Biloxi Newspaper Slams Relief Effort, Begs for Help

[sabra]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001052870

Biloxi Newspaper Slams Relief Effort, Begs for Help

NEW YORK The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss., in an editorial today, criticized the relief effort in its ravaged area so far, and told officials and the nation-at-large: "South Mississippi needs your help."

It angrily revealed: "While the flow of information is frustratingly difficult, our reporters have yet to find evidence of a coordinated approach to relieve pain and hunger or to secure property and maintain order. People are hurting and people are being vandalized.
"Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?"

Pointedly, it declared that earlier today, "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics."

It added: "We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster."

[Erika]

1. How sad we have no competent leadership n/t

[rodeodance]

2. whow--it really blasts the guard as well as the President.

[puddycat]

3. where is the Nat Guard the article asks? let's all take a wild guess. nt

[Usrename]

4. emulating their commander in chief

"reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics."

I just want * gone, I don't care how or where.

[Eloriel]

5. My God. -- NOMINATED -- Ubelievable, and utterly grotesque

Pointedly, it declared that earlier today, "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics."

The mind reels.

[BQueen]

10. And the reason given -- astonishing!

"When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris."

:wtf:

And the editorial writer thinks that South Mississippi is getting a miss because they're too busy dealing with New Orleans -- I don't even want to see how pissed off they'll be when they find out what's *really* been going on....
:yoiks:

[The Backlash Cometh]

29. We can't send the Air Force to pick up debris on the beach,

but we can send National Guard to fight the frontlines in Iraq!

Good Grief! Is the Air Force in on the Bush coup?

[RaleighNCDUer]

32. Actually, yes.

Look at the AF Academy prostletyzing. Look at their general attitude to war -- it's distant, clean, painless. They are all in the mold of Curtis LeMay, thinking that air power is what wins our wars, and the more air power there is, the easier to win them.

I've noted that AF is far liklier to be politicized than the other services - presumably because they had to be indoctrinated to accept the idea of nuking civilian populations. They are the original wingnuts.

No offense to DU former airmen, but it's boots on the ground that win wars

[Trevelyan]

43. KICK! Here you see an example of Bush's carefully chosen Nazi elite

I think it was Ted Ralls who wrote the article THE STENCH OF DAUCHAU IS OVER GUANTANAMO BAY. He writes that Dauchau started out as a "training camp for torture" to get SOME of the German soldiers prepared to give up their humanity and learn to torture other human beings and later became a death camp.

In one of the links 2 weeks ago on DU to some of the torture photos that have been released, there was one of a noose with a trap door lit up and men against the wall in orange suits. Someone wrote that when Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq all he wanted to see were the death chambers. He is a true member of Skull and Bones, Illuminati BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH and the whole bushco team has been very successful in spreading death and misery all over the world.

They must be stopped. Please sign Veterans for Peace IMPEACHMENT PETITION. It has a very good pdf of about ten pages on the US and International laws broken by Bushco including Nurenburg law.

Ramsey Clark also has a shorter legal Impeachment Document you can sign. Some of the people on AOL messageboards are awful blaming people for not leaving or racist but some are outraged at bush and one called for impeachment. Please try to leave some good links and paragraphs on relatively neutral sites like AOL Messageboards for people to learn about the political side of the web. That is how I found this and other sites.x( :-( :( :kick: :shrug:

[truthisfreedom]

6. bush's "what, me worry?" is now replaced with "let the little f*ckers die.

i like the smell of carnage in the morning."

he's all about being above it all. he likes to survey wreckage... and do nothing to stop or fix it. and watch him claim that he's preserving freedom in the south by leaving these people to fend for themselves.

[marbuc]

8. Or the Rovian ADD

Another Dead Democrat.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Did this paper endorse any particular candidate in 2004?

Just askin'.

[The_Casual_Observer]

19. It's just a guess, ......

[halobeam]

9. Is this administration just prodding the public for a revolution?

They want their total marshall law, DON'T THEY! What else am I supposed to think here? What are these poor, poor souls supposed to do??? They are fighting to survive. When they are left without anything, they are going to HAVE TO rise up, and the fury of every good man and woman will rise with them. How can they NOT see this? That's what makes me question this administration's intent here. Are they really going for this total control? Damn, this is NOT a conspiracy theory here, I'm just wondering WHAT COULD THEY BE THINKING?

I am so perplexed, honestly.

Louisianna, are they are trying to wash us all away?


