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8/29/05 - 9/4/2005
Sunday 9/4/2005
New race row rattles relief drive for hurricane victims 9/4/2005 AFP: "Terming the poor, mainly black, people evacuated by air and bus from the terrible aftermath of Katrina as refugees "is insulting, it is racist, it does not describe American citizens," Jackson said.
"If you characterise them as refugees, it is someone other than citizens," he said. Aid agencies classify those who are forced to flee their homes but do not cross international borders as internally displaced people."
New Orleans crisis shames US 9/4/2005 BBC
Who Really Knows Who Shot Who? 9/4/2005 BlogSpot: ""Stations: The latest New Orleans-datelined urgent series Hurricane Katrina-Shootings has been KILLED. The Army Corps of Engineers says the contractors were shot at, then police fatally shot the gunman who'd fired on the contractors. The contractors were NOT killed."
"A kill is mandatory. Make certain the story is not broadcast.""
Venezuela to Sell U.S. More Fuel Because of Storm, Chavez Says 9/4/2005 Bloomberg
Senators Call Government Response 'Immense Failure' 9/4/2005 Capitol Hill Blues
Spreading the poison of bigotry 9/4/2005 Chicago Tribune: "They locked down the entrance doors Thursday at the Baton Rouge hotel where I'm staying alongside hundreds of New Orleans residents driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina.
"Because of the riots," the hotel managers explained. Armed Gunmen from New Orleans were headed this way, they had heard.
"It's the blacks," whispered one white woman in the elevator. "We always worried this would happen.""
Joe "Funeralgate: Allbaugh Destroyed FEMA 9/4/2005 Democrats.com: "Mitch Daniels, spelled out the philosophy in remarks at an April 2001 conference: "The general idea -- that the business of government is not to provide services, but to make sure that they are provided -- seems self-evident to me," he said. In a May 15, 2001, appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Allbaugh signaled that the new, stripped-down approach would be applied at FEMA as well. "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management," he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level." As a result, says a disaster program administrator who insists on anonymity, "We have to compete for our jobs -- we have to prove that we can do it cheaper than a contractor.""
Bywater evacuated at Gunpoint 9/4/2005 New Orleans IndyMedia: "By Andrea Garland of Get Your Act On and member, Green Party of Louisiana. The entire city of New Orleans is under evacuation orders. I just spoke to my friend Daniel in the Bywater (9th ward). He reports that unmarked police vehicles (cadillacs) are driving through the neighborhood with SWAT team police armed with 'big black machine guns' telling people through bullhorns they are under orders to evacuate and must leave the city now…. Daniel says that in 6 days they have not seen or received any help. In 6 days they saw one policeman - flying through the neighborhood in a police car at 40 miles an hour. He reported that for the first two days after the storm, Wildlife and Fisheries were rescuing people from the flooded out lower 9th ward, blocks from my house and his house by boat - and just dropping the people off on the dry side of the levy, with no food or water or anywhere to go. He said that after two days the boats just stopped coming. He had no idea why until I explained the situation with the National Guard to him, and that the rescue boats were told to stand down and stop rescuing people. The people locked down in the city have no idea that supplies are sitting just outside the city and being turned away. The only reason they have food is they managed to gather what they could from friends' apartments, etc., but again, no one has come to help them or bring them food. Other than the people left stranded in the neighborhood, it has been completely abandoned by all official entities.
Here is a bit of heart breaking news. There is only one radio station people can receive in the city. Daniel said that people trapped in their attics in the lower 9th ward have been calling the station saying where they are and asking that some one come get them. But there is no one to come. Those that are not already dead are dying. Daniel estimates that there are easily some 40-50,000 people dead in their homes in the lower 9th ward. I can not imagine listening to this on the radio, knowing that these peoples pleas are falling on deaf ears. They have simply been left to die."
'It's black people who are dying, so Bush doesn't care' 9/4/2005 Observer: "The last person who was able to really lift us out of the trickbag of race was Martin Luther King. He said: "Look, poor black people and poor white people, we're all catching hell, so let's get together in this poor people's campaign and march up to our government and say you can no longer fool us by turning us on each other with race."
I am shocked and I am not shocked by what is happening now. It is instructive to a lot of people that we really have not been concerned about the poor and certainly about the blacks in this nation. When you look at who is in control of the politics, when you look at who the appeal has been to from the conservatives, you see that whole racial element coming up again. Louisiana is pulling the sheath off the nation.'"
