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lapsedmodernistI can't even select shit to link to anymore, it's all just unmediated, undifferentiated horror.
Legality, reason and ethics aside, shouldn't this trigger the basic survival instinct of Americans, that THIS ADMINISTRATION NEEDS TO GO OR IT WILL KILL US. Won't the rest of America finally fucking clue in to what everyone in NYC realized after 9/11, that this administration exists in some UnReality-Based Community Beyond Mad Mel where there is no meaningful distinction between criminal negligence and concentrated evil. It could be both, it could be either, it does not matter, this is like an abusive relationship, this is our Sleeping With the Enemy, oh my god, this administration is going to kill us all, through the next MIHOP/LIHOP/Real terrorist attack or through bird flu or maybe eventually we will drown in our own tears and vomit, I mean, shit, isn't this enough? These are bullies, they are cowards, they have hijacked legitimate protocol for electing a representative government, but for the first time since 2001 the media is doing its job, and soon this glitch in the matrix will close up, this is Benjamin's flash of the lightning, those motherfuckers can be impeached, can be made to resign, can't WE as a nation bang on pots and pans and make it clear that everyone must go, not one can stay?
... On the sixth day of disaster and despair, an urgent new problem erupted: disease.
A suspected outbreak of dysentery compelled authorities in Biloxi, Miss., to hurriedly evacuate hundreds of people from a shelter. Medical experts have warned of epidemics sweeping through crowded, unsanitary shelters.
Authorities along the coast also complained of continuing neglect by the federal government. Donovan Scruggs, the director of community development for Ocean Springs, just east of Biloxi, said his city still didn't have a FEMA contact.
Halliburton hired for storm cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
"Outside assistance from FEMA has been pretty much nonexistent," he said.
As Valerie Bennett was evacuated from a New Orleans hospital, rescuers told her there was no room in the boat for her dogs.
She pleaded. ``I offered him my wedding ring and my mom's wedding ring,'' the 34-year-old nurse recalled Saturday. They wouldn't budge. She and her husband could bring only one item, and they already had a plastic tub containing the medicines her husband, a liver transplant recipient, needed to survive. Such emotional scenes were repeated perhaps thousands of times along the Gulf Coast last week as pet owners were forced to abandon their animals in the midst of evacuation.
In one example reported last week by The Associated Press, a police officer took a dog from one little boy waiting to get on a bus in New Orleans. ``Snowball! Snowball!'' the boy cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog.
At the hospital, a doctor euthanized some animals at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned and starve to death. He set up a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog kennel.
``The bigger dogs were fighting it. Fighting the gas. It took them longer. When I saw that, I said 'I can't do it,''' said Bennett's husband, Lorne.
Authorities are avoiding airdropping provisions into New Orleans — the traditional way of supplying disaster victims — out of fear of sparking riots, a state official said.
While the military has used helicopters to drop provisions to some stranded in New Orleans, authorities have not launched the massive supply airdrops seen in Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Airdropping supplies could actually worsen the situation, said Army National Guard Lt. Kevin Cowan, with the state Office of Emergency Preparedness. “Just like Afghanistan, you drop food, it creates chaos,” Cowan said.
National Guards “played cards” amid New Orleans chaos: police official
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - A top New Orleans police officer said Saturday 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 added to controversy over the government handling of the crisis as New Orleans descended into anarchic chaos after Katrina swamped the city’s flood defences. Thousands are feared dead in the disaster.
“For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have.”
Medieval horrors of the Superdome
Devan Allen is 11 years old. Here with his dad, he gingerly approaches to tell what he saw in the Superdome. They were things no child should witness. Like the moment on Tuesday - or was it Wednesday? The days have blurred together for everyone here - when a man stood on one of the balconies and screamed so everyone could hear that he had lost everyone in the storm and now he would die also. He dived headfirst on to the playing field below, his head bursting open. Devan shouldn't have seen that. Nor should he have heard the gunshots. Nor the whispers of the girls who were raped and stabbed to death, right there with him in the Superdome. Or of the boy who was raped.