I almost deleted this whole post. I remembered a DU'ers advice to me last night about my incredible urge to let loose and then wipe it gone, cuz it isn't any different than what everyone else is thinking. The advice was, "You SHOULDN'T have deleted it!" and I was yelled at, and I learned that it has to be said.. so now, I won't delete.

Thanks, friend.

[blue neen]

15. Excellent post.

Let it out. We're all wondering the same thing "WHAT COULD THEY BE THINKING?"

[calimary]

22. Screw it. You're doin' just fine.

You raise an interesting point, also. Unfortunately with these horrible people, we need to examine all possibilities - even the stinkiest and seamiest ones. Because with this bunch, the more sinister the suspicion, the more likely it's actually what's in play. After all, remember whom we're dealing with, here.

[WCGreen]

31. Don't give them that much credit....

They are just incompetent people in important positions who have nary a clue as to how ineffective they truly are......

[halobeam]

48. no, I'm sorry, they are NOT ineffective....

they are effectively ripping apart all hope and let's not mention the CHANCE that anyone has of surviving more than the next few days. I am NOT giving them too much credit. They are just what they call "extremists: evil" Isn't that what they do? They call others such things, and it is exactly what they are themselves.

I know what you are trying to say, but humanity is not a level of intelligence. Either you have it or you don't. You don't learn it in a school. They aren't stupid, no siree.. they are perfectly callous.

[WCGreen]

50. They just don't know what they are doing....

They are incompetant...

Look at Bush's trrack record in the private sector...

They were ill prepared and are scrambling around like the idiots they are trying to come to grips with actually leading instead of practicing poltics, which is the only thing they are good at....

[orleans]

11. How disgraceful! "Air Force personnel playing basketball &

performing calisthenics"

ATTENTION ALL REPUBLICANS: LOOK WHAT YOUR PRESIDENT ISN'T DOING TO HELP ANYONE!!!

[mom cat]

12. His photo ops are wearing thin...

[SoCalDem]

13. Where is the national Guard?? Ask "MandateBoy"

Let's see..Mississippi voted for????

:eyes:

*² said he planned to spend his capital that he was "given".. Good luck getting any of it.he done spent it:(

[AKing]

14. "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming" Sidney Blumenthal...

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

[JoFerret]

21. That lays it out - the responsibility. Great article. Must read.

THAT is a story that must be told. Here are the facts that must be shared and known. Every step of the way bushCo failed.

[bballny]

26. send this article

to everyone you know

[calimary]

23. That's my Sidney... (sigh...)

Yep - this says it all. As usual. Blumenthal tends to hit 'em outta the ballpark on a VERY regular basis. His stuff is always a "must-read."

[RaleighNCDUer]

33. Well, DUH!

"The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce."

I think that the devastation of one of America's premier citis might have an effect on interstate commerce.

[The White Tree]

44. Perhaps that article should be called:

"Criminal Malfeasance"

It is quite damning.

[JustSayNO 2 Sheeples]

16. Sounds like they are seeing RED (n/t)

[Trevelyan]

45. God bless you and your brother, Just Say No 2 Sheeples

All our young people - In Skull and Bones: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask online, severals sites including Parascope, focusing on Bush, Senior crimes, the aim of S&B and the Illuminati is too have at least one war each generation because people who are grieving won't look as closely at what they were and are doing to implement their New World Order.

So sad. How can they? Judgment Day is coming soon for all those that have created SOOO much needless misery.

:( :cry: :patriot:

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. CNN just said

a FEMA rep they talked to said it is not unusual for relief to take 4 or 5 days to reach the victims. That is deplorable.

[AKing]

18. Very True.....

when you have no disaster plan ready just in case.

[speedoo]

20. Gee, what will Haley Barbour say now?

He's been lavishing praise on the Coward and his cronies for days.

Now maybe the fat shithead will shut the fuck up and get to work.

[Strelnikov_]

30. Haley Is In Full Whore Mode. CNN Talking Head Was Asking Why

Federal response was so slow, couldn't they have started mobilizing earlier.

Haley launched into full spin 'Federal response has been great, couldn't have anticipated magnitude of hurricane' meme.

He should be collecting two paychecks. One from MS, and one from the RNC as spokesperson.

[rfranklin]

35. Well, he was an RNC chairman...

and a member of the BFEE. You should not be surprised.

[Bcre8v]

39. Haley Also Said on CNN

Barbour - "I think it's very unfair for the
federal government, for you to say we knew this was a
great powerful storm. THIS WAS A CATEGORY ONE WHEN IT
HIT FLORIDA. And that's the truth"

Reporter - "Governor, it was a category 5 storm."

