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Katrina Storm Page III "Various types of belief can be implanted in many people after brain function has been deliberately disturbed by accidentally or deliberately induced fear, anger or excitement. Of the results caused by such disturbances, the most common one is temporarily impaired judgement and heightened suggestibility. Its various group manifestations are sometimes classed under the heading of "herd instinct" , and appear most spectacularly in war time, during severe epidemics, and in all similar periods of common, which increase anxiety and so individual or mass suggestibility." Dr William Sargant, a psychiatrist at the Tavistock Institute, in his 1957 book, Battle For The Mind.
New Orleans Residents All Over The Country
Should Be Put On Red Alert:
Federal Judge Threatens To Throw New Orleans
City Attorney In Jail
White House stonewalls official Hurricane Katrina inquiry Hurricane Victims Outside N.O. Suffering Hugely Levee 'Explosives Residue' Story Remains Unconfirmed By Jim Moore 9-11-5 New Orleans Unmasks 'Apartheid - American Style' By Jason Miller Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo 'Man-Made Storm' For Profits? By Michael Shore The New Orleans Flooding A Planned Event? Commentary By Michael Shore 'Oil Storm' Sisters - Katrina And Rita By Charlene Fassa 9-25-5
Attacks on democratic rights, breaching legal
barriers: FEMA and Katrina:
New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown by Carolyn Baker The Unconstitutional FEMA by Sheila Samples September 16, 2005 Ben Livingston: Cloud physicist has eye on hurricane control Katrina, Eugenics and 'Peak Oil By David McGowan
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
The Bush administration is withholding information relevant to a Senate committee investigating federal management of Hurricane Katrina. Invoking executive privilege, the administration has also refused to allow sworn testimony from senior White House officials on the disaster and governmental response. At his press conference Thursday, Bush defended the practice. “If people give me advice and they’re forced to disclose that advice, it means the next time an issue comes up, I might not be able to get unvarnished advice from my advisors.” He also claimed his administration had been “fully cooperative” with the House and Senate committees. At the committee hearing Tuesday, witness presentations focused on the extent of emergency preparedness in the months and years before Katrina, which left at least 1,100 dead, displaced more than a million area residents, and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. But the investigation, conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has been thwarted by the White House from obtaining communications logs, and even dates and times of meetings and phone calls regarding Katrina emergency response efforts. White House spokesperson Trent Duffy told reporters Tuesday that the administration had declined to provide testimony from Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff; Card’s deputy, Joe Hagin; and domestic security adviser Frances Townsend. Townsend’s deputy, Ken Rapuano, has given informal, non-public briefings to the committee, but has also effectively been placed under a presidential gag order. In addition, Duffy said that the administration has refused to provide staff member correspondence, including e-mails regarding the hurricane. Joseph Lieberman (Democrat—Connecticut), the highest-ranking senator on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of enacting a “gag order” to hinder the committee’s work. “The problems begin at the White House, where there has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation we have a responsibility to do.” According to Lieberman, attorneys advised former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) head Michael Brown during a closed-door session not to respond to questions on “whether he spoke to the president or the vice president, or comment on the substance of conversations” he had with White House officials during the response operation. Brown did acknowledge that he had exchanged e-mails and phone calls repeatedly with Bush, Chief of Staff Card and Card’s deputy during the two days before Katrina made landfall. When asked about the types of requests he made in preparation, Brown stated, “I’m being advised by counsel that I can’t discuss with you my conversations with the president’s chief of staff and the president.” Republican Senator Susan Collins, also on the committee, complained of “completely inappropriate” reticence on the part of witnesses who “have told us when we begin to ask about any communications with the White House” that they had been advised not to answer, citing executive privilege. The stonewalling by the White House on the Katrina investigation is of a piece with its now-standard practice of cloaking the activities of the administration and its officials in secrecy, claiming all-encompassing powers for the presidency and no accountability to Congress or the American public. The White House shrugged off the criticisms and insisted it was cooperating in its own way, on its own terms. “There are numerous administration officials that have gone before the committee and testified,” spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. “We’ve had specialized briefings by the national security adviser for the committees. And we will continue to work with committees in a cooperative way to make sure they have the information they need to do their job.” He added disingenuously, “I know there is always some separation of powers issues involved in some of these matters, but we’re committed to working in a cooperative way.” Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained two documents that suggested that the White House was not being forthcoming with what officials knew before Katrina hit. The Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) and FEMA provided the White House with several sobering assessments of the situation shortly before Katrina’s landfall. On August 29, a few hours before impact, a 41-page document was sent as an e-mail from NISAC to the White House “situation room,” where national emergencies are managed. According to the Post, the assessment included a warning that a storm of comparable size would “likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching,” that “could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months.” Specifically, the levees along Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans were considered to be vulnerable to failure. The document also included the projection that Katrina “could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks and months.” NISAC estimated losses in the tens of billions of dollars, long-term damage to utilities, and compounded difficulties in emergency response because of power and telecommunications outages. A separate document, sent the night after landfall, was cited by the New York Times as warning the White House of a quarter-mile-long levee breach near the 17th Street Canal, and that “an estimated 2/3 to 75 percent of the city is underwater.” This urgent assessment resulted in no immediate action from the Bush administration. The document acquired by the Post included a slide presentation on the impending catastrophe that was presented to the administration on the morning of August 27. An accompanying document compared Katrina, then a Category 3 building to Category 4, to a computer simulation called Hurricane Pam. The simulation was built by NISAC for the Catastrophic Planning Initiative, a FEMA project begun in 2003, and was considered to be the most accurate predictive computer model yet developed. The simulated Hurricane Pam was a slow-moving Category 3 storm that moved in over New Orleans from the southeast. It carried winds of 120 miles per hour and 20 inches of rain and produced a storm surge that breached levees in southern Louisiana. Projected consequences included a death toll as high as 60,000, the submersion of the city in 10 to 20 feet of water, 234,000 collapsed buildings, 786,000 residents without power, and the forced evacuation of more than a million residents. While the death toll from Katrina was fortunately much lower than projected, the simulation was otherwise correct. Katrina—a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane by the time it came ashore—brought 20 inches of rain, 20 feet of water in low-lying neighborhoods, 250,000 destroyed homes, 881,400 residents without power, and the displacement of more than a million. The accuracy of the model and its eerie resemblance to Katrina points to negligence on the part of the Bush administration in the days leading up to the Katrina disaster, as well as a gross lack of preparedness on the part of federal agencies for years beforehand. Together, these documents stand as a concrete repudiation of statements made by top officials in the immediate aftermath, who maintained that widespread death and destruction were unforeseen. On September 1, as the disaster was compounding in toxic flood waters, President Bush told ABC’s “Good Morning America” news show, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” Two days later, as FEMA and federal troops focused on containment of the city’s survivors rather than evacuation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters that the collapse of the levees was “breathtaking in its surprise.” He characterized Katrina as “That ‘perfect storm’ of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody’s foresight....” In comments in the early days of the disaster, Bush made clear that the Homeland Security Department, which includes FEMA, intended to move in only after the storm had run its course, and that residents of New Orleans unable to evacuate needed to fend for themselves. Moreover, in the emergency declaration Bush signed in response to a request from Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, FEMA aid and support was specifically authorized for 39 southern Louisiana parishes, but excluded from two of the most vulnerable to flooding, Orleans Parish (the city of New Orleans) and Jefferson Parish. On August 29, former FEMA Director Michael Brown urged local fire and rescue personnel arriving in the area not to attempt to help those parishes not listed as having requested assistance. These two low-lying, working class parishes suffered severe damage and loss of life when the levees failed. The response from the federal government in the subsequent days augmented the crisis. Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard, describing the situation on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on September 4, said that FEMA was cutting off aid and communications. “We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back,” he said. “They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel,” Broussard said, breaking down. “Yesterday—yesterday—FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines.” Hurricane Katrina was the most costly disaster in US history, causing at least $100 billion in damage. But five months after the evacuation, the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program announced the distribution of a mere $11.5 billion in housing aid, spread among five states hit by both Katrina and Rita, which caused an additional $8 billion in damage. On Wednesday, HUD pledged a paltry $74.5 million to Texas to provide public housing for the quarter of the million residents still displaced. Louisiana, which requested $30 billion in HUD funds, was allocated only $6.2 billion. Poor residents have been effectively locked out of the reconstruction, while corporate interests swallow up the city. Working class neighborhoods with disproportionate levels of poverty and rental housing were hardest hit, and have been abandoned by local, state, and federal governments in all but lip service. Many of these homeowners still don’t know if they will be allowed to rebuild in their neighborhoods, or whether they will receive compensation for their lost property. On Wednesday, the White House said it would oppose a proposal sponsored by Rep. Richard Baker, a Louisiana Republican, to create a federal agency to buy homes destroyed by the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes. The plan, already approved by a House committee, would create a corporation funded by government-backed bonds to take over destroyed properties at the request of homeowners. Donald Power, a former bank regulator and the president’s coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, commented, “I think we would all be served better if the government didn’t get into the real estate business and leave that to the private sector.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1998-2006 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved
New Orleans Residents All Over The Country Should Be Put On Red Alert: The Neo Cons Are Trying To Illegally Bulldoze Away Your Homes and Steal Your Property Brandon Darby, the founder of Common Grund Relief In New Orleans, is sounding the alarm and involved in a lawsuit to stop the government from illegally taking property by lying to the people and using phony eminent domain laws. 6 Jan 2006 By Greg Szymanski
Brandon Darby of Austin, Texas, had only one thing in mind when Hurricane Katrina hit. He had to rescue his best buddy, Robert King Wilkerson, as he was trapped and dying in the attic of his New Orleans home. The race to save Wilkerson's life started in Texas with a frenetic, high-speed life and death drive, ending with Darby up to his neck in scummy New Orleans water and resisting arrest from uncooperative federal authorities. And after authorities arrogantly refused to go after Wilkerson or let Darby go it alone, he jumped out of the Army Ranger jet boat, defying the law and forcing them into action. Let there be no doubt or the slightest question Darby saved his friend's life with his heroic, in your face stand-off with cops and FBI agents. And it was Darby who refused to take no for an answer, which finally led to officials getting off their "fat behinds" to pull Wilkerson out of his home. Wilkerson, an aging Black man who had already spent 29 years in maximum security prison for a crime he didn't commit, lasted 11 long hard days without much food and water before Darby's efforts finally got him pulled out of the high waters that flooded his home. "I knew I had to save King's life and I wasn't going to let federal authorities or the New Orleans Police force stop me," said Darby, who has now left his Austin, Texas, business behind to stay permanently in the Crescent City to help others in need. "I couldn't leave when I saw the misery and I saw how many people really needed help. We formed a group called "Common Ground Relief" of all political ideologies to help people save their property from government programs designed to take it away illegally." And so after saving Wilkerson, the articulate activist immediately went to work helping others, filling a need left by FEMA and its programs filled with red tape and basically designed to keep the poor from returning home while helping the rich get on with New Orleans high society life. "You have to say these programs are designed to racially cleanse the city," said Darby who appeared this week on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal on the Republic Broadcasting Network at www.rbnlive.com. "I see it firsthand every day and the media is just ignoring what is really happening here. "Simply, the city, state and federal government are using their illegal imminent domain powers to take away personal property. There are 14,000 homes in the 9 th Ward ready to be bulldozed and most of the people have been systematically kept away from the city and don't even know what's going on. Darby said after assessing many of the thousands of homes in the 9th Ward and other poorer neighborhoods, it is his opinion and the opinion of many others that most of the homes are in good enough shape to be repaired, not demolished. "The media is not telling this side of the story as they all are working together, including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and others all the way up to the White House, who are intent on paving the way with billions of dollars of redevelopment money to first level the homes and then replace them with casinos, hotels and other expensive type housing," said Darby. Darby added that Mayor Nagin has been "his worst nightmare" since he has not only catering to rich developers but also allowing federal agencies on the front lines to keep utilities purposely turned off in the poorer neighborhoods, discouraging people from going home. "Think about it. Whole neighborhoods in the 9th Ward and elsewhere completely empty even though the houses can be repaired with a little hard work and effort," added Darby, who has been busy in the last four months gutting homes with other private relief workers in order to get people back in their homes. "We have to get the word out to everyone across the country about exactly what is going on here. The government is lying and telling people to stay away in order to take their property out from under them. It's criminal, unconstitutional and we have filed a lawsuit trying to block the bulldozing which is starting as we speak." And the sinister nature of this complete government rip-off is not being played out the evening news, but is being fought behind the veil of secrecy, as Darby and his band freedom fighters today stood between cranes and a man's house in the 9th Ward set for demolition. "Our attorney who filed the lawsuit to block the demolitions, received a 24 hour temporary