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Left Behind

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:47 am
by Starman
Outstanding diary thread commenting to the following post:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://cindysheehan.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/31040/36581">cindysheehan.dailykos.com...1040/36581</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Left Behind <br>by Hunter <br>Fri Sep 2nd, 2005 at 00:10:40 PDT<br>The last twelve hours of news coverage has been nearly overwhelming. Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, others, even unapologetic partisans like Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson -- everyone is asking where the government is. (No, I haven't turned to Fox News. I don't have the heart, today.) Anderson Cooper lost it interviewing Sen. Mary Landrieu, countering her litany of thank-yous to a series of politicians with his own encounter with rats eating a body that had been left abandoned in the street for over 48 hours. Paula Zahn boggled at FEMA director Michael Brown's declaration that the reason about 15,000 shelter seekers at the New Orleans Convention Center have gone without food or water since the day of the hurricane is because FEMA didn't even know the refugees were there until today.<br><br>The common televised theme is of reporters traveling to hard hit areas in New Orleans or the smaller communities, and reporting no FEMA presence, no National Guard presence, no food, no water, no help -- and this is day 5. "Where is the government?" has been the predominant theme of the day. Apologists are being met with barely concealed disgust, in more and more quarters. Bush administration cuts to the levee system are being widely reported. FEMA inaction is being roundly criticized by ever-more-urgent live feeds from disheveled media figures with stunned expressions.<br><br>The Convention Center situation appears to be horrific, with deaths of elderly and infants due to dehydration already now occurring. It's not clear if anything can be or is being done tonight, or how many will die between now and the morning, or what will happen then.<br><br>The lawlessness is rampant. It's important to note, however, that the lawlessness wasn't rampant on Monday. It wasn't rampant on Tuesday. We heard only twinges of it on Wednesday. Today, from the sounds of the reports, a city devoid of all hope devolved into absolute chaos.<br><br>It is nighttime again in New Orleans, and after four days of no food, no water, no communications, no security forces, and no apparent discernible plan that they can see, trust and hope that rescuers will arrive seems all but gone. If the forces had arrived on Tuesday, things would be different.<br><br>It is simply too stunning, too shocking, too soul-draining. Nobody knows where the emergency relief has been. Nobody can quite understand why the response to the catastrophe only now seems shuddering to life.<br><br>The politics are omnipresent, but present only a hollow shell behind which a sea, an absolute frothing sea, of much worse realizations are crowding every mind. This was a disaster the country had been preparing for. This was one of the disasters most predicted, most feared, most planned for. There was two days of advance warning, as the massive, category 5 hurricane shifted purposefully towards New Orleans. This was no terrorist attack -- this time, there was warning. This time, there was knowledge.<br><br>And yet, the much-reshuffled domestic security resculpted as a result of 9-11 simply didn't show up. It wasn't there. FEMA, which has been hacked, shuffled, and gutted in the last few years, proved unable to respond to a catastrophic emergency situation. The catastrophic emergency situation, along the Gulf Coast, the one that sounded the alarms two days before landfall, the one that triggered the warnings of nightmare scenarios known for years in advance, and yet if there was any advance plan at all, any knowledge at all, any fathoming at all of how to respond in the fourty-eight hours most critical for the survival of the victims, it didn't show up. The roads were clogged, the islands were flooded, the levees were breached, and homeland security wasn't there, leaving each state, each town, each police force, each wrecked band of shell-shocked survivors to fend, and make do, while convoys organized and strategies prepared with seeming obliviousness to the urgency of the numbers and clocks. There is... almost nothing meaningful to say.<br><br>The apparent and most likely explanations for the failure, known long before the fact, are almost shattering when reread today, while the ongoing catastrophe unfolds around us.<br><br>We have witnessed two disasters this week. The first was an act of nature. The second was not. The second disaster, still ongoing, is unforgivable.<br><br>That's the only word that comes to mind, a word I keep repeating to myself. These deaths, these men, these women, these infants dying now in these hours didn't have to happen. They did not have to die waiting for convoys to gather outside their city or for reservists to stand alongside their shattered police forces. They did not have to wait in darkness and fear for help to arrive, only to struggle for days without that help ever coming.<br><br>This is not politics. This is not partisanship.<br><br>This is unforgivable.<br>*****<br>A few comments:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.caravantoneworleans.com/">www.caravantoneworleans.com/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Some people in Maryland are organizing a caravan. Don't know if they have it well-thought-out or not; they sound like they're serious and anyone who's interested in doing this can e-mail them. <br>by Noisy Democrat <br>*<br><br>Conservatives don't like big government until they need it.<br>Is this supposed to give us confidence in this government's preparedness for any kind of emergency? This particular emergency was a well-known scenario that had been studied and predicted for years. Nobody accepting any responsibility, bureaucrats claiming ignorance and then blaming the victims. The president fucking around for two whole days while the city floods. <br><br>Anonymous post from another blog:<br><br>Suppose, instead of a hurricane, that terrorists had blown holes in those levees. The situation would be the same, except much worse: those hundreds of thousands of early evacuees would have still been there too.<br><br>Those levees, along with many dams, were commonly known to be the only thing keeping New Orleans from being under water.<br><br>And this would have been the response. Talk about being unprepared for a disaster, be it terror-driven or otherwise.<br><br>by playon <br>**<br><br>Hunter, Shepard Smith echoed them all --<br>He has been standing on that overpass next to the Dome, with a couple thousand people, for 3 days straight, wondering WTF is going on. A woman had a baby and it was dying, and he flagged down a cop, jumping out in front of the car because they were flying by, and MADE them take her. Surreal.<br><br>If I had a nickel for everytime Bush mentioned "9/11" I could raise enough reward money to go after Binladen-Jon Stewart<br><br>by Blakbelt <br><br>**<br> And now, the orders are shoot to kill: <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4207202.stm">news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4207202.stm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Shoot to kill.<br><br>I can't say anything more.<br><br>Bush has got to go. Keep surfin, keep rockin, Baja Margie alias Pargie<br><br>by Pargie <br>**<br>The Bush thugs believe in accountability -- just not for themselves.<br>Starman<br><br>"Do Iraqi children scream when the bombs fall if no one is in the White House to hear them?" Bernard Chazelle<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

