Sure, some in New Orleans are breaking into jewelry stores, but this account seems more like desperate and hungry people than bad guys trying to make a buck (and as the mayor said, where they going to sell the stuff anyway)

In the city’s Carrollton section, which is on relatively high ground, looters commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a Rite-Aid pharmacy. The crowd stormed the store, carrying out so much ice, water and food that it dropped from their arms as they ran. The street was littered with packages of ramen noodles and other items.

Defillo said looters were also taking guns and ammunition.

If I were there, in a disintegrating city with no order and mass confusion, I’d want a gun too.

Update: Nagin declares Martial Law to crack down on looters.

When nursing home buses are jacked and then the residents are threatened, well yeah, it’s time to send in troops. But let’s not split the skulls of those who really were just hungry and stealing food. There is a difference, a big one.

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We heard this crap during the Vietnam war protests, and we’re still hearing it. If you oppose the insane wars of the US, you must be communist. (and so what if you are? In Europe, communists are members of parliament and no one gets hysterical about it.)

Cindy Sheehan: anti-American communist?

That was the accusation coming yesterday from the Heritage Foundation, which hosted author John J. Tierney Jr. for a forum titled “The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?”

Tierney researched the movement for a book and came up with some choice descriptions. “I have to say it is communist.

Tierney, of the Institute of World Politics, identified five groups: ANSWER, Not in Our Name, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and MoveOn.org. He said these groups “come from the Workers World Party”

This is so wrong it’s ludicrous. None of the above groups have ties with Worker’s World (and again, so what if they did), not to mention that relations between some of these groups can be distant, much less that they all emerged from the same socialist party. With attacks like this, we will join together and forget what might divide us. That such attacks are happening simply demonstrates that the right is getting desperate, they’ve lost control off the antiwar debate, momentum and public opinion has shifted our way.

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From TheOilDrum (keep trying, their servers are overloaded)

Newest (and very informative and very scary) report from an anonymous insider

This is from an oil industry insider I consider quite credible. She was definitely right about everything in her last post.  If she’s right about this one, we may finally start to get a true picture of what’s going on. –

There are MANY production platforms missing (as in not visible from the air). This means they have been totally lost. I am talking about 10’s of platforms, not single digit numbers. Each platform can have from 4 to 100+ wells on it. Most larger ones have 20-30 wells in this area, with numerous caisson wells. They are on their sides, on the bottom of the gulf.

We also set individual wells as satellites and pipe them back to existing platforms. These stand-alone wells are called caisson wells. 90% of those in the storm path are bent over, rendering them a total loss.

We utilize platforms as gathering hubs. Damage to a hub means everything going to the hub is offline indefinitely. There are +/- 15 HUBS missing. MISSING!! As in we cannot find them from the air.

Boats are usually brought into harbor to weather storms. We do not have a boat count yet, but from the initial reports, we may have lost or grounded 30% of the Gulf of Mexico fleet.

We are looking at YEARS to return to the production levels we had prior to the storm.

YEARS, people. I know what this means - hope everyone else gets it too…

In the mid 70’s I roughnecked on land drilling rigs in West Texas. Roughnecks are the crew on a drilling rig. One day there was a serious screw up, the shift boss dropped the blocks, and 2,000 feet of drilling pipe broke off and went to the bottom of the 3,000 foot well. Getting it all out took specialized equipment and a couple of weeks. And this was on a little bitty land rig, not a monster offshore platform with 100 wells on it.

Many of those offshore rigs probably had crews on them too.

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Websites and blogs are the primary way that news from the Gulf is getting out. With print media and television disabled, the Net has become irreplacable. Newspapers and TV in the Gulf are using their websites to disseminate news. Most Gulf media has relocated out of the affected areas and their web servers (obviously) are in areas that still have electricity.

As a database wonk, I can see that one major task is assembling a massive data repository so people can get back in touch with each other. Yet though this needs to be done quickly, it also needs to be done perfectly, making sure that data is correct. Imagine the effect on a family if that database lists someone as dead when they weren’t.

Breaking news

WWL TV . They have news on the website and live TV as well. Many of those reporting have lost homes too.

Times Picayune is back after relocating.

Times Picayune rss feed 

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IndyMedia LA interview with ANSWER LA organizer and friend John Beacham about the protest, the cops only giving jaywalking tickets to the anti-Bush people, and how the anti-Bush forces greatly outnumbered the pro-Bush group - who were waving a Confederate flag.

mp3 (4:55. 1.8 MB)

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Whether it’s Iraq or the Philippines, it’s the same imperialist US foreign policy. That’s why the Sept. 24 nationwide antiwar demonstations will raise the issues of Palestine, the Philippines, Haiti, and Venezuela as well as Iraq. Because it’s all the same struggle.
From the Sun Star in the Philippines

For American activist Preston Wood, many may view the Mindanao conflict involving the Moro people and the Philippine government as just an internal issue.
But concerns over the growing involvement of the Bush administration in the ongoing peace talks between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Philippine government amid the West’s “war on terror” campaign, have reached levels that these have warranted the conflict’s inclusion in the agenda of the huge September 24 rally scheduled for September 24 in Los Angeles.
Wood is among the organizers of the demonstration that promised to mobilize hundreds of thousands in a protest action against the American government’s increasing intervention in the affairs of other countries, especially in Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela and Mindanao.

Preston, yet another ANSWER LA organizer and friend, was in the Philippines last week.

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