FoodMusicJustice.com

There may be things more important than the Super Bowl.

On the other hand…waiting for, watching and celebrating The Game in the French Quarter.

From the book “24 Hour Party People” pgs 205-206 by Tony Wilson

A half-hour profile - sorry - small, cheap documentary, of the textile billionaire David Alliance, big boss of Coates Viyella, answered the question, ‘why Manchester?’ once and for all. Alliance was answering the question from Wilson the interviewer: ‘Why do you, one of Britain’s richest industrialists, keep your head office in Manchester and continue to live in Manchester?

‘I’ll tell you why.’

Forty years in England had only mellowed the delightful Middle-Eastern lilt of his speech. Alliance was a handsome, charismatic man in his mid-fifties who once tried to warn his friend the Shah of Iran, ‘You’re feeding their bellies, you’ve got to start feeding their minds.’

‘I’ll tell you why. When I had been in this country from my home in Persia no more than ten days, I was looking for my uncle’s house in Clyde Road in West Didsbury. I was sheltering from the rain under the awnings of the old Rediffusion cinema in East Didsbury. I spoke maybe ten words of English. I had the address on a piece of paper. I saw a woman pushing a pram, I showed her the address and she indicated I should follow her. We walked, perhaps a mile and a half, through the rain, and finally got to Clyde Road and got to my uncle’s house. I knocked. He opened the door and flung his arms round me, shouting, “Davoud, Davoud.” And I looked back and the woman waved and walked back the way we had come, pushing the pram.

‘I turned to my uncle and said, “She wasn’t coming this way, why did she come all this way if she wasn’t coming this way?”

“Davoud, because this is Manchester.”‘

It is this city’s hospitality to the outside that gives rise to the great truism of Manchester music: Manchester kids have the best record collections. That’s not a Wilson line, though he wishes it was. He’d been given this gem by A&R hero Dave Ambrose. Right on, Dave. They do. They have the best record collections. Open to outside influences.

Why do you think Jon Dasilve, Graeme Park and the Pick were playing house music on a Friday night? Why were the Mondays listening to it every fucking night? It was bloody foreign, wasn’t it? It was and this is the city of the foreigner, with its open arms. And hands held out, palm up.

And maybe that’s why so many of the people in this book are mysteriously devoted to the town. Its open arms inspired a return. Even down to putting everything you’ve earned and everything you’re going to earn into a designer dance hall that was now slowly approaching break-even thanks to student (urgh) night and Stella a quid a pint.

And you never give up. That was the lesson of Wilson’s next small, cheap documentary. The story of the Manchester Ship Canal.

King Cotton made us first city of the empire. Foundation stone of the Industrial Revolution. Bit like Peter Saville being responsible for Designer Britain. Good thing or bad? Maybe like Chou En-Lai said when asked the same question about the French Revolution: it’s too soon to tell.

Anyway, come the American Civil War and all this cotton stuff comes to a halt. Famously, the textile workers of England’s North-West sided with the black (Liverpool-imported, if you don’t mind) slaves and Lincoln’s Republican army, although this was precisely against their own interests, holding down jobs that relied on the plantation owners of the South. They rightly identified the African slave labour as remarkably similar to their own alienated labour.

A little bit Bradley Hardacre and a little bit Andy Warhol.

The “Katrina Myth” has been the #4 top rated video in the “News and Politics” category on YouTube for the last 12 hours.

That means the levee issue is right up there on the top line with stories about the Democratic convention and McCain’s choice of Governor Palin as his running mate.

It’s also the #10 top favorite video, and the #14 top rated video in ALL categories.

YouTube’s counter, which is notoriously slow, shows 23,146 views in the last 24 hours.

Thanks to everyone who helped in this effort.

If you haven’t had a chance to support the video yet, there is still time.

The goal here is to keep the levee issue on the top of YouTube’s consciousness at least so that it might be picked up by a major news service.

That way instead of hearing how corrupt New Orleans people are, or how doomed the city is, people might learn that if the FEDERAL levees were simply built the way we all already PAID with our tax dollars for them to be built, New Orleans would be facing a hard time, but
not a second inundation by flood waters.

We’re getting a lot of international interest in the video and the comments from international viewers are all the same:

“How is it possible that the US treats its citizens this way?” They are genuinely baffled.

Anyway, if you’re in a position to (i.e. not packing up your belongings and heading out of town), keep pushing it.

Bizarrely (to me at least), this video seems to be the only source of publicly available information that lays out the levee situation in a clear, concise and comprehensive manner.

Here it is. Please let people know about it…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k

After you watch the movie, please click through to YouTube and rate it, comment on it, favorite it.

And then send the link to friends, family members, and colleagues and ask them to do it too.

There will never be a better window of opportunity to get the truth out about Katrina, New Orleans and levees.

Thanks.

Click here now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k

Hi y’all,

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busy.

One of the things I was up to was putting the finishing touches on the production and promotion of a film I wrote and produced called “The Katrina Myth: The Truth about a Thoroughly Unnatural Disaster.”

