Friday, August 15, 2003

"Live from Baghdad! Top 10 tips for surviving outages"

Why not talking to the experts in doing without a functioning electrical grid? That's right—the Iraqis! Here:

And the No. 1 suggestion among Iraqis for Americans suffering without power: TAKE TO THE STREETS. Some said demonstrations can be effective in persuading authorities to turn on the switch. "We held protests. After that we had fewer blackouts," Ahmed Abdul Hussein said without even a hint of sarcasm. "I'd suggest Americans go out and demonstrate."

Of course, the Iraqi power failures are from a war, and our power failures are... well, from what else but from a war of a few "malefactors of great wealth" against the public interest?

NOTE: Though to be fair—heck, why not try to be fair to the administration? Since even when we are fair, their failures are so grotesque—I'd like to see more citations in Palast's reportage on the "malefactors" above.