Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

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CELINE DION CUTS THE CRAP & PRAYS FOR NEW ORLEANS, by Charles Carreon

4:13 pm, September 5, 2005

Now I understand why Celine Dion is called a great singer. She is a great human being. See this video from CNN, where she rejects excuses for the continuing neglect of suffering people in New Orleans, and compares the US military's ability to kill “all the people in an entire country” with the government's gross inaction and mis-action in New Orleans. Larry King, the interviewer, tries to interfere with her outpouring of real sentiment, but she just mows him down. Her acapella prayer at the end of the interview is very beautiful.

Click here to download CELINE.wmv.

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BUSH ASKS NEW ORLEANS: "WHAT DIDN'T GO RIGHT?", by Charles Carreon

5:40 pm, September 5, 2005

Bush's handlers are eager to show that their boy is not “out of touch.” This becomes more difficult daily, as it becomes apparent that the handlers are also out of touch. The raft of stories coming out of New Orleans shows that FEMA and the Dept of “Homeland Security” are completely out of their element when dealing with a job that demands pasting your ass to a chair, sitting at a desk, and manning the phone lines to direct an enormous logistical effort.

On the issue of the top dingleberry being out of touch, I guess it's a matter of “like mother, like son.” For real, orbital, out-of-touchness, Barbara Bush can't be beat — listen to the sound clip of her below, expressing the opinion that the evacuees are really quite fortunate to be flooded out of house and home, have their relatives drowned, and be treated like drowning rats — better off in the drink. But her son the president is not far behind, as Nancy Pelosi made clear when she reported his delivery of an amazing Bushism, as reported in the Houston Chronicle quote below.

Houston Chronicle

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had “absolutely no credentials.”

She related that she urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire 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?”

You can play a very short video of Nancy Pelosi relating Bush's statement using Winamp. There are many other Katrina-related videos at Katrina Little Movies (You have to sign up to join this website, but it is really worth it for all of the incredible material there.)

The reason this boondoggle is going to blow up in Bush's face is simply because it is so damned obvious that no only do they not give a flying fuck about New Orleans or its people — they also view this as an opportunity to prove that you can, in fact, fool all of the voters all of the time. The media has spun this story six different ways from Sunday, but regardless of the spin, the atrocity of contemptful neglect that Bush has demonstrated toward the injured Southerners should chap hides all across America. With Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch Bush's lights out if he criticizes Louisiana authorities one more time, Bush could be in for the celebrity death match of his life.

Pride cometh before the fall, and certainly pride has been the Ace up Bush's sleeve in one surprising deal after another. This time, though, being out of touch can be terminal, as when he joked that New Orleans would rise again and become a place where rich kids can “have too much fun.” Yes, and all of the manicured lawns and beautiful golf courses will be restored, and then he'll come back.

I have often thought to myself, “What will Bush's Falklands be?” You'll remember that it was the misbegotten adventurism of an Argentine junta at its wits end for further distractions that led to its destruction. The future history might read like this:

Encyclopedia Liberalica

”By September 2005, Bush had destroyed the nation's financial solvency, declared war on Islam internationally, sent the entire National Guard to depose Iraq's government, alienated the European nations by feeding the fires of international warfare, invited a trade war with Canada over softwood, and directed his proxy Pat Robertson to announce a jihad against Venezuela. Then G-d decided to open yet another front in the worldwide conflict, and directed his armies of wind and waves to destroy the entire Biloxi staging base for the Iraq war, to destroy New Orleans in one day, to create a huge demand for the absent National Guard, to choke off the nation's supply of crude and refined oil by devastating Louisiana and Mississipp, and killed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, all in just over a week. G-d also saw fit to assure the destruction of the Bush junta by hardening the hearts of the Pharaoh's men, so that their TV messages were not at all reassuring, and their sound bites were like stones, and broke the teeth of viewers who sought to consume them. So a great wave of anger rose up in the hearts of the people, and like a tsunami of rage, destroyed the Bush junta."

