Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil
When the birthday party settled into eating pizza and birthday cake, a second feature began. A series of large screen TVs came to life to show Chuck E. Cheese TV. The program was, at first, MTV-like. Performers in large animal garb sang and danced through an idyllic scene with herons and alligators. A man clad in a blazing yellow shirt and red vest skipped across the screen, singing and snapping his fingers to the lively music. The scene shifted to a person dressed in a dog costume fishing in the lake with 3- and 4-year-old children and then shifted again from pictures of the children to mothers holding small babies. Although it was disjointed and a bit crazed, it was what one might expect at Chuck E Cheese.
Then my jaw dropped: the MTV segment shifted to a promotional piece compiled by the Department of Defense! The promo showed happy, smiling soldiers in Iraq handing out toys and candies to delighted children. This was followed by a series of scenes showing war planes, tanks and more happy soldiers. This production lasted for 5 minutes of the 15-minute CEC TV show. Throughout the segment, the large animated puppets' eyes shifted toward the TV as they nodded in approval and clapped. Then their eyes shifted back to the children, who were spellbound by the movie.
Several telephone calls I made to Chuck E. Cheese headquarters were not answered. Finally reaching someone at the local outlet, one of over 500 company owned and operated locations, I learned that the CEC TV show was a regular part of the offerings at all CEC sites and that it was run a number of times during each day.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090205C.shtml
Now for the interesting background on Ms. Beriwal. She is a big-time contributor to the GOP. She's given thousands of dollars to Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal, Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana, the National Republican Congressional Committee, former Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson. Vitter was the largest recipient of funds from Beriwal
http://rense.com/general67/fema.htm
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
http://www.stratfor.com/news/archive/050903-geopolitics_katrina.php
Her condescending filibuster continued: "Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard—maybe you all have announced it—but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating."
Cooper suspended the traditional TV rules of decorum and, approaching tears of fury, said:
Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.
And when they hear politicians slap—you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.
Do you get the anger that is out here? …
I mean, I know you say there's a time and a place for, kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. I mean, there are people who want answers, and there are people who want someone to stand up and say, "You know what? We should have done more. Are all the assets being brought to bear?"
Landrieu kept her cool, probably because she's in Baton Rouge, while the stink of corpses caused Cooper to tremble in rage all the way to the commercial break.
Yesterday, on NPR's All Things Considered, Robert Siegel didn't get medieval on Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, in part because the microphones there are specially fabricated to decant all emotion from the voices of their reporters. But Siegel aggressively blocked every escape route that Chertoff took to evade hard questions about "corpses" and "human waste" piling up at the city's convention center, where thousands were stranded without provisions. (Siegel gets tough at about minute four in the audio clip.)
Siegel kept asking Chertoff how long it would take to serve or rescue these people, and a couple times Chertoff answered that the government was doing a great job at the Superdome.
When he cautioned Siegel about the danger of relying on "anecdotal" "rumors" of people in dire straits, Siegel said, no—these are facts presented by reporters who have covered war zones. There are 2,000 people at the convention center in need, he said. Having finally broken through the steel plate that is Chertoff's skull, the secretary confessed he hadn't heard those reports—reports that the television networks were documenting, live, with their cameras. Chertoff promised he'd look into the matter.
Several readers directed me to CNN reporter Miles O'Brien's hard-boiled interview with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour in which he repeatedly invited the governor to agree with him that the federal government had "dropped the ball." When Barbour demurred on this and other points of culpability, O'Brien came back at him without the politesse reporters usually extend to dissembling pols.
