Davis, 25 Questions about the Murder of New Orleans


Tomgram:
Nation Institute
by Tom Engelhardt

Mike Davis (whose most recent book is Monster at our Door, The Global Threat of Avian Flu) and architect Anthony Fontenot have just returned from New Orleans. They rode out Rita in southern Louisiana and talked with numerous people involved in local Katrina rescue efforts. The city is now, Davis says, a huge crime scene that may never be properly investigated. After Hurricane Ivan turned away from the Big Easy in 2004, Davis wrote a singularly prophetic piece, Poor, Black and Left Behind, about the car-less, unevacuated poor of that city. The arrival of Hurricane Katrina, which did not spare New Orleans, essentially proved for the poor a horrifying replay of the previous year. Nothing had changed for the better. The main question Davis and Fontenot raise below -- for an investigative body that may never exist -- is just how deliberate, from top to bottom, the neglect of the obvious was in New Orleans.

Right now, we're watching the ridiculous spectacle of the woefully incompetent former FEMA head Michael Brown being thrown to the Republican wolves in the House of Representatives, while the two national figures most in charge of the Katrina debacle, Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, remain remarkably untouched by their acts. The man who couldn't wait to invade Iraq couldn't figure out how to get a soldier into New Orleans. It's a sorry record. Here, then, are some of the disturbing questions on the minds of those Davis and Fontenot met in New Orleans -- questions from the frontlines of an American shock-and-awe disaster of epic proportions. Tom

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The Mysteries of New Orleans

Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy

By Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

We recently spent a week in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists, and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration.

Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward, but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city.

In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with. Until a grand jury or congressional committee begins to uncover the answers, the moral (as opposed to simply physical) reconstruction of the New Orleans region will remain impossible.

1. - Why did the floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal only break on the New Orleans side and not on the Metairie side? Was this the result of neglect and poor maintenance by New Orleans authorities?

2.- Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward -- the most deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?

3. - All of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish east of the Industrial Canal were drowned, except for the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District along Chef Menteur Highway. Why was industrial land apparently protected by stronger levees than nearby residential neighborhoods?

4.- Why did Mayor Ray Nagin, in defiance of his own official disaster plan, delay twelve to twenty-four hours in ordering a mandatory evacuation of the city?

5.- Why did Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff not declare Katrina an "Incident of National Significance" until August 31 -- thus preventing the full deployment of urgently needed federal resources?

6. - Why wasn't the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies, and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.

7.- Similarly, why wasn't the Baltimore-based hospital ship USS Comfort ordered to sea until August 31, or the 82nd Airborne Division deployed in New Orleans until September 5?

8. - Why does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld balk at making public his "severe weather execution order" that established the ground rules for the military response to Katrina? Did the Pentagon, as a recent report by the Congressional Research Service suggests, fail to take initiatives within already authorized powers, then attempt to transfer the blame to state and local governments?

9. - Why were the more than 350 buses of the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority -- eventually flooded where they were parked -- not mobilized to evacuate infirm, poor, and car-less residents?

10. - What significance attaches to the fact that the chair of the Transportation Authority, appointed by Mayor Nagin, is Jimmy Reiss, the wealthy leader of the New Orleans Business Council which has long advocated a thorough redevelopment of (and cleanup of crime in) the city?

11. - Under what authority did Mayor Nagin meet confidentially in Dallas with the "forty thieves" -- white business leaders led by Reiss -- reportedly to discuss the triaging of poorer Black areas and a corporate-led master plan for rebuilding the city?

12.- Everyone knows about a famous train called "the City of New Orleans." Why was there no evacuation by rail? Was Amtrak part of the disaster planning? If not, why not?

13. - Why were patients at private hospitals like Tulane evacuated by helicopter while their counterparts at the Charity Hospital were left to suffer and die?

14.- Was the failure to adequately stock food, water, portable toilets, cots, and medicine at the Louisiana Superdome a deliberate decision -- as many believe -- to force poorer residents to leave the city?

15.- The French Quarter has one of the highest densities of restaurants in the nation. Once the acute shortages of food and water at the Superdome and the Convention Center were known, why didn't officials requisition supplies from hotels and restaurants located just a few blocks away? (As it happened, vast quantities of food were simply left to spoil.)

16.- City Hall's emergency command center had to be abandoned early in the crisis because its generator supposedly ran out of diesel fuel. Likewise many critical-care patients died from heat or equipment failure after hospital backup generators failed. Why were supplies of diesel fuel so inadequate? Why were so many hospital generators located in basements that would obviously flood?

17.- Why didn't the Navy or Coast Guard immediately airdrop life preservers and rubber rafts in flooded districts? Why wasn't such life-saving equipment stocked in schools and hospitals?

18.- Why weren't evacuee centers established in Audubon Park and other unflooded parts of Uptown, where locals could be employed as cleanup crews?

19.- Is the Justice Department investigating the Jim Crow-like response of the suburban Gretna police who turned back hundreds of desperate New Orleans citizens trying to walk across the Mississippi River bridge -- an image reminiscent of Selma in 1965? New Orleans, meanwhile, abounds in eyewitness accounts of police looting and illegal shootings: Will any of this ever be investigated?

20. - Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs along the river in Bywater?

21.- Where were FEMA's several dozen vaunted urban search-and-rescue teams? Aside from some courageous work by Coast Guard helicopter crews, the early rescue effort was largely mounted by volunteers who towed their own boats into the city after hearing an appeal on television.

22.- We found a massive Red Cross presence in Baton Rouge but none in some of the smaller Louisiana towns that have mounted the most impressive relief efforts. The poor Cajun community of Ville Platte, for instance, has at one time or another fed and housed more than 5,000 evacuees; but the Red Cross, along with FEMA, has refused almost daily appeals by local volunteers to send professional personnel and aid. Why then give money to the Red Cross?

23.- Why isn't FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees receive absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?

24. - As politicians talk about "disaster czars" and elite-appointed reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed "new urbanism" in New Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the city's ordinary citizens in their own future?

25. - Indeed, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, what has happened to democracy?

Mike Davis is the author of many books including City of Quartz, Dead Cities and Other Tales, and the just published Monster at our Door, The Global Threat of Avian Flu (The New Press) as well as the forthcoming Planet of Slums (Verso).

Anthony Fontenot is a New Orleans architect and community-design activist, currently working at Princeton University.

Copyright 2005 Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

Source:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=24875

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Is Bin Laden Dead?

By Fred Burton
09.27.2005

The tone of U.S. and Pakistani diplomats has shifted -- suddenly and markedly -- in the perennial discussions about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

The Americans, normally quite vocal about pressing their demands in the war on terrorism, have now sounded an extremely deferential note toward Islamabad. In an interview last week with the editorial board of Time magazine, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Pakistani military is "probably" better suited than American forces to conduct the search for bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials, who long have been believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan, along the Afghan border. Rice then proceeded to contradict a great many of her Bush administration colleagues in saying that Pakistan, which has long stymied efforts to capture bin Laden, actually has every incentive to do so -- and that its failure to deliver his head on a platter to Washington is quite understandable given the difficult terrain.

Not to be outdone, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf told Time that he hopes bin Laden eventually will be captured "somewhere outside Pakistan by some other people."

While Musharraf's frankness on the matter is a little surprising, his sentiment certainly is not. For four years, the search for bin Laden has been a political hot potato that Musharraf -- squeezed on one side by the United States and on the other by domestic Islamists who would come unleashed if foreign forces operated on Pakistani soil -- dared not touch. Nothing would be better, in his eyes, than for bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (and whoever else might be hiding in Pakistan) to obligingly move off and become someone else's problem.

Rice's statements are rather more interesting, since they could be interpreted in several different ways. First, one could argue that she was using reverse psychology. In her rather sweet defense of Pakistan's performance in the search for al Qaeda leaders, Islamabad doubtless will get the message that the Bush administration wants him found and killed yesterday -- or else. Second, her discussion might have been a move by the White House -- whose standing with the American public has been damaged by the ongoing war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – to pre-empt further criticism over its failure to find and, in every sense of the word, annihilate bin Laden.

By planting the seed that responsibility for bin Laden ultimately lies elsewhere, the Bush administration begins to wash its hands of a question that, despite being on the minds of the public, serves no purpose for the United States to engage.

