Armed Thugs In The Streets!

[G_j]

Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005A.shtml
Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans.

Contractors 'Run Loose' in Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005E.shtml
Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.

[flying_wahini]

1. our very own gestapo

Bush's SS... very scary.

[whistle]

2. Follow the money....the poor in New Orleans in all liklihood.....

....don't own anything but the clothes they wear, otherwise they would not be poor.

So why are these people remaining in their "homes"? I suggest that they are living in rent controlled public housing and apartments. These properties are either owned by the city or my slum-lords who are subsidized in some way to keep from tearing down the housing and evicting the poverty tenants. These tenants won't leave knowing that if they do they will never be allowed back. So they think by remaining, somehow the city or the government will find them adequate housing somewhere in New Orleans. A dream, but that's what they believe.

Now Katrina has changed the whole mix of property ownership in the city, as essentially the properties for the most part are destroyed. So these property owners/landlords/city welfare just want to raze the structures and build luxury condos and townhouses to increase the tax base and send the poor out to the suburbs or out of the state. But the city welfare and the slum-lords know they can't just throw the tenants out into the streets, not with all of the press hanging about. That would be a public relations nightmare. So, they have turned to the mayor's office to order these people out, to the private military mercenaries to treat them as insurgents and whatever other means they will need to accomplish that goal.

It is in the New Orleans redevelopment master-plan. The hurricane just made it 1,000 times simpler for the developers and rich landlords to accomplish that vision. Any property that the lower classes own or are paying mortgages on will fall to the new eminent domain laws and so the government will just declare any such property holdouts as vital to community redevelopment and take the properties at fair market value. Either way, the poor and the powerless will loose in the biggest land-grab in over a 100 years.

<link> http://www.villavaso.com/opportunity.htm

[G_j]

3. on rebuilding New Orleans

"Residents Discuss Race, Rebuilding and Hurricane Katrina"

From Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/07/1415225

Residents Discuss Race and Hurricane Katrina

<snip>
BEVERLY WRIGHT: (founder and Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University in New Orleans, LA.)

Yes. I believe that New Orleans will be rebuilt, because New Orleans is a world class city. I believe, however, that these questions are posed because of the way that New Orleans is being perceived at the present moment. And that is that it is a city that had a majority African American population, and that that population is acting in a way that's – that we shouldn't – less civilized than what we should be acting under these times of duress, so people are saying, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn't build it.’

On the other hand, I really believe that developers, some of them, are doing a break dance at this moment as they watch so many African Americans being removed from the city, of course, because of these circumstances, because now they will have a chance to rebuild it the way that they would like to build it, and that is without us. You hear people say that the city of New Orleans will be bigger, it will be better, it will be stronger. And we also know that the plan is for it to be whiter. And that is one of the reasons that those of us who are scattered all over do plan to return. We are in the process of trying to organize in some way that we will be at the table for the rebuilding of our particular community, but what is happening in New Orleans and the way some of it is being reported is no different from the way we were being reported before the hurricane. And so, you basically have all of the prejudice and racist kinds of feelings that people have about us being played out in the media now.

<snip>

====

well-connected lobbyists and consultants, rushing to cash in $$
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10contracts.html?ei=5094&en=fe141b51ca81de17&hp=&ex=1126411200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

September 10, 2005

In Storm's Ruins, a Rush to Rebuild and Reopen for Business
By JOHN M. BRODER

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 9 - Private contractors, guided by two former directors of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other well-connected lobbyists and consultants, are rushing to cash in on the unprecedented sums to be spent on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction.

From global engineering and construction firms like the Fluor Corporation and Halliburton to local trash removal and road-building concerns, the private sector is poised to reap a windfall of business in the largest domestic rebuilding effort ever undertaken.

Normal federal contracting rules are largely suspended in the rush to help people displaced by the storm and reopen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts have already been let and billions more are to flow to the private sector in the weeks and months to come. Congress has already appropriated more than $62 billion for an effort that is projected to cost well over $100 billion.

Some experts warn that the crisis atmosphere and the open federal purse are a bonanza for lobbyists and private companies and are likely to lead to the contract abuses, cronyism and waste that numerous investigations have uncovered in post-war Iraq.

..more..