New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.
Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.
Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.
On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.
Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department, who accompanied the soldier, added that it wasn't safe to be in Bywater. "They'll kill you out here," he said, referring to the few residents who have continued to defy mandatory evacuation orders and remain in their homes."
"The cockroaches come out at night," he said of the residents. "This is one of the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you," he told a female reporter.
Nugent, who is white, acknowledged he wasn't personally familiar with the poor, black neighborhood, saying he only knew of it by reputation.
Later Monday, the recovery team collected a body from a green house on St. Anthony Street in nearby Seventh Ward. The dead man, who was slipped into a black body bag and carried out to one of the white vans, had been lying alone on the living room floor for nearly two weeks, neighbors said.
"I told them weeks ago he was in there," said Barry Dominguez, 39, who lives across the street and has refused to leave the neighborhood he grew up in.
After the recovery team took away the St. Anthony Street body, two workers urinated on the side of a neighbor's house.
The CNN suit was in response to comments Friday at a news conference in which officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said members of the news media would not be allowed to witness the recovery of hurricane victims' bodies.
Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, had said Friday that the recovery effort would be done with dignity, "meaning that there would be no press allowed." Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore later said there would be zero access to the recovery operation.
During a hearing Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Houston, a lawyer who represented the government said FEMA had revised its previous plans to limit coverage.
Government agencies may still refuse requests from members of the media to ride along, or be "embedded," on recovery boats as crews gather the dead. "But, to the extent the press can go out to the locations, they're free to do that," said Keith Wyatt, an assistant U.S. attorney, according to a transcript of the hearing. "They're free to take whatever pictures they can take."
Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele said the government's position as explained in court Saturday didn't represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery efforts they come upon, but they won't be embedded with search teams.
"We're not going to bar, impede or prevent" the media from telling the story, he said. "We're just not going to give the media a ride."
Article...
Thursday, September 15, 2005
A Bridge Too Far
by Jason Cherkis and Erik Wemple, Washington City Paper
The print media get picky about a story involving police forcing evacuees back into New Orleans.
Soon after the floodwaters engulfed New Orleans, reporters chronicled the thousands trapped at the Superdome, trapped at the convention center, and trapped on rooftops. As the days passed, news consumers had to wonder: Why couldn’t citizens just hike out of the city to the nearest patch of dry land?
The Socialist Worker webzine on Sept. 6 provided an answer: You couldn’t leave without facing down a police barricade and gunfire.
Lorrie Beth Slonsky and Larry Bradshaw, Socialist Worker contributors, had traveled to New Orleans to attend a convention for emergency-medical-services personnel. Then the storm hit. They holed up inside a French Quarter hotel for several days. Once the hotel’s food and water ran out, Slonsky and Bradshaw were booted onto the street, along with other hotel guests.
The group set out for the convention center but decided to change plans after learning that it wasn’t fit for humans. So they consulted a police commander posted near Harrah’s on Canal Street. “He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge…” Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote. Buses would be stationed on the other side, the commander said.
They headed for the bridge, about 200 people, nearly all of them African-American, according to Slonsky. As they approached the structure, Slonsky and Bradshaw reported, they were met with a police barricade and the sound of bullets whizzing overhead. Soon dozens and dozens from their crowd began to peel away and scatter. Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote that they and a few others managed to approach the police line. They were told there were no buses waiting for them.
“We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway,” Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote. “They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor and Black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not getting out of New Orleans.” Bradshaw reports that there were about a dozen cops guarding the bridge, and only one of them was black.
In covering Katrina, journalists expertly documented the seismic fuckups of officialdom—the stifling conditions at the Superdome, the convention-center fiasco, the weak levees that gave in to floodwaters. The coverage turned Michael Brown from an obscure political appointee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into cannon fodder for Bush-administration detractors nationwide. And it told the compelling stories of people who never made it out of the Crescent City. But it largely ignored the most compelling one, in large part because a pair of lefty Web types were first on the scene.
Article...
The print media get picky about a story involving police forcing evacuees back into New Orleans.
Soon after the floodwaters engulfed New Orleans, reporters chronicled the thousands trapped at the Superdome, trapped at the convention center, and trapped on rooftops. As the days passed, news consumers had to wonder: Why couldn’t citizens just hike out of the city to the nearest patch of dry land?
The Socialist Worker webzine on Sept. 6 provided an answer: You couldn’t leave without facing down a police barricade and gunfire.
Lorrie Beth Slonsky and Larry Bradshaw, Socialist Worker contributors, had traveled to New Orleans to attend a convention for emergency-medical-services personnel. Then the storm hit. They holed up inside a French Quarter hotel for several days. Once the hotel’s food and water ran out, Slonsky and Bradshaw were booted onto the street, along with other hotel guests.
The group set out for the convention center but decided to change plans after learning that it wasn’t fit for humans. So they consulted a police commander posted near Harrah’s on Canal Street. “He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge…” Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote. Buses would be stationed on the other side, the commander said.
They headed for the bridge, about 200 people, nearly all of them African-American, according to Slonsky. As they approached the structure, Slonsky and Bradshaw reported, they were met with a police barricade and the sound of bullets whizzing overhead. Soon dozens and dozens from their crowd began to peel away and scatter. Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote that they and a few others managed to approach the police line. They were told there were no buses waiting for them.
“We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway,” Slonsky and Bradshaw wrote. “They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for: if you are poor and Black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not getting out of New Orleans.” Bradshaw reports that there were about a dozen cops guarding the bridge, and only one of them was black.
In covering Katrina, journalists expertly documented the seismic fuckups of officialdom—the stifling conditions at the Superdome, the convention-center fiasco, the weak levees that gave in to floodwaters. The coverage turned Michael Brown from an obscure political appointee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into cannon fodder for Bush-administration detractors nationwide. And it told the compelling stories of people who never made it out of the Crescent City. But it largely ignored the most compelling one, in large part because a pair of lefty Web types were first on the scene.
Article...
Talk About Obscenity
Congress' latest idiotic effort to make the airwaves "decent" explains why Americans favor lawmakers about as much as telemarketers and drunken drivers.
By Garrison Keillor, Salon
Sept. 14, 2005 | One of the benefits of Katrina is how it got Congress to focus on real things: the relief of suffering and devastation and eventually an investigation to learn why Homeland Security stumbled so badly. And to cancel the nonsense for the time being, such as the push to roll back the estate tax, a private bill for the relief of billionaires; and the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, a high-water mark of official stupidity that swept through the House and now is lapping at the doors of the Senate.
The BDEA is the anti-Janet-Jackson's-nipple bill that would make broadcasters liable for fines of up to $500,000 for any obscene, indecent or profane material they disseminate. Every congressman who voted for it should have his or her name engraved on a brass plaque on the Monument to Cowardice.
To the CBS network, a half-million is petty cash, but to the manager of a radio station in Lexington, Ky., it may mean extinction. So when you hang that enormous sharp sword over his head, you force him to monitor closely everything uttered, muttered, sung or chanted on his airwaves. It is not possible to do that and still have a wife and children. So the station manager is forced to cut out any programming that is original or that originates live and switch over to syndicated programs that come with a Decency Guarantee. Or else live in fear.
Talk about abuse of government power. Talk about government intruding into the lives of people to no good purpose whatsoever.
This summer, a radio station canceled a radio show of mine because I read a poem that used the word "breast." The poem was far from lascivious or obscene. If you'd read it to your Aunt Esther in Greenville, maybe she would blush faintly. But the word "indecent" can be interpreted so many ways and a Federal Communications Commission hearing would be long and tedious and the show is broadcast on 500 radio stations, so the fine would come to $250 million, or about half the cost of a baseball stadium, which is a lot to pay for freedom of speech, and what boob would want to take those risks? So, here in the land of the free, freedom won by brave men whose speech was salty and whose interest in women was keen, a man cannot say "breast" on the radio. How do these people manage to order Kentucky fried chicken?
The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act illustrates beautifully why the American people's opinion of Congress is only slightly more favorable than our view of telemarketers and drunken drivers. You need go no farther. Congress can sometimes be so removed from reality that it goes after a mosquito with a chain saw. The word for this is dementia.
I would feel better about the law if Congress held itself to the same high standards and subjected members of Congress who utter obscene, indecent or profane things to the same heavy penalties.
If Sen. Bleaughhh, posing on the Capitol steps with a delegation of 4-H'ers from Cooterville, should slip and fall on his hinder, and land on a hemorrhoid the size of a Concord grape, and suddenly make a vulgar reference to holy excrement and call down God's wrath all in one succinct phrase -- shouldn't there be some recourse for the decent and God-fearing just as there would be if Howard Stern had said it?
What a horrible experience for those 4-H'ers. To travel all the way to Washington and stand in awe at the gaudy splendor of it all and get the chance to shake hands with an actual U.S. senator and suddenly the old fattycakes cuts loose with some ripe language you didn't hear at the prayer breakfast -- bummer!
What rules do we have in place to protect schoolchildren from some old demented Republican walking around exposing his right nipple and saying crude things and waving sparklers? None that I'm aware of. A Congressional Decency Enforcement Act would specifically forbid the waving of genitalia, while either whooping or not, or exposing the mammary glands, either male or female, or exposing the posterior (also known as "mooning"), or referring to the posterior, or to fecal matter, whether chicken, horse, bull or any other species, and a half-million-dollar fine would be a good deterrent, though I'd prefer locking offenders in the stocks and pelting them with offal, dead cats, fish heads and rabbit pellets. I do not think you can ever do enough in behalf of our children.
By Garrison Keillor, Salon
Sept. 14, 2005 | One of the benefits of Katrina is how it got Congress to focus on real things: the relief of suffering and devastation and eventually an investigation to learn why Homeland Security stumbled so badly. And to cancel the nonsense for the time being, such as the push to roll back the estate tax, a private bill for the relief of billionaires; and the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, a high-water mark of official stupidity that swept through the House and now is lapping at the doors of the Senate.
The BDEA is the anti-Janet-Jackson's-nipple bill that would make broadcasters liable for fines of up to $500,000 for any obscene, indecent or profane material they disseminate. Every congressman who voted for it should have his or her name engraved on a brass plaque on the Monument to Cowardice.
To the CBS network, a half-million is petty cash, but to the manager of a radio station in Lexington, Ky., it may mean extinction. So when you hang that enormous sharp sword over his head, you force him to monitor closely everything uttered, muttered, sung or chanted on his airwaves. It is not possible to do that and still have a wife and children. So the station manager is forced to cut out any programming that is original or that originates live and switch over to syndicated programs that come with a Decency Guarantee. Or else live in fear.
Talk about abuse of government power. Talk about government intruding into the lives of people to no good purpose whatsoever.
This summer, a radio station canceled a radio show of mine because I read a poem that used the word "breast." The poem was far from lascivious or obscene. If you'd read it to your Aunt Esther in Greenville, maybe she would blush faintly. But the word "indecent" can be interpreted so many ways and a Federal Communications Commission hearing would be long and tedious and the show is broadcast on 500 radio stations, so the fine would come to $250 million, or about half the cost of a baseball stadium, which is a lot to pay for freedom of speech, and what boob would want to take those risks? So, here in the land of the free, freedom won by brave men whose speech was salty and whose interest in women was keen, a man cannot say "breast" on the radio. How do these people manage to order Kentucky fried chicken?
The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act illustrates beautifully why the American people's opinion of Congress is only slightly more favorable than our view of telemarketers and drunken drivers. You need go no farther. Congress can sometimes be so removed from reality that it goes after a mosquito with a chain saw. The word for this is dementia.
I would feel better about the law if Congress held itself to the same high standards and subjected members of Congress who utter obscene, indecent or profane things to the same heavy penalties.