The question of bin Laden's fate is not an easy one for the White House. On the one hand, the American public both wants and needs the psychological closure that news of bin Laden's capture, punishment and death would bring to the wounds of 9/11. Four years on, however, the search for the world's most wanted man ostensibly still continues, and the issue of his whereabouts -- or even whether he is alive or dead -- is still being actively debated inside the Beltway and at the highest levels of federal intelligence agencies. On the other hand, there is no strategic value for the United States in producing bin Laden's corpse for the masses, which would instantly turn him into an icon for potential jihadists everywhere, or even in pressing too hard for his capture, which would saddle Washington with responsibility for having him tried and still render him an icon.

Given these realities, the best possible strategy for the Bush administration is the one it appears to be pursuing: to hand off responsibility for dealing with these issues to some other country. This leaves al Qaeda to grapple with the problem of having to prove bin Laden's continued existence -- or else answer the question, which might begin to grow in the minds of its own global Islamist audience, of why he seemingly has abandoned the flock.

Though we cannot state categorically that bin Laden is either alive or dead, the view that he may "be no more" has taken root within U.S. intelligence agencies, where officials note that the al Qaeda leader -- whose health was questionable even before the Sept. 11 attacks -- might have died from wounds sustained in the Afghanistan conflict, kidney failure or some other natural causes, or a combination of these factors. Access to quality medical care, including the dialysis machine we believe he needed, would be quite hard to come by while fleeing Predator drones and hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, even if doctors or medical supplies were available and could be retained for
a price.

Al Qaeda's own videotapes have borne witness to bin Laden's physical deterioration -- or at least they did, until he stopped appearing in them about a year ago. The last seemingly fresh video footage of bin Laden was issued in September 2003, when he appeared noticeably gaunt while walking through a mountainous area with al-Zawahiri. In an audio tape accompanying that footage, the two men referred to the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But bin Laden was not portrayed again on video until late October 2004 -- and then in such apparent good health that the date of the footage was called into question.

http://web.stratfor.com/images/charts/CHRONOLOGY-OF-AL-QAEDA-STAT.jpg

Since the video of September 2003, al-Zawahiri has emerged as the most prominent figure in al Qaeda releases. Bin Laden's voice was heard on a handful of audio recordings, but even those have now fallen off: He last was known to speak in December 2004, praising an attack against the U.S. consulate in Jeddah that occurred Dec. 6.

In reviewing the chronology of al Qaeda releases, it also is noteworthy that al-Zawahiri has begun exhorting followers during the past year to continue their jihad despite the fate of al Qaeda's leaders. In an audio issued Sept. 9, 2004, he states: "You, youth of Islam, this is our message: If we die or are detained, continue the path after us, and don't betray God and his prophet, and don't knowingly betray the trust." Less than a month later, in
a video released Oct. 1, he repeated the message, saying, "If we are killed or taken prisoner, continue the path after us. . . . It's the era of Muslim resistance, after the [Arab] governments submitted to the Zionist occupant.
We should learn the lessons of Chechnya, Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine."

Of course, such statements are entirely in keeping with al Qaeda's goal of sparking a grassroots movement within the Muslim world. But given the other factors, there is the intriguing possibility that al-Zawahiri's remarks on death and capture were made at a time when bin Laden himself might have been dying nearby.

Absent a body, there is plenty of room for speculation on such matters. But the facts are these:

*-Bin Laden has not been known to move or speak since December 2004.

*-He has been replaced in both video and audio recordings by al-Zawahiri, who has issued a handful of statements this year alone.

*-No U.S. or foreign government agencies have claimed credit for bin Laden's death.

Having said that, we would argue that it is in al Qaeda's tactical interest to keep bin Laden "alive" in the public's mind -- or at least not to acknowledge his unspectacular or completely natural death -- since that ties up military and intelligence resources and diverts attention away from any operational planners who might still be capable of carrying out attacks.

From the U.S. point of view, it must be remembered that intelligence agents are interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who served as bin Laden's chief tactical commander. Though he was captured in March 2003, he would be perhaps the best-positioned of all the al Qaeda operatives captured thus far to give reliable information about bin Laden's possible hideouts (though not, after so much time, the location of bin Laden himself). Every nook and cranny he could name in South Asia would be scoured by CIA shadow teams -- but, so far, there is no reason to believe they have found anything.

Now, it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility that the United States actually did succeed, somehow, in killing bin Laden -- perhaps with a missile fired from a Predator in Afghanistan -- and the corpse, if it was ever found, might have been unrecognizable. Intriguingly, no one has claimed to have any forensic evidence that logically could be expected in such an event -- which indicates to us that either no corpse was ever found or the forensic evidence was inconclusive. There is a third possible argument -- that the government has conclusive evidence of bin Laden's demise and has somehow hushed it up -- but we find this exceedingly difficult to believe.
As anyone who has ever worked inside the Beltway can tell you, there are no secrets in Washington -- and certainly none that juicy that could be kept quiet for long.

Speaking from a purely domestic perspective, for the moment, there is nothing to stop the Bush administration from claiming at any time that bin Laden is dead, which would certainly score PR points with the public. But barring any forensic proof to back up its words, that would be a risky move. The White House already has a credibility problem, having claimed the existence of WMD in Iraq, and there would be no way to prevent anyone from whipping out some dated video footage of bin Laden that would make the administration look foolish. Given the number of American conspiracy theorists who argue that the United States attacked itself on Sept. 11, the question of who in the world would believe such a claim about bin Laden doesn't weigh favorably for the White House.

Rather, logic argues that it is better, both strategically and tactically, to say nothing and allow perceptions to persist that bin Laden, terrorist mastermind and financier, is still "out there," rather than try to force a PR victory on the issue, even if that was the Bush administration's style. And there is no compelling reason for this president, who cannot seek re-election, to pander to the mercurial polls.

Returning to the political exchanges now occurring in the media, we see new clues as to Washington's thinking. As we have noted, the Bush administration has been propping up the Pakistanis to take the lead in the hunt for bin Laden. Now, if Washington believes bin Laden to be alive and within reach, it would not trust the Pakistanis to lead the charge, nor would it share the most sensitive bits of intelligence on the matter even with allies. The
Americans would go it alone -- though they probably would not seek to leave the impression that they were ultimately responsible for bin Laden's demise, for the reasons noted above. However, if the Bush administration believes bin Laden is dead, thrusting responsibility for the search to Islamabad certainly doesn't hurt, and it provides several political dividends. For one thing, it keeps the heat on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to flush out other, less iconic al Qaeda leaders, but does not overtly humiliate Islamabad in the process.

The ball, then, would seem to be in al Qaeda's court. Unless they can paint bin Laden as having been martyred by infidel Western forces, creating an icon around which the Islamist public can rally, it is in the group's interest to generate perceptions that bin Laden is alive as the titular leader of the vanguard jihadist movement. Al Qaeda is losing strength as a strategic force , and being able to produce bin Laden might, on a psychological level, help buoy the movement.

But the group has done nothing to enforce this perception in almost a year. The silence from Washington on bin Laden's fate is perfectly logical; why al Qaeda remains silent is a mystery.

Strategic Forecasting
http://www.stratfor.com

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Cindy Sheehan:
My First Time Arrested

My First Time
by Cindy Sheehan
Mon Sep 26th, 2005

The rumors are true this time. I was arrested in front of the White House today. It was my first time ever being arrested.

We proceeded from Lafayette Park to the Guard House at the White House. I, my sister, and other Gold Star Families for Peace members and some Military Families requested to meet with the President again. We again wanted to know: What is the Noble Cause? Our request was, to our immense shock and surprise, denied. They wouldn't even deliver any letters or pictures of our killed loved ones to the White House.

We all know by now why George won't meet with parents of the soldiers he has killed who disagree with him. First of all, he hates it when people disagree with him. I am not so sure he hates it as much as he is in denial that it even happens. Secondly, he is a coward who arrogantly refuses to meet with the people who pay his salary. Maybe the next time one of us is asked by our bosses to have a performance review, or we are going to be written up for a workplace infraction, we should refuse to go and talk to our bosses sighting the fact that the President doesn't have to. The third reason why he won't talk to us is the he knows there is no Noble Cause for the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq. It is a question that has no true answer.

