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on the people of Iraq and upon the finest people of this nation is
HORRENDOUS.
Unfortunately in this nation of “freedom” and democracy, pay back time is in Election 2006 and 2008.
I hope some of the scum have left at their own free will. I have no hope for the people’s representation in Congress to stand firm. In 2006 there must be clean-up time among Republicans and Democrats alike, for any meaning to the word
ACCOUNTABILITY!
Bush takes the fight to his enemy – the Americans should march on Washington with Cindy Sheehan and we’ll take the fight to the nation’s worst enemy – this corrupt and pathetic administration from Texas. The US deserves better, Texas deserves better.
US Relieve Aid Arrives in New Orleans :: SWAT TEAMS!
More to follow below the fold » »
Troops deployed in anarchic New Orleans with SHOOT TO KILL orders
NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) Sept. 2, 2005 — New Orleans was primed for all-out combat, as Iraq-tested troops with shoot-to-kill orders moved into the hurricane-devasted city to quell rioters and looters. The deployment of 300 members of the Arkansas National Guard came ahead of a tour of the affected region by President George W. Bush, who vowed “zero tolerance” for the armed gangs terrorising the flooded city.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said the guardsmen had been authorized to open fire on “hoodlums” profiteering from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which is believed to have left thousands dead. “These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets,” Blanco said. “They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded.
The body of a victim of Hurricane Katrina floats in floodwaters in New Orleans. Iraq-tested US troops with shoot-to-kill orders were deployed in New Orleans to restore law and order after days of chaos and looting in the hurricane-devastated city. AFP/James Nielsen
While the troops are parading with their M16 – perhaps they can offer some bottled water to the people?
Blanco also angrily demanded an immediate apology, after House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert questioned whether flood-wracked New Orleans should be rebuilt. “I demand an immediate apology: to kick us when we are down, to destroy hope, is absolutely unthinkable.”
Around 200 frightened Japanese, European and American tourists, who had been thrown out of their hotel on Thursday morning, told how police fired over their heads as they attempted to get to buses to take them to safety.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent plea for help for up to 20,000 refugees stuck in the convention center which he said was “unsanitary and unsafe” and running out of supplies. “This is a desperate SOS,” Nagin said in a statement released through CNN television.
Blanco said up to 300,000 survivors may still be stuck in disaster areas in the state and at least 40,000 uniformed troops were needed for New Orleans alone.
Leadership in chaos – read the devastating stories of New Orleans residents left to die.
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City officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response following Hurricane Katrina.
“They don’t have a clue what’s going on down there,” Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.
“They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn — excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.”
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… with snipers on rooftop for protection against sporadic arms fire targeted at the police.
Some police districts, up to 60% of force has left!
Reported by Jim Spellman of CNN, who is on the scene at police HQ in New Orleans French Quarter.
No response to emergency calls for the sick, injured or dying. There is hardly any communication possible, just some walkie talkies are operating.
Shame FEMA : shame DHS : shame Bush | Cheney administration!
Where have all the $$$ billions of US taxpayers gone?
Where are the basic services for the people starving and dying!
Where is the call on UN logistic support, honed for these emergency relief aid operations – heh JB!
Americans, now your eyes have been opened, don’t you dare to forget the Katrina Disaster of 2005. I’m hopeful the MSM have turned a knob and will do their task for the mass of viewers and help democracy oust this wretched regime of secrecy, lies and deceit.
I don’t often rant, I like to add some positive elements, but the circumstances of leaving thy brother and sister, children and elderly, the poor and helpless to die in such misery is just beyond believe and humanity.
Thanks to all bloggers for their search of the true story and not listening to the official bs qualified as dung coming out of this White House. Gheez what a sacrifice, cut his vacation of five weeks short two days, or it won’t look too good with the hurricane aftermath of New Orleans.
Bush has learned one lesson, better do a fly by and not perform a landing among his military cheerleaders on the ground in an Army camp of Louisiana or Mississippi. When will the nation’s military wise up to this miserable, worthless being. What a piece of shit this SC has installed, Justice O’Connor included.