restraining order to stop bulldozing the homes," said Darby. "Guess what happens then? We get a phone call this morning from a man who said the city was now using cranes instead of bulldozers. What nonsense. So we rushed over to his 9 th Ward house, stood between the crane and the house and stopped the demolition. "At least we stopped it for the time being as I think we will have to do the same thing tomorrow if they return. We are down here to help the thousands of people who need it and who have been deceived by the government intent on taking their property, making way for the rich developers to make millions. For example, I know this for a fact, they are offering people in far away places like Minnesota or Alaska $5,000 for their house, saying it's worthless when, in fact, it's in good condition. Worth much more and can be repaired." And the real tragedy behind what happened before, during and after Katrina is that the tragic scene as it is playing out now catches the feds, state and local authorities red-handed at a systematic racial cleaning and land grab program of enormous proportions. Before Katrina, Mayor Nagin was given more than $17 million after Hurricane Ivan hit, to put together an evacuation plan to get the poor out of the city quickly if another hurricane hit. But instead of using the money wisely, no evacuation plan was ever created, according to Darby's research, as thousands of poor unable to get out were left to die during Katrina in the same manner that occurred a year earlier when Ivan struck. "What did he do with the money? I have problems with that as I was here during Ivan and nothing changed when Katrina hit," said Darby. "After being left to die in their homes, they were left to die at the Superdome and the Convention Center, left with no water and food like animals. "Then after that thousands of families were separated and sent to hundreds of different faraway places. Ask yourself why? Isn't it easier to bulldoze away houses when no one is around. That's why. "But we must put up a fight and that's why I am appealing to everybody listening not to let this happen as If we let them take our fellow brothers' property here in New Orleans, the government will do it all over the country. It's a land grab, pure and simple, an illegal land grab designed to steal property and change the complexion of this wonderful city." Darby said the problems surfacing in New Orleans go very deep, but that he has decided he's "in it for the long haul" no matter what happens, making a last stand against the government land grab. "I have leased a home in one the areas scheduled to be demolished and they are not forcing me to leave," said Darby, adding he's hoping his story gets out to the people since the mainstream media is on the side of the rich developers. "If you read these words, send this story all across America as we need all the help we can get. Political and ideological differences shouldn't stand in the way of helping all these people. "Think about it. If it can happen to the good folks of New Orleans, it can happen to you next!" Editor's Note: If you want to lend a helping hand to Darby and his cause, contact the Arctic Beacon at www.arcticbeacon.com . For more informative articles, go to www.arcticbeacon.com . *****
Federal Judge Threatens To Throw New
Orleans City Attorney In Jail
In The 9th Ward Activists and lower income homeowners have been successful in temporarily stopping the needless destruction of many of the 14,000 homes in the 9th Ward scheduled for demolition by the government's crooked use of the eminent domain laws. A federal judge scolded city attorneys for attempting to violate the temporary restraining order in effect until an upcoming January 16 hearing. Although activists were pleased with the ruling, they remain suspicious of the future outcome. 7 Jan 2006 By Greg Szymanski
A federal judge Friday threatened to throw the New Orleans City Attorney in jail if "one home was bulldozed down" in violation of temporary restraining order obtained by activists and lower income homeowners, trying to save their property from what is playing out to be an illegal government land grab. While the legal wrangling continues, sinister government programs to racially cleanse and steal property from lower income homeowners in New Orleans is playing out on the streets of the poorer neighborhoods with bulldozers and wrecking balls inching closer and closer to 14,000 homes in the 9th ward. And the only thing stopping the illegal government land grab, orchestrated by the feds, the state of Louisiana and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's office, is a group of feisty activists from Common Ground Relief, headed by Brandon Darby of Austin, Texas, who are literally putting their bodies between the wrecking ball and homes to stop the destruction. Besides the strong activist stand taken this week, Darby said the group has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a number of lower income residents and Wednesday received a temporary 24 hour restraining order to stop the bulldozing after the case was removed from state to federal court. And a federal court judge at the last minute stopped the bulldozing at least temporarily until the next hearing on January 16, threatening to throw the New Orleans City Attorney in jail if the restraining order was again violated. "It was nice to hear that," said Darby in a conversation Friday night from his car parked in the 9th Ward, as he was keeping a watchful for any government shenanigans. "At least for the time being we have stopped this illegal land grab, but we will have to wait and see, as anytime there is a lot of money at stake, I do not trust these guys. "Also, today I was contacted by federal agents, leaving a message and saying they wanted to talk with me and I have noticed being followed by Homeland security ever since we had the stand-off in the 9 th Ward. The stand-off Darby is talking about occurred Thursday morning when he and other activists from Common Ground Relief, a private organization formed by Darby, put their bodies in between the wrecking ball and a man's home scheduled for demolition. "We rushed to help one 9th Ward resident who called and said the wrecking ball was at his house Thursday morning in clear violation of the restraining order," said Darby about this highly important story that should be on the six o'clock news but has been suspiciously kept from the American public by a complicit mainstream press. "So we rushed to help the man in the 9th Ward's home, calmly convincing the operator of the wrecking ball to stop the demolition job. We were successful but the government's argument for defying the court order was crazy, as officials said the order only prohibited use of a bulldozer not a wrecking ball." Darby also wanted to emphasize that a majority of the homes scheduled for demolition are structurally sound, saying many of the owners have been purposely kept out of state by FEMA and hoodwinked into believing their property is worthless setting the stage for the one of the biggest government land grabs in the history of the United States. "What has our country come to when eminent domain laws and fascist government intimidation is used to steal property away from thousands of Americans," said Darby. "In the background and behind the political scenes, everybody has to know that from Mayor Nagin right on up to the White House, they are all supporting the rich developers. "They are also planning a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan to build expensive hotels, casinos and high rise housing and the bulldozers now being seen in the 9 th ward are the first step to achieving their rotten goals." Besides the 14,000 homes in the 9th Ward scheduled for demolition, 88,000 are expected be next in line for bulldozing in the city's poorer east side, hard hit when the levies exploded, possibly on purpose. Although no one in the mainstream media or in city hall has the guts to even propose such a possibility as the levies being blown up by government operatives, the same thing happened after 9/11 when everyone was frightened to openly say anything that the terrorist attack may have been a government inside job. However, four years later many people in high places and even former Reagan and Bush Cabinet members are pointing a finger at government involvement in 9/11, saying it was the lynchpin needed to further the neo con war machine now killing hundreds of thousands of innocents in the Middle East. Even though proof of the levies being blown on purpose has not yet surfaced, proof positive of FEMA's plans to keep New Orleans evacuees out of state is well-documented. To prove this point, former New Orleans residents, Clothilde Mack, 85, who recently returned to her Orleans Parrish home on her own accord, said FEMA basically tried to bribe her to stay out-of-state by telling her case would be dropped unless she signed a paper stating she'd remain away from the Crescent City for one year. Other residents are also reporting similar horror stories, saying they have been offered small amounts of money for their New Orleans property without having any opportunity to inspect the extent of damage. "One man called me from out-of-state saying he was offered $5,000 for his home," said Darby. "He was told it was demolished when in fact it was still structurally sound and worth much more. And that is the problem. Government programs should be encouraging people to come back and take care of their land instead of being paid to stay away." For more informative articles, please go to www.arcticbeacon.com .
Hurricane Victims Outside N.O. Suffering Hugely From Mary Sparrowdancer 11-25-5 Hi Jeff - This commentary below was forwarded to me today by a friend who saw it posted on a group. It is written by a woman in Louisiana who is a nurse and animal rescuer, and it is about the smaller communities in Louisiana no one's ever heard of, and which are not making the "news." These are devastated communities following Katrina and they have received no help from FEMA or the Red Cross. In some places, it's difficult to even establish communication with the victims, and when the animal rescuers went in, they were stunned to find that the humans there are in such deplorable conditions, they are begging for blankets that have been donated for animals. I contacted this woman today, and she has given me permission to send the info below to you... Written by Jeannette Ferro "All the news is about New Orleans. I have a love/hate relation with New Orleans. I grew up there. I'm almost 60 now. But New Orleans, with all it's destruction, actually faired better than most communities. Granted, New Orleans was heavier populated, but we can't overlook the many other areas simply because no one has heard of them and because they're not tourist attractions. The other people count, too. As a nurse and an animal rescuer, having cared for and knowing so many of these people and animals, I have been trying to do everything I can for both humans and nonhumans since Katrina hit. I will live with stories that will haunt me until the day I die. One of the most recent that has come to my attention is also one of the worst. The coastal areas of Louisiana, in Vermilion Parish, are/were inhabited with generations of Acadian/Cajun people. This is where the dying language of Cajun French is spoken. The majority of the population are animal and crop farmers. Being closer to the Gulf, the tides and storm surges completely wiped out most of everything that was there. Crops were destroyed. Large herds of cattle, horses, pigs, and every other living animal known to those areas were either swept out into the Gulf, or were left stranded on tiny islands of slightly higher ground. The very most southern part, below HWY 82, looks like it was never inhabited by any living beings. Wells that provided water are now ruined from the salty Gulf and ocean waters. The land is a white/grayish color, completely dead, and rendered totally useless by the salt water. Animals who weren't washed out into the Gulf, and who have tried to survive on the remaining salt saturated water and grass, have either died from dehydration from the salt or are now very sick. These people are begging for the basic needs for themselves, but are also desperately asking for the basic needs to try and keep their animals alive as well. Many of the people who lived in the area would not leave their family homesteads, homesteads that have been passed down from several generations before them. They wouldn't leave their animals or their crops as these were their only means of survival, because of the love of their animals (not all are raised to be slaughtered), and because their homes represent generations of their families and culture. Two days ago, I heard about an animal rescuer in one such little town called Abbeville. Near Abbeville is another small, and just as unknown town called Erath. I'm told there is an estimated 3,000 people there, many now living in tents, without power and water, and who have not had any relief from FEMA and little to none from the Red Cross. The news that upset me so badly, coming from a fellow animal rescuer, is the fact that many of these people are actually coming to this animal rescuer asking for water and blankets that have been donated for the animals. As an avid animal lover and nurse, I can't begin to explain to you how upsetting this is to me. What kind of society lets it's own people go without the most basic needs to cause them to have to beg for water and blankets that were donated for animals?!? The animal rescuer I learned about normally aids smaller domestic animals, but she's now forced to do what she can to provide water and blankets for humans, as well as hay and feed for all kinds of livestock. Fencing, like everything else, is now gone and badly needed. Vaccinations and medications are badly needed. I would bet that the majority of the people who might read this have never heard of any of this or even know there are places like Abbeville and Erath, Louisiana. I live in Louisiana and I've never seen or heard about any of this on our local news. How can that be? How can the governments and the news forget or overlook thousands of US citizens living in total despair?!? I just saw on the news that the big CEO of Pfister pharmaceutical company donated millions in dollars and medications to earthquake victims in another country, and was quoted as saying something to the effect that it was an opportunity for him to give back to those who had nothing. Hello! What about thousands of Americans from Texas to Alabama who now have nothing?!? Thousands of families who are trying their best to get back on their feet and rebuild or go on with their lives elsewhere are in limbo thanks to the federal government. FEMA is out of money until the federal government refills their bank account so FEMA can pay the millions of people who have paid for flood insurance protection for years. The federal government is holding up funding FEMA because they are to involved in arguing on the rights to drill for damnable oil in the protected Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and won't pass the budget bill without the provision allowing them those drilling rights. That should tell you a LOT about the priorities and the alliances of our federal government! Where is the aid from these rich and powerful oil companies that we recently heard about making record breaking third quarter profits for 2005, and that are responsible for destroying the marshes and wetlands that used to protect all of our Gulf coast states? Those marshes and wetlands, had they not been destroyed by oil drilling, would have prevented most of the destruction and would have saved many of the thousands of lives taken by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and hurricanes yet to come. Americans have been hit and hit as hard as any people could be hit by the worst disaster in the history of our nation, and federal aid is no where to be found. Just as bad, there is no public outcry because there has been no news coverage about these people. How can this happen in the largest, richest, most powerful country..... or was.....in the world? Reproduced gratefully from Rense.com
Story Remains Unconfirmed By Jim Moore 9-11-5 9-9-5 From www.Rense.com Also Read another Story on Prisonplanet.com which is more extensive: http://www.prisonplanet.com/Pages/090905levees.htm
New Orleans Unmasks 'Apartheid - American Style' By Jason Miller 9-11-5
Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
Saturday 10 September 2005 New Orleans - Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their 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 US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US 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 2 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 and Louisiana state governments. Blackwater is one of the leading private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after 4 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 US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees. 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 September 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 2 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. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 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?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. 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 6 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. Visit www.democracynow.org for in-depth, independent, investigative reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Email: jeremy@democracynow.org.
