But it’s also hard to believe that one of the main bullet points in FEMA’s disaster management plan reads: "Go directly to the local sheriff’s office and cut all the telephone wires." Not unless Mike Brown has been taking his cues from watching Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen.
I. Tinfoil Time
Back to Main
September 7, 2005
WB: Tinfoil Time +
Comments
Bad news hurts. Of course, Rove would do anything at all to prevent bad news from emanating from Louisiana. Remember, poor black people picketed Rove’s house in Washington awhile back. It’s payback time.
Rove is a charming(?) sociopath. We’re looking at Ted Bundy clones running a country. If things get really bad, Bush will wear a cast on his arm.
Posted by: arbogast | Sep 7 2005 7:21 utc | 1
Re: Tinfoil Time
It is difficult to believe that the federal government would risk the blowback of pulling a stunt like deliberately disrupting emergency communications, especially when a motive can not be easily seen that would justify that risk. There might be something, however, to the idea that they are trying to minimise bad news or shocking graphics coming out of the disaster area. I’ve already read two stories (sorry, I’ll have to scour the web for links to them) about how horrific the necropolis of New Orleans is going to look once some headway is made in pumping the floodwaters out.
They won’t let you see American bodies being shipped home from Iraq, they are doing their damnedest to keep you from seeing the real atrocities at Abu Ghraib, I doubt they want you to see tens of thousands of American floaters littering the streets on our own soil. This administration has got to be the most image-conscious organization ever and these images are not controlled photo ops or scripted press conferences, so this bit of wackiness would not be entirely outside of their MO.
Of course, after FEMA’s quick and efficient wiping of the crime scene of the World Trade Center in 2001, it could just be that covering things up is simply the only thing they are effectively trained to do.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 7 2005 8:17 utc | 2
Maybe they did not want anybody to pick up the communications going to the FEMA people. This is just a thought.
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 7 2005 8:23 utc | 3
Is it a conspiracy if there is a disaster in an area where there are a lot of poor black people and none of the presumed-racists in charge put much effort in rescuing them? Perhaps one could call it a passive-aggresive conspiracy.
Posted by: steve expat | Sep 7 2005 8:31 utc | 4
I’d suspect they’re applying standard force-protection procedures to the US. Radio jamming in order to prevent terrorists synchronising an attack on the vessel. They think they’re in hostile waters. They might not be wrong.
S. Expat: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice” is the version that’s been doing the rounds.
Tinfoil wearers:
I guess I’m going to have to withhold judgement on Madsen’s claims.
Very wise strategy indeed. For in the age of Bush, the tinfoil-hat brigade know that time is on their side.
Remember the “crazy” guy that was running around saying 9,000 Americans had died because of Iraq? Wait, and even the most outlandish of tin-foil hat claims eventually becomes understatement.
Posted by: bcf | Sep 7 2005 13:30 utc | 7
The “incompetence” meme is too easy for this situation. Let’s remember that the administration has been very careful and deliberate and always intentional in everything they’ve done. They’ve always been extremely disciplined (otherwise you couldn’t possibly keep so many people in line with a repellent agenda such as theirs). The fact that they disregard things WE believe are important does not mean they are not careful or deliberate about things THEY feel are important.
The problem people have is entertaining the notion that the agenda is as cold blooded as it is (“They can’t possibly have meant to do THAT!”) Yet, the mountain of evidence says that each act is consistent with that very conclusion.
Before we apply the tin hat to the jamming theory, let’s collect a few threads first:
1. The administration has shown it is entirely at peace with callous disregard for the public welfare in every sense.
2. The administration is infatuated with methods of coercion and control.
3. The administration is single minded in it’s effort to remove all responsibility for public services from the government and transferring it to the private sector by funneling our tax dollars into private pockets and then ignoring what’s done with those dollars.
Add those up and Katrina spells OPPORTUNITY in letters a mile high. Opportunity to test out ways to disrupt communications and control an urban area, treating the people like lab rats (as if it hasn’t been done HERE before with nuclear fallout, LSD, and God knows what else). Opportunity to remove an opposition population. Opportunity to maximize the mess so we can maximize the payouts to our favored friends for the cleanup. Etc.
You don’t need to stretch to get to this position, you only need 1-3 above. If the rescue effort mobilized by the states and private organizations had swept into the vacuum left by the administration, the tin hat ideas would be just that. However, we now have widespread accounts of those efforts being intentionally thwarted and the notion of “don’t mess up my experiment” makes more and more sense. It’s an ugly concept, and my mind rebels against it even now, but, at this point, it takes very tortured reasoning to support the relatively benign explanation as mere “incompetence.” I believe they have been very competent indeed, and that’s the really scary thought.
