Now, the same army corps spokesperson, John Hall, says, “Fourteen contractors were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire.” I’m confused. Latest news results.
Update [2005-9-4 18:54:25 by susanhu]: “Police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs …” (AP)
Update [2005-9-4 18:41:40 by susanhu]:Police kill army contractors: “Police shot eight people carrying guns on a bridge Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said.
An “army corps of engineers [spokesperson] said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal. The contractors were walking across a bridge … to launch barges into Lk Pontchartrain to fix the 17th St Canal, said John Hall, a spokesperson for the corps. …” (News 24/SA)
Earlier: Police shot at armed NOLA residents on a bridge in Iraq NOLA. (AP, MSNBC) Did they fire or point guns at police?
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Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said the shootings took place on the Danziger Bridge, which connects Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.
He said he had no other details.
Is my writing in the title and report a bit perverse? I can’t help but htink that this is not entirely unlike Iraq.
For one thing, we don’t know if those people were doing a thing except carrying weapons.
not perverse.
Your writing perverse? Absolutely not. It’s the whole flipping situation that’s perverse, Susan. You just keep doing what you’re doing. We love you.
imported! We have “refugees”, “insurgents”, “armed contractors” a fallujah style entry for the army. Where is it a civilian search and rescue thing?
don’t be ridiculous- it is EXACTLY like fuckin Iraq
Susan, it serves to remind us that we don’t know if some of the reported “insurgents” killed in Iraq were only carrying weapons — or not — too.
civil war is about to break out in this country — if not civil war, HUGE outbreaks of social unrest are right around the corner, and because Bush is in power martial law is what’s NEXT!
We need to make sure we have communication networks in place (any ham radio operators out there??), as diane has encouraged, that we all have a disaster kit at the ready, and if you have firearms, make sure they’re clean and you have plenty of ammo.
We need rallying points as well — places where we’ll be safe if we have to flee our homes, if we need to hide because we have suddenly become traitors or enemy combatants.
We need to be able to band together at a moment’s notice.
This has NOT been a message from FEMA.
But I’m thinking of sending over a few Finns and a containerload of petrol disguised as vodka. Their job (and I am talking extreme measures) is to pretend to help the President get partying again. He probably needs it right now.
But their real mission is to get close enough to deliver the Molotov Cocktail – a Finnish invention. When the White House is in flames, people will understand.
We’re very good at guerilla warfare. Finns fought 30:1 in hundreds of WWII battles. If you want experts in lo-tech combatting hi-tech, ask the Finns. If you want hi-tech battling hi-tech, ask the Finns. If you want to know how to live by your wits, ask the Finns.
We only send troops for peacemaking these days. But when the Finns have been driving low gas cars for years and using the excellent mass transit here (a great sacrifice as Finns love cars) they will be extremely angry at any attempt to support American profligacy in energy.
They will fight, and it won’t be a pretty sight.
Nothing to forgive there as far as I can see, Sven. Not a thing.
What the Finnish immigration policy like? My husband loves to ski (I KNOW, and we’re stuck in Texas) and has been dying to teach our 6 year old….
….cross-country is the thing here – though there are some slalom mountains up in Lapland. Forest everywhere. Pick your own mushrooms and berries. Find a lake with nobody near. Eat healthy food.
I’ve no idea about our immigration policy. I think you just come. But to become a Finnish citizen, the American Embassy will require you to submit to the humiliation of having your passport destroyed in front of your eyes.
As far as the Finns are concerned, you are just welcome.
After this week, I’m not so sure the destruction of my passport would be anywhere near as humiliating as having to ‘fess up that I’m an American…
I would light the match myself….
Do Finns have much use for a computer person and a Ph.D. in education (instructional technology)??
We do not have the resources to get there are this point of course, but I am beginning the collection of information (actually I started last year…)
I would say your talented family would be greatly appreciated in either Sweden and Finland. In Finland, quite of a lot of University education is conducted in English. And Nokia’s HQ is nicknamed ‘Powerpoint Heaven’ – so there’s plenty of room for instructional technology 😉
Let me know if you want any pointers, but I guess we are all dab hands with a google these days.
I’ll take all of the pointers I can get!!
Google’s great and all, but an informed search is WAY better than starting out cold — THANKS!
flip it any way you want but bring some Norwegians with you when you come to save us here in the US. (The Norwegians raised a whole lot of creative hell when the Nazis arrived in Norway.) If we have both the Finns and Norskies with us that “dreet sac” in the white house will be running for his mommies skirts.
….a Scandinavian expedition bringing Scandinavian values. I can’t think of a better, fairer form of society.
And if people don’t understand, we’ll knock the frikkin bejesus out of them 😉
Just leave the ludefisk at home, ja?
The yoke here iss dat vee tro da lutefisk under the house to chase off the skunks.