After we were refused a meeting with the Disconnected One, we went over to right in front of our house...the White House (behind the gate of course) and we sat down and refused to move until George came out and talked to us. We actually had a good time singing old church songs and old protest songs while we waited. I tied a picture of Casey on the White House fence and apparently, that is against the law, too.

After three warnings to get up and move off of the sidewalk in front of our house, we were arrested. It is so ironic to me that the person who resides in our White House swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The person who is the (p)resident of the White House now has no concept of the Constitution. He was appointed by the Supreme Court for his first term, invaded and continues to occupy a sovereign country without a declaration of war from the Congress, and violated several treaties to actually invade, Iraq too. Not to mention the condoned torture that pervades the military prisons these days. These are all violations of the Constitution. The Patriot Act and denying us our rights to peaceably assemble are serious breaches of the Bill of Rights. George is so concerned about Iraq developing a Constitution and he ignores and shreds our own Constitution.

Being arrested is not a big deal. We were arrested for "demonstrating without a permit." We were protesting something that is much more serious than sitting on a sidewalk: the tragic and needless deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Americans (both in Iraq and here in America) who would be alive if it weren't for the criminals who reside in and work in the White House.

Karl Rove (besides just being a very creepy man) outted a CIA agent and was responsible for endangering many of our covert agents worldwide. Dick Cheney's old company is reaping profits beyond anyone's wildest imaginations in their no-bid contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans. John Negroponte's activities in South America are very shady and murderous. Rumsfeld and Gonzales are responsible for illegal and immoral authorization, encouragement and approval of torture. Not to mention, violating Geneva Conventions, torture endangers the lives of our service men and women in Iraq. Along with the above mentioned traitors, Condi lied through her teeth in the insane run-up to the invasion. The list of crimes is extensive, abhorrent, and unbelievable. What is so unbelievable is that we were arrested for exercising our first amendment rights and these people are running free to enjoy their lives and wreak havoc on the world.

The fine for Demonstrating Without a Permit is $75.00. I am certain that I won't pay it. My court date is November 16th. Any lawyers out there want to help me challenge an unconstitutional law??

Source:
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/26/19444/3681

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Anti-War Fervor Fills the Streets

By Petula Dvorak
The Washington Post
Sunday 25 September 2005

Demonstration is largest in capital since US military invaded Iraq.

Tens of thousands of people packed downtown Washington yesterday and marched past the White House in the largest show of antiwar sentiment in the nation's capital since the conflict in Iraq began.

The demonstration drew grandmothers in wheelchairs and babies in strollers, military veterans in fatigues and protest veterans in tie-dye. It was the first time in a decade that protest groups had a permit to march in front of the executive mansion, and, even though President Bush was not there, the setting seemed to electrify the crowd.

Signs, T-shirts, slogans and speeches outlined the cost of the Iraq conflict in human as well as economic terms. They memorialized dead U.S. troops and Iraqis, and contrasted the price of war with the price of recovery for areas battered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Riffs on Vietnam-era protests were plentiful, with messages declaring, "Make Levees, Not War," "I never thought I'd miss Nixon" and "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam." Many in the crowd had protested in the 1960s; others weren't even born during those tumultuous years.

Protest organizers estimated that 300,000 people participated, triple their original target. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who walked the march route, said the protesters achieved the goal of 100,000 and probably exceeded it. Asked whether at least 150,000 showed up, the chief said, "That's as good a guess as any.

"It's their protest, not mine. It was peaceful -- that's all I care about," Ramsey said.

The protesters rallied at the Ellipse, then marched through a misty drizzle around the White House and along Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The crowd thinned as events continued into the evening with a concert on the grounds of the Washington Monument that featured Joan Baez and other performers, along with antiwar speeches.

The police presence along the demonstration's route seemed more relaxed than at recent protests, although D.C. police and U.S. Park Police had hundreds of officers in place to deal with potential trouble. Police said a construction fence was torn down and a newspaper box damaged, but they reported no injuries or major problems. They said three people were arrested -- one on a charge of destruction of property, one on a charge of attempted theft and one on a charge of disorderly conduct.

More than 200 counter-demonstrators set up outside the FBI building on Pennsylvania Avenue, and some back-and-forth yelling occurred as the antiwar marchers moved past. "Shame on you! Shame on you!" one counter-protester shouted at the antiwar group. Several dozen officers stood between the two groups, and no trouble erupted, police said.

Some organizations supporting the war in Iraq plan to demonstrate today on the Mall.

Antiwar groups staged smaller rallies yesterday in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Rome and other cities. In Washington, the events were sponsored by groups including the ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice and focused on a succinct theme: "End the War in Iraq and Bring the Troops Home Now."

Roughly 147,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq. Since the war began in March 2003, 1,911 U.S. members of the military have been killed and 14,641 have been wounded.

The protest groups helped organize caravans and carpools, and many participants began arriving early in the morning after bumpy, all-night bus rides.

Leslie Darling, 60, came from Cleveland with four friends and said it was her first antiwar protest. She said she was moved by what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

"It made clear that while we spend all this money trying to impose our will on other countries, here at home in our own country, we can't take care of each other," she said.

When the bus coming from Kalamazoo, Mich., pulled up to Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue, Sister Maureen Metty, 56, stretched her legs and prepared for a brand-new experience.

"There were 250 sisters who wanted to be here today, but I'm the one they chose to send," she said. She carried a sign that read "Sisters of St. Joseph's for Peace," a folding stool and a backpack with snacks, her toothbrush and toothpaste. She snapped a flurry of pictures for the sisters back home, took a deep breath and headed into the crowd.

People came to the Mall and Ellipse in waves. Organizers said that several thousand never got there because of an Amtrak breakdown on the New York-to-Washington line in the morning. Others who took Metro faced delays because of repairs on the Yellow and Blue lines.

Once protesters arrived, they joined throngs headed toward the rally on the Ellipse, which featured numerous speakers, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, actress Jessica Lange and Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who drew thousands of demonstrators to her 26-day vigil outside Bush's Crawford, Tex., ranch last month and was the inspiration for many protesters yesterday. Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Iraq last year.

"This is amazing!" Sheehan said. "You're part of history."

Some of the biggest applause went to someone not even on the program. Adam Hathaway, an 8-year-old who became lost while mingling in the crowds. Before he was separated from his mother, Adam was showing people his jar of pennies and proclaiming that "President Bush is taking lots of this and using it in the war."

Several announcements were made seeking help in finding the blond boy from Maine. He was reunited with his mother, Julia Hathaway, as the crowd cheered.

Bush was not around to hear the protesters filing past the White House. He spent the day at command centers in Texas and Colorado, where he assessed Hurricane Rita recovery efforts. Vice President Cheney was undergoing surgery at George Washington University Hospital to treat aneurysms on the back of his knees.

Bush and Cheney were depicted on posters, T-shirts and in makeshift costumes. Several demonstrators wore masks of Bush's likeness and prison jumpsuits. They were often asked to pose for photographs.

Many protesters said they had opposed the action in Iraq all along but were emboldened to demonstrate after polls showed that a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of the war.

The masses on the street served up a broad cross section of the United States by age, geography religion and ethnic group. The Raging Grannies, Presbyterians for Peace, Portuguese Against Bush and a group of Quakers were there. The Buddhist Peace Delegation took up most of 14th Street NW with its golden banner that read: "May all beings be safe and free from anger, fear, greed, dilution and all ill being."

Protest organizers made special note of military participants in the antiwar effort.

Army 1st Sgt. Frank Cookinham, with a Special Forces patch on one shoulder, scorpion tattoos crawling across the back of his neck and "LOCO" permanently inked on his Adam's apple stands out in most crowds. He was pretty uncomfortable yesterday.

"I've never done this before, but here I am, in uniform, figuring this is the only way I can shove it to Bush," said Cookinham, of Newport, R.I., a Persian Gulf War veteran who recently returned from a second tour in Iraq. "This war makes no sense."

Marching past the Treasury Building, Steven Olsen, 57, and his wife, Brenda, 49, of Yonkers, N.Y., held signs bearing a photo of their son, an Army Reserve sergeant sent to Iraq after enrolling in medical school.

"I hear from him about once a month," said Brenda as her husband gently waved a placard that said, "Proud of my soldier: Ashamed of this war."

