The Katrina Gulag

It would appear that the news media has little or no interest, but there are thousands of people who have been rotting in Louisiana prisons for about a year now without charges and/or trial dates, and often for trivial crimes including spitting on the sidewalk (though most are held on minor drug charges). It’s just what you’d expect in a Third World country, which the USA is apparently becoming.

Read the article:

stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/451 … st_katrina

[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”] It’s just what you’d expect in a Third World country, which the USA is apparently becoming.
[/quote]

…with a Third-World service economy!…and a crumbling infrastructure. (but I guess those new schools and libraries and fire-stations and water treatment facilities, paid for by US taxpayers, are sorely needed in Iraq…) :loco:

[quote]The dollar’s value and status as reserve currency cannot forever stand the trade and budget deficits that are now part and parcel of America’s economic policy.

Unless there are major changes soon, America’s economic future is a third world work force with a banana democracy’s worthless currency.[/quote]

–Paul Craig Roberts.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
He can be reached at: pcroberts@postmark.net

[quote=“Dog’s_Breakfast”]It would appear that the news media has little or no interest, but there are thousands of people who have been rotting in Louisiana prisons for about a year now without charges and/or trial dates, and often for trivial crimes including spitting on the sidewalk (though most are held on minor drug charges). It’s just what you’d expect in a Third World country, which the USA is apparently becoming.

Read the article:

stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/451 … st_katrina[/quote]

I don’t see that this person, the lead example in the story fits this description:

[quote]
New Orleans resident Pearl Bland was arrested and jailed on drug paraphernalia charges in August 2005[/quote]

But what about a trial you say???

[quote]
She pleaded guilty on August 11, and her judge ordered her released the next day for placement in a drug rehabilitation program.[/quote]

The site you proved DB is cool and worth a read, and I thank you for it, but your exaggerated headline is also far off the mark:

[quote]
Gulag was the branch of the State Security that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit camps and prisons. While these camps housed criminals of all types, the Gulag system has become primarily known as a place for political prisoners and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the Soviet state. Though it imprisoned millions, the name became familiar in the West only with the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 The Gulag Archipelago, which likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands.[/quote]

Any political prisoners spitting on the sidewalks or smoking a doob in jail there? EVERYONE in prison doesn’t not deserve to be there you know.

Now, going with the “Gulag” theme, it just doesn’t fit, as these problems, even from your source are local, not federal:

[quote]
The New Orleans district attorney’s office did not return repeated calls seeking information on the number of people arrested before or after Katrina who have yet to see a lawyer or have a court hearing. Similarly, and perhaps indicative of the state of affairs at the public defenders office, no one there even answered the phone despite repeated calls.[/quote]

I don’t deny that people are in jail longer than they should be, but your attention grabbing headline should be featured in The Guardian. There is a good story to tell here, but “Gulag” isn’t it.

Juxtapose: Bangladesh and The USA.


Spike Lee’s take on Katrina is out now. Torrents are available.

Spike Lee?.. :roflmao: stop it!..you’re killing me… :roflmao: :roflmao:

Juxtapose: Bangladesh and The USA.


Spike Lee’s take on Katrina is out now. Torrents are available.

[quote]
Film review Spike Lee’s sonorous, heartrending reflection on an American tragedy

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Venice Film Festival
Peter Bradshaw
Saturday September 2, 2006

Guardian

Festivalgoers at Venice, or anywhere else, are unused to having their attention-span tested by a four-hour documentary, especially when the screenings are subject to delay, as this one was, for mysterious “technical reasons”. But Spike Lee’s history of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, sonorously-named When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, commanded everyone’s attention - and even opened a few tear ducts.

Anti-Bush sentiments triggered the traditional approving whoops: the unhappy US president is now the pantomime villain for all European film festivals with a doc or two on the menu. But Lee’s movie was notable for how measured its judgments were, and even ventured some politically incorrect views about the city itself.