Posted by: wai | Sep 7 2005 13:57 utc | 8
Tin Foil Hat? I take it this is a continuation of the previous thread, which pretty much says it all:
Levee repair money cut, 17th st. levee left unhardened where it broke, no tractors or helicopters waiting to fix small breaches before they became disasters, Hastert’s comment, the struggle between the Feds and La. for control (I tend to give Blanco some credit for her actions here, the mayor is more of a mixed bag–a tool of capitol who needs black support for reelection), lines cut, signals jammed, roads closed, help turned back, absolutely no aid allowed in, hospital ships left in port, national guard doing calistenics, no evacuation plans for elderly or hospitals (read the chilling reports of doctors choosing who will live and who will die on Nola’s weblog from Saturday), new wilderness Orwellian “evacuee” camps, no airdrops of food or water into new orleans, Babs’ chilling comment, and on and on.
This is what I call a facilitated event: I’m not wearing a big enough TFH (tin foil hat) to believe the US controls the weather yet, and directed the path of the hurricane. What I am arguing is that a normal damaging hurricane with a handful of deaths and property damage in the hundred million range was deliberately turned into the worst catastrophe in American history. The lack of planning and preparation is not just criminal, not just unconscionable, it is unbelievable. Just as in 9-11, when the government’s claims that no one expected planes flying into buildings, was belied by the extensive evidentiary record. The same lie was promulgated here, “no on expected the hurricane, the levees….” This is the “Big Lie” in action, folks. And, yes, it is hard to take in, if you are at all intelligent, because the implications are just too chilling.
Here, the interference with aid flowing in is clear evidence of this desire to “up the ante.” We all know that the congress just appropriated $231 MILLION for a bridge to an uninhabited island in Alaska, but there was no money for levee repair and upgrade in LA. (This refutes the argument that money for “the Homeland”, unfortunately, went to Iraq.) Those levees were documented to have subsided up to four feet in some places. I remember Dick Gregory used to say during the Viet Nam war, “We can APPROPRIATE money for war, but we can’t THROW MONEY AWAY on poverty.”
And don’t believe claims that you can’t keep a conspiracy secret. We now know that over 100 people were meeting regularly, for up to a year before our invasion of Iraq, at the State Department to plan. The fact that these plans were then thrown out the window by Rummy and Cheney, does not change the conclusion. There were 1000’s of people who KNEW we were going to invade Iraq well before we did, but word nover got out. The ruling class, and its handmaiden press, have never had a problem keeping secrets from those they plan on screwing.
The only thing different here, is that the events we are seeing concentrates power, even more severely, in the hands of far fewer elite. This is the coup element. In our current patronage system, benefits are expected to trickle down: federal, to state, to city and county, and so on. But here, the same strategy as Iraq is being employed: cut off the patronage for them, and replace patronage buy-in with military force. Well that is fine for Americans to watch over in Iraq, but when they see it in their own backyard, it does get kind of scary. Everything has always been corrupt, but now my dinner (as a local contractor) is being sent to Halliburton, and I’m being forced to go to bed hungry. And now, the threat of state violence is being used to silence me. This is the point at which crony capitalism turns to state fascism.
My thinking is not quite as dour as Michael Ruppert’s or Wayne Madsen’s, but it is far from optimistic. I agree with Ruppert’s unstated premise: That FEMA has been suborned, in the sense that once you combine emergency aid with COG (continuity of government) planning into one agency, you have perverted the original mission of the agency. The same ploy has been used at the CIA. As Bill Cristison has argued at Counterpunch, the same effect was achieved by combining intelligence collection with secret ops. Nearly all Americans are in favor of collecting intelligence on foreign governments, far fewer would be in favor of the covert activities (all crimes) the CIA undertakes, if they knew about them. So, the question then becomes, who is the head of the Hydra? We know the answer for the CIA–no one gave a shit what the intelligence gatherers were saying, and they were punished for speaking up.
Have we seen, as Ruppert argues, the same result with FEMA? Perhaps so. I endured 8 separate hurricanes in my years living on St. Croix, USVI. FEMA was a godsend down there. They were prepared, punctual, competent, fair and humane. They were sensitive to cultural differences as extreme as in New Orleans. They did their mission–they prevented deaths and suffering and aided in the recovery. I’m not saying they were perfect, but they functioned pretty well. They were also highly involved with safety and environmemtal compliance at the refinery (as large as any near New Orleans) that I worked at down there.