I tink Sven should bring enuff for da Vite House. Seems it’s been inhabited by some breed of skunks. And if’n dat don’t vurk vee try sumptin’ else.
(Actually I like lutefisk.)
I eat the stuff, but I can’t be less than a 100 m away while its cooking.
But dry, I could pack a couple of suitcases, no problem. But what we might try is to persuade the new Phillipine WH chef to try out a new recipe for the Top Norwegian Oilmen coming over to fix those broken rigs. Say a couple of large kettlesfull. The WH could be declared a no-go zone for weeks. Excerpt for the Norwegians of course who will have their pick of historical rooms to stay in. The Karl Rove room I hear is decorated in pink slime, with a queen-sized bed padded with more soft blackmail folders than J. Edgar Hoover could ever have dreamed.
The success of your strategy seems more likely at this point than that of our normal political process.
Don’t forget to bring the aquavit!!!
I suppose that might be called cod humour 😉
And we could get all the Norwegian Minnesotans to rise up!! They may be only the slow OS 6.9, but they are stable and unstoppable 😉
I am so glad you mentioned about preparing for emergency and banding together. As I have said before there is a lot of info on village blue, and I hope no one has excuses why they do not get prepared.
In any event you should begin now to prepare for shortages, get extra supply of medicine, have dup. copies of id in your ‘getaway fast’ backpack…one for each member of your family. Include water, food,. a flashlight, water purification tables, first aid, change of clothes, battery radio, plastic sheeting and one of the foil, blankets, . Just think what you would alsolutely need for survival,
And then we need to prepare the Booman Trib. disaster plan.
I am going to do something on this whole subject tomorrow for the fBC….
I like the prepareness idea. At to that the discussion with the family about meeting places in cases of disaster where people can connect up again.
Revolution is a closer reality in this country than many are willing to acknowledge.
I so fear that is true. I have seen potential for several days of widespread urban riots, as in the ’60s. This could be the incident, if these “insurgents” were (or are perceived to be) as innocent as the unarmed man shot in London by short-fused police there after the bombings, the triggering event.
From the experience of the ’60s, and as it is even weirder in this country in some ways now, remember to ALWAYS have identification with you. Not just to vote, if the conservatives have their way. ALWAYS. And work out a code with a friend you can call quickly (before your phone is confiscated:-) that means “in jail, go bail” — in case you cannot reach your friend but can only leave a message. You will not be alone when you make the call, and it can be better for you to not get into explanations that could anger those with you.
Put the friend’s number on speed dial, on every phone.
Of course, if the friend is with you — have lots of friends these days.
devolution – you know – that so-called intelligent design at work killing off all brain cells.
Devolution has been happening for quite a while now, and it’s picked up speed during the Bush regime’s tenure. This is why something like revolution is becoming more and more of a possibility. I don’t mean revolution in the sense of just riots and destruction and civil unrest. I mean revolution as the expression of a people rising up against a corrupt, autocratic and delusional government that’s driving our beloved country into the abyss.
Revolution is the expression of reality seeking to triumph over tyranny.
The White house is battling poverty. Water or weapons, take your pick
.
VIDEO News – Unedited Report from Inside New Orleans:
~~~
The BBC has just reported that FEMA has reported that their contractors oon the way to make repairs were shot Only on one wire service so far.
I’m laughing; I can’t help myself. It’s terrible but I’m laughing, hysterically, of course.
OK. Sobering now. Maybe these are two different instances. Let’s await further details…
OMG: The Army Corps of Engineers is now saying that it’s their contractors who were shot. I’ll see if I can find a link.
Anderson Cooper just announced this on CNN. He cited the AP.
Bloody hell. We’re all Iraqis now.
Via Yahoo!, AP has the headline link as “5 Contractors Killed on New Orleans Bridge”, but the article is sparse and doesn’t have the updated info yet.
Yes, I am reminded of the ’60s phrase (and fine documentary) — “The War at Home.”
My compliments to Booman for use of the term “insurgents” in this case. I have, at the request on tv of some involved, tried to remember to alter use of the term “refugees” to the term “evacuees.”
But these are neither — so I now will try to remember to not use “residents” but use “insurgents.”
Nor ought the term be restricted to New Orleansians. I think I will now introduce myself as an insurgent, wherever I go.
Uh, I mean my compliments to Susan, not Booman.
Not that I don’t have much to compliment Booman about, too, but . . . forget it. Sorry for the booboo, boohoo.
Oh SHIT OH SHIT this was bound to happen
Some very ugly facts:
There are lots of guns still in New Orleans and lots of ammunition.
There are lots of drug addicts still in the city and relatively few fixes.
There are ample supplies of rage, hatred and anger.
Americans tend to shoot first and ask questions later.
Prediction: Things will get much worse.
This also could come from forced evictions, excuse me, “mandatory evacuation.”
