FEMA and Rex 84 (google search)
these are just a random on the spot finings in a news search using
google on Rex 84 with FEMA... note most sources are Canadian.. NOT
Amerikan except one.. and the others are Italian and French!
_____
Attacks on democratic rights, breaching legal barriers: FEMA and
Katrina: REX-84 Revisited
The "Black Curtain" around FEMA's Operations
by Kurt Nimmo
September 11, 2005
kurtnimmo.com
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Print this article
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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original
Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof,
on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL
hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The
author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global
Research articles in print or other forms including commercial
internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
We are making such material available to our readers under the
provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better
understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material
on this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and
educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for
purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at
Global Research's News and Discussion Forum
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com, 2005
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=NIM20050911&articleId=929
____
October 13, 2005
New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown
by Carolyn Baker
September 13, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
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?
Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories
of FEMA's "gutting" by the federal government as the agency became
part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some
sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only
it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA's
obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro,
Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian
organizations inside the United States is mindboggling. For a
complete list of efforts blocked by FEMA see:
http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm
In order to begin answering the endless disturbing
questions, we must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila
Samples' excellent September 10 article
(http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/samples7.html), she emphasizes the
origins of FEMA in the 1980s under its architect, Oliver North.
North's Operation Rex 84, or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by
which the the federal government would accommodate the detention of
large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency.
Through Rex-84 an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set
in operation throughout the United States, for internment of
dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of
the Rex 84 plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings
in 1987, and subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5,
1987. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84)
For decades since North's operation was disclosed, many dissidents
have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being
secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this
may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little
speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serve—until
the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Coast hurricane,
we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout the nation.
Particularly since 9-11, FEMA has been very little about disaster
relief and very much about "population management." Katrina has
underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans
already knew—the chaos that results from natural disasters. What the
federal government knows, but most Americans don't know is the
pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil
exacerbate.
In the United States, all non-organic food growers use commercial
pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have
either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as
petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices.
Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas
prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their
axles break because interstates are in dis-repair as a result of the
prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What
happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment
engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of
people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the
likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural
disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a
scenario. Enter FEMA's mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater,
to maintain order.
One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the
infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is "demand
destruction", also known as population control. In a recent article,
Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis:
"Demand destruction" has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak
Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5%
of the world's people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world's energy.
How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless,
unemployed "refugees" (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don't buy
gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with
energy and requiring energy to operate). They don't use air
conditioning because they can't afford it. They are the embodiment
of Henry Kissinger's infamous term "useless eaters," a phrase from
the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged
by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is
a priority, then the only – I repeat only – beast that must be tamed
is the United States.
As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating
masses of African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how
chilling was FEMA's promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person,
then its decision to give these "useless eaters" a check for $2,000
when most have neither a checking account nor personal
identification! In addition, the very fact that so many of these
individuals are living from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of
homelessness, underscores the likelihood that many of them will be
forced into bankruptcy which may accelerate freefall into
homelessness as the Bush Administration's Bankruptcy Abuse
Prevention Act becomes law on October 17. Remember the Patriot Act—
that 300-page piece of legislation passed in the middle of the night
on October 26, 2001 which almost no members of Congress had a chance
to read? You know, the one that shredded the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights? How appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention
Act will become law almost four years to the day after the Patriot
Act was passed.
It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but
alas, things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling
elite would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent
evacuees to suddenly "litter" the streets of America. A more likely
scenario could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer
that no penniless refugee could refuse: "We'd like to give you a job
helping to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We can't pay you
minumum wage, however, since the President cancelled minimum wage by
Executive Order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of debt,
but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to `work off your
debt' by coming to work for us until you debt is satisified." Will
this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum?
With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of
this government will come more clearly into focus. On September 10,
Tom Curry listed in his article, "Hurricane Spawns Flurry Of
Deregulation," (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9259887) the Bush
Administration's most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and
oil supply relief:
Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal
Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours
truckers can drive when transporting fuel.
The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next
Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible
diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to
combat high ozone and sulfur emissions.
Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which
requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum
products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal
waters.
Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R-
Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal
emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per
emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days.
The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of
Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college
students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student
drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell
grant.
