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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of September, 2005.
Viewing Disaster in New Orleans NEWS articles 1 through 75 of 123.
- Hurricane Katrina should be a wake up call for President Bush on the need for urgent US action to tackle climate change, Friends of the Earth said today. The hurricane is one of the worst natural disasters America has ever faced and is a stark reminder of what scientists expect to happen as a result of human induced climate change. - Damage estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars. At least one million people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are without electrical power, and officials say it may take weeks to fully restore service to all affected regions. Clean drinking water is scarce, and the flood waters covering city streets are contaminated with gas from ruptured gas lines, chemicals and human waste, raising a serious danger of infectious disease. - Rather, with a smirk on his face, he allowed that “the days seem awfully dark for those affected”—a phrase that could only have been uttered in these terrible circumstances by someone who did not count himself among those unfortunates. This from the President of the United States! - Bring the National Guard home now, where they're needed. - ...it is not simply the fact the neocons hijacked the National Guard and sent them packing to Iraq. In 1995, the Army Corps of Engineers began a project to shore up the New Orleans levees. But in 2003, Bush grabbed the money from that project to pay for his invasion and occupation - Army Corps levee project manager criticizes Bush administration for the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood control funding in New Orleans history.
- Unidentified Hurricane Looters in New Orleans-Crime: Looting food, diapers, clothes, consumer items; Neil Bush-Crime: Looted US taxpayers of at least $1.6 billion as head of the Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan Association in 1988 during the S&L meltdown - One of the premiere Black cities in the nation faces catastrophe. There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans will one day rise again from its below sea level foundations. The question is, will the new New Orleans remain the two-thirds Black city it was before the levees crumbled? - Bush was in sunny San Diego, having just left sunny El Mirage, Arizona. - This nation has not faced an economic crisis like the one that Katrina will spark in the days and months ahead. But that is one of the reasons Katrina was guided along the path that we all watched. - Of course we all know just what drives the media engines: disaster, sensationalism, and people acting badly, which boosts the rating and profitability sectors of their respective bottom lines. Never mind finding out—asking the hard questions—like why in a city that is mostly below sea level there were no plans for evacuation of all its residents? - A French news agency has yanked a photograph surrounding the New Orleans hurricane that raised questions of racism - The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. - Sean Hannity is closely linked to Karl Rove's office. He gets talking points from that office daily if not hourly.
- The real criminals are sitting in positions of authority: the president, the director of FEMA, and the hundreds of congresspersons cutting their excessive vacations short to pat one another on the back as they pass emergency funding provisions for the hardly-operative relief efforts centered in Louisiana and Mississippi.
- Bill O'Reilly simply wanted the police and National Guard to shoot down "looters," that is to say those attempting to survive by taking food and drink from stores, thus sending the ruling corporate elite's message: "law and order" (i.e., protecting corporate property and banks) is more important than human life, especially expendable African-American human life, for what the robber baron Jay Gould said a hundred years ago still applies today: "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." - Bush is relaxing in Crawford, Condi is going to a Broadway show and Dick Cheney is probably fly fishing -- all AFTER the hurricane struck.
- ...instead of helping people left desperate in the wake of Katrina's wrath, the Blackhawk's actually were slated to transport a CNN news crew to take video shots of those people. - They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. - "George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said from New York during the show aired live on the East Coast on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and Pax, just before cameras cut away to comedian Chris Tucker. - "This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control." - The firms that received the contract are big GOP contributors - The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better. - - by Michael Parenti - The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market. - Star duo caught in crossfire between police and gunmen - "Stop the car right now," reporter told. "Back up, or I'll shoot" - What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking, standing there next to President Bush and providing verbal cover for the administration's ludicrous claims that the problems plaguing New Orleans were unforeseeable? - ...we now have a new unconfirmed report that the culprit may be the Pentagon itself.
- Stay fixated, if you wish, on the thieves and desperate families who are so much easier to catch on camera than comptrollers electronically stealing your cash. It is not pleasant to see anyone loot a store. But ExxonMobil and big oil are looting the nation, and no one declaring martial law on them. - While the Federal government has participated in and orchestrated massive international airlifts, such as the Berlin airlift during the Cold War, apparently persons of African descent do not need rescue. Heck, park rangers in my home state of Massachusetts would air-drop bales of hay to starving deer in the snow-covered winter.
- If only New Orleans had a higher population of upper class pretty thin white girls, rather than poor overweight black ones, the people might have been spared the hideous fate that Uncle Sam has dealt them. - Readers should also be aware that the Pentagon's technology blockade strategy extends to the Internet. Web sites like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos have a lot of explaining to do when they censor critical information during a national emergency. - ALLEGATIONS SURFACE THAT U.S. & RUSSIA HAVE TECHNOLOGY TO MANAGE HURRICANES - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said on Saturday. - On Thursday, there was a report on the net Delta Force had just dropped into New Orleans. This was at about the same time this website noticed a couple helicopters full of unidentified troops being dropped off the helipad at the Superdome. If the "Delta Force" story is true (and even Army Times says forces are engaging in combat in New Orleans), or another small special ops force were dropped into New Orleans, they would be well placed, for provacateuring more than anything else - Last night he told a reporter for the Associated Press: "If the CIA slips me something and next week you don't see me, you'll all know what happened."
