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Catastrophes

  • Murder and rape - fact or fiction?
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    by Gary Younge in Baton Rouge
    There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.
    In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out.
    But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal.
    New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the (…)

  • Patrolling the ’Venice from Hell’
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    By Matthew Davis
    In a small boat chugging round the streets of eastern New Orleans, the surreal scene dumbfounds even seasoned rescuers.
    Road signs crane above the stagnant waters, power lines hang inches above head height.
    Beneath the surface, cars have become the twisted equivalent of sandbanks.
    Our boat passes rows of houses marked with red spray paint - signs that show the building has been checked, and which tell of the fate of their occupants.
    Brown lines along the wooden (…)

  • The Smoking Gun: Navy Ship sits unused awaiting Bush’s orders, while Bush ate cake
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    10 comments

    by Ben Frank
    After the Hurricane struck, Bush did NOTHING to mitigate the disaster, instead he continued on his scheduled photo ops- yucking it up with Seniors, eating cake with John McCain, and playing guitar for the cameras. Meanwhile, a US Navy ship with amphibious landing vehicles, hopsital facilities with 600 beds, 9 million meals (MREs) and the capacity to make 100,000 gallons of water per day- sat unused for a week- awaiting Bush’s orders. In this BBC interview with Lt. Commander (…)

  • New Orleans : water is being pumped out
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By DOUG SIMPSON
    The floodwaters that caused so much misery and death in New Orleans were being pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain and authorities braced for what the receding deluge would reveal. "It’s going to wake the nation up again," Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday.
    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began pumping water out the flooded city after closing a major gap in a key levee that burst during Hurricane Katrina, flooding 80 percent of the bowl-shaped city.
    Nagin said it would take (…)

  • New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to feds: ’Get off your asses’
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    6 comments

    Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans’ Nagin
    New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced interview with local radio station WWL-AM.
    The following is a transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette’s interview with Nagin on Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about his conversation with President Bush:
    NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do (…)

  • Katrina Cuts to the Heart of America: French Quarter News
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

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    French Quarter Holdouts Create ’Tribes’
    By ALLEN G. BREED Sep 4 2005
    (AP) Mat James caries his dog Baby Pearl as he marches in the Southern Decadence parade in the French...
    NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes" and dividing up the labor.
    As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a (…)

  • This government is out of control
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    self-help has a term for what’s happening: ’self-will run riot’. There is a clear absence of community, of spirituality, of fellowship, of humanity in this group.
    There is no love. To me, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. That is what has been shown for all to see through the airwaves and computers this past week.
    Please, people, before it is too late, we must use every reasonable tool at our disposal to be rid of this menace to humanity.
    This is malignant (…)

  • New Orleans has been taken over by the United States Government
    6 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    6 comments

    The entire city of New Orleans is under evacuation orders. I just spoke to my friend Daniel in the Bywater (9th ward). He reports that unmarked police vehicles (cadillacs) are driving through the neighborhood with SWAT team police armed with ’big black machine guns’ telling people through bullhorns they are under orders to evacuate and must leave the city now.
    People in that neighborhood are being told to go to the big pool on the corner of Lesseps and St. Claude (this is one block from my (…)

  • Katrina, Time for Revolution
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Carolyn Bennett
    After week long images of displaced, desperate black Americans dubbed refugees and looters by a race-based U.S. press followed by race-based outrage from the usual headline grabbers, I must say something. But what can I say about death and disorder caused by Americans’ apart-ness, and flawed federal leadership?
    Katrina did not have to break levees, flood cities, and destroy lives. What combined to cause horrendous deaths and despair, particularly in the jewel among the (…)

  • Critical Information for all Katrina victims, refugees, survivors
    5 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    4 comments

    Israeli citizens that made their homes in the illegal (under international law) settlements in Gaza, are to receive between $200,000 - $300,000 each to relocate- paid for by US taxpayer dollars.
    "Settlers, who were encouraged by the Israeli government to move to settlements, are entitled to compensation," says Sarit Michaeli, spokesman for B’Tselem, the independent Israeli information centre for human rights in the occupied territories.
    Israel has negotiated a $2.2 billion dollar gift (…)