Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country’s emergency management.

…Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

“The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. “The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana.”

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state’s victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.

Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis “has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities,” he said. “The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable.”
washingtonpost.com

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, “the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.”

“Cuba’s leaders go on TV and take charge,” said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, “nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday – which seemed casual to the point of carelessness – suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.”

“Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable” in Cuba, Valdes said. “Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin.”

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, “so that people aren’t reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff,” Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, “The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does.”

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.
informationclearinghouse.com

Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans
…“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.”

People of the Dome
…Les says that “it’s only because of the looters that non-looters — old people, sick people, small children — are able to survive.”

Those people who stole televisions and large non-emergency items have been selling them, Les reports (having witnessed several of these “exchanges”) so that they could get enough money together to leave the area.

Guardsmen ‘ played cards’ amid New Orleans chaos: police official
…”We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance,” he told AFP in an interview.

Riley went on: “We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard.

“The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney:Shame on This Administration

Ex-officials say weakened FEMA botched response
….. Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called “a very good exercise.”
More than a million residents were “evacuated” in the table-top scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
“It was very much an eye-opener,” said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. “A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved.”
Still, Castleman found it hard to square the lessons he and others learned from the exercise with the frustratingly slow response to the disaster that has unfolded in the wake of Katrina. From the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to the Mississippi and Alabama communities along the Gulf Coast, hurricane survivors have decried the lack of water, food and security and the slowness of the federal relief efforts.
“It’s hard for everyone to understand why buttons weren’t pushed earlier on,” Castleman said of the federal response.

The Real Looters Wear Pinstripes

Drenched in profits: Drenched in blood

Kanye West comments censored

American Red Cross
America’s Second Harvest
Humane Society of the United States
Operation Blessing
United Jewish Communities
Adventist Community Services
B’nai B’rith International
Catholic Charities, USA
Christian Disaster Response
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
Church World Service
Convoy of Hope
Corporation for National and Community Service Disaster Relief Fund
Disaster Psychiatry Outreach
Feed the Children
Lutheran Disaster Response
Mennonite Disaster Service
Nazarene Disaster Response
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
Salvation Army
Southern Baptist Convention — Disaster Relief
UJA Federation of New York
Union for Reform Judaism
United Methodist Committee on Relief
fema.gov

Gee Whiz–Halliburton Hired to do Cleanup

Sonic ‘Lasers’ Head to Flood Zone
crowd control/mind control experimentation

Sobbing Geraldo: Let the People Go

Kanye West: “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People”

by Jeff Wells

When it all comes down to dust, I will help you if I must;
I will kill you if I can. – Leonard Cohen

Maybe you think the worst is over, now Bush has had his photo op as the clockwork convoy of aid finally rolled into New Orleans. I thought, maybe so. Maybe that’s enough death for them.

If you’re like I was, you haven’t seen this yet:

It’s Geraldo Rivera, Friday night at the New Orleans Convention Center, where 30,000 Americans are locked down again with their piss and their shit and their dead. Rivera gets it, but he doesn’t know what he’s got. “What the hell, man – let them walk out of here!” If anyone tries it, if anyone reaches the perimeter, they’re turned back.

From the website of the American Red Cross, their disaster FAQ:

Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

“Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.”

This week, look for it: the “pacification” of New Orleans.
rigorousintuition.blogspot.com

Ring Them Bells

The man in the Oval Office is fond of condemning “killers.” But his administration continues to kill with impunity.

“They can go into Iraq and do this and do that,” Martha Madden, former secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said Thursday, “but they can’t drop some food on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now? It’s just mind-boggling.”

The policies are matters of priorities. And the priorities of the Bush White House are clear. For killing in Iraq, they spare no expense. For protecting and sustaining life, the cupboards go bare.

The problem is not incompetence. It’s inhumanity, cruelty and greed.

Media outlets have popularized some tactical critiques of U.S. military operations in Iraq. But the administration is competent enough to keep the military-industrial complex humming. It’s good at generating huge profits for “defense” contractors, oil companies and the like. First things first, and first things last.

Why shore up levees when the precious money it would take can be better used for war in Iraq? Why allow National Guard units to remain home when they can be useful, killing and being killed, in a faraway war based on lies?

And when catastrophe hits people close to home, why should the president respond with urgency or adequacy if their lives don’t figure as truly important in his political calculus?

It’s time to end the impunity of President George W. Bush.
informationclearinghouse.org

Audio Interview With Mayor Nagin–Listen

Jordan Flaherty: Notes from Inside New Orleans

Trapped in an Arena of Suffering

Randall Robinson blog

Two Americas: Sink or Swim

From Natural Disaster to National Humiliation

The Humbling of a Superpower

The Perfect Storm

Hurricane Katrina: the Obvious Questions

What They Should Have Learned from a Hurricane Named Ivan

Major Oil Spill Seen on Mississippi River

New Orleans Rocked by Huge Blasts

Will the ‘New’ New Orleans be Black?

Venezuela Offers Food and Humanitarian Aid

As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina continues to wreak mayhem and havoc amid reports of mass looting, shooting at rescue helicopters, rapes and murders, establishment media organs are promoting the Red Cross as a worthy organization to give donations to.