Click here to download Nancy Pelosi Speaks.wmv.

Click here to download barbarabush.mp3.

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MATT WELLS' BBC OP-ED PIECE IS A LITTLE TOO SANGUINE 4 ME, by Charles Carreon

12:28 am, September 6, 2005

Matt Wells, of the BBC, has his own optimistic take on the media situation, in the article quoted below. He thinks the media is going to redeem itself by getting a grain of social conscience and learning to talk back to the Bush spin machine. Somehow I doubt it. Rove and his double-dealers will be calling in every favor, threatening every troublesome newsperson with exposure for small or large crimes, endangering their jobs, grabbing short hairs and whispering soft threats. Soon the media will remember its place.

I mean, I like Matt's article, but the idea that FOX is gonna come to Jesus over this issue is quite fanciful. They'll be blasting away at Cindy Sheehan, and supporting Pat Robertson, and hefting the Grand Inquisitor Gonzales into his Supreme Court seat in short order.

Matt has other fantasies, like how there'll be so many new Louisiana voters in Texas after this exodus from Louisiana, but I hate to tell you, after they register in Texas, they're all going to turn out to be felons!

Matt believes that the Bush administration's true colors have been revealed, and that is going to rock the corporate kleptocracy to its foundations. That is all too optimistic. Right, and the supply of suckers being born every minute has recently been reduced to a trickle. I think not. People remain as stupid as ever, and if the worst fears of the Libertarians take shape, and large internment camps are set up to hold the evacuees under military guard like the INS interned the Haitian boat people for years, who will stop that? The media hasn't even rebelled over the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib.

Now that the civil rights violations are happening here on home turf, it will take tremendous intelligence and dedication for the nation to use this opportunity to unseat the hegemonic forces that have settled astride the people of the nation. Haliburton has already got its snout into the feedbag for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, and ultimately we are going to see a land grab so big it will make the theft of California from Mexico, the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and the Louisiana Purchase itself, seem like small change. Trump is already waiting to start firing people. This will be reality TV like you never imagined.

Matt Wells

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?

BBC News, Los Angeles

As President Bush scurries back to the Gulf Coast, it is clear that this is the greatest challenge to politics-as-usual in America since the fall of Richard Nixon in the 1970s.

Then as now, good reporting lies at the heart of what is changing. But unlike Watergate, ”Katrinagate“ was public service journalism ruthlessly exposing the truth on a live and continuous basis.

Instead of secretive ”Deep Throat“ meetings in car-parks, cameras captured the immediate reality of what was happening at the New Orleans Convention Center, making a mockery of the stalling and excuses being put forward by those in power.

Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

'Lies or ignorance'

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.

The most spectacular example came last Friday night on Fox News, the cable network that has become the darling of the Republican heartland. This highly successful Murdoch-owned station sets itself up in opposition to the ”mainstream liberal media elite“.

But with the sick and the dying forced to sit in their own excrement behind him in New Orleans, its early-evening anchor Shepard Smith declared civil war against the studio-driven notion that the biggest problem was still stopping the looters.

On other networks like NBC, CNN and ABC it was the authority figures, who are so used to an easy ride at press conferences, that felt the full force of reporters finally determined to ditch the deference.

As the heads of the Homeland Security department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) appeared for network interviews, their defensive remarks about where aid was arriving to, and when, were exposed immediately as either downright lies or breath-taking ignorance.

And you did not need a degree in journalism to know it either. Just watching TV for the previous few hours would have sufficed.

Iraq concern

When the back-slapping president told the Fema boss on Friday morning that he was doing ”a heck of a job“ and spent most of his first live news conference in the stricken area praising all the politicians and chiefs who had failed so clearly, it beggared belief.

The president looked affronted when a reporter covering his Mississippi walkabout had the temerity to suggest that having a third of the National Guard from the affected states on duty in Iraq might be a factor.

It is something I suspect he is going to have to get used to from now on: the list of follow-up questions is too long to ignore or bury. And it is not only on TV and radio where the gloves have come off.

