…Senator Obama’s “town meeting” (a well-controlled PR exercise) was an apparent triumph. An editor of the right-wing local newspaper, The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, wrote, “It was a virtual love-in Thursday at the Illinois Terminal in Champaign when Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama stopped by to answer questions at a town meeting. Even the anti-war protestors, who criticized Obama for not arranging the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq after a mere eight months in office, were deferential.”

The student newspaper, The Daily Illini, described AWARE’s activities: “Anti-war protesters met Obama in the Illinois Terminal parking lot with posters critical of the senator’s reluctance to endorse an immediate pullout. After a short exchange of words with Obama, the protesters followed him all the way to the fourth floor ballroom of the terminal. As Obama delivered his opening statement from the podium, a member of the Anti-War/Anti-Racism Effort walked the aisles passing out the group’s literature. Obama attempted to align himself with the protesters’ sentiments while defending his cautiousness toward a pullout.”

In fact, the senator took just one (gentle) question on the war, and never mentioned torture, Iran, the Downing Street minutes, Israel, impeachment, imprisonment without trial by the US government, etc. (Asked about that by a member of AWARE after the rally, Obama replied, “Other people have the right to ask questions, too.”) What he did say about the war was even more disturbing — that he hoped US troops “could begin to leave Iraq next year, [but] removing the troops now would result in a massive bloodbath for both countries.”

That is, of course, almost identical with the administration’s position, and it ignores the fact that a majority of the Iraqis want the U.S. out now, understandably enough, because the “massive bloodbath” is already occurring. It contrasts sharply with the view expressed so clearly this summer by Cindy Sheehan, who points out that one is either for the ending of the war and the withdrawal of the U.S. from Iraq, or for its continuance.

But to a largely sympathetic audience in August, Obama pled his poor power to add or detract from the blood-letting: he was, after all, only “99th in seniority” in the Senate. “I am not the president — yet,” he said — “prompting loud cheers,” according to the student newspaper.

There was a vein of smug self-satisfaction in Obama’s casual talk, as there was in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. When asked about John Rogers’ nomination to the Supreme Court, he replied with a smile, “Well, I know he went to a good law school.” (Obama and Rogers were both at Harvard Law.) In an article for Time magazine about another Illinois politician, he had earned some condign ridicule by writing, “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat — in all this, he reminded me not just of my own struggles.”

But it’s Obama’s role as a liberal enabler of the war that most disquieted members of AWARE. He is cooperating in the critical support that the Democratic party has given to the war and to U.S. government policy in the Greater Middle East — a policy that has killed tens of thousands of people during this administration and may yet have even more catastrophic results. Leading Democrats are now to the right of the Bush administration in calling for an expansion of the U.S. military.
counterpunch.org

NEW YORK – As its hurricane relief donations near the $1 billion mark, more than double all other charities combined, the American Red Cross is encountering sharp criticism of its efforts and mounting pressure to share funds with smaller groups.

The complaints — that Red Cross operations were chaotic in some places, inequitable in others — have stung deeply within an organization that is proud of its overall response to Hurricane Katrina, by far the most devastating natural disaster it has confronted on U.S. soil.

“It’s frustrating to our thousands of volunteers out there every day, away from their families, helping people,” said spokeswoman Devorah Goldburg. “We never said we were perfect — we’re trying to do our best under extraordinary circumstances.”

The frustration stems partly from the fact that the Red Cross has worked to avoid a recurrence of the humbling fundraising controversy that flared after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Back then, the Red Cross raised about $1.1 billion — its record so far for a single disaster — but the organization was assailed when donors belatedly learned that $200 million of their gifts were being earmarked to prepare for future crises rather than to help victims. Red Cross president Bernadine Healy resigned, the money was shifted back to the Sept. 11 Liberty Fund, and the organization promised greater accountability in future fundraising campaigns.
news.yahoo.com

Scotland Yard and the FBI have been asked to help stem a surge in violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago.

Patrick Manning, the Caribbean nation’s prime minister and finance minister, announced that he had asked for assistance from overseas while delivering his annual budget presentation yesterday.

He said he had asked the Metropolitan police to supply equipment and expertise to a special police unit in Trinidad, the largest of the 23 islands that make up Trinidad and Tobago.

The prime minister has been under intense pressure to tackle the rising crime level. There have been 275 murders so far this year and police say that this is more than the number of murders in the whole of 2004.
Last week, import-export businessman Dr Eddie Koury, a nephew of a government minister, was abducted and beheaded by a criminal gang.

Mr Manning said the task of coping with the crime wave – including an upsurge in murders and kidnappings – was compounded by criminal deportees sent home from the UK, US and Canada.