I recall Andrea Mitchell all but editorializing on NBC the other night about Congress taking its sweet time to reconvene and pass a hurricane-relief bill … Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith chasing after a mute police officer down the New Orleans freeway overpass and asking in outrage when the stranded would get help … and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough in Biloxi transforming himself into the voice of the disenfranchised to put in a good word for the looters:
http://www.slate.com/id/2125581/?nav=tap3#ContinueArticle
It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite -- and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then -- whatever emotional connections they may have to their home -- their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region
http://www.stratfor.com/news/archive/050903-geopolitics_katrina.php
Bush the Younger? He made a statement decrying all looting, drawing no distinction between hooligans who grabbed televisions for which there was no electricity and frantic parents swiping bread from broken store windows after the fashion of Jean Valjean. Informed that gasoline had spiked to $3 a gallon, Bush, who returned home from a one-month vacation aboard a 747 jumbo jet that also transports his armored limousine, told people not to purchase gasoline unless they needed it. In a country in which mobility had just been shown to be the difference between life and death, Bush's answer was to tell people not to buy what they inevitably will need.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05247/564856.stm
Provocateur forces in New Orleans? The case builds
http://www.total411.info/2005/09/provacateur-forces-in-new-orleans-case.html
The highly secretive department at the Lloyds market, dubbed Department X, has also prepared estimates of the damage that could be caused by an earthquake along the St Andreas fault line in California measuring nine on the Richter scale. In those circumstances, the bill could be five or six times higher. Lloyds of London is expecting a hit of between £1bn and £2bn following last week's carnage, about 25 per cent less than its exposure after 9/11
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1562119,00.html
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
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.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=293936996
MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.
Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.
But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she's done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn't foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/print076556.html
Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.
About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.
The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.
"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."
Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.
"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."
The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.
"I t's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where we're safe."
During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.
One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and hungry.
...
Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.
"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."
http://www.newschannel5.tv/2005/9/1/4255/Taking-refuge-in-the-Astrodome
The Australian government criticised a US ban on consular officials entering hurricane-stricken New Orleans Sunday, after being embarrassed when media crews rescued its stranded citizens while diplomats awaited access to the disaster zone.
Officials in Canberra said 31 Australians had been evacuated from New Orleans in the past two days and another 40 were still believed to be trapped in the city.
Some rescued Australians who were transported out of New Orleans by Australian news crews have criticised their government for doing nothing to help them, but Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Bruce Billson said efforts were hampered by the US ban.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/050904/19/vsbx.html
Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson” - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
The CIA report, prepared as the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials, blames Tenet and several top CIA officials for its failure pre-9/11 to deal with al-Qaida
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/2/110832.shtml
The Military Is Frisking Little Children Before Rescuing Them
by Michael in New York - 9/03/2005 08:00:00 PM
I have not seen this, but reader Aaron (who I know and trust) said he just watched ABC World News This Weekend and they showed footage of a black family being rescued from some highway above the waters and put on a military helicopter. But before the family was allowed inside, everyone was frisked -- including a little boy that was maybe ten years old! ABC assured us that military leaders insisted this was necessary. Yes, everyone standing politely by and waiting to be rescued needs to be treated like a criminal and frisked. Is there one example of someone asking to be rescued who then turned on their rescuers? No. Is there anyone who thinks a little 10 year old boy hungry and crying IS A SECURITY RISK? Who lifts the old people out of their wheelchairs so they can be frisked? Who frisks the bodies on the side of the road and floating in the water in case they've been booby-trapped? Who frisks the babies hungry for milk that might be swaddled in explosives? This is the final humilation for these poor, abandoned people.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/military-is-frisking-little-children.html
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. 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; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young annd old - deserve far better from their national governmeent.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-faked-levee-repair-for-photo-op.html
The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force.
But Riley said that for the first three days after Monday's storm, which is believed to have killed several thousand people, the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people.
"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."
Riley
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050903/ts_alt_afp/usweatherpolice_050903215815
“I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims – far more efficiently than buses – FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
...
“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. 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; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
http://www.fromtheroots.org/story/2005/9/3/19542/97952
While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.php
He continues: "My next prediction: burglaries, lootings, shootings, and/or arson incidents will happen in Houston and Atlanta. The media will attribute it to New Orleans refugees, and the "shoot to kill" order will extend to these cities police and special police, if not be accompanied by the arrival of Federal (Storm)Troops."
http://www.rense.com/general67/nwg.htm
The largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War reverberated across the country from its starting point in New Orleans yesterday, as more than half a million people uprooted by Hurricane Katrina sought shelter, sustenance and the semblance of new lives.
Storm refugees overwhelmed the state of Louisiana and poured into cities from coast to coast, crowding sports arenas, convention centers, schools, churches and the homes of friends, relatives and even strangers. Red Cross officials reported that every shelter in a seven-state region was already full -- 76,000 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Hundreds of miles from New Orleans, hotels were jammed or quickly filling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090102406.html
Cargo vessels stranded
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1938e1ba-1be8-11da-9342-00000e2511c8.html
Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New Orleans bridge on Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said.