The most artful supporter of the administration on the staff of the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, has also had enough.

He and others are calling the debacle the ”anti 9-11“: ”The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled,“ he wrote on Sunday.

”Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield.“

Media emboldened

It is way too early to tell whether this really will become ”Katrinagate“ for President Bush, but how he and his huge retinue of politically-appointed bureaucrats react in the weeks ahead will be decisive.

Government has been thrown into disrepute, and many Americans have realised, for the first time, that the collapsed, rotten flood defences of New Orleans are a symbol of failed infrastructure across the nation.

Blaming the state and city officials, as the president is already trying to do over Katrina, will not wash.

Black America will not forget the government failures, and nor will the Gulf Coast region

Beyond the immediate challenge of re-housing the evacuees and getting 200,000-plus children into new schools, there will have to be a Katrina Commission, that a newly-emboldened media will scrutinise obsessively. The dithering and incompetence that will be exposed will not spare the commander-in-chief, or the sunny, faith-based propaganda that he was still spouting as he left New Orleans airport last Friday, saying it was all going to turn out fine.

People were still trapped, hungry and dying on his watch, less than a mile away.

Black America will not forget the government failures, nor will the Gulf Coast region.

Tens of thousands of voters whose lives have been so devastated will cast their mid-term ballots in Texas next year - the president's adopted home state.

The final word belongs to the historic newspaper at the centre of the hurricane - The New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the weekend, this now-homeless institution published an open letter: ”We're angry, Mr President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry.

“Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been, were not. That's to the government's shame.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/w ... 214516.stm

Published: 2005/09/05 16:48:01 GMT

© BBC MMV

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FEMA HEAD KNOWS HORSESHIT, BUT WHAT ELSE?, by Charles Carreon

6:07 pm, September 5, 2005

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has called for FEMA to get the hell out of their city, and for Bush to fire FEMA Director Mike Brown and all of his blunderlings. One thing we know is that Brown knows shit from Shinola, based on his past employment as the head of the International Arabian Horse Association, where he got into so much horseshit they fired his ass. Now he can swim in shit up to his eyeballs and not notice.

FEMA head takes heat in spotlight

By John Biemer and Howard Witt Chicago Tribune staff reporters Published September 4, 2005

For the decade prior to joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Director Michael Brown was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado-based group that organizes breeders and horse shows. Then he was asked to resign.

“He didn't follow the instructions he was given,” then-IAHA President William Pennington confirmed Saturday.

Less than five years after that dismissal, Brown, 50, finds himself heading the federal agency charged with responding to one of the nation's worst disasters.

Brown has been one of the leading public faces of a federal response sharply criticized as too little and too late. His statements and sometimes even his demeanor under the camera's glare have been questioned by critics--and often divergent from the grief-stricken reality on the ground.

During one of his first televised news conferences Wednesday, when violence and chaos were spreading in New Orleans and bodies were beginning to be seen floating in the water, Brown laughed and joked as he took reporters' questions.

At points last week, he described security in New Orleans as “pretty darn good.” He said he had received no reports of “unrest,” nor any information about uncollected corpses. And on Thursday night, he told CNN the agency had just learned that thousands of people had huddled at the New Orleans Convention Center, even though the city had directed them to go there, and journalists had been reporting their plight.

The frustrated New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, lashed out last week, saying federal officials “don't have a clue” what was going on in his city. And the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, was quoted in The New York Times as calling on President Bush to fire Brown.

Seeking her own expert, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Saturday hired James Lee Witt, the widely praised FEMA director under President Bill Clinton, to advise her.

Still, even though Bush has called the federal response to the disaster “not acceptable,” he praised Brown Friday during a tour of Alabama, saying, “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,” the AP reported.

FEMA DIR. MIKE BROWN FIRED FROM PRIOR JOB AT HORSE ASSOC.
by Goldy at HorsesAss
by Daily Kos.com
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005

[editor's note, by Goldy at HorsesAss] Revised title

"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it's not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.