As an aside, I will report evidence of racism. As a white person, I used to break curfew every night to go drinking at the yacht club on the richer, whiter side of the island (Boy, that was fun!) I wouldn’t have been able to do that with chocolate skin on the other side of the island.
So, what happened? This cries out for great investigatory reporting. Here’s my hunch: FEMA was purposely eviserated. Whether it is the work of “free market” ideologues or that of ruling “Brown Shirts”, I won’t guess. But, it was wittled down to 2500 employees. My guess is that you have three departments, the COGers, the contract writers and the flak spinners. That is about all you can do with 2500 people. So while there is almost no one left from FEMA who can deliver aid, the contract writers are working as fast as they can for their real bosses: Halliburton and their ilk.
What can we do? We can DEMAND the calving off of the COG function from FEMA’s mission. Then we can safely advocate vast increases in FEMA’s funding and staffing. To me, FEMA should function as a federal insurance agency. No city can afford to own the number of busses required for total evacuation, regardless of the wingnuts invectives, so FEMA amortizes costs like these over the entire nation. That, and their combined expertise and experience in dealing with disaster are necessary and good for the nation.
But, my TFH seems to have slipped off during this rant. Let me right it. Do I believe that the presswhores will cover this story and that the sheeple can understand any distinctions at all besides “Good and Evil?” No. So, I believe what we will end up with is a FEMA vastly empowered to turn this country into a police state. As if the government doesn’t have enough of that power already. We are now the lobsters relaxing into the boiling water of our doom. We don’t have the energy anymore to climb out of the pot. Where do we move the clock up to now? 1937? 1938? 1939? You tell me.
And one last point: I’m tired of hearing stories about how stupid Chimpy is. I’m sure he is not clueless about the import of his regime’s policies. He doesn’t need to know the details. Face it, this administration has been more successful at pushing its agenda of helping their friends and the superrich (but I repeat myself), and hurting the poor, and now the middle class. They have been more organized, more relentless, more ruthless, more on message, and have more of the population confused, than any administration I can remember.
And here’s evidence: (TFHs on) Clearly, the administration knew Rehnquist’s prognosis for quite a while. That is why O’Connor asked to step down when she did–remember, no one could figure out why she acted when she did? Remember that, or has it already slipped down the memory hole for you? So now, Rehnquist is gone and Bush already has his nominee for Chief Justice halfway through the process. These guys make “Slick Willie” look like a bumbler.
The “incompetence” meme is too easy for this situation. Let’s remember that the administration has been very careful and deliberate and always intentional in everything they’ve done. They’ve always been extremely disciplined (otherwise you couldn’t possibly keep so many people in line with a repellent agenda such as theirs). The fact that they disregard things WE believe are important does not mean they are not careful or deliberate about things THEY feel are important.
Great point, wai! Understanding this, we can now see Bush’s Tuesday guitar strumming photo op in the same light as his reading of “My Pet Goat”: A deliberate way to foster the incompetance meme, a red herring to occupy the attentions of the opposition, ensuring that no one looks behind the curtain. Magicians use the same technique.Large corporations do not give 1/4 of a Billion dollars to reelect a fool.
one role of bringing in the military has been to threaten journalists. several reporters have related stories of being slammed up against walls, having guns pointed at them, and being told to get out of certain areas. i certainly won’t be surprised to hear that a cameraman on a rooftop gets taken out b/c they threaten the propagenda line.
Posted by: b real | Sep 7 2005 14:52 utc | 11
“It is not just a failure of execution (William Kristol), or that bad things just happen (Laura Bush). It was not just indifference by the President, or a lack of accountability, or a failure of federal-state communication, or corrupt appointments in FEMA, or the cutting of budgets for fixing levees, or the inexcusable absence of the National Guard off in Iraq. It was all of these and more, but they are the effects, not the cause.”
-George Lakoff
Or maybe, as LARRY MARGASAK, of Associated Press writes,
Things just didn’t seem right to the people in the field.
“The Bush administration was warned by congressional investigators this summer that some first responders were concerned that their training and equipment was tilting too much toward combatting terrorism rather than natural disasters .
But, we will never know, because the House hearings examining that response had been canceled indefinitely… (Sound familiar?).
Folks, in my tinhat, this is methodical relentless and systemic. Ever seen a Buffalo Jump? the masses are being herded into an ideology. Metaphorically and quite literally i.e. physically. What other conclusion can there be?
I will proudly be wrong, but I fear I’m not.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 15:00 utc | 12
As th house cancels hearings and parlimentary proceedures are used to block the investigation its time for mass protest in Washington. Those on the NGO side need to plan for persistnet long term demonstartion support in Washington and in the Home districts of the those house members that are forcing obstruction.