Baghdad in Louisiana— wooohoo hoooo wait till it comes home to you HELLO?
!
.
BREAKING ::
Apparently mistaken identity – glad with the forces roaming the streets of the city, we all feel more secure – unless you are an electrician in London or an engineer in NOLA!
Perhaps the “cops” were Blackwater mercenaries???
~~~
.
Contradiction – police were present to protect Army Corps Engineers :: AmericaBlog
Faulty news story – link taken down.
~~~
My favorite example of an early AP story that was way wrong:
I knew a woman, just by e-mail, who lived in Germany and had a fan page for Tommy Lee Jones.
I read a breaking AP story that he’d fallen off a horse at his Texas ranch and was paralyzed.
I e-mailed her right away.
An hour later or so, the report was corrected. He was just fine. (How they ever reported that he was paralyzed, I never learned.)
contractors shot at
by citizens
police responded, contractors safe
That was so succinct – unlike my rambling commentary!
Thanks, but yours actually makes sense!
Wel, that’s good at least.
You and Yaright are cracking me up! Now stop that … no, keep going …
Speaking of cracking people up, the county Democratic chair sent this out today:
Sent to me by an e-mail pal contemplating the New Orleans chaos:
“Looks to me like W ain’t been on top of anything since he fathered
children”
Via CNN: The story is now that gunmen who were a threat to the Army Corps of Engineers contractors(don’t those guys have a handy acronym like everybody else?), were shot. The ACOE contractors were not shot – just those who were a threat to them – apparently.
But if any of those “insurgents” are still out there…
Dr. Senator Frist is at the New Orleans Airport where he’s just finishing up his whole 1/2 day of medical volunteering, but plans on leaving yet this evening.
He just diagnosed the problem as a wee bit of a planning problem, and it took too long for the volunteers and national guard to step up, but everything is going smoothly now.
I think God’s looking for someone to fill in for a heavenly lightning bolt about now.
Okay, once, slowly for the humor / outrage impaired:
this is not a call for assassination.
I’ll leave that sort of thing to Christian leaders like Pat Robertson.
Since Frist wraps himself in the pages of the Bible on the days he isn’t wearing the Flag, it was a poetic way to suggest he experience first hand the consequences of his looting of the American Treasury on the behalf of the greedy and well off — and as a response to his obvious self-serving lies about the real causes of this. Blaming it on the volunteers who were prevented from helping is a very low blow, but hell, what are human lives when there is political posturing to be done.
(Yes, this whole comment/entry seems pointless to me, too. But someone saw fit to list my previous comment as one of the half-dozen things currently wrong with Booman Tribune — ever since he was given a 2 rating by Man Egee… Glad someone has clear priorities. Sheesh.)
Makes one wonder how much of the gunfire blamed for holding back rescue operations came from police weapons.
The New Orleans cops (the ones who didn’t throw down their badges and leave) are stressed literally to the point of suicide. Why the fuck haven’t they been pulled out of there and relieved? Oh, yeah, that would be the same reason that thousands of stranded people haven’t been pulled out of there–George Fucking Bush and his Merry Fucking Band of Fucking Fuckups.
Too bad former DA Jim Garrison isn’t still around–he may have been wearing the tinfoil hat as far as JFK was concerned, but I bet he would have had the stones to draw up some fucking indictments right now for criminally negligent homicide, starting with everyone listed on FEMA’s letterhead and working up from there.
And even though the initial story that the cops shot the contractors was wrong, I still say the cops need to be out of there. No human being can stand that kind of stress for this long.
Anderson Cooper reported that one police station had “Fort Apache” spray painted on the outside and that they still have to lock themselves in at nite to protect themselves.
No, the military need to be out there, escorting contractors — as they do in Iraq.
The cops, many of them exhausted and strained with worry for their families, need to be relieved. They have been holding on for a week now. That is a reason outside troops are brought in, less burdened by worry about their own families and homes than the locals. (And that is a reason why some are attacked as having “abandoned” their jobs, I suspect — not that they should, but should they abandon their families? Not a situation I want ever to be in. . . .)
Here’s an article about that stress:
Edwin Compass, the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, told the New York Times most of his officers were staying at their posts, but said morale was ‘not very good.’
He said some officers told their superiors they were leaving, others worked for a while and then stopped showing up, while others never made it in after Monday`s storm.
Ever since, many of the force`s 1,500 members have had to work around the clock, trying to cope with flooding, a crush of refugees, looters, snipers and corpses littering the streets.
‘If I put you out on the street and made you get into gun battles all day with no place to urinate and no place to defecate, I don`t think you would be too happy either,’ Compass said.
Fire department officials said they weren`t aware of any firefighters who had quit.
What the Times story left out is that the New Orleans police department enjoyed a less than spotless reputation long before Katrina arrived on the scene.