On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally
financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law
requires the federal government to pay the "prevailing wage" on
construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum
wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower
than prevailing wages, and Bush said, "will result in greater
assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the
employment of thousands of additional individuals."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new
energy bill as a result of the hurricane. "When one hurricane, as
massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and
natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are," he said.
In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay
wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to
oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific
Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration
until the year 2012.
Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been
pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler's unilateral
directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA
has not been gutted; it is the Patriot Act on crack!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at
www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original
Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof,
on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not
modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL
hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. The
author's copyright note must be displayed. For publication of Global
Research articles in print or other forms including commercial
internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
We are making such material available to our readers under the
provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better
understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material
on this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and
educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for
purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the
copyright owner.
To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at
Global Research's News and Discussion Forum
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Carolyn Baker, GlobalResearch.ca, 2005
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=20050913&articleId=938
_____
New Orleans: Dress rehearsal for lockdown od America
Carolyn Baker, Online Journal Contributing Writer
September 13, 2005
September 13, 2005—Good morning, Baghdad! Good morning, Kabul! 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?
Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of
FEMA's "gutting" by the federal government as the agency became part
of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of
altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had
been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA's obstruction of
assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez,
and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations
inside the United States is mind-boggling. Click here for a complete
list of efforts blocked by FEMA.
In order to begin answering the endless disturbing questions, we
must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila Samplesﾒ excellent
September 10 article, she emphasizes the origins of FEMA in the
1980s under its architect, Oliver North. North's Operation Rex 84,
or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by which the the federal
government would accommodate the detention of large numbers of
American citizens during times of emergency. Through Rex-84, an
undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation
throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and
others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of the Rex 84
plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and
subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987.
For decades since North's operation was disclosed, many dissidents
have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being
secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this
may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little
speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serve—until
the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Gulf Coast
hurricane, we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout
the nation.
In this particular disaster, most evacuees were poor and black, but
since global warming's repercussions are intensifying daily, we can
ultimately expect to see evacuees from all socio-economic groups,
including the white middle class being relocated as a result of
earthquakes, forest fires, floods, and tornadoes across the
continent in the coming months or years. While the ruling elite are
not willing to publicly admit the reality of global warming, they
are fully aware of it, just as they are well-informed on the reality
of Peak Oil. They know as well as progressives do that the
juxtaposition of these two ecological phenomena guarantees both
economic collapse and a plethora of natural disasters. (Please see
my recent article The Not-So Gradual Collapse Of Empire.)
Particularly since 9–11, FEMA has been very little about disaster
relief and very much about "population management." Katrina has
underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans
already knew—the chaos that results from natural disasters. What the
federal government knows, but most Americans don't know is the
pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil
exacerbate.
In the United States, all nonorganic food growers use commercial
pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have
either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as
petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices.
Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas
prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their
axles break because interstates are in disrepair as a result of the
prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What
happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment
engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of
people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the
likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural
disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a
scenario. Enter FEMA's mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater,
to maintain order.
One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the
infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is "demand
destruction," also known as population control. In a recent article,
Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis:
"Demand destruction" has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak
Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5%
of the world's people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world's energy.
How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless,
unemployed "refugees" (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don't buy
gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with
energy and requiring energy to operate). They don't use air
conditioning because they can't afford it. They are the embodiment
of Henry Kissinger's infamous term "useless eaters," a phrase from
the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged
by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is
a priority, then the only—I repeat only—beast that must be tamed is
the United States.
As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating masses of
African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how chilling was
FEMA's promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person, then its
decision to give these "useless eaters" a check for $2,000 when most
have neither a checking account nor personal identification! In
addition, the very fact that so many of these individuals are living
from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of homelessness, underscores
the likelihood that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy
which may accelerate freefall into homelessness as the Bush
administration's Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act becomes law on
October 17. Remember the USA PATRIOT Act—that 300-page piece of
legislation passed in the middle of the night on October 26, 2001,
which almost no members of Congress had a chance to read? You know,
the one that shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How
appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act will become law
almost four years to the day after the USA PATRIOT Act was passed.
It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but, alas,
things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling elite
would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent evacuees to
suddenly "litter" the streets of America. A more likely scenario
could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer that no
penniless refugee could refuse: "We'd like to give you a job helping
to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We can't pay you the
prevailing wage, however, since the president cancelled prevailing
wage by executive order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of
debt, but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to 'work off
your debt' by coming to work for us until your debt is satisified."
