NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 30 (UPI) — Martial law was declared in New Orleans midday Tuesday as the city continued flooding from at least two levees damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

WWL-TV, New Orleans, which evacuated its studios earlier, reported airlifts of sandbags had been ordered as water flooded along the city’s landmark Canal Street. No one but emergency personnel was being allowed into the city, whose two airports were under water. Looting was reported.

Mayor Ray Nagin said bodies have been seen floating in floodwaters, although neither city nor Louisiana state officials had issued a preliminary death toll.

Nagin said the city’s Twin Span Bridge is “totally destroyed” and that 80 percent of the city is underwater. New Orleans is 6 feet below sea level, and reliant on levees to hold back water from Lake Ponchartrain.

He also predicted there would be no electricity in the city for four to six weeks. Natural gas leaks were also reported throughout the city, CNN reported.

—————————————
Flashback: Bush Held Back Funding On Hurricane Defense
New Orleans City Business

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district.

Chances are, though, most projects will not be funded in the president’s 2006 fiscal year budget to be released today.

In general, funding for construction has been on a downward trend for the past several years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the New Orleans Corps’ programs management branch.

In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.

Demma said NOC expects its construction budget to be slashed again this year, which means local construction companies won’t receive work from the Corps and residents won’t see any new hurricane protection projects.

Demma said she couldn’t say exactly how much construction funding will be cut until the president’s budget is released today. But it’s down, she said.

The New Orleans district has at least $65 million in projects in need of fiscal year 2005 funding. In fiscal year 2006, the need more than doubles to at least $150 million.

Unfunded projects include widening drainage canals, flood- proofing bridges and building pumping stations in Orleans and Jefferson parishes. The Corps also wants to build levees in unprotected areas on the West Bank.

Demma does not expect the Corps to award many more projects before fiscal year 2005 ends.

The New Orleans district already owed about $11 million to construction companies after funding dried up last July, well before the end of the fiscal year. By paying its debt, the Corps lost money it could have spent on other projects in 2005.

Boh Bros. Construction Co. LLC of New Orleans waited until November for the Corps to pay off a nearly $2 million debt, said Robert S. Boh, company president.

When the Corps doesn’t pay its bills, companies like Boh Bros. either use internal funds or borrow money to continue work.

That is a tough burden that is placed on us, Boh said.

Boh said his situation was not as bad as construction companies working the Corps’ Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

The burden that reduced funding puts on us is that funds are not necessarily available in each fiscal year to pay for the construction work that we might be able to do, Boh said. They’re running out of funds and presenting the contractor with a real dilemma.

The most urgent work being delayed by funding shortfalls involves levee construction on the West Bank.

The West Bank doesn’t have the first level of protection completed. So, that’s the really critical one, Demma said.

On the bright side, the West Bank work has been receiving higher funding than usual in the past few years to get this work done, she said.

Still, $3.5 million in West Bank construction contracts have not been funded in fiscal year 2005.

SELA has a backlog of $35 million, according to the Corps’ 2005 budget.

Our progress is definitely beginning to slow, said Stan Green, SELA project manager.

Green said SELA has 14 project plans that could be awarded if funds were available. SELA’s highest priority, he said, is completing an intake culvert for Dwyer Road in eastern New Orleans. The culvert, an underground concrete box that carries water to a pumping station, would improve the flow of water to the Dwyer Road pumping station, where construction should be completed by October, he said. A roughly $18 million contract for the culvert has been not awarded due to lack of money, he said.

Fourteen SELA projects worth $114 million could be awarded, he said. But SELA’s 2005 budget is only $28.5 million, he said.

The last time a SELA contract was awarded was early in fiscal year 2004, he said.

We’re just continuing work that’s been under way for some time, he said.

Green said the 14 projects consist of widening canals and replacing bridges, such as the West Esplanade Avenue bridge at Elmwood Canal, which restricts water flow in area canals.

I think the projects are of critical importance in reducing rainfall flooding, Green said. I’d say in the last two or three years, the work that we’ve already done under SELA has made a significant difference. We have a lot of benefits yet to be realized from this work we haven’t built yet.

The 2006 SELA budget has also been cut, Green said.

Corps projects are important to companies such as Boh Bros., which is in the middle of a $36 million contract to install floodgates for the Harvey Canal.

Boh said the unpredictable pay pattern will make him scrutinize Corps contracts more closely before applying for work.

