WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — Thousands of applicants for federal emergency relief money after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita used duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers or bogus addresses, suggesting that the $2.3 billion program was a victim of extensive fraud, a Congressional auditor will report Monday.

The examination of the so-called Expedited Assistance program determined that the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to take even the most basic steps to confirm the identifies of about 1.4 million people who sought expedited cash assistance, leaving the program vulnerable to the “significant fraud and abuse,” the Government Accountability Office intends to report.

The auditors did not try to estimate the total dollar amount of fraudulent claims. But the report says that FEMA itself had found that 900,000 of the 2.5 million applications for all forms of individual assistance were “potential duplicates.”

Even when FEMA’s automated computer system picked out what might be fraudulent applications, payments were at times still sent, says the advance testimony of Gregory D. Kutz, the managing director of the G.A.O.’s forensic audits unit.

The controls were so lax that auditors were able to secure their own $2,000 relief check by using “falsified identifies, bogus addresses and fabricated disaster stories,” and then simply waiting for the money to arrive in the mail, says the report for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
nytimes.com

The suggestion here is that a bunch of bad black people are scamming, but I’ll bet there is much more to this story than a bunch of duplicate $2000 checks.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The first Mardi Gras parade since Hurricane Katrina marched through the French Quarter pulling carts with blue tarps, effigies of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco and floats with themes such as “Give Me That Mold Time Religion.”

The Krewe du Vieux lampooned Katrina and public officials blamed for the bungled response to the catastrophe in their parade Saturday themed “C’est Levee,” a play on the French phrase meaning “that’s life.”

Mardi Gras has long been an occasion for the city to laugh at tragedy and aim barbs at authorities. Given all the pain New Orleans has suffered in the past year, the irreverence should reach new heights this season.

“It is hard living here now. We need to have our opportunity to release,” said organizer Keith Twitchell. “If you don’t laugh, you’re dead. There’s a lot to cry about here.”

One display asked France to buy Louisiana back, suggesting the state might get better treatment than it has from the American government. Another float was themed “Fridge Over Troubled Water.” In place of a parade map, the Krewe du Vieux had a “projected path” adorned with a swirly hurricane symbol.

Still, in the midst of revelry and satire, even the city known as the Big Easy has a serious side.

The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, a 90-year-old historically black group that holds one of the city’s most beloved parades, held a service and lit 10 candles in honor of club members who have died since the storm. An eleventh was lit to honor the hundreds of people killed by Katrina.

Mardi Gras parades typically run on weekends leading up to and on Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 28 this year, almost exactly six months after the Aug. 29 storm. The parades are put on by private clubs across the city; Krewe du Vieux is a smaller French Quarter parade that runs in advance of the major parades.

Masked riders in the parades have long used the opportunity to mock the ruling class and government officials, said Mardi Gras expert Arthur Hardy. The tradition goes back to 1873, when the Mistick Krewe of Comus themed its parade “The Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of the Species” and portrayed Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as a tobacco grub.

Hardy said the satire serves as a coping mechanism.

“It’s almost like you laugh to keep from crying. It’s a chance to say ‘This can’t keep us down,”’ he said.

Even groups that are typically less tongue-in-cheek are taking swipes at the storm and politicians this year.

The Krewe of Carrollton, which holds its parade on Feb. 19, chose the theme “Blue Roof Blues” – a reference to the tarps protecting damaged and leaky roofs. The Krewe of Mid-City will use blue tarps along the bottom of its floats – in part out of necessity because of flooding at its warehouse.

The Mid-City parade, scheduled for Feb. 26, will have floats called “New Orleans Culture” – that’s culture as in mold – and “I drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was gone,” a bitter twist on the line from Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
guardian.co.uk

This goes a lot deeper than some release mechanism. The roots of Carnival and Mardi Gras are in African ‘spirituality’, and point to its particular strength as a tradition that is responsive to lived reality. There is a reason that Haitian ‘voudou’ (as one example) is indestructible:it is in many aspects an ongoing conversation with and about Haiti’s brutal history, and provides not simply a mechanism for coping with tragedy,but is a taproot that links people in this hemisphere back to the most ancient truths. ‘Religion’ in its realest sense.