Will this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum?
With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of this government
will come more clearly into focus. On September 10, Tom Curry listed
in his article, "Hurricane Spawns Flurry Of Deregulation," the Bush
administration's most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and
oil supply relief:
Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal
Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours
truckers can drive when transporting fuel.
The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next
Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible
diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to
combat high ozone and sulfur emissions.
Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which
requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum
products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal
waters.
Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R-
Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal
emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per
emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days.
The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of
Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college
students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student
drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell
grant.
On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally
financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law
requires the federal government to pay the "prevailing wage" on
construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum
wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower
than prevailing wages, and Bush said, "will result in greater
assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the
employment of thousands of additional individuals."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new
energy bill as a result of the hurricane. "When one hurricane, as
massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and
natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are," he said.
In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay
wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to
oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific
Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration
until the year 2012.
Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been
pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler's unilateral
directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA
has not been gutted; it is the PATRIOT Act on crack!
Copyright © 2005 Carolyn Baker
:: Article nr. 15677 sent on 13-sep-2005 18:59 ECT
:: The address of this page is : www.uruknet.info?p=15677
:: The incoming address of this article is :
www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/091305Baker/091305baker.html
:: The opinions are the authors' own and doesn't necessarily
represent Uruknet's opinion.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m15677&l=i&size=1&hd=0
____
October 13, 2005
The Unconstitutional FEMA
by Sheila Samples
September 16, 2005
lewrockwell.com - 2005-09-10
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or
watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of
this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with
his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those
who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida
elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes
were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon – who watched
in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to
another throughout the day – were not surprised that he dropped the
ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29.
Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But
he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in
college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed
with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can
divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on
the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a
game. Go Team.
However, Operation Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from
Bush's "freedom is on the march" game that continues to wreak chaos,
death and destruction throughout the Arab world. In the aftermath of
Katrina, the homeless, bewildered, abandoned and starving citizens
may be poverty-stricken, they may be dark-skinned, but they are
Americans. And, because they are Americans, the cheering has
stopped. The media, led by the shaking outrage of CNN's Anderson
Cooper and right-leaning curmudgeon Jack Cafferty, followed by the
networks and, finally, by the wondrous on-air meltdown of Fox News'
Shepard Smith, at long last is doing its job. For a time, however
fleeting, the media has been shocked into telling the truth, asking
the right questions and holding the administration's feet to the
fire.
Thanks to the media, Bush is out there without a bullhorn – and
without a game plan.
The best-laid plans
Of course the neoconservatives who are in control of this country
had a plan for Iraq. I've written about it so often I'm almost
embarrassed to bring it up again. In 1992, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby
and Paul Wolfowitz laid out their obsession for world dominance in a
secret document, Defense Planning Guidance wherein they boldly
asserted, "our overall objective is to remain the predominant
outside power in the region (Middle East and SW Asia) and preserve
U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."
Although such arrogance caused a furor when released to the media,
the war jackals merely retreated into their lair and continued to
hone the policy of preemptive war to seize control of the world's
resources. That was the plan then, it was the plan in 1997 when they
established the warmongering think-tank, Project for a New American
Century, it was the plan outlined in the September 2000 Rebuilding
America's Defenses, which included another bold assertion – to
achieve their goal they would need "a catastrophic and catalyzing
event, like a new Pearl Harbor" – and it remains the plan today.
It was a stroke of genius in 2000 to rig the election and put George
Bush in the Cheerleader in Chief role. Bush is mean-spirited,
vindictive, greedy, incapable of feeling empathy, easily
manipulated, desperate for attention – even adulation – and has no
qualms with playing the God card for political gain. Americans are a
forgiving people, and most accepted without question this worthless,
former booze-and-drug sodden ne'er-do-well's claim that he was born
again – a man of God. They loved him. All Cheney had to do was
select himself as Number Two, slip behind the curtain, and the
cabal – as they like to call themselves – was open for business, and
waiting for a new Pearl Harbor.
It was not long in coming. If 9-11 taught us nothing else, we must
ultimately concede that George Bush entered office on his way to war
with Iraq, and had no qualms about lying repeatedly to the American
people and to our allies to get there. Piles of dead bodies,
including nearly 2,100 coalition soldiers and marines and tens of
thousands of Iraqis, the majority of whom are women and children,
are but a minor irritant to Bush. That part of humanity not
belonging to the corporate world is invisible to Bush, nothing more
than collateral damage, and is not factored into his "war plan."