- Is there anyone who thinks a little 10 year old boy hungry and crying IS A SECURITY RISK? - There has been all this bluster about security but when nature strikes, the president goes partying and playing golf – after the levees were already giving in to the water from Lake Pontchartrain. The reality of the criminal neglect doesn’t seem to seep through to the consciousness of anyone who is in a position of leadership. - For days, and days, and days, the expendable poor of New Orleans have been begging for someone, anyone, to come. Be careful what you wish for. It’s not just, finally, Bush and some troops who are ambling into town. Here come the mercenaries. - thought you might like an inside view - Perhaps this tragedy will mark a turn in values and priorities for the nation’s news reporters. Perhaps. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. - Out of all the stories of the tragic deaths of New Orleans...there are some unconfirmed reports of explosives being used to blow levees - Bill "Bubba" Clinton is one sick human specimen. - If You have Nothing, You are Nothing
- "And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." - Mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler" - Special report on the elite police state takeover - In a breathtaking display of racism, some white British students who were trapped in the hell of the city’s Superdome stadium, being used for refugees, were removed to a safer place in a basketball arena by a white policeman who one student described as having “broken all the rules” to help them. - "They were hanging out of the windows and trying to get water. Some of the inmates were so desperate for water that they tied their t-shirts together and lowered a boot into the diseased water that they had just relieved themselves into." - New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre.
- FEMA Agency draws ire of frustrated volunteers and donors for stopping relief efforts.
- Truth be told, the US has been sinking in a toxic stew of Empire and Inequality for quite some time. - - by Michael Ruppert - Intelligent critics from both left and right have for years painstakingly documented FEMA’s paramount leadership role in Continuity of Government (COG) operations and planning. Better described, COG is what will happen if Congress is nuked, if a major catastrophe makes "normal" government operations impossible, or if there is major civil unrest (or total economic collapse). Much of FEMA’s infrastructure is really dedicated to this task and not to disaster relief. - Reagan, like George W. Bush after him, failed to understand that when people come together into community, and then into nationhood, that they organize themselves to protect themselves from predators, both human and corporate, both domestic and foreign. This form of organization is called government. But the Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations. - Oil prices at 100 usd a barrel are no longer an unthinkable prospect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Asian demand is part of the reason, analysts said.
- The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to send 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims. - Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep.
- As Katrina wiped out New Orleans' communications infrastructure, panicky rumors of violence in evacuation centers quickly filled the airwaves. The only problem--few of the reports were true. - by John Perkins - It is time, my fellow Americans, to listen to the words of our Founding Fathers. Profiteering without representation must go. The destruction of our world, for the short-term benefit of a new type of royalty, is unacceptable. - Campaign pros get top jobs - "The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically." - FEMA is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. It has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress. - The mass media made an abrupt turn, adapting and shaping the images of the Administration’s catastrophe. In seven days the magic of the media transformed the Bush team from incompetent and ignorant leaders to decisive and caring officials. At the same time the desperate, dying and furious were converted into an unruly, crime-ridden, ungrateful and chaotic mob. The political message was clear: Repression and militarization were priority conditions for survival and humanitarian aid. The city had to be under de facto martial law before it could be saved. Viet Nam and Falluja come to mind.
- "I don't own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife." - Could the levees in New Orleans have been INTENTIONALLY blown out in order to save sections of the city deemed to be more important?
- Report follows controversy over Brown’s qualifications, agency’s response - The Dallas meeting focused on rebuilding and rezoning New Orleans without the "criminal element," a code word for the city's poor African American community. - US President George W Bush issued an executive order on Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage. - No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said. - Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as "Mr. Cheney."
- ...in 1974, within 24 hours notice, the American government sent thousands of brand new military assets, tanks, planes, rockets, artillery, with all the ammunition required, to aid Israel against Egypt. Therefore, the US does have a proven track record for mobilising major logistical programmes, even to help a nation across thousands of miles away, in the relatively less capable US, 30 years ago, but it took five days to help the poor people in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.Palestinians. - In New Orleans food aid is provided only to those who leave the city and in the Astrodome US military recruiters are attempting to recruit young men and women without too many alternatives into their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. - Once again, the same massive corporations that have screwed up the Iraq reconstruction, screwed up numerous US projects, and been fined for overcharges and wage and safety violations, have been rewarded by the Bush Administration. - Just last month, the Washington Post published an article revealing that the US military’s Northern Command had developed a series of "war plans" for the military "to take charge" in domestic crises. While apparently these plans involved a response to supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out. - Ruptured New Orleans Levee had help failing - ...mercenaries from Blackwater USA are rumbling through the New Orleans streets, armed to the teeth and in full battle gear.
Pages for September, 2005
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