Staff writers Karlyn Barker, Jo Becker, Susan Levine, David Nakamura, Robert E. Pierre, Amit R. Paley and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092401701_pf.html

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Thousands Protest the Iraq War

By Kathleen Sullivan, Chris Heredia, Janine DeFao and Todd Wallack
The San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday 24 September 2005

SF also crowded with Love Parade revelers.

Tens of thousands of people marched in San Francisco and the East Bay today to urge the U.S. government to pull out of Iraq, joining anti-war protests in Washington and other cities.

Elsewhere in the city, thousands of people grooved to the sound of electronic music along Market Street and at Civic Center Plaza. And tonight, thousands more are expected to rock-out at SBC Park to Green Day, the celebrity punk band born in Berkeley.

Police estimated 20,000 people marched today. Organizers pegged the crowd at 50,000. Either way, it was one of the largest anti-war protests since the U.S. invaded Iraq two years ago. Protesters gathered in San Francisco's Dolores Park this morning, then marched for two hours to Jefferson Square Park, where the park was jammed with a standing room only crowd of bodies.

As they marched, people carried signs expressing outrage at everything from the war in Iraq to President Bush to the treatment of Palestinians. One man, dressed as Uncle Sam, carried an American flag with a peace sign.

A sixth-grader from San Jose held a handmade sign that said "No war ever more" on one side and "No war anymore" on the other. "I am going to be a conscientious objector," said Dominic Dello Bueno, 11, who was there with his father and younger sister. "I vote for peace not war." Some participants said they have been actively protesting the war for months or years.

"I write letters," said Isabelle Corkins, 47, of Alameda, who with her husband and 4-year-old daughter. "This is the only thing left that gives me a sense of doing something."

A student from Laney College in Oakland prepared to help carry a procession of black coffins, built to represent Iraqi children who have died in the conflict.

"The idea is that we will stop protesting just because the war is continuing, but we won't," said Maryjane Jota, 20. "Just because it's old news, doesn't mean that it's old news to the people who are dying."

Douglas Fisher, 61, held a large rainbow flag that said "Peace" in Italian. He said he got the flag in Sicily, and has taken part in several peace marches to oppose the war.

"Somebody said it was a great day for a march," he said. "I was thinking it would be great if we didn't have to come down here anymore."

Along a grassy median on Dolores Street, people set up 40 large placards marking casualties from the war. Each poster carried 60 photos and drawings, representing American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who have been killed in the conflict. (The U.S. military estimates that at least 1,900 soliders have died, and thousands more have been wounded in Iraq.)

Jim Haber, 43, said the posters were designed to "show the human cost of the war." At least a half dozen counter-protesters, including a group of college Republicans from San Francisco State University, turned out to the military effort in Iraq.

One held a handmade sign that said "Hey, losers. Stop demoralizing the troops."

Another said he thinks the U.S. military will need to remain in Iraq for years to help the country establish a democracy. He said he thought most of the protesters were radicals who wanted to overthrow the U.S. government.

"There is a different way to peace," said Leigh Wolf, a 19-year-old broadcast major. "This work can come to an end with patriotism instead of a socialist revolution."

By late afternoon, the crowd at Jefferson Park had thinned considerably.

A smaller protest was also held in Walnut Creek, where about 250 to 300 people marched from the city's Bart station to Heather Farms Park.

The demonstration drew a wide range of people - from seniors to kids- holding peace signs. Many drivers honked noisily as they drove by marchers on Ignacio Valley Road, though some gave a thumbs down sign or a middle finger.

A 52-year-old lawyer said he joined the protest because of her outrage at the federal government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina. Faith Brewer said she thought the problem was exacerbated because too many resources were diverted to Iraq.

"Too many people died in New Orleans, because of the war in Iraq," she said.

Brewer said she was particularly motivated to march in Walnut Creek, her hometown, because it's considered a more conservative city in the liberal region.

"People tend to think that nobody here is against the war in Iraq - that all the leftist, peaceniks are in San Francisco," she said.

Others held signs supporting peace and a pull-out of Iraq. On said "Moms against the War." Another read, "Bring the troops home now." A third said "Peace is Patriotic." Unlike some other war protests, the focus appeared to be squarely on Iraq.

Sondra Runyan, who has a daughter in the Coast Guard, said she worried that Americans have become inured to the news of soldiers dying in Iraq.

"It seems when you turn on the radio, they mention we lost two or three soldiers, and then they're off to the sports scores," said Runyan, 47, of Martinez. "People are immune to the pain these families are going through. This is destroying families."

Contra Costa County Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier, who attended the rally, said he plans to propose a resolution next month in support of Congressional legislation to set a deadline to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.

"I don't see this as being out of mainstream," DeSaulnier said, as he looked over the crowd . "It may be the tip of the iceberg."

"If enough local elected speak out, we could be saving lives," he added.

The Walnut Creek rally ended peacefully at about 2 p.m.

Meanwhile, thousands of electronic music lovers gathered along Market Street for the 1 p.m. start of the city's second annual Loveparade.

The parade, featuring 24 floats with more than 200 disc jockeys from as far away as Israel, was expected to head slowly along Market Street, ending in a massive dance party at City Hall and the surrounding Civic Center Plaza.

An estimated 30,000 to 35,000 people showed up for the festival last year, and organizers hope to double that tally this year.

Though precise crowd estimates weren't available, the sidewalks were packed 12-people deep in some places along Market Street as dance party regulars mixed with tourists. "Can you feel the love? It's contagious," said Brian Tene, 27, of Daly City, dressed in a Superman outfit, complete with a red cape and sculpted foam chest. "Look at everyone being themselves and being free."

Loveparade was first launched in Berlin in 1989, with the idea that techno music would help bridge the cultures of East and West Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While the Berlin event is now defunct, other Loveparades had popped up around the globe, including Mexico City and Tel Aviv.

The San Francisco event - which includes not only Euro-inspired techno music but hip hop, house, jungle, funk, progressive and trance music - has continued the theme that music celebrates diversity, promotes tolerance and fosters community.

"The music sort of joins everyone together," said parade spokeswoman Jennifer Manger. "If we can put all the music in one place, we can join those subcultures together in a community of love."

The Green Day concert was expected to begin at 7 p.m., ensuring traffic snarls would continue throughout the day. A BART commuter reported trains were jammed.

Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/24/BAprotest24.DTL

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Thousands March to Demand Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq

By Tom Anderson
The Independent UK
Sunday 25 September 2005

More than 10,000 protesters descended on London yesterday for a mass demonstration against the war in Iraq.

Many of the protesters, who marched from Parliament Square to Hyde Park blowing whistles and carrying placards, were demanding the immediate withdrawal of British troops.

Buses were used to bring people from all over Britain to join the demonstration, organised by the Stop the War Coalition.

Scotland Yard estimated that crowds had swollen to 10,000 people by the time the march reached Hyde Park in the early afternoon, although organisers put the numbers at up to 100,000. Other marches were planned for the United States.

Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, said people were marching to show their solidarity with Muslims bearing "the brunt of attacks" in Iraq.

He told the crowd: "We cannot say how many are here, but there are certainly tens of thousands from all over the country marching above all to bring the troops home from Iraq and end the bloody disastrous occupation."

The former Labour MP Tony Benn, who also took part in the demonstration, described the war as "unwinnable" and said it had been waged "for oil and power".

"We demand that troops come out of Iraq and that a date is set now," he said.

The demonstration, which was the 12th to be held over the past few years, began outside the Houses of Parliament where protests have been banned under new laws.

Peter Brierley, from Batley in West Yorkshire, whose son Shaun, 28, died in Kuwait in 2003, said: "My son was betrayed by Blair. If the Government do not bring them out, there will be more families like us."

For Sue Smith, who lost her son in a roadside explosion in Basra two months ago, the day was highly emotional. She choked back tears as she read out a letter delivered to Downing Street earlier yesterday, begging Tony Blair to withdraw British troops.

"Seven weeks ago we saw our son for the last time in a coffin at the chapel of rest," she said.

"You can never know how it feels, but you have the power to stop it happening again. You made the decision to go to Iraq and you can make the decision to get our sons and daughters out of there."

British soldier Lance Corporal George Solomou, who refused his call-up to serve in Iraq, was near the front of the protest as it made its way to Trafalgar Square and on to Hyde Park.

He said: "I am here to show my solidarity. The British people are realising they have been told more and more lies about this war."