Bush, Cheney, Rice & Rumsfeld :: your time has run out – best arrange your escape from Washington, to pre-empt the people’s Orange Revolt and regime change.
Support Cindy Sheehan – the best defense and Homeland Security policy – is to take the fight to Washington.
In further developments, I will try to focus in this diary on International Support and offering of AID to the poorest and society’s unfortunate, left to die in New Orleans :: Anno 2005 in the USA.
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To come in contact with this Repugnant administration, either go get yourself some $1,000 shoes or learn to ride a bike!
but never go out camping!
Cindy Sheehan
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Convention Center New Orleans
A man holds his baby as he shows a dead body outside the New Orleans Convention Center. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina, huddled in sweltering squalor and terrorized by armed gangs, expressed outrage at the authorities' failure to stem rising chaos.AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson
Districts and communities with least damage, get owners and residents back in, to start rebuilding their lives and livelyhood. Try to limit the economic damage caused by Katrina and Bush.
Replace all ignorent and unfit leaders of the city, state and federal organizations that have failed so miserably.
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Due to 9/11, all major cities and states should have ready a Disaster Scenario and contingency planning for command structures, communications, relief and security effort. All indications are, none of these were present in one of the major Gulf coast cities: New Orleans and nearby home of an essential US port and harbor with oil terminals: Gulfport Mississippi.
Who needs terrorists, when the US cities in case of a natural phenomena, cannot hold up its own breaches. In addition, the absence of thousands of NG men and women has made a minor disaster into a devastating, all encompassing disorder of National consequence and economic disruption. Once again: on the Republican watch of Bush | Cheney and its lack of leadership and unity in American society. A nation divided is a nation heading for one failure to the next. Read the following report from CNN news desk today, and watch the video —
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — A day after Hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow to the Big Easy, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday night blasted what he called a lack of coordination in relief efforts for setting behind the city’s recovery.
“There is way too many fricking … cooks in the kitchen,” Nagin said in a phone interview with WAPT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, fuming over what he said were scuttled plans to plug a 200-yard breach near the 17th Street Canal, allowing Lake Pontchartrain to spill into the central business district.
An earlier breach occurred along the Industrial Canal in the city’s Lower 9th Ward. Watch the video featuring Nagin’s complaints about delayed sandbagging — 0:56
A satellite image taken on August 31 shows the city of New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katarina. Submerged streets are seen as dark areas towards the top of the picture. Survivors were evacuating the shattered city on September 1 as authorities confronted growing lawlessness and desperation.Digital Globe/Reuters
The National Weather Service reported a breach along the Industrial Canal levee at Tennessee Street, in southeast New Orleans, on Monday. Local reports later said the levee was overtopped, not breached, but the Corps of Engineers reported it Tuesday afternoon as having been breached.
But Nagin said a repair attempt was supposed to have been made Tuesday. According to the mayor, Black Hawk helicopters were scheduled to pick up and drop massive 3,000-pound sandbags in the 17th Street Canal breach, but were diverted on rescue missions.
Nagin said neglecting to fix the problem has set the city behind by at least a month. “I had laid out like an eight-week to ten-week timeline where we could get the city back in semblance of order. It’s probably been pushed back another four weeks as a result of this.”
“That four weeks is going to stop all commerce in the city of New Orleans. It also impacts the nation, because no domestic oil production will happen in southeast Louisiana.” Nagin expects relief efforts in the city to improve as New Orleans, the National Guard and FEMA combine their command centers for better communication, follow up and accountability.
Law of the Jungle in Convention Center NO
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MADRID, Spain Sept. 1, 2005 — A vacationing MP from Spanish parliament, succeeded to get a phone call out to a friend in Spain. CCNi reported the information thru this friend, the law of the jungle rules in the convention center and immediate surroundings. There is complete lack of presence of any authority. The Spanish MP is trying to get the attention of the Spanish government in an attempt to be evacuated out of a desolate and life endangering situation.