Long before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, just as before 9-
11, administration officials were warned of impending peril.
Although they played out the frightening scenario in rehearsal after
rehearsal, when it was "show time" they were nowhere to be found.
They knew. And they did nothing. Either by incompetence or design,
they failed to act, and the death, crippling despair, disease and
sheer hopelessness suffered by Americans in our most romantic city
is breathtaking in scope and indefensible on any level.
Bush has repeatedly slashed funds for the Army Corps of Engineers
water projects for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. In 2003, the
money that had previously flowed into the Southeast Louisiana Urban
Flood Control Project (SELA), tasked with shoring up levees and
building pumping stations, dried up to a mere trickle. With warnings
ringing in his ears, in 2004 Bush refused the money requested to
raise the levees and rejected a plea for a $15-million project to
shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. And, in June, Bush's 2006
federal budget called for slashing SELA funds from an already
inadequate $36.5-million to a mere $10.4-million, and for cutting
the overall New Orleans Corps of Engineers budget a record $71.2-
million, which Corps officials say is the largest single-year
funding loss ever.
But all is not lost. The Corps of Engineers managed to get a hefty
$100-million for just one water project – in the Kurdish area of
northern Iraq. According to the peerless Ward Harkavy, who writes
The Morning Report for the Village Voice, "On August 15, just two
weeks before Katrina slammed into the U.S., the Pentagon boasted of
spending $6.4-billion – so far – on 2,705 Corps of Engineers
construction projects in Iraq, all but 200 of them started since
June 2004."
The SNAFU plan
It looks to me like everything is going according to plan. Chaos,
like everything else, is just a matter of perspective. Few people
really know anything about the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), except it's a name that's thrown around a lot during times
of national disaster. Do not think for one minute that Bush "gutted"
FEMA by placing it under the control of Homeland Security czar
Michael Chertoff. By any other name, FEMA remains this
nation's "secret government," with powers to suspend laws, move
entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant,
hold citizens without a trial, seize control of all transportation
and communication systems and – suspend the US Constitution.
FEMA was created outside of Constitutional law via a President John
Kennedy Executive Order, and is subject to no Congressional
oversight. It received a "tune up" under President Jimmy Carter
then, like Topsy, "just growed" through presidents Nixon, Reagan,
Poppy and Bubba to the present time. Genocide fascists like Henry
Kissinger, and greedy patriots like former General Richard Secord
and Lt. Col. Oliver North, the architects of both the Iran-Contra
scandal and today's FEMA, must be laughing their asses off at the
juvenile disinformation bait-and-switch scenario playing itself out
in the US media.
We would do well to remember that these jackals are on a mission. No
matter how many times they are exposed as liars and deceivers, they
continue across the field of life like a hoard of grasshoppers,
leaving stripped and broken humanity in their wake. They are roiling
the waters of the Mississippi by portraying FEMA as dim-witted,
absent-minded, rudderless.
And it's working. The media, Internet, Congress, you, me –
everybody – all baying for Bush to dump the hapless FEMA director,
Michael Brown, a Bush crony and former counsel for the International
Arabian Horse Association. We are all outraged, not at Bush for
dropping the ball; for being so chillingly disconnected from those
he is charged to protect – but at Brown, who is a perfect lightning
rod and, if need be, a fall guy.
He's also a man with a plan.
Take a look at these headlines – FEMA refusing all offered rescue
assistance from Amtrack to experienced firefighters, FEMA not
delivering on promises, FEMA barring delivery of desperately needed
food or water to frightened and bewildered victims of Katrina, FEMA
telling First Responders not to "respond" to the disaster. Does
anybody but me see a pattern here? Is it possible for an emergency
aid organization to show up at the scene only to refuse all offers
of aid? Does McDonald's cook up a bunch of hamburgers and then lock
its doors to its hungry patrons?
FEMA is the Patriot Act on crack. Once its powers are unleashed,
Oliver North's REX 84 "exercise" will become a reality. The
Constitution will be suspended and FEMA will have the right to
detain or seize the property of anyone even suspected of engaging
in, or who might be thinking of conspiring with others to engage in
acts of espionage or sabotage. REX 84 also advocated rounding up and
transferring to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at least
21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or
disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in
the 1930s.