If Sen. Bleaughhh, posing on the Capitol steps with a delegation of 4-H'ers from Cooterville, should slip and fall on his hinder, and land on a hemorrhoid the size of a Concord grape, and suddenly make a vulgar reference to holy excrement and call down God's wrath all in one succinct phrase -- shouldn't there be some recourse for the decent and God-fearing just as there would be if Howard Stern had said it?
What a horrible experience for those 4-H'ers. To travel all the way to Washington and stand in awe at the gaudy splendor of it all and get the chance to shake hands with an actual U.S. senator and suddenly the old fattycakes cuts loose with some ripe language you didn't hear at the prayer breakfast -- bummer!
What rules do we have in place to protect schoolchildren from some old demented Republican walking around exposing his right nipple and saying crude things and waving sparklers? None that I'm aware of. A Congressional Decency Enforcement Act would specifically forbid the waving of genitalia, while either whooping or not, or exposing the mammary glands, either male or female, or exposing the posterior (also known as "mooning"), or referring to the posterior, or to fecal matter, whether chicken, horse, bull or any other species, and a half-million-dollar fine would be a good deterrent, though I'd prefer locking offenders in the stocks and pelting them with offal, dead cats, fish heads and rabbit pellets. I do not think you can ever do enough in behalf of our children.
Media, Protesters Kept Away from ‘Freedom Walk’
by Brendan Coyne, NewStandard
Sep 12 - Yesterday's Pentagon-sponsored September 11 memorial walk and concert was billed as a "Freedom Walk," but the news media and people who desired to speak out against the Bush administration were restricted to small areas, mainly away from the day's events. Restrictions also extended to participants, all attendees had to register by Friday evening and were subject to search upon arrival.
The Defense Department claimed that over 13,000 people attended the event, Stars & Stripes reports. They marched along a two mile route lined by US Park Police and fencing, according to the military newspaper.
Hundreds of protesters also attended, mostly corralled near the end of the route. Park Police prevented reporters from speaking with the group, Stars & Stripes said.
Friday, the Washington Post reported that the entire Washington, DC contingent of the Park Police would be handling event security.
In addition to keeping protesters from interacting with marchers, security kept reporters limited to three separate areas.
Critics of the event -- which was billed as a memorial for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks as well as a march to support American troops -- charged that it was designed to tie the September 11 attacks to the war on Iraq.
Additional criticism came from privacy advocates who questioned the Pentagon's original registration requirements as intrusive. The policy was slightly altered shortly after a NewStandard reporter inquired why registrants were to supply their mailing addresses and other information in order to participate.
A group of anti-war protesters participated in the walk. They wore anti-war imagery, but did not disrupt the march, the Associated Press reports.
© 2005 The NewStandard.
Sep 12 - Yesterday's Pentagon-sponsored September 11 memorial walk and concert was billed as a "Freedom Walk," but the news media and people who desired to speak out against the Bush administration were restricted to small areas, mainly away from the day's events. Restrictions also extended to participants, all attendees had to register by Friday evening and were subject to search upon arrival.
The Defense Department claimed that over 13,000 people attended the event, Stars & Stripes reports. They marched along a two mile route lined by US Park Police and fencing, according to the military newspaper.
Hundreds of protesters also attended, mostly corralled near the end of the route. Park Police prevented reporters from speaking with the group, Stars & Stripes said.
Friday, the Washington Post reported that the entire Washington, DC contingent of the Park Police would be handling event security.
In addition to keeping protesters from interacting with marchers, security kept reporters limited to three separate areas.
Critics of the event -- which was billed as a memorial for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks as well as a march to support American troops -- charged that it was designed to tie the September 11 attacks to the war on Iraq.
Additional criticism came from privacy advocates who questioned the Pentagon's original registration requirements as intrusive. The policy was slightly altered shortly after a NewStandard reporter inquired why registrants were to supply their mailing addresses and other information in order to participate.
A group of anti-war protesters participated in the walk. They wore anti-war imagery, but did not disrupt the march, the Associated Press reports.
© 2005 The NewStandard.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
All-Time Record Profits Not Enough?
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush is tapping the strategic oil reserve to help petroleum refiners.
Obviously, the oil industry can't rely on soaring prices and record profits to weather this meteorological inconvenience. They need a hand up. Good thing they thought ahead enough to install their buddy into the Oval Office.
How much of this will you stand, because I've had enough.
Obviously, the oil industry can't rely on soaring prices and record profits to weather this meteorological inconvenience. They need a hand up. Good thing they thought ahead enough to install their buddy into the Oval Office.
How much of this will you stand, because I've had enough.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Questions for the 39%
From Yellow Dog Blog
While we were focusing on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last week, the results of an AP-Ipsos poll taken September 6-8 were released. The poll shows President Bush's approval rating sinking faster than his mother's compassion for the poor and resting at a lowly 39 percent.
I have forwarded some follow-up questions to the Ipsos organization. I'm hoping they will use these questions for the next presidential approval poll and ask them of the respondents who still approve of the job Bush is doing as president:
1. Who dresses you in the morning?
2. Do you use common utensils when you eat?
3. Which of these items is different from the others? a) Cup b) Plate c) Bowl or d) Porcupine
4. Do you take your medication before answering polls?
5. If a car is going 60 miles per hour, how far will it go in one hour?
6. How many words are in your vocabulary? Please be exact.
7. Do you steer your car with the big wheel in front of the driver's seat or with one of the pedals on the floor?
8. Which goes “woof,” a doggie or a kitty?
9. In what state is the Kentucky Derby held?
10. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being President Bush and one being a rock, just how stupid are you?
It is my belief that these questions will provide some granularity on the intellect of people still responding positively to questions on George W. Bush's job performance.
While we were focusing on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last week, the results of an AP-Ipsos poll taken September 6-8 were released. The poll shows President Bush's approval rating sinking faster than his mother's compassion for the poor and resting at a lowly 39 percent.
I have forwarded some follow-up questions to the Ipsos organization. I'm hoping they will use these questions for the next presidential approval poll and ask them of the respondents who still approve of the job Bush is doing as president:
1. Who dresses you in the morning?
2. Do you use common utensils when you eat?
3. Which of these items is different from the others? a) Cup b) Plate c) Bowl or d) Porcupine
4. Do you take your medication before answering polls?
5. If a car is going 60 miles per hour, how far will it go in one hour?
6. How many words are in your vocabulary? Please be exact.
7. Do you steer your car with the big wheel in front of the driver's seat or with one of the pedals on the floor?
8. Which goes “woof,” a doggie or a kitty?
9. In what state is the Kentucky Derby held?
10. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being President Bush and one being a rock, just how stupid are you?
It is my belief that these questions will provide some granularity on the intellect of people still responding positively to questions on George W. Bush's job performance.
Overkill in New Orleans
The ongoing and increasingly cavalier militarization of America is actually starting to frighten me, my being long past shock where this rogue administration is concerned. Is our government now hiring private militias to protect private property from its own citizens?--Pete
By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo, AlterNet
Posted on September 12, 2005
From Alternet
Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as two weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal government and the state of Louisiana. Blackwater is one of the leading private security firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several U.S. government contracts and has provided security for many senior U.S. diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after four of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive U.S. retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
Who Sent In the Mercs?
As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that, "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."
Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane relief effort." A statement on the company's website, dated Sept. 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by two Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety," he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force.
Where the Real Action Is
We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with two New York City police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were three men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around here," and pointed down the road.
"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who are in Iraq?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the place."
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms. "When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'" one of the Blackwater men said. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued level 5, explosion-proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk [in the North of Iraq] where the real action is."
Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq.
Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to six months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."
If Blackwater's reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of services the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.
Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo are in New Orleans.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/25320/
By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo, AlterNet
Posted on September 12, 2005
From Alternet
Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as two weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal government and the state of Louisiana. Blackwater is one of the leading private security firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several U.S. government contracts and has provided security for many senior U.S. diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after four of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive U.S. retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
Who Sent In the Mercs?
As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that, "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."
Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane relief effort." A statement on the company's website, dated Sept. 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by two Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety," he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force.
Where the Real Action Is
We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with two New York City police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were three men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around here," and pointed down the road.
"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who are in Iraq?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the place."
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms. "When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'" one of the Blackwater men said. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued level 5, explosion-proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk [in the North of Iraq] where the real action is."
Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq.
Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to six months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."
If Blackwater's reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of services the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.
Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo are in New Orleans.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/25320/
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Cri Du Coeur
A volunteer psychologist's account
of evacuee conditions in Dallas
There are so many words that come to mind. As a scholar I am thinking Diaspora, social displacement, systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic and unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at something that we have never been trained to handle in this country--a level of victimization and its resultant psychosocial ripples that mandate a whole new field of clinical practice-mass victimology.
Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social termite's nest that has been growing beneath the ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for that matter, faith and hope.
Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that augurs a second and more terrible level of social disruption and anger not far down the road.
Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after Reconstruction. Over and over, people said, "everyone has been so wonderful, thank you, thank you." When I said, "there is no need to thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want to help you--American to American," there would be a long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.
They are angry and it is growing. The system failed them. For that matter, there is no system because all the safeguards and preparations that we thought were in place aren't there. I have been begging anyone who would listen over the past two years for a program in mass victimology to prepare for the next tragedy after 9/11. Now it is here and the lack of organization, science, and preparation are going to result in terrible consequences for us as a nation.
Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable demographic population in America into cities and towns all over the US who are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation and their support needs. The lower Gulf States have a language, a history, a social dynamic, a faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system unlike any other in America. These people have lived in and been acculturated to this system for generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries, we are going to see all over America, a nation that will lose patience with the needs of a foreign refugee population. Abandoned once again, the fury and the trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the outpouring of empathy and support post-crisis, will arise larger and more terrible than we have been equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over and over, in the survivor stories, in the loss of self, and the need to reclaim dignity and power.
Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical thinking. "People want me here--here is better. I think I'll stay here." What is going to happen when reality sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay don't understand the system here. Even though we abut borders, we are a vastly different nation. At least we are southerners. What is going to happen to the thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey? They are being offered free apartments, furniture etc, by generous and well meaning people who haven't thought the long term consequences through very well. A lot of the apartments are in areas where they won't have transportation or jobs. What is going to happen six months down the road when the magic wears off and the help slowly fades? How about the holidays for a people who thrive on ritual, tradition, and celebration?
Entire Post...
of evacuee conditions in Dallas
There are so many words that come to mind. As a scholar I am thinking Diaspora, social displacement, systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic and unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at something that we have never been trained to handle in this country--a level of victimization and its resultant psychosocial ripples that mandate a whole new field of clinical practice-mass victimology.
Katrina kicked the top off of a racist and social termite's nest that has been growing beneath the ground since Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for that matter, faith and hope.
Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that augurs a second and more terrible level of social disruption and anger not far down the road.
Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after Reconstruction. Over and over, people said, "everyone has been so wonderful, thank you, thank you." When I said, "there is no need to thank us, you are our fellow citizens and we want to help you--American to American," there would be a long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.
They are angry and it is growing. The system failed them. For that matter, there is no system because all the safeguards and preparations that we thought were in place aren't there. I have been begging anyone who would listen over the past two years for a program in mass victimology to prepare for the next tragedy after 9/11. Now it is here and the lack of organization, science, and preparation are going to result in terrible consequences for us as a nation.
Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable demographic population in America into cities and towns all over the US who are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation and their support needs. The lower Gulf States have a language, a history, a social dynamic, a faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system unlike any other in America. These people have lived in and been acculturated to this system for generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries, we are going to see all over America, a nation that will lose patience with the needs of a foreign refugee population. Abandoned once again, the fury and the trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the outpouring of empathy and support post-crisis, will arise larger and more terrible than we have been equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over and over, in the survivor stories, in the loss of self, and the need to reclaim dignity and power.
Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical thinking. "People want me here--here is better. I think I'll stay here." What is going to happen when reality sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay don't understand the system here. Even though we abut borders, we are a vastly different nation. At least we are southerners. What is going to happen to the thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey? They are being offered free apartments, furniture etc, by generous and well meaning people who haven't thought the long term consequences through very well. A lot of the apartments are in areas where they won't have transportation or jobs. What is going to happen six months down the road when the magic wears off and the help slowly fades? How about the holidays for a people who thrive on ritual, tradition, and celebration?
Entire Post...
Bush Suspends Pay Act In Areas Hit by Storm
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005
President Bush yesterday suspended application of the federal law governing workers' pay on federal contracts in the Hurricane Katrina-damaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The action infuriated labor leaders and their Democratic supporters in Congress, who said it will lower wages and make it harder for union contractors to win bids.
The Davis-Bacon Act, passed in 1931 during the Great Depression, sets a minimum pay scale for workers on federal contracts by requiring contractors to pay the prevailing or average pay in the region. Suspension of the act will allow contractors to pay lower wages. Many Republicans have opposed Davis-Bacon, charging that it amounts to a taxpayer subsidy to unions.
In a letter to Congress, Bush said he has the power to suspend the law because of the national emergency caused by the hurricane: "I have found that the conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina constitute a 'national emergency.' "
Bush wrote that his decision is justified because Davis-Bacon increases construction costs, and suspension "will result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney denounced the Bush announcement as "outrageous."
"Employers are all too eager to exploit workers," he said. "This is no time to make that easier. What a double tragedy it would be to allow the destruction of Hurricane Katrina to depress living standards even further."
Article...
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005
President Bush yesterday suspended application of the federal law governing workers' pay on federal contracts in the Hurricane Katrina-damaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The action infuriated labor leaders and their Democratic supporters in Congress, who said it will lower wages and make it harder for union contractors to win bids.
The Davis-Bacon Act, passed in 1931 during the Great Depression, sets a minimum pay scale for workers on federal contracts by requiring contractors to pay the prevailing or average pay in the region. Suspension of the act will allow contractors to pay lower wages. Many Republicans have opposed Davis-Bacon, charging that it amounts to a taxpayer subsidy to unions.
In a letter to Congress, Bush said he has the power to suspend the law because of the national emergency caused by the hurricane: "I have found that the conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina constitute a 'national emergency.' "
Bush wrote that his decision is justified because Davis-Bacon increases construction costs, and suspension "will result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney denounced the Bush announcement as "outrageous."
"Employers are all too eager to exploit workers," he said. "This is no time to make that easier. What a double tragedy it would be to allow the destruction of Hurricane Katrina to depress living standards even further."
Article...
After Severe Injury, The Presidential Insult...
Proclamation by the President: To Suspend Subchapter IV of Chapter 31 of Title 40, United States Code, Within a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the National Emergency Caused by Hurricane Katrina
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do by this proclamation suspend, as to all contracts entered into on or after the date of this proclamation and until otherwise provided, the provisions of subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code, 40 U.S.C. 3141-3148, and the provisions of all other acts providing for the payment of wages, which provisions are dependent upon determinations by the Secretary of Labor under section 3142 of title 40, United States Code, as they apply to contracts to be performed in the following jurisdictions…
Section 3142(b) of title 40, United States Code, provides that such “minimum wages shall be based on the wages the Secretary of Labor determines to be prevailing for the corresponding classes of laborers and mechanics employed on projects of a character similar to the contract work in the civil subdivision of the State in which the work is to be performed…”
The Whole Shebang...
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do by this proclamation suspend, as to all contracts entered into on or after the date of this proclamation and until otherwise provided, the provisions of subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code, 40 U.S.C. 3141-3148, and the provisions of all other acts providing for the payment of wages, which provisions are dependent upon determinations by the Secretary of Labor under section 3142 of title 40, United States Code, as they apply to contracts to be performed in the following jurisdictions…
Section 3142(b) of title 40, United States Code, provides that such “minimum wages shall be based on the wages the Secretary of Labor determines to be prevailing for the corresponding classes of laborers and mechanics employed on projects of a character similar to the contract work in the civil subdivision of the State in which the work is to be performed…”
The Whole Shebang...
Friday, September 09, 2005
U.S. Offers No Response to Cuban Emergency Assistance Offer
From NewStandard by Brendan Coyne
On Tuesday, as flood waters rose in New Orleans, a nearby nation made a unique aid offer: mobile doctors with backpacks, ready to provide medical care on the spot to hurricane survivors. The doctors would work in small teams or alone finding and treating people in need of medical care on the streets and in their houses. The offer was not immediately acknowledged openly by the Bush administration, and a week later, the offer has not been accepted.
Though apparently no final decision has been made, the United States federal government appears ready to turn down the offer of hurricane relief from the Cuba, which is world-renowned for its health-care system. Cuba's president, Fidel Castro, said he would send 1,100 doctors to aid in relief efforts, despite the four-decade-old economic embargo the US maintains against the tiny island nation. The first doctors could have begun arriving the day after an acceptance from the US.
The Cuban-trained doctors would be sent in three waves over three days, with each group carrying small packs with medical and diagnostic supplies to enable them to move into ravaged areas and treat people immediately, Fidel Castro explained in a speech Friday.
Sunday, the US Department of State announced it would accept relief offers from a number of nations, but it did not acknowledge the Cuban offer. Tuesday, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters that the US was unlikely to accept the assistance after the Department of Health and Human Services determined that volunteering US doctors would be able to handle the load. More than 12,000 US doctors have volunteered so far, the Associate Press reports today.
Cuban Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jose Luis Ponce told the AP that his nation had not received an official response to their offer. State Department executive secretary Harry K. Thomas Jr. will address international aid offers at an off-camera, on-the-record briefing today, the State Department said. On Sunday the United Nations announced that the US had finally accepted its offer of assistance from several UN agencies highly experienced in disaster relief.
In a statement Friday, Castro outlined a plan that included immediately flying 100 medical professionals to Houston or another nearby city, and then transporting them to New Orleans where they would work in small teams or alone to provide medical care to people suffering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Over the next two days, Castro proposed, Cuba would send two more teams of 500 similarly equipped doctors to the US. The workers would remain, "as long as is necessary," Castro said, and were proficient enough in English to communicate with patients.
According to the statement, Castro originally offered assistance last Tuesday, but did so through back channels due to the adversarial relationship the US and Cuba have endured since a communist revolution swept Castro into power more than 40 years ago. The US has maintained a crippling economic embargo against Cuba, which until recently, included medical supplies.
The restated offer from Castro came about after the State Department thanked a number of nations for offering aid but failed to include Cuba, Castro said.
Like most Caribbean nations, Cuba has extensive experience dealing with the fallout from hurricanes. Earlier this year, following the $1.4 billion in damage Hurricane Dennis caused the island nation, the United States proposed sending Cuba $50,000 in aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). A number of groups criticized the amount of assistance offered as too little, and Castro opted to decline.
In the past, Cuba has sent medical brigades to other hurricane-ravished countries. For instance, following Hurricane Mitch and Hurricane Georges in 1998, Cuba sent medical relief teams to Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and other hard-hit nations.
On Tuesday, as flood waters rose in New Orleans, a nearby nation made a unique aid offer: mobile doctors with backpacks, ready to provide medical care on the spot to hurricane survivors. The doctors would work in small teams or alone finding and treating people in need of medical care on the streets and in their houses. The offer was not immediately acknowledged openly by the Bush administration, and a week later, the offer has not been accepted.
Though apparently no final decision has been made, the United States federal government appears ready to turn down the offer of hurricane relief from the Cuba, which is world-renowned for its health-care system. Cuba's president, Fidel Castro, said he would send 1,100 doctors to aid in relief efforts, despite the four-decade-old economic embargo the US maintains against the tiny island nation. The first doctors could have begun arriving the day after an acceptance from the US.
The Cuban-trained doctors would be sent in three waves over three days, with each group carrying small packs with medical and diagnostic supplies to enable them to move into ravaged areas and treat people immediately, Fidel Castro explained in a speech Friday.
Sunday, the US Department of State announced it would accept relief offers from a number of nations, but it did not acknowledge the Cuban offer. Tuesday, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters that the US was unlikely to accept the assistance after the Department of Health and Human Services determined that volunteering US doctors would be able to handle the load. More than 12,000 US doctors have volunteered so far, the Associate Press reports today.
Cuban Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jose Luis Ponce told the AP that his nation had not received an official response to their offer. State Department executive secretary Harry K. Thomas Jr. will address international aid offers at an off-camera, on-the-record briefing today, the State Department said. On Sunday the United Nations announced that the US had finally accepted its offer of assistance from several UN agencies highly experienced in disaster relief.
In a statement Friday, Castro outlined a plan that included immediately flying 100 medical professionals to Houston or another nearby city, and then transporting them to New Orleans where they would work in small teams or alone to provide medical care to people suffering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. Over the next two days, Castro proposed, Cuba would send two more teams of 500 similarly equipped doctors to the US. The workers would remain, "as long as is necessary," Castro said, and were proficient enough in English to communicate with patients.
According to the statement, Castro originally offered assistance last Tuesday, but did so through back channels due to the adversarial relationship the US and Cuba have endured since a communist revolution swept Castro into power more than 40 years ago. The US has maintained a crippling economic embargo against Cuba, which until recently, included medical supplies.
The restated offer from Castro came about after the State Department thanked a number of nations for offering aid but failed to include Cuba, Castro said.
Like most Caribbean nations, Cuba has extensive experience dealing with the fallout from hurricanes. Earlier this year, following the $1.4 billion in damage Hurricane Dennis caused the island nation, the United States proposed sending Cuba $50,000 in aid through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). A number of groups criticized the amount of assistance offered as too little, and Castro opted to decline.
In the past, Cuba has sent medical brigades to other hurricane-ravished countries. For instance, following Hurricane Mitch and Hurricane Georges in 1998, Cuba sent medical relief teams to Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and other hard-hit nations.
BUSH USES KATRINA AS EXCUSE TO ATTACK SOCIAL SECURITY
KEITH KOFFLER, NATIONAL JOURNAL - Top Republicans Monday indicated that a key rationale for continuing to press for items such as overhauling Social Security and making tax cuts passed during Bush's first administration permanent is that these initiatives are good for the economy, and that what is good for the national economy is also good for New Orleans. "A large part of the response to the hurricane's impact is to jump-start the region's economy, which requires a vibrant national economy," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy. Duffy asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the hurricane's impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which threatens to strain the budget in coming years.
SO IT WASN'T THE GAY'S FAULT AFTER ALL
HAARETZ, ISRAEL - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi and the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, said that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for U.S. President George W. Bush's support for Israel's Gaza pullout. "It was God's retribution. God does not shortchange anyone," Yosef said during his weekly sermon. His comments were broadcast on Channel 10 TV on Wednesday. Yosef also said recent natural disasters were the result of a lack of Torah study and that Katrina's victims suffered "because they have no God," singling out black people.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/622278.html
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/622278.html
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq
From The Onion
BAGHDAD—The 4,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen stationed in Iraq, representing over a third of the state's troops, called home this week to find out what, if any, help they could offer Katrina survivors from overseas. "The soldiers wanted to know if they could call 911 for anyone, or perhaps send some water via FedEx," said Louisiana National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The Guardsmen also "would love to send generators, rations, and Black Hawk helicopters for rescue missions," but, said Schneider, "we desperately need these in Iraq to stay alive." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the phone support, but noted that it would take months to transfer any equipment from Iraq to New Orleans, saying, "You fight a national disaster with the equipment you have."
BAGHDAD—The 4,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen stationed in Iraq, representing over a third of the state's troops, called home this week to find out what, if any, help they could offer Katrina survivors from overseas. "The soldiers wanted to know if they could call 911 for anyone, or perhaps send some water via FedEx," said Louisiana National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The Guardsmen also "would love to send generators, rations, and Black Hawk helicopters for rescue missions," but, said Schneider, "we desperately need these in Iraq to stay alive." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised the phone support, but noted that it would take months to transfer any equipment from Iraq to New Orleans, saying, "You fight a national disaster with the equipment you have."