'Man-Made Storm' For Profits? By Michael Shore From www.Rense.com
Flooding A Planned Event?
9-9-5 From www.Rense.com
By Charlene Fassa 9-25-5
Attacks on democratic rights, breaching
legal barriers: by Kurt Nimmo September 11, 2005 www.kurtnimmo.com
If you believe the corporate media, FEMA is simply a bungling and inept emergency management agency and its director, Michael Brown, according to the Washington Post, is simply an "accidental director" and "the failed head of an Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become President Bush's point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history" and, as the Boston Globe notes, "got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.... Brown -- formerly an estates and family lawyer -- this week has made several shocking public admissions, including interviews where he suggested FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation of refugees stranded at the New Orleans convention center." In short, the corporate media would have us believe Brown is a clueless lawyer and former horse trader and FEMA an unresponsive federal bureaucratic leviathan wrapped up in red tape. But this does not explain the following: FEMA refused evacuation help from Amtrak; it turned away experienced fire fighters and first responders; it turned back Wal-Mart supply trucks; refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver food; blocked a 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid; turned away generators and other equipment (see this page with links to news stories). In other words, FEMA went out of its way to deny aid and allow people to die from dehydration, starvation, and lack of medicine and medical help. In addition to denying aid, and thus killing an as of yet (and possibly forever) unknown number of people, FEMA is attempting to control media access to the worst natural disaster in American history (see Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead). Moreover, journalists and photographers have been assaulted by troops and had their notebooks and cameras confiscated (see The Eye of the Hurricane by Matthias Gebauer). Regardless of all the corporate media hype, FEMA was not created to respond to natural disasters and help American citizens (in fact, it is an unconstitutional construct, created by Executive Order, and draws its "lawful" facade not from the American people, but the fact Executive Order 12148 was published in the Federal Registry). "FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic," writes Harry V. Martin. "General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA's role as a 'new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.'" In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of criticism is focused on FEMA, but this is not the first time the agency has taken heat for "dropping the ball" after natural disasters. Martin writes: FEMA's deceptive role really did not come to light with much of the public until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the U.S. mainland. As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in The World and I, "...The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism." Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black operations" than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress, only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a "black curtain" around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979. One such black op was REX-84 (Alpha Explan, or Readiness Exercise 1984), exposed by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, and described as "a secret government within a government." Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North "worked closely with FEMA to redraw national contingency plans dealing with nearly everything from nuclear attack to civil insurrection," explains totse.com (FEMA: Blueprint For Tyranny). "FEMA's action plan included the declaration of martial law, suspension of the Constitution and aggressive moves against dissenters. A trigger could be 'violent and widespread internal dissent.' This plan and its failure to clearly define a national crisis caused Attorney General Smith to issue an official protest. The Herald reported that on Aug. 2, 1984, Smith emphatically expressed to National Security Advisor Robert 'Bud' McFarlane his alarm over FEMA's 'expansion of the definition of severe emergency to encompass "routine" domestic law enforcement emergencies.'" Under Reagan, Louis O. Giuffrida, "a stealth-obsessed ex-California National Guard officer who preferred to be addressed according to his former rank in that organization," as Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen describe him, oversaw FEMA. During the late sixties and early seventies, Giuffrida served as then California governor Reagan's terrorism advisor and at Reagan's request founded the California Specialized Training Institute, a school for police and military commandos. "Giuffrida and [Edwin] Meese (then Governor Reagan's chief assistant) helped develop a plan to purge California of its militant and peaceful protesters," Vankin and Whalen write. "Operation Cable Splicer, a variation of the Army Garden Plot, a 'domestic counterinsurgency' scheme, spied on suspected radicals and marshaled maximum force to squash riots and legitimate demonstrations alike." It appears Hurricane Katrina has provided FEMA with an excuse to "dry run" its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up "refugees" (now called "evacuees") and "relocating" them in various camps. "Some evacuees are being treated as 'internees' by FEMA," writes former NSC employee Wayne Madsen. "Reports continue to come into WMR that evacuees from New Orleans and Acadiana [the traditional twenty-two parish Cajun homeland] who have been scattered across the United States are being treated as 'internees' and not dislocated American citizens from a catastrophe. Some FEMA facilities are preventing these internees from leaving on their own. Reports of mandatory registration and the issuing of FEMA ID cards suggest that FEMA, an agency that is rife with right-wing security goons and severely lacking in humanitarian workers, has other motives in treating poor and destitute American citizens as prisoners in their own country." Call it REX-84 revisited. "The disaster that struck New Orleans and the southern Gulf Coast has given rise to the largest military mobilization in modern history on US soil. Nearly 65,000 US military personnel are now deployed in disaster area, transforming the devastated port city into a war zone," writes Bill Van Auken. "While no doubt incompetence and indifference played a major role [in the supposedly bungled aid effort], there is also strong evidence that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over the city.... the US ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching legal barriers -- such as Posse Comitatus -- against the use of military force against the American people." Van Auken mentions "that US military's Northern Command had developed a series of 'war plans' for the military 'to take charge' in domestic crises" allegedly in response to "supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city" and "the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out." Finally, as a corollary of the FEMA-Pentagon operations in New Orleans (as opposed to the soft and squishy and apparently endless corporate media spin about displaced people finding solace in private homes and humanitarian shelters), see Don Nash's Refugees from New Orleans behind barbed wire in Utah and I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp, the latter posted by a Christian man who attempted to deliver aid to Louisiana "refugees" (or detainees) in Oklahoma and was turned away by FEMA bureaucrats. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. To become a Member of Global Research The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com © Copyright Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com, 2005 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php ?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20050911&articleId=929 ____
October 13, 2005 New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown by Carolyn Baker September 13, 2005 www.GlobalResearch.ca
The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask: Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans? Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMA's destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city? ( http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ , September 6) Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up? Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of FEMA's "gutting" by the federal government as the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA's obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations inside the United States is mindboggling. For a complete list of efforts blocked by FEMA see: http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm In order to begin answering the endless disturbing questions, we must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila Samples' excellent September 10 article ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/samples7.html ), she emphasizes the origins of FEMA in the 1980s under its architect, Oliver North. North's Operation Rex 84, or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by which the the federal government would accommodate the detention of large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency. Through Rex-84 an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of the Rex 84 plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84 ) For decades since North's operation was disclosed, many dissidents have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serve—until the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Coast hurricane, we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout the nation. Particularly since 9-11, FEMA has been very little about disaster relief and very much about "population management." Katrina has underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans already knew—the chaos that results from natural disasters. What the federal government knows, but most Americans don't know is the pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil exacerbate. In the United States, all non-organic food growers use commercial pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices. Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their axles break because interstates are in dis-repair as a result of the prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a scenario. Enter FEMA's mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater, to maintain order. One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is "demand destruction", also known as population control. In a recent article, Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis: "Demand destruction" has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5% of the world's people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world's energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed "refugees" (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don't buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They don't use air conditioning because they can't afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissinger's infamous term "useless eaters," a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is a priority, then the only – I repeat only – beast that must be tamed is the United States. As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating masses of African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how chilling was FEMA's promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person, then its decision to give these "useless eaters" a check for $2,000 when most have neither a checking account nor personal identification! In addition, the very fact that so many of these individuals are living from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of homelessness, underscores the likelihood that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy which may accelerate freefall into homelessness as the Bush Administration's Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act becomes law on October 17. Remember the Patriot Act— that 300-page piece of legislation passed in the middle of the night on October 26, 2001 which almost no members of Congress had a chance to read? You know, the one that shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act will become law almost four years to the day after the Patriot Act was passed. It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but alas, things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling elite would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent evacuees to suddenly "litter" the streets of America. A more likely scenario could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer that no penniless refugee could refuse: "We'd like to give you a job helping to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We can't pay you minumum wage, however, since the President cancelled minimum wage by Executive Order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of debt, but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to `work off your debt' by coming to work for us until you debt is satisified." Will this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum? With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of this government will come more clearly into focus. On September 10, Tom Curry listed in his article, "Hurricane Spawns Flurry Of Deregulation," ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9259887 ) the Bush Administration's most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and oil supply relief: Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours truckers can drive when transporting fuel. The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to combat high ozone and sulfur emissions. Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal waters. Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R- Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days. The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell grant. On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law requires the federal government to pay the "prevailing wage" on construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower than prevailing wages, and Bush said, "will result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new energy bill as a result of the hurricane. "When one hurricane, as massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are," he said. In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration until the year 2012. Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler's unilateral directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA has not been gutted; it is the Patriot Act on crack! --------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. To become a Member of Global Research The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com © Copyright Carolyn Baker, GlobalResearch.ca, 2005 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050913&articleId=938 _____