Source:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article314998.ece

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DC Antiwar Rally Coverage


Googling the Antiwar News Links

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Patriotic Dissent


By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t Speech
Saturday 24 September 2005

Ahhhh, I love the smell of Patriotic Dissent in the afternoon!

As we stand here on the grounds of a monument that is dedicated to the Father of our Country, George Washington, we are reminded that he was well known for the apocryphal stories of never being able to tell a lie. I find it so ironic that there is another man here named George who stays in this town between vacations, and he seems to never be able to tell the truth. It is tragic for us that our bookend presidents named George have two completely different relationships with honesty.

I also find it ironic and heartbreaking that my son, Casey, who was a brave person, tall and proud, who loved his country and was honest beyond measure, could be sent to his death by someone who is even too cowardly to meet with a broken-hearted mom, let alone go and fight in the illegal and immoral war of his generation. We are losing our best and our brightest in a country that we are destroying, that was no threat to the United States of America. Iraq was and still is no danger to our safety and security, or to our way of life. The weapons of mass destruction and mass deception reside in this town: they are the neocons who pull the strings and the members of Congress who have loosened the purse strings with reckless abandon and have practically given George and company a blank check to run our country into monetary and moral bankruptcy. We are out here in force today to take our country back and restore true democracy and sanity to our political process. The time is now, and we are here because we love our country, and we won't let the reckless maniacs destroy her any further.

We, as a young colony of Great Britain, broke from another tyrant, King George the Third. Well, I wish our George the Third were here today to see us out here in force protesting against his war and against his murderous policies. George is not here, though, because he is out galavanting around the country somewhere pretending that he cares about the people who are in the path of hurricane Rita. We know that he cares nothing for the people of America: Katrina, Iraq, and his idiotic response to 9/11 are evidence of that. He is just out and about play-acting like a President whose country is in crisis, just like he pretends to be a Commander in Chief and a Cowboy (I wonder if before he took off to Texas or Colorado or wherever he went, he watched a movie like Independence Day to see how that other fake president acted?).

The reason he is out today is that his handlers told him that he got a little flak for playing golf and eating birthday cake with Senator McCain while some of his employers were hanging off rooftops and treetops in New Orleans. He swaggers around arrogantly like he is a macho dictatorial tyrant who doesn't have to answer to his employers, the people of the United States of America. Those days are over George, we are here today to tell you that we are a majority and we will never rest until you bring our young people home from the Middle East, and until you start putting money into rebuilding OUR communities: the ones natural disasters destroy with your help, and the ones which your callous and racist war economy are decimating. We won't allow you to take anymore money out of social programs to finance Halliburton to rebuild the Gulf States: there is no money. Our bank account is empty. George, this is our rainy day and you have failed us miserably. Stop pouring money into the pockets of the war profiteers and into building permanent bases in Iraq ... It is time to bring our billions of dollars home from Iraq too!!!

One thing the Camp Casey movement that hunkered down in Crawford, Texas, this past August taught us is that we the people of America have the power and we can and should name our national policy and make sure it is carried out. I constantly get asked if we are making a difference and if we think (like we're naïve boobs) that we will actually stop the war. Well, looking back at how Vietnam was ended and looking back in the history of our country, most notably in the suffragette, union, and civil rights movements, we the people are the only ones who have been able to transform history and affect true and lasting change here in America: so to those people who question if we are making a difference: I tell them to go back to school and read their history books!! And another thing these questioners overlook is that WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE!!! And we are here to tell the media, Congress, and this criminal and criminally negligent administration: WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY!!!

We in the peace movement need to agree on one thing: yes we need an exit plan, but it is not a strategy, it is a command. The command should be: have all of our military personnel and paid killer mercenaries out of Iraq within 6 months, and the generals carry out the command. Simple, it's not brain surgery, and I think it is so easy even George Bush can sign the order. We can't give the homicidal maniacs any wiggle room or long-term strategy sessions. For one thing, when our leaders strategize, we are put in even more jeopardy - they have proven that they are not too bright or even a little compassionate. But the most important thing is that people die every day in Iraq for absolutely no reason and for lies. We have to say NOW because the people on the other side are saying NEVER. We can't compromise, we can't say please, and we can't retreat. If we do, our country is doomed. We have to honor the sacrifices of our loved ones by completing the mission of peace and justice.

It is time.

Bring our troops home, NOW!

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092405Y.shtml

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British prison break and blown
covert operation, exposes
"war on terrorism" lie

by Larry Chin
September 20, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

On Monday, September 19, 2005, six British armored vehicles smashed into an Iraqi jail in Basra to free two undercover SAS elite special forces commandos who were engaged in a bungled espionage operation involving the planting of explosives. Michel Chossudovsky breaks the story down here and puts it in to context: British "Undercover Soldiers" Caught driving Booby Trapped Car.

See also the mainstream coverage from BBC, Washington Post, The Independent and the Christian Science Monitor.

This incident is as obvious and embarrassing as the 1986 downing of Oliver North’s Southern Air Transport/CIA supply plane over Nicaragua (piloted by Eugene Hasenfus), which started what is known as the Iran-Contra scandal. In the wake of official denials and tap-dancing from the British, a new cover-up is already underway,

What this scandal confirms, in spectacular fashion, is that the "war on terrorism" is a lie. It has been a lie, from the manufactured 9/11 to the present; one huge covert operation spearheaded by the US and the British governments, built upon endless faked intelligence and Downing Paper lies. It further confirms that the lie itself is becoming increasingly difficult to control.

Here we have British agents caught planting explosives, setting up a bombing and the murder of civilians, and fighting between the British and the Iraqi police ("allies"). Why?

In the timely and thorough analysis Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Resistance Movement, Chossudovsky asks: "Has the US [and Britain] created as part of a covert intelligence operation, a bogus ‘resistance movement’ made up of its own Al Qaeda sponsored ‘terrorists’? Their suicide attacks target Iraqi civilians rather than the US military. The suicide bombings tend to encourage sectarian divisions not only within Iraq, but throughout the entire Middle East. They serve Washington's interests. They contribute to undermining the development of a broader resistance movement uniting Shia, Sunni, Kurds and Christians against the illegal occupation of the Iraqi homeland. They also tend to create, at the international level, divisions within the antiwar and peace movements."

The answer to the question, emphatically underscored by the British prison break, is yes.

A manufactured and guided "terrorism", including suicide bombings set up by Western forces, and blamed on "terrorists" (Zarqawi, etc.), and "real" blowback violence (anti-occupation resistance)---fomented by the West, for geostrategic purposes.

The real terror threat originates from Washington, and its brethren in London and Tel Aviv.

Source:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20050920&articleId=982

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Wake Up

By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Monday 19 September 2005

So we have come to cash this check - a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
-- Martin Luther King Jr., August 28, 1963, "I Have a Dream" speech

What Bush's Katrina shows once again is that my son died for nothing. If you listen to Bush - and fewer and fewer are, thank goodness - we are in Iraq in part due to 9/11. All our president has been talking about has been protecting this country since 9/11. That's why people voted for him in the last election. Katrina shows it's all as sham, a fraud, a disaster as large as Katrina itself.

Hundreds of billions and tens of thousands of innocent lives wasted later, what have we achieved? Nothing. Casey died for nothing and Bush says others have to die for those that have died already.

Enough, George! What is disgusting is not, as the first lady says, criticism of you, but rather the crimes you've committed against this country and our sons and daughters. Stop hiding behind your twisted idea of God and stop destroying this country.

This week I arrive in Washington DC to begin my Vigil at the White House just like I did in Texas. But this time I'll be joined by Katrina victims as well. In your America we are all victims. The failed bookends of your Presidency are Iraq and Katrina.

It is time for all of us to stand up and be counted: to show the media, Congress, and this inept, corrupt, and criminal administration that we mean business. It is time to get off of our collective behinds to show the people who are running our country into oblivion that we will stand for it no longer. That we want our country back and we want our nation's young people back home, safe and sound, on our shores to help protect America. That it is time for a change in our country's "leadership." That we will never go away until our dreams are reality.

We have so-called leaders in our country who are waiting for the correct "politically expedient" time to speak up and out against the occupation of Iraq. It is no sweat for our politicos to wait for the right time, because not one of them has a child in harm's way. I don't care if the politician is a Democrat or a Republican, this is not about politics. Being a strong leader to guide our country out of the quagmire and mistake of Iraq will require people of courage and determination to stand up and say: "I don't care if I win the next election, people are dying in Iraq every day and families are being decimated." We, as the 62% of Americans who want our troops to begin coming home, will follow such a leader down the difficult but oh-so-rewarding path of peace with justice.

