005, MIM reviewed the long- range AM radio stations including some in the South.

By Sunday afternoon before the storm hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama it was known that Katrina had winds of 175 miles per hour and it had been known before that that it was heading for New Orleans.

The night when everyone needed to be escaping the Gulf Coast with the help of federal aid that did not come, two New York wimmin talk show hosts were running down Black men on New York radio explaining how they like Lance Armstrong and Mark McGwire but not Barry Bonds--in relation to steroid abuse. Then they ran down Snoop Dog for lacking suburban savoir faire in forming his own baseball little league. The sad part is that prior to midnight before Katrina's landfall that was the sort of so-called news available in general. Such family-friendly news played well in the white suburbs no doubt.

After midnight it seems that the radio hosts became much more realistic and less fluffy--probably because there are so many fewer advertising dollars at stake while people are sleeping. At 12:40 am EST the Drudge report on AM radio was one of the few stations talking about the coming disaster. Drudge was one of the first sources the Bush family checked the night of the election in 2004, such are its conservative credentials.

"The federal government has planes. Do you think the government should have sent planes?" asked the Drudge host of a caller. His caller did not answer, but the Drudge talk show host said he did not think the public would allow blame on Bush for the damages. He raised the question of socialism as for why he opposed sending planes to pick up people in New Orleans before Katrina hit. Let there be no mistake: the reactionaries in the circles of power in the federal government knew full well what Katrina was packing and they chose to do nothing with justifications about how government's role should be limited. The Drudge Report is an example of how these people think.

For some outside u.$. borders, the Democratic Party is often referred to as "socialist" by the Republican Party reactionaries of the united $tates, because Amerikkkans in general are not capable of much more in their political analysis. Any time the government does anything it is called "socialism" by these primitives who constitute the bulk of Bush's political support. In other countries there would be a more thorough discussion about how government intervention bolsters profits, or how it intertwines with corrupting business interests, but in the united $tates, discussion can be very simplified and ideological for tens of millions of people.

The caller to Drudge pointed out that "some" of the private airlines had stopped services the Saturday before the Monday storm. Thousands of travelers had to stay in hotels stranded because of the airline decisions. Left unstated was that since the private airlines had stopped operating a full 48 hours before the storm hit, perhaps the federal government should have stepped in to evacuate people. Even the caller and Drudge fan said one "just hopes" that the private airlines know what they are doing; even though, the weather seemed fine enough to him to evacuate the people of New Orleans by plane.

The most serious discussion occurred when a talk show host had the sense to get a weather expert to call in in around the 1 am to 2am time slot and talk at length. The expert spoke exactly of how levees might break if Katrina maintains its current course; although a slight turn to the east and slight weakening was a hopeful sign. This caller pictured New Orleans as potentially flooded and carrying toxic wastes and sewage in the water that flooded. The caller pointed out that evacuation of New Orleans was only 75%, so inevitably a certain percentage of people was stuck. At the time of this story, it is now more than a week later, and still it would be news to find out that more died from the storm than 911. The attention span of the government and media that monitors it is that weak.

Before Katrina hit land, there was at least one talk radio show predicting that the death toll from Katrina would be a multiple of the death toll from the World Trade Center attack. It is by no means true that "no one knew" how bad Katrina would be before it hit. The government and weather people did know as did some after-midnight radio listeners.

At 6:30 a.m. the radio stations were still waiting for the storm to hit land. Yet, a run through the dial revealed not one station saying where exactly the storm was, just occasional repeats of the prior night's news. The news was back to fluff.

At 8:30 am there was only a syndicated talk show Howard-Stern-imitator talking about the storm in general, still no details such as where the storm was exactly. That's two syndicated stations out of 30 AM stations tried. Meanwhile numerous stations were covering the baseball scores and the football trades and football training tribulations.

At around 10 a.m. there should have been some solid information coming in from New Orleans and the neighboring region, but it took two runs through the dial to find something on any of 43 stations tried. Thanks to the record for oil prices set that morning, Bloomberg, the financial news station of New York mentioned more details on Katrina than anyone else.

