Katrina: The First Ten Days

A LETTER FROM A MAN KNOWN ONLY AS SCOTT




Hello friends,


My family evacuated prior to the hurricane and is safe, Alex, my son, and I stayed to care for pets that owners could not or would not evacuate with them. The conditions have been primitive and challenging, then they turned very dangerous. Alex and I stayed and cared for the animals (we could handle no water, electricity, & water in the steamy summer heat) until we felt our lives were at risk, and we were able to escape the city out the back door as security in the Big Easy deteriorated. Physically we are both in excellent shape as I prepared for the worst before the arrival of Katrina. As far as emotionally, I have RARELY felt so peaceful, serene, and in a place of unconditional love since the hurricane started bearing down on the city. A surreal sense of calm, oneness, and caring has overwhelmed me since this challenge has arrived in my small microcosm of the universe. I realize that this is a sign for me that I need to look at. My heart feels more open than it ever has!This challenge is happening for a reason, and even though it may not be apparent at this point to most the world, I KNOW that the lessons that we are to learn from this very low vibration that has been and is continuing to be CREATED by OUR collective consciousness will help our evolution on this planet. Don't only meditate and pray for peace in my home in New Orleans, but BE peace and love at every moment with everyone you encounter, be thankful for all of our blessings...especially the simple ones we take for granted. This is one way we can raise our vibration and that of our planet, and the ripple effects will reach New Orleans and the gulf coast.If I can be in this place of acceptance, love, and peace after losing my home, my businesses, and a city that I love so dearly, so can everyone else. More than ever, this is what needed on our planet. Total acceptance. And the knowing that we have a responsibility to change what doesn't work anymore, to change the things that were in place that WE created that led to the current unrest in New Orleans, long after Katrina was gone. To me, THIS is the real issue we should be addressing. If we had not created a situation where almost one fourth of my city's residents live BELOW the poverty level, I know that the instability in the city would not exist in the aftermath of a storm that only lasted a matter of hours. Until mankind addresses this deeper core issue, and until we correct this inequity worldwide, there will be many more "cries for help", however unacceptable, by the lower socio-economic groups of souls that WE have created, much like we are now seeing in New Orleans. I feel their pain, their fear, their feelings of loss and despair, and I understand their unconscious actions for basic survival. They are not crying out for just supplies, they are crying out for love and acceptance from mankind.
How shall we respond?This is another opportunity for mankind to demonstrate and express WHO WE REALLY ARE and to change what WE have created on this planet. I am excited about this opportunity to accept what is, embrace it, and decide WHO AM I IN RELATION TO THIS? Life is full of challenges, and the universe will never fail to give us opportunities to evolve. This is mine and I am blessed to have this spiritual slap on the side of my head. I will make the most of this opportunity. I hope that anyone who has been affected by the ongoing events in my beloved hometown does the same. The consciousness of our planet needs the compassionate, heartfelt love and light from all souls touched by the ongoing events. Please stop for 5 minutes RIGHT NOW and close your eyes, breathe deeply, and passionately envision our leaders making choices and decisions that will be for the highest good for all involved on the gulf coast. We can empower our leaders to hasten a rapid recovery of this devastated area and pray for a major healing. Nothing is more important at THIS moment RIGHT NOW.Please forward this letter to as many people as you can, as time is critical ! Take this challenge and use it to help us remember that we are all connected on a soul level, and that love, compassion, and understanding are the common threads that make human "kind". Namaste' ! Scott

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From: Michael Moore
Friday, September 2nd, 2005 Dear Mr. Bush: Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 ofHurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in NewOrleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth couldyou have misplaced all our military choppers? Do youneed help finding them? I once lost my car in a Searsparking lot. Man, was that a drag. Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiersare? We could really use them right now for the typeof thing they signed up to do like helping withnational disasters. How come they weren't there tobegin with? Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outsidewhile the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over myhead. It was only a Category 1 then but it was prettynasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there werestill homes without power. That night the weathermansaid this storm was on its way to New Orleans. Thatwas Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn'twant to interrupt your vacation and I know how youdon't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisersto go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore andsmear. You sure showed her! I especially like how, the day after the hurricane,instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diegoto party with your business peeps. Don't let peoplecriticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane wasover and what the heck could you do, put your fingerin the dike.