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
From The Onion
NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African Americans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.
NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African Americans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Lest We Forget To Lay Blame Where Blame Is Due...
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.
Hugo's Helping Hand
By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet
Posted on September 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/25067/
In a stunning reversal of largesse, the global community is sending aide to a superpower humbled by mythic disaster. But before Katrina came ashore, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had already launched a stateside campaign to woo the hearts of America's poor.
On August 28, before Katrina hit land, Chávez announced a plan to offer discounted heating oil to U.S. poor through the Citgo Petroleum Corp., a unit of Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela.
"We want to help the poorest communities in the U.S.,'' Chávez said in his weekly television address. "There are people who die from the cold in winter in the U.S.''
Venezuela is the United States' fourth-largest oil supplier and the world's fifth-largest exporter. It sells some 1.5 million barrels a day of crude oil to Americans.
The same weekend, days after televangelist Pat Roberts said he should be assassinated, Chávez also announced he wanted to provide free eye examinations to U.S. residents with no health care. He made the offer to Reverend Jesse Jackson who was in Caracas to sooth tensions between the two countries.
Katrina hit and Chávez, who claims President Bush has plans to assassinate him and invade Venezuela, had a public relations softball.
He was the first foreign leader to offer aid workers, food and fuel. Citgo soon offered a $1 million donation and yesterday the company announced it would sell an additional 1 million barrels of oil to offset losses from the hurricane.
Thus the pickle: the Bush Administration, which accuses Chávez of using oil money to feed populist revolutions in America's "back door," is watching it come through the front in humanitarian envelopes.
But all of Chávez's generosity wasn't about disaster and suffering.
In Chicago, a city with a solid Latino voting block, Chávez's charity machine was at work. The Fiesta Boricua, a popular street festival that draws thousands of Latinos, took place only because a $100,000 donation from Citgo saved it at the last minute, the Chicago Tribune reported last week. "As Puerto Ricans in Chicago salute baseball great Roberto Clemente and other cultural icons at a festival this weekend," the paper said, "they also will pay homage to some unlikely new heroes: the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S. and the chief executive of Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company."
Some of the same new heroes will soon be on a six-city, U.S. public relations tour called "Venezuela Matters," which brings together businessmen, artists and academics together to show support for Chávez's social policies.
Article...
Posted on September 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/25067/
In a stunning reversal of largesse, the global community is sending aide to a superpower humbled by mythic disaster. But before Katrina came ashore, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had already launched a stateside campaign to woo the hearts of America's poor.
On August 28, before Katrina hit land, Chávez announced a plan to offer discounted heating oil to U.S. poor through the Citgo Petroleum Corp., a unit of Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela.
"We want to help the poorest communities in the U.S.,'' Chávez said in his weekly television address. "There are people who die from the cold in winter in the U.S.''
Venezuela is the United States' fourth-largest oil supplier and the world's fifth-largest exporter. It sells some 1.5 million barrels a day of crude oil to Americans.
The same weekend, days after televangelist Pat Roberts said he should be assassinated, Chávez also announced he wanted to provide free eye examinations to U.S. residents with no health care. He made the offer to Reverend Jesse Jackson who was in Caracas to sooth tensions between the two countries.
Katrina hit and Chávez, who claims President Bush has plans to assassinate him and invade Venezuela, had a public relations softball.
He was the first foreign leader to offer aid workers, food and fuel. Citgo soon offered a $1 million donation and yesterday the company announced it would sell an additional 1 million barrels of oil to offset losses from the hurricane.
Thus the pickle: the Bush Administration, which accuses Chávez of using oil money to feed populist revolutions in America's "back door," is watching it come through the front in humanitarian envelopes.
But all of Chávez's generosity wasn't about disaster and suffering.
In Chicago, a city with a solid Latino voting block, Chávez's charity machine was at work. The Fiesta Boricua, a popular street festival that draws thousands of Latinos, took place only because a $100,000 donation from Citgo saved it at the last minute, the Chicago Tribune reported last week. "As Puerto Ricans in Chicago salute baseball great Roberto Clemente and other cultural icons at a festival this weekend," the paper said, "they also will pay homage to some unlikely new heroes: the Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S. and the chief executive of Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company."
Some of the same new heroes will soon be on a six-city, U.S. public relations tour called "Venezuela Matters," which brings together businessmen, artists and academics together to show support for Chávez's social policies.
Article...
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Ignorance Abounds...
SEATTLE INDYMEDIA - Mayor Nagin told ABC news that citizen refugees who were attempting to walk out of New Orleans in search of aid were stopped at the Jefferson Parish line by police with attack dogs and machine guns. The chief law enforcement officer of Jefferson Parish is Sheriff Harry Lee, who is notorious for his views on racial profiling by his officers. He once said his men would stop blacks in 'rinky dink' cars in white neighborhoods at night.
Nagin explained that he suggested the mostly black people at the convention center try walking out because there were no supplies in the city to relive their suffering, and no buses for their evacuation.
Article...
Nagin explained that he suggested the mostly black people at the convention center try walking out because there were no supplies in the city to relive their suffering, and no buses for their evacuation.
Article...
Dispatch From Incompetence Central
CONGRESSMAN BOBBY JINDAL 7:42 P.M.
People who want to volunteer for search and rescue operations, police from outside the state who want to help, all should be able to come to New Orleans without fear of wading through bureaucratic red tape. My constituents don't care who brings them food and water, or take them to safety; just help these people.
BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL MAYOR, 3:32 P.M. - We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horseshit"
WWL, 3:11 P.M. - Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines. Why? FEMA has not
explained. . .
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
People who want to volunteer for search and rescue operations, police from outside the state who want to help, all should be able to come to New Orleans without fear of wading through bureaucratic red tape. My constituents don't care who brings them food and water, or take them to safety; just help these people.
BEN MORRIS, SLIDELL MAYOR, 3:32 P.M. - We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horseshit"
WWL, 3:11 P.M. - Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines. Why? FEMA has not
explained. . .
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
Monday, September 05, 2005
The Beautiful Mind Strikes Again
by DavidNYC
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 17:09:32 PDT
From Daily Kos
Barbara Bush - the woman whom no less an authority than Dick Nixon said "knows how to hate," the woman who didn't want to trouble her "beautiful mind" with thoughts of "body bags and deaths" - has now offered us yet another gem. After visting refugees staying at the Houston Astrodome, she had this to say:
What a cold, callous, wretched ghoul of a person. I just don't even know what else to say.
Mon Sep 5th, 2005 at 17:09:32 PDT
From Daily Kos
Barbara Bush - the woman whom no less an authority than Dick Nixon said "knows how to hate," the woman who didn't want to trouble her "beautiful mind" with thoughts of "body bags and deaths" - has now offered us yet another gem. After visting refugees staying at the Houston Astrodome, she had this to say:
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckled slightly)--this is working very well for them."
What a cold, callous, wretched ghoul of a person. I just don't even know what else to say.
Media Focus On Looters Is Institutionalized Bigotry At Best
MITCH COHEN, NEW ORLEANS INDYMEDIA - My friend Les Evenchick, an independent Green who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans in a 3-story walkup, reports that 90 percent of the so-called looters are simply grabbing water, food, diapers and medicines, because the federal and state officials have refused to provide these basic necessities. Les says that "it's only because of the looters that non-looters -- old people, sick people, small children -- are able to survive."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.
Think about it:
- People were told to leave, but all the bus stations had closed down the night before and the personnel sent packing.
- Many people couldn't afford tickets anyway.
- Many people are stranded, and others are refusing to leave their homes, pets, etc. They don't have cars.
You want people to stop looting? Provide the means for them to eat, and 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 and would not let the people leave. Instead, the military ordered the tourists to the now-infamous Convention Center. . .
There is something sinister going down -- it's not simply incompetence or negligence. How could FEMA and Homeland Security not have something so basic as bottled drinking water in the Super Dome, which was long a part of the hurricane plan? One police officer in charge of his 120-person unit said yesterday that his squad was provided with only 70 small bottles of water.
Last year, New Orleans residents -- the only area in the entire state that voted in huge numbers against the candidacy of George Bush -- also fought off attempts to privatize the drinking water supply.
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.
Article...
Think about it:
- People were told to leave, but all the bus stations had closed down the night before and the personnel sent packing.
- Many people couldn't afford tickets anyway.
- Many people are stranded, and others are refusing to leave their homes, pets, etc. They don't have cars.
You want people to stop looting? Provide the means for them to eat, and 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 and would not let the people leave. Instead, the military ordered the tourists to the now-infamous Convention Center. . .
There is something sinister going down -- it's not simply incompetence or negligence. How could FEMA and Homeland Security not have something so basic as bottled drinking water in the Super Dome, which was long a part of the hurricane plan? One police officer in charge of his 120-person unit said yesterday that his squad was provided with only 70 small bottles of water.
Last year, New Orleans residents -- the only area in the entire state that voted in huge numbers against the candidacy of George Bush -- also fought off attempts to privatize the drinking water supply.
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.
Article...
And Then, There's The Nation At War With A Tactic
JEFFERSON PARISH PRESIDENT AARON BROUSSARD, MEET THE PRESS-
The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
[Breaks into tears] You have to watch. Words fail me, except words of anger. And thoughts of revenge for the people who have murdered thousands of Louisianan's by their callous disregard for their fellow citizens.
http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com/
The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
[Breaks into tears] You have to watch. Words fail me, except words of anger. And thoughts of revenge for the people who have murdered thousands of Louisianan's by their callous disregard for their fellow citizens.
http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com/
Some Nations, With Their Citizens In Mind, Know What They're Doing
MARJORIE COHN, TRUTH OUT
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."
"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."
"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.
After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."
http://truthout.org/contactmc.php
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."
"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."
"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.
After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."
http://truthout.org/contactmc.php
Working Hard at Nothing All Day
By CORINNE MAIER, New York Times
Published: September 5, 2005
Paris — Thoreau deplored the supremacy of work in this way: "It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work." Fortunately, there is one day a year in which one celebrates work without going there: Labor Day.
And it's you Americans who have invented it. We French thank you for that, even if few of us realize that this paradoxical day comes from across the Atlantic. Nonetheless, it was in America, a decidedly pioneering land, where the idea of a shorter workweek, a notion dear to French hearts, was born.
All that began on May 1, 1886. On that historic day, American workers went on strike to demand an eight-hour day; at that time it was habitual to work 10 to 12 hours - quelle horreur! Alas, the strike resulted in the Haymarket tragedy, and European Socialists, shocked, decided to fix May 1 as the day for demanding better working conditions.
Even though the impetus for the May 1 Fête du Travail comes from America, your Labor Day is not celebrated then, but in September. And this difference in date changes everything. For in France, May 1 announces summer, and we also have a saying, "En mai, fais ce qu'il te plaît" - that is, in May, do as you please. The day is also the prelude to a series of warm-weather events that the French dote on: the Cannes film festival, the French Open tennis tournament and especially the Tour de France, even when it's always Lance Armstrong who wins.
Thus, in France, Labor Day is the beginning of a season of pleasures, while for you in America, it is the official end. You don't work that day, but vacation is over and it's time to roll up your sleeves and buckle down. You have one consolation: your Labor Day is always on a Monday, so you are sure of enjoying what we French call with delight a "week-end prolongé." May 1, however, capriciously moves around. This year was especially disappointing: May 1 was a Sunday, so no break from work. Next year, though, yippee: it's a Monday!
