911review/katrina

From the page: "The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe.

They should. Two years after Katrina, the effort to protect coastal Louisiana from storms and restore its vanishing wetlands has become one of the biggest government extravaganzas since the moon missionâ€"and the Army Corps is running the show, with more money and power than ever. Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakesâ€"and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you'll love what's coming next."
9/11
NORAD
NORAD

From the page: "Bush to shift $1.3 Billion of levee funds in NOLA....Vitter: 'We will not recover if this happens'

You may remember when we sent Mardi Gras Beads to Bush to call for full funding of levee construction in NOLA. Well it never ends. Now Bush plans to shift $1.3 Billion of the already inadequate funding for levee protection of New Orleans....

WASHINGTON â€" President Bush is expected to shift $1.3 billion away from raising and armoring levees, installing flood gates and building permanent pumping in Southeast Louisiana to plug long-anticipated funding shortfalls in other hurricane-protection projects, a move Sen. David Vitter describes as a retreat from the presidentâ€s commitment to protect the whole New Orleans area.

Vitter, R-La., who unveiled Bushâ€s plans Thursday, condemned the move in a strongly worded letter to the president and called on him to ask Congress for more money to complete work that he promised would be done - and Congress financed - in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

â€oeI believe your fiscal 2008 budget proposal would be a step back from that commitment, however unintended,â€oe Vitter wrote. â€oeI am deathly afraid that this vital emergency post-Katrina work is now being treated like typical (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) projects that take decades to complete. We will not recover if this happens.â€oe"

From the page: "Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans
by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
September 20th, 2005

cartoon by Khalil Bendib

The day Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Robert Boh watched the dramatic pictures of the unfolding disaster on television at his in-law's house in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where his family had taken shelter. As president of the biggest construction company in New Orleans, he was confident that the hundreds of miles of levees that he and his rivals have built over the decades would hold. "It never occurred to me," he said, that the 17th street canal would gave way. "I was shocked."

The next day the phones started ringing off the hook. One of the calls was offering work to repair the levees and drain the city from the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency run by the US military. Unable to access his New Orleans offices, which had six feet of water on the first floor, Boh drove down to work in nearby Baton Rouge, to help save the city where his grandfather had founded a construction business 96 years before.

Military Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters dropped sandbags into the breached levees in New Orleans, as Boh Brothers crews worked around the clock for a week. The work was a financial boost for the civil engineering company that had been $2 million in debt just over a year prior, because the Army Corps of Engineers had no money to pay them for installing floodgates for New Orleans†Harvey Canal.

Before Katrina struck, Boh was starting to question if he really wanted to apply for more work from the Corps, which oversees the levees. "In 2004 and 2005, funding for our work has been cut," he told CorpWatch. Indeed, earlier this year, New Orleans district projected that it would get just $82 million in flood and hurricane protection projects, a 44.2 percent drop from the $147 million spent in 2001.

Today state and federal money and contracts are flowing into the stricken area and Boh Brothers is one of the key local beneficiaries. Right after completing the emergency repairs, Boh was sub-contracted to help pump water from the flooded city by the Shaw Group, a politically well-connected contractor that had worked on reconstruction in Iraq. Then the state of Louisiana awarded the company a new $30.9 million contract to fix the hurricane-damaged twin-span bridge that carries Interstate 10 traffic over Lake Pontchartrain.

Bohâ€s contract is tiny compared to the billions that will flow to the giants of the industry: Halliburton , Bechtel and Flour. "The construction industry has stood up and is saying we are standing ready for your call," Lieutenant General Carl Strock told a September 2 Defense Department briefing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army have budgeted at least $62.5 billion in emergency aid for Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, (not including rebuilding the levees), creating a boom for construction companies.

"They are throwing money out, they are shoveling it out the door," said James Albertine, a Washington lobbyist and past president of the American League of Lobbyists, told the New York Times. "I'm sure every lobbyist's phone in Washington is ringing off the hook from his clients. Sixty-two billion dollars is a lot of money -- and it's only a down payment."

"You are likely to see the equivalent of war profiteering -- disaster profiteering," said Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government spending watchdog group. She notes that Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of FEMA is now a lobbyist and consultant to both the Shaw Group and Halliburton . (Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities.")