Well, we’re going to have to look at each one now, he said. We’ll have to make a judgment about the likelihood of funding being adequate to pay for the work.
prisonplanet.com

This was a disaster which at best, like 9-11, was allowed to happen, and at worst…
It’s hard not to notice that the FEMA scenario of martial law and soldiers patrolling the streets ala the conspiracy theorists’ worst nightmare is now unfolding in New Orleans, that the people perched in trees and being airlifted off roofs are black people, that ‘Homeland Security’ is putting in a star appearance. This whole thing stinks like the streets of New Orleans about now…

by Robert Fisk
…Having been three or four trains in front of the King’s Cross tube that exploded on 7 July, I take these things seriously myself. And were I back on the London Tube today, I’d probably be trying to avoid young men with backpacks – as well as armed members of the Metropolitan Police.

And after all the panjandrums in the press about our wonderful security forces, I’d also be taking a close look at these fine and patriotic folk. These are the men (and women?) who lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These are the chaps who couldn’t get a single advance trace of even one of the four suicide bombings on 7 July (nor the un-lethal ones a few days later). These are the lads who gunned down a helpless civilian as he sat on a Tube train.

But hold on a moment, I say to myself again. The 7 July bombings would be a comparatively quiet day in Baghdad. Was I not at the site of the an-Nahda bus station bombings after 43 civilians – as innocent, their lives just as precious as those of Londoners – were torn to pieces last week.

At the al-Kindi hospital, relatives had a problem identifying the dead. Heads were placed next to the wrong torsos, feet next to the wrong legs. A problem there. But there came not a groan from England. We were still locked into our 7 July trauma. No detectives are snooping around the an-Nahda bomb site looking for clues. They’re already four suicide bombs later. An-Nahda is history.

And it dawns on me, sitting on my balcony over the Mediterranean at the end of this week, that we take far too much for granted. We like to have little disconnects in our lives. Maybe this is the fault of daily journalism – where we encapsulate the world every 24 hours, then sleep on it and start a new history the next day in which we fail totally to realise that the narrative did not begin before last night’s deadline but weeks, months, years ago.

For it is a fact, is it not, that if “we” had not invaded Iraq in 2003, those 43 Iraqis would not have been pulverised by those three bombs last week. And it is surely a fact that, had we not invaded Iraq, the 7 July bombs would not have gone off (and I am ignoring Lord Blair’s piffle about “evil ideologies”). In which case the Pope would not last week have been lecturing German Muslims on the evils of “terrorism”.
zmag.org

by Gary Hart
08/24/05 “Washington Post ” — — “Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to push on,” warned an anti-Vietnam war song those many years ago. The McGovern presidential campaign, in those days, which I know something about, is widely viewed as a cause for the decline of the Democratic Party, a gateway through which a new conservative era entered.
Like the cat that jumped on a hot stove and thereafter wouldn’t jump on any stove, hot or cold, today’s Democratic leaders didn’t want to make that mistake again. Many supported the Iraq war resolution and — as the Big Muddy is rising yet again — now find themselves tongue-tied or trying to trump a war president by calling for deployment of more troops. Thus does good money follow bad and bad politics get even worse.

History will deal with George W. Bush and the neoconservatives who misled a mighty nation into a flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold War, accumulating staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we’ve blown up, and weakening America’s national security.

But what will history say about an opposition party that stands silent while all this goes on? My generation of Democrats jumped on the hot stove of Vietnam and now, with its members in positions of responsibility, it is afraid of jumping on any political stove. In their leaders, the American people look for strength, determination and self-confidence, but they also look for courage, wisdom, judgment and, in times of moral crisis, the willingness to say: “I was wrong.”

To stay silent during such a crisis, and particularly to harbor the thought that the administration’s misfortune is the Democrats’ fortune, is cowardly. In 2008 I want a leader who is willing now to say: “I made a mistake, and for my mistake I am going to Iraq and accompanying the next planeload of flag-draped coffins back to Dover Air Force Base. And I am going to ask forgiveness for my mistake from every parent who will talk to me.”

Further, this leader should say: “I am now going to give a series of speeches across the country documenting how the administration did not tell the American people the truth, why this war is making our country more vulnerable and less secure, how we can drive a wedge between Iraqi insurgents and outside jihadists and leave Iraq for the Iraqis to govern, how we can repair the damage done to our military, what we and our allies can do to dry up the jihadists’ swamp, and what dramatic steps we must take to become energy-secure and prevent Gulf Wars III, IV and so on.”
informationclearinghouse.info

Well Hart answers his own question. Even his liberal line reveals at best his incomplete understanding, and at worst the long-standing collusion between so-called US conservatives and liberals in the pillaging of the planet.

