Katrina: Shameful Acts Thread

[DudeAsInCool]

Guardsmen 'played cards' amid New Orleans chaos: police official

NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - A top New Orleans police officer said that National Guard troops sat around playing cards while people died in the stricken city after Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled.

His remarks fuelled controversy over the government's handling of events during five days when New Orleans succumbed to lawlessness after Katrina swamped the city's flood defenses.

The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force.

But Riley said that for the first three days after Monday's storm, which is believed to have killed several thousand people, the police and fire departments and some volunteers had been alone in trying to rescue people.

"We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance," he told AFP in an interview.

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

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a...ce_050903215815

[DudeAsInCool]

Military Frisked Little Children Before They Rescued Them

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/mi...e-children.html

[DudeAsInCool]

Corps: Contractors Killed in New Orleans

Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New Orleans bridge Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said. A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal.

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?...=D8CDN3K80.html

[slum_goddess]

Military Frisked Little Children Before They Rescued Them

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/09/mi...e-children.html

Is there anyone who thinks a little 10 year old boy hungry and crying IS A SECURITY RISK? Who lifts the old people out of their wheelchairs so they can be frisked? Who frisks the bodies on the side of the road and floating in the water in case they've been booby-trapped? Who frisks the babies hungry for milk that might be swaddled in explosives? This is the final humilation for these poor, abandoned people.

this is beyond beyond...no way would they have done this shit if they were white.

[The Hunter]

Report: Police shoot gunmen

In New Orleans, police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on contractors crossing a bridge to make levee repairs, The Associated Press reported.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/09/05/katri...pact/index.html

[slum_goddess]

Bush tells Americans who have lost their homes to the hurricane and flood that they may be able to receive low interest LOANS!

"His main focus on dealing with the disaster was sending in massive troops not aid."

from here

[Kooperman]

Bush tells Americans who have lost their homes to the hurricane and flood that they may be able to receive low interest LOANS!

"His main focus on dealing with the disaster was sending in massive troops not aid."

from here

I guess once George gets all them Nigras and Coonasses outta theah he can start oil drilling on Canal Street.....

[DudeAsInCool]

Red Cross Bureaucracy Problems

http://thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...mplate=printart

[slum_goddess]

I guess once George gets all them Nigras and Coonasses outta theah he can start oil drilling on Canal Street.....

yeah, fuck them--let their asses drown. goddamn them all (whitehouse fucks, not the blacks). i'm so angry and sad at all of this.

[slum_goddess]

y'all prolly saw this already but just for the record: barbara (beautiful mind) bush yesterday in Houston: '

‘Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W. Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated “This is working very well for them.”

‘The former First Lady’s remarks were aired this evening on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace” program…In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: “Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston.”

‘Then she added: “What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”

'them.'

[MrBag]

in a world where some people have and some dont have, conflick ensues

[DudeAsInCool]

‘Then she added: “What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”

Gee, willikers. Isn't it amazing how everything just seems to turn up

roses for these poor folks. Thanx Barbara for your cheerful and condescending outlook :reallymad:

[DudeAsInCool]

Two veteran photojournalists - NPPA member Rick Wilking of Reuters and Getty's Mark Wilson - were robbed of cameras and computer equipment today while on assignment in a neighborhood in New Orleans, and a photojournalist and a reporter were confronted at gunpoint and slammed against a wall by police following a shoot-out between looters and cops that left at least one person dead.

Another photojournalist -Lucas Oleniuk of theToronto Star - was knocked to the ground by police, his gear taken from him initially, when he photographed them shooting at looters and then beating one. In response to the growing violence and an increasing sense of despair among the stranded survivors, some television networks have hired armed private security firms to protect their journalists as they work to cover the story.

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2...hurricane2.html

[slum_goddess]

absolutely amazing and way fucked up: 1,000 firefighters from around the US volunteered to help out in NO but when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to disaster zones, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atlanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. worse yet

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

from here

[DudeAsInCool]

Katrina Scams!