"You don't want to know what it was like. We had killings, abortions, babies born, toilets stacked up and it was hot, hot, hot." Pressed for details, she doesn't hesitate. She speaks of two girls being raped and murdered inside the dome, one aged seven. The other was 16 and was "slit open" by a knife after she was raped in the woman's bathroom, she says. Much of what she tells is similarly described by several other dome evacuees. A boy aged seven was also raped by two men. (Mr Allen says the rapist was chased down by other men and beaten before being handed over to the soldiers. He claims they also beat him and then threw him from a terrace outside the Superdome to the asphalt, killing him.)
"There was babies born and put in the garbage," Ms Farrell continues. Apparently, someone else found one infant alive and took it to the small clinic they had inside. Almost everyone talks of gunshots in the night, including one shooting of a National Guard soldier. Ms Farrell says the soldier died, others spoke of him being wounded in the leg and surviving. Meanwhile, she adds, a black-market trade flourished in marijuana cigarettes, crack cocaine, guns and alcohol, in plain view of the authorities. Men were flashing their penises at the women, who dared only go to the bathroom in groups of five. When the bathrooms became so foul that going into them was impossible, people began squatting down just anywhere to relieve themselves. "Human beings don't live like that, people in the street don't live like that," she says.
OH BUT THE POTEMKIN VILLAGES! THE "SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATION" IN BILOXI THAT WAS THE BACKDROP TO BUSH'S PHOTO-OP WAS COMPLETELY STAGED, AND IN THE MEANTIME AIRLIFTS OF SUPPLIES WERE SHUT DOWN FOR THE DURATION OF HIS PRESENCE IN LA.
Legality, reason and ethics aside, shouldn't this trigger the basic survival instinct of Americans, that THIS ADMINISTRATION NEEDS TO GO OR IT WILL KILL US. Won't the rest of America finally fucking clue in to what everyone in NYC realized after 9/11, that this administration exists in some UnReality-Based Community Beyond Mad Mel where there is no meaningful distinction between criminal negligence and concentrated evil. It could be both, it could be either, it does not matter, this is like an abusive relationship, this is our Sleeping With the Enemy, oh my god, this administration is going to kill us all, through the next MIHOP/LIHOP/Real terrorist attack or through bird flu or maybe eventually we will drown in our own tears and vomit, I mean, shit, isn't this enough? These are bullies, they are cowards, they have hijacked legitimate protocol for electing a representative government, but for the first time since 2001 the media is doing its job, and soon this glitch in the matrix will close up, this is Benjamin's flash of the lightning, those motherfuckers can be impeached, can be made to resign, can't WE as a nation bang on pots and pans and make it clear that everyone must go, not one can stay?
... On the sixth day of disaster and despair, an urgent new problem erupted: disease.
A suspected outbreak of dysentery compelled authorities in Biloxi, Miss., to hurriedly evacuate hundreds of people from a shelter. Medical experts have warned of epidemics sweeping through crowded, unsanitary shelters.
Authorities along the coast also complained of continuing neglect by the federal government. Donovan Scruggs, the director of community development for Ocean Springs, just east of Biloxi, said his city still didn't have a FEMA contact.
Halliburton hired for storm cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
"Outside assistance from FEMA has been pretty much nonexistent," he said.
As Valerie Bennett was evacuated from a New Orleans hospital, rescuers told her there was no room in the boat for her dogs.
She pleaded. ``I offered him my wedding ring and my mom's wedding ring,'' the 34-year-old nurse recalled Saturday. They wouldn't budge. She and her husband could bring only one item, and they already had a plastic tub containing the medicines her husband, a liver transplant recipient, needed to survive. Such emotional scenes were repeated perhaps thousands of times along the Gulf Coast last week as pet owners were forced to abandon their animals in the midst of evacuation.
In one example reported last week by The Associated Press, a police officer took a dog from one little boy waiting to get on a bus in New Orleans. ``Snowball! Snowball!'' the boy cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog.
At the hospital, a doctor euthanized some animals at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned and starve to death. He set up a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog kennel.
``The bigger dogs were fighting it. Fighting the gas. It took them longer. When I saw that, I said 'I can't do it,''' said Bennett's husband, Lorne.
Authorities are avoiding airdropping provisions into New Orleans — the traditional way of supplying disaster victims — out of fear of sparking riots, a state official said.