Sing to the tune of: “Do you know the Muffin Man?”:
Do you know the Carlyle Group?
The Carlyle Group, The Carlyle Group?
Do you know the Carlyle Group,
that invests in military gain?”

Do you know that Tony Blair?
That Tony Blair, That Tony Blair?
Do you know that Tony Blair
has a job offer with same?…

Okay, that’s enough nursery rhyme singing. This isn’t a nursery subject, neither is Blair’s relationship with the Bush Family Financial Tree, their connections with the Saudis, and the equity investment company that nurses the Tree..
War is no child’s play. WAR is The Carlyle Group’s primary business. WAR and that which enhances it’s operations… They own companies that build weapons, telecommunication systems, and aviation support. In fact, even our current president, Dubyah, had a position in 1991 with one of their properties (1a). The Carlyle Group, now 18 years old, is one of the main ‘tree keepers’ of the Bush Family Financial Tree.

To Cindy Sheehan, and all who have lost from WAR, (which is just about everyone), if you want to know why you’ve lost, look into the development and practices of the Carlyle Group. If you are unfamilar with them, here’s a general starter…from the incredible news hound, Tom Feeley, and his Information Clearing House:

informationclearinghouse.info

There’s actually two articles listed in that link. The Red Herring article (1b) is particularly brow raising (and the links at the bottom of that article also tell of Carlyle’s involvements in Asia) Here’s a short list of a fraction of the men who have in the past and/or present been involved, either in the administration or as clients of Carlyle:

James Baker III (former US Secretary of State under Bush Senior, recently served on the 2004 election investigation commission with Jimmy Carter),
Frank Carlucci (former US Secretary of Defence and former Deputy director of the CIA, good friend with Donald Rumsfeld and his former wrestling partner at Princeton),
George Herbert Walker Bush (former US president, former director of the CIA),
The Bin Laden Family (the family of Osama, himself),
John Major(previous Prime Minister of Great Britian),
Fidel Ramos (ex-president of the Philippines),
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (of Saudi Arabia. In various positions of the TOP richest men in the world between 1999 and 2005, see (2),
George Soros (another billionarie),

and many more. While most equity firms have only 10 or 12 employees, Carlyle has 240 (see Red herring article), all over the world.

On 09/11/01, there was a Carlyle group meeting in progress in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC, including the Bin Laden Family, Carlucci and Baker. They watched the images of the twin towers falling on television news. A couple of days later, the Bin Ladens hopped on a jet, unobstructed and flew back to Saudi Arabia. Since the turn of the millenium, the Carlyle Group has added 6 billion dollars to it’s financial worth, in no small part due to the wars that followed 9/11, in Afganistan and Iraq.
choicechanges.com

Over the course of the past year, the Bush administration has begun to shift its focus in Latin America away from asymmetrical threats, such as terrorism, and toward the more traditional power politics of the region: containing the left-leaning governments bent on curtailing Washington’s influence in the region. Threats previously espoused by the administration — Hezbollah’s presence in the tri-border region and in Chile, Venezuela’s Margarita Island serving as a terrorist resort and Islamic groups working with the drug traffickers in the region — have all seemingly been knocked down in their threat level in public declarations. However, in Central America, Washington is getting serious about a problem it helped to create — and not simply because the region’s street gangs and vast criminal networks are making their presence known in the United States.

While media reports, often fueled by some in the Bush administration, have focused on the possibility of al-Qaeda tapping into the criminal networks controlled by the gangs, this threat seems overstated for the time being. However, the street gangs represent an opportunity Washington is likely to exploit in the region. Even as Washington adopts a traditional power politics stance in Latin America, it can be expected that it will use Central America’s gang problem to deepen its influence in the region through joint initiatives and training programs, in part designed to block Venezuela’s attempts to put a rift between the region and Washington.
pinr.com

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The population of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has grown this year by more than the 9,000 settlers evacuated under a plan to cede some occupied land, an Israeli government official said on Friday.

Thousands of Israelis have streamed into larger West Bank settlements since the start of the year, increasing the number of Jews living on occupied land to 246,000, said the Interior Ministry official, who declined to be identified.

The official said that even after factoring in Israel’s evacuation of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank this week, the overall number now living in the occupied West Bank has grown by about 10,000 Jews.