Bush tour a 'photo op': Louisiana senator 9/4/2005 Sydney Morning Herald: ""Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street Levee," said Landrieu, a Democrat.
"Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.
"Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity.
"The desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment."
USA has entered the first stage of civil war ... and there is no turning back now! 9/4/2005 Vheadlines: "What Rivera and the other reporters (on site in New Orleans) witnessed, I experienced in person in the devastation of the Venezuelan barrios in the 1970s ... raw sewage, dead rats, chickens and dogs and maggots and vomit sweeping through tin and cardboard, mud-floored shacks during heavy rains ... for days at a time ... and the stench of dead humans who were unable to afford medication ... dying alone in their improvised homes ... almost all dark skins ... the majority 80% of the Venezuelan population ... not like the Venezuelan Miss Universes we have so often seen ... who represent a small minority of what Venezuelan women look like ... while a majority of Venezuelan white skins and their cohorts raped the wealth of the country, partied endlessly, drank the "best" whiskies and smoked the "best" cigars, and treated the dark skins like slaves as a matter of custom, paid them undignified wages, way below poverty level ... and worse yet, spoke openly against the dark skins (and they still do today), calling them names such as thieves, lazy drunks and monkeys from the hills."
Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting - White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials 9/4/2005 Washington Post: "Chertoff planned to fly overnight to the New Orleans area to take charge of deploying the expanded federal and military assets for several days, he said. He said he has "full confidence" in FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, the DHS undersecretary and federal officer in charge of the Katrina response.
Brown, a frequent target of New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's wrath, said Saturday that "the mayor can order an evacuation and try to evacuate the city, but if the mayor does not have the resources to get the poor, elderly, the disabled, those who cannot, out, or if he does not even have police capacity to enforce the mandatory evacuation, to make people leave, then you end up with the kind of situation we have right now in New Orleans."
New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas acknowledged that the city was surprised by the number of refugees left behind, but he said FEMA should have been prepared to assist.
"Everybody shares the blame here," said Thomas. "But when you talk about the mightiest government in the world, that's a ludicrous and lame excuse. You're FEMA, and you're the big dog. And you weren't prepared either."" [Numerous newspaper stories show that all plans expected at least 100,000 to stay behind after an evacuation.]
Saturday 9/3/2005
 Guardsmen 'played cards' amid New Orleans chaos: police official 9/3/2005 AFP: ""We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance," he told AFP in an interview.
Riley went on: "We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard.
"The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep.
"For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have.""
Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign' 9/3/2005 Boston Herald
Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response 9/3/2005 Chicago Tribune: "FEMA's chief has been demoted from a near-Cabinet-level position; political appointees with little, if any, emergency-management experience have been placed in senior FEMA positions; and the small, 2,500-person agency was dropped into the midst of the 180,000-employee Homeland Security Department, which is more oriented to combating terrorism than natural disasters. All that has led to a brain drain as experienced but demoralized employees have left the agency, former and current FEMA staff members say… It had been standard practice for FEMA to position supplies ahead of time, and the agency did preposition drinking water and tarps to cover damaged roofs near where they would be needed. In addition, FEMA has coordinated its plans with state and local officials and let the Defense Department know beforehand what type of military assistance would be needed.
"I'm a little confused as to why it took so long to get the military presence running convoys into downtown New Orleans," Copenhaver said.
And there isn't an experienced disaster-response expert at the top of the agency as there was when James Lee Witt ran it during the 1990s. Before Michael Brown, the current head, joined the agency as its legal counsel, he was with the International Arabian Horse Association.
That loss of experienced personnel might explain in part why FEMA was not able to secure buses sooner for the evacuation of New Orleans, a step anticipated by the hurricane disaster simulation last year." [Brown was fired from the International Arabian Horse Association for ruining its finances.]
"Let Them Eat Shit..." - People of the Dome 9/3/2005 Counterpunch: "Those people who stole televisions and large non-emergency items have been selling them, Les reports (having witnessed several of these "exchanges") so that they could get enough money together to leave the area… Some tourists in the Monteleone Hotel paid $25,000 for 10 buses. The buses were sent (I guess there were many buses available, if you paid the price!) but the military confiscated them to use not for transporting people in the Dome but for the military. The tourists were not allowed to leave. Instead, the military ordered the tourists to the now-infamous Convention Center… On Wednesday a number of Greens tried to bring a large amount of water to the SuperDome. They were prevented from doing so, as have many others. Why have food and water been blocked from reaching tens of thousands of poor people?