Aside from the date, the French and Americans simply celebrate Labor Day differently. Americans have picnics and family gatherings; we have the lily of the valley, brought into the city by rural folk who've gathered it in the woods, and protests. Every year, the famous May 1 protest gathers together union members, militants and leftists. This march, though closely covered by the news media, doesn't usually get a lot of attention from the public. There are exceptions, as in 2002, when the threat of the extreme right's coming to power drove a million Parisians into the streets. I was there too: engulfed in an enormous crowd, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with ... a colleague from the office. Here indeed is proof that May 1 is the Fête du Travail....
Still, it is the day when the Americans, like the French, should reflect on the meaning of their jobs. Everybody knows that the two nationalities don't have the same attitude toward work. Americans think the French are lazy, and the French think Americans are interested only in money. Of course, these are stereotypes, as are many other perceptions we have about each other (after all, some Frenchwomen do get fat). But because the French work 35 hours a week, Americans sneer, forgetting that in many years French workers have a higher productivity rate than their American counterparts - proof that you can work better by working less.
Americans also forget that going to work every day is often more a chore than a pleasure. You seem more and more disillusioned about work: only a third of you say that you love your jobs. In such conditions, it's not surprising that you spend on average two hours of your workday ... not working. Answering personal e-mail messages, shopping online, playing computer games or chatting with co-workers ... it's so much more pleasant than working, really.
My American friends, there you are caught, red-handed, being lazy. Is that enough to reconcile the Americans and the French? United in indolence, a foundation of sloth in which Labor Day is the cornerstone. Will Laziness Unlimited be the future of work?
Corinne Maier, an economist, is the author of "Bonjour Laziness: Jumping Off the Corporate Ladder." This article was translated by The Times from the French.
Published: September 5, 2005
Paris — Thoreau deplored the supremacy of work in this way: "It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work." Fortunately, there is one day a year in which one celebrates work without going there: Labor Day.
And it's you Americans who have invented it. We French thank you for that, even if few of us realize that this paradoxical day comes from across the Atlantic. Nonetheless, it was in America, a decidedly pioneering land, where the idea of a shorter workweek, a notion dear to French hearts, was born.
All that began on May 1, 1886. On that historic day, American workers went on strike to demand an eight-hour day; at that time it was habitual to work 10 to 12 hours - quelle horreur! Alas, the strike resulted in the Haymarket tragedy, and European Socialists, shocked, decided to fix May 1 as the day for demanding better working conditions.
Even though the impetus for the May 1 Fête du Travail comes from America, your Labor Day is not celebrated then, but in September. And this difference in date changes everything. For in France, May 1 announces summer, and we also have a saying, "En mai, fais ce qu'il te plaît" - that is, in May, do as you please. The day is also the prelude to a series of warm-weather events that the French dote on: the Cannes film festival, the French Open tennis tournament and especially the Tour de France, even when it's always Lance Armstrong who wins.
Thus, in France, Labor Day is the beginning of a season of pleasures, while for you in America, it is the official end. You don't work that day, but vacation is over and it's time to roll up your sleeves and buckle down. You have one consolation: your Labor Day is always on a Monday, so you are sure of enjoying what we French call with delight a "week-end prolongé." May 1, however, capriciously moves around. This year was especially disappointing: May 1 was a Sunday, so no break from work. Next year, though, yippee: it's a Monday!
Aside from the date, the French and Americans simply celebrate Labor Day differently. Americans have picnics and family gatherings; we have the lily of the valley, brought into the city by rural folk who've gathered it in the woods, and protests. Every year, the famous May 1 protest gathers together union members, militants and leftists. This march, though closely covered by the news media, doesn't usually get a lot of attention from the public. There are exceptions, as in 2002, when the threat of the extreme right's coming to power drove a million Parisians into the streets. I was there too: engulfed in an enormous crowd, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with ... a colleague from the office. Here indeed is proof that May 1 is the Fête du Travail....
Still, it is the day when the Americans, like the French, should reflect on the meaning of their jobs. Everybody knows that the two nationalities don't have the same attitude toward work. Americans think the French are lazy, and the French think Americans are interested only in money. Of course, these are stereotypes, as are many other perceptions we have about each other (after all, some Frenchwomen do get fat). But because the French work 35 hours a week, Americans sneer, forgetting that in many years French workers have a higher productivity rate than their American counterparts - proof that you can work better by working less.
Americans also forget that going to work every day is often more a chore than a pleasure. You seem more and more disillusioned about work: only a third of you say that you love your jobs. In such conditions, it's not surprising that you spend on average two hours of your workday ... not working. Answering personal e-mail messages, shopping online, playing computer games or chatting with co-workers ... it's so much more pleasant than working, really.
My American friends, there you are caught, red-handed, being lazy. Is that enough to reconcile the Americans and the French? United in indolence, a foundation of sloth in which Labor Day is the cornerstone. Will Laziness Unlimited be the future of work?
Corinne Maier, an economist, is the author of "Bonjour Laziness: Jumping Off the Corporate Ladder." This article was translated by The Times from the French.
FEMA BLOCKED 500 BOATS FROM JOINING IN RESCUE EFFORT
CLARK WARNER, 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 flotilla 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 flotilla 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.
A young DWF agent strolled through the boats and told approximately half of the citizens that their boats were too large because the water had dropped during the night and that they should turn around and go home.
They were pulling a large (24ft) shallow draft aluminum boat that can safely carry 12 passengers and had ramp access which would allow the elderly and infirm to have easier access to the boat. They then politely informed the DWF agent that the local and national media had consistently reported that the water level had risen during the night which contradicted his statement to them that the water was dropping and no boat over 16 ft. in length would be allowed to participate in rescue operations.
They then specifically asked the DWF agent that they (and other citizens in the flotilla) be allowed to go to the hospitals and help evacuate the sick and the doctors and nurses stranded there. They offered to bring these people back to Lafayette, in our own vehicles, in order to ensure that they received proper and prompt medical care.
The DWF agent did not want to hear this and ordered them home -- all five hundred boats. They complied with the DWF agent's orders, turned around and headed back to Lafayette along with half of the flotilla. However, two friends were pulling a smaller 15 ft alumaweld with a 25 hp. The DWF agents let them through to proceed to the rescue operation launch site.
They were allowed to drive to the launch site where the FEMA controlled La. Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries were launching their rescue operations (via boat). They reported to me that there were over 200 DWF agents just standing around and doing nothing. They were kept there for approximately 3 hours. During that time they observed a large number of DWF agents doing absolutely nothing. Why? Because FEMA would not let them help! After three hours had passed they were told that they were not needed and should go home. They complied with the DWF's orders and turned around and went home to Lafayette. . .
On Tuesday afternoon, August 30, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee asked for all citizens with boats to come to the aid of Jefferson Parish. A short time later Dwight Landreneau, the head of the La. Depart. of Wildlife and Fisheries, got on television and remarked that his agency had things under control and citizen help was not needed. . .
http://pelican.dailykos.com/
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 flotilla 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 flotilla 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.
A young DWF agent strolled through the boats and told approximately half of the citizens that their boats were too large because the water had dropped during the night and that they should turn around and go home.
They were pulling a large (24ft) shallow draft aluminum boat that can safely carry 12 passengers and had ramp access which would allow the elderly and infirm to have easier access to the boat. They then politely informed the DWF agent that the local and national media had consistently reported that the water level had risen during the night which contradicted his statement to them that the water was dropping and no boat over 16 ft. in length would be allowed to participate in rescue operations.
They then specifically asked the DWF agent that they (and other citizens in the flotilla) be allowed to go to the hospitals and help evacuate the sick and the doctors and nurses stranded there. They offered to bring these people back to Lafayette, in our own vehicles, in order to ensure that they received proper and prompt medical care.
The DWF agent did not want to hear this and ordered them home -- all five hundred boats. They complied with the DWF agent's orders, turned around and headed back to Lafayette along with half of the flotilla. However, two friends were pulling a smaller 15 ft alumaweld with a 25 hp. The DWF agents let them through to proceed to the rescue operation launch site.
They were allowed to drive to the launch site where the FEMA controlled La. Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries were launching their rescue operations (via boat). They reported to me that there were over 200 DWF agents just standing around and doing nothing. They were kept there for approximately 3 hours. During that time they observed a large number of DWF agents doing absolutely nothing. Why? Because FEMA would not let them help! After three hours had passed they were told that they were not needed and should go home. They complied with the DWF's orders and turned around and went home to Lafayette. . .
On Tuesday afternoon, August 30, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee asked for all citizens with boats to come to the aid of Jefferson Parish. A short time later Dwight Landreneau, the head of the La. Depart. of Wildlife and Fisheries, got on television and remarked that his agency had things under control and citizen help was not needed. . .
http://pelican.dailykos.com/
ARMY DECLARES WAR ON NEW ORLEANS VICTIMS "THIS WILL BE A COMBAT MISSION"
JOSEPH R. CHENELLY - Combat operations are underway on the streets "to take this city back" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "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."
Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy. . . (He means "chaos", of course.--Pete)
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. . .
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."
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.php
Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy. . . (He means "chaos", of course.--Pete)
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. . .
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."
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.php
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Open Letter From Michael Moore To President(?) Bush
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.
Brownisms
Conditions In The Convention Center
FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need.
Uncollected Corpses
Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.
Hospital Evacuations
Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
Violence and Civil Unrest
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
The Federal Response
Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need.
Uncollected Corpses
Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.
Hospital Evacuations
Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
Violence and Civil Unrest
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
The Federal Response
Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Katrina Conspiracy Unveiled!
Remember Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson post-9/11, placing the blame for the attacks at the feet of lesbians and witches?
Well, the wacko christianists [note: I use christianist to denote those whose beliefs cannot even remotely be considered a derivative of Jesus' teachings] have gone high tech.
Using images of Hurricane Katrina supplied by NOAA [and I suppose that agency's name is a coincidence, right?], the Columbia Christians for Life [of replicating cells and not, apparently, of hurricane victims...] have found satellite-assisted proof that this hurricane was the direct result of the area's abortion clinics.
The group claims that the red and orange parts of the image [upper left] closely resemble fetal images used in pro-life visuals. Their dispatch ends with these words of support for those being washed away, without food, and facing the unimaginable task of rebuilding their lives: "God's message: REPENT AMERICA!"
Um, thanks.
Well, the wacko christianists [note: I use christianist to denote those whose beliefs cannot even remotely be considered a derivative of Jesus' teachings] have gone high tech.
Using images of Hurricane Katrina supplied by NOAA [and I suppose that agency's name is a coincidence, right?], the Columbia Christians for Life [of replicating cells and not, apparently, of hurricane victims...] have found satellite-assisted proof that this hurricane was the direct result of the area's abortion clinics.
The group claims that the red and orange parts of the image [upper left] closely resemble fetal images used in pro-life visuals. Their dispatch ends with these words of support for those being washed away, without food, and facing the unimaginable task of rebuilding their lives: "God's message: REPENT AMERICA!"
Um, thanks.
Patriotic Pork
The Army Eats Out
By Nick Turse
When you think of food and the U.S. Army, what do you picture? Long chow lines with a grunt serving up chipped beef on toast (aka "shit on a shingle")? A lowly private peeling potatoes on KP duty? Unidentifiable slop in a mess hall? Semi-inedible C-rations or palate-numbing Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs)? Well think again, my friend.
These days, the Army loves to eat out. Hell, who doesn't? No messy preparation. No dishes to clean up. No fuss, no muss. Not a chip of beef in sight. And, best of all, the tab's being picked up by somebody else. Of course, when the Army goes out to eat, that somebody else turns out to be you and me. And when it's on us, it's no longer an Army of One. Judging by the Pentagon's own accounting, our Army (not to mention the Air Force, Navy, and Marines) has been very hungry and feeding in herds. So where, you might ask, do Army men and women head off to when they nosh in an official capacity; how many taxpayer dollars are they spending; and what, exactly, are they eating?