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days,will reveal how you specifically reduced the ArmyCorps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summerfor the third year in a row. You just tell them thateven if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees,there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fixthem anyway because you had a much more importantconstruction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY INIRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, Ihave to say I was moved by how you had your Air ForceOne pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over NewOrleans so you could catch a quick look of thedisaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab abullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like acommander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize thistragedy and try to use it against you. Just have yourpeople keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing.Even those pesky scientists who predicted this wouldhappen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico isgetting hotter and hotter making a storm like thisinevitable. Ignore them and all their global warmingChicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about ahurricane that was so wide it would be like having oneF-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.


No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not yourfault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in povertyor that tens of thousands had no transportation to getout of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's notlike this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagineleaving white people on their roofs for five days?Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- todo with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few ofour Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend thepeople of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are nearTikrit. Yours, Michael MooreMMFlint@aol.comwww.MichaelMoore.com P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longerat your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives ofthe Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country,stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you cancatch up with them before they get to DC on September21st.
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United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 3, 2005
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New

Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can't take care of our own?
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A Can't-Do Government By Paul Krugman The New York Times
Friday 02 September 2005
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.
First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.
There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.
Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"
Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."
I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.
So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.
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Mayor C. Ray Nagin's Interview
Published: September 2, 2005

The following is a transcript of the interview with WWL-AM. MAYOR RAY NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect.

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they're standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.
And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.
WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, "I need the military in here"?
NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."
Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.
And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.
They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.
WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?
NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.
I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.
I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.
It's awful down here, man.
WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?
NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.
We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak.
You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."
WWL: Who'd you say that to?
NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.
And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives.
And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city, and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people.
In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there.
So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.
WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?
NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done.
Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.
I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?
NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.
WWL: Did the governor do that, too? NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so.
But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead-tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we hold it under check.
I'm not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources.
And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.
Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.
And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.
You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.
And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.
WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.
NAGIN: Really?
WWL: I know you don't feel that way.
NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?
You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?
And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.
WWL: You and I will be in the funny place together.
NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.
Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.
You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.
And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.
WWL: What can we do here?
NAGIN: Keep talking about it.
WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?
NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.
I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.
Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.
WWL: I'll say it right now, you're the only politician that's called and called for arms like this. And if -- whatever it takes, the governor, president -- whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.
NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just -- I'm at the point now where it don't matter. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.
WWL: We're both pretty speechless here.
NAGIN: Yeah, I don't know what to say. I got to go.
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31 August 2005
"No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming" By Sidney Blumenthal Salon.com
Wednesday
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans

district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."
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The following was written by a cardiac surgeon in Lafayette, Louisiana, and sent to his sister, who works with my wife. It is horrifyingly self-explanatory. TCHI just got back from helping in N.O. at the Superdome. TV news reports look like Disneyland compared to how it really is at "ground zero." They couldn't get any doctors to go because people were shooting at the helicopters and it wasn't a safe place. Unfortunately, all of the people who didn't evacuate and had to go to the dome were the poorest of the population and also the sickest with the most medical problems. We saved a lot of them but we had to be evacuated around 2am this morning because a couple of medics were shot by civilian snipers. There are about 20,000 people still stranded in the dome and no way to get them out because of the flooding. The toilets don't work, the lights don't work, the air conditioning doesn't work, they can't smoke or drink and people are just feeling like caged animals led to slaughter. Dead people are floating in the streets everywhere. They are expecting the death toll to be more than 50,000. There were three rapes in the dome yeasterday, one was a seven year old girl. Child molesters, convicts and very desperate people who can no longer smoke, drink, orwatch Dr. Phil and Oprah. It is truly the wild wild west.One of the civilians grabbed the M-16 of one of the MPs and shotsomeone. There are people being stabbed every so often. Babies being born in front of everyone. People having seizures, hypertensive strokes, heart attacks, etc. because we are out of supplies, IVs, medicine, breathing treatments, etc.No semblance of order whatsoever. A very desperate situation. Therewere only three of us (doctors) there all day yesterday with about 10medics but we were forced to evacuate early this morning because theconditions had deteriorated so severely that it was not safe to be
anywhere around there. I am in Lafayette now, working. The phone service is hit and miss and I can only get internet from work. We cannot send any outgoing messagessometimes.Peace
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Is there no end to the pain?

by rev. jim wilson





Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

And we gathered
in the stinking waters of the flood,
crying for a glass of water
a loaf of bread,
no pictures of people praying.

Is there no end to the pain?
The crying ascends
like a dark cloud
blocking the sunshine
tearing hope to shreds.