The actual number of displaced New Orleans residents is unknown.
Overnight, they became "refugees," and hundreds of thousands packed
into the Super Dome or sat sweltering in the sun on roads and
bridges during a nightmarish week of waiting for help that did not
come, while political fat cats finger-pointed and accused each other
of playing the "blame" game. Finally, their military liberators
herded them onto buses and planes, refusing to reveal their
destination – husbands and wives separated, families split apart –
and disappeared to "assembly centers or location camps" throughout
the United States.
Bush, who once asked Sojourners' Reverend Jim Wallis how to talk to
poor people because he had never been around one, has once again
dropped the ball. Telling Americans whose homes, jobs, loved ones,
whose whole lives were washed away in a single night to "hang in
there, and don't buy gasoline if you can't afford it," before
cutting out to a birthday party in Arizona falls a bit short of his
presidential promise to "protect the American people."
It's unfortunate that it took a tragedy like Katrina for middle- and
lower-class America to finally come to grips with where they will
fit into the capitalist White supremacist New World Disorder.
Americans now know that Bush is incapable of leading. They know he's
too arrogant and stubborn to follow. They know it's time for him to
get out of the way – before more of us are trampled, displaced,
abandoned, and destroyed, not only here but throughout the world.
Sheila Samples [send her mail] is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a
former civilian US Army Public Information Officer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
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© Copyright Sheila Samples, lewrockwell.com, 2005
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=SAM20050916&articleId=962
_____
Bush administration's perfect post-Katrina storm gaining strength
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.
September 21, 2005—According to the official version,
the "incompetent" Bush administration bungled the Katrina relief
effort. Wrong. This administration has gone about its business like
the world-class gangsters that they are. They have, willfully and
quite "competently," done all the things that really matter to them,
and disregarded what does not.
Bush has been Bush. When Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi demanded that
Bush fire (now-gone) FEMA chief Michael Brown, Bush blinked and
answered, "Why should I do that? What has he done wrong?" He was
being honest.
Contrary to initial reports suggesting that Dick Cheney was "out to
lunch" during the hurricane, he was placing personal phone calls to
Southern Pines Electric Power Association, ordering power
restoration to Collins Pipeline, diverting power from rural
hospitals and other local utilities in the process.
Halliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root swept into the area soon
afterwards, and so did Cheney. Cheney, doing what Cheney does.
Michael Brown has been Michael Brown. FEMA/Homeland Security has
been FEMA/Homeland Security. Condoleeza Rice was shopping for
expensive shoes. Of course she was.
If the past two weeks have not provided more than ample proof that
this administration is delivering more hell in the wake of Katrina,
Bush's speech provided smelly icing on a huge and rotten cake. In
his speech, Bush said that he considers "detailed emergency planning
to be a national security priority." Bush has ordered Homeland
Security to conduct "reviews of emergency plans in every major city
in America." And he has put the malignant Karl Rove in charge of
the "reconstruction".
As noted in FEMA and Katrina: REX-84 Revisited and Dress Rehearsal
for the Lockdown of America, Katrina has provided the perfect storm,
the ideal dry run to finish what began with 9/11. This is tyranny's
gift to you. To quote Bill Van Auken, "while no doubt incompetence
and indifference played a major role, 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." Make that the entire country.
Consider the fact that the victims, the "refugees," have been sent
to camps all over the country. Consider that these American citizens
are literally military prisoners, not permitted to leave, or to
receive outside help, their lives and families utterly destroyed.
Journalists kept out, at gunpoint. This is the definition of
cleansing, and it is not just ethnic.
Consider how, today, New Orleans is a militarized hell, teeming with
mercenary thugs, and government agents. Dying, suffering people
being intimidated. Military checkpoints. Twenty-four-hour curfews.
Just like Palestine. Just like Iraq. Right here, in the United
States of America, right now. This is the plan (and it is a
bipartisan one) for the management of post-Peak Oil America. For the
management of you.
Just as disaster victims will not receive "relief" from this
government, the rest of the American people will not get relief—of
any kind—from a US political system that is, by function,
criminalized. Those who fail to grasp this reality—all of it—are as
guilty for the decline of this nation as the destroyers themselves.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/092105Chin/092105chin.html
____
September Friday 9th 2005 (20h57) :
BUSH -- THE MAN WITH A SNAFU PLAN
3 comment(s).