“These add significantly to the challenge of law enforcement by bringing to our country the sophistication and expertise of the most advanced criminal networks,” Reuters reported Mr Manning as saying.

He said the illegal drugs trade had created an international “criminal elite”.

Mr Manning told BBC News that money from drug trafficking was being used to buy weapons and ammunition that were then being used by feuding gangs, pushing up the murder rate in the country, which has a population of 1.3 million.

Yesterday the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers Association (TTMA), which represents some 400 businesses, took out adverts in newspapers accusing Mr Manning of failing to tackle crime.

“Regardless of colour, creed, race or economic standing, we all live in constant fear of being robbed, kidnapped or killed. We no longer have a peaceful way of life,” the TTMA said.

A poll this week in the Trinidad and Tobago Express following the killing of Dr Koury depicted a population living in fear.

In his speech yesterday, Mr Manning said “high-level meetings” had taken place between authorities in the UK and US. The FBI had been asked to help reorganise the country’s police force, he said.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said: “We are happy to help in whatever way we can. It is normal for officers from overseas to visit us and for our officers to visit various countries.”

Trinidad and Tobago is the most southern island in the Caribbean and lies just of the coast of Venezuela. It obtained its independence from the British empire in 1962 and became a republic in 1976.
guardian.co.uk

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept. 27 – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the poorest nation in the Americas today to urge Haitians to vote in the first elections since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted last year and spirited into exile on an American military jet.

In a visit to the presidential palace and then a voter-registration office just a block outside its walls, Ms. Rice directly addressed the Haitian people, telling them that “this is a time when Haiti can have a new start.” But she also warned the current interim government that in a country with a long history of voter fraud, intimidation and authoritarian rule, Haiti’s leader must move far more aggressively to guarantee the integrity of the presidential and parliamentary election on Nov. 20, and a peaceful transfer of power on Feb. 7.

“These elections must be open and inclusive and fair,” she said, standing next to Haiti’s interim prime minister, Gérard Latortue.

Ms. Rice’s visit here was her first as secretary of state, and her six hours on the ground here considerably more peaceful than the visit by her predecessor, Colin L. Powell, last December. As he met Haitian leaders in the same palace, gunfire erupted outside, and ensuing gun battles between gangs and peacekeepers, most of whom are from Brazil, left three Haitians dead and at least nine injured.

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice and a delegation of five members of Congress said they were encouraged that violence had tapered off a bit in recent weeks. But American officials took extraordinary precautions, helicoptering Ms. Rice the few miles from the airport to the presidential palace rather than risk driving her downtown, on roads where kidnappings and shootings are still a frequent occurrence. Here guards openly brandished automatic weapons from the moment she landed.

More than 2.6 million people have registered to vote, and Ms. Rice talked to a few of them today as they obtained national identity cards and used computer systems put in place by the Organization of American States to verify their identities by scanning their fingerprints and creating digital images of their signatures.

But the registration center, in a health clinic, was an island of quiet in a city coping with collapsed housing, deep poverty, periodic gunfire and suspicions of the United States, which once supported Mr. Aristide and then encouraged him to go when he was forced from office in February, 2004.
nytimes.com

Now there’s some revisionist history for you.

US troops returning from Iraq are for the first time to be offered state-of-the-art radiation testing to check for contamination from depleted uranium – a controversial substance linked by some to cancer and birth defects.

Campaigners say the Pentagon refuses to take seriously the issue of poisoning from depleted uranium (DU) and offers only the most basic checks, and only when it is specifically asked for. But state legislators across the US are pushing ahead with laws that will provide their National Guard troops access to the most sophisticated tests.

Connecticut and Louisiana have already passed such legislation and another 18 are said to be considering similar steps. Connecticut’s new law – pioneered by state legislator Pat Dillon – comes into effect on Saturday.

“What this does is establish a standard,” said Mrs Dillon, a Yale-trained epidemiologist. “It means that our Guardsmen will have access to highly sensitive testing that can differentiate between background levels of radiation.” DU – a heavy metal waste-product of nuclear power plants – has been used by the US military since the 1991 Gulf War. It is used to tip tank shells and missiles because of its ability to penetrate armour. On impact DU burns at an extremely high temperature and is widely dispersed in micro particles.