This can’t be a lets all go to crawford. You must have continuous widespread logistic support for these protests. All these activities must be transparent and their video and audio records need multi-sources for recording and distribution. There aren’t enough thugs yet to crack down on demonstrators everywhere.
Now is the time to get in the streets. Do not wait. Move Move Move. These bastards are stretched thin and effect transparent and highly visible populous action now will save many live later.
Posted by: patience | Sep 7 2005 15:45 utc | 13
above, i pointed out that one role of the military will be to keep journalists at bay.
FEMA Wants No Photos of Dead
The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.
on democracy now today (wed) one of the segments continued the coverage from the DN team that went to NO last w/e. one rescue worker mentioned that he was told 950 bodies had been recovered from one neighborhood the day before. the jamming & severing of official emergency channels, and all the other strange things we hear of can be explained by the obsessive desire for control of as much information as possible. they do not want tv audiences to see dead u.s. citizens on homeland turf, period. they do not want transcripts of official communications which would reveal the scope of the deliberate annhilation of superfluous peoples. population reduction is not pretty. sane people would not permit it if they understood what was happening. fortunately for the vampires, this is not a sane culture.
Posted by: b real | Sep 7 2005 17:14 utc | 14
“Ethnic cleansing” is not outside the realm of possibility.
Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 7 2005 17:46 utc | 15
Also from Democracy Now:
Newly leaked memos are showing that FEMA waited five hours after Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans before requesting help to be dispatched to the region. Even then Michael Brown, the director of FEMA – the Federal Emergency
Management Agency – said that the 1,000 Homeland Security employees could take two days to show up at the disaster scene. Brown’s memo to Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff politely ended, “Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.” According to the Associated Press, Brown’s memo lacked any urgent language besides describing the hurricane as a “near catastrophic event.” Brown’s memo told employees would be expected to “convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public.” While FEMA took days to send help, tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents were left without food, water or a safe place to stay. The memo was leaked as criticism of Brown increased.
In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin has ordered law enforcement to forcibly remove any residents remaining in the city. Fires continue to spread in the city and fear is growing over the toxicity of the floodwater. Officials have announced that they plan to temporarily take all corpses to Saint Gabriels, a small town once used as a leper colony. Mayor Nagin warned that horrific sights would be seen once the city is drained of the floodwater. He said, “It’s going to be awful and it’s going to wake the nation up again.”
Meanwhile the Guardian newspaper is reporting that New Orleans police have been unable to confirm reports of widespread violence in the New Orleans Superdome last week. For days news shows reported that a child had been raped, that babies had been killed and that bodies of murder victims had been found on the Superdome’s floor. But, according to a report in the Guardian of London, police have not been able to confirm any of these rumors. No witnesses, survivors or relatives of the survivors have come forward.
Reporters Without Borders has issued a warning about police violence against journalists working in New Orleans. According to the group, on Sept. 1 police threatened a reporter and photographer from the Toronto Daily Star at gunpoint because they were seen covering a clash between police and individuals identified by police as looters. When police realized the photographer had snapped photos, they threw him to the ground, grabbed his cameras and removed the memory cards containing about 350 photographs. His press card was also torn from him. When the photographer asked for his photographs back, police officers threatened to hit him. Police also detained a photographer from the New Orleans-based Times Picayune after he was seen covering a shoot-out involving the police. Police smashed all of his equipment on the ground.
Maybe we will just see joyful scenes of evacuees being reunited with their loved ones again and again. It seems obvious that the death count seems arbitrarily low at this point.
Yesterday, Amy talked about Plessy v. Ferguson, and its effect on New Orleans. This for the poster several threads ago who wanted to know why New Orleans is so much poorer than Vancouver CA. Additionally, there is no harder, lower paying, thankless and denigrating jobs than those in the tourist industry: minimum wage with no benefits. Yet blacks, who serviced this industry, are portrayed as shiftless criminals.
Right wing blogs are blaming the Governor and Mayor for incompetance, and comparing them to Guiliani. It should be noted, however, that the number of people directly affected in NY was far less than 10% of those in New Orleans, while the city size and resources were well over 10 times as much.
Also this from WWLTV in New Orleans:
7:02 P.M. – ATLANTA (AP): Hundreds of firefighters have been sitting in Atlanta, playing cards and taking FEMA history classes, instead of doing what they came to do: help hurricane victims.
The volunteers traveled south and west from around the country, leaving their homes in places like Washington state, Pennsylvania and Michigan. They came after FEMA put out a call for two-thousand firefighters to help with community service.