And we gather
on the dry ground of
Tulsa, Monroe, Atlanta, Houston, Lafayette
and Poosey Ridge,
two or three at a time,
one hundred and a thousand,
listening to CNN in its endless procession
of the grim news
bowing our heads in disbelief
then holding hands
all around,
waiting to feel that marvelous hand
of Mr. Jesus holding ours.

Is there no end to the pain?
The crying ascends
like a dark cloud
blocking the sunshine
tearing hope to shreds.
Then a story of relief,
an anecdote of wonder
and hope breaks out
two or three inviting Mr. Jesus


to point the way through the great abyss
blazing a new trail through the wilderness,
only then to revert back to despair.

Is there no end to the pain?
The crying ascends
like a dark cloud
blocking the sunshine
tearing hope to shreds.

Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain,
Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Guatemala,
Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel,
Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela,
and the United Arab Emirates, all offering help,
thousands of cities at home, 200,000,000 million raised in The U.S. so far,
thousands of individuals and churches opening doors, Mosques, Synagogues,
Temples all saying here take what we have,
THERE IS HOPE INDEED IN THE
GRAND OUTPOURING OF LOVE.
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"They've got to open the base"By Stephen Elliott
Sept. 3, 2005 BATON ROUGE, La. -- I got on a bus with California Rep. Maxine Waters Saturday afternoon, not sure where we were going, just knowing we were headed to New Orleans to pick up Hurricane Katrina victims. Even as television news is showing pictures of people being rescued by military helicopters and chartered buses, local and national black leaders are seething at the mismanaged evacuation, as well as the haphazard way even the rescued people are being handled. So they've come up with their own plan: to load the remaining residents on buses they've chartered and bring them to England Air Force Base, a shuttered military installation in Alexandria, La.
"My soul wouldn't let me sit and watch this on TV," says Waters, who represents South Central Los Angeles. "I'm just shocked that people have been living for five days, and dying, on the streets of this country. So I came down here, and my friend Cleo Fields came up with this wonderful possibility."

That wonderful possibility, hatched by state Sen. Cleo Fields and the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, is to house the displaced residents at the Air Force base instead of shelters and sports stadiums like the Astrodome, many of which are full anyway. They haven't gotten permission to do that, but that's not stopping them. The black leaders say racism is behind both the late response to the emergency and the dispersal of rescued residents far away from New Orleans.












This morning I saw City Council President Oliver Thomas near tears at the Federal Emergency Management Agency office. He'd just heard the story of a bus of 200 refugees that had been turned away the night before, because all of the city's shelters were full. "So what if the shelters are full?" Thomas asked. "What do you mean full?"
Thomas complained that many people had been turned against New Orleans refugees because of media emphasizing stories of looting and violence, and he asked why they couldn't be housed closer to home. "Texas is being neighborly, while Louisiana is rejecting people. Why do we have to send our people to Texas?"
"The people in Jefferson Parish," Thomas continued, referring to a mostly affluent and white area to the northwest of New Orleans, "have been very clear; they don't want them here." Jefferson and other neighboring parishes were also hit hard by Katrina, and many have no electricity and little or no water pressure. But while Thomas acknowledged that Jefferson had its own problems, "they wouldn't even allow their parish to be used as a staging area."
Thomas' complaint is part of why the Legislative Black Caucus, headed by Fields and state Rep. Cedric Richmond, announced they would bring three buses to pick up those still stranded in New Orleans. The base has not been opened to admit people, but Fields says, "it's better than what they have now. People were airlifted from their homes four days ago and left on the highway. They've got to open the base to these people. It's ridiculous in America that people are sitting on a highway for four days without food and water." Fields reportedly appealed to federal officials to open the base Friday but didn't get an answer. The Rev. Jesse Jackson will also reportedly accompany the bus caravan to England Air Force Base.
I decided to get on one of the buses headed for New Orleans, even though our exact destination wasn't certain. As we left there were reports that people were still stranded along Highway 10, and I was told the intention was to go get them. But Waters was under the impression we were headed for the New Orleans convention center. After we'd driven a few miles we got word that both the