The science surrounding DU remains hotly contested though the majority of studies have concluded there is no genuine risk from battlefield contamination. One 2001 study by the Royal Society, concluded: “Except in extreme circumstances any extra risks of developing fatal cancers as a result of radiation from internal exposure to DU arising from battlefield conditions are likely to be so small that they would not be detectable above the general risk of dying from cancer over a normal lifetime.”
commondreams.org

Osama, finally blessed with a donated kidney from a Pakistani religious student (the transplant was performed in one of his better equipped caves in Afghanistan), has launched an internet news show entitled “the Voice of the Caliphate,” featuring an anchorman wearing a black ski mask and an ammunition belt.
I’m not making this up. Well, I made up the part about the donated kidney (although Pakistani religious students have offered to donate their kidneys to their hero Osama), but the business about the internet show and the anchorman is true, if we can believe the Washington Post.

“The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq and expressed happiness about recent hurricanes in the United States. A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.”

Note all the pedestrian al-Qaeda stereotypes here—a prominent copy of the Koran, a rifle, the ski mask (brought back into vogue after Black September by that nimble—for a guy with one leg—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), and of course expressions of joy over the death and misery of Americans, especially by way of natural disaster attributable to the will of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him.

“The lead segment recounted Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which the narrator proclaimed as a ‘great victory,’ while showing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia walking and talking among celebrating compatriots,” reports Daniel Williams for the Post. “That was followed by a repeat of a pledge on Sept. 14 by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, to wage all-out war on Iraq’s Shiite Muslims. An image of Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni Muslim, remained on the screen for about half the broadcast.”

In other words, al-Qaeda wants to reaffirm its support for the Palestinians (and these people want their own state) and al-Zarqawi is the leader and Osama is the titular head of al-Qaeda, if that. It is interesting this video or program would appear so close to the airing of a 60 Minutes “Osama who?” episode. “If he (bin Laden) is hiding in a hole, neither the electronic nor the human intelligence can find him. Is it all that important to find him? If he’s taken out tomorrow, his ideology is not going to come to an end. I don’t think that it’s important … if he is captured,” Gen. Safdar Hussain, a top army commander supposedly responsible for anti-terrorism operations in northwestern Pakistan, told 60 Minutes. The Pakistani military and intelligence should know something about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—hell, with a lot of money and TLC from the CIA, they made Osama into what he is today (or was before he died of kidney disease) and turned a handful of cantankerous Islamic fanatics and goat herders into a formidable world-class terrorist organization.

It makes absolutely no sense and is completely counterproductive for al-Zarqawi to “wage all-out war on Iraq’s Shiite Muslims,” but then, recall, we are assured the guy is none too bright, even if he is billed as a logistical mastermind. If al-Qaeda “in Iraq” is busy killing Shi’ites—and thus perpetuating the age-old Islamic schism—there will be less time and effort put into killing American and British occupation troops. Obviously, al-Qaeda needs a couple net meetings to hammer out its mission statement. I mean, it is rather muddled and impulsive to take on the Great Satan and millions and millions of Shi’ites at the same time.

“The masked announcer also reported that a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have launched chemical-armed rockets at American forces in Baghdad,” the Post continues. “A video clip showed five rockets fired in succession from behind a sand berm as an off-screen voice yelled ‘God is great’ in Arabic. The Islamic Army asserted responsibility last year for the killing of Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in Iraq.”

“According to Atmane Tazaghart and Roland Jacquard, in the French Figaro magazine, [the Islamic Army in Iraq was] founded by Abu Abdallah Hassan Ben Mahmoud on the 29th of September 2003, and is composed by internationalist salafist islamists, former baasists and also former militants of the Palestine Liberation Front of Abu Abbas,” notes Wikipedia.

Of course, it makes perfect sense the Palestine Liberation Front would fire chemical weapons at Americans. Bush told us as much about these evil-doers. Abu Abbas was responsible for tossing the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer off the Achille Lauro and into the sea (after shooting him) back in 1985. It is said Abbas died in American captivity in Iraq—and none too soon, since it was claimed by Ari Ben-Menashe, a salesman for the Israel Defense Forces’ armaments business, that the Achille Lauro hijacking was a Mossad operation designed to make Palestinians look like brutal killers and cutthroats. It appears “internationalist salafist islamists” and Palestinians will do whatever it takes to build their rep as scurrilous terrorists and thus conform to our worst nightmares, possibly with a little help from Mossad and the CIA. Even Italian journalists are not safe these days.

“A commercial break of sorts followed, which previewed a movie, ‘Total Jihad,’ directed by Mousslim Mouwaheed. The ad was in English, suggesting that the target audience might be Muslims living in Britain and the United States.”