Patriotic Pork
It turns out that the Army has definite gastronomic likes and dislikes. Some ethnic foods aren't even on the table. Due to the arcane nature of the Pentagon's accounting system, it is almost impossible to know for sure, but the tally on many Asian cuisines (although not Asian bases) appears to be:
Vietnamese restaurants: 0
Thai restaurants: 0
Indian restaurants: 0
Japanese restaurants: 0
And don't even ask about Afghan food!
But while it's a no-go on sushi, cooked fish is another matter entirely. In 2004, for instance, the Army spent over $5,000 at Chic-A-D's Cajun Chicken & Catfish Restaurant in Winnsboro, Louisiana. While five grand probably buys a lot of catfish, it apparently failed to sate the Army's voracious appetite for these bottom-feeders, because that same year the Army also dropped $6,500 at Capt'n Morgan's Steak & Catfish Restaurant in Diberville, Mississippi.
Since, as Napoleon once observed, an army marches on its stomach, the U.S. Army cannot live on catfish alone. Sandwiches are, apparently, also a must as the Army plunked down $13,845 at a Quiznos Classic Subs in Louisiana.
Army stomachs also couldn't seem to get enough of the fine food Arkansas has to offer and so significant sums were dropped at such "Natural State" restaurants as: Rodeo Cafe ($3,485); Molly's Diner ($5,400); Annie's Family Restaurant ($8,996); and the Crispy Taco Mexican Grill ($19,283), among other establishments.
But Arkansas was only a drop in the proverbial bucket (of fried chicken, no doubt). Army folks also sampled the fare at numerous other eateries across the country, including:
Copper Mill Restaurant (Logan, UT) $10,878
Bristol Bar & Grille (Louisville, KY) $5,026
Englewood Cafe (Independence, MO) $5,026
Pericos Mexican Restaurant (Covington, TN) $4,050
Big Mama's Kitchen (Fayette, AL) $3,705
Timber Lodge Steakhouse (Sioux Falls, SD) $2,544
While the military obviously likes its catfish and Mexican food, what it evidently loves best is barbeque. In fact, from Shotgun's Bar-B-Que Restaurant in Texas and Bo's Pit Bar-B-Que in Missouri to the Pig N' Whistle in Tennessee and Longhorn Barbecue in Washington State, the military has sampled barbeque all over the U.S. -- at least thirteen BBQ joints in all in 2004 when it shelled out at least $164,828 to grease those Army fingers.
Article...
By Nick Turse
When you think of food and the U.S. Army, what do you picture? Long chow lines with a grunt serving up chipped beef on toast (aka "shit on a shingle")? A lowly private peeling potatoes on KP duty? Unidentifiable slop in a mess hall? Semi-inedible C-rations or palate-numbing Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs)? Well think again, my friend.
These days, the Army loves to eat out. Hell, who doesn't? No messy preparation. No dishes to clean up. No fuss, no muss. Not a chip of beef in sight. And, best of all, the tab's being picked up by somebody else. Of course, when the Army goes out to eat, that somebody else turns out to be you and me. And when it's on us, it's no longer an Army of One. Judging by the Pentagon's own accounting, our Army (not to mention the Air Force, Navy, and Marines) has been very hungry and feeding in herds. So where, you might ask, do Army men and women head off to when they nosh in an official capacity; how many taxpayer dollars are they spending; and what, exactly, are they eating?
Patriotic Pork
It turns out that the Army has definite gastronomic likes and dislikes. Some ethnic foods aren't even on the table. Due to the arcane nature of the Pentagon's accounting system, it is almost impossible to know for sure, but the tally on many Asian cuisines (although not Asian bases) appears to be:
Vietnamese restaurants: 0
Thai restaurants: 0
Indian restaurants: 0
Japanese restaurants: 0
And don't even ask about Afghan food!
But while it's a no-go on sushi, cooked fish is another matter entirely. In 2004, for instance, the Army spent over $5,000 at Chic-A-D's Cajun Chicken & Catfish Restaurant in Winnsboro, Louisiana. While five grand probably buys a lot of catfish, it apparently failed to sate the Army's voracious appetite for these bottom-feeders, because that same year the Army also dropped $6,500 at Capt'n Morgan's Steak & Catfish Restaurant in Diberville, Mississippi.
Since, as Napoleon once observed, an army marches on its stomach, the U.S. Army cannot live on catfish alone. Sandwiches are, apparently, also a must as the Army plunked down $13,845 at a Quiznos Classic Subs in Louisiana.
Army stomachs also couldn't seem to get enough of the fine food Arkansas has to offer and so significant sums were dropped at such "Natural State" restaurants as: Rodeo Cafe ($3,485); Molly's Diner ($5,400); Annie's Family Restaurant ($8,996); and the Crispy Taco Mexican Grill ($19,283), among other establishments.
But Arkansas was only a drop in the proverbial bucket (of fried chicken, no doubt). Army folks also sampled the fare at numerous other eateries across the country, including:
Copper Mill Restaurant (Logan, UT) $10,878
Bristol Bar & Grille (Louisville, KY) $5,026
Englewood Cafe (Independence, MO) $5,026
Pericos Mexican Restaurant (Covington, TN) $4,050
Big Mama's Kitchen (Fayette, AL) $3,705
Timber Lodge Steakhouse (Sioux Falls, SD) $2,544
While the military obviously likes its catfish and Mexican food, what it evidently loves best is barbeque. In fact, from Shotgun's Bar-B-Que Restaurant in Texas and Bo's Pit Bar-B-Que in Missouri to the Pig N' Whistle in Tennessee and Longhorn Barbecue in Washington State, the military has sampled barbeque all over the U.S. -- at least thirteen BBQ joints in all in 2004 when it shelled out at least $164,828 to grease those Army fingers.
Article...
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
The National Guard Belongs in New Orleans and Biloxi - Not Baghdad
By Norman Solomon
Another reason to bring them home now
The men and women of the National Guard shouldn’t be killing in Iraq. They should be helping in New Orleans and Biloxi.
The catastrophic hurricane was an act of God. But the U.S. war effort in Iraq is a continuing act of the president. And now, that effort is hampering the capacity of the National Guard to save lives at home.
Before the flooding of New Orleans drastically escalated on Tuesday, the White House tried to disarm questions that could be politically explosive. “To those of you who are concerned about whether or not we’re prepared to help, don’t be, we are,” President Bush said. “We’re in place, we’ve got equipment in place, supplies in place, and once the—once we’re able to assess the damage, we’ll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas.”
Echoing the official assurances, CBS News reported: “Even though more than a third of Mississippi’s and Louisiana’s National Guard troops are either in Iraq or supporting the war effort, the National Guard says there are more than enough at home to do the job.”
But after New Orleans levees collapsed and the scope of the catastrophe became more clear, such reassuring claims lost credibility. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday: “With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday—calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.”
The back-page Post story added: “National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops—most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.”
Speaking for the Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy Thaggard said: “Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people.” According to the Washington Post, the Mississippi National Guard “has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq” while “Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.”
National Guard troops don’t belong in Iraq. They should be rescuing and protecting in Louisiana and Mississippi, not patrolling and killing in a country that was invaded on the basis of presidential deception. They should be fighting the effects of flood waters at home—helping people in the communities they know best—not battling Iraqi people who want them to go away.
Let’s use the Internet today to forward and post this demand so widely that the politicians in Washington can no longer ignore it:
Bring the National Guard home. Immediately.
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For excerpts and other information, go to:
http://www.warmadeeasy.com/
Another reason to bring them home now
The men and women of the National Guard shouldn’t be killing in Iraq. They should be helping in New Orleans and Biloxi.
The catastrophic hurricane was an act of God. But the U.S. war effort in Iraq is a continuing act of the president. And now, that effort is hampering the capacity of the National Guard to save lives at home.
Before the flooding of New Orleans drastically escalated on Tuesday, the White House tried to disarm questions that could be politically explosive. “To those of you who are concerned about whether or not we’re prepared to help, don’t be, we are,” President Bush said. “We’re in place, we’ve got equipment in place, supplies in place, and once the—once we’re able to assess the damage, we’ll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas.”
Echoing the official assurances, CBS News reported: “Even though more than a third of Mississippi’s and Louisiana’s National Guard troops are either in Iraq or supporting the war effort, the National Guard says there are more than enough at home to do the job.”
But after New Orleans levees collapsed and the scope of the catastrophe became more clear, such reassuring claims lost credibility. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday: “With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday—calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.”
The back-page Post story added: “National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops—most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.”
Speaking for the Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy Thaggard said: “Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people.” According to the Washington Post, the Mississippi National Guard “has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq” while “Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.”
National Guard troops don’t belong in Iraq. They should be rescuing and protecting in Louisiana and Mississippi, not patrolling and killing in a country that was invaded on the basis of presidential deception. They should be fighting the effects of flood waters at home—helping people in the communities they know best—not battling Iraqi people who want them to go away.
Let’s use the Internet today to forward and post this demand so widely that the politicians in Washington can no longer ignore it:
Bring the National Guard home. Immediately.
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For excerpts and other information, go to:
http://www.warmadeeasy.com/
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Post-Constitutional Amerikkka
ACLU CLAIMS FBI IS SPYING THROUGH LIBRARIES
The American Civil Liberties Union says that the FBI has used a controversial Patriot Act power to demand records from an organization that possesses "a wide array of sensitive information about library patrons, including information about the reading materials borrowed by library patrons and about Internet usage by library patrons." The FBI demand was disclosed in a new lawsuit filed in Connecticut, which remains under a heavy FBI gag order.
The ACLU is seeking an emergency court order to lift the gag so that its client can participate in the public debate about the Patriot Act as Congress prepares to reauthorize or amend it in September.
"Our client wants to tell the American public about the dangers of allowing the FBI to demand library records without court approval," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, the lead lawyer in the case. "If our client could speak, he could explain why Congress should adopt additional safeguards that would limit Patriot Act powers."
Papers reveal that the client, whose identity must remain a secret under the gag, "strictly guards the confidentiality and privacy of its library and Internet records." The client is a member of the American Library Association.
The lawsuit challenges the National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the FBI to demand a range of personal records without court approval, such as the identity of a person who has visited a particular Web site on a library computer, or who has engaged in anonymous speech on the Internet. The Patriot Act dramatically expands the NSL power by permitting the FBI to demand records of people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
The government has repeatedly dismissed the concerns of librarians that the act could force them to violate their ethical responsibility to protect the privacy of library users. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft even called these concerns about the Patriot Act "baseless hysteria."
REDACTED VERSION OF THE ACLU'S COMPLAINT
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=18956
The American Civil Liberties Union says that the FBI has used a controversial Patriot Act power to demand records from an organization that possesses "a wide array of sensitive information about library patrons, including information about the reading materials borrowed by library patrons and about Internet usage by library patrons." The FBI demand was disclosed in a new lawsuit filed in Connecticut, which remains under a heavy FBI gag order.
The ACLU is seeking an emergency court order to lift the gag so that its client can participate in the public debate about the Patriot Act as Congress prepares to reauthorize or amend it in September.
"Our client wants to tell the American public about the dangers of allowing the FBI to demand library records without court approval," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, the lead lawyer in the case. "If our client could speak, he could explain why Congress should adopt additional safeguards that would limit Patriot Act powers."
Papers reveal that the client, whose identity must remain a secret under the gag, "strictly guards the confidentiality and privacy of its library and Internet records." The client is a member of the American Library Association.
The lawsuit challenges the National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the FBI to demand a range of personal records without court approval, such as the identity of a person who has visited a particular Web site on a library computer, or who has engaged in anonymous speech on the Internet. The Patriot Act dramatically expands the NSL power by permitting the FBI to demand records of people who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.
The government has repeatedly dismissed the concerns of librarians that the act could force them to violate their ethical responsibility to protect the privacy of library users. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft even called these concerns about the Patriot Act "baseless hysteria."