I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago.

Goldy at HorsesAss's diary :: ::

He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.

Yes, that's right ... the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for the International Arabian Horses Association ... a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

New Hampshire Arabian Horse Association

I am headed to the IAHA convention in San Antonio after Thanksgiving. It should be a hot time down there this year. A complete counter slate of officers has been offered from the floor of convention. There is a lot of unrest in this industry right now. There are 17 resolutions pertaining to Resolution 5-90 (The office of the Judges and Stewards Commissioner) i.e.; the $3.00 fee. Mike Brown who was commissioner was requested to resign after all of the controversy regarding the number of lawsuits that are pending transpired.

AWhiteHorse Equine Industry Articles, Editorials and Opinions Page

From Tom Connelly to the Board of Directors:

As the Board directed during our recent conference call, negotiations have been ongoing with Mike Brown in relation to his resignation.

Attached is the final agreed upon separation agreement which Mike has executed and presented to us. He realized that this matter was going to go to the Board and he wanted to have signed it before it was actually presented.

I plan to sign the agreement Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, but in the meantime, if you wish to make any comments, please forward them to Joleen White and she will make sure we all see them.

SEPARATION AGREEMENT

I. PARTIES

The Parties to this Agreement are:

A. International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado non-profit corporation, which is located in Arapahoe County, Colorado ("IAHA"); and

B. Michael D. Brown, an individual who is a resident of Boulder County, Colorado.

II. RECITALS

A. Mr. Brown is employed as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA.

B. Mr. Brown and IAHA are currently involved as co-defendants in litigation.

C. Mr. Brown desires to resign from his employment with IAHA, and IAHA desires to accept Mr. Brown's resignation. However, in an attempt to accomplish an orderly transition for IAHA, the parties desire a gradual disengagement of the relationship so that Mr. Brown can complete his pending work and continue to assist in the defense of the pending litigation.

III. COVENANTS

In consideration of the mutual covenants set forth herein, and for other good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency of which the parties hereby acknowledge, the parties agree as follows:

A. Upon execution of this Agreement by the parties, Mr. Brown will resign from his position with IAHA, effective January 31, 2001.

B. Mr. Brown will employ his best efforts to conclude his work on pending matters during the month of September, 2000, and will assist in an orderly transition, and will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work as Judges and Stewards Commissioner.

C. Prior to January 31, 2001, Mr. Brown will use all of his accrued vacation time.

D. IAHA will continue to pay to Mr. Brown his full salary, including benefits, through January 31, 2001.

E. During the months of February, March and April, 2001, IAHA will pay Mr. Brown his full salary, as severance pay.

F. Mr. Brown will continue to assist in the defense of litigation against him and/or IAHA relating to his work for IAHA as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, as reasonably requested by counsel for IAHA, unless reasonably objected to by counsel for Mr. Brown.

G. IAHA will pay to Mr. Brown a consulting fee of $100 per hour for time he spends assisting in the defense of litigation after April 30, 2001, such fee to be paid within 30 days of the date services are billed to IAHA by Mr. Brown.

H. IAHA will continue to provide and to pay for health insurance for Mr. Brown and his wife through October 31, 2001.

I. By October 1, 2000, Mr. Brown will cause to be contributed from the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund the sum of $25,000.

J. IAHA will, without limitation and to the fullest extent allowed by law, continue to indemnify Mr. Brown and to hold Mr. Brown harmless from all liabilities, obligations, claims, causes of action, or expenses of any kind, including reasonable attorneys' fees and costs, that may arise or be incurred by Mr. Brown arising out of the performance of his employment as Judges and Stewards Commissioner of IAHA, including his duties under the terms of this Separation Agreement.

K. Mr. Brown further agrees to abide by the provisions of Paragraphs 17 and 18 his Employment Contract and the confidentiality requirements of Resolution 5-90.