By Sheila Samples
"A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such
a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return
to the populace, that government is finished." Michael Rivero, What
Really Happened
It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or
watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of
this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with
his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those
who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida
elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes
were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- who watched
in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to
another throughout the day -- were not surprised that he dropped the
ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29.
Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But
he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in
college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed
with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can
divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on
the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a
game. Go Team.
However, Operation Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from
Bush's "freedom is on the march" game that continues to wreak chaos,
death and destruction throughout the Arab world. In the aftermath of
Katrina, the homeless, bewildered, abandoned and starving citizens
may be poverty-striken, they may be dark-skinned, but they are
Americans. And, because they are Americans, the cheering has
stopped. The media, led by the shaking outrage of CNN's Anderson
Cooper and right-leaning curmudgeon Jack Cafferty, followed by the
networks and, finally, by the wonderous on-air meltdown of Fox News'
Shepard Smith, at long last is doing its job. For a time, however
fleeting, the media has been shocked into telling the truth, asking
the right questions and holding the administration's feet to the
fire.
Thanks to the media, Bush is out there without a bullhorn -- and
without a game plan.
The best-laid plans
Of course the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocon...
neoconservatives who are in control of this country had a plan for
Iraq. I've written about it so often I'm almost embarrassed to bring
it up again. In 1992, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz
laid out their obsesson for world dominance in a secret document,
http://www.princeton.edu/~ppn/docfi... Defense Planning Guidance
wherein they boldly asserted, "our overall objective is to remain
the predominant outside power in the region (Middle East and SW
Asia) and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."
Although such arrogance caused a furor when released to the media,
the war jackals merely retreated into their lair and continued to
hone the policy of preemptive war to seize control of the world's
resources. That was the plan then, it was the plan in 1997 when they
established the warmongering think-tank, http://www.pnac.info/
Project for a New American Century, it was the plan outlined in the
September 2000 http://www.newamericancentury.org/R... Rebuilding
America's Defenses, which included another bold assertion -- to
achieve their goal they would need "a catastrophic and catalyzing
event, like a new Pearl Harbor" -- and it remains the plan today.
It was a stroke of genius in 2000 to rig the election and put George
Bush in the Cheerleader in Chief role. Bush is mean-spirited,
vindictive, greedy, incapable of feeling empathy, easily
manipulated, desperate for attention -- even adulation -- and has no
qualms with playing the God card for political gain. Americans are a
forgiving people, and most accepted without question this worthless,
former booze-and-drug sodden ne'er-do-well's claim that he was born
again -- a man of God. They loved him. All Cheney had to do was
select himself as Number Two, slip behind the curtain, and the
cabal -- as they like to call themselves -- was open for business,
and waiting for a new Pearl Harbor.
It was not long in coming. If 9-11 taught us nothing else, we must
ultimately concede that George Bush entered office on his way to war
with Iraq, and had no qualms about http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
lying repeatedly to the American people and to our allies to get
there. Piles of dead bodies, including nearly 2,100 coalition
soldiers and marines and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the majority
of whom are women and children, are but a minor irritant to Bush.
That part of humanity not belonging to the corporate world is
invisible to Bush, nothing more than collateral damage, and is not
factored into his "war plan."
Long before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, just as before 9-
11, administration officials were warned of impending peril.
Although they played out the frightening scenario in rehearsal after
rehearsal, when it was "show time" they were nowhere to be found.
They knew. And they did nothing. Either by incompetence or design,
they failed to act, and the death, crippling despair, disease and
sheer hopelessness suffered by Americans in our most romantic city
is breathtaking in scope and indefensible on any level.
Bush has repeatedly slashed funds for the Army Corps of Engineers
water projects for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. In 2003, the
money that had previously flowed into the Southeast Louisiana Urban
Flood Control Project (SELA), tasked with shoring up levees and
building pumping stations, dried up to a mere trickle. With warnings
ringing in his ears, in 2004 Bush refused the money requested to
raise the levees and rejected a plea for a $15-million project to
shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. And, in June, Bush's 2006
federal budget called for slashing SELA funds from an already
inadequate $36.5-million to a mere $10.4-million, and for cutting
the overall New Orleans Corps of Engineers budget a record $71.2-
million, which Corps officials say is the largest single-year
funding loss ever.