FEMA director Michael Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.~~~
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Why Europe Hasn’t Jumped to Help Katrina’s Victims
Virtually overnight, fun-loving New Orleans transformed from America’s playground into a waterlogged wasteland. Photos of houses and highways underwater and reports of dead bodies floating in swampy debris and frightened refugees huddling for cover have left us mute. Hurricane Katrina turned out to be at least as violent as expected and will likely turn out to be among the biggest hurricanes of all time.
Yet, in Europe, the Web sites of major aid organizations — including international branches of the Red Cross in Germany, France, England etc. — don’t even mention its existence.
Katrina has devastated much of Mobile, Alabama.Unlike underdeveloped Third World nations, America has a well-honed and highly organized system of emergency aid distribution. So, when disaster hits, the nation — and even individual states — can readily help themselves. “If the American Red Cross asks us for help, we will be there directly,” said Margitta Zimmermann, German Red Cross spokesperson. “But so far, there haven’t been any calls for our services.”
Kristina Decker, from Germany’s Christian aid group Caritas, concurred, saying help from Germany might even cause more harm than good. “America has a strong army and are well equipped for disaster relief,” she said.
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As efforts continued yesterday to rush aid to New Orleans, questions were being raised whether the administration of President George W. Bush had weakened efforts to prepare for a disaster that had long been predicted.
The administration and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives pushed this year for the largest ever cut to funding for hurricane protection and flood control in Louisiana, a stance that is likely to draw fresh criticism after the catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.
NASA Images
While the administration has continued to pour funds into warding off future terrorist attacks, the White House’s budget proposal for the 2006 fiscal year, called for a $71.2m (€39bn, £57bn) reduction in federal funding for hurricane, and flood prevention projects in the New Orleans district, the largest such cut ever proposed.
In addition, the administration wanted to shelve a study aimed at determining ways to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane, one notch above the storm that hit the Gulf Coast last week.
The Army Corps of Engineers had already complained the Mississippi delta was being neglected by this administration, and the necessary renovation was stalled.
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PLANS FOR EMERGENCY NOT IN PLACE
As U.S. military engineers struggled to shore up breached levees, experts in the Netherlands expressed surprise that New Orleans’ flood systems failed to restrain the raging waters.
With half of the country’s population of 16 million living below sea level, the Netherlands prepared for a “perfect storm” soon after floods in 1953 killed 2,000 people. The nation installed massive hydraulic sea walls.
“I don’t want to sound overly critical, but it’s hard to imagine that the damage caused by Katrina could happen in a Western country,” said Ted Sluijter, spokesman for the park where the sea walls are exhibited. “It seemed like plans for protection and evacuation weren’t really in place, and once it happened, the coordination was on loose hinges.”
See my earlier comment! ◊ by Oui
[…]
GLOBAL WARMING
NASA – Hurricane Center
The sympathy was muted in some corners by a sense that the United States reaped what it sowed, since the country is seen as the main contributor to global warming.
Joern Ehlers, a spokesman for World Wildlife Fund Germany, said global warming had increased the intensity of hurricanes. “The Americans have a big impact on the greenhouse effect,” Ehlers said. (Related story: Scientists: Global warming pumps up storms)
But Harlan L. Watson, the U.S. envoy for negotiations on climate change, denied any link between global warming and the strength of storms. “Our scientists are telling us right now that there’s not a linkage,” he said in Geneva. “I’ll rely on their information.”
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How did they manage to find a SWAT team that is entirely white?!
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Offers from the International community and the United Nations, have been brushed aside by the ‘leaders’ of the Unites States.
From correspondents at the UN
NEW YORK UN HQ Sept. 02, 2005 — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged the world to offer assistance to the US after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which he described as a “huge disaster”. “The damage is far worse than any of us imagined at first,” Mr Annan said in a statement released by his office.
“The American people, who have always been the most generous in responding to disasters in other parts of the world, have now themselves suffered a grievous blow. “I know that I speak for the whole world in offering them my heartfelt sympathy, and any assistance that the UN can give,” SG Annan added.