L. This Separation Agreement shall not in any way be construed as an admission by either party of any acts of wrongdoing whatsoever. The parties recognize that, due to the nature of Mr. Brown's duties as Judges and Stewards Commissioner, he has been the subject of numerous personal attacks, and that there have been numerous allegations made during the course of his employment that Mr. Brown engaged in conduct that would constitute cause for the termination of Brown's contract with IAHA. IAHA specifically acknowledges, however, that no cause exists to terminate Brown's contract with IAHA.

M. The Parties hereby and forever release and discharge each other, their heirs and assigns, from any and all causes of action, actions, judgments, liens, damages, losses, claims, liabilities and demands whatsoever, whether known or unknown, which arose prior to the date of this Separation Agreement.

N. Any dispute arising under this Separation Agreement shall be submitted to arbitration before the Judicial Arbiter Group in Denver, Colorado. In the event any arbitration is held pursuant to this Agreement, the arbitrator shall award the prevailing party his or its reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.

O. This Separation Agreement sets forth the entire agreement between the parties hereto, and fully supersedes any and all prior agreements and understandings between the parties hereto pertaining to the subject matter hereof.

P. The parties have each been represented by counsel in connection with this Separation Agreement and have read the entire Separation Agreement and understand each of the terms hereof.

Q. Colorado law shall govern the interpretation of this Separation Agreement and the resolution of any dispute arising in connection herewith.

R. No modification to this Separation Agreement will be effective, unless such modification is made in writing and signed by each of the parties hereto.

S. In the event that any part of this Separation Agreement and General Release is determined to be void, or otherwise unlawful, the remaining portions hereof shall remain in full force and effect.

Date:

Michael D. Brown

International Arabian Horse Association

Date: By:

And what of that misleading White House press release?

The White House

Nominations

President Bush to Nominate Two Individuals to Serve in His Administration

The President announced his intention to nominate two individuals to serve as members of his administration.

The President intends to nominate Michael D. Brown to be Deputy Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown was appointed FEMA General Counsel in February, and Acting Deputy Director in September, where he has served as the Chairman of the Consequences Management Working Group. From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee. From 1988 to 1991, Brown was General Counsel to Dillingham Insurance, Suits Drilling, Suits Rig, Latigo Energy, Dillingham Ranch and Dillingham Enterprises, and from 1980 to 1988, he was an attorney in private practice. In 1978 to 1980, he worked for the Oklahoma State Senate Finance Committee, and from 1975 to 1978, Brown worked for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, overseeing the emergency services divisions. Brown is a graduate of Central State University and Oklahoma City University Law School.

The President intends to nominate Ruth Lewis Griffin to be a Commissioner of the International Joint Commission for the United States and Canada. Griffin is the Executive Councilor for the Third District of New Hampshire and has been a member of the Executive Councilor since 1987. She was a Member of the New Hampshire State Senate, the New Hampshire House of Representatives and has served New Hampshire in elected office for a total of 35 years. Griffin is a member of the Governor's Commission on Intermodal Transportation which is the architect of the New Hampshire Highway Plan and the New Hampshire Health Services Planning and Review Board. She has served on the Portsmouth Board of Education, the Portsmouth Police Commission and is currently the Portsmouth Housing Authority Commissioner. A registered nurse, she is a graduate of the Wentworth Hospital School of Nursing.

I can't even begin to fact check the dates or IAHA's alleged relationship to the US Olympic Committee, because of course, the IAHA doesn't exist anymore, so there's nothing to Google. But it begs the question ... how the hell did his prior job experience prepare Brown to head FEMA?

Well, judging by his agency's performance over the past few days ... it didn't.

[Cross-posted at HorsesAss.org]

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AMSTERDAM IS BELOW SEA LEVEL, BUT NEVER FLOODS, by Charles Carreon

7:17 pm, September 5, 2005

A lot of folks are thinking that you had to be stupid to live in New Orleans, but my daughter Maria lived there for a while in summer 2001, and I'm sure glad she moved back to Manhattan in time for the WTO disaster! As one of the world's most beautiful cities, founded by the French colonials and filled with beautiful architecture, stately neighborhoods, and cultural history, it might have received some respect, and its people some protection.

