No Longer "soon to be"

Ok. I’ve packed my life into two suitcases, a day pack, and a laptop case. Aside from a 5’ x 10’ storage locker, that is. And, after giving my desktop PC to a computerless Elma family, my computer system has been reduced to a 3 pound Sony laptop with a 10” screen and all of the latest wireless technology.

Tomorrow I will pack my life into my car and my neighbor, and best friend of 28 years, will drive me to the Portland airport for my post midnight flight to Merida, where I will arrive later that day, check into my apartment, and embark on my Yucatan adventure.

I have removed “soon to be” from the blog title, as tomorrow I will embark upon my expatriation.

Torture by U. S. Military Personnel is a Matter of Policy

The New York Times reports that torture by US military personnel is systemic, not due the "few bad apples" as the Dept. of War and Bush have assured us.

From the NYT article:

Captain Fishback said the investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses.

"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he is going through Army Special Forces training. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and the two sergeants described abuses by soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division, including beatings of Iraqi prisoners, exposing them to extremes of hot and cold, stacking prisoners in human pyramids, and depriving them of sleep at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja. The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

After fruitlessly trying for 17 months to get his superiors to take action on his complaints, Captain Fishback said, he finally took his concerns this month to aides to two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. When the Army learned he was talking to Senate aides, Captain Fishback said that Army investigators suddenly intensified their interest in his complaints.

Pat Tillman

Remember Pat Tillman? Tillman graduated summa cum lade from Arizona State; was a star high school and college football player; played professionally for the Arizona Cardinals; and, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, passed on a lucrative Cardinals contract extension offer to enlist in the army to fight al Queda in Afghanistan.


Tillman was shot to death by members of his own army unit and for the subsequent 5 weeks the Dept. of War proferred a story that Tillman was killed in a heroic fight with enemy forces. Shortly before Tillman's unit was due to ship home officials in the Dept. of War apparently decided they had better own up to the truth and revealed that Tillman had been killed by "friendly fire."

Despite a number of investigations, one of which is ongoing, the truth of Tillman's killing has never been definitively enunciated. I wonder why the Dept. of War lied about Tillman's death? Similarly, why did the DOW lie about the Jessica Lynch affair? In either case, it seems to me, lies were told purely for public relations purposes; and, it seems, that those who proferred the BS arrogantly thought they could get away with theirs lies.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle article.

Urban Legend

Turns out that "99%" of the stories of shooting, murder, and rape in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina are BS. Read the story in the Time-Picayune.

Depths of Depravity

Is there no limits to the depth of depravity of President in Fact, Karl Rove? Remember that President, by Supreme Court edict, George Bush has appointed Rove to head the Katrina recovery effort.

From the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. Full Story here.

"The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation.'"

What became of the republican "talking point" that now is not the time for affixing blame for the Katrina response debacle? None-the-less, the Justice Department, not to mention its apologists at the "National Review Online," got it wrong. As the article notes, the levees subject of environmental law suits were Mississippi River levees, not the Lake Pontchartrain levees that failed and flooded New Orleans. So not only is Karl Rove depraved, he's also inept, except, of course, when it comes to smearing folks who don't agree with him.

Bush Goes to the U.N. and Writes Note to Mommy Condi

I know Condi and George are close, but this is abit over the top. The President writing a note to his Secretary of State, during a U. N. confab indicating that he needs "a bathroom break" .

The Reuters caption.

"U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14, 2005. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday but their blueprint falls short of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's vision of freedom from want, persecution and war."

Click image to enlarge.

Trogir Girl

Time for another photo so my two readers don't grow weary of my ranting.

I came upon this exceptionally cute Croatian girl while skulking the narrow byways of Trogir photographing the beautiful old buildings in the small town on a tiny island in the Adriatic not far from Split.

Speaking of Racism

Update: I found the photos; and, as you can see the photos are from different news agencies. None-the-less, given the fact that folks who were unable to leave were desperate for food and water I think AP still deserves condemnation for its photo caption. Click on image to view a larger version.

The Associated Press ran two photos of folks who had broken into grocery stores to obtain food and drink. The caption of the picture of an African-American gentleman carrying a half rack of Pepsi and a garbage bag apparently full of other supplies indicated the man had looted the grocery store. The photo of a Caucasian man and woman indicated that they had found supplies in a grocery store.

I think that one of the good things to come out of the Katrina rendered disaster is that we have again been reminded that overt racial bigotry remains. From the fact that the city, state, and federal governments left behind in New Orleans 100,000 poor, mostly African -American, citizens who for one reason or another who could not flee the coming storm; to the cracker suburban New Orleans police chief who prevented folks from evactuating the City via one of the few remaining evacuation routes; to an Assoicated Press editor.

Bush Does Something Right

Bush has forced out his crony, Mike Brown, as FEMA director and replaced him with someone with some actual experience managing disaster response.

R. David Paulison, as chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, has led the U.S. Fire Administration division of FEMA since December 2001.