October 13, 2005 by Sheila Samples September 16, 2005 www.lewrockwell.com - 2005-09-10
It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon – who watched in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to another throughout the day – were not surprised that he dropped the ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29. Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a game. Go Team. However, Operation Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from Bush's "freedom is on the march" game that continues to wreak chaos, death and destruction throughout the Arab world. In the aftermath of Katrina, the homeless, bewildered, abandoned and starving citizens may be poverty-stricken, they may be dark-skinned, but they are Americans. And, because they are Americans, the cheering has stopped. The media, led by the shaking outrage of CNN's Anderson Cooper and right-leaning curmudgeon Jack Cafferty, followed by the networks and, finally, by the wondrous on-air meltdown of Fox News' Shepard Smith, at long last is doing its job. For a time, however fleeting, the media has been shocked into telling the truth, asking the right questions and holding the administration's feet to the fire. Thanks to the media, Bush is out there without a bullhorn – and without a game plan. The best-laid plans Of course the neoconservatives who are in control of this country had a plan for Iraq. I've written about it so often I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up again. In 1992, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz laid out their obsession for world dominance in a secret document, Defense Planning Guidance wherein they boldly asserted, "our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region (Middle East and SW Asia) and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil." Although such arrogance caused a furor when released to the media, the war jackals merely retreated into their lair and continued to hone the policy of preemptive war to seize control of the world's resources. That was the plan then, it was the plan in 1997 when they established the warmongering think-tank, Project for a New American Century, it was the plan outlined in the September 2000 Rebuilding America's Defenses, which included another bold assertion – to achieve their goal they would need "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" – and it remains the plan today. It was a stroke of genius in 2000 to rig the election and put George Bush in the Cheerleader in Chief role. Bush is mean-spirited, vindictive, greedy, incapable of feeling empathy, easily manipulated, desperate for attention – even adulation – and has no qualms with playing the God card for political gain. Americans are a forgiving people, and most accepted without question this worthless, former booze-and-drug sodden ne'er-do-well's claim that he was born again – a man of God. They loved him. All Cheney had to do was select himself as Number Two, slip behind the curtain, and the cabal – as they like to call themselves – was open for business, and waiting for a new Pearl Harbor. It was not long in coming. If 9-11 taught us nothing else, we must ultimately concede that George Bush entered office on his way to war with Iraq, and had no qualms about lying repeatedly to the American people and to our allies to get there. Piles of dead bodies, including nearly 2,100 coalition soldiers and marines and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the majority of whom are women and children, are but a minor irritant to Bush. That part of humanity not belonging to the corporate world is invisible to Bush, nothing more than collateral damage, and is not factored into his "war plan." Long before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, just as before 9- 11, administration officials were warned of impending peril. Although they played out the frightening scenario in rehearsal after rehearsal, when it was "show time" they were nowhere to be found. They knew. And they did nothing. Either by incompetence or design, they failed to act, and the death, crippling despair, disease and sheer hopelessness suffered by Americans in our most romantic city is breathtaking in scope and indefensible on any level. Bush has repeatedly slashed funds for the Army Corps of Engineers water projects for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. In 2003, the money that had previously flowed into the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), tasked with shoring up levees and building pumping stations, dried up to a mere trickle. With warnings ringing in his ears, in 2004 Bush refused the money requested to raise the levees and rejected a plea for a $15-million project to shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. And, in June, Bush's 2006 federal budget called for slashing SELA funds from an already inadequate $36.5-million to a mere $10.4-million, and for cutting the overall New Orleans Corps of Engineers budget a record $71.2- million, which Corps officials say is the largest single-year funding loss ever. But all is not lost. The Corps of Engineers managed to get a hefty $100-million for just one water project – in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. According to the peerless Ward Harkavy, who writes The Morning Report for the Village Voice, "On August 15, just two weeks before Katrina slammed into the U.S., the Pentagon boasted of spending $6.4-billion – so far – on 2,705 Corps of Engineers construction projects in Iraq, all but 200 of them started since June 2004." The SNAFU plan It looks to me like everything is going according to plan. Chaos, like everything else, is just a matter of perspective. Few people really know anything about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), except it's a name that's thrown around a lot during times of national disaster. Do not think for one minute that Bush "gutted" FEMA by placing it under the control of Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff. By any other name, FEMA remains this nation's "secret government," with powers to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant, hold citizens without a trial, seize control of all transportation and communication systems and – suspend the US Constitution. FEMA was created outside of Constitutional law via a President John Kennedy Executive Order, and is subject to no Congressional oversight. It received a "tune up" under President Jimmy Carter then, like Topsy, "just growed" through presidents Nixon, Reagan, Poppy and Bubba to the present time. Genocide fascists like Henry Kissinger, and greedy patriots like former General Richard Secord and Lt. Col. Oliver North, the architects of both the Iran-Contra scandal and today's FEMA, must be laughing their asses off at the juvenile disinformation bait-and-switch scenario playing itself out in the US media. We would do well to remember that these jackals are on a mission. No matter how many times they are exposed as liars and deceivers, they continue across the field of life like a hoard of grasshoppers, leaving stripped and broken humanity in their wake. They are roiling the waters of the Mississippi by portraying FEMA as dim-witted, absent-minded, rudderless. And it's working. The media, Internet, Congress, you, me – everybody – all baying for Bush to dump the hapless FEMA director, Michael Brown, a Bush crony and former counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association. We are all outraged, not at Bush for dropping the ball; for being so chillingly disconnected from those he is charged to protect – but at Brown, who is a perfect lightning rod and, if need be, a fall guy. He's also a man with a plan. Take a look at these headlines – FEMA refusing all offered rescue assistance from Amtrack to experienced firefighters, FEMA not delivering on promises, FEMA barring delivery of desperately needed food or water to frightened and bewildered victims of Katrina, FEMA telling First Responders not to "respond" to the disaster. Does anybody but me see a pattern here? Is it possible for an emergency aid organization to show up at the scene only to refuse all offers of aid? Does McDonald's cook up a bunch of hamburgers and then lock its doors to its hungry patrons? FEMA is the Patriot Act on crack. Once its powers are unleashed, Oliver North's REX 84 "exercise" will become a reality. The Constitution will be suspended and FEMA will have the right to detain or seize the property of anyone even suspected of engaging in, or who might be thinking of conspiring with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. REX 84 also advocated rounding up and transferring to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The actual number of displaced New Orleans residents is unknown. Overnight, they became "refugees," and hundreds of thousands packed into the Super Dome or sat sweltering in the sun on roads and bridges during a nightmarish week of waiting for help that did not come, while political fat cats finger-pointed and accused each other of playing the "blame" game. Finally, their military liberators herded them onto buses and planes, refusing to reveal their destination – husbands and wives separated, families split apart – and disappeared to "assembly centers or location camps" throughout the United States. Bush, who once asked Sojourners' Reverend Jim Wallis how to talk to poor people because he had never been around one, has once again dropped the ball. Telling Americans whose homes, jobs, loved ones, whose whole lives were washed away in a single night to "hang in there, and don't buy gasoline if you can't afford it," before cutting out to a birthday party in Arizona falls a bit short of his presidential promise to "protect the American people." It's unfortunate that it took a tragedy like Katrina for middle- and lower-class America to finally come to grips with where they will fit into the capitalist White supremacist New World Disorder. Americans now know that Bush is incapable of leading. They know he's too arrogant and stubborn to follow. They know it's time for him to get out of the way – before more of us are trampled, displaced, abandoned, and destroyed, not only here but throughout the world. Sheila Samples [send her mail] is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer.
Ben Livingston: Cloud physicist has eye on
hurricane control
Katrina, Eugenics and 'Peak Oil'
Greetings from the Center for an Informed America ( http://davesweb.cnchost.com/ ). Please forward this newsletter widely. If this was forwarded to you and you would like to receive future mailings, e-mail (mailto:dave@davesweb.cnchost.com ) a request to be added to this mailing list. NEWSLETTER #73 October 23, 2005 Katrina, Eugenics and 'Peak Oil' http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr73.html
So ... I thought that I'd try the old "fake my death and boost sales" charade, 'cause I heard that it worked great for the Beatles back in the '60s, but it hasn't worked out all that well for me, to tell you the truth, which is why, for better or worse, I'm back. Did anyone miss me? I have a lot of catching up to do, so much so that I don't really know where to begin, but I guess I'll start with the following brief news story, which I happened to stumble upon while digging deep within a recent edition of the Los Angeles Times: KATRINA'S AFTERMATH Cuban Hurricane Preparation Offers Lessons in Organization Los Angeles Times September 10, 2005; Page A30 HAVANA — Cubans have no Astrodome or cruise ships to house evacuees, and meals-ready-to-eat usually consist of rice and beans. But they have weathered some of the most violent storms the tropics can churn up, with surprisingly low death tolls and almost perfect compliance with evacuation orders. Last year, United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland singled out Cuba for praise among Caribbean nations for hurricane evacuation planning. When Hurricane Ivan swiped the island last September, for example, Cuba didn't record a single death, but 115 people died regionally. The same month, Hurricane Jeanne killed more than 1,500 in Haiti, many drowning in floodwaters. Now, as analysts and politicians examine how the U.S. government responded to Hurricane Katrina — and how to avoid a similar catastrophe — some say this communist island may offer a few lessons. Cuban evacuations are mostly carried out by community groups that take cues from the government. The military assists, unarmed. "Cuba views hurricanes as a top national security priority, and they know the drill," said Daniel P. Erikson, Caribbean specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. The storms not only imperil lives, he said, but threaten Cuba's economic underpinnings: agriculture and tourism. "The drill" Erikson refers to includes yearly military exercises across the island, with two-day training sessions for emergency workers, simulated evacuations and reviews of emergency plans. During hurricanes, Cuba's four state-run television stations run nonstop evacuation orders and weather reports. The coverage is anchored by President Fidel Castro, who coordinates response during live broadcasts as if waging battle against an invading army. "It's an organized system, in a pyramid structure," said Dr. Gabriel Diaz Ramirez, a Cuban pediatrician dispatched to Indonesia this year to treat tsunami survivors. "We have our government's support." Perhaps the most striking element of Cuba's disaster preparedness is that most residents obey evacuation orders without question. The government says it evacuated 1.5 million people in July ahead of Hurricane Dennis. Most went to safe zones, and 245,000 flocked to state-run shelters. This contrasts starkly with New Orleans, where thousands decided to ride out the storm and were later plucked from flooded attics or perished. Others are still refusing to leave, even with toxic muck on the streets and armed forces moving in to carry out mandatory evacuations. Erikson suggested that the smooth displacements were a product of the government's tight control over residents. "It's still a police state," he said. "You could say one advantage they may have is the ability to move large numbers of people in a short amount of time. "But of course the political environment in Cuba makes it difficult to resist those kinds of orders." (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cuba10sep10,1,3142651,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true) Stupid fucking Commies! Can you imagine a