…Naomi gives a smile as she recounts how she found another church which took her in and sent her to Kinshasa. She has ended up in a hostel run by War Child. She is lucky. Tens of thousands of children live in the cemeteries, markets and streets of Kinshasa feeding on rubbish, begging and stealing. Most are there because of witchcraft accusations – mostly from their own families. The phenomenon is spreading, with recent cases of child abuse motivated by the belief that the child is possessed by evil spirits, showing up in London, Paris and Amsterdam.

I found Nelphy Lelu, a lanky 14-year-old, in another Kinshasa hostel. He has British citizenship and until recently he went to New Rush Hall School in Hainault, north-east London, and speaks with a soft London accent. He dreamt a man in black was trying to kill him and told his mother, who took him to a church in Tottenham, where the pastor declared him to be a witch. His mother beat him and he was taken into care before his mother brought him to Kinshasa. There he was sent to his grandmother, where the beatings continued.

As Congolese society has disintegrated, undermined by the country’s rulers and ravaged by Aids and poverty, the family has collapsed. Children have been the main victims, often accused of witchcraft when families suffer misfortunes.
guardian.co.uk

This article fails to mention that this witchcraft scare originated in evangelical churches in Congo. Just another of the countless rotten fruits of the European, and mainly British (until recently) “Christianizing mission.” Churches demonize children and then take them in to ‘save’ them. Some sick sh**.

“We are being challenged by Islam these years – globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy. We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction”.
– Queen Margrethe II of
Denmark, 15 April 2005

Tolerance is a falsehood often pronounced with difficulty in all of Western societies. Small countries such as Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and Sweden are leading the pack in the war on Muslims at home, and may be on the road to encouraging a new Holocaust against humanity.

While these countries are part of the U.S.-led coalition, which is responsible for the mass murder of Iraqis, they have also introduced discriminate and draconian immigration laws which are specifically directed against Muslims fleeing war and economic hardship. The pretexts are always the phantom of the “War on Terror”.

Historically, Muslims have been at the receiving end of Western-Christian violence for centuries. Following the 9/11 attack on the USA, Western Europe joined the U.S. in its anti-Muslim crusade: “We are all Americans now” united against Muslims. Although, 9/11 stills a mystery, it is used to legitimise a new form of Western-Christian fascism. Media pundits such as Christopher Hitchens and Daniele Pipes, who support the anti-Muslim ideology, are springing up like mushrooms all over the Western world. Using the cliché of “free speech”, they are fuelling a vicious and violent war against Muslims around the world.
axisoflogic.com

PATNA: Her frail frame disguises the steel within, which not only saw her tame the abusive men folk who battered their wives after getting drunk but also earned her a opportunity to address a United Nations meet in faraway New York.

For Girija Devi, 59, a Dalit Mushar (rat-eating caste) woman from the dingy Bhirkhia-Chipulia village, about 30 km from Motihari, the headquarters of Bihar’s East Champaran district, it will be a long journey to New York where she will address the 15th session of the UN’s division of advancement of woman and department of economic and social affairs later this month–in Bhojpuri.
newindpress.com

And what about political rights for all Dalit people?

NEW DELHI: Seven political parties, including CPI, CPI(M) And Samajwadi Party, on Friday decided to oppose the forthcoming visit of US President George W Bush to the country.

“Under President Bush, the US continues to occupy Iraq and oppress its people. It threatens Syria and has targeted Iran on the issue of its nuclear programme. It backs the naked oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel.

“He is certainly not welcome in India,” a joint statement of CPI, CPI(M), RSP, AIFB, CPI(ML) Liberation, JD(S) and SP said after a decision in this regard was taken at a meeting on Thursday.

“We have constituted a broad-based committee against Bush’s visit and decided to organise under its banner a massive peoples march and rally to protest against his visit,” it said, calling the American leader an “enemy of sovereign nations”.
newindpress.com

Panic and retaliation among progressive Democrats over Green challenges are behind HR 4694, say Greens, citing the bill’s prohibitive petition requirements, ban on private contributions; Greens call the bill patently unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Green Party leaders called on Congress to reject a House bill that combines public funding of congressional campaigns with a scheme to ban third party and independents from such races.