More likely, the “target audience” consists of Americans and Brits, regardless of religious persuasion. The ad—in fact, the entire program—sure the heck is not intended for average Muslims in the Middle East because most of them don’t have computers or broadband internet connections (many of them, especially Iraqis, are lucky to have consistent electricity and clean drinking water). It’s also curious how much “Total Jihad” sounds like one of those late night infomercials. Instead of exercising equipment or vegetable preparation tools, the al-Qaeda infomercial sells death to infidels.

“The final segment was about Hurricane Katrina. ‘The whole Muslim world was filled with joy’ at the disaster, the anchorman said. He went on to say that President Bush was ‘completely humiliated by his obvious incapacity to face the wrath of God, who battered New Orleans, city of homosexuals.’ Hurricane Ophelia’s brush with North Carolina was also mentioned.”

In short, all Muslims are sadistic and want every last American to suffer and suffocate in toxic sludge. No wonder we declared war on them. As for the homosexual comment, it would seem the producers of the al-Zarqawi Hour consulted with Jerry Falwell and the Christian Zionists, many who believe the same thing about Katrina—it was an act of God in response to our wickedness and our inability or unwillingness to ferret out gay people and stone them to death, as mandated in the Old Testament.
informationclearinghouse.info

09/28/05 “ICH” — — Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men “rescued” from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

According to the head of Basra’s Governing Council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event, or do we simply accept Defence Secretary John Reid’s customary arrogance? “Iraqi law is very clear,? he said. ?British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process.” He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq?s occupiers.

Watching “embedded” journalists in Iraq and London, attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime’s “writ” did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and the “British trained” police in Basra might be “infiltrated”. An outraged Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two of our boys – in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury – could possibly be arrested by police in a “democratic” society. “Aren’t they supposed to be on our side?” he demanded.

Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men’s unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the “radical” cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “Radical” is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the “rescue”? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman, Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr’s followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival. “When the police tried to stop them,” he said, “[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing – weapons, explosives and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists.”

The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the “coalition” is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq – which it is, overwhelmingly – and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of Al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information Program” set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans’ single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi.

Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis’ right to resist an illegal invasion – a right enshrined in international law – has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shi’ites and the Sunni. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh said this week, “There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other… The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will start an internal Shi’ite incitement.”
informationclearinghouse.info

ISTANBUL, Sept. 28 – Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, seeking common ground with leading women’s rights advocates in Turkey, was confronted instead on Wednesday with anguished denunciations of the war in Iraq and what the women said were American efforts to export democracy by force.

It was the second day in a row that Ms. Hughes found herself at odds with groups of women on her “public diplomacy” tour, aimed at improving the American image in the Middle East. On Tuesday, she told Saudi Arabian women she would support efforts to raise their status but was taken aback when some of them responded that Americans misunderstand their embrace of traditions.

She met Wednesday with about 20 Turkish feminist leaders in Ankara, the capital. She introduced herself, as she has done on this trip, as “a working mom” and said she was there to emphasize the many things Turkey and the United States had in common. The women welcomed her but had a different emphasis.

“You are very angry with Turkey, I know,” said Hidayet Tuskal, a director of the Capital City Women’s Platform, referring to what she characterized as United States reaction to opposition in Turkey to the Iraq war, which she said was a feminist issue because women and children were dying daily. “I’m feeling myself wounded,” Ms. Tuskal added. “I’m feeling myself insulted here.”

Fatma Nevin Vargun, identifying herself as a Kurdish rights advocate, said she was “ashamed” of the war and added that the United States bore responsibility. Referring to the arrest of a war protester at the White House on Monday, she added, “This was a pity for us as well.”

With her brow furrowed, Ms. Hughes replied: “I can appreciate your concern about war. No one likes war.” She went on to say that “my friend President Bush” did all he could to avoid a war in Iraq, but then asserted about Iraq: “It is impossible to say that the rights of women were better under Saddam Hussein than they are today.” She said that women had been tortured, raped and killed under the leadership ousted by American troops.
nytimes.com

1. Why did the floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal only break on the New Orleans (majority Black) side and not on the Metairie (largely white) side? Was this the result of neglect and poor maintenance by New Orleans authorities?

2. Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward — the most deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?

3. All of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish east of the Industrial Canal were drowned, except for the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District along Chef Menteur Highway. Why was industrial land apparently protected by stronger levees than nearby residential neighborhoods?

4. Why did Mayor Ray Nagin, in defiance of his own official disaster plan, delay twelve to twenty-four hours in ordering a mandatory evacuation of the city?

5. Why did Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff not declare Katrina an “Incident of National Significance” until August 31 — thus preventing the full deployment of urgently needed federal resources?

6. Why wasn’t the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies, and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.