government actually demonstrating concern for the health and safety of the people? What are they thinking over there? And what is this business of sending in the military unarmed, as if they were being sent in to do some sort of humanitarian work? How in the hell are you going to issue shoot-to-kill orders if your relief workers aren't even packing heat? Those pinkoes are just so damn backwards in their thinking. I mean, who the hell relies on "community groups" when you can just get on the phone and call in some professional mercenaries? (Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans) Come to think of it, I bet they don't even have any 'private' paramilitary outfits in Cuba. They do though have an awful lot of medical doctors. So many that they offered to send over a veritable army of 1,100 of them to tend to the victims of Katrina. The Bush administration, however, realizing that the presence of swarms of qualified medical personnel could negatively impact their denegrofication project, declined the offer. The writer and editor of the L.A. Times piece, after consulting their trusty copy of "Orwell for Dummies," concluded that Cuba is better at responding to disasters because "it's still a police state." But that much is rather obvious, since, as any fool knows, a “police state” is one that responds to natural disasters by sending in actual relief workers, while a “democracy” generally responds to natural disasters by militarily occupying the zone of destruction and criminalizing the survivors. Most of you probably remember learning all that stuff back in your Civics classes. There is, of course, an alternative explanation for why the Cuban people willingly follow evacuation orders while the residents of New Orleans were reluctant to do so. Granted, the alternative explanation lacks the disconnection from reality so clearly on display in the Times article, but we should probably give it some consideration nonetheless, so here it is: the Cuban people know that after the danger has passed, they will actually be allowed to return to their homes! The people of New Orleans, on the other hand, had good reason to fear that they would not. It is painfully obvious that many of the former residents of New Orleans will never be going home. Many did not survive, though we will never know the true number since it was apparent from early on that the death toll would be covered up. Of those who did survive, many have seen the last of their family homes. Residents of New Orleans probably didn’t realize it at the time, but the stage was set two months before Katrina came ashore, on June 23, 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that it was well within the ‘rule of law’ for the government to seize what is ostensibly privately held land so that that land can then be passed into the grubby, bloody hands of developers. The stage was actually set earlier than that, in April 2005, when the United States Congress, in its infinite wisdom, opted to pass some bankruptcy ‘reform’ legislation. I’ll defer to the L.A. Times once again for an explanation of exactly how that ‘reform’ will come into play: After virtually every major hurricane of the last 25 years, bankruptcy filings have grown significantly faster than usual as victims sought to shake off old debts in order to rebuild their economically ruined lives. But unless changes are made to an overhaul of the nation’s bankruptcy law due to kick in next month, many of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and the resulting floods will have a substantially harder time winning court relief from loans they incurred for homes and businesses that are now gone, according to a variety of judges, lawyers and policy experts. “Just because your house or car is somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t mean that your auto loan or mortgage went with it,” said Brady C. Williamson, who was appointed by President Clinton to head a national bankruptcy commission in the mid-1990s. (Peter Gosselin “New Bankruptcy Law Could Exact a Toll on Storm Victims,” Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2005) Imagine, if you will, this purely – ahem – ‘hypothetical’ scenario (which, as we all know, could never happen in the land of the free and home of the brave): under the pretense that conditions are far too dangerous for you to stay, you and your family are forced from your family home by heavily armed troops. You are then shipped off, against your will, to some distant, unspecified location, where your actions are monitored lest you decide to do something crazy, such as attempting to return to what you, quite foolishly, still think of as your home. That home, meanwhile, is condemned and quickly bulldozed, though the actual damage to the property was quite minimal. The ground that your house used to stand on is seized by the government and will soon serve as the home of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at the new Disneyland New Orleans®. Having been stripped of everything that you once called your own – including your home and all its furnishings, the land it stood on, your vehicle(s), and your job – and having been separated from your friends and neighbors, you are now faced with the daunting prospect of completely rebuilding your life with little to work with other than a mountain of debt, which, you are quickly assured, you will be required to pay back. And guess what? This month’s payments are already past due. If you were ever to find yourself in this ‘hypothetical’ predicament, which of the following would best describe your situation? (a) I live in some sort of hellish, Kafkaesque police state; (b) I live in the world’s greatest democracy; or (c) I’m Caucasian, so this doesn’t really apply to me – yet. I have to admit that I am quite impressed at the amazing foresight displayed by the Washington gang in getting these new and vastly improved interpretations of “bankruptcy” and “eminent domain” on the books just in time to serve the needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. And I am also quite impressed with Washington’s propaganda unit, otherwise known as “Hollywood,” which continues to demonstrate an uncanny ability to serve up “product” that offers commentary on ongoing events, despite the fact that that product was filmed long before the events even took place. Consider, for example, the new television series “Invasion,” which debuted on September 21, just a few short weeks after the flooding of New Orleans, and just three days before Rita came ashore. Two curious facts about this new show stood out even before the first episode aired: (1) ABC chose to premier it along with the rest of its slate of new Fall shows even though it was obviously in very poor taste to do so; and (2) there was not a whimper of protest from any avenue of the media over that decision. For those who have not seen “Invasion” (and you are all excused for that oversight, since the series, shockingly enough, sucks), it concerns the rather strange goings-on in the aftermath of – are you ready for this? – a Gulf Coast hurricane. Prominently featured on the program are frequent allusions to governmental cover-ups. The hurricane that kicked off the series, you see, was apparently not your run-of-the-mill hurricane. According to one character on the show – a character who, as custom dictates, is portrayed as a paranoid ‘conspiracy theorist’ with a fondness for aliens – the hurricane was actually an elaborate “cover for a military operation.” Elsewhere in the premier episode, a young girl spoke cryptically about how “the truth will never come out” because the media wouldn’t hang around for long before they moved on to other things. (These may or may not be exact quotes; I wasn’t taking notes.) Despite being a mediocre show at best, “Invasion” has received rave reviews from many supposed critics. The fact that the show is on the air at all, despite the obvious insensitivity shown to the tens of thousands of victims of Katrina and Rita, coupled with the fact that it is actually being praised, rather than questioned, would seem to indicate that some powerful folks in the Washington/Hollywood axis feel that it is important that “Invasion” be seen by the viewing public. And that, of course, raises the obvious question: why is it important that this show be seen? My guess is that it is probably because at the very time when people of conscience should be asking questions not too dissimilar from those raised in “Invasion,” Hollywood has already, in its inimitable style, proactively relegated such concerns to the world of television fantasies. And, of course, thrown a bunch of aliens into the mix. Can anal probes be far behind? Perhaps we should throw caution to the wind and have a quick look at some of the ‘conspiracy theories’ surrounding Hurricane Katrina. There certainly is no shortage of them out there. Probably the most elaborate theories are the ones claiming that the government actually created Katrina, using advanced, ‘black’ technology. Personally, I find that scenario to be highly unlikely. And yes, by the way, I am well aware that control of the weather has been, for some time now, an explicitly stated goal of the U.S. military. And yes, I am also well aware of the HAARP project in Alaska. However, there is a big difference between having the desire and willingness to do something, and having the technological ability to actually do it. And I seriously doubt that the technology to create and control manmade weather systems currently exists. I seriously doubt that mankind even has an accurate understanding of how naturally-occurring weather systems operate, which would seem to be a prerequisite for creating artificial systems. A related theory is the one that holds that while Katrina was not necessarily artificially created, it was deliberately steered into New Orleans. Again, this seems very unlikely – more plausible than the creation theories, I suppose, but still very unlikely. And the truth of the matter is that what these almost entirely speculative theories primarily do is draw attention away from the real question that needs to be asked here, which is: was Hurricane Katrina even the primary cause of the devastation in New Orleans, or did it just provide a convenient “cover for a military operation”? Already long forgotten, by both the media and the always well-informed American public, is that there was a bizarrely long gap between when Katrina came ashore and when the levees were breached. Also long forgotten is that the earliest reports out of New Orleans held that the city had been spared from a direct hit, and the storm had therefore done considerably less damage than anticipated. Captain Nora Tyson – commander of the USS Bataan, a Navy ship that first rode out the storm in the Gulf of Mexico before following it to shore – perfectly summed up the initial feeling about the storm’s impact on New Orleans: “On Monday it was like, ‘Wow, it missed us, it took a turn east,’ and everything eased up. It was ‘Let’s open up Bourbon Street, have a beer, let’s go party,’ and understandably so. And then all of a sudden, literally and figuratively, the dam broke, and here we are.” (Stephen J. Hedges “Navy Ship Nearby Underused,” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 2005) According to the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street was feeling in a celebratory mood as well: “Hurricanes are never good news for insurance companies. But by veering east of New Orleans on Monday, Hurricane Katrina may have saved insurers a bundle. Major casualty insurers saw only modest losses on Wall Street …” (Kathy M. Kristof “Insurers Reevaluate Hurricane’s Losses,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2005, Page C2) On the front page of the same newspaper, Katrina was said to have “delivered a hard but glancing blow to New Orleans, then spent its full fury on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, swamping beach resorts and inland towns.” (Scott Gold and Ellen Barry “Katrina Hits the Gulf Coast,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2005, Page A1) That “glancing blow” would have serious repercussions – but not until the next day. Hurricane Katrina arrived on the shores of New Orleans on Monday morning, August 29. By the time night fell on the partially evacuated city, it appeared as though the danger had passed and New Orleans had successfully dodged a bullet. The Category 4 winds never really materialized, the rain was no match for New Orleans’ formidable pumping system, and all 350 miles of the city’s system of levees and canals held fast against the feared storm surges. Until, that is, the wee hours of the morning of Tuesday, August 30, when three canals (the 17th Street Canal, the London Street Canal and the Industrial Canal, aka the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal) suffered major breaches in no less than five separate locations. The official story, for the first several weeks, was that storm surges from the mighty Katrina were simply too much for the overburdened levee walls to handle. The rising water first surged over the tops of the levee walls, we were to believe, sending the first floodwaters into New Orleans, and then the levee walls themselves ultimately succumbed to the surging waters. And the rest, as they say, is history. Now, that’s a nice little story. It really is. It’s at least as good, I’d have to say, as any of the other stories cooked up in recent years to explain away unusual events. True, if you really give it some thought – like, say, for thirty seconds or so – then it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but that has never stopped a wild yarn from becoming a part of the new reality before, so it shouldn’t be a problem now. Once upon a time, in a more innocent era, people might have questioned how it was that storm surges could have caused the breaches in the levees nearly a full day after the storm had hit town. “How can that be?” they might have asked. “The storm came through here on Monday and the levees weren’t breached until Tuesday. The wind and rain were pretty well gone by then, so it seems to me like it would have been kind of an odd time for a massive storm surge. And it seems pretty darn peculiar that all five of those breaches – all five of them! – occurred under cover of night some 18-21 hours after Katrina came ashore.” Today, in these much more enlightened times, we would never raise such foolish questions. Instead, we instinctively do what is expected of all refined, cultured men and women of the twenty-first century: we warmly embrace whatever nonsensical lies are thrown our way, and then we go and share those lies with others, only to find that everyone else already knows the same lies, which is okay, as it turns out, because that makes it easier for us to all sit around and discuss current events as though we actually know what we’re talking