Spike Lee has some introductory archive footage and photos of New Orleans, but mainly his film juxtaposes heartrending shots of the wreckage with interviews, talking to politicians and New Orleans residents, most of them even more angry about the debacle, one year on, than they were at the time…

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,1863363,00.html
[/quote][/quote]

More on the devastating aftermath of the flooding in Bangladesh…oh sorry I mean the United States of America…God Bless America…the land of milk and honey…as long as your not black and/or poor…

http://www.wnymedia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1918&Itemid=43

Watch some of the Doco here: http://wnymedia.net/video/whentheleveebereakact2.wmv

Torrents available here: http://www.chomskytorrents.org/TorrentDetails.php?TorrentID=1742

Youtube 16 mins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TRWI4CFkU0

Oh dear. Those damned past records keep coming back to haunt otherwise “intelligent” debate on the subject… Let’s find out more shall we? Okay! Let’s!

[quote]Right from the start there have been two glaring purposeful “errors” of omission from the mainstream media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the governments response to it.
First, the Democratic administrations of Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin havebeen given passes. Oh sure there have been stories here and there that have pinpointed theblatant negligence of the dynamic duo of the Bayou. Inadequate evacuation notices, mishandling requests for the National Guard, leaving the school buses to drown in their parking spaces instead of using them to help in the evacuation effort. All of this has been noted. But the rabid dogs of journalism prefer to take their bites out of the response of the federal government, a.k.a. the president and his FEMA.
Following the lead of the Democrats in Washington, the media immediately focused their collective attention on the failures of FEMA and the perceived lackadaisical response to the storm by President Bush. Day by day we weregiven the play by play of how FEMAhad screwed up their relief efforts and how the president was really to blame because he had put one of his unqualified cronies at the head of the agency in the person of Michael Brown. Soon the cries of incompetencemorphed into claims of racial insensitivity to the plight of those in the mostly black city of New Orleans, and those claims turned into accusations of outright racism.
If only we had the “I feel your pain” brigade of Bill Clinton and his FEMA director, James Lee Witt, in place, we were told, then things would have been handled differently. You see Messrs. Clinton and Witt could more readily identify with the good people of New Orleans. They have Southern roots and as Mr. Clinton himself told ABC’s “Good Morning America” recently, he might have done things differently because, “I feel so close to the area.” During the disaster Mr. Witt appeared on the tube telling us how he could have done it better.
Besides, we were told, there was a track record of the Clinton-Witt FEMA and it proved that it was the best ever. One problem with that claim though, it’s not true.
If the mainstream media wanted tomake their claim of FEMA superiority under Clinton-Witt, it would have been fairly simple to go back to a hurricanethat struck during those years, and use it as a measuring stick for the Katrina response. In fact thankfully, it’s not too late to do that today.
Let’s look at Hurricane Floyd. It hit the coast on Sept. 16, 1999, and New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida were very hard hit. At the time it was the worst storm to hit the U.S. in a quarter century. Legend has it that Mr. Witt, under the guidance of Mr. Clinton, handled the storm and the floods that followed with great skill and success. I mean, did you hear any stories to the contrary during the Katrina coverage?
But as NewsMax.com reported on Sept. 7, 2005, there is plenty of evidence that the media could have presented to show that Katrina was not the first major hurricane that presented major response problems for FEMA.
Three weeks after Floyd had passed, Mr. Witt appeared as a guest on the now-defunct CNN show, “Both Sides Now” hosted by Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson said, “It seemed there was preparation for Hurricane Floyd, but then came Flood Floyd. Bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole towns under water… it’s an awesome scene of tragedy. So there’s a great misery index in North Carolina.”
Now keep in mind that this is nearly a month after the storm. Thecelebrated FEMA chief said, “We’re starting to move the camper trailers in. It’s been so wet it’s been difficult to get things in there, but now it’s going to be moving very quickly.”
It’s been very wet? Is that “Brownie” or the “Great Witt”?
An AP story quotes one North Carolina woman who broke down after suffering the failures of FEMA months after the storm: “I had heard FEMA was going to be downtown, so I got up early to get down there and get in line. I had been let down so many times I had just lost it … I was just standing there in the middle of the street crying, totally disoriented, practically hysterical.”
The Raleigh News & Observer had these observations on Oct. 3, 1999: “We passed hundreds of families sitting outside their now uninhabitable homes, with their water-soaked possessions spreadout on their lawns. Desperately picking through the mess for anything to salvage, most people, particularly the elderly, seemed to be in a state of shock.” And there was evidence that it was those who were located off the beaten path that were thelast to see any sign of FEMA. “The larger towns had a visible FEMA and Red Cross presence. But in smaller towns it looked like utter confusion and despair. No one in charge, no one knowing what to do or where to go for help.”
I guess it’s too much to expect for the mainstream media to go back in history as far as 1999. They are more comfortable treating Katrina as a stand-alone event with no historical perspective on the jobdone by the federal government. It suits their agenda just fine.
Just understand that they have an agenda.[/quote]

washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20 … -6173r.htm

“That is absolutely the right thing to do. He will make a huge difference.”
– Mike Brown, FEMA director. on being told that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco was going to hire James Lee Witt to advise her on Hurricaine Katrina disaster recovery.

[color=blue]Probably not a good idea in retrospect:[/color]

February, 2004

"President Bush’s proposed homeland security budget shortchanges the nation’s first line of defense against terrorism and either cuts back or eliminates several other vital security programs, members of a Senate panel said Monday.

The DHS budget includes “a stunning 30 percent cut, government-wide, for first responders that is the latest evidence of shortchanging the homeland side of the war against terrorism,” warned former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended the funding proposals, saying the administration took a hard look at the realities of the times and made tough choices “by the balancing of the fiscal and security environment,” Ridge said. . . .

The DHS budget drew bipartisan criticism Monday for various programs it cut completely — such as funding for SafeComm, a grant program to help ensure that first responder communications are interoperable — to those it scaled back dramatically, such as the $1.6 billion (30 percent) cut in key grant programs to first responders. . . . "

So Spook:

That was a funny quote by the way. Let me be the first to congratulate you on digging that up! Touche!

However… despite the 30 percent cut, the response in New Orleans was faster and better than the one in North Carolina, ergo, the new media should have been scandalized (in retrospect) by the FEMA failure in 1999? no? IF not, why not… back to you.

And just to get MFGR involved, thanks for playing…

Fred, I agree 100%. Katrina disaster recovery was one of the crown jewel achievements of the Bush administration, if not the crowning achievement.

How 1,836 managed to get themselves killed in the process though is beyond me. After all, only 56 people died during Hurricaine Floyd and its aftermath.

I think it’s because people in Louisiana are just stupider than people in North Carolina.

[quote]Fred, I agree 100%. Katrina disaster recovery was one of the crown jewel achievements of the Bush administration, if not the crowning achievement.

How 1,836 managed to get themselves killed in the process though is beyond me. After all, only 56 people died during Hurricaine Floyd and its aftermath.

I think it’s because people in Louisiana are just stupider than people in North Carolina.[/quote]

The FEMA responded within 48 hours. It is required to respond within 72 to 96 hours. Before that, the state and local officials are the primary responders. The big complaint with FEMA is that it did not override state and local officials and that it should have recognized that they were incompetent.

The chief cause of death was the fact that the levees failed. This was not a “response” problem. The deaths were not a response problem. The problem was that the levees failed. The system in New Orleans is completely dysfunctional.

Now. We have LEARNED our lesson. IF Bush does not take the authority for rebuilding away from the incompetent state and local officials, THEN I would blame him for not doing a better job. We KNOW that Blanco and Nagin are incompetent. It has been over a year and neither Nagin nor Blanco have come to terms with just what areas of New Orleans will be rebuilt. UNTIL that happens then guess what no one is going to rebuild. Why not? No one will insure such areas.

So IF Bush wants to remedy this matter, he should step in and federalize all decison-making regarding what areas will be rebuilt, when and how and even more IMPORTANT, he should ensure that federal authorities have complete oversight over how such monies are spent.

Agreed? Let’s stop the blame and recognize that Lousiana and New Orleans are corrupt places with incompetent officials. If the federal government took over DC under Marion Barry, why not Louisiana and New Orleans?

Amen.

The Feds should release a rap sheet for every stinkin politician, police chief and mid-to upper level public servant in LA.