But all is not lost. The Corps of Engineers managed to get a hefty
$100-million for just one water project -- in the Kurdish area of
northern Iraq. According to the peerless Ward Harkavy, who writes [-
The SNAFU plan
It looks to me like everything is going according to plan. Chaos,
like everything else, is just a matter of perspective. Few people
really know anything about the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), except it's a name that's thrown around a lot during times
of national disaster. Do not think for one minute that Bush "gutted"
FEMA by placing it under the control of Homeland Security czar
Michael Chertoff. By any other name, FEMA remains this
nation's "secret government," with powers to suspend laws, move
entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant,
hold citizens without a trial, seize control of all transportation
and communication systems and -- suspend the US Constitution.
FEMA was created outside of Constitutional law via a President John
Kennedy http://www.disastercenter.com/lawor... Executive Order, and
is subject to no Congressional oversight. It received a
http://www.fema.gov/library/eo12148.shtm "tune up" under President
Jimmy Carter then, like Topsy, "just growed" through presidents
Nixon, Reagan, Poppy and Bubba to the present time. Genocide
fascists like Henry Kissinger, and greedy patriots like former
General Richard Secord and Lt. Col. Oliver North, the architects of
both the Iran-Contra scandal and today's FEMA, must be laughing
their asses off at the juvenile disinformation bait-and-switch
scenario playing itself out in the US media.
We would do well to remember that these jackals are on a mission. No
matter how many times they are exposed as liars and deceivers, they
continue across the field of life like a hoard of grasshoppers,
leaving stripped and broken humanity in their wake. They are roiling
the waters of the Mississippi by portraying FEMA as dim-witted,
absent-minded, rudderless. And it's working. The media, Internet,
Congress, you, me -- everybody -- all baying for Bush to dump the
hapless FEMA director, Michael Brown, a Bush crony and former
counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association. We are all
outraged, not at Bush for dropping the ball; for being so chillingly
disconnected from those he is charged to protect -- but at Brown,
who is a perfect lightning rod and, if need be, a fall guy.
He's also a man with a plan.
Take a look at these headlines -- FEMA refusing all offered rescue
assistance from Amtrack to experienced firefighters, FEMA not
delivering on promises, FEMA barring delivery of desperately needed
food or water to frightened and bewildered victims of Katrina, FEMA
telling First Responders not to "respond" to the disaster. Does
anybody but me see a pattern here? Is it possible for an emergency
aid organization to show up at the scene only to refuse all offers
of aid? Does McDonald's cook up a bunch of hamburgers and then lock
its doors to its hungry patrons?
FEMA is the Patriot Act on crack. Once its powers are unleashed,
Oliver North's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84 REX 84 "exercise"
will become a reality. The Constitution will be suspended and FEMA
will have the right to detain or seize the property of anyone even
suspected of engaging in, or who might be thinking of conspiring
with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. REX 84 also
advocated rounding up and transferring to "assembly centers or
relocation camps" of at least 21 million American Negroes in the
event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of
the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The actual number of displaced New Orleans residents is unknown.
Overnight, they became "refugees," and hundreds of thousands packed
into the Super Dome or sat sweltering in the sun on roads and
bridges during a nightmarish week of waiting for help that did not
come, while political fat cats finger-pointed and accused each other
of playing the "blame" game. Finally, their military liberators
herded them onto buses and planes, refused to reveal destinations --
husbands and wives separated, families split apart -- and
disappeared to "assembly centers or location camps" throughout the
United States.
Bush, who once asked Sojourners' Reverend Jim Wallis how to talk to
poor people because he had never been around one, has once again
dropped the ball. Telling Americans whose homes, jobs, loved ones,
whose whole lives were washed away in a single night to "hang in
there, and don't buy gasoline if you can't afford it," before
cutting out to a birthday party in Arizona falls a bit short of his
presidential promise to "protect the American people."
It's unfortunate that it took a tragedy like Katrina for middle- and
lower-class America to finally come to grips with where they will
fit into the capitalist White supremacist New World Disorder. At
long last, Americans know that Bush is incapable of leading. They
know he's too arrogant and stubborn to follow. They know it's time
for him to get out of the way -- before more of us are trampled,
displaced, abandoned, and destroyed, not only here but throughout
the world.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army
Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a
variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net. ©
2005 Sheila Samples
By : Sheila Samples
September Friday 9th 2005
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=8185
|