It is no longer time for the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. It never has been the time for that. Our "now" is so fiercely urgent. Like my daughter, Carly, wrote in the last verse of her "A Nation Rocked to Sleep" poem:

Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Being Rocked to Sleep?
Our leaders want to keep us numb so the pain won't be too deep,
But if we the people allow them to continue, another mother will weep,
Have you heard the sound of a Nation Being Rocked to Sleep?

Wake up: See you in DC on the 24th.

For more information on September 24th go to:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org

Source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091905Z.shtml

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URGENT FROM BOGALUSA...
PEOPLE ARE F**KING DYING


America is too hopelessly and willfully deluded and distracted to properly care for itself. Consider this an international alert. Worldwide assistance is desperately required in America yesterday!

by Barbara
Sat Sep 17th, 2005 at 19:37:53 PDT

I have been in Bogalusa, LA for the past three days and today I lost it...emotionally. The pain and suffering, the bullshit by every fucking government agency from the locals to the FEDS.

I have managed to bully my way into the main command center and become friendly enough with the 'important' people, that I have been invited into crucial meetings that are affectionally called "OPEC" meetings because they are about draining/screwing Americans.

Yesterday I was with the "crisis manager" of Bogalusa, Tom Anderson...he's actually a detective in the sheriff's department and while he surely was nice, he's a lying SOB when it concerns what is TRULY happening in Bogalusa.

PLEASE CONTINUE TO READ THIS AND RECOMMEND.

I talked to FEMA reps, RC reps, State Health reps and the hospital folks and received the same "we don't need doctors or nurses to run clinics" (I've been placing medical teams)

Today at the Red Cross shelter, the doctor I traveled with...Dr. Ken Levine, was STILL seeing patients that 'didn't need him' when I left at 7 p.m.

There is NO MEDIA HERE...PLEASE KOSSACKS, GET ME MEDIA...THE NATIONAL KIND NOW.

I went to check on my little 80 year old ladies today and stopped at another house with TWO TREES still through it and the couple living there...14 days AFTER the hurricane hit, they put a sign out on their lawn that said "this is how the government treats you"...FEMA went there the next day, gave them a $2k check and wished them good luck.

These people sent their kids to Texas and want to go there...it's a town south of Houston, the name escapes me now. These people have NOT seen the RC and scavange for food/water. She drove for an hour and waited in line for 9 hours to fill out the paperwork for getting RED CROSS vouchers and then was given a NUMBER and told to come back on MONDAY. Now you might think, well they must be in the middle of no where...WRONG, these people are on the ROAD THAT ALL THE GOVERNMENT agencies take to the main control center at least 10 times daily. FEMA never even got people to remove the trees off their roof, they had FRIENDS show up finally.

At my little 80 year old ladies home, I find out they haven't seen the RED CROSS for 2 days and they were out of food and water and needed medical attention and meds. I got them all of that.

While there, their young neighbor talked with the photo journalists who requested I talk to him and I find out that the RED CROSS REFUSED to talk to him, much less help him. This is a 36 year old man who has a wife with POLIO and they are living in a church with NOTHING. FEMA won't talk to them, they have no phone, etc.

So KOSSACKS, here is the low down from here and what I am praying you will do.

Contact the press and get them to come here and use me as their 'point' person so I can show them the 'real' shit.

Contact the RED CROSS and ask them where the fuck the $700 million is going, cuz they sure aren't helping the folks much here. Sure, they have shelters and soup kitchens, but that is that. The shelters may or may not have food or sundry items. I actually took a load of things to the one here today because they didn't have stuff.

Start a ruckus, make all of these entities accountable.

Texas KOSSACKS, get me a house for this one couple, they are poor, but they are wonderful.

Help me get a home in Bogalusa for the man (Lucky) with the wife with polio.

Mediate/pray that I will have the strength to continue.

I will be able to use this computer and the dial up connection each evening for the next few days. I PRAY YOU WILL RECOMMEND THESE DIARIES.

The situation is horrible here, 85% of the powerlines are down, thousands of homes are destroyed. Animals have died, more are displaced or abandoned...I am horrified.

CALL ME if you need to. The church where I am staying at night has good cell coverage...during the day in Bogalusa, it's hit/miss.

619.213.2762

If you can't or don't want to contact the press CALL ME WITH DIRECT NUMBERS PLEASE.

THank you.

In Peace and horrified.

Barbara


SUNDAY A.M.

It is 6:30 a.m. and I'm going to head to Slidell for a few hours and then get back here and may go up to Bogalusa to check on 'my' folks and bring them some things.

Jim and Linda Creel, 1002 West Tenth, Bogalusa, LA are the couple who said they would go to Splendora Texas.

Lucky Pope and his wife (with polio) are the other couple Miss Rosie and her sister are my '80 year olds'.

URGENT: Missing woman. Ashley N. Dones, DOB 11/6/86, black, 250 pounds. Mother is Lisa Lewis. She was taken on a separate bus out of SLIDELL (by the RED CROSS apparently) and no one has heard from her or knows where she is.

The Red Cross hasn't a clue with her bus went, they THINK it went to the DAYTON OHIO area.

I know there are message boards for missing people. FEMA supposedly has begun 'community sweep teams' with the purpose of going DOOR-TO-DOOR to 'assess' the needs of people and get them registered with FEMA. Interestingly they have ONLY 24 teams and a pretty large parish.

They won't be out until this week.

Am trying to get names/numbers of the FEMA 'leaders' for that. Supposedly these are paying positions folks.

I have heard that a 'BOBCAT' is worth $1000/day paid by FEMA (us), flatbed trucks something like $500/day. Then it seems the contractors try to collect additional money from homeowners, many poor. It just gets better.

Please continue to pressure politicians in this area. This is Distric 12...I have the State Senator (not US) business card somewhere...Ben Neevers comes to mind...start CALLING HIM, let him know that Barbara from Oceanside needs to talk to him and give him my number. I met him at the "OPEC" meeting, I LIKE the guy...he told me to CALL HIM if I saw things that the others claimed were 'fine'....

The congressional guy (probably state) is Mr. Richey...he didn't have a card with him...he was okay, but not much of go getter.

Well, I am off. I will attempt to beg for this computer later.

THANK YOU.

Read Barbaras journal and observations here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/2868461.html

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Your Departure is Long Overdue

Mr. Bush's Tuba

By NED SUBLETTE
September 16, 2005, 3 a.m.

Pretty much everything Mr. Bush has said since this crisis began has been unspeakably insensitive. But tonight he topped himself. While reading his ghost-written speech in front of the temporarily illuminated 1855 statue of slaveowner Andrew Jackson, he used the most tasteless metaphor of all. Speaking from the deserted city of New Orleans, he appropriated the image of the jazz funeral.

Mr. Bush -- I can't bring myself to call him the President -- had the gall to evoke this sacred African American tradition while black people's corpses were still decomposing within walking distance from where he was speaking. While, as an e-mail from someone who had just returned from the Ninth Ward advised me, the stench of death in the street was overpowering. While the destitute were unable to afford the plainest of jazzless funerals for their loved ones. While anguished mothers were still separated from their children two and a half weeks after the hurricane.

I hope Mr. Bush can play the tuba himself, because I doubt there will be much enthusiasm for his parade from the now dispersed communities that know how to do jazz funerals right. I wish I could forget that image of him with the guitar while the Ninth Ward was drowning.

Tonight, while we were still struggling to comprehend the magnitude of this catastrophe, he promised everything but the moon. He promised "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." In other words, the ultimate big-government project, throwing off lots of money for his cronies in business and faith-based organizations. He didn't tell us how we can afford to do this now, when we couldn't even afford levee maintenance for New Orleans before.

George W. Bush is simply not capable of overseeing the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. Much less the rebuilding of the shattered United States of America. Not intellectually, not administratively, and not morally.

He and his appointees abandoned an entire community of United States citizens to be trapped like rats and left to starve, dehydrate, and literally rot in an open sewer. Even if this unforgivable insult to African Americans were Mr. Bush's sole offense, his resignation would be an essential element of any meaningful accountability.