7. Similarly, why wasn’t the Baltimore-based hospital ship USS Comfort ordered to sea until August 31, or the 82nd Airborne Division deployed in New Orleans until September 5?

8. Why does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld balk at making public his “severe weather execution order” that established the ground rules for the military response to Katrina? Did the Pentagon, as a recent report by the Congressional Research Service suggests, fail to take initiatives within already authorized powers, then attempt to transfer the blame to state and local governments?

9. Why were the more than 350 buses of the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority — eventually flooded where they were parked — not mobilized to evacuate infirm, poor, and car-less residents?

10. What significance attaches to the fact that the chair of the Transportation Authority, appointed by Mayor Nagin, is Jimmy Reiss, the wealthy leader of the New Orleans Business Council which has long advocated a thorough redevelopment of (and cleanup of crime in) the city?

11. Under what authority did Mayor Nagin meet confidentially in Dallas with the “forty thieves” — white business leaders led by Reiss — reportedly to discuss the triaging of poorer Black areas and a corporate-led master plan for rebuilding the city?

12. Everyone knows about a famous train called “the City of New Orleans.” Why was there no evacuation by rail? Was Amtrak part of the disaster planning? If not, why not?

13. Why were patients at private hospitals like Tulane evacuated by helicopter while their counterparts at the Charity Hospital were left to suffer and die?

14. Was the failure to adequately stock food, water, potable toilets, cots, and medicine at the Louisiana Superdome a deliberate decision — as many believe — to force poorer residents to leave the city?

15. The French Quarter has one of the highest densities of restaurants in the nation. Once the acute shortages of food and water at the Superdome and the Convention Center were known, why didn’t officials requisition supplies from hotels and restaurants located just a few blocks away? (As it happened, vast quantities of food were simply left to spoil.)

16. City Hall’s emergency command center had to be abandoned early in the crisis because its generator supposedly ran out of diesel fuel. Likewise many critical-care patients died from heat or equipment failure after hospital backup generators failed. Why were supplies of diesel fuel so inadequate? Why were so many hospital generators located in basements that would obviously flood?

17. Why didn’t the Navy or Coast Guard immediately airdrop life preservers and rubber rafts in flooded districts? Why wasn’t such life-saving equipment stocked in schools and hospitals?

18. Why weren’t evacuee centers established in Audubon Park and other unflooded parts of Uptown, where locals could be employed as cleanup crews?

19. Is the Justice Department investigating the Jim Crow-like response of the suburban Gretna police who turned back hundreds of desperate New Orleans citizens trying to walk across the Mississippi River bridge — an image reminiscent of Selma in 1965? New Orleans, meanwhile, abounds in eyewitness accounts of police looting and illegal shootings: Will any of this ever be investigated?

20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs along the river in Bywater?

21. Where were FEMA’s several dozen vaunted urban search-and-rescue teams? Aside from some courageous work by Coast Guard helicopter crews, the early rescue effort was largely mounted by volunteers who towed their own boats into the city after hearing an appeal on television.

22. We found a massive Red Cross presence in Baton Rouge but none in some of the smaller Louisiana towns that have mounted the most impressive relief efforts. The poor Cajun community of Ville Platte, for instance, has at one time or another fed and housed more than 5,000 evacuees; but the Red Cross, along with FEMA, has refused almost daily appeals by local volunteers to send professional personnel and aid. Why then give money to the Red Cross?

23. Why isn’t FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees receive absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?

24. As politicians talk about “disaster czars” and elite-appointed reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed “new urbanism” in New Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the city’s ordinary citizens in their own future?

25. Indeed, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, what has happened to democracy?
commondreams.org

Tony Blair and John Reid, the defence secretary, have been holding secret talks with Saudi Arabia in pursuit of a huge arms deal worth up to £40bn, according to diplomatic sources.

Mr Blair went to Riyadh on July 2, en route to Singapore, where Britain was bidding for the 2012 Olympics. Three weeks later, Mr Reid made a two-day visit, when he sought to persuade Prince Sultan, the crown prince, to re-equip his air force with the Typhoon, the European fighter plane of which the British arms company BAE has the lion’s share of manufacturing.

Defence, diplomatic and legal sources say negotiations are stalling because the Saudis are demanding three favours. These are that Britain should expel two anti-Saudi dissidents, Saad al-Faqih and Mohammed al-Masari; that British Airways should resume flights to Riyadh, currently cancelled through terrorism fears; and that a corruption investigation implicating the Saudi ruling family and BAE should be dropped. Crown prince Sultan’s son-in-law, Prince Turki bin Nasr, is at the centre of a “slush fund” investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
guardian.co.uk