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HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS
Katrina Victims Still Waiting
New Orleans Awaits Billions in Fed Aid
Bush Caught in Lie about Katrina
Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina
Bush team has written off New Orleans
Bush Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm
80% of New Orleans Blacks May Not Return
Bush Declines to Provide Storm Papers
Bush Told Hurricane Posed Danger
Documents Show Govt Forewarned on Katrina
Ethics group sues State Department over Katrina records
FEMA mainly benefits higher income groups
Drowned city cuts its poor adrift
FEMA Official Says Boss Ignored Warnings
Minority Firms Getting Few Katrina Pacts
Killing of New Orleans
The Invisible Body Battalion
Americans Are Being Brainwashed
Daley Shocked as Feds Reject Aid
FEMA Cut Emergency Communication Lines- Witnesses
EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE FOUND ON FAILED LEVEE DEBRIS
The Storm That Ate The GOP
Michael Brown, FEMA’S Corrupt Head, Helped Bush Win Florida
Bush surrounds Louisiana with Mexican Troops
Very Painful Questions About New Orleans
Five US Army Contractors Killed
The Great New Orleans Land Grab
Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals
'The unfeeling president should be held accountable'
Let the Dead Teach the Living
Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
George W. Bush Investigates!
'How Bush will use Katrina'
America's meltdown
Ethnic cleansing in the USA
GOP Leaders Rush Aid…To Millionaires
A Can't Do Government
New Orleans-The Real Problem

 

                                                     Katrina

 

This is just another example of either criminal negligence or intentional "ethnic cleansing" 

and a "land grab" by Bush and his rich friends.

_____________________________________________________________________________

HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA

WARNINGS

A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!
Monday, August 28. From New Orleans.

DON'T blame the Lady.  Katrina killed no one in this town.  In fact, Katrina missed the

city completely, going wide to the east.
 
It wasn't the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and starved 1,500 people that

week.  The killing was done by a deadly duo: a failed emergency evacuation plan combined

with faulty levees.  Behind these twin failures lies a tale of cronyism, profiteering and willful

incompetence that takes us right to the steps of the White House.
 

__________________________________________________________________

Bush’s Empty Promises: Katrina Victims Still Waiting For

Homes To Be Rebuilt

Unfortunately, the rest of the New Orleans hasn’t fared much better. A recent report

from the Brookings Institution found that rent prices have sharply increased over the past

year, while unemployment rates remain higher than pre-Katrina levels. Crime levels are

also up in certain districts, and 60% of houses and businesses are not receiving electricity.

New Orleans’s current population is only at around half its pre-Katrina level.

____________________________________________________________________

 

New Orleans Awaits Billions in Fed Aid


Friday August 25, 2006 7:46 PM

AP Photo NYOL714

By MICHELLE ROBERTS

Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - First came the floodwaters, then the paperwork. Billions of promised

federal dollars to fix New Orleans' crumbling infrastructure have gone largely untapped a year

after Hurricane Katrina. City officials complain that a snarl of red tape, restrictions and unexpectedly

high costs have kept hundreds of public buildings in disrepair, streets pocked with potholes and

most parks too dirty for children to play.

__________________________________________________________________________

Reporting on Bush pre-Katrina briefing, NY Times, Wash.

Post, USA Today entirely forgot Bush claim that no one anticipated

levee breaches

Summary: On March 2, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today reported

on newly released video footage and transcripts documenting how, on the day before Hurricane

Katrina made landfall, President Bush was warned -- and expressed concern -- about the possibility

that the levees in New Orleans would be breached by the storm. But none of these reports mentioned

that these new tapes further contradict the claim Bush made on ABC's Good Morning America several

days after the storm hit that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

____________________________________________________________________________________

Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina

By MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers 26 minutes ago

In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush

and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach

levees, risk lives in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential

video footage of the briefings.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina

struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

Six days of footage and transcripts obtained by The Associated Press show in excruciating detail

that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere

along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to

deal with the unprecedented disaster.

________________________________________________________________________________

'Bush team has largely written off New Orleans'

Posted on Thursday, February 16 @ 10:01:55 EST

And beyond the city, much of south Louisiana is threatened by the administration's

unwillingness to pay for restoration of wetlands.



BATON ROUGE, LA. - Though most of New Orleans resembles Nagasaki after the bomb,

President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress appear to have all but forgotten about

it. In his State of the Union address, the president mentioned New Orleans only briefly, and

at a news conference five days earlier, he declared in reference to promised federal reconstruction

funds, "I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot."