Protection from nature? From disastrous tropical storms? From flooding we knew could happen? Yes, like the Dutch provided for Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the entire Dutch nation — half of which lies below sea level.

Welcome To the Netherlands wrote:

The Netherlands is best known for its tulips, windmills and clogs. And for its low altitude and vulnerability to flooding.

The Netherlands lies on the delta of three major rivers: the Rhine, Maas and Scheldt. It owes its existence to feats of hydraulic engineering.

The Dutch are proud of their conquest of water. Their struggle to keep dry has helped them develop a can-do attitude. And since controlling water requires many parties to meet and plan together, it has forced them to learn how to work as a team. That is why their European partners and the broader international community regard the Dutch as bridge builders and often ask them to serve as such.

Floods

The Netherlands’ many bridges, dykes, windmills and pumping stations give it a unique appearance and illustrate its long struggle against the sea. The crowning achievement was the Delta Project, a chain of dams protecting Zeeland and South Holland from the North Sea.

Work on the Delta Project began after the 1953 floods, and it ended in 1997 with the completion of a storm surge barrier in the Nieuwe Waterweg. The barrier has two enormous hinged gates that can be lowered in severe weather to close off the 360-metre-wide waterway. It protects greater Rotterdam’s one million inhabitants from flooding without harming the environment.

A quarter of the Netherlands’ land area lies below sea level. The low-lying areas consist mainly of “polders”, flat stretches of land, surrounded by dikes, where the water table is controlled artificially. From the 16th century, windmills were used not just to keep the land dry, but even to drain entire inland lakes.

http://www.minbuza.nl/default.asp?CMS_ITEM=MBZ300136

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NEW ORLEANS SURVIVORS CAMP FREE, LIKE ADAM & EVE, by Charles Carreon

11:57 pm, September 5, 2005

As a practical matter, I think it's good that the Forest Service is letting people camp for free, but it also strikes me it would make it a helluva lot easier to camp out if they'd drop off some tents, trailers, kitchens, toilets and water in the campgrounds! At any rate, let's find these places, because some people are gonna need 'em.

The US Forest Service wrote:

Release No. 0348.05 Contact: Daniel Jiron (202) 205-1134 FOREST SERVICE WAIVES CAMPGROUND FEES FOR HURRICANE KATRINA SURVIVORS Washington, Sept.3, 2005 - The USDA Forest Service is taking another step to assist survivors of Hurricane Katrina by temporarily rescinding the fee requirement for campgrounds and the 14-day stay limit for camping on some National Forest System lands in the Southern Region. The normal fee range is $4.00 to $25.00 depending on the location.

The forests offering free camping include the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana, the National Forests of Alabama, the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest in Arkansas, the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas and Oklahoma and the National Forests and Grasslands of Texas. In all, 106 campgrounds are open without charge to victims of Hurricane Katrina as they transition through these first weeks of the disaster.

Location information on the fee-free campgrounds will be shared through the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and state and local assistance agencies. Individuals and families with communications capabilities can call their nearest USDA Forest Service office.

The USDA Forest Service efforts are a component of the active response efforts by USDA to provide immediate relief to displaced residents by providing food, water and housing. For a comprehensive overview of USDA efforts go to: http://www.usda.gov. More information on hurricane recovery activities through FEMA is available at http://www.fema.gov. Last Modified: 09/03/2005

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THE "DROWNING OF NEW ORLEANS" WAS PREDICTED IN 2001, by Charles Carreon

1:21am, September 6, 2005

Michael Chertoff is really a fine team player, the kind of guy who will get the Medal of Honor someday, just like George Tenet, who sold the CIA's credibility down the crapper, and Paul Bremer, who declared victory and abandoned Iraq to wallow in bloodshed. Michael Chertoff will achieve this high honor because of his demonstrated ability to blandly redefine truth as whatever is convenient to say. He has now blandly stated that no one could've foreseen this whole disaster, but the University of Louisiana did, and shared its conclusions in a huge article in Scientific American called “Drowning New Orleans,” in the October 2001 issue. The article estimated a possible 100,000 dead, based on a worst case scenario computer simulation that looks just like an aerial view of the post-Katrina waterscape that has replaced the New Orleans city grid. The water depths achieved, ranging up to 20 feet in depth, were also predicted by the University's simulation. So what's not to foresee, Mike?

