Message to George Bush from a San Diego North County Evacuee

Neither the Border Patrol nor George Bush is welcome in San Diego! We’ve Suffered Enough!

Message to George Bush,

I believe…

1. Nature caused these fires

2. Global Warming, the most dangerous side effect of Capitalism, made them worse.

3. The lack of resources to fight these fires and which are currently being used in the imperialist war in Iraq prevented most of these fires from being extinguished expeditiously.

At this moment, the FBI and other police agencies are searching for some of the culprits who may have caused some of the fires in San Bernardino. Such is the thirst for revenge for these fires that one suspected person has been shot and killed while there is a search for others. This search implies that these particular fires in San Bernardino were caused by humans, while the rest were a tragic result of nature.

I believe otherwise.

If the police authorities want to find the person who may be to blame for the rest of the fires that spread uncontrollably around Southern California, they should immediately detain and arrest George Bush as he sets foot into the scene of the crime on this day.

The fact of the matter is that no other entity in this country, and perhaps the world bears more responsibility for this natural disaster than George Bush and the government he represents. No other person or government in the world is more anti-nature than George Bush and the status quo he represents.

We are well aware of the repeated attempts by the US government to continue to deny the fact that Global Warming, or what should be called, Global Extinction, is a reality and a threat to our society, and our world as we know it, despite the overwhelming proof being provided by the scientific community. We know that when it comes to the question of Global Warming, there is no longer a debate, but instead only a time bomb that has been lit.

If Hurricane Katrina made those of us who were skeptical about Global Warming question whether it was a reality, then the fires in Southern California in 2007 should be more than convincing. What more proof are we waiting for? One more natural disaster of epic proportion? Is the third time the charm? It must not be so.

In addition to the threat brought onto the world caused by the lifestyle of those who identify themselves as capitalists, the War in Iraq is also to blame. Being a lifelong resident of Fallbrook, which is located in the North County of San Diego where you are visiting, I have seen many fires start and end within two to three days around this area.

The fire we saw on the morning of Monday, October 22, 2007 was no different. As we traveled to the burning area that was in Rainbow on that morning, the only difference we saw was the lack helicopters or airplanes flying around the area, nor did we hear the familiar sound of fire engines rushing to the scene. Even if it were true that the Santa Ana winds prevented airplanes and helicopters from flying on Monday, that does not explain Tuesday, Wednesday and now Thursday when the winds have actually died down substantially. Nor does this explain why the fires were not extinguished from the start on Sunday, October 21st, as they normally are around this area when there are isolated fires.

According to award-winning journalist, Miriam Raftery, “CNN reports that only 1,500 National Guard have been sent to assist Californians during the current wildfire crisis—less than 1/10 of the state’s 20,000 National Guard members. Clearly having the bulk of our National Guards forces deployed to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan have hindered emergency response here at home.”

Thus, your war in Iraq bears responsibility for allowing these fires to grow to the level in which they did.

Furthermore, the presence of the Border Patrol in evacuated communities only add insult to injury. There is absolutely no need for Border Patrol vehicles in evacuated communities and their presence only hinders what should be a collaborative effort between authorities and evacuees.

The sight of the Border Patrol in Mexican and Latin American communities such as Fallbrook, Pala and Pauma Valley, bears as much terror as the guillotine’s public presence used in the French Revolution, since the Border Patrol and other immigration agencies are known to decapitate families by separating parents from their children.

How in the world do you expect the community to react in a time of crisis when they see these instruments of state terror roaming around their neighborhoods? They expect the community to now see them as aiding the evacuation effort? If they truly wanted to be of assistance, why not they give them a hose or a fireman’s uniform to fight the fire, since there was obviously a shortage of manpower?

Considering all this, your visit to our communities in North County should only receive the utmost repudiation and disdain we can humanly express. Even more so than how Bollinger received Ahmadinejad at Columbia University earlier this year since you embody the most extreme signs of an imperialistic and psychopathic dictator.

In closing, we must recall the words of Subcomandante Marcos at the Gathering of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas held just recently.