Firefighters arrived, as told, with lifesaving equipment and sleeping bags.
But one of the waiting volunteers says it might have been better if they’d brought paper and cell phones. That’s because some of the emergency responders are being told they will go to South Carolina, to do paperwork.
Others don’t know where they’ll be put in action.
The FEMA director in charge of firefighters says he’s trying to get the volunteers deployed ASAP, but wants to make sure they go to the right place.
One firefighter points to nightly reports of hurricane victims asking how they were forgotten. He says, “we didn’t forget, we’re stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.”
3:26 P.M. – Harris: I think FEMA must’ve disconnected their phone lines. It took them five days to get into Gretna with food and water. FEMA did great things when they were by themselves, but (combining them with) Homeland Security seems to have gummed them up.
On the bright side we have this:
2:05 P.M. – CARACAS, VENEZUELA (AP): Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum has set up disaster relief centers in Texas and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Venezuela’s emergency management director says the company’s begun providing humanitarian aid to thousands of American victims. He says volunteers at Citgo refineries in Lake Charles and Corpus Christi, Texas, are providing medical care, food and water to about 5,000 people.
Meanwhile, he says volunteers from the company’s Houston headquarters have provided similar help to some 40,000 victims.
Venezuela’s oil minister also says the nation will send one million barrels of gasoline to the disaster zone as soon as possible.
The oil producing country is a major supplier to the United States. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and a frequent critic of President Bush.
lots of discussion across the various media about race as a factor. very little discussion about class. we are trained to notice differences in skin color. we are trained to ignore class issues. the media feeds stereotypes based on color so the receiver ignores the obvious.
Posted by: b real | Sep 7 2005 19:07 utc | 17
Any opinions as to why no Katrina related bloated corpse pictures, etc., are appearing on sites such as Ogrish.com and Rotten.com.
Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 7 2005 20:45 utc | 18
there were some pix from ogrish here [warning: dead flood victims]
i don’t follow those type of sites though so i have no comments/answer
Posted by: b real | Sep 7 2005 20:55 utc | 19
I don’t recall if anyone has posted this already but it made me want to howl: Firefighters Told to Hand Out Fliers for FEMA
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week – a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
Federal officials are unapologetic.
this is just un-expletive-believable…
Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 7 2005 21:21 utc | 20
All part of the regime’s assault on the concept of expertise, DeA. What would fire fighters know about search and rescue and such things? A good manager can manage anything: domain knowledge is so 20th century.
I think this post from “Dispatch From the Trenches” is the best I’ve read to explain events without resorting to the tinfoil hat: Michael Brown is most likely an incompetent stooge but the fact of the matter is that when he refused to release supplies, National Guard troops, and construction equipment, and then ordered the Superdome locked and checkpoints set up along the roads leading out of New Orleans to turn back anyone trying to escape the destruction, he was following orders. None of it was accidental, none of it was a matter of poor decision-making or the wrong priorities. It was a deliberate attempt by the Bush Administration to blackmail the state of Louisiana into handing the city over to the Federal government.
There’s more, of course. So either Blanco is a hero (and perhaps anyone who stands up to Bush is), or you have the State and the Federal government fighting for control of the pie, like two rapacious dogs, while the poor die of hunger.
As noted, today’s NYT reported that pictures of those killed by the hurricane were banned. This and other sites have reported how resources were diverted and falsely positioned to create the appearance that the disaster was being more effectively managed during the first Bush visit. Clearly, a great deal of effort os being put into ‘managing’ the impressions coming out of New Orleans — the damage and incompetence is being minimized and the federal government’s role is being exalted. Clearly, part of creating and lending credence to this narrative is, as was likely attempted in Iraq, to minimize contradicting reports. Since the principals in this regime have clearly demonstrated an unconscionable level of sociopathy, I don’t think that it can be reasonably argued that they wouldn’t sink to electronically jamming communications from the disaster area to achieve this goal.
Posted by: optional | Sep 7 2005 23:31 utc | 23
Sorry, but my tinfoil hat doesn’t fit in this situation. I think there is a very rational explanation that is consistent with every other situation this administration has dealt with…
and for them, reality isn’t important. Image is all. The NYTimes reported years ago on the Bushies hiring a Hollywood guy to stage Bush’s appearances…and thus we got Bush as the whack-a-mole in front of Mt. Rushmore, and Bush with a halo like a Russian icon in front of the seal of the prez, and Bush on the “right hand of Jesus” at a Christian youth conference, and Bush posing pensively from air force one after he sat like a dolt and read The Pet Goat while people were jumping from the WTC.