REDACTED VERSION OF THE ACLU'S COMPLAINT
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=18956
Sometimes Justice Manages To Get A Leg Up
ANDREW BUNCOMBE, INDEPENDENT UK - In a landmark judgment, a court in California has allowed a coalition of environmental groups to sue the US government over global warming - the first time a court has recognized the potentially disastrous impact of climate change.
A judge in San Francisco gave permission for the two groups, along with four US cities, to sue two federal development agencies that provide billions of dollars in loans to fund projects overseas. Some of the projects are power plants that emit greenhouse gases while others include pipeline projects that allow the transfer of oil.
"This is the first time a US court has given a plaintiff the right to go to court solely on the global warming issue," Geoff Hand, a Vermont-based lawyer in the case, told The Independent. "It's a great advance."
The lawsuit was brought by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, along with the cities of Boulder, Colorado, and the Californian cities of Oakland, Santa Monica and Arcata. In the filing the cities argued that the impact of global warming - including rising sea levels and warmer ocean temperatures - would have a negative impact on their communities.
The coastal city of Arcata said: "Arcata is presently suffering and will continue to suffer, these consequences. [The government agencies' actions] increase the risk that Arcata's interests are and will continue to be harmed by climate change."
Jerry Brown, the Mayor of Oakland, said: "Tragically, the federal government is violating federal law, which requires an assessment of cumulative impacts. This injures the citizens of Oakland, and every person in this country."
The lawsuit names two government agencies - the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic) and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. It claims that 8 per cent of all the world's greenhouse gases come from projects supported by these two agencies.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article308256.ece
A judge in San Francisco gave permission for the two groups, along with four US cities, to sue two federal development agencies that provide billions of dollars in loans to fund projects overseas. Some of the projects are power plants that emit greenhouse gases while others include pipeline projects that allow the transfer of oil.
"This is the first time a US court has given a plaintiff the right to go to court solely on the global warming issue," Geoff Hand, a Vermont-based lawyer in the case, told The Independent. "It's a great advance."
The lawsuit was brought by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, along with the cities of Boulder, Colorado, and the Californian cities of Oakland, Santa Monica and Arcata. In the filing the cities argued that the impact of global warming - including rising sea levels and warmer ocean temperatures - would have a negative impact on their communities.
The coastal city of Arcata said: "Arcata is presently suffering and will continue to suffer, these consequences. [The government agencies' actions] increase the risk that Arcata's interests are and will continue to be harmed by climate change."
Jerry Brown, the Mayor of Oakland, said: "Tragically, the federal government is violating federal law, which requires an assessment of cumulative impacts. This injures the citizens of Oakland, and every person in this country."
The lawsuit names two government agencies - the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic) and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. It claims that 8 per cent of all the world's greenhouse gases come from projects supported by these two agencies.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article308256.ece
Unca George Is Losin' it!
By DOUG THOMPSON, Capitol Hill BlueAug 25, 2005, 06:19
While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.
“I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. “She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”
Bush flashes the bird, something aides say he does often and has been doing since his days as governor of Texas.
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their members under control.”
White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President’s honesty.
“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”
Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to hell” or to “go fuck yourself.” His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.
Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.
To see that fear emerges, Dr. Frank says, all one has to do is confront the President. “To actually directly confront him in a clear way, to bring him out, so you would really see the bully, and you would also see the fear,” he says.
Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.
“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office,” Dr. Frank says. “Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state.”
Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control what aides called “violent mood swings.” As Dr. Frank also notes: “In writing about Bush's halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.’”
Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:
“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it's rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he says. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush's personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”
© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
Guide To Wingnut Logic(?)
You've got to check out Blogenlusts's "Guide to Wingnut Logic". It's hilariously dead-on!
http://blogenlust.typepad.com/law/
http://blogenlust.typepad.com/law/
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Robertson Called For The Assassination Of Venezuela's President
From Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006
This is the level of political debate in America right now. The Christian Fascist Theocrats are in power, and Pat Robertson is seen as a pundit. Bear in mind that the 700 Club is considered a "family" show.
The time of fools is at hand--Pete
Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:
Ask ABC Family to discontinue broadcasting The 700 Club!
http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220006
This is the level of political debate in America right now. The Christian Fascist Theocrats are in power, and Pat Robertson is seen as a pundit. Bear in mind that the 700 Club is considered a "family" show.
The time of fools is at hand--Pete
Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:
ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.
You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.
Ask ABC Family to discontinue broadcasting The 700 Club!
New Rules Imposed Over Truckers’ Objections
by Brendan Coyne, NewStandard
Aug 22 - The Bush administration on Friday approved national rules to allow trucking companies to demand drivers stay on the road for 11 hours a day. The decision came despite widespread opposition among drivers and in the face of data showing that lengthier hauls lead to more accidents.
Friday's decision trumps a July court ruling and allows truck drivers to work 11 hours a day, up from the previous limit of 10 hours.
Responding to Friday's announcement, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation's largest truck drivers union, said the new rules are virtually the same as the ones proposed a year ago, which the federal court struck down.
"What reasonable person who has traveled our nation's roads and highways thinks that forcing tired truck drivers to stay behind the wheel even longer is good public policy?" Teamsters President James Hoffa said.
The new rules go into effect in October.
In a statement announcing the new rules, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said the regulations improved upon rules announced in 2003. If enough rest time was taken, drivers could drive up to 11 hours per day in many instances under the old rules, said the agency, and the new rules prohibit drivers from working more than 14 hours in a single shift.
Short-haul truckers – those who work within 150 miles of a given base – will be allowed to work two 16-hour days in a row, something the Teamsters warn will undermine truckers' labor rights and could lead to roadway dangers.
In 2004, a federal court ruled that the 2003 regulatory change allowing truckers to stay on the road for 11 hours straight was "arbitrary and capricious," and endangered drivers' and motorists' health.
© 2005 The NewStandard.
Aug 22 - The Bush administration on Friday approved national rules to allow trucking companies to demand drivers stay on the road for 11 hours a day. The decision came despite widespread opposition among drivers and in the face of data showing that lengthier hauls lead to more accidents.
Friday's decision trumps a July court ruling and allows truck drivers to work 11 hours a day, up from the previous limit of 10 hours.
Responding to Friday's announcement, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation's largest truck drivers union, said the new rules are virtually the same as the ones proposed a year ago, which the federal court struck down.
"What reasonable person who has traveled our nation's roads and highways thinks that forcing tired truck drivers to stay behind the wheel even longer is good public policy?" Teamsters President James Hoffa said.
The new rules go into effect in October.
In a statement announcing the new rules, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said the regulations improved upon rules announced in 2003. If enough rest time was taken, drivers could drive up to 11 hours per day in many instances under the old rules, said the agency, and the new rules prohibit drivers from working more than 14 hours in a single shift.
Short-haul truckers – those who work within 150 miles of a given base – will be allowed to work two 16-hour days in a row, something the Teamsters warn will undermine truckers' labor rights and could lead to roadway dangers.
In 2004, a federal court ruled that the 2003 regulatory change allowing truckers to stay on the road for 11 hours straight was "arbitrary and capricious," and endangered drivers' and motorists' health.
© 2005 The NewStandard.
TUBE KILLING: WHAT POLICE SAID - AND WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Well, it would seem that all is under control in Jolly Old, eh what? Good thing for the cooler heads in law enforcement, otherwise things could get really fucked up, huh?--Pete
(From the Independent, UK]
The police claim: A man of "Asian appearance", behaving suspiciously, is shot dead by police on a Tube train in Stockwell.
The truth: The dead man, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was Brazilian.
The police claim: His shooting was "directly linked" to the investigation into the London bombings.
The truth: Mr de Menezes was an electrician and had nothing to do with the London bombings.
The police claim: Witnesses described him running into the Tube station, vaulting the barriers.
The truth: He walked into the station and picked up a free newspaper before entering with a travel pass. He made his way to the platform. He started to run only when the train arrived.
The police claim: Witnesses said he was wearing an "unseasonable" heavy coat, and Scotland Yard said his clothing had "added to suspicions".
The truth: Photographs of the body show Mr de Menezes wearing a blue denim jacket.
The police claim: "As I understand the situation the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions" - Sir Ian Blair.
The truth: There was no police challenge.
The police claim: Mr de Menezes ran on to the Tube train, tripped and was shot five times by police as he lay on the floor.
The truth: CCTV footage is said to show Mr de Menezes pausing, looking left and right, and sitting on a seat facing the platform. A police witness says Mr de Menezes stood up when the police arrived. The policeman then pinned his arms to his sides and pushed him back in the seat. Mr de Menezes was then shot 10 times - three of the bullets missed.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article307349.ece
(From the Independent, UK]
The police claim: A man of "Asian appearance", behaving suspiciously, is shot dead by police on a Tube train in Stockwell.
The truth: The dead man, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was Brazilian.
The police claim: His shooting was "directly linked" to the investigation into the London bombings.
The truth: Mr de Menezes was an electrician and had nothing to do with the London bombings.
The police claim: Witnesses described him running into the Tube station, vaulting the barriers.
The truth: He walked into the station and picked up a free newspaper before entering with a travel pass. He made his way to the platform. He started to run only when the train arrived.
The police claim: Witnesses said he was wearing an "unseasonable" heavy coat, and Scotland Yard said his clothing had "added to suspicions".
The truth: Photographs of the body show Mr de Menezes wearing a blue denim jacket.
The police claim: "As I understand the situation the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions" - Sir Ian Blair.
The truth: There was no police challenge.
The police claim: Mr de Menezes ran on to the Tube train, tripped and was shot five times by police as he lay on the floor.
The truth: CCTV footage is said to show Mr de Menezes pausing, looking left and right, and sitting on a seat facing the platform. A police witness says Mr de Menezes stood up when the police arrived. The policeman then pinned his arms to his sides and pushed him back in the seat. Mr de Menezes was then shot 10 times - three of the bullets missed.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article307349.ece
Monday, August 22, 2005
Hunter Thompson's Last Shot
By Jan Frel
Posted on August 20, 2005
Hunter Thompson is out of here today. His ashes have been packed in among a brass monkey of fireworks shells -- and the delivery mechanism be a thing of beauty: A 150-foot tall tower in the shape of the gonzo fist holding a peyote button, which was the insignia of his Aspen Freak Party.
For a precious moment after Thompson's death, our entire print media devoted some space to consider what was so great about the man. And while many exposed their transparent jealousies and anti-drug bias, the public at least got to hear that yes, there once was a writer who wrote how he pleased about American life and politics while on cocktails of psychadelics and amphetamines, and it just so happened to be some of the most lucid stuff ever written.
Among the countless obituaries, the one I enjoyed the most was William Greider's:
If you go back and read what he wrote, particularly about politics, it was laden with this sense of yearning for something decent and honest and honorable to happen. And that wasn't fake. He really felt that. And on a personal level, he really did share your pain. It's a cliché now, but he wanted you to get over it, whatever it was. It was almost like "let's get out of this, this is bad."
Greider also captures the moment when Thompson goes down to Little Rock, Arkansas, with the Rolling Stone royalty to meet with Bill Clinton after he won the Democratic nomination in 1992:
Hunter had brought down to Little Rock various gifts for Clinton. He had decided this rendezvous we had with Clinton was going to be the four of us delivering the Rolling Stone vote to the Clinton people. That's a put on; on the other hand, he wants to believe this.
We then go to the interview, and the first gift was these reeds for a tenor saxophone. He had gotten these special French reeds which he regarded as really extraordinary. They were actually pretty routine. He gave them to Clinton and Clinton kind of looked at them, rolled them around in front of his face. Hunter later described the future president as "Sniffing the saxophone reeds like a chimp." Which is just right.
His other present for Clinton, which was quite spectacular, was a photograph he had made, and it was blown up huge, like a 3-foot by 4-foot photograph in a frame, that he had had shipped down from Colorado to Little Rock. And the photograph showed Hunter squatting on his haunches in the night, firing a rifle at a big drum of gasoline. And when he fired the drum the gasoline ignites, and blows this huge flame back in his face. It was quite striking, a dramatic picture, and Hunter entitled it, "Politics is a dirty business."