about. In this particular situation, however, we do not have to blindly accept the first official lie. There are slightly different rules at play here, because this is one of those cases where the official story has been officially repudiated. That official repudiation, however, was a rather coy one, which means that this is a situation where it is okay to believe either the first official lie or the second official lie. Either one will do just fine, just so long as you firmly believe in one of the two. The closest parallel I can think of here concerns the attack on the Pentagon on September 11. Readers will recall that at first it was claimed that the plane and everything in it was vaporized by the intense heat from the resulting fire. Later, however, it was claimed that the passengers were actually recovered and identified through DNA analysis, and that the plane had been largely reconstructed and was sitting in an unidentified aircraft hangar. Obviously, both stories could not possibly be true, and, in fact, neither one of them was actually true. But that’s not the point here. The point here is that it is perfectly okay to be a true believer in either official version of reality. What is not okay is trying to insert your own reality, or, worse yet, a relatively objective reality into the mix. That would be considered a major faux pas. The important thing to remember here is that, while you are not limited to a specific official reality, you must choose from one of the available official realities. And as I started to say, there is a new official story concerning the breached levees. It goes something like this: The levee breaches along two major canals that flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina resulted from massive soil failures under concrete storm walls, not from hurricane surges that sent water over the tops of the walls as Army officials initially said, according to teams of investigators who have examined evidence in the last week. The findings appear to chip away at the simple story that the storm surge was much larger and higher than the walls were designed to handle … Investigators have found no evidence of such overflow and foundational scouring at the breaches in the London Avenue and 17th Street Canals, two main failures behind the central New Orleans flooding. In fact, in one case, water marks are a full 2½ feet below the tops of the walls. (Ralph Vartabedian “Soil Failure, Not Overflow, Cited in Levee Breaches,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2005, Page A26) So it appears that it has now been officially acknowledged that there was no massive storm surge that sent water pouring over the levee walls, on either Monday or Tuesday mornings. Even at the height of the storm, the hurricane’s surges didn’t come close to overflowing the levee walls at either the 17th Street or London Avenue Canals, where water remained "more than two feet below the tops of the walls." (Ralph Vartabedian and Stephen Braun “System Failures Seen in Levees,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2005) But then, hours later, when the winds and rain had died down, and relative calm had returned to the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, the soil underneath the levee walls, in multiple locations, spontaneously failed. Along the London Avenue Canal, for example, “a 100-foot-long block of soil, about 15 feet deep, was pushed back 35 feet. As the earth berm shifted, the concrete storm wall on top collapsed into the hole left by the moving soil and disappeared into the water.” I wonder what could cause that to happen? Why would there be such a tremendous lateral force exerted on the soil underlying the levee walls at that particular time? Is that the norm in the aftermath of a hurricane? I’m no expert in the dynamics of various types of natural disasters, but it seems to me that a phenomenon like that would more likely be the result of an earthquake than a hurricane. Another possibility, I suppose, is that some type of depth charges were responsible for undermining the levees. I’ll bet that the Pentagon has something in its catalogue that would do the trick. But I don’t recall reading any news reports of the levees being deliberately blown, so I guess we have to rule out that possibility. Luckily, we have an alternative explanation. According to the most recent reports, the soil failures were caused by oak tress and burrowing rodents: "The triggering event in the catastrophic failure of the 17th Street Canal may have been the fall of a large oak tree planted at the base of the levee ... The tree's falling started a chain reaction that took out several hundred feet of flood wall. A similar scenario may have played out on the London Avenue Canal." In addition, "burrowing animals created large tunnels that undermined already weak foundations." Levee board officials, however, openly scoffed at such foolishness, noting that "there were no trees on the levees anywhere," and neither were there large concentrations of burrowing rodents. (Ralph Vartabedian and Stephen Braun “System Failures Seen in Levees,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2005) Since it is pretty obvious that only a crazed 'conspiracy theorist' would buy into the notion that oak trees and rodents caused the massive flooding of New Orleans, let's turn our attention back to the more credible theory that the levees were deliberately breached. And, as it turns out, there were indeed some reports of deliberate flooding, albeit much later in the day Tuesday, many hours after the initial breaches: “authorities took the decision to flood [Crowder Road] district in an apparent attempt to sluice out some of the water that had submerged a neighbouring district … The authorities had given people in the district until 5pm on Tuesday to get out – after that they would open the floodgates.” (Jamie Doward “They’re Not Giving Us What We Need To Survive,” The Observer, September 4, 2005) Do levees have floodgates? Gates that, if opened, allow neighborhoods to be flooded? That’s a pretty odd feature. I hope they keep them locked, to keep the neighborhood kids from trying to open them. What really happened, I suppose, is that a levee was deliberately breached. But I wonder how they did that? I wonder if they undermined it by blasting away the soil underneath? I’m just curious because that seems to be a pretty effective technique. And it probably makes relatively little noise. But I guess in this case noise wasn’t really a factor, since breaching the levee was an officially acknowledged act. No one was trying to hide anything. If you were trying to hide authorship of the breaches though, it might be a good idea to undermine the levee walls rather then just blasting them directly. Does anyone find it curious, by the way, that the Crowder Road District was deliberately flooded? What was the thought process behind that decision? ... “Well, it looks like we have one neighborhood over here that is pretty well trashed. There’s just water everywhere. So I think what we should do – and I’ve given this a great deal of thought – is try to drain some or all of the water into that neighborhood right over there. That way, we will have two flooded neighborhoods! Actually, truth be told, we’re hoping that if we act quickly enough, the first neighborhood can be saved – at the expense, of course, of the second neighborhood. And I’m sure the people in the second neighborhood won’t mind because, as a general rule, the black folks around here are always willing to lend a hand to help out the white folks.” The main point of this semi-digression, I suppose, is that as of Tuesday (August 30) evening, actions were being taken to deliberately cause flooding in certain neighborhoods, and no credible explanation was being given for these actions. Perhaps then it is not so unreasonable to ponder whether the initial breaches, all occurring under cover of night, all occurring many hours after the storm had passed through town, and all causing flooding primarily in the poorest sections of the city, were deliberate as well. And perhaps the additional flooding – occurring too long after Katrina’s landfall to be credibly attributed to the storm, and so therefore officially, though quietly, acknowledged as a deliberate act – was undertaken to correct a ‘problem’ with the initial flooding, that problem being that a few of the targeted neighborhoods were spared while a few of the non-targeted neighborhoods were not. Before moving on from this discussion of the levees, I should probably mention one rather curious incident that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I realize, of course, that America is home to the largest, mightiest, ‘freest’ media machine the world has ever seen, and because of that, there is virtually no scrap of news that escapes the attention of the press corps and the American people. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that some of you may have missed this story the first time around, I present it to you here in its entirety: Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New Orleans bridge Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said. A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal. The contractors were walking across a bridge on their way to launch barges into Lake Pontchartrain to fix the 17th Street Canal, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Corps. Earlier Sunday, New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police shot eight people, killing five or six. The shootings took place on the Danziger Bridge, which spans a canal connecting Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. No other details were immediately available. (“Police Kill Five Contractors on LA Bridge,” Associated Press, September 4, 2005) This was, of course, a huge story when it first broke. I mean, how often do groups of armed military personnel and groups of armed police personnel reenact the “gunfight at the OK Corral” on an American street using live ammunition? This unprecedented event – the gunning down of half-a-dozen military personnel on American soil for merely going about doing their jobs – naturally generated a considerable amount of media attention. Bill O’Reilly alone spent the better part of a week hashing over the ‘talking points’ of the story. To the surprise of everyone, Greta Van Susteren and Nancy Grace even took a break from their relentless search for Natalie Holloway to focus attention on the big story. Oprah had on the wives of the fallen contractors to discuss how they were dealing with their loss. Investigations were quickly launched into the incident by the Army Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Police Department, the Louisiana Governor's Office, the New Orleans Mayor's Office, the United States Congress, and various other concerned parties. You all remember all of that … right? If not, it’s probably because none of it actually happened. Except for the part about the shootout between the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Orleans Police Department. That part really happened. At least, I’m assuming that there was quite a shootout, since one would expect that when armed military personnel are being fired upon, they will generally fire back. But all the rest, I just made up. Kind of like the real media just makes stuff up. It is difficult to determine, given the scarcity of details available, what really happened. When the two organizations involved are the New Orleans Police Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it’s near impossible to determine who might have been the good guys in this story. Was this a case of corrupt elements of the NOPD thwarting efforts to arrest the flooding of New Orleans? Or was this a case of honest police officers thwarting efforts to further sabotage the levee system? Or was it neither? Was it merely a tragic case of mistaken identity? Possibly so, but the fact that this story was quickly buried suggests otherwise. Moving on then … Much less discussed than the breakdown in the levee system was the unprecedented breakdown in the city’s second line of defense, its imposing system of pumping stations. Given that New Orleans sits below sea level, an effective pumping system is absolutely essential to the city’s survival. Without it, New Orleans would flood every time a decent rain came through town. Luckily then, the city has a pumping system like no other in the world. (“How the Levees Failed,” Discovery Channel, October 9, 2005) Built in the early 1900s, New Orleans’ pumping system is composed of 23 pumping stations that house a combined 140 pumps. Though nearly a century old, these pumps remain, to this day, the largest and most powerful of their kind in the world. And, since they were built before America became a society that reveres disposability, the pumps are remarkably reliable. Right up until the day that Katrina came ashore, every one of those 140 pumps were fully operational. But that all changed very quickly in the aftermath of the storm, when, for reasons that have never been adequately explained – and never will be, because no one in government or the media will ever bother to ask – the decision was made to shut the system down. The explanation that was given was that, since the major levee breaches lay between the pumping stations and Lake Pontchartrain, the pumps were serving no purpose other than to circulate the water right back through the breaches. It was not the case, however, that all 23 of the stations were situated in that manner, and yet all of them were apparently shut down. And all of the stations, while they were running, were serving at least one crucial function: keeping the pumping stations themselves from being flooded. Once the pumps were shut down, the stations were promptly, and quite predictably, submerged, thus doing major damage to all of the pumps’ electrical components. With one incredibly stupid, or one incredibly malicious act, a system that had performed nearly flawlessly for almost a century was rendered completely inoperable. Before repairs could even be attempted, workers were faced with the uniquely challenging task of pumping out the pumping stations. The damage was so extensive that two weeks after Katrina hit New Orleans, over half of the stations still had no running pumps. It is difficult to think of a reasonable explanation for why the pumping stations were shut down, just as it is difficult to think of a logical explanation for why at least some neighborhoods were deliberately flooded. It is difficult as well to explain the curious timing of the five major levee breaches, though I suppose that in a world where three steel-framed skyscrapers can spontaneously collapse on a single day, the nearly simultaneous appearance of five major levee breaches, many hours after the supposedly precipitating event, doesn’t really require any explanation at all.