The Road to Hell

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:08 am
by Qutb
Well I’m standing by a river<br>But the water doesn’t flow<br>It boils with every poison you can think of<br>And I’m underneath the streetlight<br>But the light of joy I know<br>Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows<br>And the perverted fear of violence<br>Chokes the smile on every face<br>And common sense is ringing out the bell<br>This ain’t no technological breakdown<br>Oh no, this is the road to Hell<br><br>And all the roads jam up with credit<br>And there’s nothing you can do<br>It’s all just bits of paper flying away from you<br>Oh look out world, take a good look<br>What comes down here<br>You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well<br>This ain’t no upwardly mobile freeway<br>Oh no, this is the road<br>Said this is the road<br>This is the road to Hell<br> <p><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:century gothic;font-size:x-small;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Qutb means "axis," "pole," "the center," which contains the periphery or is present in it. The qutb is a spiritual being, or function, which can reside in a human being or several human beings or a moment. It is the elusive mystery of how the divine gets delegated into the manifest world and obviously cannot be defined.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><br><br></p><i></i>

Things are going to slide

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:19 am
by Qutb
Things are going to slide ... <br><br>There'll be the breaking of the ancient <br>western code <br>Your private life will suddenly explode <br>There'll be phantoms <br>There'll be fires on the road <br>and the white man dancing <br>You'll see a woman <br>hanging upside down <br>her features covered by her fallen gown <br>and all the lousy little poets <br>coming round <br>tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson <br>and the white man dancin' <br><br>Give me back the Berlin wall <br>give me Stalin and St Paul <br>I've seen the future, brother: <br>it is murder. <br><br>Things are going to slide, slide in all directions <br>Won't be nothing <br>Nothing you can measure anymore <br>The blizzard, the blizzard of the world <br>has crossed the threshold <br>and it has overturned <br>the order of the soul <br><br> <p><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:century gothic;font-size:x-small;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Qutb means "axis," "pole," "the center," which contains the periphery or is present in it. The qutb is a spiritual being, or function, which can reside in a human being or several human beings or a moment. It is the elusive mystery of how the divine gets delegated into the manifest world and obviously cannot be defined.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><br><br></p><i></i>