highway encampment and the convention center had been evacuated, and it was decided that we'd head to the airport, where thousands of people had been moved from downtown.
"I hope to get people on this bus, and also to see for myself where people are being sent," says Waters, who's the ranking member of the subcommittee on housing of the House Financial Services Committee. "This is Labor Day weekend and it's normally time for a little R&R, but my conscience would not allow that." The feisty Waters almost sounded like she was enjoying herself, though.
But nobody could enjoy themselves once we got to the airport. We were not prepared for what we found. Though it has been touted as a solution to the squalor of the convention center and the Superdome, Louis Armstrong International Airport is on the way to re-creating it. Already there's a huge pile of stinking garbage, and thousands of people outside who can't get in. They're being promised that planes and buses will evacuate them yet again, but they're still waiting. There's no violence because police and soldiers are everywhere, but there's filth and despair.
Our buses filled up quickly, and most people aren't even asking where we're headed.
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Landrieu Implores President to "Relieve Unmitigated Suffering;" End FEMA's "Abject Failures"
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., issued the following statement this afternoon regarding her call yesterday for President Bush to appoint a cabinet-level official to oversee Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts within 24 hours.
Sen. Landrieu said:
"Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency. 24 hours later, the President has yet to answer my call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA, now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at hand.
"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid.

When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government.
"Mr. President, I'm imploring you once again to get a cabinet-level official stood up as soon as possible to get this entire operation moving forward regionwide with all the resources -- military and otherwise -- necessary to relieve the unmitigated suffering and economic damage that is unfolding."
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Senators Reid and Landrieu Call on President to Take Immediate Action to Support Katrina Victims
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., today called on President Bush to take a number of actions that the president is empowered to take to provide immediate relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Under current law, the Senators wrote, President Bush has the authority to make available a wide array of services and benefits to the disaster victims. The Senators called on Bush to immediately use such powers to provide relief to the victims in the Gulf region.
The full text of the letter appears below.
- 30 -
September 3, 2005
The President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history, it is critical that all Americans come together to address the emergency needs of millions of our fellow citizens. We want to thank you for your efforts since the hurricane hit, and to express our strong interest in working cooperatively with you in the days ahead on additional measures we believe are needed to address this crisis. At the same time, we are concerned about the serious problems and chaos that have marked the Federal government's initial response to date. We believe it is essential that you fully use the significant legal authority you possess under current law to better respond to the absolutely critical needs of victims who are undergoing unspeakable hardships.
As you know, beyond the thousands who apparently have lost their lives, countless numbers of others have lost their homes and possessions, and now are suffering with nowhere to live, few, if any, resources, and nowhere to turn. These increasingly desperate people are struggling to find food and water and to ensure their survival. It is absolutely critical that the Federal government immediately do everything in its power to meet their needs and minimize unnecessary suffering as this crisis continues.
We know that thousands of dedicated federal workers and many others are doing all they can to address this crisis, often in the face of enormous logistical problems that are an inevitable consequence of such a disaster. Yet we are concerned that rescue and recovery efforts appear to remain chaotic and that many victims remain hungry and without adequate shelter nearly a week after the hurricane struck. Clearly, strong personal leadership from you is essential if we are to get this effort on track.
Fortunately, as you know, the Stafford Act gives you broad legal authority to address the needs of Katrina's victims. Under that law, for example, the Administration can provide cash benefits to individuals who have been stranded without financial resources. Yet we have heard reports that some victims who have contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been told that FEMA is not accepting applications for financial assistance. This is deeply troubling, and we urge you to address it immediately. Only the federal government can adequately address the basic needs of our fellow Americans suffering from this disaster and they deserve a better response from their government.
Current law also gives the President broad authority to use Federal facilities in an emergency in order to provide housing and food for those in need. We urge you to use your existing authority to ensure that all victims have at least enough food to survive, and to immediately identify military bases and other federal facilities that can house these victims on a temporary basis.
Current law also grants the President broad authority to provide transportation assistance in a disaster. Yet many of those displaced from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast regions have no ability to relocate to other areas where they may have family and friends available. Providing such transportation assistance also should be a priority.
Finally, we urge you to join with us to ensure that our nation makes a strong and absolute commitment to rebuilding New Orleans. The City of New Orleans is a national treasure with a special atmosphere and a unique culture that could never be replaced. It is unthinkable that some in Washington have suggested that the city, in effect, be abandoned. We urge you to speak out in strong opposition to such defeatism and to make clear to all the people of New Orleans that we will never, ever abandon them or their remarkable city.
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Not a Natural Disaster: Ethnic Cleansing in Louisiana
by Michael I. Niman
http://www.blogger.com/

'We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between thosewho lived and those who died in the great storm and flood of 2005 wasnothing more than poverty, age or skin color."- Representative Elijah Cummings