But beyond that, he has betrayed us repeatedly. He lied to us in prosecuting an unwinnable, unnecessary, and calamitous war. He's made the rest of the world despise us. He's crippled our national security, dealt a body blow to our domestic social justice, divided the American public into hostile camps as if preparing for civil war, subordinated science to ideology, sabotaged the free press, undermined working people, made slander and smear a public weapon of first resort, awarded large no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, eroded the magnificent American distinction between church and state, and badly damaged the economy.

We have to have a well-informed chief executive who works 52 weeks a year, not a government that goes on vacation in August. Mr. Bush has repeatedly proven that he is not up to the task. It's not that he must now do better. He can't do better. We cannot survive three and a half more years of Mr. Bush's incompetence and reckless disregard.

We have a lot of soul-searching to do, and a lot of things to change, but we can't even begin to do it with him as president. His departure is only a first step toward reclaiming our national dignity, but it is a necessary step.

Since he seems not to understand the difference between a government and a private company, we must explain it to him in a businesslike way:

You're fired.

Not in 2008. Now.

Ned Sublette is a musicologist and author who lives in Manhattan. He was a 2004-2005 Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at Tulane University in New Orleans. He can be reached at: ned@qbadisc.com

Source:
http://www.counterpunch.com/sublette09172005.html

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AMAZING KATRINA PHOTOS

These photos are beautiful and almost evil and too scary for words.

_____________________

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?

Who knew it would lay bare our deeply inbred agenda of social injustice and civil neglect, and our systematic abuse of the country? This storm thing is so not the thing we need right now because, oh my God look, just look! We've been so golden! We've had the run of the candy store! We have been gods among swine!

Can you hear them? Hastert to DeLay to Frist to Santorum to Rove to Cheney to Bush himself, across the board and all down the snickering party line they keen, "It's not fair! We've been planning this regime, this overthrow for 40 years! We've worked so damn hard to drive a wedge into the culture and an ice pick into the heart of the nation, working like demons on meth to mangle this country's economy and sense of pride so as to boost corporate profits and lock down our wealth and empire!"

And now Katrina. And now a furious backlash we never predicted that could very well spell the death of our wanton free-for-all gluttony. Damn you, Mother Nature! Damn you, uppity female!

Just listen. Isn't that Dick Cheney, lying awake at night as the leeches drain his soul, muttering his woes to a well-narcotized Lynne? "Dammit, Lynney, what went wrong? We've got the House locked up and the Senate locked up and we can cram through any law or any referendum or toxic Patriot Act we like with next-to-zero outcry and no discussion on the floor ..."

We're successfully stuffing the lower courts with hundreds of homophobic neoconservative misogynist appointees and now we even own the Supreme Court -- the Supreme Court, pudding-thighs! -- and even the increasingly impotent California governor is more in our back pocket than we imagined. We've had the whole goddamn country under our thumb for five years, squirming like a stuck rat as we make out like robber barons.

What a run we've had! We've threatened major media into numb compliance and we run the FCC the way a pimp runs a cheap hooker and we've got a loudmouth right-wing pundit manning nearly every ideological outpost in every corner of the media globe while millions of stupefied 'Murkins still believe Fox News is a genuine source of integrity and honesty. Look at us go!

And don't forget, to back it all up and shore up the base, we've got so many hate-spitting pseudo-religious bonk jobs broadcasting their bile across roughly 1,600 militant Christian Midwestern talk-radio shows it would make Jesus himself cringe in pain, and even that soulless cretin Pat Robertson is comfy enough to start suggesting we assassinate foreign leaders who dare to dis BushCo.

Look what we've accomplished! We launched two brutal, devastating, unwinnable wars. We've let Osama bin Laden run happy and free for over four years, and counting. We just passed an obscene $12.3 billion energy bill that ensures our heroin-like dependency on foreign oil for the next two decades while misinformed 'Murkin GIs die in Iraq protecting us from $5 gallons of gas. Damn, we're good!

We torture innocent detainees in Iraq and abuse inmates at Guantánamo and chip away at women's rights and demonize homosexuals, and we strip the forests and gut the Clean Air Act and pollute the water and devastate the economy and cut welfare spending (whew!), and still the lemming people think we're gods because we keep them wrapped in fear and a whole pile of carefully orchestrated Rove-ian lies. We are, in short, f--ing geniuses.

But now, this. Now BushCo's spineless Katrina response and our party's obvious contempt for lazy poor people who don't own SUVs and Lockheed-Martin portfolios means Dubya's ratings have plummeted below 40, as many of his precious pet agenda items head for the Dumpster, including the gutting of Social Security and the gutting of Medicare and even more tax cuts for his wealthy cronies. Damn you, Mother Nature!

Even the media has stepped it up, taken off the kid gloves and begun hurling angry, pointed questions at BushCo for the first time in four years, ever since we muzzled them with one part threat and one part Rove and all parts corporate stranglehold. Hell, the damn media was on the ground in New Orleans within 24 hours of Katrina, beating our untrained monkeys from FEMA by three days. Who the hell do they think they are?

Ain't it a bitch? And now there are those who say the impermeable fortress o' pain known as the GOP might just lose the South next election due to its obvious lack of care for the lower classes, unless we can somehow scare them poor people into not voting again, or tell them if they vote Democrat they won't get any health care or food stamps or relief money or any of Barbara Bush's patronizing rich-grandma cookies. Hey, it worked last time.

So goes the GOP lament. Of course, it's not all bad (they say). Hell, the oil companies are as giddy as schoolgirls at being able to falsely jack up prices to over whopping 70 bucks a barrel, despite a recent (temporary) glut of supply. Halliburton is squealing like Jenna Bush at a kegger at scoring the contract to help rebuild New Orleans' infrastructure thanks to the fact that the former head of FEMA is now a Halliburton lobbyist, and the GOP plan to decimate FEMA and militarize emergency efforts is going -- pardon the pun -- swimmingly.

But something has shifted. Something is ugly and toxic in the water. This is what, I imagine, the GOP overlords are asking each other over cocktails and baby seal kabobs and whale-blood transfusions: Do you think the people are finally beginning to sense it? Are they finally waking up? You think they know that the fact that Bush is finally taking a modicum of responsibility for his administration's failure -- something he never, never does -- is a sign of true GOP desperation? Do you think they recognize that BushCo isn't really spending a dime on Katrina relief, that the $52 billion they just crammed through Congress without any discussion isn't actually going toward repairs and rebuilding at all?

You think people sense that all of it, every single dime, is going toward -- you guessed it -- PR? Spin control? You know it's true. Every government truck and every National Guardsman and every aid package and every miserable FEMA agent you see is merely in place to try and shore up Bush's miserable poll numbers, his dwindling support. Hell, it's the only reason Bush -- or his party -- does anything for the "good" of the nation.

But holy crap, it sure is expensive. It sure is annoying. It sure takes the GOP off its game of warmongering and finger-pointing and padding the pockets of the rich and pulverizing the economy like a ... like a ... yes, OK, like a hurricane. Damn you, Mother Nature.

Source:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/09/14/notes091405.DTL&nl=fix

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Last week, devastation struck the City of New Orleans. The first disaster was natural. The second was a failure of leadership. Our federal government`s response to Hurricane Katrina was slow and mismanaged. And now, hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans are dead.

So what went wrong? This question must be answered -- for the sake of the victims of Hurricane Katrina -- and for future generations. Please join me in calling for an Independent Commission to investigate what went wrong and make sure that this never happens again.

Sign the petition:
http://tools.democracyforamerica.com/petition/katrina/index.php?refid=5654324db9f70a7a

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Where Is Osama bin Laden?

Day 1,461 and Counting

It's the fourth anniversary of September 11 - and Osama bin Laden is still at large.

By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect

This September 11 will mark the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States. The media will focus on the ceremonies at the former World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, and other cities and towns around the country that will honor the dead. The Bush administration, meanwhile, will do its best to remind Americans that today's George W. Bush - except for the Watergate-era Richard Nixon, the most unpopular two-term president, at this point in his tenure, since scientific polling began in the 1940s - is the same man who led the country through tragedy.

In truth, the anniversary should be the occasion for a thoroughgoing discussion of how America has combated terrorism in the last four years. And on that front, even the disaster Bush has created in Iraq takes a back seat to one overwhelming fact: By the time night falls on September 11, Osama bin Laden will have been at large for 1,461 days.