On Thursday, the government used the excuse that there were some very scattered gunshots (two or three instances only) -- around 1/50th of the number of gunshots that occur in New York City on an average day -- to shut down voluntary rescue operations and to scrounge for 5,000 National Guard troops fully armed, with "shoot to kill" orders -- at a huge economic cost… One of the first acts of Governor Kathleen Blanco (a Democrat, by the way) during this crisis was to turn off the drinking water, to force people to evacuate. There was no health reason to turn it off, as the water is drawn into a separate system from the Mississippi River, not the polluted lake, and purified through self-powered purification plants separate from the main electric grid. If necessary, people could have been told to boil their water -- strangely, the municipal natural gas used in stoves was still functioning properly as of Thursday night!
There are thousands of New Orleans residents who are refusing to evacuate because they don't want to leave their pets, their homes, or who have no money to do so nor place to go. The government -- which could have and should have provided water and food to residents of New Orleans -- has not done so intentionally to force people to evacuate by starving them out. This is a crime of the gravest sort."
Directing Katrina Money to Pat Robertson - Faith-Based FEMA? 9/3/2005 Counterpunch: "Operation Blessing, an evangelical Christian charity, was founded by Rev. Pat ("take him out") Robertson. Robertson still serves on its national board.
Operation Blessing is given a place of prominence at the FEMA website. Operation Blessing appears third on a list of charities overwhelmingly dominated by religious groups.
The governmental endorsement of Operation Blessing has been a media boon for the Christian group, with wire services, newspapers, television and other media widely publicizing FEMA's promotion of it."
Notes from Inside New Orleans 9/3/2005 Counterpunch: "In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp… There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child's education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy."
Just to give you a sense of just how badly FEMA has f*cked up. 9/3/2005 Daily Kos: "On Wednesday morning a group of approximately 1,000 citizens pulling 500 boats left the Acadiana Mall in Lafayette in the early morning and headed to New Orleans with a police escort from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. The flotillia of trucks pulling boats stretched over FIVE miles. This citizen rescue group was organized by La. State Senator, Nick Gautreaux from Vermilion Parish. The group was comprised of experienced boaters, licensed fishermen and hunters, people who have spent their entire adult life and teenage years on the waterways of Louisiana. The State Police waved the flotillia of trucks/boats through the barricades in LaPlace and we sped into New Orleans via I-10 until past the airport and near the Clearview exit. At that time we were stopped by agents of the FEMA controlled La. Dept. of Wildlife & Fisheries."
How to help: Black groups rally to aid victims 9/3/2005 Guerilla News
FEMA Chief: 'Urban Warfare' Slowed Rescue 9/3/2005 NewsMax: "Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Michael Brown said Friday that rescue efforts in New Orleans were hampered when relief workers came under attack by the city's criminal element, prompting conditions that resembled "urban warfare.""
FEMA Chief: 'Urban Warfare' Slowed Rescue 9/3/2005 NewsMax: "Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Michael Brown said Friday that rescue efforts in New Orleans were hampered when relief workers came under attack by the city's criminal element, prompting conditions that resembled "urban warfare."
"We are working under conditions of urban warfare," Brown told CNN, explaining why his agency was unable to act more quickly to save those left behind by evacuation efforts."
Homeland Security won't let Red Cross deliver food 9/3/2005 Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Bush visit halts food delivery 9/3/2005 Times Picayune: "Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea."
Kanye West's Torrent of Criticism, Live on NBC 9/3/2005 Washington Post: "I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food." And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!"
Friday 9/2/2005
France, Cuba, Venezuela among those offering aid 9/2/2005 AP
Jackson Blasts Bush Over Katrina Aid 9/2/2005 AP: "Jackson questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering?"
"It is that lack of sensitivity and compassion that represents a kind of incompetence."
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, head of the military task force overseeing operations in the three states, is black. His task force is providing search and rescue, medical help and sending supplies to the three states in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."
Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans 9/2/2005 Army Times: “This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.” ...Numerous soldiers also told Army Times that they have been shot at by armed civilians in New Orleans. Spokesmen for the Joint Task Force Headquarters at the Superdome were unaware of any servicemen being wounded in the streets, although one soldier is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a struggle with a civilian in the dome Wednesday night… Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.