A spokesperson for the army corps of engineers said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Hurricane_Katrina/0,,2-10-1942_1765151,00.html
When Michael visited the busiest Special Agents' Office in Customs on the Southern Border, he returned and complained to his supervisors because the communication equipment was so outdated and barely usuable. He felt, like many others, that the reasons U.S. Customs refused to give this office updated equipment was because (ninety-nine percent (99%) of the Customs office employees were of Indian descent.
http://www.cathyharris.homestead.com/MichaelWallace.html
[Here’s a good one. It runs out uranium isn’t bad for you after all. What was I thinking?]
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-107572.html
To demonstrate further the perniciousness of Fed policy, I decided to go back to the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Again using the BLS inflation calculator, I made a comparison between 1913 and 2005. In 2005, it takes $20.00 (rounded from $19.74) to equate to the purchasing power of $1.00 in 1913. In other words, since the Fed's inception, the price level has increased 20 times! Put another way, a dollar today would only buy you a nickel in 1913. That is, since 1913, Fed policy has eroded the value of a dollar's purchasing power by 95 percent.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46099
``Until the authorities OK loading those Panamax vessels, we can't get going,'' Feider said yesterday in a telephone interview. ``We need those big boats freely operating on the river.'' Panamax-class vessel, which are the largest capable of moving through the Panama Canal, carry 50,000 metric tons of grain, or 2 million bushels, he said.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which regulates traffic on inland waterways, restricted shipments since Katrina struck the area Aug. 29 around New Orleans, disrupting operations by Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. About 59 percent of unprocessed grain and oilseed exports are handled by the Port of New Orleans, the biggest U.S. by tons shipped, the National Grain and Feed Association said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a5macWMmbw.U&refer=us
JAMMING IS NOT TAKING PLACE~MONITOR THE SYSTEM YOURSELF
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=78044
Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals.
Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere."
Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white.
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/s/172/172478_anarchy_and_agony_in_new_orleans.html
Then my jaw dropped: the MTV segment shifted to a promotional piece compiled by the Department of Defense! The promo showed happy, smiling soldiers in Iraq handing out toys and candies to delighted children. This was followed by a series of scenes showing war planes, tanks and more happy soldiers. This production lasted for 5 minutes of the 15-minute CEC TV show. Throughout the segment, the large animated puppets' eyes shifted toward the TV as they nodded in approval and clapped. Then their eyes shifted back to the children, who were spellbound by the movie.
Several telephone calls I made to Chuck E. Cheese headquarters were not answered. Finally reaching someone at the local outlet, one of over 500 company owned and operated locations, I learned that the CEC TV show was a regular part of the offerings at all CEC sites and that it was run a number of times during each day.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090205C.shtml
Now for the interesting background on Ms. Beriwal. She is a big-time contributor to the GOP. She's given thousands of dollars to Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal, Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana, the National Republican Congressional Committee, former Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson. Vitter was the largest recipient of funds from Beriwal
http://rense.com/general67/fema.htm
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
http://www.stratfor.com/news/archive/050903-geopolitics_katrina.php
Her condescending filibuster continued: "Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard—maybe you all have announced it—but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating."
Cooper suspended the traditional TV rules of decorum and, approaching tears of fury, said:
Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.
And when they hear politicians slap—you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.
Do you get the anger that is out here? …
I mean, I know you say there's a time and a place for, kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. I mean, there are people who want answers, and there are people who want someone to stand up and say, "You know what? We should have done more. Are all the assets being brought to bear?"
Landrieu kept her cool, probably because she's in Baton Rouge, while the stink of corpses caused Cooper to tremble in rage all the way to the commercial break.
Yesterday, on NPR's All Things Considered, Robert Siegel didn't get medieval on Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, in part because the microphones there are specially fabricated to decant all emotion from the voices of their reporters. But Siegel aggressively blocked every escape route that Chertoff took to evade hard questions about "corpses" and "human waste" piling up at the city's convention center, where thousands were stranded without provisions. (Siegel gets tough at about minute four in the audio clip.)