CNN wrote:

Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist. However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans

Monday, September 5, 2005; Posted: 2:55 p.m. EDT (18:55 GMT)

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff talks with reporters Saturday during a news conference. New Orleans (Louisiana) Michael Chertoff

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.
But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans.

Click here to download "Drowning New Orleans"

[admin]

VIDEOS OF MAYOR NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS SURVIVORS, AND MORE, by Charles Carreon

9:56 pm, September 7, 2005

The video reports coming out of New Orleans are shocking in their consistency. This isn't accidental neglect, but the imposition of a cruel lie on the entire country. The people of New Orleans are being treated as if they were to blame for this disaster, as if they have something to apologize for. There cannot be enough outrage in response to this callousness, which is perfectly exemplified by Barbara Bush's observation that the survivors huddled in the Houston arena are getting some kind of a vacation from struggling for a living because they're getting to spend the night in a stadium. Is this lady insane? People lived in New Orleans like they do anywhere else, in houses, on dry land. But why should I rant when the people themselves are on video to speak? Please watch the video of Mayor Nagin, who handles himself very well, and would clearly govern the nation better than the clique of chickenhawks and self-serving “tycoons” who fiddled while New Orleans drowned.

This video of Charmaine Neville of The Neville Brothers musical family is absolutely horrifying. If you can't play it, please read the transcript at the bottom of this post. Additionally, the American-Buddha.com website has put together a page of publicly available newscasts and videos documenting the Katrina disaster in a very accessible format. Although you do have to sign up to join this website, it just takes a second, and is really worth it for all of the incredible material on there. Clicking on any of the links below will take you directly to a special Katrina Little Movie page as soon as you sign up (for free). Just sign up once, then you can stay logged in. Use Winamp to play the movies on your computer.

• 60 Minutes: Interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin - 9/4/05
• Barbara Bush -- Audio
• Bob Shieffer Blasts the Response to Katrina
• Boustany Flip Flops
• Cafferty: The Blame Game
• Call For Help
• Celine Dion's Crying Plea
• Charmaine Neville: New Orleans Evacuee [1]
• Chertoff Blames the Media for His Failings
• Hillary Clinton Wants an Investigation Into Katrina
• Jack Burkman in Damage Control: Wanker
• Mary Landrieu to Bush: "I'll Punch Him"
• Olbermann's Rant on Katrina
• Oprah Winfrey and Katrina
• Pelosi: Bush [is] "Oblivious, in denial, dangerous"
• Rumsfeld Says We Have Too Many Troops!
• Russert Blasts Government Over Handling of Katrina
• Scott McClellan's Latest Press Conference
• The Daily Show and Katrina
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CHARMAINE NEVILLE, NEW ORLEANS EVACUEE

”I was in my house when everything first started. I live by the high water in the 9th Ward in New Orleans. When the hurricane came, it blew all of the left side of my house, the north side off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents. I had my neighbor, an elderly man who's my neighbor and myself in the house, with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water, but the water was coming in too fast, so we ended up having to leave the house. We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door open on the roof of the school to help people, to get them up on the roof of the school. Later on we found a flat boat and we went around in the neighborhood in the flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school. We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people.