Mission was accomplished for them when Bush had a photo-op in a flight suit with a sock stuffed in his tighty whities…that and no-bid contracts.
They are, really, not different than the Mafia, as far as actions are concerned, and no different than the worst posturing televangelist as far as bullshit disguised as piety or patriotism is concerned.
They really, really do not care about you or me or any of those people who suffered in New Orleans. If you are one of the twenty-five richest of the rich, they care about you…you’re “their people, their tribe.”
Anyone else who thinks they are part of Bush’s base is the girl in the back of the car who feels a little uncomfortable when that pushy guy says…I only want to kiss you… there…but really, if you’re not stupid, you know you’ll get fucked whether you want to or not unless you walk away.
So, I guess I’m saying that about half the population is a drunk sorority girl who gets date raped over and over and thinks the guy loves her, while he laughs with his friends about what a stupid bitch she is.
Bush stayed on vacation because he didn’t care enough to see that people didn’t die. Republicans cut the budgets for necessary services because they don’t care if poor people die…if you’re poor, according to Republicans, there’s something wrong with you…like being born into a poor family…why didn’t you choose to be born into a rich family so that when you fuck up, you never have to suffer the consequences?
The Bush junta is so removed from the experience of the American people they might as well be a military junta in Argentina…of course there people were thrown out of airplanes to drown, while here they were just ignored and left in place.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 8 2005 0:20 utc | 24
don’t put away the tin-foil yet!
madsen has picked up the report on the barge-induced breech
WMR has just been informed by evacuees in Baton Rouge from Lakeview, a well-to-do New Orleans neighborhood, that the flooding of the city was caused by a loose barge striking the levee on the 17th Street Canal. The breach was not caused by rising flood waters as reported by FEMA and other agencies. Lakeview is some 1.5 miles down Veterans Boulevard from the 17th St. Canal breach. Distraught evacuees want to know why the Coast Guard or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not secure the barge. The evacuees who witnessed the barge striking the levee also want to know why the major media is not covering this story.
he doesn’t provide any more details.
i did find some discussion of this topic on a blog here,
which contains a link to this article
Loose Barge May Have Caused Levy Breach
A loose barge may have caused a large breach in the east side of the Industrial Canal floodwall that accelerated Hurricane Katrina’s rising floodwaters in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi said Monday.
Naomi said the barge was found on the land side of the floodwall, leading corps officials to believe it could have crashed through the wall and sent a huge amount of water – which was already pouring over the top of the wall – into the neighborhoods immediately downriver.
“We have some pictures that show this very large barge inside the protected area. It had to go through the breach,” Naomi said. “The opening is a little bit wider than the barge itself. One would think it’s the barge that did it.”
If it did strike the floodwall, Naomi said, the barge would have “precipitated a tremendous collapse” that would have quickly flooded the Lower Ninth Ward and then St. Bernard Parish. The breach is “ultimately in my opinion what got (St. Bernard) Parish flooded,” Naomi said.
Posted by: b real | Sep 8 2005 4:40 utc | 25
funny, during my conversation over dinner i speculated that since the eye of the storm missed NO, and many people heard the loud bang of the levee breaking , i wondered and expressed that i wouldn’t put it past them , with the storm passing and all, to find a way to cause the ultimate havoc. i told my friend … i thought they had tipped the ice berg, because the disater wasn’t disatrous enough for the grab.
and now, i am the one saying, posting too much. i will just be quiet for awhile.
Posted by: annie | Sep 8 2005 5:23 utc | 26
Annie, I put nothing past these maniacal Hungry Ghosts .
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 8 2005 7:42 utc | 27
I live in Florida and noticed wide band interference after each of the hurricanes that came through here last year. Given the enormous effort the bushes and FEMA made here last year, I doubt they intended to jam communications. I think the more likely explanation is the large number of unshielded generators were creating the inteference.
I think it damages our cause to make such wild claims without more evidence. The wingnuts already paint those on the left as irrational. It doesn’t help to give them ammunition.
Posted by: ross | Sep 8 2005 13:42 utc | 28
you mean like those wild claims we made after 9/11 that osama and sadam weren’t connected, or that we were invading for $
there are so many wild clains the irrational left have made that have turned out to be true.