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash4.htm

[DudeAsInCool]

Evacuee Arrested for Panhandling in Ga.

September 07,2005 | ATLANTA -- A man who fled Louisiana with his family to escape Hurricane Katrina was arrested for asking motorists for money in this city where banning panhandling has been a hotly debated issue.

James Scott says he had slept in a car for days with his brother, sister and her two young children before they decided to ask for help.

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?...=D8CFQTR80.html

[slum_goddess]

not related to the hurricane but last week the preznit's visit to san diego forced the naval medical centre to cancel patients' chemotherapy and other patient appointments. outrageous

[DudeAsInCool]

CNNUSATODAYGALLUP POLL:  ONLY 13% BLAME BUSH?

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 609 adults taken September 5-6 shows:

Blame Game -- 13% said George W. Bush is "most responsible for the problems in New Orleans after the hurricane"; 18% said "federal agencies"; 25% said "state and local officials"; 38% said "no one is to blame"; 6% had no opinion. -- 29% said that "top officials in the federal agencies responsible for handling emergencies should be fired"; 63% said they should not; 8% had no opinion.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm

Hard to believe...

[DudeAsInCool]

Interviews of Shame - the head of Fema, Trent Lott, Bill O'Reilly, etc

http://anon.salon.speedera.net/anon.salon/...r_gone_wild.mov

(you might have to watch a short interview to access)

[DudeAsInCool]

This is probably the most shameful of all:

Robert Scheer: The real costs of a culture of greed

...Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.

Now we have a president who wastes tax revenues in Iraq instead of protecting us at home. Levee improvements were deferred in recent years even after congressional approval, reportedly prompting EPA staffers to dub flooded New Orleans "Lake George."

None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist" government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.

...For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone — education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services — in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.

...For those who have trouble with statistics, here's the shorthand: The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe populist language of Louisiana's legendary Long, the shaft.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/o...la-news-comment

[DudeAsInCool]

Why the troops didn't come earlier - politics and foot dragging

http://nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nat...artner=homepage

[DudeAsInCool]

Ocala homeowners association says evacuees are not welcome

OCALA - Tammy Coggins returned to her Majestic Oaks home after a weekend in Atlanta and found the welcome mat pulled out from under her good intentions.

While communities throughout the Sunshine State and elsewhere are welcoming Hurricane Katrina's storm-weary survivors, Coggins and others in the 500-home southwest Ocala subdivision were told by their homeowners association that their deed restrictions prohibited them from doing the same.

A flier, distributed by the Majestic Oaks homeowners association on Saturday, said that rather than allowing "additional families" in the community, residents were encouraged to contribute to hurricane relief funds.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...70310/1078/news

[slum_goddess]

i wonder if the board is white (doesn't say).

[DudeAsInCool]

i wonder if the board is white (doesn't say).

Dont know. Some people think the lack of action from Bush, etc, was a racial thing - I dont believe that. I think it was incompetence and politics. Regardless, the victims got hurt. If anything, they are victims of class, not color.

***

With the Bush Administration's approval, Robertson's $66 million relief organization, Operation Blessing, has been prominently featured on FEMA's list of charitable groups accepting donations for hurricane relief. Dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press, duly reprinted FEMA's list, unwittingly acting as agents soliciting cash for Robertson. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asked of Operation Blessing's inclusion on FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050919/blumenthal

[DudeAsInCool]

WEIGHING KATRINA PIX

September 9, 2005 -- A request by FEMA that news organizations not photograph dead bodies being recovered in New Orleans is not going to fly with the major newsweeklies.

"I understand the request, but to not take pictures of dead bodies is not something we can heed," said Jim Kelly, the managing editor of Time.

http://www.nypost.com/business/52393.htm

Shame on Fema & Michael Brown - Brown worked as a PR man on the Bush campaign and wants to sweep anything 'not nice' under the table