It's painfully difficult for me to wrap my mind around images of Americans lying dead by the score, their corpses being eaten by rats and dogs. As a brave new America trudges forward into the 21st Century armed with a new set of national priorities, there's something acutely unnatural about this disaster. First of all, it didn't have to happen. It's no secret that New Orleans is in a geographic "bowl," the bottom of which is ten feet lower than the nearby Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf, the Mississippi River and LakePontchartrain all tower above the vulnerable city, held back by an aging levee system perpetually sinking into the muck that is southern Louisiana. For New Orleans, the question became "when," not "if." In 1995, withhurricanes growing more numerous and powerful (dare we say, "globalwarming?"), the U.S. Congress created the Southeastern Louisiana Urban FloodControl Project (SELA) - the agency tasked with preventing New Orleans frombecoming New Atlantis. The feds funded the project at $430 million and hopedto complete it by 2005.

So far, so good.

New Orleans and Fallujah

Then came the George W. Bush administration. By 2003, they cut SELA funding to what the New Orleans Times-Picayune described as a "trickle." By 2004 the Bush administration slashed SELA funding over 44 percent from its 2001level, funding only 20 percent of the Army Corps of Engineers 2005 SELAbudget. This brought construction to a halt on the mostly completedproject. Corps officials, according to numerous Times-Picayune articles, cite the cost of the Iraq War and the Bush tax cuts (for the wealthiestAmericans) as the reasons for slashing the SELA budget.

Fast forward to Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans' 15-foot tall levees were no match for Katrina's promised category five winds and 30-40 foot tidal surge. But the storm dropped to a level four and veered east, devastating the Mississippi coast and sparing the Big Easy from the brunt of its force. NewOrleans residents awoke the next day and breathed a collective sigh of relief, seemingly having dodged the bullet, sustaining only superficial damage. But then the city started, in water torture fashion, to slowly fillup. Two flimsy sections of the levee burst - unable to withstand the increased pressure from Lake Pontchartrain's swelled waters. A rather predictable event proceeded as forecast, unabated by any effective interdiction on the part of the most powerful nation in history.


Another Left Behind Story

Here's where one of the most embarrassing episodes of modern American
history turns even uglier. On Sunday, August 28th, the day before the storm
hit the Gulf Coast, the Governor of Louisiana ordered New Orleans evacuated.
In Louisiana, however, the word "evacuation" takes on a meaning of its own.
It means those who can leave should pack up a few valuables and get their
butts out of town - pronto. And flee they did, checking into hotels from
Atlanta to Houston.

In an Armageddon-like scenario, over 100,000 New Orleans residents were leftbehind, and the ugly truth is that those left behind were mostly either too
poor or too infirm to leave. New Orleans was, in fact, in a state of
disaster before Katrina struck and before the levee failed. Over one
quarter of New Orleans' population struggled to live below the federal
poverty line in some of the most substandard housing in the country. Over100,000 of them lacked access to automobiles - giving New Orleans the lowest
auto ownership rate in the U.S. - even lower than mass transit endowed NewYork City.
When the evacuation order came, public busses were running on a Sunday
schedule. The few that were running ceased operating by late afternoon as
the system was shut down - no doubt with the bus drivers themselves heading
to dry ground. School buses that could have been employed in the
evacuation effort were left locked up in mostly low-lying parking lots -eventually submerging in the flood.

Last year a category five hurricane hit the impoverished nation of Cuba with160 M.P.H. winds. Yet the Cubans, for all of their faults, were able to evacuate 1.5 million people to high ground. Despite losing over 20,000 homes to winds and floodwaters, the casualty rate in Cuba was negligible. In NewOrleans, by contrast, we left the poor, elderly, infirmed and otherwise vulnerable behind to die.

The story continues to grow more sickening.