Posted by: annie | Sep 8 2005 13:55 utc | 29
Plenty of generators on St. Croix in the 90’s. Kew a bunch of hams. Never heard of any wide band interference.
i saw the parish president on nbc dateline monday night, sept. 5 – he said that the FEMA guys were cutting the county’s emergency communication lines in order to put in their own -sp maybe this particular incident is just stupidity and error rather than a plan to prevent all communication –
on the other hand –
barring the photographs of the victims – is obviously intended to interfere with info flow
as chris floyd remarks at his site “empire burlesque”, it’s hard to tell malevolence from criminal incompetence with this crowd – especially since there’s so much of both
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Sep 8 2005 14:39 utc | 31
@mistah charley, is that a recent ph.d?
anywho, I mosied over to your blog, and snooped around, nice place, your most recent post talks of “the paranoid shift” as disscused over at ALL SPIN Zone blog, I couldn’t find the comments refered to, and was wondering, was you making reference to Michael Hasty’s article entitled:
Paranoid shift by chance? just curious, because as a off and on frequenter/reader of ASZ, I have posted about same in the past, back when kate storm was around. anyway, I was just wondering if I was missing out on some juicy topic that I like opinionating on…lol especially, with regards to arguements that Government agencies can become self-perpetuating evils
“Conspiracy theory as a theory of power, then, is an ideological misrecognition of power relations, articulated to but neither defining nor defined by populism, interpellating believers as “the people” opposed to a relatively secret, elite “power bloc.” Yet such a definition does not exhaust conspiracy theory’s significance in contemporary politics and culture; as with populism, the interpellation of “the people” opposed to the “power bloc” plays a crucial role in any movement for social change. Moreover, as I have argued, just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean they are not on to something. Specifically, they ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm.”
–Fenster, Mark (1999)
Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 8 2005 15:58 utc | 32
You don’t need to stretch to get to this position, you only need 1-3 above. If the rescue effort mobilized by the states and private organizations had swept into the vacuum left by the administration, the tin hat ideas would be just that. However, we now have widespread accounts of those efforts being intentionally thwarted and the notion of “don’t mess up my experiment” makes more and more sense. It’s an ugly concept, and my mind rebels against it even now, but, at this point, it takes very tortured reasoning to support the relatively benign explanation as mere “incompetence.” I believe they have been very competent indeed, and that’s the really scary thought.
Posted by: wai | Sep 7, 2005 9:57:22 AM | #
astute analysis/
domain knowledge is so 20th century. – Colman
haha. been away; missed the camp of this
site.
….
@mistah doctor charlie
“i saw the parish president on nbc dateline monday night, sept. 5 – he said that the FEMA guys were cutting the county’s emergency communication lines in order to put in their own -sp maybe this particular incident is just stupidity and error rather than a plan to prevent all communication -“
Could you explain to we slower students the mechanism involved here… specifically, why setting up one set of emergency communication lines would necessitate cutting established lines? I’m no telecommunications expert, but that sounds a bit too much like technical bs to me.
But, then, the cynic in me doesn’t find the meme that everything that hurts the poor and enriches the elite is the result of kind-hearted incompetence as comforting a bedtime story as the majority apparently do.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 8 2005 21:36 utc | 34
I posted the below in the most recent open forum… I am moving it here. Sorry, but I am getting a bit impatient with being patted on the head and being told that the feds don’t really wish any harm to anyone. As far as I am concerned, the “Feds as incompetent” meme is the left’s version of facilitory self-delusion and pairs up nicely with the right-wingers excuse that it is imperative to pursue the War Against Abstract Nouns. I’m starting to feel like I am talking to a bunch of battered wives who keep finding excuses to stay with their abusive spouse. “But… he’s really sweet when he hasn’t been drinking… and I loooooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooooooove him!”
@Unca $cam
“But, something don’t add up, something smells fishy about this story to me, they are trying to hard to have us believe incompetence, this is beyond absurd, it’s as if “they” (whoever they are) wants us to believe FEMA, is this fucked up…somthing just does not feel right about it…”
It doesn’t feel right because it isn’t right. And it isn’t new. Look at the “faulty” intelligence about Iraq leading up to justifying something they planned to do anyway. Look at the complete absence of culpability regarding Abu Ghraib. And now look at New Orleans. We have stories about water and food being deliberately turned away, survivors being deliberately rounded up, communications (at least in Jefferson Parrish) being deliberately cut… and yet we are still playing that cold comfort game of imagining that well-orchestrated events are just a series of “oopsies”!
Ronald Reagan (all Alzheimer’s jokes aside) managed to skip some pretty hefty criminal charges by playing “asleep at the wheel”. Some arms for hostages, a wry chuckle from the populace and then it’s back to business. The comforting thought that none of this is malicious is what keeps these guys in business.