Many, including Senator Richard Durbin, "are worried because we hear about no-bid contracts in the Katrina areas going to the same companies that they went to in Iraq without the kind of accountability that we have to demand," the Illinois Democrat told National Public Radio, a public radio network in the US. " "

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
-President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005,
six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

some stories on blackwater (military contractor)
mercenaries !
These guys arent so bad though.
there were 6 of them "securing" an SBA (small biz admin) office in New Orleans with 5 Katrina victims.
I heard the Blackwater guys were getting paid over $500 a day to face these dangerous enemies :)

Blackwater has a history of big $ contracts, and doing dirty biz for the Gov.

also see...
Blackwater links at 911review.org
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Private Security Workers Living On Edge in Iraq (washingtonpost.com)
Rich is typical of the men drawn to Blackwater USA and scores of other private security firms now doing a booming business in Iraq. ...
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10547-2005Apr22.html [washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10547-2005Apr22.html]

CNN.com - 7 US security contractors killed in Iraq - Apr 21, 2005
(CNN) -- Seven Blackwater USA employees, all Americans, died Thursday in Iraq, the company said. The deaths bring the number of Blackwater employees killed ...
edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/04/21/iraq.contractors/ [edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/04/21/iraq.contractors/] - 47k - Cached - Similar pages

ARTICLE: Blackwater USA says it can supply forces for conflicts ...
Blackwater USA runs a 6000-acre operation in Moyock, NC Its Web site states ... for the US ambassador to Iraq under a contract with the State Department. ...
home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm [home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm] - Similar pages

What really happened at the Danziger Bridge ?

What really happened at the Danziger Bridge ?

It looks fairly clear, that at least some of the people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police came to a report of an incident, and shot people who were just crossing the bridge.

In the days after the storm, no one knew who was in charge, and if you had a badge then YOU were.
officers came from all over the US, not just police, but ATF, FBI, and anyone with a badge.
hava look...
flickr.com/photos/911review/222616083/
flickr.com/photos/911review/222629164/
flickr.com/photos/911review/222629160/
flickr.com/photos/911review/222629163/
flickr.com/photos/911review/222609153/

Now, im glad that most of the NOPD decided to stay, but the problem with this incident, is that they LIED about it.
These were trying times for everyone including the police, but if you do something wrong, then, tell the truth,
and let the chips fall where they may.
The LYING seemed to be part of the whole essence of government thinking.
Get away with what you can, and if you get caught, lie about it.
Thats what FEMA did too.
Bush said he would help the Citizens,
but a total of 37 people (as of Jan 5th 2006) have actually recieved money !@?

Here are the first few reports about this incident.
It seems every report that came out was different.
Trying to cover things up, then when busted, changing the story.
First they were contractors, then they were looters, then something to do with the Corps of Engineers...
None of that was true.

I also have to REALLY wonder why the Corps of Engineers was originally in the middle of this,
and now it seems that they have nothing to do with it ???

First, ill post what i read at xymphora.blogspot.com in Dec 2005, they summed up the different stories.
Then, further below, is the account of what REALLY happened.

What really happened at the Danziger Bridge ? civil rights

From the page: "Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse."
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Quick note on this.
Releif for Katrina victims housing is supposed to come through the "ROAD HOME" project.

Last i heard was about 2 weeks ago on this.
(around the beginning of December 2006)
and a grand total of a whopping 27 people have actualy recieved funds !!!

personal note:

Malik is a green party activist in New Orleans.

I havent seen him since the hurricane, glad to see him make it to Michael Moore's website

This guy is a VET, that had trouble getting benefits last i spoke to him.


i feel bad for him, and the way all the african Americans were treated during the hurricane.

Its truly AWFUL, i cant beleive THIS is the America i grew up in

His report is something that shouldnt be missed, please pass around,

thanks

Brad




For a Former Panther, Solidarity After the Storm

By Michelle Garcia / Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS -- Malik Rahim, a granddaddy with a broad face and long gray dreadlocks, leans across his wooden kitchen table and with a low Nawlins growl lets you know what he thinks local pols did for racial harmony.

"I'm far from being a Republican, but I got to call it the way it is," he says. "They had a shoot-to-kill order on African Americans in this city with an African American mayor."

He catches himself.

"Let me rephrase that: A so-called African American mayor and a so-called African American police chief. They sat here and allowed this governor to declare martial law on African Americans ."