From the Red Cross

Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane.

People will die because of this appallingly callous decision by HSA.

New Orleans left to the dead and dying

Thousands more bedraggled refugees were bused and airlifted to salvation Saturday, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.

Words fail me. Our rulers have no heart. Sri Lanka after the tsunami launched a vastly better rescue of the victims than the US, supposedly the most powerful country on the planet.

Dysentery

A suspected outbreak of dysentery compelled authorities in Biloxi, Miss., to hurriedly evacuate hundreds of people from a shelter.

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From Reuters:

Police and National Guard troops on Saturday closed down the two centers — the Superdome arena and the city’s convention center — but them penned them in outside in sweltering heat to keep them from trying to walk out of the city.

I thought these areas were meant to be refuges, not prisons.

Several residents of the impromptu shantytown recounted two horrific incidents where those charged with keeping people safe had killed them instead.

In one, a young man was run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer, in another a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier, witnesses said.

Wade Batiste, 48, recounted another tale of horror.

“Last night at 8 p.m. they shot a kid of just 16. He was just crossing the street. They ran him over, the New Orleans police did, and then they got out of the car and shot him in the head,” Batiste said.

“We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom,” one National Guard soldier told Reuters. “Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death.”

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It is a result of a weak levee — one that was in mid-repair when the storm hit. And that levee, which has held back floodwaters for time beyond memory, collapsed for one simple reason: Bush refused to fix it last summer, when local officials were begging him to do so. Instead, he diverted those funds to the war effort.

Had the levee repairs been completed in a timely manner (two years ago), Katrina would have hit hard, destroyed buildings and probably taken some lives. But it would NOT have cracked open the floodwalls and submerged an entire CITY. It took Bush’s criminal neglect of his domestic duties to produce that outcome.

Hurricane protection a low priority for Bush 

A history of funding for the Lake Pontchartrain and Vincinity Hurricane Protection project. (Note: This was the levee system that broke. Due to lack of funding, major construction stopped in 2004 — the first such stoppage in 37 years.)

    2004:
    Army Corps request: $11 million
    Bush request: $3 million
    Approved by Congress: $5.5 million

    2005:
    Army Corps request: $22.5 million
    Bush request: $3.9 million
    Approved by Congress: $5.7 million
   
    2006:
    Bush request: $2.9 million.

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I’d figured since Tuesday that impossible-to-stop fires would rage in NOLA, either due to arson, or exploding gas/oil, or whatever. Didn’t blog it because, well, it hadn’t happened yet. But now it has.

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Our sub-blog, the Politics of Water, has continuing coverage on the serious, mind-boggling problem of toxic water in New Orleans, as well as info on the now-serious water issues in the entire Gulf region. Check it out.

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This Wed., Sept. 7
Washington, DC: 5 pm, White House
Los Angeles: 6 pm, Westwood Federal Building, (Wilshire & Veteran)
San Francisco: 5 pm, Powell & Market Sts.
Seattle: 5 pm at Westlake (Pine near 4th)

It is becoming clearer every day that this crisis goes far beyond a “natural disaster.” The massive death and destruction did not have to happen as a result of the hurricane; rather it is caused by a government that prioritizes profits, war and conquest over human needs. The danger that a hurricane posed for New Orleans and the region had been known and discussed for years—with no significant preparations taken. Funds were diverted from securing the levees to pay for the war in Iraq and the protective wetlands were sold off to the developers.

Before the hurricane struck, the government issued a mandatory evacuation order with a “free-market approach.” In other words, people were ordered to leave, but the means for evacuation were not provided. It was the poorest sectors of the working class and predominantly the African American community that did not have the means to leave and endured the greatest personal suffering.

The government is preparing to bail out the oil companies, insurance companies, other big corporations and casinos. Big Oil is also using this catastrophe as an opportunity to line their pockets. Working people in the United States need to stand with the victims of this crisis and demand that the government provide both short and long-term assistance to those who have lost everything. More

Stop Racist Scapegoating
Jail the Real “Looters” the Big Oil executives
Money for People’s Needs, Not for War

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At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line - much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since last Sunday.

“How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

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This quite extraordinary essay is from AP. It will appear in thousands of newspapers and websites across the planet. AP has that kind of reach, more than any other news media. Seriously.

For mainstream media to be saying this indicates the ruling elite has their most serious crisis in decades. The facade of them pretending to care about the public is gone. Billions for wars for oil, but crumbs for the citizens. In a true irony, the Gulf oil industry lies in tatters in part because money that was earmarked to be spent on levees was diverted to Iraq instead.

Some excerpts from the AP essay - read the whole thing.

The richest, most powerful nation in the world can build schools, hospitals and shelters halfway around the globe, but it can’t provide the basic necessities for its own days after a disaster that everybody saw coming?

Yet, ultimately, that’s what is most unsettling about the constant stream of images: The suffering goes on not just for hours, but for days after we should have and could have ended it. And for all the commissions, reports and bravado that passes for preparedness, we didn’t. It was a hand we never expected to be dealt. 

There will be time enough, too, to assess blame, for politicians to point fingers, find and fire those deemed accountable. And maybe even to figure out how a handful of Southeast Asian governments, whose economies, armies and emergency resources could all be folded comfortably several times inside those of the United States, responded to a tsunami much larger and fiercer than Hurricane Katrina with swiftness and efficiency, and we could not.

Let’s make the Sept. 24 antiwar protests enormous and militant. For those who say we should just mention one issue, the war, on Sept. 24, and ignore all other issues, Katrina aptly demonstrates how all the issues are linked. Billions for war, but crumbs for the citizens. Makes a mockery of their pretend ‘compassionate conservatism’, doesn’t it?

Bush is an extreme example of a system gone mad with greed and selfishness. The problem, at root, is an avaricious economic system, not a lunatic president. That’s what we need to change.

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If Katrina had hit the upscale, wealthy, mostly Anglo city of Santa Barbara, California, do you think it would have taken this long for D.C. to respond?

Race and class are undeniable, unavoidable issues here.

As for the looting, from the always wonderful The Bitter Shack of Resentment

Brilliant

Let me say a few things here. The first is that the city of New Orleans is, according to the last census, 67.3 percent black. Given that looting is predictable under any significant breakdown of social order, who would you expect to find out there smashing windows when the lights go out? Ethnic Hawaiians?

Poor Blacks get stranded in a collapsing city to fend for themselves, while better-off, mostly White people escape. And somehow it takes the Feds days to get around to mobilizing. Had Katrina hit the wealthy White enclaves in Long Island, the Feds would have been there in hours, not days.

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Gingrich said the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina “puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can’t respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we’re prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?”

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Gov. Kathleen Blanco Friday night called on President Bush to order the expeditious return to the state of the 256th Brigade Combat team of the National Guard which is now serving in Iraq because they are needed in Hurricane Katrina cleanup and rescue efforts.

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