Another Day, Another Corporate Giveaway
Sen. Obama joined with Republican Tom Couburn in demanding the government explain their
deal with Carnival Cruiselines when Greece had offered cruise ships to house victims for free.
"Even if the Carnival contract were a good one--and it almost certainly is not--it is inexplicable why FEMA would fail to implement the Greek government's offer of free cruise ships," the senators said. "Unfortunately, this is merely the latest example of poor decision-making by FEMA."
Making this waste of $236 million even more appalling:
"The ships were largely sitting empty in the Gulf Coast, The Washington Post reported this week, prompting allegations of wasted government money from Republicans and Democrats. " NBC news is reporting that they are sitting "half full." The senators are suggesting that a CFO position be created to oversee the dispersal of Katrina related funds.
Even more disturbing are the signs that everyone is trying to get their greedy little fingers on a piece of the government's Katrina Relief Fund.
Lobbyists are already trying to get their pet projects money from the pot, including:
$8 million for alligator farms.
$25 million for a sugar cane research lab.
$35 million to market seafood.
$50 billion in open-ended grants.
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is not greater disaster than greed
-Lao-tzu
Darfur - Further Down the Spiral
This weeks Coalition Post:One week ago, experts and observers
warned that Darfur risked "sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness." At a time when Khartoum and the Darfur rebels were preparing to meet in an attempt to move the essentially non-existent peace process forward, IRIN was reporting
Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.
The "fragile ceasefire" has never really existed and fears of "perpetual" lawlessness are misplaced considering that Darfur has been essentially lawless for more than two years.
Last week, the World Food Program
reported that "security levels deteriorated in Darfur during the reporting week." This week, the WFP
reported that "despite precautionary security measures, attacks on commercial and humanitarian vehicles continue in Darfur."
And as the UN was
expressing its concern "about the recurrent attacks carried out by armed men and gangs in Darfur states, which target civilians and commercial vehicles hired by relief organizations," Norwegian Church Aid was
reporting that "relief convoy has been raided at gunpoint by bandits in Darfur for the second time in a short period. The security situation in Darfur shows signs of deterioration"
A growing problem is also that aid convoys are now being ambushed with increasing regularity by bandits on horses and camels. Norwegian Church Aid vehicles have been raided at gunpoint twice in a matter of weeks ... The field teams who travel most often through the western and southern parts of Darfur regularly encounter en route, and are often chased by, heavily armed men riding on horses and camels. Since the aid operation began just over a year ago, security has presented a great challenge for the agencies. Yet whereas assault, exchanges of fire and attacks on villages were previously politically motivated, much of the violence seems now to be criminal in nature.
And the violence continues.
Just yesterday, it was reported that
40 were killed in fighting after an attack on the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army by "armed nomadic tribesmen" [aka "the Janjaweed"]. This was followed by another report that
80 government soldiers had been killed by the SLM when they captured the town of Sheiria in a surprise attack in retaliation for earlier government attacks on rebel-held territory.
The attack on Sheiria put at risk some
33,000 civilians who rely on humanitarian assistance after staff from three NGO's were withdrawn due to the fighting. And for good measure, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) "reported that the security situation in the Kalma camp housing displaced persons has further deteriorated with a large number of security incidents, including some 60 reported attacks on women over the last week alone."
All of this took place while the sixth round of
peace talks were being held in Nigeria.
It has now been more than
a year since the United States declared the situation in Darfur a "genocide" - and the security situation on the ground is now even arguably worse. While government-orchestrated attacks on civilians have diminished, mainly because "
there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy," the rampant insecurity in all likelihood still qualifies as part of Khartoum's
genocidal campaign to "deliberately [inflict] on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
The genocide is not ending and the situation is not improving. The people of Darfur have, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned.
And the First Katrina Construction Contract goes to.....
Haliburton. Was there ever any doubt?
Haliburton has been awarded the first big reconstruction contacts in the wake of the storm.
And of course, don't forget the Haliburton subsidiaries, wouldn't want to leave them out.