But apart from covering their asses, how does it benefit them to appear to be a bunch of well-meaning, but bumbling idiots? Let’s think about this a moment. Aren’t people now DEMANDING a more comprehensive and self-contained FEMA? Aren’t they appalled at the “bureaucracy” that cost all these lives? Why, none of this would have happened if FEMA had the authority to be a self-contained police force that didn’t have to wait for authorization from a higher power (They are, and they don’t). But now they have a mandate from the masses to be jack-booted thugs. People are throwing themselves on the ground and BEGGING that FEMA come in swiftly, efficiently, and with no “bureaucratic” oversight (and with that, no accountability). A newer, harder, more militaristic FEMA that shoots first and asks for permission later would never have let New Orleans flounder for days. And a newer, harder, more militaristic FEMA is precisely what we are demanding and will get… and with a legitimacy that can only be bought for the price of a few thousand ordinary lives.
A good fisherman does not jam a hook down a fish’s mouth. A good fisherman makes that fish believe that is where he wants that hook to be.
Am I giving the administration too much credit for cleverness? Sure, we sleep easier at night thinking that they are a bunch of incompetents. But I ask you, for the past five years, have they stopped inflating their own bank accounts? Have they been held responsible for one single atrocity or outrage that has been perpetrated at their behest? So who are the real incompetents here: BushCo or us “clever” commentators who keep letting them get away with it over and over and over…?
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 8 2005 22:00 utc | 35
It is like those snafus at the polling places.
and the snafus with California’s power supply – bureaucratic incompetence at the state level.
the snafus over warnings about something big gonna happen in 2001.
chaos is their friend.
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 9 2005 0:12 utc | 36
@eftsoons
Even if we are using terms like “SNAFU” and “incompetence” ironically or euphemistically, this represents a god damned “get-out-of-jail-free” card to the administration. And I’m getting damned fed up with the debate over whether thousands of human beings have died and more are crippled and impoverished and suffering because of evil intent or benign neglect by these guys.
I’m damned fed up with the self-satisfaction involved in pretending we are cleverer than they are when, for all their touted fuck-uppery, they are getting richer and their agenda proceeds apace. The ONLY issue in five years that I can think of that they haven’t bullied through during a congressional recess while we are smugly gabbing endlessly about how “incompetent” they are is that they have had to put the evisceration of Social Security on a back burner for the time being.
For the final time, they see the same things we do… but they are acting on things while we are simply bitching about them. Didn’t they know about the coming housing crisis and peak oil? Sure, and they made it practically impossible for the average citizen to declare bankruptcy. Didn’t they know about the impending damage that a major hurricane would do to New Orleans? Sure, and they are using it to turn FEMA into the Gestapo they’ve always wanted them to be. Didn’t they know about… well, you get the goddamned point. Just because they are inhuman and do not make compassionate decisions doesn’t mean they aren’t acting proactively. And how god damned smart does it make us being played like fiddles and talking about how stupid they are?
Look, we can argue about criminal intent or benign neglect and keep going in circles about it. Bottom line is that people… many, many people in this country and the world over, are dead or suffering because of what this administration does and NOBODY IS BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE! It doesn’t matter whether they are kindhearted country bumpkins or reptiles from the Planet Neocon in disguise when you have lost your life or everything you own to these guys! Calling them stupid is wasting our time and absolving them of any responsibility. ENOUGH!
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 9 2005 2:49 utc | 37
@Uncle $cam – no, my ph.d. is not new – in fact, it dates from the penultimate decade of the previous millennium – i use it in my signature at “fafblog” for humorous effect, and accidentally posted it here – but it is true, i am a real doctor – i wrote a real dissertation
@Monolycus – i am no telecommunications expert (although i am a real doctor) – i combine my layperson’s grasp of the technical issues with my observation of the part of the parish president’s report that nbc showed me to conclude that it might have been something like – the fema guys clipped the wires from the sheriff’s dept. equipment going to the big antenna in order to attach the wires of their own equipment – something like that
about the goldilocks’ principle in political paranoia – not too soft, not too hard, but just right – i’ve seen people overdoing it (in my opinion) here at this blog – for example, the unfortunate brazilian guy who was killed in london in july right after the subway bombings – someone here said at the time “the authorities knew exactly who they were shooting” – well, no
and as for the hole made in the levee by the loose barge – yes, i believe that – but was it INTENTIONALLY loose? no, i don’t believe that
on the other hand, i believe that other equally unfortunate things are not mistakes, but part of nefarious plans – foremost in my mind at the moment is the iraq war
and that other potentially very unfortunate things are probably going to be a lot worse than they needed to be because of the cluelessness of those who currently “call the shots” (it’s a pun, folks) – e.g. the coming, potentially VERY serious, influenza pandemic
Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 9 2005 22:51 utc | 38