America vanquished world fascism in less time: We obtained Germany's surrender in 1,243 days, Japan's in 1,365. Even the third Punic War, in which Carthage was burned to the ground and emptied of citizens who were taken en masse into Roman slavery, lasted around 1,100 days (and troops needed a little longer to get into position back in 149 B.C.).

Yes, yes: It can be harder to find one stateless man than to defeat an army whose troop movements can be tracked. And that would be a good excuse - if the Bush administration had bothered to make capturing bin Laden a priority.

John Kerry can't be accused, alas, of having offered a coherent foreign policy in last year's campaign, but he was dead right when he said the administration had "outsourced" the job of finding the man responsible for the most deadly attacks ever on American soil. As the journalist Peter Bergen wrote in The Atlantic last October, we were closing in on al-Qaeda leadership in December 2001. But the United States decided to leave the crucial two-week battle of Tora Bora chiefiy to local Afghan fighters. It was, Bergen wrote, "a blunder that allowed many members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden himself, to slip away."

And, of course, we know why that battle was left to locals - and why, relatedly, we never had more than about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2001. (How's Afghanistan going today? We now have 18,000 troops there, and 2005 has been the deadliest year for U.S. forces since the fighting began.)

The Bush administration had already decided, at the very least, to find an excuse to invade Iraq. We know from Richard Clarke's testimony and other sources that administration officials, including Bush himself, started asking the counterterrorism chief to find an Iraqi link to 9-11 from the day following the attacks. On December 11, 2001 - right around the time bin Laden began his escape, possibly the very day - Vice President Dick Cheney told FOX News, "If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Whatever the apologists say, the truth is simple: The administration held back troops from Afghanistan so that it could send 150,000 to Iraq. That, and nothing else, is the reason bin Laden is still at large.

But listen closely to the silence: Outside of magazines like this one and a handful of liberal Web sites, the subject is rarely discussed.

Just imagine bin Laden having been at large this long in President Al Gore's administration. In fact, it's impossible to imagine, because President Gore, under such circumstances, wouldn't have lasted this long. You probably didn't know, until you read this column, the number of days bin Laden has been at large. But I assure you that if Gore had been president, you and every American would have known, because the right would have seen to it that you knew, asking every day, "Where's Osama?" If Gore hadn't been impeached, it's doubtful he'd have survived a re-election campaign, with Americans aghast at how weak and immoral a president had to be to permit those 2,700 deaths to go unavenged this long.

To be sure, the difference is partly a Democratic failure - they're afraid of the right-wing noise machine, pure and simple. That's a failure of nerve, and it's an appalling one.

But the moral failure belongs to Bush and his subordinates and their amen chorus of slatternly propagandists and so-called intellectuals, who made great political advantage of 9-11 but spit on the grieving families by pretending that there is no imperative in seeing justice done for their losses. They may be able to control the dialogue, but they can't control the facts - and the facts condemn them all.

Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.

Source:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10229

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Judge supports CNN request to cover Katrina's toll

Saturday, September 10, 2005

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- At the request of CNN, a federal judge in Texas Friday night blocked emergency officials in New Orleans from preventing the media from covering the recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina. Attorneys for the network argued that the ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on news gathering. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order against a "zero access" policy announced earlier Friday by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director. A hearing was scheduled for Saturday morning to determine if the order should be made permanent. In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let media view the bodies.

10 September 2005. A writes:

I hope you will cover the Katrina body recovery story. The Feds are stonewalling, and editors (print/electronic) are sanitizing coverage so that -- apparently -- it is "suitable" for six-year-olds.

This is only the beginning

Source;
http://cryptome.org/katdead-01/katrina-dead-01.htm

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Impeach Bush now!

A Message from Ramsey Clark:

Hurricane Katrina, Another Impeachable Crime

Dear Craig,

We need your support to bring Impeachment to the White House door! Please make a much needed contribution now for the growing costs of the Sept. 24 demonstration - from many thousands of signs and flyers to buses to help get people to DC. Help us fill the streets with ImpeachBush banners and placards - and people! Your contribution will also help us place a new round of full-page newspaper ads calling for impeachment.

The stunning human tragedy of Katrina makes the impeachment of President Bush more urgent. His priority is not poor people, but militarism to exploit the poor at home and abroad.

President Bush sent National Guard units to Iraq from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi in a criminal war of aggression and military occupation. They were thus unavailable to provide emergency services in their own states, or protect their own families. He refused to return them from Iraq to save and serve their own people, instead only authorizing the return of some Air National Guard personnel to protect and repair equipment at an Air Force Base. These forces and the resources that they command should be used to meet people's needs, not for violence.

His tax cuts for the rich, huge increases in military spending and deliberate slashes in social programs, including those funds specifically requested for flood control and to strengthen dikes in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, and his complete failure to even consider emergency transportation for the known poor in the path of a level-5 hurricane, followed by days of failure to send federal emergency relief personnel to seek and save the many thousands whose lives were known to be threatened, who were pleading for help on television and who faced death, was criminal negligence at best, and a failure to faithfully perform his duties as President.

George W. Bush will never recognize the rights or human dignity of the immense and growing population of Americans - overwhelmingly African American and other minorities and elderly - living in Third World conditions here at home. They were the principal victims of Katrina, as they are of his failure to assure equal protection of the laws to all. Their plight and peril will worsen while President Bush remains President.

The only act that can stop President Bush from continuing his criminal war of aggression against Iraq and his arrogant criminal acts and threats against Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Korea, Syria, Venezuela and any country in his path is impeachment. Impeachment is an act already two years past due. The cost of delay is staggering: two thousand U.S. military deaths, ten thousand and more wounded, many thousands more disabled, more than 100,000 Iraqi deaths, several hundred thousand injured, nearly $200,000,000 in federal funds, and even greater damage to Iraq in shattered lives and smashed cities and infrastructure. The cost of delay, already staggering, is greater every day.

While proclaiming freedom his credo, George W. Bush has done more to destroy freedom and the human dignity which it nourishes than all other Presidents in our history. Who would have dreamed of Abu Ghraib, scores of prisoners murdered, assassinations and summary executions, Guantanamo, thousands imprisoned in the U.S. without Constitutional protections, or sent to be tortured in client states with impunity, all for a President and those acting for him? What prior President has proclaimed himself above the law, coerced more than 100 countries into bilateral treaties promising never to surrender a U.S. citizen to the International Criminal Court?

The world watches and wonders why, if the American people are free, they fail to resist the criminal violence of their President.

The only act that can redeem the United States in the hearts and minds of those still capable of forgiving and believing our government can change its violent ways is the impeachment of George W. Bush and the responsible officials of his administration before it is too late.

The time to begin a final drive for impeachment is now. Together, we are not helpless. Power is in the people united for peace. Perseverance through the midterm Congressional elections in November 2006 can force incumbent members of the House of Representatives to impeach President Bush or face defeat. Failing that, it can restore integrity and honor to the President's oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The Constitution, written with the abuses of King George III painfully in mind, is unequivocal in the action required for criminal conduct of civil officers of the United States:

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Article II, Section 4.

The Nuremberg Judgment proclaimed war of aggression "the Supreme international crime." World War II was comprised of wars of aggression. President Bush boasted assassination and summary executions in his 2003 State of the Union message.

We need your help. Vote to Impeach. Persuade others to vote to impeach now.

The impeachment campaign will be achieving its largest ever street visibility by organizing a huge contingent on September 24th, at what will be the largest peace demonstration in Washington D.C. since the war of aggression against Iraq began in March 2003. The demonstration will call loud and clear for impeachment, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and full reparations to the victims of U.S. violence.

We are organizing buses from many cities on September 24th. Ticket prices are being kept low so that everyone who wants to come can attend. Printing banners, signs, posters add to the expenses. We are also preparing to publish another round of full page ads in the New York Times and other newspapers so that the message of impeachment resonates not only on September 24, but in the critical weeks and months ahead.

We need money now to help promote and transport people who want peace to Washington on September 24, for the next round of newspaper ads, and for the acceleration and continuation of the impeachment drive into the Congressional elections next year. Please take a moment to make a much needed donation, by clicking here.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

Click Here to Donate

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WHERE'S GEORGE ?