Barbour - "No, it was a category 1, it was a category
1 storm when it hit Florida. It was a category 5
storm A FEW HOURS BEFORE IT CAME ASHORE."

(Emphasis is all mine)

What a maroon!

[wryter2000]

41. Welcome to DU

:hi: Creative

[Nothing Without Hope]

24. Shocking but consistent. It goes even deeper than this - read through

this thread and you will be freshly sickened.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4523783
Thread title: CNN/New Orleans:"Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breeches" and that's {only the beginning}:

New Orleans didn't have to drown. The Bush Adminisstration is responsible on multiple levels - including failing to patch the levees with promised - but no-show - helicopters and sandbags. It didn't have to happen. Funding had been slashed away from projects to strenthen the levees and moved to Homeland Security and the Iraq War.

The US Media has not picked up on this yet. We must push them to do so.

And Bush has refused rescue aid workers from Canada - what gives him the right? He'd rather ave all these people DIE than relinquish power or admit to cluelessness.

[NYC]

25. France has offered aid as well.

Bush will likely refuse.

What will the people in Mississippi and New Orleans think when they hear that Canadian and French aid were refused? They are still waiting for U.S. aid. I'm sure they would be happy to have aid from Canada or France, just any aid at all.

[wryter2000]

40. Canada and France

Do you have a link to Canadian and French aid being refused? I'm hearing noises already that "None of the countries we help ever help us."

[NYC]

51. I don't have a link to refusals.

I only read the offers of help. Do you need a link to the offers? If so, I'll go looking for them.

[The White Tree]

46. They will think that it is very sad.

New Orleans is very influenced by people of both these Nationalities.

[demo dutch]

36. The media is picking it up, I have heared it being discussed on NPR, NBC,

and CNN. This is only the beginning!

[Nothing Without Hope]

49. Good. It needs to be part of a media blast that will FORCE getting the

best, fastest possible aid and rescue from the US and anywhere else that will help. Otherwise the neocons will continue to stonewall. Why?

They don't want to admit to the world that the situation is as bad as it is - after all, they are responsible for the flooding in New Orleans and for failing to help people throughout the hurricane-ravaged region.

The don't want the Canadians to see and tell the rest of the world how very little the US government is doing. If there are rescue teams, they will see horrors and atrocities.

They want to pretend that "they are in charge." Pride and vanity.

There is a long-term neocon plan to set up a domestic military police force to "manage" US citizens, both during disasters and at all other times. (Read this thread and the links in it and you will see what I mean - it's obvious when you put the pieces together. Sending OUR National Guard out of the country and abusing it - using it up - is part of this plan. The administration doesn't want to have to admit that this plan has failed and that the absence of the National Guard have been needed desperately. "Homeland Security" is a failure except as a fascist tool. Indeed, grant and project money that was needed to reinforce the levees and do other major preparation for hurricanes and floods WAS DIVERTED BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND TO THE IRAQ WAR.

And I seriously wonder if perhaps the neocons WANT the deaths and dispossessions of all those poor people, many of them minorities, in LA, MS and AL. When you look over everything that has been done and NOT been done - you're FORCED to consider this as a real possibility.

[Massachusetts]

27. "Biloxi Newspaper Slams Relief Effort, Begs for Help"

The Bu$hco Titanic finally hit the iceberg that will bring it down.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the
people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
- A Lincoln

[The Backlash Cometh]

28. It sure does sound like the Air Force is getting a free ride, both

with Iraq and with filling in for our National Guard's stateside duties.

[riverwalker]

34. 72 hours

it is 72 hours now since the storm hit. People cannot live more than 72 hours without water. There are still people stranded on rooftops in 20 feet of water who are going to DIE today.

[demo dutch]

37. Sorry to say this Country is completely unprepared for ANY disaster

natural or man-made!

[wryter2000]

38. Ready for a change?

"Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?"

Ready to vote for someone who gives a fuck about you for a change?

[Orion The Hunter]

42. Great article!

Yeah its sad that those people on the ground are left to fend for themselves because all of the resources that could have been used to assist them are sitting in Iraq....

[mistertrickster]

47. You mean the south Mississippi that votes every election to "get big gov't

off our backs?"

Okay, folks, you succeeded. Now ask the churches to save your sorry asses . . .

[neuvocat]

52. My thoughts EXACTLY!!!

Oh man did you ever hit that one on the head!