Dear Log,
«After years of not investing in the country's infrastructure, this could be the first consequence of misspending. The US telephone systems, bridges, railroads and highways are in poor shape. The authorities were told 25 years ago that the New Orleans levees could not withstand a storm of Katrina's magnitude, but a city that votes Democratic wasn't going to get the necessary allocations to refortify the works. Bush turned down foreign aid because America is the giver, not the receiver, but they are also not talking much in the US news media about what we can't afford and what resources aren't available because of the war in Iraq.We are becoming like the countries we criticise and pity, places where the state and the society have less and less to do with each other. We are on our own, but then black people have always known that.»
--"We are on our own": "In the US, white people can't imagine black people who are just like them"
«The words "homeland security" now have a terribly hollow ring in the anarchic south: 35% of Louisiana's National Guard is serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. And recruiting is down because people fear being sent to Iraq. The priority given to law and order seems a troubling inverse reflection of what happened after the fall of Baghdad. Is it really more important to use deadly force against looters than to deliver humanitarian aid effectively?»--"Blaming Bush"
«If we can't focus properly on the immediate and long-term causes of communal violence, we'll get ample opportunity in the future to appropriate someone else's misery for our own failed ideologies.»--"Looting: My story."
Tomorrow begins here. So call me when it's over -- I'm going to go find a glacier to hide under.