While the military has used helicopters to drop provisions to some stranded in New Orleans, authorities have not launched the massive supply airdrops seen in Afghanistan at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Airdropping supplies could actually worsen the situation, said Army National Guard Lt. Kevin Cowan, with the state Office of Emergency Preparedness. “Just like Afghanistan, you drop food, it creates chaos,” Cowan said.
National Guards “played cards” amid New Orleans chaos: police official
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - A top New Orleans police officer said Saturday 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 added to controversy over the government handling of the crisis as New Orleans descended into anarchic chaos after Katrina swamped the city’s flood defences. Thousands are feared dead in the disaster.
“For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have.”
Medieval horrors of the Superdome
Devan Allen is 11 years old. Here with his dad, he gingerly approaches to tell what he saw in the Superdome. They were things no child should witness. Like the moment on Tuesday - or was it Wednesday? The days have blurred together for everyone here - when a man stood on one of the balconies and screamed so everyone could hear that he had lost everyone in the storm and now he would die also. He dived headfirst on to the playing field below, his head bursting open. Devan shouldn't have seen that. Nor should he have heard the gunshots. Nor the whispers of the girls who were raped and stabbed to death, right there with him in the Superdome. Or of the boy who was raped.
"You don't want to know what it was like. We had killings, abortions, babies born, toilets stacked up and it was hot, hot, hot." Pressed for details, she doesn't hesitate. She speaks of two girls being raped and murdered inside the dome, one aged seven. The other was 16 and was "slit open" by a knife after she was raped in the woman's bathroom, she says. Much of what she tells is similarly described by several other dome evacuees. A boy aged seven was also raped by two men. (Mr Allen says the rapist was chased down by other men and beaten before being handed over to the soldiers. He claims they also beat him and then threw him from a terrace outside the Superdome to the asphalt, killing him.)
"There was babies born and put in the garbage," Ms Farrell continues. Apparently, someone else found one infant alive and took it to the small clinic they had inside. Almost everyone talks of gunshots in the night, including one shooting of a National Guard soldier. Ms Farrell says the soldier died, others spoke of him being wounded in the leg and surviving. Meanwhile, she adds, a black-market trade flourished in marijuana cigarettes, crack cocaine, guns and alcohol, in plain view of the authorities. Men were flashing their penises at the women, who dared only go to the bathroom in groups of five. When the bathrooms became so foul that going into them was impossible, people began squatting down just anywhere to relieve themselves. "Human beings don't live like that, people in the street don't live like that," she says.
OH BUT THE POTEMKIN VILLAGES! THE "SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATION" IN BILOXI THAT WAS THE BACKDROP TO BUSH'S PHOTO-OP WAS COMPLETELY STAGED, AND IN THE MEANTIME AIRLIFTS OF SUPPLIES WERE SHUT DOWN FOR THE DURATION OF HIS PRESENCE IN LA.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 06:52 am (UTC)I've been wishing that this would have happened in an election year so that the momentum might actually carry the fuckheads out of office.
I don't think meaningful elections are possible in our country after the electoral process has been successfully Diebolded prior to this election, BUT I sort of think that the public momentum just might carry an impeachment right about nowish. Not that I am actually optimistic about it happening in reality.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 07:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 01:55 pm (UTC)Agreed, and I would love this, but who is going to get the ball rolling on impeachment hearings, and who in Congress would actually vote for such a thing?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 04:23 pm (UTC)I'd bet anything they'll frame the numbers under 10,000 so Kofi Annan won't go ballistic, but that's what we have here.
If this doesn't wake people up to the fact that we live in a dictatorship, nothing will.We have a grim reaper for a president.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 02:50 am (UTC)Speaking of genocide, Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (http://www.law-ref.org/GENOCIDE/index.html) defines it as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:"
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Whether we've been seeing the deliberate inflicting of conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the poor black residents of New Orleans is a reasonable question to ask at this point. Had this happened in apartheid-era South Africa, or in Israel, I think more people would be asking the same thing.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-07 09:11 pm (UTC)Here's what happened. (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagekatrinabringsoutwhitepride.html)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-05 08:11 pm (UTC)it amazes me to live here, to read about it and see the images from here, where it is a beautiful mild clear September day. just like in 2001.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 03:49 pm (UTC)