Read this for example:
…There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the NO Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months…
and these:
http://www.freep.com/news/nw/neworleans22e_20050822.htm
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006006.html
on the humiliation of many black NO residents forced to sit at roadsides watching buses go by while surrounded by predominantly white police officers with automatic weapons who rarely gave any information. The reporter using typical British understatement said the people were noticeably angered by this treatment.
OK. I’m getting confused. The one aspect of each of these versions seems to be five people dead. The ACOE says it’s their contractors. The NOPD says it was people firing ON the contractors; the contractors are fine. Hmmm… fast coverup? How did the ACOE get it wrong? Wouldn’t they know if it was their people getting killed? Me thinks there’s a bit of a frenzy going on at that bridge at the moment, changing the clothes of corpses and re-allocating guns. And if the ACOE “contractors” were Blackwater guys how exactly would you tell them apart from roving thugs? O dear, let’s await further corrections and revisions and try to pick the one most likely to be true…
You know when you bring in fresh white National Guard soldier or regular Army who have been trained to kill and are all worked up about “insurgents” This is what happens.
I am willing to bet:
1). the firing on contractors is a lie to cover up trigger happy soldiers filled with misinformation about black people. Confusing them with Arabs.
2) The people killed are innocent of any crime. What are gunman doing on a bridge? Isn’t that a typical Iraq story? An ambush by insurgents on a bridge. Wern’t the conftractors in Fallujah hung on a bridge and killed on a bridge or near a bridge.
Don’t you know? They were criminals, I mean contractors, I mean a sniper, a BAND of criminals. Whatever. Mission accomplished. Now, where were we? The levees were breached on Tuesday. No one could have foreseen such a thing. This disaster response is the same as all disaster responses. None of this is FEMA’s responsibility. Things are going fine.
Where’s Bahgdad Bob when we need him? He was much better at this. He’d be standing right there — there was no hurricane! The city of New Orleans was never a real city — it was three blocks and a gas station. The Gulf Coast beach has always been on the great shores of Baton Rouge…
well hell yeah– they were guilty of ‘ walking while black.’ GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr
IZZY a scream or what?! LOVE YOU!
This whole story seems to be pretty unclear thus far, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out to be true that “Blackwater mercenaries” were involved in the shooting.
Well blackwater USA is headquartered not far away from where I live- and I can say they are a bunch of idiot cowboy wannabbees
It’s like a sleeve patch- I’m an idiot
I am just wondering if like using the word, “refugees” we should even be using the word “insurgents”. Absolutely no offense is meant here or disrespect for anyone. I just hate the thought of “them” latching on to the word “insurgents” .Thugs, criminal element, crazed drug addicts looking for a fix. Am i wrong? I will shut up if you all tell me I am wrong. Just a little paranoid these days. I value all opinions, especially SusanHu! And Susan thank you for doing an over the top superb job of keeping us informed and “linked” to all as it happens. You are an amazing woman. Do you ever sleep?
I felt a lot of unease about using the term insurgent … but it was meant as SATIRE ..
it was an expression of my bitterness, my snark, my grief, my HOSTILITY, my pain, my overwhelming sense of helplessness — just as I have felt for the people of Iraq only now am also feeling for the people of the Gulf.
I agree that it could be a dangerous term to use. I think, however, we can assume that the MSM won’t be lookin’ for news report titles from little ol’ me, and so my snark is safe here.
If it in ANY way becomes a problem, I’ll change the title in a heartbeat without any hesitation.
And thanks for your kind words. I am doin’ fine .. I will be watching a bunch of TV soon — and it won’t be the news.
Last night, I watched a rerun of Entourage and Rome just to get away from all of this.
I completely understand where you are coming from. Yes, we all need to curl up infront of some mindless tv or with a good book. My head just can’t handle anymore today. I am sure you know that I in no way meant to offend you.
Susanhu,
I’ve been hoping all day to find and open thread to post a great photo of some baby raccoons who survived Hurricane Katrina, (the Florida edition). I didn’t want to arbitrarily insert the photo into the middle of a dark thread on catastrophe for fear the impact would be diminished.
Hopefully a non-disaster-related open thread will magically appear soon so I can share this picture and the short story that goes with it.
off-topic a bit but are you fucking kidding me? "Dr. Phil" is on Larry King, live from the Astrodome. So FEMA won’t let the Red Cross into New Orleans, but they let Dr. Phil into the Astrodome? That is profoundly disrespectful of the people there–from tragedy to travesty.
oh hell this is all they need now…dr phil!!!!!!!!!! can you imagine it with him in there trying to make ppl feel better…and then comes across like an idiot himself ..I do not like him in the first damn place.<<<puke>>>>>
Susan, all that this administration has done since day 1 has been confusing to me. There has not been one day since they stole the office that I have understood anything they have done. So do not feel alone when you say you are confused. I think they want it like this so we can not think clearly, let alone understand anything.