“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”"
Daley 'shocked' at federal snub of offers to help 9/2/2005 Chicago Tribune: "Frustration about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has reached Chicago City Hall, as Mayor Richard Daley today noted a tepid response by federal officials to the city's offers of disaster aid.
The city is willing to send hundreds of personnel, including firefighters and police, and dozens of vehicles to assist on the storm-battered Gulf Coast, but so far the Federal Emergency Management Agency has requested only a single tank truck, Daley said."
The big disconnect on New Orleans - The official version; then there's the in-the-trenches version 9/2/2005 CNN: FEMA Chief Brown is willfully ignoring obvious realities.
FEMA Dir. Mike Brown fired from prior job at Horse Assoc. 9/2/2005 Daily Kos: "He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.
I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people."
An American Hotel Rwanda - Desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina 9/2/2005 Dogon Village: "Dear Black America, There is a woman in Tucker, Georgia housing 52 victims of Katrina in a small house. Her sister-in-law has 40 people at her home in Decatur, GA. I'm sure there are numerous people across the country in the same situation. When I told the woman I had space for some of them, she asked if I could take 33 -there are more on the way!"
Genocide in New Orleans 9/2/2005 IndyBay: "I was seriously hoping that I would not have to write this article. But it has been too long now, and I have to say something. Regardless of whether the deaths en masse of poor black folks in New Orleans is due to neglect or maliciousness, the end result is constructively a genocide on poor blacks in America, right now, in 2005. The lack of aid to New Orleans at this late hour (7 pm, Sept. 1) is not explicable. I have only one explanation that I can muster up. And that explanation is classism and racism… New Orleans is not even a day away from the West Coast. I cannot explain why it is taking days to get help to those people dying down in New Orleans right now. But I remember when I was in the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, that the white middle class people had all the water they could use from the national guard, while only a few miles to the south, the mostly Hispanic communities, were standing in lines for hours in the sun to get only 5 gallons of water. My son and I drove up from the San Fernando Valley into the Santa Clarita Valley in 1994 after the quake collapsed our apartment, after seeing block-long lines at stores for water and long lines at high schools and parks with National Guard trucks giving out water to anyone with a 5 gallon container. When we hit Santa Clarita, there were cases of bottled water at every I-5 off ramp, with military personnel just sitting there, waiting for these middle class families to drive up. When I hit the Santa Clarita Red Cross, they also asked me to take some water off their hands, unloading a few cases of Evian water into my trunk! They had a surplus. I asked both the military and the Red Cross to please load the water up and drive just a bit over the hill where the water was desperately needed. And they refused. Maybe that story is a microcosm of what is going on here in New Orleans right now. No one wants to drive over the hill with supplies?"
Political storm blows in Washington 9/2/2005 MSNBC: "Members of the Congressional Black Caucus gathered in Washington on Friday to voice their frustration at the pace of hurricane relief efforts on the Gulf Coast and offered a few specific ideas that they thought might help, such as, every hotel chain in America opening its doors to people evacuated from Louisiana and providing donated accommodations."
New Orleans: A Disaster Waiting To Happen 9/2/2005 NNPA: By George E. Curry, who editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com, serving more than 200 Black newspapers. "I am angry. I am angry at the mayor of New Orleans. I am angry at the governor of Louisiana. I am angry at the Environmental Protection Agency. I am angry at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security. I am angry at George W. Bush. I am angry because they were warned last November that New Orleans was one of the “Disasters Waiting to Happen” – and did nothing about it. Consequently, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead. Needlessly."
Airboaters stalled by FEMA - The pilots stand ready to go help hurricane victims but have not been allowed to do so. 9/2/2005 Orlando Sentinel
Barbara Lee Blames War for Slow Response to Katrina 9/2/2005 Truth Out
US Will Accept Venezuela's Offer of Aid for Hurricane Victims 9/2/2005 VOA: "A top U.S. State Department official says the United States will accept Venezuela's offer of humanitarian aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but does not view the offer as a signal of change in the strained relations between the two countries. The official made the comment to VOA Friday in a wide-ranging interview as he prepares to leave his post later this month.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, says Washington has received offers of relief assistance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina from some 15 countries in the Americas, including Venezuela."
Bureaucratic Failure 9/2/2005 Wall Street Journal: [Having gutted FEMA which previously worked well, the right wingers now want to privatise it.] "A public role is unavoidable and political leadership is necessary. But if we're going to live with First World threats, such as the destruction of a major port city, let's deploy the most imaginative First World brains--in the private sector and academia--to mitigate those threats."
