Home > Katrina Survivors Storm Capitol
"I can’t believe that some people in Washington think that after a category 5 hurricane the solution is to unleash a category 5 assault on working families.” That was the sentiment of Hurricane Katrina survivors, brought to Washington to draw attention to mounting needs that continue to go unanswered. Campaign for America’s Future sponsored the visit of several survivors who met today with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The survivors shared stories about the recovery and assistance they have still not received. Dian Palmer of New Orleans, who organized a team of volunteer nurses, said she had witnessed closed hospitals, no reliable health care system, and a desperate need for Medicaid funds and care. Michelle Baker echoed her complaints saying "I lost my job and the benefits that come with it and when I recently applied to get some help from the government in the form of Medicaid I was rejected. Turned down. Refused.”
“It is a cruel hoax on the victims of Katrina to use their plight to promote a budget that doesn’t address their needs, that increases the deficit and gives tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country,” said Rep. Pelosi. She and Senator Reid are continuing to push Congress for a budget that addresses the priorities of America’s working families and doesn’t ask the “the poorest children in America” to pay for the pressing needs of Katrina survivors.
Reconstruction issues were also discussed at today’s meeting. “Vincent Morris spoke about how the people of New Orleans want to lift themselves up and rebuild their lives but that local contractors are still struggling to find work because of the way contracts are being awarded throughout the Gulf Coast.”
Senator Reid blasted the Republicans over these misplaced priorities and continued favoring of the wealthy few. “Republicans talk a good game about helping victims, but when it comes time for meaningful action, they are nowhere to be found,” said Sen. Reid.
Forum posts
26 October 2005, 09:36
• Where are the children?
Oct. 19: There is a noticeable absence of children in New Orleans. NBC’s Carl Quintanilla reports.
Nightly News
Many Katrina survivors are in FEMA REX84 Concentration Camps under armed guard by the military and unable to defend their property rights or to have access to the media. The ones sent far away to remote location in UTAH without being told were separated from their families and are behind barbed wire. Why is even the left blogsphere forgetting about this so quickly?
http://kurtnimmo.blogspot.com/
FEMA and Katrina: REX-84 Revisited
If you believe the corporate media, FEMA is simply a bungling and inept emergency management agency and its director, Michael Brown, according to the Washington Post, is simply an "accidental director" and "the failed head of an Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become President Bush’s point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history" and, as the Boston Globe notes, "got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.... Brown — formerly an estates and family lawyer — this week has made several shocking public admissions, including interviews where he suggested FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation of refugees stranded at the New Orleans convention center." In short, the corporate media would have us believe Brown is a clueless lawyer and former horse trader and FEMA an unresponsive federal bureaucratic leviathan wrapped up in red tape. But this does not explain the following:
FEMA refused evacuation help from Amtrak; it turned away experienced fire fighters and first responders; it turned back Wal-Mart supply trucks; refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver food; blocked a 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid; turned away generators and other equipment (see this page with links to news stories). In other words, FEMA went out of its way to deny aid and allow people to die from dehydration, starvation, and lack of medicine and medical help. In addition to denying aid, and thus killing an as of yet (and possibly forever) unknown number of people, FEMA is attempting to control media access to the worst natural disaster in American history (see Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead). Moreover, journalists and photographers have been assaulted by troops and had their notebooks and cameras confiscated (see The Eye of the Hurricane by Matthias Gebauer).
Regardless of all the corporate media hype, FEMA was not created to respond to natural disasters and help American citizens (in fact, it is an unconstitutional construct, created by Executive Order, and draws its "lawful" facade not from the American people, but the fact Executive Order 12148 was published in the Federal Registry). "FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic," writes Harry V. Martin. "General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA’s Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA’s role as a ’new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.’" In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of criticism is focused on FEMA, but this is not the first time the agency has taken heat for "dropping the ball" after natural disasters. Martin writes:
FEMA’s deceptive role really did not come to light with much of the public until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the U.S. mainland. As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in The World and I, "...The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism." Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black operations" than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress, only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a "black curtain" around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
One such black op was REX-84 (Alpha Explan, or Readiness Exercise 1984), exposed by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, and described as "a secret government within a government." Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North "worked closely with FEMA to redraw national contingency plans dealing with nearly everything from nuclear attack to civil insurrection," explains totse.com (FEMA: Blueprint For Tyranny). "FEMA’s action plan included the declaration of martial law, suspension of the Constitution and aggressive moves against dissenters. A trigger could be ’violent and widespread internal dissent.’ This plan and its failure to clearly define a national crisis caused Attorney General Smith to issue an official protest. The Herald reported that on Aug. 2, 1984, Smith emphatically expressed to National Security Advisor Robert ’Bud’ McFarlane his alarm over FEMA’s ’expansion of the definition of severe emergency to encompass "routine" domestic law enforcement emergencies.’" Under Reagan, Louis O. Giuffrida, "a stealth-obsessed ex-California National Guard officer who preferred to be addressed according to his former rank in that organization," as Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen describe him, oversaw FEMA. During the late sixties and early seventies, Giuffrida served as then California governor Reagan’s terrorism advisor and at Reagan’s request founded the California Specialized Training Institute, a school for police and military commandos. "Giuffrida and [Edwin] Meese (then Governor Reagan’s chief assistant) helped develop a plan to purge California of its militant and peaceful protesters," Vankin and Whalen write. "Operation Cable Splicer, a variation of the Army Garden Plot, a ’domestic counterinsurgency’ scheme, spied on suspected radicals and marshaled maximum force to squash riots and legitimate demonstrations alike."
It appears Hurricane Katrina has provided FEMA with an excuse to "dry run" its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up "refugees" (now called "evacuees") and "relocating" them in various camps. "Some evacuees are being treated as ’internees’ by FEMA," writes former NSC employee Wayne Madsen. "Reports continue to come into WMR that evacuees from New Orleans and Acadiana [the traditional twenty-two parish Cajun homeland] who have been scattered across the United States are being treated as ’internees’ and not dislocated American citizens from a catastrophe. Some FEMA facilities are preventing these internees from leaving on their own. Reports of mandatory registration and the issuing of FEMA ID cards suggest that FEMA, an agency that is rife with right-wing security goons and severely lacking in humanitarian workers, has other motives in treating poor and destitute American citizens as prisoners in their own country." Call it REX-84 revisited.
"The disaster that struck New Orleans and the southern Gulf Coast has given rise to the largest military mobilization in modern history on US soil. Nearly 65,000 US military personnel are now deployed in disaster area, transforming the devastated port city into a war zone," writes Bill Van Auken. "While no doubt incompetence and indifference played a major role [in the supposedly bungled aid effort], there is also strong evidence that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over the city.... the US ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching legal barriers — such as Posse Comitatus — against the use of military force against the American people." Van Auken mentions "that US military’s Northern Command had developed a series of ’war plans’ for the military ’to take charge’ in domestic crises" allegedly in response to "supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city" and "the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out."
Finally, as a corollary of the FEMA-Pentagon operations in New Orleans (as opposed to the soft and squishy and apparently endless corporate media spin about displaced people finding solace in private homes and humanitarian shelters), see Don Nash’s Refugees from New Orleans behind barbed wire in Utah and I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp, the latter posted by a Christian man who attempted to deliver aid to Louisiana "refugees" (or detainees) in Oklahoma and was turned away by FEMA bureaucrats.
10:58 AM 10 comments
26 October 2005, 09:53
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.c...
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/fema.html
Next Question:
Why are people being held against their will in military guarded internment camps similar to Krakow?
It’s reported that some of the survivors are being locked up in secluded places; FEMA sites taken over from private sectors, without communications for a period of 5 months, they are prevented from leaving and others are prevented from entering... so no one can ask them questions?
I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp
Why are Evacuees Being Sent to Puerto Rico Against Their Will?
The Katrina Evacuees are being treated like POWs behind fences, not allowed to leave with heavy military guard. Please investigate and help these survivors of Katrina who are being treated like Gitmo detainees. They haven’t committed any crime! The following article has a photograph of two very unhappy, oppressed and worn looking women behind orange fence not allowed to speak to the press and under heavy military guard.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archi...
Thursday :: Sep 8,2005
Welcome To George’s Holiday Camp
Here we go again.
The other day, I wrote about Katrina evacuees being taken to Utah with no prior knowledge of their destination, and that they were reportedly being kept behind barbed wire. I mentioned at the time that I couldn’t confirm this, and if any Utahns who read The Left Coaster could confirm or deny this tale, it would be reported here.
But this morning, what do I spy - to my shock and surprise - but a similar report from Aurora, Colorado:
I was afraid of this. As the great diaspora of New Orleans continues with evacuees not being told where they’re going until the bus/plane cranks up or until they and/arrive, the police state tactics of some of The ’welcoming’ communities are actually just housing people at remote locations, behind fences - like prisons, really.
Verne Stovall, foreground, and her daughter-in-law, Jacquelyn Augustine, stand at a
fence separating them from reporters and others Tuesday at the Community College
of Aurora. Stovall recalled how she was rescued Sunday with 23 other people from a
flooded house in New Orleans. (Denver Post / Glenn Asakawa)
And that’s NOT all, folks!
I saw a report yesterday where evacuees were put on a plane and not told they were heading for Salt Lake City, Utah until they began taxi-ing down the runway. [I wrote about this - p]
And then there is that report I have noted in recent days of the 1,000 evacuees flownto Roosevelt Roads naval base on Puerto Rico’s eastern tip. What of them?
I’ve still seen no reports, but I confirmed it with a Puerto Rican friend of mine. This is too surreal.
I mean if you read the story, the evacuees are very thankful for being safe and in a new place. Still, do we want to treat fellow Americans like this? And why so far away in Colorado? One woman says she’s never even been outside of New Orleans and that’s a pretty common thing among New Orleans’ poorer residents.
As for forcing Americans into a fenced-in camp? I don’t like it. Not one bit.
There is even SCLM support for this report.
Evacuees’ stories are moving, but fence isn’t
Article Last Updated: 09/07/2005 03:37:49 AM
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Staff Columnist
If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was peering through the fence at a Concentration camp.
The signs on the buildings say "Community College of Aurora," though for now they’re serving as an impromptu Camp Katrina. About 160 hurricane survivors are being housed in the dorms, surrounded by fences, roadblocks, security guards and enough armed police officers to invade Grenada.
There’s a credentials unit to process every visitor, an intake unit to provide Identification tags and a bag of clothes to every evacuee, several Salvation Army food stations, portable toilets, shuttle buses, a green army-tent chapel with church services three times a day and a communications team to keep reporters as far away from actual news as possible.
It probably was easier for a reporter to get inside Gitmo on Tuesday than to penetrate the force field around Lowry.
The New Orleans hostage crisis
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/0...
War on the Poor in New Orleans 2: The Attempt to Declare Martial Law
http://matewan.squarespace.com/jour...
FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Locations and Executive Orders
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?...
Concentration Camps in America, for Americans!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/camps.htm
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/0...
New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown
By Carolyn Baker
September 13, 2005
The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask:
Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans?
Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMA’s destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city? (http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/, September 6)
Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up?