“Never before has there been so much and such great stupidity from the bad governments which cause our countries to suffer… because what is happening is that they are killing the earth, nature, the world.

Without logic of time and place, catastrophes such as earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, floods become present in all of the world.

And they say they are natural catastrophes, when in reality they have been provoked, with painstaking stupidity, by the grand multinational corporations and the governments that serve them in our countries.

The fragile equilibrium of nature, which for millions of years has permitted the world to exist, is about to shatter anew, but this time definitively.”

You Mr. Bush (you do not deserve the title of President) represent the quintessence of the stupidity of governments our Compañero Marcos so precisely described.

October 25, 2007
Ricardo Favela
Fallbrook Resident and Evacuee
North County San Diego
rqfavela@yahoo.com

There are roughly as many California Guard personnel deployed to Iraq right now has have been clled up for fire duty.


Total CANG Personnel: 22,000
Deployed to Iraq: ~1,530
Deployed to Afghanistan: ~60
Deployed to Kuwait: ~50
Deployed to the Mexican Border: ~1,200
On TDY, in Schools or other training: ~500 at any given time.

If you wish, you may assume that 50% of the remainder is undeployable for any of the reasons that that happens (health, legal, hardship,...) or are previously tasked for other upcoming planned events (deployment rotation, exercises, Annual Training), and you still get a body of over 8,000 national Guard personnel available for whatever duty is necessary.

LG Blum, the Director of the National Guard Bureau, said in a C-Span televised briefing that before overseas deploymetns, teh capabiliteis that California would need for the fire season were factored in and none of those capabilites were sent from the state.

As for equipment, using HMMWVs as an example, 290 CANG Hummers are overseas right now. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the many hundreds of trucks the CANG is authorized. It is possible that they are short by 50%, but if that's the case, it's not because they've left California, it's because, as has been done since the Guard was established, they've never had their full authorization and those trucks were never purchased/allocated/delivered.

And that's a valid complaint, one you'd rightly take up with every Congress for the past 40 years.

believe…

Ricardo Favela wrote;

"1. Nature caused these fires

2. Global Warming, the most dangerous side effect of Capitalism, made them worse.

3. The lack of resources to fight these fires and which are currently being used in the imperialist war in Iraq prevented most of these fires from being extinguished expeditiously. "

Ricardo is correct on two points;

1) Nature did indeed cause the fires, and searching for an arsonist to use as a scapegoat for property damage is futile and ignorant of the fire ecology of the SoCal canyons. Anything, from a spark of a generator, static electricity (invisible lightening) of clouds or a careless toss of a cigarette could have caused the initial fires. To attempt to blame any human being for causing this event that would occur periodically in hot dry weather conditions is a foolish endeavor on the part of the government. Their (our taxpayer) resources would be better used in preventing suburban sprawl housing built into fire prone canyons and relearning indigenous people's (pre-Columbus) methods of controlled burns to prevent build-up of fuel load (ie., cheatgrass, shrubs, etc..) so that regular, lower intensity fires return to the chapparel canyon ecosystem..

2) Global warming's climate change effects moisture patterns in ways weather science cannot predict. This could be additional months of severe drought in summer seasons, and additional months of severe rainfall in spring/winter seasons. Ironically both of these conditions will worsen the summer fire season in the SoCal foothills if unregulated development without controlled burn fire ecology continues into the future..

3) This point indicates that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq are responsible for lack of fire control resources in CA. While i am also oppossed to the U.S.
military occupation of Iraq, it is wishful thinking to believe that more firefighters running about the SoCal hillsides would actually have stopped the fires when acknowleging the two above points (natural fire ecology and global warming drought/heat) as fact.

My belief is that the U.S. "troops" (ie., mostly young adults in uniform) should be brought home from Iraq (or Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc..) simply because they are human beings and don't deserve to be placed in harm's way in either Iraq (to protect King George's petroleum supplies) or the SoCal canyons to breath searing hot smoke to save another yuppie's mansion..

Both the capitalists and the socialists have dropped the ball when it comes to discussing fire ecology and that fire fighting should be replaced by fire ecologists who practice lower intensity controlled burns..