“When you factor in the removal of settlers and take into account about 10,000 newcomers, mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews, you arrive at a figure of about 246,000 settlers. This is correct as of June 2005,” the official said.
news.yahoo.com

As Labor Day draws near and children head back to school, much important attention is being focused on recruitment tactics (sanctioned by No Child Left Behind) in our country’s public secondary schools and colleges. However, this hounding and seduction is not just happening in our high schools. Rather, it reaches down to children as young as 8 years old. Here, though, it is packaged as leadership, character, and discipline development, or as top-secret motivational presentations by so-called medal of freedom recipients

On April 19, 2005 Tommy Franks visited Logan Street Elementary school in Los Angeles to do what was billed as a “motivational presentation” for the school’s students. The “non-profit, pro-military” organization that sponsored Franks’ secret (without family consent or knowledge) presentation to the school’s fifth graders was actually U.S. Trust, a private investment firm with $102 billion dollars in assets. Logan Street school is 89% Latino, and 93% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. This is exactly the population that is heavily targeted by NCLB-related recruitment efforts. I suppose that US Trust and Franks were there to encourage the students to be all they can be?

We don’t know what actually went on during Franks’ performance/presentation for the fifth grade students, because apparently the video of the event has been destroyed by the school district. However, one parent speculated: “Rumor is that he took pictures with our community youth to be used in a future run for office bid on the republican ticket.”

Or, perhaps, Franks was priming these ten year old students for the military programs that they may soon encounter in their middle schools: Middle School Cadet Corps, or Junior Officer Reserves Training Corps.

An article from In These Times describes how many of these programs have eleven year old students learning how to stand, march and salute in synchronization while carrying fake guns and doing push-ups for disobeying orders. Here’s a bit from the In These Times piece that puts this kind of militarization-in-the-name-of-education into perspective:

“Proponents of the programs tout leadership training and character development. But critics quote former Defense Secretary Gen. William Cohen, who described JROTC as ‘one of the best recruiting services that we could have.'”

In an effort to further deepen our understanding, here’s a bit of an interview with Nina Shokraii Rees, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Innovation and Improvement, United States Department of Education:

Do you consider art and music “frills,” or would you say they are necessary to a good elementary education?

Nina Shokraii Rees: It depends. If a student is attending an affluent school that has the budget to invest in such things, then I see many benefits to adding art and music courses. What I object to is focusing the attention of poor school systems on these activities. Schools should be in the business of teaching students the basics. If they fail to teach students how to read and write, it makes no sense to ask them to offer music! In a perfect world, these are decisions that I wish parents could make and pay for.

So there you have it –affluent schools get art and music. Schools lower on the socio-economic ladder get military training (and top-secret visits from Tommy Franks). Countering the overt and more insidious recruitment tactics sanctioned by NCLB is certainly necessary. However, as both educators and humans, we must also be honest and upfront about ways in which our structures of schooling, and the system’s unmarked (default) language of control, also contribute to our militarized culture.
counterpunch.org

Kristina Grish has been described as a ‘Nazi’ and little better than a prostitute. Her crime: writing a light-hearted, non-Jewish women’s guide to understanding Jewish men.

On websites and letters pages in Israel and the United States, Jewish women have railed at Grish, an American Protestant, accusing her of making it harder for them to find a Jewish man and trying to destroy Judaism.

On the surface, Boy Vey! The Shiksa’s Guide to Dating Jewish Men, has little in common with Mein Kampf, but Grish has touched the insecurity of some Jews who feel that marrying outside their religion will lead to its gradual erosion.
guardian.co.uk

The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church’s training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.

It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.

The document expresses the church’s belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern.

Vatican-watchers believe the Pope harbours doubts about whether the church should publish the document, which has already been the subject of three drafts.

‘Inevitably, such a directive will be met with opposition,’ said John Haldane, professor of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews.

The instruction tries to dampen down the controversy by eschewing a moral line, arguing instead that the presence of homosexuals in seminaries is ‘unfair’ to both gay and heterosexual priests by subjecting the former to temptation.
guardian.co.uk

MEMBERS of Britain’s elite have been selected as priority cases to receive scarce pills and vaccinations at the taxpayers’ expense if the country is hit by a deadly bird flu outbreak.

Workers at the BBC and prominent politicians — such as cabinet ministers — would be offered protection from the virus.

Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, has already spent £1m to make sure his personal office and employees have their own emergency supplies of 100,000 antiviral tablets.

If there is an avian flu pandemic in the coming months there would be enough drugs to protect less than 2% of the British population for a week.

The Department of Health has drawn up a priority list of those who would be first to receive lifesaving drugs. Top of the list are health workers followed by those in key public sector jobs.

Although senior government ministers would be among the high-priority cases, the department said this weekend that it had not decided whether to include opposition politicians.

timesonline.co.uk