Now he should get rid of his cronies he appointed to lead the war, state and justice departments; and who have lied there way into the invasion of Iraq, muffed the invasion and occupation, justified torture, and further eroded our Constitutional protections from the awesome power of our government.

Don't Let Them Into Our Neighborhood

Of all of disturbing stories of overt racism emanating from New Orleans in Katrina's wake, this report of a suburban police chief ordering his troops to fire into the air to dissuade New Orleanians (primarily African-American, and a couple San Francisco paramedics) from escaping New Orleans could be the most disturbing. But, to steal a line from just about every Marx Brothers movie made, "It's early yet."

Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans

By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Sep. 9, 2005 at 10:48AM

Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.

An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.

The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." (emphasis added)

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.

"The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to get on (the) Crescent City Connection ... authorities said," reads a Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and the ruinous flooding that followed.

Read the story here.

Katrina Response Investigations

What we hear these days coming from federal elected and appointed officials and the media: blah, blah, blah, Katrina, blah, blah, blah, FEMA, blah, blah, blah. Of course, with the change of two words, it's pretty much all we here from those quarters.

I am certain that the 100,000, or so, who were left behind during the evacuation of New Orleans to fend for themselves for 3 or 4 days, and other victims of the shameful FEMA failures, are comforted to know that President Bush will personally investigate the bungled federal response to Katrina. Much as they were, no doubt, comforted by the President's belated visit to the devastation, which he memorialized by noting that he had often partied in the destroyed city. (Incidentally, during the President's photo-op visit, intended to bolster is plummeting approval rating, rescue and aid helicopter flights were grounded and firefighters were imported from as far away as Utah to act as props during the president's visit.)

Republican leaders of congress have also announced a "bi-partisan, bi-cameral" investigation into the federal response.

I guess that just about takes care of the whole matter. Why, who could doubt that the President and Republican congressional leaders will conduct honest investigations?

The results of an honest investigation, which we will never witness, would indicate that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has once again become a dumping ground for patronage appointments of political hacks with no emergency management experience.

Remember, after the pathetic FEMA response to hurricane Andrew, owing to the incompetence of hacks appointed as FEMA managers by Bush I, there were calls for FEMA reform. During the 1990s James Witt, an actual professional manager with emergency management experience, did just that. FEMA gained a reputation as an effective emergency response agency.

President Bush II has returned FEMA to the bad old days.

Commenting and Spam

Since there have now been two automated spam comments posted here I have turned on the "word verification" function. Those posting comments will be required to type into a box the letters that appear on the screen. This requires the intervention of a human and will eliminate automated spam.

Once Again, Cuba Outdoes the U. S.

Thanks to Steve for passing on the following excellant article.

The Two Americas

By Marjorie Cohn

09/03/05 "t r u t h o u t" -- --- Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

FEMA Incompetence

I did not start this web log as a forum to bash the President Bush and his administration; but, with the inept federal government response to the disaster in New Orleans, he and the cronies he appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) warrant criticism. After all, it took the federal government 3 days to get water and food to the 100,000, or so, folks who remained in New Orleans during the storm, most of whom were unable to leave. Then the FEMA director pronounced 3 days after the disaster that his agency was unaware of the thousands of folks stranded at the Super Dome, even though, in the wake of Katrina, folks were instructed to go to the Super Dome and that such was widely reported.

As for the President, the day after the Katrina struck Bush lectured those remaining in New Orleans must exercise personal responsibility (not that he has ever taken responsibility for anything) and the next day he exclaimed as how "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," despite the fact that study after study, including a FEMA “tabletop” exercise last year, has cited levee failure as a major concern from a storm hitting New Orleans, an event rated amongst the top three most catastrophic natural disasters that could strike the U.S.

I watched an interview of FEMA Director Mike Brown and was appalled that he simply repeated talking points in response to each question put forth by a CNN reporter who, surprisingly, did not let up on asking how it could possibly be that FEMA did not know about the folks stranded at the Super Dome, given the fact that such had been widely reported. He blamed state officials. Mike Brown, by the way, gained his emergency management experience as "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" to the International Arabian Horse Assoc., a position from which his was ultimately fired after rendering the organization into financial ruin http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/34622/68348 .

So why has FEMA, which during the 1990s James Witt reconstructed into a well respected, competent emergency response agency, failed so shamefully in its Katrina response?

The answer is apparent. James Witt is a professional manager who had emergency response management before his appointment as FEMA director. Mike Brown is a political hack with no emergency management experience. Likewise his predecessor, and benefactor who brought Brown to FEMA after his firing from the IAHA, Joseph Allbaugh, a long time Bush political crony and 2000 campaign manager, had no emergency response experience. Allbaugh left his FEMA position to establish a consultancy to peddle his influence in awarding contracts related to the destruction and reconstruction of Iraq.

Is it too much to ask of our elected officials to hire competent, experienced professional managers to direct delivery of essential government services to the citizenry, rather than political cronies?