Unfortunately, nothing close to $85 billion has been spent, and that's because most of it is tied up

with something called the Stafford Act, which restricts the use of federal money for precisely the

kind of things that Louisiana needs to recover, particularly housing relief. It's like giving a kid a

dollar to spend on anything he likes as long as it's broccoli. In the meantime, most members of

Congress -- 87 percent of the House and 70 percent of the Senate -- haven't bothered to come

on down to the Big Easy at all.
____________________________________________________________________________

 

White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration

officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30,

that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding

from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters

starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

____________________________________________________________________________

Study Says 80% of New Orleans Blacks May Not Return

By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — New Orleans could lose as much as 80 percent of its black

population if its most damaged neighborhoods are not rebuilt and if there is not significant

government assistance to help poor people return, a detailed analysis by Brown University

has concluded.

Combining data from the 2000 census with federal damage assessment maps, the study

provides a new level of specificity about Hurricane Katrina's effect on the city's worst-flooded

areas, which were heavily populated by low-income black people.

Of the 354,000 people who lived in New Orleans neighborhoods where the subsequent damage

was moderate to severe, 75 percent were black, 29 percent lived below the poverty line, more

than 10 percent were unemployed, and more than half were renters, the study found.

______________________________________________________________________

White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers

January 25, 2006

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of

executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain

documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for

sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker,

Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally

financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and

mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but

administration officials said the state would have to use community development

money appropriated by Congress.

____________________________________________________________________

White House Was Told Hurricane Posed Danger

January 24, 2006

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane

Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater,

forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be

released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

___________________________________________________________________

Documents Show Govt Forewarned on Katrina

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

January 24, 2006, 2:27 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- The government's plans to evacuate people from New Orleans

in the approach of a catastrophic storm were only 10 percent complete a month

before Hurricane Katrina, newly released documents show.

"If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait till you see lines" at

collection points in New Orleans, Transportation Department regional emergency

officer Don Day said at a July 29 briefing with federal and state authorities.

"We're at less than 10 percent done with this ... planning when you consider the

buses and the people," Day said at the briefing, according to notes taken by

contractors Innovative Emergency Management Inc. of Baton Rouge.

______________________________________________________________________

Ethics group sues State Department over Katrina records

12/13/2005 @ 3:01 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, a progressive legal watchdog group,

sued the U.S. State Department this afternoon after it failed to turn over records surrounding

the government's preparedness and response to Hurricane Katrina.

__________________________________________________________________________

FEMA reimbursements mainly benefit higher income groups

SUN-SENTINEL INVESTIGATION

For the four Florida hurricanes in 2004, the reimbursements amounted to $242 million.

Eighty percent of the money went to applicants in middle- and upper-income areas, including

45 residents of the moneyed island of Palm Beach and 221 people in a posh Orlando suburb

with sprawling estates on lakes and fairways.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Drowned city cuts its poor adrift

The waters have receded but the mainly black, low-income citizens of New Orleans are

now the victims of rising rents, forced evictions and plans that favour the better off, reports

Peter Beaumont.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans it was the city's poor - almost exclusively

African Americans - who were left to fend for themselves as the city drowned in a lake of

toxic sludge. Now, three months on, the same people have been abandoned once again by

a reconstruction effort that seems determined to prevent them from returning. They are the

victims of a devastating combination of forced evictions, a failure to reopen the city's public

house projects, rent gouging and - as in the case of Mildred - a decision to write off whole

neighbourhoods.

______________________________________________________________________

FEMA Official Says Boss Ignored Warnings

 

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a Federal Emergency 

Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail to Director Michael 

Brown saying victims had no food and were dying. No response came from Brown.

Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss 

wanted to go on a television program that night — after needing at least an hour to 

eat dinner at a Baton Rouge, La., restaurant.

_____________________________________________________________________

Minority Firms Getting Few Katrina Pacts

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 4, 2:17 PM ET

Minority-owned businesses say they're paying the price for the decision 

by Congress and the Bush administration to waive certain rules for Hurricane 

Katrina recovery contracts.

About 1.5 percent of the $1.6 billion awarded by the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency has gone to minority businesses, less than a third of the 

5 percent normally required.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Mysteries of New Orleans

Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy
By Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

__________________________________________________________________________

The Invisible Body Battalion


A private firm's undertaker unit is witnessing the
human cost of Katrina. But they're not talking.