The biggest website in the world, Yahoo.com, displays a Red Cross donation link prominently on its front page.

Every time there is a major catastrophe the Red Cross and similar organizations like United Way are given all the media attention while other charities are left in the shadows. This is not to say that the vast majority of Red Cross workers are not decent people who simply want to help those in need.

But what the media fails consistently to remember in their promotion of the organization is that the Red Cross have been caught time and time again withholding money in the wake of horrible disasters that require immediate release of funds.

The Red Cross, under the Liberty Fund, collected $564 million in donations after 9/11. Months after the event, the Red Cross had distributed only $154 million. The Red Cross’ explanation for keeping the majority of the money was that it would be used to help ‘fight the war on terror’. To the victims, this meant that the money was going towards bombing broken backed third world countries like Afghanistan and setting up surveillance cameras and expanding the police state in US cities, and not towards helping them rebuild their lives.
prisonplanet.com

I have been listening to BBC and NPR reports: about the Louisiana governor’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ orders against ‘armed thugs,’ about hospitals yards away from National Guard and relief stations, in dry areas, filthy and stinking with dead bodies stacked in stairwells who have not received a scrap of help. The mayor of New Orleans:”Where’s the beef? Cause I don’t see no beef.”

This morning we’re told the relief efforts are being held up by these same ‘armed thugs.’ Why are we being treated to the same 30 seconds of ‘armed thug’ footage on every tv channel if the problem is so widespread? Only 1/3 of the usual number of National Guard troops, whose intended function is to respond to civil emergencies, remains to respond to this one. Yesterday a bunch of them were lying in the shade on the West Bank of the Mississippi waiting for Red Cross food and water that has still not come. People there had walked for days in the choking heat with their few possessions, their children in their arms, propelled by the promise of relief on the other side of the bridge: buses, food, water…there was nothing there.

The people remaining in the Superdome have not had food or water for five days. The dead are stacking up. The ‘shelter of last resort’ is turning into a death camp.

This morning I wake to the news of huge explosions and raging fires spreading a toxic pall over this dying city.

After years of the deepest suspicions about the motives and actions of my government, I have to admit I cannot imagine what these terrible people have in mind. I know they have been eager for the chance to practice their FEMA/martial law scenario, but you’d think they’d at least take a page out of Hitler’s book and offer bread along with the boot in the face. Are they just going to start shooting black people?

One thing is certain, in the ‘new city’ that will rise from the muck of the old one, these ‘poorest of the poor’ suffering in New Orleans and displaced throughout the South, will not be welcomed back.

They think to get away with this because it’s just poor blacks, just ‘thugs’ who are the sufferers here. But I wonder. I wonder if it’s sinking into the white American consciousness that what is being done here to ‘the least’ is also a crime being perpetrated against them, against their own humanity. I wonder if, as they contemplate their missing Guards, they recall that they are over in Iraq participating in the daily, unnatural devastations taking place there, paid for by their tax dollars.

There are thousands of troops there who have been directly impacted by this disaster. What are they thinking about now, in the desert 5000 miles away? Visiting suffering on other people’s mothers and kids, are they thinking this morning of their own?

Local officials forcibly evacuated from New Orleans

Example of Racist Media Caught by Web Surfer During Hurricane Katrina Coverage

Al-Jazeera aired snippets of a video tape attributed to Al-Qaeda, in which it said the network’s number two Ayman al-Zawahiri claims responsibility for the July 7 London bombings.

The Qatar-based Arab television station said the video, more of which was to be broadcast later in the evening, also showed footage of one of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, outlining the reasons for his action.

Al-Zawahiri describes the rush-hour bombings on underground trains and a bus as a “slap for the policy” of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the channel said.

Al-Jazeera aired footage of a turbaned man alleged to be Sidique and said he explained the reasons for his action.

He blamed Western citizens for the bombings in London and last year in Madrid, as well as for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, “because they elect governments which perpetrate crimes against humanity.”

Sidique Khan, a 30-year-old British national of Pakistani origin, was named as one of the four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in coordinated attacks in the British capital.
news.yahoo.com

Yeah right. A video appears with BOTH Zwahiri and Khan on it. The SAME video. Zwahiri appears to be the same sort of fabricated boogie-man as al Zarqawi in Iraq, and indeed Osama himself.

The United States have offered to Sunni representatives USD 75 Million to sign the draft Constitution of Iraq, RIA Novosti announced, citing information of source close to the Constitutional Committee of the country, published in the Saudi daily Al Vatan.
focus-fen.net

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Monday his government plans to sell as much as 66,000 barrels per day of heating fuel from its U.S. Citgo refinery to poor communities in the United States.

The offer, made after populist Chavez held talks with U.S. civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, would represent 10 percent of the 660,000 bpd of refined products processed by Citgo. The deals would cut consumer costs by direct sales.

Venezuela’s Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said officials were still working on the details on how the oil would be sold from Citgo, a unit of the state oil firm PDVSA.

“We are going to direct as much as 10 percent of the production, that means 66,000 barrels, without intermediaries, to poor communities, hospitals, religious communities, schools,” Chavez told reporters at a press conference.
reuters.com