As is the case in urban areas around the world, the poorest people in New Orleans lived in the most environmentally vulnerable neighborhoods - on some of the lowest and quickest-to-flood terrain. As the floodwaters slowly rose, people moved from their first floor residences to their attics, and eventually from their attics onto their roofs. American Water Torture It's important to realize how slowly this catastrophe unfolded. There was no tidal wave washing over the city as predicted. And by all indications there probably wasn't much loss of life during and immediately after the storm. The New Orleans calamity was ultimately the result of benign neglect. Up to five days past, and stranded, hungry, dehydrated New Orleans
residents were still clinging to their roofs exposed to the elements - and
dying by the score. Tens of thousands made their way to the official
evacuation points at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Centeronly to find themselves waiting for days without sanitary facilities,
sometimes without food or water or medical care - still waiting forevacuation - waiting for help of any kind. And more dead bodies started to pile up. Some people needed dialysis. Some needed insulin. Some were justold and frail or newly born. Many of them died.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) used to have a plan for
responding to a hurricane hitting New Orleans. It involved activating a
hospital ship at the first sign of a storm and following the storm up into the gulf - knowing it would make landfall somewhere. And the hospital wouldbe on the scene 24 hours later. The National Guard, mobilized at the first hint of a storm, was supposed to be on the scene within hours, and so on. But the Bush administration folded FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security, replacing the director of FEMA with a political appointee with no emergency response experience. He was fired from his previous position managing horse shows as head of the International Arabian Horse Association. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, there was no effective FEMA response. A hospital ship (based in Boston) wasn't activated until two days after the storm, and wouldn't be able to respond for another week. FEMA responded to the storm by issuing press releases claiming things were under control when they weren't - claiming they were delivering food when they weren't and so on. On their website they asked people to donate money to a relief organization co-founded by radical televangelist Pat Robertson, on whose TV show fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell once described the 9/11
attacks as God's wrath against the homosexuals and the ACLU. Under the Bush administration's reorganization plan, FEMA will officially lose its disaster preparedness responsibilities - instead focusing more on mass detention centers (concentration camps) and other "War on Terror"functions. No agency has been designated to pick up this responsibility. FEMA is already dropping the ball - and New Orleans residents were left todie - or fend for themselves. Many of the Louisiana National Guard's deepwater vehicles, helicopters and Humvees (along with 3,000 Guard troops) were off in Iraq when the storm hit - crippling their ability to respond to the very type of mission they are chartered to respond to.

Looting and Rioting

This is were media reports of "looting" and "rioting" come into play. NewOrleans residents were left to die or fend for themselves. Many opted for survival - foraging for water, food and other supplies. And there were also looters - morons and junkies wading through floodwaters with plasma TVs on their heads. New Orleans was always one of this country's poorest, and hence, most crime infested cities. New Orleans thieves and rapists didn't change their ways just because the apocalypse was at hand - they continued to victimize their neighbors as they always have. Only now, the victims were also blamed for the crimes as media reports tarred all stranded NewOrleans residents as descending into chaos, raping and killing each other -even though such mayhem was never national news before Katrina and was certainly unrepresentative of how New Orleans residents responded to the calamity.This is ultimately a story about race and class.

New Orleans was 67 percent black.

Because of an economic legacy dating back to slavery days and a general lack of opportunities for black folks in Louisiana, about half of the city's black population lived below the poverty line. Hence, the people unable to escape New Orleans before the storm were primarily black - and overwhelmingly poor. They didn't have the physical means to leave or the money to stay in hotels once they evacuated. This is also why the photos of the collapse of New Orleans show black faces almost exclusively.

These are the people America left behind to die.

These are the people the federal government was in no hurry to rescue.

I'm not saying this was deliberately planned out, as in genocide, but there's no arguing that this certainly is how the chips fell.

Choosing to Stay?

Michael Brown, the Bush administration's FEMA chief, confronted with reports
that thousands were dying in New Orleans, explained that the victims bore
some responsibility for their own fates because they "chose" not to evacuate. The media initially trumpeted this story of irresponsible black folks staying behind, ostensibly to loot. Nationally distributed photos showed white people "finding" supplies as they waded through flood waterswith cases of soda or water. Near identical photos of black people carrying water had captions describing them as having "looted" a store.

I'm sorry, when you are left behind to die, you have not only the right,
but also the obligation to find unused supplies that can save human lives.
In many media reports, white people were praised for just such heroism while
black folks were demonized. A blog published by New Orleans based employees
of the DirectNic Internet domain company refer to the city as the "Planet ofthe Apes."
In one personal correspondence to a family member in New York that was shared with me,
a white flood victim staying in a French Quarter hotel withInternet access writes: "Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreen's on Canal [Street] under police escort. The pharmacy was dark and full of water." He goes on to explain, "We basically scooped the entire drug sets [sic] into garbage bags and removed them. All under police escort .The looters had to be held back at gun point." A racial double standard is so ingrained into Louisiana society that the author/looter couldn't see the irony of his own words. CNN reports that police officers, many of whom were deployed without provisions, also commandeered food, water and fuel from wherever they could find it. But they weren't "looting."