Thursday 9/1/2005
Hurricane Katrina Leaves Thousands of African-Americans Without Shelter, Food or Water 9/1/2005 AP
Disease outbreaks a real threat: Public health problems loom in Katrina's wake 9/1/2005 CNN
Anarchy in New Orleans - Chaos rules with 200,000 still stranded in the city. Looting, gunfire and a death toll still unknown 9/1/2005 Independent, UK
Taking refuge in the Astrodome 9/1/2005 KRGVTV, Houston: "NEWSCHANNEL 5 crews were in Houston as some desperate refugees arrived in a stolen bus." Video of the 18 year old black driver who will be charged for taking 100 people to safety on an abandonned bus.
Love Canal-type landfill submerged in New Orleans floodwaters 9/1/2005 Solid Waste & Recycling: "The Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) is situated on a 95-acre site in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood waters could potentially cause the landfill's toxic contents – the result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping – to leach out."
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize 9/1/2005 Stratfor: "The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States… New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to."
finding-looting 9/1/2005 Yahoo: "Flickr user dustin3000 uploaded two similar news photos; each of a flood victim in New Orleans wading in chest high water with boxes and bags.
Caption 1 under the very dark skinned person: " A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans"
Caption 2under the light skinned person: "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...""
Wednesday 8/31/2005
Bigots Gloat over Hurricane Victims; Spew Racist and Anti-Semitic Hate Online 8/31/2005 ADL
Venezuelan President Offers Aid For Katrina Victims 8/31/2005 AHN
Israel and 9/11: New Report Connects the Dots 8/31/2005 Antiwar.com
MEMORANDUM TO THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE 8/31/2005 Antiwar.com: "Israeli Surveillance of the Future Hijackers and FBI Suspects in the September 11 Attacks and Their Failure to Give Us Adequate Warning: The Need for a Public Inquiry"
Two Ohio Election Officials Indicted for 2004 Election Recount Conduct! 8/31/2005 Bradblog: "Two Cuyahoga County elections officials were indicted Tuesday on charges of not handling ballots correctly during the recount of the 2004 presidential election.
Kathleen Dreamer, manager of the board's ballot department, and the assistant manager, Rosie Grier, were each charged with six counts of failing to follow Ohio laws that spell out how ballots are selected and reviewed during a recount."
New Orleans is Sinking, But… "Hey, Shoot that Black Guy Running Off with the Bottled Water from Wal-Mart!" 8/31/2005 Counterpunch
5,000 soccer fans witness Haitian police machete massacre 8/31/2005 SF Bay View
'This is criminal': Malik Rahim reports from New Orleans 8/31/2005 SF Bay View: "Malik Rahim, a veteran of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans, for decades an organizer of public housing tenants both there and in San Francisco and a recent Green Party candidate for New Orleans City Council, lives in the Algiers neighborhood, the only part of New Orleans that is not flooded. They have no power, but the water is still good and the phones work. Their neighborhood could be sheltering and feeding at least 40,000 refugees, he says, but they are allowed to help no one. What he describes is nothing less than deliberate genocide against Black and poor people. - Ed."
Venezuela promises discounted heating oil and free eye surgery to U.S. poor 8/31/2005 SF Bay View
Lost in the Flood - Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage? 8/31/2005 Slate: "To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the importance of evacuation."
Hurricane Katrina exposes racism and inequality - Left behind to face the worst 8/31/2005 Socialist Worker
Iran's Nuclear Ambitions 8/31/2005 The Nation: "In their agitated state of mind, the EU-3 negotiators failed to realize that the only valid basis for hauling Iran before the United Nations Security Council was its breach of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime as enshrined in the NPT. In its latest statement on the subject, the IAEA said that it had not found any evidence that Iran was engaged in a nuclear weapons program, which is banned under the NPT. (Later, the IAEA announced that its tests vindicated Iran's claims that traces of enriched uranium found two years earlier by its inspectors at the Iranian nuclear facilities were from the imported equipment, believed to be of Pakistani origin.)
Not surprisingly, Washington dismissed the IAEA findings as meaningless.
Among those who remained coolly cognizant of the facts on the ground were fifteen IAEA governors belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement. The NAM includes such heavyweights as Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa.
At the IAEA's emergency session, Rajmah Hussein of Malaysia, the current NAM chairman, reiterated NAM's position that all countries have a basic and inalienable right to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes--the prime objective for which the IAEA was established in 1953 at the initiative of US President Dwight Eisenhower."
