Green Years ...

Friday, November 11, 2005

"Free Ganji" icon


I am adding a "Free Ganji" icon to the right of this blog, and I am going to leave it there as a symbol to his enormous resistance and courage for human right activities. Hope that one day all dictators around the world, and specially Iran, will be gone.

To see more about "Akbar Ganji", see here.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Where is my Dinner?

Micheal Brown, the former president of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), a native of Oklahoma, did a terrible job during the Huricane Katrina, both before and after the huricane. Brown was appointed to this important position without any job-related experience, and only because of his close tie with the Bush administration.

Some of the emails between different FEMA officials a while after Huricane Katrina have been released. Here you can read these released emails:

_Marty Bahamonde, regional director for New England to David Passey, regional director for the Gulf Coast, Aug. 28, 4:46 p.m.:
"Issues developing at the Superdome. 2000 already in and more standing in line. ...The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about 2 hours and are looking for alternative oxygen."
_Bahamonde to Deborah Wing, FEMA response specialist, Aug 28, 5:28 p.m.
"Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast."
_Passey to group, Aug 28, 7:16 p.m.
"The current population at the Superdome in New Orleans is 25,000. That's a large crowd during a normal event. Among the shelter population are 400 special needs evacuees and 45-50 sick individuals who require hospitalization. The on-hand oxygen supply will likely run out in the next few hours. According to the ESF8 folks, the local health officials have struggled to put meaningful resource requests together."
_Passey to Bahamonde, Aug. 28, 9:58 p.m.
"Our intel is that neither the OK-1 DMAT nor the public health officers staged in Memphis will make it to the Superdome tonight. Oxygen supply issue has not been solved yet either."
_Bahamonde to Michael Heath, FEMA official, Aug. 29, 7:33 a.m.
"Some pumping stations failed but no widespread flooding yet. The reall (sic) worry will be in the next 3 hours when he (sic) storm passes and we get the northerly winds blowing thwe (sic) lake into the city
_Bahamonde to Nicole Andrews, FEMA spokeswoman, Aug. 30, 7:02 a.m.
"What is happening with the US travel this morning. When is he coming to New Orleans. The area around the Superdome is filling up with water, now waist deep. The US can land and do a presser but then have to leave, there will be no ground tour, only flyover," referring to planned visit by Brown.
_Bahamonde to FEMA Director Michael Brown, Aug. 31, 11:20 a.m.
"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical. Here some things you might not know.
Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes.
The dying patients at the DMAT tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for dome evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.
_Sharon Worthy, Brown's press secretary, to Cindy Taylor, FEMA deputy director of public affairs, and others, Aug. 31, 2 p.m.
"Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.
Gievn (sic) that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc.
_Bahamonde to Taylor and Michael Widomski, public affairs, Aug. 31, 2:44 p.m.
"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! No won't go any further, too easy of a target. Just tell her that I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants. Maybe tonight I will have time to move my pebbles on the parking garage floor so they don't stab me in the back while I try to sleep.
_Bahamonde to Taylor, Sept. 3, 1:06 a.m.
"The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch. ... But while I am horrified at some of the cluelessness and self concern that persists, I try to focus on those that have put their lives on hold to help people that they have never met and never will. And while I sometimes think that I can't work in this arena, I can't get out of my head the visions of children and babies I saw sitting there, helpless, looking at me and hoping I could make a difference and so I will and you must to."


Do you think if the victims of Huricane Katrina were from his home state Oklahoma or Texas, instead of black people of New Orleans, he would dare to eat dinner more than 30 minutes while lots of people were dying?

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Everlasting Racism

As a result of some years living in the South of the US, I think time to time about the roots and beginning of the racism. I haven’t seen the problem of racism, before coming to US. Last night, I saw the biographical movie of Rosa Parks, the human activist who didn’t give her seat to a white man in the bus and got arrested in 1955. It made me come to the point out about this again.

A friend of mine, an African American born in California who unluckily got admission to the school in the South, had told me about different horrible stories happening to him here in the middle of US. It wasn’t surprising for me, because I have lived in the South long enough to completely feel the hatred and racism. It was just a confirmation on my belief about people in the South, but why people in South are more racist than North is important too. Most people in the South are poor, church-going, haven’t seen any other cultures. A combination of poor financial situation with the strong belief that Christians are human and the others are just non-humans, makes their mind black and white.

Racism has a very long root in the West, is something that started in Europe. Racism originated with capitalism and the slave trade. As the writer CLR James put it, "The conception of dividing people by race begins with the slave trade. This thing was so shocking, so opposed to all the conceptions of society which religion and philosophers had…that the only justification by which humanity could face it was to divide people into races and decide that the Africans were an inferior race."

History proves this point. Prior to the advent of capitalism, racism as a systematic form of oppression did not exist. For example, ancient Greek and Roman societies had no concept of race or racial oppression.

Nowadays modern slavery is very mixed with the train of church-going people with a religious fabricating.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Computer Programming for Kids


If you are a parent who wants to teach your kids computer programming from early childhood, you can use the nice c-jump, the C programming board game for kids.