Around 11 am a sports-only station claimed that the levees in New Orleans had broken and that New Orleans was in fact under 15 feet of water as the worst-case scenario had spoken of in the wee hours before landfall. Other than Drudge, there was one call-in AM station who went on at length on how the storm would kill several times as many people as the September 11 2001 events, but such voices were still generally not to be found in daytime radio.

As the day went into early afternoon of Monday, some details came in at WCBS. The Super Bowl dome was the choice for where New Orleans put its people too poor to leave the storm. The top news item was how pieces from the Super Bowl roof had fallen in. Estimates ranging from 10,000 to 35,000 people in the Super Bowl dome had appeared through the night. A federal government study on whether the Super Bowl stadium could survive a hurricane and serve as a shelter was not done yet. This much the public had known several hours after a mortally dangerous storm landed.

The next most mentioned bit of news about New Orleans the day of the storm itself was the 1 million in barrels per day in oil refining capacity shut down by the storm. A financial futures station pointed out that corn and similar items from the Midwest flowed down the Mississippi river for export and so futures bulls were taking positions expecting to profit from the shortages caused by the port disruption.

To bring home the message the radio professionals were so desperate that they pointed out that 27% of the short-term supply of coffee sits in New Orleans warehouses.

"In the meantime America will pray," we heard Bush say by the afternoon of the day. Meanwhile, one radio dj asked whether the government should shut down the oil market for two days until the storm subsided.

By 1:55 PM the stock market index called Dow Jones industrial average was up over 50 points. By the end of the day it was up over 60 points. Word had it that the oil damages would not be as great as expected and then in the following days Bush talked down the price of oil by talking about releasing federal stockpiles.

Under the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations inspired by the principles of marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, the Director of Homeland Security Chertoff would be shot for failure. He would take such a position not because of the salary or the perks of power, but out of a sacrifice for his country and upon failure he would know the price would be his execution. Gone would be the oversupply of resume-padding opportunists loaded in responsible positions and gone would be the politics of irresponsibility covering for them. This much we expect the Amerikan public to contemplate almost spontaneously from the events unleashed by Katrina.

Another point that needs scrutiny is that Amerikan "choice" is an ideological delusion. The "choice" to be poor, elderly or handicapped and drowned in Katrina flooding is not a choice that should exist--to hell with that "freedom." To hell with the "freedom" to own a TV set and VCR and then have no money to escape the storm, because the government failed in its duties. For that matter who can say that people who should have been paying attention to Katrina and doing their duty were not listening to these AM radio stations blather on about sports. The problem with Katrina is that there was too much "choice" and no good choices for the oppressed. Yes, there was a great deal of so-called freedom of so-called choice in the AM radio stations. It was up to every executive of every journalistic company whether to talk about Snoop Dog for the ratings or relay important information.

The bourgeoisie calls it "freedom" for the people needing evacuation that they might have turned on the TV or radio and found nothing important to know just as the storm was about to hit. It's freedom that no organized federal forces rousted every individual from the Gulf Coast.

The attitude of the bourgeoisie toward risk is thoughtless. Radio stations everywhere in the u$a should have informed people adequately so that they could check on friends and family and tell them to leave the Gulf Coast. Although most people did leave the Gulf Coast, a minority did not get the message. Indeed, reactionaries blaming the victims called right-wing radio talk shows the next day to say the people who stayed in New Orleans should be fined for not following the mayor's orders, as if those orders had even reached everyone.

Under the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations:
1) The order to leave New Orleans and similar places would be federal and actual with government forces carrying out the evacuation and with no question that there would be a means to get out. Likewise the entire people would have the right to expect that no one "stayed behind," so there would be no need for blaming the victims afterwards.
2) No media companies would be profiting from covering baseball instead of Katrina.
3) No oil or gas companies could be suspected of price gouging since there would be no production for profit.
4) Resume-padders calling daily press conferences without accomplishing anything would at least have no reason to expect future profits from holding executive positions obtained by the fame of having claimed to have done something about Katrina. People in responsible positions would have no phony motivations, and a real fear that failure could bring the death penalty.

Amerikkkan freedom in three pictures