Developers need to be placed in check and held responsible for ignoring previous warnings about the predicted threats of fire..

One good thing the ISO is doing (picking up the ball) is hosting a talk by Mike Davis to better understand the risks of fire and how to adapt to fire ecology..

Sponsored by Haymarket Books and the International Socialist Organization. Email isosandiego [at] yahoo.com for more information.


http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/26/18456171.php

In Mike's words;

"Prescriptive burning (after the aboriginal model) has been practiced successfully in local national forests for decades. It is precluded in most Southern California foothills by the sheer density of housing and the threat of lawsuits from powerful homeowners' associations. They are the principal political constituency for the continuation of costly and quixotic efforts at "total fire suppression."

Since the end of World War II, at least 50,000 high-priced homes have been constructed in Southland foothills and mountains. More than communion with nature, these homes represent — as design critic Reyner Banham recognized — a search for absolute "thickets of privacy" outside the fabric of common citizenship and urban life. Hillside homebuilding, in these cases, has despoiled the natural heritage of the majority for the sake of an affluent minority. The beautiful coastal-sage and canyon-riparian ecosystems of the Santa Monica Mountains have now been supplanted by castles and "guard-gate prestige." Elsewhere in Southern California, tens of thousands of acres of oak and walnut woodland have been destroyed by bulldozers to make room for similar posh developments.

Despite a season of horrifying firestorms, dozens of new hillside tracts remain under construction. In the foothills above Monrovia, for example, several hundred venerable oak trees have been cut down for the sake of overscaled (and combustible) faux chateaux. In Altadena a favorite glen is being transformed into a "total-security" gated suburb complete with its own private school. "

article found @;

http://www.radicalurbantheory.com/mdavis/firebugs.html

"it is wishful thinking to believe that more firefighters running about the SoCal hillsides would actually have stopped the fires when acknowleging the two above points (natural fire ecology and global warming drought/heat) as fact."

This is easy for someone to say who may have not seen what I saw. I saw relatively small fires burning without ANY fire fighters present to extinguish them. There was an obvious lack of personnel to help fight the fires. And not only were wealthy homes burned, but many poor people's homes, trailers, shanty's were burned as well. It is a fact that the wealthy can not live without the poor, which means where there is one mansion, there are usually many poor families nearby to work for that family. You apparently aren't familiar with the communities of San Diego.

It is very idealistic and even MORE wishful thinking to believe that we can all live in a pretty wonderland where human beings don't have to risk living in harms way. To me, that sounds lazy and very anti-socialistic. Many of the more well known figures who have proclaimed to be socialists are known for there ability to sacrifice their lives and putting themselves in harm's way to defend the defenseless. I've never heard of a socialist who DOESN'T do so.

Sorry Richard, we have a difference of opinion. My earlier statement stressed that fires are natural, and building mansions, shacks or shanties in harm's way all represent bad ideas, regardless of economic status..

Here again i would not ask anyone (firefighter) to place their physical being in harm's way to defend any sort of building that occurrs in the fire prone canyons of this region. Accidental fires in regular placed homes (not in fire prone canyons) are a risk enough for firefighters, without expecting people to perform miracles into excessive dry winds and heat tunnels of canyons..

If the wealthy and their codependent working class neighbors cannot learn to live with the ecosystem (as i've said before, indigenous people have lived with the fires for centuries pre-Columbus, before you play the 'racist' card on me), then there will be additional fires and evacuations until humans learn we cannot dominate Madre Tierra..

In fact, it is the attitudes of people over nature that is prevalent in both capitalism and socialism, so neither of these centralized government structures appeals to me. My choice is the return to traditional pre-Columbus indigenous knowledge and lifestyles, less dependency on technology and domination of natural forces. Feel free to argue with me about how "we can't go backwards" or "this wouldn't work unless billions died", etc.. and other anti-primitivist sentiment. Am ready to debunk some euro-colonialist myths with traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous culture..

If folks rebuild their mansions and codependent working class neighborhoods in fire prone canyons next year, please consider to rescue yourselves..