Save the USA

It’s time for the Democrats to rise up and stop doing business as usual

Our personal safety and the future of the nation are at grave risk. The Republicans are craftily turning this fiasco that may be criminal malfeasance into an example of why big government doesn’t work. Well, it doesn’t work because we have a man with arrested development, who lives in a bubble, running the government into the ground. Bush has said he’s our CEO. Well, any CEO with his record of failure would have been fired long ago.

Hell yeah!

Over 100 trucks await orders from FEMA to bring water to NOLA“They’ve got their thumbs up their as

Food Not Bombs volunteers:
We spent a couple hours talking with the semi drivers, who were operating under FEMA to bring water and food into New Orleans - but, as we saw, all were just sitting in the parking lot waiting for directions. Some had been there for days, some for more than a week, without any food or supplies from the government or any other relief agencies.

Many shared stories of frustration with the bureaucracy of the federal government and FEMA. Dozens of tanker trucks carrying 50,000 gallons of water each were parked in rows, awaiting orders to travel into affected areas and fill up 10-gallon jugs to hand out. Only a few trucks at a time are allowed in, and it takes nearly 24 hours to empty a tanker, leaving the majority of them sitting around doing absolutely nothing.

It’s like they’re trying to drive people out by not providing residents with necessary supplies… now why would anyone want that… hmmmm?

from the SF Chronicle via BellaCiao

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn’t being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters — more than three football fields in length — away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Are there any investigative reporters with telephoto lenses willing to risk it all to uncover the truth?

FEMA hired a mobile morgue to take care of the bodies in New Orleans. That’s why bodies are left in the streets, because nobody is allowed to touch them except FEMA’s morticians… problem is they hired a firm that previously dumped bodies in the woods!

from Raw Story

The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies.

SCI paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit filed by outraged family members of the deceased.

A secretary at the lawfirm that sued SCI over the Florida cemetery scandals gasped when informed that FEMA had outsourced handling of Katrina victims’ bodies to an SCI subsidiary.

“Oh, good lord!” she said.

Peter Hartmann, general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, was later found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning outside his parents’ home in an apparent suicide.

RAW STORY calls to FEMA were not returned.

Waltrip, chairman of SCI, is a longtime friend of Bush’s father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The firm’s political action committee donated $45,000 to George W. Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign.

LA Gov. Blanco requested aid from the federal gov’t and did not get it. This disaster was too big for the local authorities, and the feds were mia when called upon.

“This report closes the book on the Bush Administration’s attempts to evade accountability,” Conyers said in a statement. “The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time.”

Conyers press release pdf
Congressional Report pdf

Katrina: Authorities bar Red Cross from NOLA; Blackwater gets carte blanche

Armed with assault rifles, contractors from private security firm Blackwater are patrolling the black-water-flooded streets of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, unnarmed Red Cross workers toting food and medicine have been unable to enter the city for days.

with some great reader comments:

Why do the police in New Orleans clear the city of the last remaining residents? Why can’t these residents stay in their homes if they are able to stay? And why do the authorities do this with guns?

…..

Since it would seem the goal of this project is to demolish the city… then give Halliburton billions to rebuild it for corporations and whites only… People need to realize that this is the biggest LOOTING operation since the fall of Baghdad - and the looters are NOT the poor blacks.

Media barred from city’s dead zones
09/10/05 “SMH” — – The military will bar journalists and photographers from documenting the recovery of bodies left littering New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the army general in charge said today.

…and the excuse is: “out of respect for the dead.” Sure. Gee, I wonder if there could be thousands of dead and it would look REALLY bad for Bush, and this policy is to allow them to dispose of the bodies before any real count takes place.

Soldiers, Cops Muzzle Reporters in Wake of Katrina
NBC’s Brian Williams: The fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

(more…)

Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been “deputized” by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force.

Blackwater goons coming to your home town
As our illegitimate president and his cronies keep telling us, it is only a matter of time before a terrorist nuke takes out an American city. If this happens (and we are told repeatedly it is not a matter of if but when), the Bush administration, FEMA, the Ministry of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon will be ready, having field tested their “response” in New Orleans. Expect Blackwater goons, experienced in killing “insurgents” in South Africa and Iraq, to enter your house—by way of kicking in the front door or pitching a stun grenade through the living room window—and confiscate your weapons and haul you off to a FEMA concentration camp.

To all those that say: “IT can happen here” Wake the *** up! We used to have a law against military use on US soil. That’s now gone, and even worse than trigger-happy troops from Iraq breaking down doors- private ’security’ guards, with M-16s, paid for with US tax dollars, accountable to NOBODY. That’s why they use private firms- because there is no Congressional oversight.

Mercenaries guard homes of the rich in New Orleans

Hundreds of mercenaries have descended on New Orleans to guard the property of the city’s millionaires from looters.The heavily armed men, employed by private military companies including Blackwater and ISI, are part of the militarisation of a city

America’s Devolution: armed mercenaries hired by the elite patrol the rich neighborhoods while cops force poor people from their homes at gunpoint.