In an ideal world, this film would have been out sometime in early September - of 2005 - but as Mark Twain said: “A lie can get half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

I’m pretty sure that even before the levees came crashing down, Karl Rove was filling up his friends at Fox News with bullshit in order to cover up the fundamental inconvenient truth about “Katrina”:

‘Tweren’t no natural disaster. It was an engineering one. And the engineers responsible were the US Army Corps of Engineers. A FEDERAL failing and a federal responsibility.

As for the people “stuck” inside the city, they were held in the city at gunpoint by representatives of the Bad Old South who drew guns and fired warning shots (sometimes into the backs) of people who tried to walk out of the city to food, water, and safety.

Instead of the truth, we heard about looters, snipers, cities built below sea level and all other manner of assorted distractions, some manufactured - and nothing about the epic heroism and kindness of tens of thousands of New Orleanians in the face of inhuman pressure.

Anyway, the future of New Orleans depends on three things and they all begin with the letter “L.”

Love, luck and levees.

The love is there. No problem.

Luck? Personally I don’t like to count on luck. Waaaaaay too fickle.

So that leaves us with levees.

Good levees, New Orleans survives. Bad levees, New Orleans drowns again.

Sorry to be so ugly about it, but there it is.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, there is only one group in the known universe that is focused on the levee issue and needless to say it is not a governmental group or even a traditional NGO (the new Orwellian-speak for a non-profit.)

Right now, the only thing standing in the way between New Orleans and future disaster is a kitchen-table-based enterprise called levees.org

If you’re not a member, please correct that right away.

And make sure you tell everyone you know who cares about the city that Step One in rebuilding the city is to swell the ranks of levees.org until it reaches a size that is capable of making noise and creating an agitation that can’t be ignored.

To help this along, I made a simple 10 minute film that addresses and demolishes the five key Katrina Myths that enable the government crooks in Washington DC, Baton Rouge and indeed New Orleans itself to “make believe” that everything is OK and they don’t need to do anything about the levees.

I don’t mind telling you I busted a gut writing this thing and getting it ready to go in time for the Big Three.

(Huge thanks to Goodman Green who provided rapid-fire video magic I’d be hard pressed to find anywhere on earth, New Orleans or elsewhere.)

There will be a sneak preview tomorrow at the annual Rising Tide conference for New Orleans bloggers.

Then on Thursday, August 28th, there will be a public premiere.

Be there. Bring friends. Tell friends in New Orleans and elsewhere.

In a week, we’ll be launching a YouTube campaign and we’re shooting for 100,000 views in seven days or less. Watch for the announcement.

Real levee repair and building cannot go forward until the bullshit about New Orleans laid down by Karl Rove, Fox News and the rest of the media ratpack back in ‘05 is thoroughly cleaned out of people’s heads and replaced with the TRUTH.

I’ve done all I can do. Now it’s up to you.

Please make sure that everyone you know, inside New Orleans and out, sees this film and are enrolled to make sure their friends and colleagues see it too - and join levees.org.

It’s three years out. It’s do or die time. Fresh momentum or the mortuary.

I think New Orleans is worth saving.

How about you?

Click here for info about the August 28th premiere:

http://www.levees.org/blog/sandy

Ken McCarthy
FoodMusicJustice.com

I admit it.

I’m hiding out in the cool weather of the Catskills.

But if I were in New Orleans, I’d made sure I was at this event. It looks like it will be absolutely beautiful.

Click here and be inspired: http://www.weshallnotbemoved.org/

New Orleans was worse than you think…and other US cities are at current risk of even greater catastrophes from…levee failures.

That’s the conclusion of group of respected civil engineers who have studied natural and engineering disasters (New Orleans was an engineering disaster) all over the world.

Here’s Part One of the two-part series.

There’s more. Click here for PART TWO: California’s levees are even worse

Want to look up the status of the New Orleans levee system?

It used to be as easy as contacting the Corps local librarian. Now all the records have been removed to a warehouse and the public no longer has access to them.

Is this one of the Corp’s post-Katrina improvements?

The local New Orleans business magazine does an excellent job of covering social justice issues.

Obviously, it’s not the magazine’s “beat” but when it does cover the subject, it’s worth reading.

When the artist known as ReX faced tens of thousands of dollars in fines for posting positive public art, the magazine not only covered the story, but also covered his nemesis, a dangerous lunatic called the Gray Ghost who is paid by the city to essentially vandalize public property with a gray paint roll.

(If New Orleans didn’t exist, someone would have to make it up, the only problem being no one would ever believe it.)

This issue of New Orleans City Business covers a particularly vicious practice of local police, setting up homeless people for petty crimes and then charging them with felonies that could result in their imprisonment for up to a decade. Great journalism.

Click here to read the article

A panel and performance by legendary Creole Wild West Indian tribe.

Enjoy this close up. I happened to be at this event and this short video captures the highlights very well.