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Viewing Disaster in New Orleans NEWS articles 76 through 150 of 168
- And then two black women approach the "President of the United States," as the anchorwoman reminds us at this moment (Really! Take note! Think about the importance of this moment!) He greets them as if they had an appointment. A woman and her daughter appear. Why these two? Were they waiting for him? Who chose them? - Look upon the city of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast now, and you see the true face of capitalism. It is time, sisters and brothers, for a revolution. How can we not look at the city of New Orleans and see that it is time for those of us who work and support the Bush administration, the Democrats who play polite political games with them for a chance at the same hegemony they now exercise, for us to band together and demand a new nation, an new government. How can we not understand that we are expendable? That we are merely resources that represent the capital they covet, and for which they produce nothing, but demand everything from us? - "FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic." - I talked to his uncle today about these allegations that the levee was deliberately blown. His nephew was nearby and confirms that residents heard a series of explosions before the levee "failed".
- With the floodwaters still high in New Orleans last week, with 25,000 body bags on their way to the city, with the Gulf of Mexico oil industry crippled - 160 platforms and 16 rigs still evacuated, oil refineries shut down - there was one group of people who, nevertheless, could see some good coming out of the wreckage. Who? Halliburton shareholders.
- Two Israeli mercenaries from ISI, another private military company, were guarding Audubon Place, a gated community. Wearing bulletproof vests, they were carrying M16 assault rifles. - #13) "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." –Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal
- Total411.info has obtained video of an ABC News report featuring an earwitness to explosives used to destroy the Industrial Canal in New Orleans. - Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger. - ...they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. & [They] informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move." - Like George Bush Jr. himself, who failed his way to the top (his "management" wrecked every business he ever ran), Bush crony Joe Allbaugh has also perfected the art of failing upward.
- Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
- In the new New Orleans, where the paradigm of the Bush police state is field tested, the media is not allowed to inform Americans of the death toll in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Or so FEMA’s military overseer of "victim recovery efforts" (confiscating guns and kicking in doors), Gen. Russel Honore, would have it. Terry Ebbert, homeland security director of the new New Orleans, explained Honore’s reason for banning the media (and assault journalists and photographers and steal the memory cards from their cameras): Not even CNN, usually an obedient worker bee for the Bushian message, was willing to put up with the Honore dictum. - Armed police have begun to handcuff hurricane survivors who refuse to leave their homes in New Orleans. - Supporters of KAMP, which was set to launch at 95.3 FM, blame red tape and bureaucrats seeking to "manage the news."
- What kind of country leaves the bodies of its citizens to rot in the streets? - This morning, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to the Reliant Park this offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter. - ...mercenaries from Blackwater USA are rumbling through the New Orleans streets, armed to the teeth and in full battle gear. - Ruptured New Orleans Levee had help failing - Just last month, the Washington Post published an article revealing that the US military’s Northern Command had developed a series of "war plans" for the military "to take charge" in domestic crises. While apparently these plans involved a response to supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out. - Once again, the same massive corporations that have screwed up the Iraq reconstruction, screwed up numerous US projects, and been fined for overcharges and wage and safety violations, have been rewarded by the Bush Administration. - In New Orleans food aid is provided only to those who leave the city and in the Astrodome US military recruiters are attempting to recruit young men and women without too many alternatives into their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. - ...in 1974, within 24 hours notice, the American government sent thousands of brand new military assets, tanks, planes, rockets, artillery, with all the ammunition required, to aid Israel against Egypt. Therefore, the US does have a proven track record for mobilising major logistical programmes, even to help a nation across thousands of miles away, in the relatively less capable US, 30 years ago, but it took five days to help the poor people in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.Palestinians.
- Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as "Mr. Cheney." - No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said. - US President George W Bush issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage. - The Dallas meeting focused on rebuilding and rezoning New Orleans without the "criminal element," a code word for the city's poor African American community. - Report follows controversy over Brown’s qualifications, agency’s response - Could the levees in New Orleans have been INTENTIONALLY blown out in order to save sections of the city deemed to be more important?
- "I don't own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife."
- The mass media made an abrupt turn, adapting and shaping the images of the Administration’s catastrophe. In seven days the magic of the media transformed the Bush team from incompetent and ignorant leaders to decisive and caring officials. At the same time the desperate, dying and furious were converted into an unruly, crime-ridden, ungrateful and chaotic mob. The political message was clear: Repression and militarization were priority conditions for survival and humanitarian aid. The city had to be under de facto martial law before it could be saved. Viet Nam and Falluja come to mind. - FEMA is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. It has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress. - "The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically." - Campaign pros get top jobs - by John Perkins - It is time, my fellow Americans, to listen to the words of our Founding Fathers. Profiteering without representation must go. The destruction of our world, for the short-term benefit of a new type of royalty, is unacceptable. - As Katrina wiped out New Orleans' communications infrastructure, panicky rumors of violence in evacuation centers quickly filled the airwaves. The only problem--few of the reports were true.
- Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep.
- The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to send 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims. - Oil prices at 100 usd a barrel are no longer an unthinkable prospect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Asian demand is part of the reason, analysts said.
- Reagan, like George W. Bush after him, failed to understand that when people come together into community, and then into nationhood, that they organize themselves to protect themselves from predators, both human and corporate, both domestic and foreign. This form of organization is called government. But the Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations. - - by Michael Ruppert - Intelligent critics from both left and right have for years painstakingly documented FEMA’s paramount leadership role in Continuity of Government (COG) operations and planning. Better described, COG is what will happen if Congress is nuked, if a major catastrophe makes "normal" government operations impossible, or if there is major civil unrest (or total economic collapse). Much of FEMA’s infrastructure is really dedicated to this task and not to disaster relief. - Truth be told, the US has been sinking in a toxic stew of Empire and Inequality for quite some time. - FEMA Agency draws ire of frustrated volunteers and donors for stopping relief efforts.
- New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre. - "They were hanging out of the windows and trying to get water. Some of the inmates were so desperate for water that they tied their t-shirts together and lowered a boot into the diseased water that they had just relieved themselves into." - In a breathtaking display of racism, some white British students who were trapped in the hell of the city’s Superdome stadium, being used for refugees, were removed to a safer place in a basketball arena by a white policeman who one student described as having “broken all the rules” to help them. - Special report on the elite police state takeover - Mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler" - "And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."
- If You have Nothing, You are Nothing - Bill "Bubba" Clinton is one sick human specimen. - Out of all the stories of the tragic deaths of New Orleans...there are some unconfirmed reports of explosives being used to blow levees - Perhaps this tragedy will mark a turn in values and priorities for the nation’s news reporters. Perhaps. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. - thought you might like an inside view - For days, and days, and days, the expendable poor of New Orleans have been begging for someone, anyone, to come. Be careful what you wish for. It’s not just, finally, Bush and some troops who are ambling into town. Here come the mercenaries. - There has been all this bluster about security but when nature strikes, the president goes partying and playing golf – after the levees were already giving in to the water from Lake Pontchartrain. The reality of the criminal neglect doesn’t seem to seep through to the consciousness of anyone who is in a position of leadership. - Is there anyone who thinks a little 10 year old boy hungry and crying IS A SECURITY RISK?
- Last night he told a reporter for the Associated Press: "If the CIA slips me something and next week you don't see me, you'll all know what happened." - On Thursday, there was a report on the net Delta Force had just dropped into New Orleans. This was at about the same time this website noticed a couple helicopters full of unidentified troops being dropped off the helipad at the Superdome. If the "Delta Force" story is true (and even Army Times says forces are engaging in combat in New Orleans), or another small special ops force were dropped into New Orleans, they would be well placed, for provacateuring more than anything else - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said on Saturday. - ALLEGATIONS SURFACE THAT U.S. & RUSSIA HAVE TECHNOLOGY TO MANAGE HURRICANES - Readers should also be aware that the Pentagon's technology blockade strategy extends to the Internet. Web sites like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos have a lot of explaining to do when they censor critical information during a national emergency. - If only New Orleans had a higher population of upper class pretty thin white girls, rather than poor overweight black ones, the people might have been spared the hideous fate that Uncle Sam has dealt them. - While the Federal government has participated in and orchestrated massive international airlifts, such as the Berlin airlift during the Cold War, apparently persons of African descent do not need rescue. Heck, park rangers in my home state of Massachusetts would air-drop bales of hay to starving deer in the snow-covered winter.
- Stay fixated, if you wish, on the thieves and desperate families who are so much easier to catch on camera than comptrollers electronically stealing your cash. It is not pleasant to see anyone loot a store. But ExxonMobil and big oil are looting the nation, and no one declaring martial law on them.
- ...we now have a new unconfirmed report that the culprit may be the Pentagon itself. - What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking, standing there next to President Bush and providing verbal cover for the administration's ludicrous claims that the problems plaguing New Orleans were unforeseeable? - Star duo caught in crossfire between police and gunmen - "Stop the car right now," reporter told. "Back up, or I'll shoot" - - by Michael Parenti - The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market. - The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better. - The firms that received the contract are big GOP contributors - "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." - "George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said from New York during the show aired live on the East Coast on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and Pax, just before cameras cut away to comedian Chris Tucker. - They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. - ...instead of helping people left desperate in the wake of Katrina's wrath, the Blackhawk's actually were slated to transport a CNN news crew to take video shots of those people.
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