Monthly Archives: September 2005

Boing Boing is updating regularly on techie Jacob Appelbaum doing homebrewed media reports from inside the Astrodome, and their struggles to stay in the dome despite threats from authorities. They are documenting reports from evacuees of rapes, beatings and murders inside the ASTRODOME not the superdome.

Another evacuee: “Over 20 rapes per night happening inside this place. They bring in national guard for media purposes. Bush wants us to stay here to raise his ratings. Some workers are stealing the good stuff, like shoes.”

Also evacuees are telling stories that the 17th street Levees were blown up on purpose by the Army Corp of Engineers to save the French Quarter — numerous reports from evacuees on this subject.
I find this last item difficult to believe, but it does show the frame of mind of the people in the Astrodome, and what the know or understand about what’s going on.

Nancy Peloski on a conversation she had with President Bush:

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown. ” ‘He said ‘Why would I do that?”’ Pelosi said.
”’I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn’t go right last week.’ And he said ‘What didn’t go right?”’

Other Bush Katrina Hits:

“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.”
“…I’m confident that, with time, you can get your life back in order, new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will be back on its feet…”

Between 10,000 and 40,000 people are DEAD.
All of the spin about “rebuilding the city” and it will be as good as it was before… bullshit.
The only way that New Orleans will become a success is if Bush personally takes the 40,000 dead bodies, places them in one place, and resurrects them all.
If 40,000 dead people come back to life, then Bush can keep his job. If not he and every FEMA and Homeland Security member needs to lose their job, one way or another.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.

According to journalist Bob Brigham:

We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning their TV trucks around.
Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

They realize that the reporters on the ground are what is killing them and their ability to spin the news the way they want people to hear it, and they’re trying to hide the numbers of the dead to lessen the political impact of the tragedy.

I’ve attempted to do some timeline drawing on my site, but this page is the complete detailed picture of what happened and when, and it’s damning for President Bush.
It’s just damning. It’s so clear that the problem started at the top.
The more I read through this, the angrier I get. PLEASE, PLEASE e-mail this timeline to everyone you know.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Washington Post and Newsweek had to issue corrections after it was discovered they printed Bush official’s lies as fact without factchecking the claims, which turned out to be false.
Media Matters has a letter and contact information so you can ask the Washington Post what it will do about it’s grave journalistic mistake.