Katrina Exposes Racism 8/31/2005 Znet
Tuesday 8/30/2005
Overseas deployments hinder Guard hurricane presence 8/30/2005 AP
Katrina's real name 8/30/2005 Boston Globe: "THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming… Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.
The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.
In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.
In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.
As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change."
Venezuela: a Launch Pad for Muslim Extremism? 8/30/2005 Counterpunch: "Now, this is a curious figure. The total population of Venezuela as of July 2005 was, according to the CIA Factbook, about 25,375,000. The same source specifies that 98% of Venezuelans are Catholic or Protestant Christians, leaving 2% "other." Other sources give a Jewish population of 35,000, a Buddhist population of 25,000. This leaves half a million who are neither Christians, Jews, nor Buddhists. But the most substantial listing of Venezuelan religious population I've found doesn't give any information on Islam at all, and a Muslim site gives the figure of only 126,876 believers in Venezuela. I suppose there might be a large community of Arab Christian immigrants, but looks to me like Arostegui has simply done some math, found that the missing two percent amount to 507,000, and finds therein that "half-million strong" and threatening "Venezuelan Arab community" providing (in his fevered imagination) haven to the Muslim rogue-state agents."
America’s doomsday prophecy 8/30/2005 Daily Sun, Nigeria: "Every lover and patriot of the country Nigeria should feel disturbed by the recent US intelligence report that if certain things are not put in place, Nigeria will disintegrate within the next 15 years.
Since this report became public knowledge, Nigerians have as usual been divided over the veracity or falsehood of such a prediction coming from one of our friendly nations. Many including the President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed the report as a product of mischief-makers and prophets of doom."
SuperDome Lockdown: Katrina's Prisoners 8/30/2005 PEJ: "In the hours leading to the landfall of the, ultimately Class 4 hurricane, thousands were left waiting for hours in the open while security checks were laboriously undertaken, with National Guard and police searching and confiscating liquor, guns, and other contraband. Though no comments have yet emerged, the racial dimension to the exodus was immediately apparent on television. Corporate newscasts of the long lines snaking around the Dome revealed the overwhelmingly Black cast of the evacuees. A cast contradicted by that of police and National Guard sent in to oversee the operation."
When the levee breaks 8/30/2005 Philadelphia Daily News: article opens with this quote "It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.
-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004."
The Louisiana Superdome of shame 8/30/2005 Pravda: "Watching news coverage of the refugees trying to enter the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans for safety from the approaching force-five Hurricane Katrina, I was incredulous how the people attempting to enter the stadium were being treated by the national guard troops and local police. The people were made to stand for hours outside in the awful Louisiana climate while they were admitted one or two adults at a time so they could be searched "for firearms and alcohol." "
Monday 8/29/2005
Hurricane Katrina leaves New Orleans’ poor out in the storm 8/29/2005 Black News Weekly: "While whites and the well-off Blacks got the hell out of town, poor Blacks and whites in New Orleans who were too poor to leave, had to wait out hurricane Katrina in the Superdome.
As New Orleans braced itself for one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the US, it's a shame how the poor in the city were left to fin for themselves. Consider this; if you are Black and still in News Orleans, and can't swim, then them crackers have left you up shit's creek!"
Venezuela to seek legal action against Robertson 8/29/2005 Reuters: ""I announce that my government is going to take legal action in the United States ... to call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism." Chavez said in a televised speech.
The fiery left-wing critic of Bush's foreign policy who frequently charges the U.S. government is plotting to kill him, called Robertson "crazy" and a "public menace."
He said Venezuela could seek Robertson's extradition under international treaties and take its claim to the United Nations if the Bush administration did not act."
FBI raids Atiku's US home 8/29/2005 Vanguard, Nigeria: "OPERATIVES of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have searched the US home of Vice President Atiku Abubakar as part of an international anti-corruption probe, according to reports yesterday."
Jesse Jackson Says Venezuela No Threat, Praises Venezuelan Government Concerns 8/29/2005 Venezuela Analysis: "With regard to the question about whether Jackson shares Chavez’s complaint that the Bush administration is funding opposition civil society groups in Venezuela, Jackson said, “If [Venezuela’s] government were to fund opposition groups in the U.S., it would be unacceptable. Democracy demands that we play the game by one set of rules.” "
"There
is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and
security to all, but especially to Democracies as against despots:
suspicion." -- Demosthenes
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