Re: Left Behind

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:26 am
by antiaristo
<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="font-size:x-small;">'A national emergency, a national disgrace'</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><br>By Sam Knight, Times Online<br><br>Four days after Hurricane Katrina and with flooded New Orleans in anarchy, President Bush will visit America's ruined Gulf Coast today, where officials and locals are furious about the federal Government's response to disaster.<br><br>Flying by helicopter, Mr Bush will touch down in communities across Mississippi and Alabama that have been devastated by the hurricane and the floods, but he is not expected to land in New Orleans.<br><br>Late last night, Congress rushed through a $10.5 billion package in aid for the region and officials promised that more troops will be deployed to contain the spreading lawlessness.<br><br>Mr Bush has asked Americans caught up in the hurricane to be patient. "I know this is an agonising time... I ask their continued patience as recovery operations unfold," he said.<br><br>But in New Orleans, where there were widespread fires and gun battles yesterday and reports of police officers handing in their badges, Terry Ebbert, the head of the city's emergency operations, complained that support for the city has been hopelessly chaotic.<br><br>"This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace," said Mr Ebbert, who singled out the slow evacuation of the city's Superdome stadium, where 30,000 refugees remain in squalid conditions, for particular criticism.<br><br>"Fema has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," said Mr Ebbert, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Government's disaster response unit. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans."<br><br>Last night, the director of Fema, Michael Brown, admitted that the agency had only just learnt of the developing emergency at the New Orleans Convention Centre, where corpses lie among 20,000 people who are waiting there, without food, water or any organised support.<br><br>A group of 88 armed police officers were surrounded and driven out of the centre yesterday when they came to investigate reports of shootings and assaults. "We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," said Eddie Compass, the chief of police.<br><br>Military helicopters sent to drop off supplies at the centre, where crowds chant "We want help! We want help!" met a similarly turbulent reception and were unable to land. Above corpses on deckchairs, soldiers threw supplies to the crowd from 10ft off the ground and flew away.<br><br>"I don’t treat my dog like that," said Daniel Edwards, one of the survivors waiting for help at the centre, as he pointed at a dead woman in a wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can’t do nothing for your own people." <br><br>"They’ve been teasing us with buses for four days," he said.<br><br>The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has told the refugees to march out of the city across one of the last remaining bridges. "This is a desperate SOS," Mr Nagin said in a statement last night. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention centre and don’t anticipate enough buses."<br><br>And in a sign of the growing desperation of the authorities in New Orleans, where fewer and fewer police are reporting for duty, the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, announced last night that a contingent of 300 battle-seasoned National Guard soldiers had arrived in the city straight from duty in Iraq.<br><br>"They have M16s and they’re locked and loaded," said Governor Blanco. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."<br><br>Today the US Army Corps of Engineers will continue its efforts to seal the main breach in the city's flood defences that opened in the early hours of Tuesday morning and let the waters in. After dropping sandbags for two days and driving pilings into the gap yesterday, the army will use 250 concrete road barriers to repair the dam.<br></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-1762127-10889,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/pri...89,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

stuck in head...

PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 8:10 am
by ZeroHaven
Everybody now bring your family down to the riverside<br>Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide<br>Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps<br>It's time we put the flame torch to their keep<br><br>Burn down the mission<br>If we're gonna stay alive<br>Watch the black smoke fly to heaven<br>See the red flame light the sky<br>----<br><br>My mum laughed when two months ago I said I wasn't sure if I could get back into the states.<br>All the signs of revolution are here.. when does it start?<br> <p><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--></p><i></i>