Shoot to Kill Survivors

George W. Bush responded to a reporter's query by explaining that there willbe "Zero tolerance" for looting, even, according to Bush, if someone is"looting" food or water - this after flood victims were left to fend forthemselves for four days. Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, added a "shoot to kill" provision to Bush's "zero tolerance" proclamation, placing "restoring order" and protecting property as a priority overrescuing still-stranded victims. When National Guard troops from thirteen states finally made their way into New Orleans five days after the storm, the scene looked more like an occupation than a rescue. Many troops aggressively pointed their rifles at hungry black survivors who approached them seeking aid. Such behavior is expected when the orders say, "Shoot to kill," and many of the shooters are freshly back from grisly duty subduing Iraqi cities. As governor Blanco put it, "These troops are fresh back from Iraq, well trained, experienced, battle-tested and under my orders to restore order in the streets." She went on to add, "They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will." The "too dangerous to rescue" myth was also employed by FEMA as rationale for ordering rescue teams to stand down early in the crisis. Louisianans are a tough lot, and many private boat owners from areas surrounding NewOrleans immediately entered the city as flooding began, creating an ad hoc rescue flotilla. Many survivors tell of strangers in small fishing boats plucking them out of second story windows or off of roofs, depositing them high and dry on highway overpasses. The Federal government put a stop tosuch heroism, while failing to replace the independent effort with one of their own.On Tuesday, one day after the storm, as Bush played golf and attended a fundraiser, foreign leaders sought to mobilize a relief effort to quickly get help to the submerged city. Russia offered to send planes of food toNew Orleans. Cuba, which was cited by the United Nations as providing a model for hurricane response, offered to deploy 1,100 doctors and 26 tons ofmedical supplies - with the first 100 doctors arriving wherever they were needed within 24 hours, with the rest following within 72 hours. The feds,however, prevented Cuba, Russia, Venezuela and a host of other governments from mounting relief efforts which could have reached survivors well beforeAmerican National Guard troops were deployed.In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Bush administration was unable toexplain their behavior, their incompetence, or their indifference. Even apresidential P.R. trip to New Orleans four days after the storm led to morepain and suffering, as Bush's security forces ordered all search and rescuehelicopters grounded for the duration of his visit. Bush explained nobody foresaw a levee break. Obviously he missed the nine-plus articles published by the Times Picayune during the last two years, which warned of just such a breach, and condemned his administration for halting programs to prevent such a breach. Presidential spokesperson Scott McClellan explained that the levee breach was "more of a design issue," yet the Bush administration had also defunded engineering studies examining the levee designs. AndMcClellan, in his worst boldface lie, told reporters "flood control has been
a priority of this administration," adding, "this is not a time for fingerpointing."

That's exactly what this is, however - a time for finger pointing.

Fivedays of depraved indifference to human life on the part of the Bush
administration, coupled with obstructionism, has cost scores of human lives.
Victims who survived and died alike were treated as though they were less
than human - left to wallow in some of the most atrocious conditions humans
have had to survive in this country since the days of slavery.