An Arlington-based Haliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc., won the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Subsidiaries of Haliburton and to the republic for which it stands one nation under contract, indivisible, with corruption and duress for all.
Bush to US - rebuilding to be paid for by the poor and middle class
President Bush gave a nice speech last night where he, as usual, uttered soundbites and failed to offer any details or meaningful proposals. Yes, there will be tax breaks for businesses, but how does that help the 20,000+ people stranded at shelters without homes or financial means? Businesses need customers, after all. Too little, too late - a real leader doesn't wait until their poll numbers go down to take action or accountability. But whoever said he was a real leader.
But more importantly, he promised that the federal government would pay for "most" of the rebuilding. My first thought was
"most of it?" aren't we paying for
all of it in Iraq? Granted, we didn't blow up New Orleans, so maybe that's the difference? There was an AP article today putting the cost of reconstruction and relief at $200 billion and beyond. The Bush administration acknowledged that it will be
coming from the American tax payer. But while they are handing tax breaks out to business owners, they are still pushing to make Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans permanent. So who will be paying for the FUBAR mess the government made of relief efforts? That's right, the poor and the vanishing middle class.
Even more damning is the fact that the entire disaster may have been lessened or possibly even avoided if they weren't
cutting the budget to give tax breaks to millionaires. They passed the current tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by cutting superfluous things like, oh, hurricane and flood protection programs from the budget. Then Bush got rid of taxes on stock dividends by cutting funding from the army Corp. Of engineers that they said was needed to shore up Louisiana's levee infrastructure. And he did the same thing to the corp. of engineers again this year when he needed to cut the budget to get rid of the estate taxes for the wealthiest Americans, like poor Paris Hilton.
Tax cuts for the wealthy helped cause this massive breakdown in our government response to hurricane Katrina, causing intense suffering for the poor in New Orleans and the surrounding area. And now tax cuts for the wealthy places the burden of
relief and recovery squarely on the shoulders of the poor again. Making us all victims of the Bush Administration.
Why aren't people leaving New Orleans? Here's why:
They wouldn't let people take their animals, small or large dogs, cats or anything else.
Venessa MaGee weeps as she prepares to hand her kitten over to animal control officers after evacuation from her flooded house in New Orleans September 7, 2005.
(Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi)
Posted September 8, 2005 Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
Yes, they did need to get the people out, but domesticated animals can't fend for themselves and have become family members for so many people. Lets face it, they did such an amazingly shitty job of getting the people out, they could have at least let them keep their pets instead of leaving them to suffer and starve to death. Like this poor dog (all of these images are from the trib or ap)
unfortunatelyy, pets weren't the only animals affected. I happened to have visited New Orleans this May and attended an event at the aquarium, which was wonderful. (Of course, I had to point out how ironic it was that they would serve fish at aquarium.)
Apparently, 2/3rds of the 6,000 fish there died because they could not pumpoxygenn into the water in their tanks.
Beyond even this, is the trauma that many people suffered while watching their pets die from starvation or even having to kill them. There are numerous reports of
police and military shooting dogs, not just rabid ones, but pets they aren't allowing people to take. The trauma of losing your home, your job, your way of life and all your possessions is more than enough, why are we still torturing the people of New Orleans?
And then there are the dogs that won't leave, without their owners.
There is something you can do: Donate your time or money to the
Anti-Cruelty Society or the
Humane Society. Help reunite those who've already suffered enough with their pets, like this woman below.
Bush Cares about.....Trent Lott
I've been taken aback by all the horrific scenes coming from New Orleans, as much of the world, and haven't thought I had anything to add to the growing number of stories written about it. Until, I read one of the most deplorable, but all too common, Bushism. Apparently, George Bush doesn't care about black people (as Kayne West so honestly and humorously reminded us on live national television), but he does care about Trent Lott. Poor old Trent Lott...
"Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house, there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch,' he said. Commentators were quick to note that Lott has at least one other house, unlike the poor who are stranded in New Orleans." - The Observer
Sen. Obama joined with Republican Tom Couburn in demanding the government explain their deal with Carnival Cruiselines when Greece had offered cruise ships to house victims for free.