_______________________________________________________________

"Americans Are Being Brainwashed"

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury on New Orleans  

Interview is very informative. New Orleans was federalized by

FEMA 2 1/2 Years Ago. 

Very Revealing about the Administration's Criminal Negligence or intentional

criminal acts regarding Katrina


Mentality is "like that of the brown shirts that followed Hitler"

________________________________________________________________

Daley 'shocked' as feds reject aid

A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and 

technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in 

the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the 

feds said they wanted was a single tank truck. 

_______________________________________________________________________

FEMA Cut Emergency Communication Lines: Witnesses

FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication
Lines: Witnesses
Agency draws ire of frustrated volunteers and donors

____________________________________________________________________

EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE FOUND ON FAILED LEVEE DEBRIS!
  Ruptured New Orleans Levee had help failing

   By: Hal Turner                                   September 9, 2005   3:36 PM EDT

______________________________________________________________________

Michael Brown, FEMA’S Corrupt Head, Helped Bush Win Florida

Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management 

Agency, approved payments in excess of $31 million in taxpayer money to 

thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances and 

three other hurricanes last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority 

of votes in that state during his reelection campaign, according to published reports.

____________________________________________________________________

 

Bush surrounds Louisiana with armed Mexican troops

__________________________________________________________

The Storm That Ate The GOP
Who will pity the soulless Republican Party now that Katrina is mauling
their regime?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that
compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a
vise?
Why, it's the GOP, and they're screaming, "No, no it can't be, oh my
God, please no, this damnable Katrina thing is just an unstoppable PR
disaster for us!"
After all (they wail), who woulda thought dissing all those poor black
people and letting so many of them die in filth and misery in the
Superdome while our pampered CEO president enjoyed yet another vacation
would cause such an ugly backlash, such harsh criticism of the glorious,
rich-über-alles GOP creed?

________________________________________________________

 

Very Painful Questions About New Orleans
By America's Patriot
9-8-5

There's something very wrong with the chronology of the levee breaks in
New Orleans
 
Do you find it highly suspicious that the levees in New Orleans broke at4:00 AM on August 30th?
 
The main storm surge from Hurricane Katrina would have been washed into
Lake Pontchartrain at about 7:00 AM on August 29th when the
counterclockwise motion of Katrina was pushing water from the Gulf of
Mexico
into the lake.
 
Why is there a 21 hour discrepancy between the storm surge and the
collapse of the levees?

______________________________________________________________________

Police kill at least 5 in New Orleans
Gunmen open fire on contractors; no workers reported killed

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Great New Orleans Land Grab

The 17th Street Canal levy was breeched on purpose
by Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan
Los Angeles, Alta California - September 7, 2005 - (ACN) There were numerous incidents that occurred during and immediately after Katrina struck that point to the "unthinkable". It now appears that a sophisticated plan was implemented that utilized the "cover of a hurricane" to first destroy and than take over the City of New Orleans ? As the world watched the events unfolding, one could not help think that something was terribly afoot concerning the rescue by FEMA of the city's poor and predominate Black population. It seems that a well laid out plan was put into effect to grab valuable real estate from well established but poverty stricken Black families of New Orleans ? What is being implemented now is nothing less than a sophisticated scheme to purge and ethnically cleanse what Whites have termed "Black and 'welfare bloated' New Orleans.  

______________________________________________________________

Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals
Sat Sep 10,11:03 AM ET

Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of
FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief
and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

______________________________________________________________

Carla Binion: 'The unfeeling president should be 

held accountable'


Date: Thursday, September 08 @ 09:39:03 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

By Carla Binion

The novelist E. L. Doctorow once said of George W. Bush, 

"He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the 

families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who 

live in poverty." Bush's disconnect from normal human feeling, his 

general lack of seriousness and abysmal leadership skills have always 

been evident. His response to the recent hurricane has only highlighted 

them. What are the consequences of our failure to hold Bush accountable?

___________________________________________________________

Let the Dead Teach the Living
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 08 September 2005

They have turned a gigantic warehouse into a makeshift morgue 

in the Louisiana town of St. Gabriel. Doctors and forensic specialists 

wait there for the bodies to come in, bodies with no identification, 

bodies that have spent days submerged in water, bodies gnawed by 

dogs and rats and 'gators. The doctors have posted a hand-lettered 

sign on the wall: "Mortui Vivis Praecipant." It means, "Let the dead teach the living."

_______________________________________________________________________

Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
President signs executive order allowing contractors to pay below 

Prevailing Wage in Affected Areas.
September 8, 2005: 9:42 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order 

Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of 

Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage. 