Ethnic Cleansing

The vast majority of the victims who were put in death's path, not by a storm alone, but by a host of government policies, were black. Their problems didn't begin with Hurricane Katrina. Prior to the storm, NewOrleans' black population had to struggle against hundreds of years of political and economic marginalization. Most recently, black New Orleans residents struggled to stay in their homes as their low-rent communities were threatened by gentrification.
Today the region's largest black city - also the base of power for theLouisiana's Democratic party - is in ruins. Most New Orleans residents didn't own their own homes; about 40 percent of those who did, lacked adequate insurance. People who struggled to stay in their affordable NewOrleans homes are now gone - shipped off to out of state "refugee centers."New Orleans will be rebuilt - But who will have a say in how that rebuilding will take place? It's doubtful that the traditionally disenfranchised population will have much power in shaping the new New Orleans. Federal policies have allowed New Orleans' black community to drown. A newcity will take shape in place of the culturally unique city the world learned to love. Middle-class homeowners will get insurance money to rebuild. Landlords will be compensated for their losses. The FrenchQuarter will once again host tourists - probably as the jeweled center of a ticky-tacky sanitized Disneyesque sort of Las Vegas by the Bayou. But will the black community that struggled since slavery days to survive in Southern Louisiana ever be able to return to and reclaim the city and heritage this flood took from them? Will their historic culture of resistance to white supremacy continue to flourish? And if history proves the answer is no,
what else can we call this other than "ethnic cleansing?"Joseph Wetmore and Neil Oolie contributed research for this story. MichaelI. Niman's previous columns are archived at www.mediastudy.com
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Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
DAN BARRY
Published: September 8, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.
The sight of corpses has become almost common on the mostly abandoned streets of New Orleans, as rescue and evacuation operations have taken priority over removing the dead.
Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.
Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.
That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.
Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn, dogs scavenge, and old signs from les bons temps have been replaced with hand-scrawled threats that looters will be shot dead.
The incomprehensible has become so routine here that it tends to lull you into acceptance. On Sunday, for example, several soldiers on Jefferson Highway had guns aimed at the heads of several prostrate men suspected of breaking into an electronics store.
A car pulled right up to this tense scene and the driver leaned out his window to ask a soldier a question: "Hey, how do you get to the interstate?"
Maybe the slow acquiescence to the ghastly here - not in Baghdad, not in Rwanda, here - is rooted in the intensive news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath: floating bodies and obliterated towns equal old news. Maybe the concerns of the living far outweigh the dignity of a corpse on Union Street. Or maybe the nation is numb with post-traumatic shock.
Wandering New Orleans this week, away from news conferences and search-and-rescue squads, has granted haunting glimpses of the past, present and future, with the rare comfort found in, say, the white sheet that flaps, not in surrender but as a vow, at the corner of Poydras Street and St. Charles Avenue.
"We Shall Survive," it says, as though wishing past the battalions of bulldozers that will one day come to knock down water-corrupted neighborhoods and rearrange the Louisiana mud for the infrastructure of an altogether different New Orleans.
Here, then, the New Orleans of today, where open fire hydrants gush the last thing needed on these streets; where one of the many gag-inducing smells - that of rancid meat - is better than MapQuest in pinpointing the presence of a market; and where images of irony beg to be noticed.
The Mardi Gras beads imbedded in mud by a soldier's boot print. The "take-away" signs outside restaurants taken away. The corner kiosk shouting the Aug. 28 headline of New Orleans's Times-Picayune: "Katrina Takes Aim."
Rush hour in downtown now means pickups carrying gun-carrying men in sunglasses, S.U.V.'s loaded with out-of-town reporters hungry for action, and the occasional tank. About the only ones commuting by bus are dull-eyed suspects shuffling two-by-two from the bus-and-train terminal, which is now a makeshift jail.
Maybe some of them had helped to kick in the portal to the Williams Super Market in the once-desirable Garden District. And who could blame them if all they wanted was food in those first desperate days? The interlopers took the water, beer, cigarettes and snack food. They did not take the wine or the New Orleans postcards.
On the other side of downtown across Canal Street in the French Quarter, the most raucous and most unreal of American avenues is now little more than an empty alley with balconies.
The absence of sweetly blown jazz, of someone cooing "ma chère," of men sporting convention nametags and emitting forced guffaws - the absence of us - assaults the senses more than any smell.
Past the famous Cafe du Monde, where a slight breeze twirls the overhead fans for no one, past the statue of Joan of Arc gleaming gold, a man emerges from nothing on Royal Street. He is asked, "Where's St. Bernard Avenue?"
"Where's the ice?" he asks in return, eyes narrowed in menace. "Where's the ice? St. Bernard's is that way, but where's the ice?"
In Bywater and the surrounding neighborhoods, the severely damaged streets bear the names of saints who could not protect them. Whatever nature spared, human nature stepped up to provide a kind of democracy in destruction.
At the Whitney National Bank on St. Claude Avenue, diamond-like bits of glass spill from the crushed door, offering a view of the complementary coffee table. A large woman named Phoebe Au - "Pronounced 'Awe,' " she says - materializes to report that men had smashed it in with a truck. She fades into the neighborhood's broken brick, and a thin woman named Toni Miller materializes to correct the record.
"They used sledgehammers," she said.
Farther down St. Claude Avenue, where tanks rumble past a smoldering building, the roads are cluttered with vandalized city buses. The city parked them on the riverbank for the hurricane, after which some hoods took them for fare-free joy rides through lawless streets, and then discarded them.
On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - "They beat me and threatened to kill me," he says - but there are benefits to this new world.
"You're able to see the stars," he says. "It's wonderful."
Today, law enforcement troops began lending muscle to Mayor C. Ray Nagin's vow to evacuate by force any residents too attached to their pieces of the toxic metropolis. They searched the streets for the likes of Strangebone, and that woman whose name sounds like Awe.
Meanwhile, back downtown, the shadows of another evening crept like spilled black water over someone's corpse.