HR 4694 (“Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act”) would grant nominees of parties (i.e., Democrats and Republicans) that had averaged 25% of the vote for House races in a given district in the last two elections would get full public funding.
gp.org

…By 2007, the Army projects it will be short 3,500 active-duty officers, primarily captains and majors — positions that are needed for new combat brigades and other units that are critical to plans for expanding and reorganizing the nation’s ground forces. One factor in the shortfall is that the Army took in too few officers in the 1990s, personnel officials say.

…In another sign of the pressing demand for officers, the Army is recalling hundreds of officers who had returned to civilian life but who are still subject to call-up, sparking protests from some who have already served in Iraq and now face more than a year of extended war-zone duty.
washingtonpost.com

MILWAUKEE — One woman here killed a friend after they argued over a brown silk dress. A man killed a neighbor whose 10-year-old son had mistakenly used his dish soap. Two men argued over a cellphone, and pulling out their guns, the police say, killed a 13-year-old girl in the crossfire.

While violent crime has been at historic lows nationwide and in cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles, it is rising sharply here and in many other places across the country.

And while such crime in the 1990’s was characterized by battles over gangs and drug turf, the police say the current rise in homicides has been set off by something more bewildering: petty disputes that hardly seem the stuff of fistfights, much less gunfire or stabbings.

…Police Chief Nannette H. Hegerty of Milwaukee calls it “the rage thing.”

…The police say the suspects and the victims tend to be black, young — midteens to mid-20’s — and have previous criminal records. They tend to know each other. Several cities said that domestic violence had also risen. And the murders tend to be limited to particular neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a homicide in about five years, but in largely black neighborhoods on the north side, murders rose from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.

…The neighborhoods with the most murders tend to be the poorest. In Milwaukee, Mallory O’Brien, an epidemiologist brought in to direct the new homicide review commission, said suspects and victims tend to have been born to teenage mothers. The city has one of the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rates for blacks, and among black men, one of the lowest high school graduation rates. An industrial base that used to provide jobs for those without a high school diploma has shrunk.
nytimes.com

Canaries in the coal mine, the morst vulnerable people most impacted by disastrous policies at home and abroad. A feature of the discourse about this is never making the connection with rampant militarism, and most certainly never with a shameful history and the present reality of racism. Black boys are full of rage? Go figure.

Latest interim results in Haiti’s election suggest the presidential race will go to a second, run-off round.

Former President Rene Preval, a one-time ally of ousted leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is now polling 50.2% with half the votes counted.

Mr Preval needs at least 50% to avoid a run-off. His supporters are alleging fraud after seeing his share drop from more than 60% in first results issued.

But international observers say the poll was free and fair.

Another ex-leader, Leslie Manigat, has 11.4%, while industrialist Charles Henry Baker has 8.3%, latest results show.

The country – the poorest in the Americas – is choosing a 129-member parliament as well as a new president.

The election process has so far been peaceful but the news of a possible second round could bring fresh instability, says the BBC’s Claire Marshall in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“We all voted for Preval. I really hope there isn’t a second round because it will mean the election results were fiddled with and there will be trouble,” one woman in an impoverished slum, where Preval enjoys strong support, told the BBC.

Charles Henry Baker has also alleged fraud, claiming some people were allowed to vote more than once because voter lists were not followed.

International observers say there were some minor procedural irregularities during Tuesday’s voting but have deemed the election free and fair.

The US State Department has also declared the voting process free from fraud.

“The key here is that there is a high turnout. The Haitian people invested in this election process,” state department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

However, in an implicit warning to Mr Preval – who once had strong links with Mr Aristide – the spokesman said the US expects the deposed leader to remain in exile in South Africa.
bbc.co.uk

and a few hours previous:

Hope grows for Haiti peace as Preval nears election victory
Rene Preval, the former close ally of the exiled President Aristide, appeared to be heading for a convincing victory in the Haitian presidential elections yesterday. While counting continues in the election, which took place on Tuesday, officials and rival candidates agreed that Mr Preval was virtually certain to top the poll.

Early returns indicated that Mr Preval, a former president and prime minister, was on 61% with his nearest rival, Leslie Manigat, on 15%. Charlito Baker, a rightwing businessman who has waged the most aggressively anti-Preval campaign, had around 5% of the vote. There are 32 candidates, and Mr Preval has to win more than 50% of the total votes in order to avoid a run-off on March 19. A clear result is expected at the weekend.

Unreal, the way this sh** goes down right before our eyes.