Siegel kept asking Chertoff how long it would take to serve or rescue these people, and a couple times Chertoff answered that the government was doing a great job at the Superdome.
When he cautioned Siegel about the danger of relying on "anecdotal" "rumors" of people in dire straits, Siegel said, no—these are facts presented by reporters who have covered war zones. There are 2,000 people at the convention center in need, he said. Having finally broken through the steel plate that is Chertoff's skull, the secretary confessed he hadn't heard those reports—reports that the television networks were documenting, live, with their cameras. Chertoff promised he'd look into the matter.
Several readers directed me to CNN reporter Miles O'Brien's hard-boiled interview with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour in which he repeatedly invited the governor to agree with him that the federal government had "dropped the ball." When Barbour demurred on this and other points of culpability, O'Brien came back at him without the politesse reporters usually extend to dissembling pols.
I recall Andrea Mitchell all but editorializing on NBC the other night about Congress taking its sweet time to reconvene and pass a hurricane-relief bill … Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith chasing after a mute police officer down the New Orleans freeway overpass and asking in outrage when the stranded would get help … and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough in Biloxi transforming himself into the voice of the disenfranchised to put in a good word for the looters:
http://www.slate.com/id/2125581/?nav=tap3#ContinueArticle
It is possible to jury-rig around this problem for a short time. But the fact is that those who have left the area have gone to live with relatives and friends. Those who had the ability to leave also had networks of relationships and resources to manage their exile. But those resources are not infinite -- and as it becomes apparent that these people will not be returning to New Orleans any time soon, they will be enrolling their children in new schools, finding new jobs, finding new accommodations. If they have any insurance money coming, they will collect it. If they have none, then -- whatever emotional connections they may have to their home -- their economic connection to it has been severed. In a very short time, these people will be making decisions that will start to reshape population and workforce patterns in the region
http://www.stratfor.com/news/archive/050903-geopolitics_katrina.php
Bush the Younger? He made a statement decrying all looting, drawing no distinction between hooligans who grabbed televisions for which there was no electricity and frantic parents swiping bread from broken store windows after the fashion of Jean Valjean. Informed that gasoline had spiked to $3 a gallon, Bush, who returned home from a one-month vacation aboard a 747 jumbo jet that also transports his armored limousine, told people not to purchase gasoline unless they needed it. In a country in which mobility had just been shown to be the difference between life and death, Bush's answer was to tell people not to buy what they inevitably will need.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05247/564856.stm
Provocateur forces in New Orleans? The case builds
http://www.total411.info/2005/09/provacateur-forces-in-new-orleans-case.html
The highly secretive department at the Lloyds market, dubbed Department X, has also prepared estimates of the damage that could be caused by an earthquake along the St Andreas fault line in California measuring nine on the Richter scale. In those circumstances, the bill could be five or six times higher. Lloyds of London is expecting a hit of between £1bn and £2bn following last week's carnage, about 25 per cent less than its exposure after 9/11
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1562119,00.html
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
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.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_news&Number=293936996
MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.
Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.
But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she's done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn't foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/print076556.html
Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.
About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.
The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.
"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."
Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.
"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."
The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.
"I t's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where we're safe."
During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.
One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and hungry.
...
Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.
"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."
http://www.newschannel5.tv/2005/9/1/4255/Taking-refuge-in-the-Astrodome
The Australian government criticised a US ban on consular officials entering hurricane-stricken New Orleans Sunday, after being embarrassed when media crews rescued its stranded citizens while diplomats awaited access to the disaster zone.
Officials in Canberra said 31 Australians had been evacuated from New Orleans in the past two days and another 40 were still believed to be trapped in the city.
Some rescued Australians who were transported out of New Orleans by Australian news crews have criticised their government for doing nothing to help them, but Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Bruce Billson said efforts were hampered by the US ban.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/050904/19/vsbx.html
Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson” - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.