The Arrogance of These Corrupt Criminals is Inconceivable

Now Halliburton can pocket even more of our tax dollars. These criminals are 

the REAL looters. Isn't there a shoot to kill order for looters????

_________________________________________________________________

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst: 'How Bush will use Katrina'
Date: Wednesday, September 07 @ 08:49:22 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

A sneak preview of the coming damage-control campaign

By Dr. Teresa Whitehurst, BuzzFlash

"Already, many Americans don't remember Bush's initial halting response to 9/11, from 

which he recovered after a few days with his iconic moment shouting through a bullhorn 

atop the rubble at ground zero. Still, recovering politically from Katrina is likely to take 

more effort. There is no foreign enemy against which to rally."


-- For Bush, A Test of Political Skill, 9/6/05

I'm always suspicious when I hear people like Newt Gingrich and other conservatives criticize the Bush administration, because it's nearly always a ploy, a tactic used when overwhelming public discontent threatens to rain on the Bush parade. When the whole nation gets up in arms about something, there's no point trying to justify or excuse one's actions; in fact, that would be a stupid thing to do because it would escalate public anger that's already at the boiling point. 

A brief mea culpa is in order, quickly followed by a brilliant defensive campaign that the mainstream media will be obliged to support.

__________________________________________________________________

George W. Bush Investigates! Bob Cesca
Wed Sep 7, 1:25 AM ET

Rick Santorum says that hurricane victims who remained
in their homes should be penalized. The Republicans
are rushing to get the first of the relief dollars
to... Mississippi , where Trent Lott's highly acclaimed
front porch once existed. The Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Homeland
Security are getting their major catastrophe
information from newspaper headlines that don't exist
other than in Karl Rove's imagination -- and making
decisions (or not) based on those imaginary headlines.

And George W. Bush, the man responsible for appointing
and/or supporting these criminally negligent excuses
for "protectors of the homeland", is going to oversee
an investigation into what went wrong.
___________________________________________________

Can FEMA do anything right?!! Look at this list!

Just click on this link above.

____________________________________________________

 

America's meltdown—get ready for the next unnatural disaster

By Lynn Landes Online Journal Contributing Writer

September 5, 2005 (www.EcoTalk.org)—America is in a meltdown. 

And the world is watching. We are a nation of haves and have-nots governed 

by lunatics and liars. I don't know if Bush and his neocon friends are completely 

incompetent, criminally insane, or just really, really evil. Whatever the case, 

I'm afraid that another un-natural disaster, worse than Katrina or 9/11, is just 

around the corner.

_______________________________________________________________

Ethnic cleansing in the USA

They ain't going back. Even if they had a way to get back, which they don't 

for the very same reason they didn't have a way to evacuate, they won't be 

able to afford to live in the rebuilt city. Governor Owens has apparently been 

told the details of the Plan. This is what ethnic cleansing looks like. Could it 

be that the failure of the government to even attempt to supply food and water 

to the refugees for days was an attempt to kill off the oldest and sickest - the 

ones who would eat up government resources in the future - before the rest were 

shipped out to their permanent new homes across the country? 

___________________________________________________________

GOP Leaders Rush Aid…To Millionaires

Four days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast , the 

country remains in crisis. The situation of Americans trapped by 

flooding grows increasingly desperate, and government resources 

and planning have proven woefully inadequate. There is nothing 

more important to the American people right now than saving lives, 

sheltering American citizens, and rebuilding homes.

But what are the priorities for the Bush Administration and 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist?  They are moving ahead 

with a plan to further starve federal coffers.

_____________________________________________________________

A week's worth

Despite everything, next week the Republicans intend to finish the 

legislative process of permanently ending the estate tax, thus "shifting 

some $1.5 billion a week - about the same as the Iraq war - from the 

public treasury to the bank accounts of the heirs to the nation's twenty 

thousand biggest fortunes" (see also here).

_________________________________________________________

A Can't-Do Government

By PAUL KRUGMAN
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.


____________________________________________________________

New Orleans -The Real Problem

I realize it is hard to focus on something other than the figurehead of 

George Bush, and he certainly deserves the criticism directed at him. 

But there is something that is much more important. The disaster in 

New Orleans is the product of a political and economic philosophy. 

George Bush is NOT solely responsible. Directing anger and blame at 

George Bush is not productive.

Trickle Down Conservative Compassion is responsible for the 

disaster in New Orleans !

_____________________________________________________