My only complaint about the funeral service for Thompson is this: Johnny Depp is to be the master of ceremonies, and I think Depp isn't up to the task. Hunter, I guess, liked him, vetted him to play himself in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," but that doesn't make it OK. Depp has made a bunch of safe-for-Hollywood counter-culture films, and he wasn't even a very good Hunter Thompson when he played him. HST's judgement wasn't always right, especially in his later life.
The obvious master of ceremonies is the guy who knew him from day one, and helped distribute Thompson to fame through Rolling Stone. His brother-in-arms, Jann Wenner.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/frel/24366/
Posted on August 20, 2005
Hunter Thompson is out of here today. His ashes have been packed in among a brass monkey of fireworks shells -- and the delivery mechanism be a thing of beauty: A 150-foot tall tower in the shape of the gonzo fist holding a peyote button, which was the insignia of his Aspen Freak Party.
For a precious moment after Thompson's death, our entire print media devoted some space to consider what was so great about the man. And while many exposed their transparent jealousies and anti-drug bias, the public at least got to hear that yes, there once was a writer who wrote how he pleased about American life and politics while on cocktails of psychadelics and amphetamines, and it just so happened to be some of the most lucid stuff ever written.
Among the countless obituaries, the one I enjoyed the most was William Greider's:
If you go back and read what he wrote, particularly about politics, it was laden with this sense of yearning for something decent and honest and honorable to happen. And that wasn't fake. He really felt that. And on a personal level, he really did share your pain. It's a cliché now, but he wanted you to get over it, whatever it was. It was almost like "let's get out of this, this is bad."
Greider also captures the moment when Thompson goes down to Little Rock, Arkansas, with the Rolling Stone royalty to meet with Bill Clinton after he won the Democratic nomination in 1992:
Hunter had brought down to Little Rock various gifts for Clinton. He had decided this rendezvous we had with Clinton was going to be the four of us delivering the Rolling Stone vote to the Clinton people. That's a put on; on the other hand, he wants to believe this.
We then go to the interview, and the first gift was these reeds for a tenor saxophone. He had gotten these special French reeds which he regarded as really extraordinary. They were actually pretty routine. He gave them to Clinton and Clinton kind of looked at them, rolled them around in front of his face. Hunter later described the future president as "Sniffing the saxophone reeds like a chimp." Which is just right.
His other present for Clinton, which was quite spectacular, was a photograph he had made, and it was blown up huge, like a 3-foot by 4-foot photograph in a frame, that he had had shipped down from Colorado to Little Rock. And the photograph showed Hunter squatting on his haunches in the night, firing a rifle at a big drum of gasoline. And when he fired the drum the gasoline ignites, and blows this huge flame back in his face. It was quite striking, a dramatic picture, and Hunter entitled it, "Politics is a dirty business."
My only complaint about the funeral service for Thompson is this: Johnny Depp is to be the master of ceremonies, and I think Depp isn't up to the task. Hunter, I guess, liked him, vetted him to play himself in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," but that doesn't make it OK. Depp has made a bunch of safe-for-Hollywood counter-culture films, and he wasn't even a very good Hunter Thompson when he played him. HST's judgement wasn't always right, especially in his later life.
The obvious master of ceremonies is the guy who knew him from day one, and helped distribute Thompson to fame through Rolling Stone. His brother-in-arms, Jann Wenner.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/frel/24366/
Sunday, August 21, 2005
CORPORADOS USING ABUSIVE LAW SUITS TO SUPPRESS FREE SPEECH
I know there is a minority of you reading this who believe that a citizen's right to sue corporations should be curtailed but who probably believe that these same corporations should have the right to sue citizens. Doesn't look so good when stated so simply, does it?--Pete
MOLLY IVINS - SLAPP suits (for "strategic lawsuits against public participation") are a serious menace to free speech. The latest example is a real prize: The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper "not acceptable" for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached trial.
And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It's not that corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced -- and so is everyone else who even thinks about raising some question about a corporate product or practice.
Isuzu claims that CU's reports are "not scientific or credible," but the company's internal memos state that the "lawsuit is a PR tool" and "when attacked, CU will probably shut up." According to a study by two University of Denver law professors, "Americans by the thousands are being sued, simply for exercising the right to speak out on public issues, such as health and safety."
Article...
MOLLY IVINS - SLAPP suits (for "strategic lawsuits against public participation") are a serious menace to free speech. The latest example is a real prize: The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper "not acceptable" for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached trial.
And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It's not that corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced -- and so is everyone else who even thinks about raising some question about a corporate product or practice.
Isuzu claims that CU's reports are "not scientific or credible," but the company's internal memos state that the "lawsuit is a PR tool" and "when attacked, CU will probably shut up." According to a study by two University of Denver law professors, "Americans by the thousands are being sued, simply for exercising the right to speak out on public issues, such as health and safety."
Article...
IS PRESIDENT OUT OF CONTROL?
DOUG THOMPSON, CAPITOL HILL BLUE - Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.
They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with "get out of here!" In fact, George W. Bush's mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain "weather reports" to warn of the President's demeanor. "Calm seas" means Bush is calm while "tornado alert" is a warning that he is pissed at the world.
Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President's paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a "god-damned traitor" for opposing him on stem-cell research. "There's real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it," a high-level aide told me recently.
A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President's wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.
Article...
They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with "get out of here!" In fact, George W. Bush's mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain "weather reports" to warn of the President's demeanor. "Calm seas" means Bush is calm while "tornado alert" is a warning that he is pissed at the world.
Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President's paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a "god-damned traitor" for opposing him on stem-cell research. "There's real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it," a high-level aide told me recently.
A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President's wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.
Article...
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER WANTS RELIGIOUS MYTH TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS; DOCTOR TAKES NO POSITION ON "LEECHING"
DAVID STOUT, NY TIMES - The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, aligned himself with President Bush today when he said that the theory of "intelligent design" should be taught along with evolution in public schools. Teaching intelligent design as well as evolution "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone," Senator Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in Nashville, according to The Associated Press. "I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."
Article...
Article...
Thursday, August 18, 2005
VENEZUELA READY TO CUT OFF OIL IF U.S. INTERVENES
Boy Howdy! You betcha, buddy! Go ahead, make Hugo's day, Unca George! While we're at it, rememeber that Citgo is the Anti-Bush gas -- it's Venezuelan! Fuel at Citgo as often as possible, 'kay?--Pete
AFP - Venezuela's energy minister, Rafael Ramirez, said that Caracas is "ready and willing" to cut off its oil supply to the United States, if there are any signs of aggression from the superpower toward his country. . . On Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to end oil exports to the United States if Washington did not stop its "aggressions."
"We do not want to break relations with the US government; it is not in our plans," Chavez said. "But if the aggressions continue, ... this could put diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States at risk."
Washington's attacks could provoke "something more serious: These two daily boats full of Venezuelan oil could head another way instead of going to the United States," warned Chavez, whose country is the fourth-largest provider of oil to the United States, supplying some 1.5 million barrels a day. "The US market is not indispensable to us," he told thousands of young people taking part in a youth festival at a Caracas arena.
Article...
AFP - Venezuela's energy minister, Rafael Ramirez, said that Caracas is "ready and willing" to cut off its oil supply to the United States, if there are any signs of aggression from the superpower toward his country. . . On Sunday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to end oil exports to the United States if Washington did not stop its "aggressions."
"We do not want to break relations with the US government; it is not in our plans," Chavez said. "But if the aggressions continue, ... this could put diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the United States at risk."
Washington's attacks could provoke "something more serious: These two daily boats full of Venezuelan oil could head another way instead of going to the United States," warned Chavez, whose country is the fourth-largest provider of oil to the United States, supplying some 1.5 million barrels a day. "The US market is not indispensable to us," he told thousands of young people taking part in a youth festival at a Caracas arena.
Article...
New Abuse Photos Could Spark Riots, US General Warns
by William Fisher
I'm guessing that these are pretty damning, waddaya think?--Pete
NEW YORK - Civil libertarians and the Pentagon appear headed for yet another trainwreck in the ongoing dispute over the so-called second batch of photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and a number of medical and veterans groups demanding release of 87 new videos and photographs depicting detainee abuse at the now infamous prison, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said the release would result in ”riots, violence and attacks by insurgents.”
In court papers filed to contest the lawsuit, Gen. Myers said he consulted with Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both officers also opposed the release, Gen. Myers said.
He believes the release of the photos would ”incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk,” according to documents unsealed in federal court in New York.
”The situation on the ground in Iraq is dynamic and dangerous,” Myers added, with 70 insurgent attacks daily. He also said there was evidence that the Taliban was gaining ground because of popular discontent in Afghanistan.
Gen. Myers cited the violence that erupted in some Muslim countries in May after Newsweek published an item, which it later retracted, saying that a Koran had been thrown in a toilet in the United States detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He also said the images could fuel terrorist disinformation campaigns.
”It is probable that Al Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill, which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support and exacerbation of tensions between Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and coalition forces,” he said.
The 87 ”new” photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at the prison.
In legal papers unsealed last week, the ACLU and its allied groups urged the court to order the release of photographs and videos, and also asked the court to reject the government's attempt to file some of its legal arguments in secret.
It said that until the first photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, the government had consistently denied that any wrongdoing had taken place, despite news reports to the contrary. Since then, the ACLU has obtained, through a court order, more than 60,000 pages of government documents regarding torture and abuse of detainees.
At a court hearing on Monday, the judge said he generally ruled in favour of public disclosure and ordered the government to reveal some redacted parts of its argument for blocking the release of pictures and videotapes.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said his rulings pertained to arguments by Gen. Myers. ”By and large, I ruled in favour of public disclosure,” he said.
The judge said he believes photographs ”are the best evidence the public can have of what occurred” at the prison.
Article...
I'm guessing that these are pretty damning, waddaya think?--Pete
NEW YORK - Civil libertarians and the Pentagon appear headed for yet another trainwreck in the ongoing dispute over the so-called second batch of photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and a number of medical and veterans groups demanding release of 87 new videos and photographs depicting detainee abuse at the now infamous prison, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said the release would result in ”riots, violence and attacks by insurgents.”
In court papers filed to contest the lawsuit, Gen. Myers said he consulted with Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both officers also opposed the release, Gen. Myers said.
He believes the release of the photos would ”incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk,” according to documents unsealed in federal court in New York.
”The situation on the ground in Iraq is dynamic and dangerous,” Myers added, with 70 insurgent attacks daily. He also said there was evidence that the Taliban was gaining ground because of popular discontent in Afghanistan.
Gen. Myers cited the violence that erupted in some Muslim countries in May after Newsweek published an item, which it later retracted, saying that a Koran had been thrown in a toilet in the United States detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He also said the images could fuel terrorist disinformation campaigns.
”It is probable that Al Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill, which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support and exacerbation of tensions between Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and coalition forces,” he said.
The 87 ”new” photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at the prison.
In legal papers unsealed last week, the ACLU and its allied groups urged the court to order the release of photographs and videos, and also asked the court to reject the government's attempt to file some of its legal arguments in secret.
It said that until the first photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, the government had consistently denied that any wrongdoing had taken place, despite news reports to the contrary. Since then, the ACLU has obtained, through a court order, more than 60,000 pages of government documents regarding torture and abuse of detainees.
At a court hearing on Monday, the judge said he generally ruled in favour of public disclosure and ordered the government to reveal some redacted parts of its argument for blocking the release of pictures and videotapes.
U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said his rulings pertained to arguments by Gen. Myers. ”By and large, I ruled in favour of public disclosure,” he said.
The judge said he believes photographs ”are the best evidence the public can have of what occurred” at the prison.
Article...
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