Katrina, Eugenics and 'Peak
Oil,' Part II Katrina, Eugenics and 'Peak Oil,' Part II http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr74.html
At least one fact seems indisputable: neither "incompetence" nor "lack of preparation" can even begin to explain the actions of national, state and local officials in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is perfectly obvious that there was a planned response, and that plan was fully implemented. The confusion over this has apparently arisen due to the erroneous belief that that plan had something to do with rescuing and providing aid and comfort to survivors. If the problem was just that FEMA had failed to adequately respond to the disaster, then maybe, just maybe, we could write it off as incompetence. Far more difficult to explain away is that FEMA, and/or the Department of Homeland Security, actively prevented any other individuals or groups from responding. And we're not talking here about a couple of anomalous incidents. No, we're talking about an undeniable pattern of criminal behavior. Among numerous other crimes against the people of New Orleans, FEMA declined an offer from the city of Chicago to send “44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic.” Instead, FEMA asked Chicago to send just a single truck. (“Daley ‘Shocked’ at Federal Snub of Offers to Help,” Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2005) FEMA also refused to allow into New Orleans “up to 500 Florida airboat pilots [who had] volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies.” Many of the pilots had “spent thousands of their own dollars stocking their boats and swamp buggies with food, water, medical supplies and fuel.” (Nancy Imperiale “Airboaters Stalled by FEMA,” Sun Sentinel, September 2, 2005) Meanwhile, “More than 50 civilian aircraft responding to separate requests for evacuations from hospitals and other agencies swarmed to the area a day after Katrina hit, but FEMA blocked their efforts” as well. (“After 9/11, a Master Plan for Disasters Was Drawn; It Didn’t Weather the Storm,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2005) Not to be outdone, the Department of Homeland Security refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver food. Said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the organization, “The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans.” (Ann Rodgers “Homeland Security Won’t Let Red Cross Deliver Food,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 3, 2005) In other news, FEMA opted to all but ignore an offshore Naval ship, the USS Bataan, that was equipped with a 600-bed hospital, six operating rooms, a 1,200-man crew, helicopters, doctors, food, water, and the ability to desalinate up to 100,000 gallons of drinking water per day. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the “role in the relief effort of the sizable medical staff on board the Bataan was not up to the Navy, but to FEMA officials directing the overall effort.” (Stephen J. Hedges “Navy Ship Nearby Underused,” Chicago Tribune, September 4, 2005) In a similar vein, FEMA passed on an offer from the University of North Carolina to supply a state-of-the-art mobile hospital. ( http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/ ) On September 5, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) blasted FEMA in a report carried by London’s Financial Times: “Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by [FEMA].” Landrieu also criticized FEMA for “dragging its feet” (a rather charitable characterization of FEMA's actions) when Amtrak offered the use of its trains to evacuate victims. ( http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e ) On September 6, an Associated Press report carried the following quote from Ben Morris, mayor of Slidell, Louisiana: “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.” http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html More than a week after Katrina came ashore, the Associated Press reported that "hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina" had instead been whiling away their time "playing cards, taking classes on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's history and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel." The FEMA official in charge of the firefighters explained that the agency "wanted to make certain they were sent where the need was greatest." And since FEMA apparently hadn't yet determined where the need was greatest, a week after the need arose, it was best to just let the skilled rescue workers sit idle. ("Eager to Help, Frustrated Firefighters Wait for Orders," Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2005, page A26) Next came a report that a “German military plane carrying 15 tons of military rations for survivors of Hurricane Katrina was sent back by U.S. authorities … Since Hurricane Katrina struck the United States, many international donors have complained of frustration that bureaucratic entanglements have hindered shipments to the United States.” (Claudia Kemmer “German Plane with 15 Tons of Aid Turned Back >From U.S.,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 10, 2005) And then came one of the most appalling stories of all, courtesy of The Advocate: “In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn’t registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ‘I begged him to let me continue,’ said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. ‘People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.’ … FEMA issued a formal response to Perlmutter’s story, acknowledging that the agency does not use voluntary physicians.” (Laurie Smith Anderson “Doctor Says FEMA Ordered Him to Stop Treating Hurricane Victims,” The Advocate, September 16, 2005) By September 11, Jefferson Parish officials had all but declared war on FEMA. As the Times-Picayune reported, “Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said he has ‘commandered’ [sic] the Sam’s and Wal-Mart stores in the parish and ordered them to open as soon as possible. Lee said he took the action after he learned that a Wal-Mart store wanted to open recently but was told by FEMA officials that it could not … Lee said anyone from FEMA who tries to close either store will be arrested by deputies.” In making the announcement, Sheriff Lee noted that he had the backing of Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish. Several days earlier, on “Meet the Press,” Broussard had angrily revealed some ugly truths about FEMA: “… the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history … Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now … Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA – we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my Parish. The Coast Guard said, ‘Come get the fuel right away.’ When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. ‘FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.’ Yesterday – yesterday – FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, ‘No one is getting near these lines.’” ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/ ; see also Scott Shane “Storm and Crisis: The Fallout,” New York Times, September 5, 2005) The Loudoun Times-Mirror provided yet another example of the ‘assistance’ that FEMA provided to Jefferson Parish: “Loudoun Sheriff’s deputies and emergency personnel were on their way to hurricane-stricken Louisiana Thursday night but had to turn around when the federal government failed to come up with the required paperwork. Sheriff Steve Simpson and his staff spent 12 hours trying to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of Louisiana Emergency Operations Center to act. They didn’t, and the 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians – all volunteers – turned around and came back to Loudoun … The deputies [had] packed up to head south after a request from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department … The relief team had gathered enough supplies to be self-sufficient for up to 14 days.” (Shannon Sollinger “Loudon Relief Crew Turned Away,” Loudon Times-Mirror, September 2, 2005) Did I mention, by the way, that Jefferson Parish is (or at least was) populated primarily with African-Americans? Or had you already figured that out on your own? And did I also mention that what this country could really use is a whole lot more Aaron Broussards and Harry Lees? To make sure that everyone got FEMA’s message loud and clear, the agency issued a press release, available on their website, urging "First Responders" not to respond unless officially dispatched – which really meant, “don’t call us, we’ll call you … but not anytime soon.” ( http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470 ) The truth of the matter is that many of the human and material resources needed to deal with the tragedy in New Orleans were readily available – trained rescue teams, skilled medical personnel, medical supplies, medical facilities, food, water, and all manner of transportation – and virtually all of it was offered free of charge. The American people, along with (though I hate to admit it) portions of corporate America, and with the backing of the international community, were poised to spontaneously mount an effective response to this disaster. If the government, particularly the federal government, had simply done nothing, then much of the death and suffering could have been avoided. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Instead, FEMA worked to actively thwart all voluntary efforts to help the victims, thereby ensuring that not only would there be no federal response, there would be no response at all. Such a deliberate course of actions cannot credibly be explained away as mere ‘incompetence.’ Neither can the punishing of two Naval pilots (Lt. Matt Udkow and Lt. Michael Holdener) for committing the apparently unpardonable sin of rescuing more than 100 hurricane victims "before returning to base from a cargo delivery." Their actions, you see, allegedly compromised the delivery of relief supplies, even though the Navy admitted that "no supplies went undelivered as a result of the rescues." A senior official claimed that the pilots were merely 'counseled,' not punished, but it was acknowledged that one of the men "was temporarily assigned to a kennel." I guess those years of training as a pilot come in handy when it comes time to clean the shit out of the cages at the kennel. (“Navy Pilots Are ‘Counseled’ After Unauthorized Rescues,” Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2005, Page A26) As most of us probably recall, the blocking of relief efforts was largely justified with claims that conditions in the city were simply too dangerous due to the rampant criminality that was inexplicably sweeping over New Orleans. Heavily-armed gangs had taken control of the ravished streets and were openly attacking both residents and stranded tourists. Looters were shamelessly exploiting the tragedy to stock up on flat-screen TVs. Murderers and, worse yet, baby-rapists lurked around every corner. Snipers had taken up strategic positions throughout the city, taking pot-shots at anyone who dared attempt come to the aid of hurricane victims. The only thing missing, it seemed, were reports of roving bands of Islamic terrorists, possibly ‘sleeper’ Al Qaeda cells. I’m kind of surprised, to be honest, that Karl Rove didn’t think of tossing that into the mix. In a truly shocking development, nearly all of those stories have turned out to be works of fiction – works of fiction that were fed to a media machine that dutifully reported them as fact ... over and over and over again. Remarkably enough, various avenues of that media machine have now admitted, rather quietly, that the sensational stories of rampant criminality were fabrications. Even without the admission, however, most of the stories were fairly obvious fabrications. For the record, the facts appear to be as follows: 1) There is no evidence that there was any “looting” of any significance occurring in post-Katrina New Orleans. Doing what is necessary, in times of crisis, to minimally provide for the needs of yourself and your family, is not "looting." And there is little indication that many residents took time from their busy schedules to swim over to the local Circuit City to pick up a new plasma TV. What would they have done with this loot once it was acquired? Take it back to their submerged homes? Lug it to the Superdome? ... "Honey, it looks like we're going to have to leave one of the kids here on the roof or I won't be able to carry the new flatty." A month after Katrina hit New Orleans, the Acting Supt. of the New Orleans Police Department, Warren Riley, acknowledged that procuring items needed for survival in a crisis situation was not “looting.” According to Riley, “[people] did actually go in and get jeans, get food in some locations. [They] were without food for some days. Those things are acceptable; they’re acceptable to me.” Oh … wait a minute … my bad. I seem to have misread Riley’s statement. What he actually said was “our officers did actually go in and get jeans, get food in some locations. We were without food for some days. Those things are acceptable; they’re acceptable to me.” So is, I suppose, the fact that “officers also commandeered Cadillacs from a car dealership.” Riley’s position would appear to be somewhat at odds, however, with the official position at the time the alleged looting was taking place, when there was much talk of a “zero tolerance” policy that called for ‘looters’ to be “shot on sight.” (Nicole Gaouette “New Orleans Police Investigate Possible Looting by Officers,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2005) 2) It is extremely unlikely that there were violent gangs prowling the flooded streets of New Orleans. I know it's hard for some people to believe, but 'gang bangers' are human too. They have families and friends. And sometimes taking care of the needs of their loved ones actually takes precedence over gang rivalries and turf wars. If Indians and Pakistanis can temporarily put aside their differences in the wake of an earthquake, then I am reasonably certain that rival street gangs can do likewise in the wake of a hurricane. And if you think about it, it would be pretty hard to do a drive-by shooting in a makeshift rowboat. 3) There is no evidence indicating that there were civilian 'snipers' impeding the work of relief workers. Snipers have never, as far as I can determine, spontaneously appeared in the aftermath of a natural disaster. If there were any snipers at all, they were military/intelligence operatives sent in to provide a handy pretext for mounting a military response. On September 27, the Los Angeles Times (along with several other newspapers) quietly admitted that the lurid stories of rampant criminality were entirely unsupported by any actual evidence: "newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center ... unverified 'rapes,' and unconfirmed sniper attacks [were] among examples of scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact ... Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome [and] roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless." (Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey “Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2005) Since the L.A. Times has long been tasked with pretending to be a ‘liberal’ publication, the Rosenblatt and Rainey report took aim at the 'Fair and Balanced' reporting of Fox News: "Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an 'alert' as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of ‘robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness.’” Colmes' little rant was pure bullshit, of course, but in all fairness to Fox News, so was just about everything that was being reported by every other avenue of the media, including the Los Angeles Times, which splashed lurid lies across it's front page for days. The feeble attempt to correct those lies, on the other hand, was buried in a single story that went largely unread -- which is why the majority of Americans still believe, and will always believe, that the only people to ride out the storm in New Orleans were looters, murderers, rapists, snipers, robbers, carjackers and rioters. It was not by accident, by the way, that Alan Colmes – the token 'liberal' hired by Fox News after an exhaustive, nationwide search for the least credible fake-liberal in the country – was among those leading the charge to spread such viscous lies about people who would, in any civilized society, have been recognized as victims, not criminals. The goal of this propaganda campaign, you see, was to justify a massive military response – to justify placing a swath of the Gulf Coast under martial law. And when you're trying to sell an authoritarian, ultra-right-wing agenda, the favored strategy is to use salesman who appear to be from the political left. And when the agenda includes a little ethnic cleansing, it helps if the salesmen are from the targeted ethnic group, hence the prominent involvement of purported 'liberals' like Oprah Winfrey and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The L.A. Times report placed blame for the “inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information.” I have to assume here that the Times’ stellar “follow-up reporting” failed to uncover the fact that there probably would have been substantially better telephone service if FEMA hadn’t been running around deliberately cutting communication lines. The cutting of those lines no doubt greatly facilitated the control of information, ensuring that the stories coming out of New Orleans were largely the stories that the government wanted told. Like, for instance, the fictional stories of snipers and armed gangs running amok in the city. Curiously missing from the L.A. Times report was any questioning of the overtly military federal response to the tragedy. After openly, though rather shyly, acknowledging that the pretext