In Geneva, a UN spokeswoman said UN disaster assessment and co-ordination teams specialised in natural disasters had been placed on alert in a number of countries, and were ready to intervene in the hurricane-hit areas if requested by Washington.
Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNCHA): “A worldwide alert has been sent to all national teams for natural disaster coordination and evaluation”. The six- to eight-man specialist teams comprise disaster experts – from doctors to geologists – with those closest to the US are able to deploy within six hours.
The various UN agencies – including the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the World Food Program and refugee agency UNHCR – were meeting in New York to put together an offer of logistical support for the US, Ms Byrs said.
UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland earlier wrote to US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton to offer help in the wake of Hurricane Katrin.
This is a code of conduct befitting any previous totalitarian regime in history, holding up a pose to fool the world and its own citizens.
See Soviet Union – Communist China – North Korea – Cuba – Zimbabwe.
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First days sitting on his hands, advocating to his surroundings, the US would coordinate the world relief effort, no need for the UN to kick in. A one man disaster, illegally occupying the Oval office with his cronies.
Tsunami Relief Effort
How the US government and the US press kicked Jan Egeland around for the slightest criticism of the world’s leading and richest nations, holding back in providing funds for the UN relief efforts.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans — and the delay helping stranded people get out or even get water and food — is raising doubts that U.S. cities may be ill-prepared to cope with a potentially worse disaster: a major attack.
Four years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the storm disaster marked the first time the federal government has invoked its post-September 11 response plan aimed at enhancing Washington’s ability to deal with national incidents.
But as Americans reeled at images of death and desperation among the city’s refugees, experts on domestic security said a nuclear or biological attack on a big U.S. city could cause greater mayhem, and unlike the storm, come without warning.
<click pics to enlarge>
Left Behind Under Bush’s Watch :: 2001 – 2005
It’s Worse Than 9/11, Bush Says
People left to die on streets - Snipers shoot at hospitals - Evacuees raped, beaten - City issues 'desperate SOS'The New Orleans disaster is already viewed as an illustration of what can go wrong in an American city under siege. “In many ways, this is a test of our national capacity,” said James Carafano, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “If we can’t do this 24-7-365, we aren’t doing our job for preparedness.”
New Orleans’ emergency responders were plagued by communications trouble, that raised comparisons with problems faced by the police and firefighters, who responded to the 2001 attack on New York’s World Trade Center.
When Katrina roared ashore, it downed transmission towers needed to maintain radio and cellular telephone contact between emergency crews. Many have had to get by with walkie-talkies.
“What were they thinking? You know a hurricane’s going to knock down cell phone towers,” said Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University.
This disaster is a sad result of years of neglect. To continue the War in Iraq, the Bush administration had reduced the funds for upkeep of the leevees in New Orleans and to do the necessary planning for hurricane flooding.
The Bush presidency is in a crisis, even his speech to the nation lacked a sense power. Based on wishful thinking no administration can establish policies.
I do like their choice of the front page photo! Must be Dutch bloodline – Oui
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While the administration has continued to pour funds into warding off future terrorist attacks, the White House’s budget proposal for the 2006 fiscal year, called for a $71.2m (€39bn, £57bn) reduction in federal funding for hurricane, and flood prevention projects in the New Orleans district, the largest such cut ever proposed.
In addition, the administration wanted to shelve a study aimed at determining ways to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane, one notch above the storm that hit the Gulf Coast last week.
The Army Corps of Engineers had already complained the Mississippi delta was being neglected by this administration, and the necessary renovation was stalled.
…
Beautiful diaries as always, (((Oui)))). And President Nero still claims no one knew about the levees. Everything that comes out of his mouth is such a pantload.
I’ve heard that so many countries have offered help but America has yet to take them up and in some cases downright declined. Any links to this?
And I gotta hand it to the entire world for not shoving this down the throats of our government… America has it’s head up their collective asses about the environment and global warming… we are the main polluters of this planet.
I wish each and every American could live abroad one year. Just one year. Then they’d maybe see that there is so much we have to change in our gluttony and disposable ways.