A report from a "refugee camp" outside New Orleans

by Jordan Flaherty, editor of leftturn.org, begins:

"I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. [Friday] I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps. In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people(at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them -Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family anda place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, noone could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get anyinformation from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me as someone who’s been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall."

For more reporting plus the best description of what New Orleans was like in its prime (last week), go to this post on Booman Tribune.

For more stories, go to Dreaming Up Daily.

Models predicted New Orleans disaster, experts say

By Alan Elsner Fri Sep 2,11:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

In comments on Thursday, President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

But Louisiana State University engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on "The Big One" examining what might happen if they did.

It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week.

For a sequence of other stories, check Dreaming Up Daily.

New Orleans, Iraq

What is the difference between New Orleans and Baghdad? Both are without electricity, though Baghdad has it some of the time, both have sewage and dead bodies in the streets, people shooting from buildings, and Halliburton looking to make a fortune. Both are populated by angry people tired of Bushcorp's empty promises.

While the situation is worse in New Orleans--no food or water or shelter to speak of--- Baghdad has been suffering longer. So what are the big differences?

So far, two come to mind. First, Iraq has alot of the US National Guard, and doesn't want them. While New Orleans desperately needs them, and doesn't have them.Second, many other nations in the world refused to ally themselves with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. But many nations, including Canada and Russia, have offered real, meaningful and much needed help--trained personnel, equipment, resources---that are ready to hit the ground running, and the US so far is refusing it.

What are they waiting for---Halliburton? They done such wonders in Baghdad, after all.

Bodies, gunfire and chaos in New Orleans' streets

By Mark Babineck
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rotting bodies littered New Orleans' streets on Thursday and troops headed in to control looting and violence, as thousands of desperate survivors of Hurricane Katrina pleaded to be evacuated from the flooded city, or even just fed.

No plan ever made to help New Orleans' most vulnerable
By LEONARD WITT Atlanta Constitution Published on: 09/01/05

"Each time you hear a federal, state or city official explain what he or she is doing to help New Orleans, consider the opening paragraphs of a July 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own.""

New Orleans 9/01/05 AP Photo  

New Orleans AP Photo 

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
William Butler Yeats

The National Guard Disappeared by Bushwar Inc.

New Orleans and other Louisiana and Mississippi cities and towns now face mammoth cleanup and repair work from hurricane Katrina. Health and safety are threatened, and the entire nation’s economy may hang in the balance.

It’s the time for the National Guard. But they aren’t there. Neither is their equipment.

Over 3,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard 256th brigade is in Iraq. So is their equipment—including high water vehicles and generators, particularly important in flood disasters.

Of the many deformities to this nation perpetrated by Bushwar Inc., the misuse of the National Guard is one of the scariest. Not only are men taken from their jobs and families who depend on them; not only are they usually no longer young and not really trained for what they face in Iraq, and so they die and are wounded for no good reason and a lot of bad ones, but the nation they are supposed to guard is left defenseless in emergencies like this one.

It’s unlikely this is the last hurricane to do damage this year. More frequent and more ferocious storms have been predicted by climate crisis models for years, and the trend is starting to show. At a time we ought to be anticipating danger to lives, infrastructure and the economy, we’re bleeding ourselves dry in Iraq. The United States of denial cannot stand.

UPDATE: Though other National Guard units were said to be deployed to the disaster area, they were apparently not present in force in New Orleans by Wednesday the 31st. According to figures broadcast by Democracy Now!, 40% of the Mississippi National Guard personnel and 35% of the Louisiana Guard are in Iraq. Louisiana's Guard has suffered 23 deaths in Iraq, more than any other state except New York, which also lost 23.