Brian Williams of MSNBC talks about the military threatening reporters and restricting what they can and can’t put on the news.
The lie they’re telling now is that they don’t want people to see their dead relatives on the news.
I’d rather see my relative on the news than never find out what happened to them at all, which is what is really going to happen, because they’re going to suppress the information.
To quote one of today’s great minds, Jon Stewart. The press hammers Scott McClellan for the second day in a row.
As I pointed out, I can volunteer, donate and hold people’s feet to the fire all at once. I don’t need to “wait until the crisis is over” to identify who is responsible, and the “Resmuglicans” as Eric Alter called them are trying to imply that if I’m asking questions, then I must not be doing the work. I AM doing the work, and asking the questions at the same time. I am capable of multi-tasking.
From Metamute comes this story; please read it…
by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster zone
From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct.Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, “Get off the fucking freeway”. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims” they saw “mob” or “riot”. We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
This is a story being passed along through e-mail. I don’t have any information on whether it’s true or not, but it rings true. It’s the account of a woman trapped at the convention center and what really happened there. From her account, the people “looting” and running around with guns were helping people and getting food for children, and they were firing at police because they believed, with some good reason due to massive miscommunication, that the authorities had brought them to the convention center to die.
From: Lisa Moore
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 10:13 AM
Subject: a survivor’s story: Katrina in New Orleans
i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise made it out of New Orleans; she’s at her brother’s in Baton Rouge. from what she told me:
her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital (historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother, her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she figured they’d be safe at the hospital. they went to Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room, two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her family were booted out; their room was given up to the new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away) to ride out the storm at her mother’s apartment. her mother stayed at the hospital.
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.
From Kazamatsuri via Boing Boing: Two photos taken on the same day last week — one of a grieving New Orleans survivor, the other of President Bush in flagrante photo opp in San Diego.
See also A tale of Two Photos for some other photos taken within hours of one another.
Pandagon lists all the typical Conservative responses. Here are just a couple:
Religious Conservative: God hates faggots and the rich white unmarried college kids who travel down to the French Quarter every year to drink, carouse, and deposit various genital secretions on or in each other. Thus, he killed a bunch of straight black people with families.
Economic Conservative: New Orleans was destroyed because it was a pitiful welfare state, the root cause of which was a mixture of the endemic nature of black people to rely on Big Daddy government coupled with the endemic nature of liberals to prey on black people. This explains their reluctance to pay $5 for a waterlogged Twinkie – years of socialism have stained their ability to understand that market economics require the fucking over of black people during emergencies, lest the government actually help them and turn their children into welfare-loving parasites. Gay welfare-loving parasites.
My personal favorite:
Faux-Moderate Conservatives: We’re in the midst of a crisis here – there’s plenty of blame to go around. We’ll apportion Democrats’ now and the rest to Republicans when New Orleans is rebuilt… in 2025.
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.
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.