The CIA report, prepared as the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials, blames Tenet and several top CIA officials for its failure pre-9/11 to deal with al-Qaida
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/2/110832.shtml
The Military Is Frisking Little Children Before Rescuing Them
by Michael in New York - 9/03/2005 08:00:00 PM
I have not seen this, but reader Aaron (who I know and trust) said he just watched ABC World News This Weekend and they showed footage of a black family being rescued from some highway above the waters and put on a military helicopter. But before the family was allowed inside, everyone was frisked -- including a little boy that was maybe ten years old! ABC assured us that military leaders insisted this was necessary. Yes, everyone standing politely by and waiting to be rescued needs to be treated like a criminal and frisked. Is there one example of someone asking to be rescued who then turned on their rescuers? No. Is there anyone who thinks a little 10 year old boy hungry and crying IS A SECURITY RISK? Who lifts the old people out of their wheelchairs so they can be frisked? Who frisks the bodies on the side of the road and floating in the water in case they've been booby-trapped? Who frisks the babies hungry for milk that might be swaddled in explosives? This is the final humilation for these poor, abandoned people.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/military-is-frisking-little-children.html
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. 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; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young annd old - deserve far better from their national governmeent.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-faked-levee-repair-for-photo-op.html
The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force.
But Riley said that for the first three days after Monday's storm, which is believed to have killed several thousand people, the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people.
"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."
Riley
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050903/ts_alt_afp/usweatherpolice_050903215815
“I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims – far more efficiently than buses – FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
...
“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. 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; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
http://www.fromtheroots.org/story/2005/9/3/19542/97952
While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.php
He continues: "My next prediction: burglaries, lootings, shootings, and/or arson incidents will happen in Houston and Atlanta. The media will attribute it to New Orleans refugees, and the "shoot to kill" order will extend to these cities police and special police, if not be accompanied by the arrival of Federal (Storm)Troops."
http://www.rense.com/general67/nwg.htm
The largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War reverberated across the country from its starting point in New Orleans yesterday, as more than half a million people uprooted by Hurricane Katrina sought shelter, sustenance and the semblance of new lives.
Storm refugees overwhelmed the state of Louisiana and poured into cities from coast to coast, crowding sports arenas, convention centers, schools, churches and the homes of friends, relatives and even strangers. Red Cross officials reported that every shelter in a seven-state region was already full -- 76,000 people in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Hundreds of miles from New Orleans, hotels were jammed or quickly filling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090102406.html
Cargo vessels stranded
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1938e1ba-1be8-11da-9342-00000e2511c8.html
Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New Orleans bridge on Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said.
A spokesperson for the army corps of engineers said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Hurricane_Katrina/0,,2-10-1942_1765151,00.html
When Michael visited the busiest Special Agents' Office in Customs on the Southern Border, he returned and complained to his supervisors because the communication equipment was so outdated and barely usuable. He felt, like many others, that the reasons U.S. Customs refused to give this office updated equipment was because (ninety-nine percent (99%) of the Customs office employees were of Indian descent.
http://www.cathyharris.homestead.com/MichaelWallace.html
[Here’s a good one. It runs out uranium isn’t bad for you after all. What was I thinking?]
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-107572.html
To demonstrate further the perniciousness of Fed policy, I decided to go back to the inception of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Again using the BLS inflation calculator, I made a comparison between 1913 and 2005. In 2005, it takes $20.00 (rounded from $19.74) to equate to the purchasing power of $1.00 in 1913. In other words, since the Fed's inception, the price level has increased 20 times! Put another way, a dollar today would only buy you a nickel in 1913. That is, since 1913, Fed policy has eroded the value of a dollar's purchasing power by 95 percent.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46099
``Until the authorities OK loading those Panamax vessels, we can't get going,'' Feider said yesterday in a telephone interview. ``We need those big boats freely operating on the river.'' Panamax-class vessel, which are the largest capable of moving through the Panama Canal, carry 50,000 metric tons of grain, or 2 million bushels, he said.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which regulates traffic on inland waterways, restricted shipments since Katrina struck the area Aug. 29 around New Orleans, disrupting operations by Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. About 59 percent of unprocessed grain and oilseed exports are handled by the Port of New Orleans, the biggest U.S. by tons shipped, the National Grain and Feed Association said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a5macWMmbw.U&refer=us
JAMMING IS NOT TAKING PLACE~MONITOR THE SYSTEM YOURSELF
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=78044
Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals.
Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere."
Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white.
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/news/s/172/172478_anarchy_and_agony_in_new_orleans.html
posted by abu nakba at 9/04/2005 08:36:00 PM
1 Comments:
thanks for a great selection of articles!
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