for turning New Orleans into a war zone was wholly fabricated, the Times offered not one word of criticism of the Bush administration's decision to send heavily armed troops into an American city on what was explicitly described as a "combat mission" to pacify "insurgents." Such an omission, from one of the alleged pillars of the ‘liberal’ media, would be shocking were it not for the fact that the very same L.A. Times long ago tacitly acknowledged that all of the justifications for turning the nation of Iraq into a war zone were lies, and yet still steadfastly cheerleads the war. Also missing was any criticism of the widely-publicized decision to pull all NOPD officers off rescue and relief operations so that the department could focus all its resources on addressing the largely mythical crime wave sweeping the city. If any organization was in a position to judge the veracity of the lurid stories circulating in the press, it was the New Orleans Police Department, which had hundreds of pairs of eyes and ears on the streets of the city. Why then was the decision made to reallocate police resources? Was this yet another action taken by FEMA officials, working behind the scenes, to insure that no relief was available to hurricane survivors, and that the only responses to the tragedy would be armed responses? Though not commented on by the media, the unjustifiable decision by the NOPD to suspend all rescue operations was rather remarkable, for it revealed, if only for a brief moment, the true nature of the beast. One of the Golden Rules of the Western corporate capitalist system stood naked for all to see, but few paid any attention. If they had, and if they had listened closely enough, this is what they would have heard: “Property has value; human life does not.” The other justification that was bandied about for preventing relief workers and supplies from getting to the victims was that the water covering the city had immediately transformed itself into a toxic stew so vile that it posed a grave threat to life as we know it. Not so toxic, of course, as to negatively impact the legions of hungry alligators (or crocodiles; I don’t remember, or care, which it was) prowling the city, or the schools of ravenous piranha, or, in at least one neighborhood, the Loch Ness Monster, but dangerously toxic nonetheless. Unfortunately, it appears as though those stories might have been over-hyped just a bit as well. Returning again to page A26 of the Los Angeles Times (where they hide all the good Katrina stories, just to see if anyone is paying attention), we find this from October 2: Fish from Lake Pontchartrain, the source of much of New Orleans’ famous seafood, is safe to eat again after Hurricane Katrina … Fetid floodwaters that filled 80% of New Orleans after Katrina struck on Aug. 29 were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, but they turned out to be less polluted than had been feared. (“Pontchartrain Fish Are Declared Safe to Eat,” Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2005, Page A26) According to Chris Piehler of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, “There is no toxic soup.” Wow! That’s weird, isn’t it? Just the other day, when the water was in the streets of New Orleans, it was highly toxic, but now that it is back in the lake, it seems to be okay. What a difference a few weeks makes! It seems like only yesterday that New Orleans was, by all reports, both a literal and metaphorical cesspool. But now we know that that was all just a, uhmm, misunderstanding. Certainly no one is suggesting any malice here. We are all adults and we all know that the price we have to pay for having a ‘free press’ is that sometimes every single media outlet in the country – in print, on television and on the radio – mistakenly spend several days loudly and repeatedly broadcasting the same made-up stories. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument – and because you wouldn’t be visiting this website if you weren’t seeking out ‘conspiracy theories' – that everything that happened in post-Katrina New Orleans happened because powerful actors wanted it to happen: the breaching of the levees, the flooding of selected portions of the city, the suppression of any and all relief efforts, the establishment of a pretext for a military response through the introduction of fraudulent ‘news’ stories, and the relocation by force of the residents of New Orleans. What then would be the motivation for these actions? I can think of at least three motives: 1. To acclimate the American people to the presence of armed troops on American soil, which will soon be a familiar sight not just in southern Louisiana, but throughout the country. Even as you read this, the White House and Congress are hard at work drafting legislation and executive orders that will normalize the use of combat personnel to deal with any contrived situation. 2. To allow the city of New Orleans to be rebuilt and refashioned into what our fearless leaders no doubt see as a city of the future – a city that is much richer, and much whiter, than the city that stood before. 3. To solidify control over the Gulf Coast oil and gas industry, since a key goal of the perpetrators of the ‘Peak Oil’ charade, as I’ve noted before, is to achieve total control over all the world’s major oil and gas taps. Speaking of ‘Peak Oil,’ my mailbox runneth over with inquiries concerning the scam. I suppose that is because the issue is getting a little hard to ignore, what with it popping up all over the mainstream media these days. I know this because I subscribe to only a handful of mainstream publications and every one of them have now promoted the 'Peak' lies. The cover of the August edition of National Geographic, for instance, reads: "After Oil; Powering the Future." The cover of October's Esquire reads, charmingly enough: "The End of Oil (& Life As We Know It); A Handy Guide." Yes, friends, thanks to the tireless efforts of Mike Ruppert and company, the mainstream media have now been forced to acknowledge the 'reality' of 'Peak Oil.' That is, after all, the way that things generally work -- the truth first emerges in the fringes of the 'alternative' media, and then, within a few short years, through the hard and thankless work of dedicated researchers, some of whom might not even come from CIA families, their ideas gain mainstream acceptance. That is precisely why mainstream commentators and publications are now okay with, for example, spilling the beans on 9-11. And the sham election of 2000. And 2002. And 2004. And the war crimes being committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the rampant criminality of the Bush regime, on both the domestic and international fronts. And Paul Wellstone's plane ‘crash.’ And (insert the scandal of your choice here; I’m bored with it already). Maybe we don’t even need an ‘alternative’ media. We can just wait a couple of years for the real stories to seep into the mainstream. True, we’ll always be lagging a little behind, but I’m the kind of guy who always waits for movies to come out on DVD before seeing them, so I’m kind of used to lagging a little behind. And to be perfectly honest, I usually feel ripped-off even at the DVD rental price, although that really has nothing to do with the current discussion. By the way, since the Peakers in the ‘alternative’ media insist on taking credit for every ‘Peak’ story that appears in the mainstream, then I suppose that I will have to take full credit for an article by Sonia Shaw entitled “The Strange Heresies of Thomas Gold,” appearing in the November issue of Playboy. Shaw’s piece makes for interesting reading, particularly the discussion of how research that has supported Gold’s theories on oil has never been published. But here I digress yet again. What I really wanted to talk about was when I offended the 'Peak Oil' crowd by reporting that their real agenda was selling the necessity of a massive 'population reduction.' Remember that? Remember how all the Peakers got their panties in a wad and accused me of putting words in the mouth of their great and fearless cult leader, The Honorable Michael Ruppert? And remember how they nearly went into convulsions when I described their ‘solution’ to the alleged problem as a eugenics program, because, of course, no one in the 'Peak' movement advocated any such thing? Well … it appears that it is time to revisit that issue, even at the considerable risk of further offending the delicate sensibilities of the craven 'Peak Oil' proponents. This time, however, I won't be putting words in anyone's mouth. No, this time I will be quoting directly from a newsletter penned by the great Colin Campbell, founding father of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) and guiding light of folks like Ruppert, Heinberg and Pfeiffer. Without further ado then, let's hear what Dr. Campbell had to say this past July (with my own comments added in red, and with a shout-out to Ty Brown for directing my attention to this post): Recent articles in the ASPO Newsletter have agreed that the explosion of world population from about 0.6 billion in 1750 to 6.4 billion today was initiated and sustained by the shift from renewable energy to fossil fuel (sic) energy in the Industrial Revolution. There is agreement that the progressive exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves will reverse the process, though there is uncertainty as to what a sustainable global population would be. ... a global population reduction of some 6 billion people is likely to take place during the 21st Century (For the mathematically impaired, Campbell is talking about no less than a 94% reduction in the world's population. If you feel that you and all of your loved ones are among the lucky 6% who will be spared, then I suppose there is no cause for alarm and you can feel free to stop reading now.) ... probably before 2010 ... uncontrollable inflation and recession will spread round the world ... (Probably so, but this will be, of course, a deliberately induced condition.) In Third World nations ... a Darwinian struggle for shrinking resources of all kinds will be in full swing ... the imperative to survive will be driving strong groups to take what they want from weak ones. The concept of human rights will be irrelevant ... It may well be that, in the West, the same argument will affect the thinking of militarily powerful nations ... Instantaneous nuclear elimination of population centres might even be considered merciful, compared to starvation and massacres prolonged over decades. (You have to applaud Campbell’s effort here; I doubt that even Orwell could have conceived of the concept of a humanitarian nuclear holocaust.) Eventually, probably before 2150, world population will have fallen to a level that renewable energy, mainly biomass, can sustain ... Probably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world’s unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless. Survival in a Darwinian resource-poor world depends on the ruthless elimination of rivals, not the acquisition of moral kudos by cherishing them when they are weak. (Hmmm ... overt calls for the destruction of the weak by the strong? ... now, where have I heard that before? ... Adolf Hitler? Aleister Crowley? I can't quite place it …) So the population reduction scenario with the best chance of success has to be Darwinian in all its aspects, with none of the sentimentality that shrouded the second half of the 20th Century in a dense fog of political correctness ... To those sentimentalists who ... are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say “You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity.” ... The scenario is: Immigration is banned. Unauthorised arrives are treated as criminals. Every woman is entitled to raise one healthy child. No religious or cultural exceptions can be made, but entitlements can be traded. Abortion or infanticide is compulsory if the fetus or baby proves to be handicapped (Darwinian selection weeds out the unfit). When, through old age, accident or disease, an individual becomes more of a burden than a benefit to society, his or her life is humanely ended. Voluntary euthanasia is legal and made easy. Imprisonment is rare, replaced by corporal punishment for lesser offences and painless capital punishment for greater. ... The punishment regime would improve social cohesiveness by weeding out criminal elements. ... military forces should be maintained strong and alert ... Collaboration with other nations practising the same population reduction scenario would be of great mutual advantage. (http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/588) I have to admit that Campbell did not once, throughout his entire rant, use the word "eugenics." But what he has described here - the destruction of the "weak," the "unfit," the sick and the elderly, the "handicapped," the "burdens" to society, and, of course, the "criminal elements" - is nothing short of a eugenicist's wet dream. The frequent references to Darwin, I have to say, are a nice touch as well. I would hope that I don’t have to point out here that it will be the all-powerful state that will decide who is a “burden” and who is a “benefit” to society, and who is “unfit,” and what is and what isn’t a “handicap,” and who is too old, injured or diseased to go on, and what crimes are punishable by death. The good news, of course, is that the wealthy will be able to produce as many children as they desire, since the rest of us will likely be forced to barter away the only thing we will have left that will be of any value: our child “entitlement.” Some of you are no doubt wondering what sort of complex formulas will be used to determine who stays and who goes when the Great Die-Off rolls through town. It’s not really as mysterious as it seems. Basically, it will work something like this: you know how in virtually every country on the planet there is a very small percentage of the people – usually around five or six percent – who seem to control the overwhelming majority of that country’s wealth? Those will be the ‘keepers.’ And everyone else? Well, maybe you better sit down, because I have some bad news for you … I should probably point out here that when Campbell speaks of “weeding out criminal elements,” he is really rather coyly referring to people that happen to have more pigment in their skin than he does. We know this because former Education Secretary and ‘Drug Czar’ William Bennett, who apparently gets his ‘talking points’ from the same folks as Colin Campbell, spelled it out pretty clearly on his radio show recently: I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could – if that were your sole purpose – you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. It’s hard to say what is more remarkable about that statement – that someone with a relatively prominent voice in the media can casually discuss genocide without stirring up a firestorm of protest, or that someone from the religious right who is not averse to equating abortion with murder could nevertheless tacitly endorse forced abortion on a grand scale, so long as the program is targeting a ‘criminal race.’ The bleating of Campbell and Bennett, and the actions taken in New Orleans, are not unrelated events. To conclude otherwise would be rather foolish. What we saw in New Orleans was a glimpse into the near future. And it was likely a relatively tame glimpse at that. An overtly military form of rule, ethnic cleansing, population reduction, the restructuring and rebuilding of major population centers, total control of vital resources, and the craven exploitation of disasters, both natural and unnatural – all of this and more is just around the corner. Perhaps you are thinking that this type of future is not for you. You’d really prefer something a little different. That’s unfortunate, because the future holds very few options. Here’s Campbell again, concluding his mini version of Mein Kampf: Another problem is likely to be the residual opposition to population reduction from sentimentalists and/or religious extremists unable to understand that the days of plenty, when criminals and the weak could be cherished at public expense, are over. Acts of violent protest, such as are carried out today by animal rights activists and anti-abortionists, would, in the Darwinian world, attract capital punishment. Population reduction must be single-minded to succeed. So it appears as though those who fight back against the agenda will likely be summarily executed, while those who passively go with the flow stand about a 95% chance of being killed off anyway. With odds like that, I would think that fighting back might be a good idea. By any means available. And sooner rather than later. (Permission is hereby granted for this material to be widely distributed and reposted, in whole or in part, provided that the content is not altered.)
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Code of Conduct
JB Campbell
Posted: 6-01-08
.....If Bush attacks Iran it might
trigger two other things.
The first one would be a declaration of a national emergency
and with it the arrests of political dissidents under
what FEMA calls Operation Garden Plot.
We can all imagine what our lives would become under martial law,
even for those of us who are not immediately arrested.
There would be shortages and deprivations
and great difficulty in movement, mainly due to the high cost of fuel,
but also because of military/police roadblocks.
We would have to justify our driving and even walking around,
the way Palestinians and Iraqis do now,
and to the same people – Judeo-American cops and soldiers....
Weather
Control and the Drug War:
Interview with Bob Fletcher.
He Links U.S.
Intelligence Figures to Drugs,
Arms Shipments and Assassinations.
Deadly
Silences The Hurricane Andrew Cover-up
From NEXUS MAGAZINE
When the Army Owns the Weather
Weather
Warfare A New World Order
weapon could trigger climate change
MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY