FEMA's Homeland Insecurity
So what are those lessons to be learned from a destroyed city with thousands dead, little or no relief for survivors, and lawlessness taking over from wind and water as the greatest threat to life? Not very nice lessons unfortunately. As the bodies of the poor, black, disenfranchised southerners bob to the surface of the rat-infested and sewage-infused waters, we’re reminded that America’s position as a big, safe, morally decent democracy with opportunity for all is one of the world’s biggest lies. The American dream that is being held up as the cause worth dying for in the Middle East is as rotten to the core as its demonic administration.
Sunday Herald | Why the American dream is one of the biggest lies
"We need to prepare the country for what's coming. We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
Nobody...
It already is, Chertoff. It already is. FEMA, beloved of Tom Matrullo as an instrument of federal indifference and self-interest, is fast lending credence to theories defining its role as an agent provocateur for a fascist regime hell-bent on bringing down the walls of the temple. A couple of days ago, in the wake of New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin's plea to assist thousands dying across three states, The Conservative Voice—using a grade-school grammar befitting its lobotomized readership, slammed the Southern mayor as "...no Rudy Giuliani".
The comment, as well as this piece of execrably blind and illogically partisan putrescence, comes as something of a compliment to Nagin. Giuliani, a slimy goombah with the mind of a rubber mallet and an unnatural interest in the convergence of security and economics, spent September 11, 2001 close to his 50,000-square foot, $13 million, bomb-proof, 23rd-floor WTC 7 command post overseeing the implosion—apparently at Larry Silverstein's behest [mp3] (Silverstein was to pick up $2-6 billion in recompense), of the WTC complex's main towers. In an event soon relegated to offical obscurity and muddied by obfuscation, the damaged 47-floor WTC 7 and Rudy's bunker were "pulled" later that day (a demolition impossible to organize in eight hours), taking with them—so it's claimed—invaluable records and intelligence in the 'safe keeping' of the CIA and FBI.
Launch in external player
On September 10, 2001, FEMA officials and members of Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management visited the WTC, the security of which had been entrusted to John O'Neill, The Man Who Knew, and who was to die in the debris. Their inspection resulted in a lack of access to the towers' rooftops and the needless deaths of hundreds. And now Louisiana's Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard intimates that FEMA deliberately hindered New Orleans rescue operations on at least three occasions; a) when it turned back three trucks of Walmart-donated water, b) when it stopped attempts to take delivery of a thousand gallons of Coast Guard-delivered diesel fuel and c) when it cut the city's emergency communications' infrastructure. A further flood of "bureaucratic" delaying tactics has prompted what might become the largest diaspora of black Americans since last century's Northern migration.
I disagree with Broussard's assertion that 'bureaucracy committed murder' in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. federal government, an uncontrolled collection of genocidal maniacs headed by a cabal of neocon Nazis, is prosecuting—in keeping with its intention of subduing increasingly impoverished and disaffected masses suffering increasing wealth disparity, an economically driven resource war against the world and its own people, be they deluded, steak-guzzling rednecks, breakfast-cereal christian airheads, or black and increasingly marginalized victims of institutionalized racism.
Recalling Tom's description of the self-conscious, uncomfortable, publicity shy behavior of so-called FEMA operatives in the area laid low by Hurricane Charley, these people appear to be agents of a body charged with exactly what its name implies, the staging and management of federal emergencies.
Conspiracy theory? Go suck eggs. That people have reason to suspect it is reason enough to sweep aside a fast-growing mountain of mealy-mouthed cover ups, impeach the Stalin-esque gangsters now holding office in the Bush administration, jail a raft of sanctimonious, sneering war-mongering profiteers, and pull the teeth of an increasingly centralized and intensely opaque private-sector dominated security apparatus. Perhaps afterwards, straight up and down people of Broussard and Nagin's ilk will be able to get on with what they do best, i.e. running government.
Note Links courtesy Information Clearing House. If the above Windows media file takes too long to download, this link might serve you better.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle)—this is working very well for them."
Barbara Bush [via the indefatigable Norm Jenson]