But then, things started getting really bad. By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food, no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming into our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters go across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us, “Hi,” and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food, any water, nothing. Alligators were eating people, they had all kinds of stuff in the water, they had babies floating in the water, we had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people, people that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals, and from the old folks' homes, I tried to get the police to help us but I realized, we rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was driving the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places where they could be saved. We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally, it got to be too much. I just took all of the people I could, I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, and I rolled them from down there in the 9th ward to the French Quarter, and I went back and I got more people. There were groups of us, you know, there were about 24 of us. And we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter, because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water, and they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get to them. I found some police officers, I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there, by guys who had come [CENSORED BY WAFB9] neighborhood where we were that were helping us to save people, but other men, and they came and they started raping women, and [CENSORED BY WAFB9] and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not going to tell you I know who they were because I don't. But what I want people to understand is that if we had not been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed because we wanted to be rioting, and we wanted to do this, and we didn't have resources to get out. WE HAD NO WAY TO LEAVE! When they gave the evacuation order, if we could have left, we would have left. There are still thousands and thousands and thousands of people trapped in the homes in the downtown area.

When we finally did get — in the 9th Ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th Ward, there are a lot of people who are still trapped down there. Old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them. And I want people to realize that we did not stay in that city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. And we'd do SOS on the flashlights, we tried everything. And it came to a point, it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing, maybe if they hear this gunfire, they would stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal Street, with all of my people that I had saved from back there — there was a whole group of us — and I — I don't want them arresting nobody else — I broke the window in a RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus, I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and everything into that bus, and we drove and we drove [breaks down in sobbing] and we drove. And millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus. [breaks down crying] What I did was with all of the willpower I had. I just tried."

(Transcribed from the Video at WAFB9, Baton Rouge, LA, by Tara Carreon, http://www.american-buddha.com )

[admin]

THE RAMONES SUGGEST: HAVE A NICE DAY, by Charles Carreon

5:21pm, September 10, 2005

Lately the NewSpeak agency has turned up the volume real loud. You remember NewSpeak, don't you — Orwell discovered it back in 1984. Remember Winston Smith? Remember O'Brien? Remember when you had a brain? Before you became a spineless Party Member?

"'I had been hoping for an opportunity of talking to you,' he said. 'I was reading one of your Newspeak articles in The Times the other day. You take a scholarly interest in Newspeak, I believe?'

Winston had recovered part of his self-possession. 'Hardly scholarly,' he said. 'I'm only an amateur. It's not my subject. I have never had anything to do with the actual construction of the language.'

'But you write it very elegantly,' said O'Brien."

From 1984, by George Orwell

Before we all learn to write NewSpeak, it's time to fight back. Somebody tries to give you a raft of bullshit, like the Bush Administration isn't racist, tell them to Have A Nice Day, then crank this vintage Ramones in their ear to drive home the point.

HAVE A NICE DAY

I heard it from the gangster I heard it from the priest I heard it from my best friend Way down in the middle east

Have a nice day. That's all I hear every day Have a nice day. I don't believe a word you say

I heard it from the landlord When he kicked me out I heard it from the spirits As they possessed my house

Have a nice day. That's all I hear every day Have a nice day. I don't believe a word you say

When they look me in the eye, I turn the other way It's just a trained reaction something they gotta say... yeah

I heard it from New Zealand I heard it at the club I heard it from my doctor Before he pulled the plug

Have a nice day. That's all I hear every day Have a nice day. I don't believe a word you say Have a nice day. That's all I hear every day Have a nice day. I don't believe a word you say

Click here for more Rock and Roll Radio at American Buddha The American Buddha Online Library website offers music for study and scholarship and other nonprofit purposes.

For even more Rock and Roll Radio, visit http://www.Joey Ramone.org

Click here to download Have A Nice Day

[admin]

CRANK, CRAP & CRUELTY, ERIC SCHLOSSER'S FAST FOOD NATION, by Charles Carreon

7:42pm, September 11, 2005

Crank, Crap & Cruelty

A Review of Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation”

It may only take a village to raise a child, but it takes an entire planet to build a Big Mac. That’s the message of Eric Schlosser’s nonfiction thriller, “Fast Food Nation.” Nonfiction, as in every line of it is true. Thriller, as in, money, power, drugs, oceans of spilled blood and shit, and a runaway train loaded with biological weapons set to destroy the entire planet. It’s a cliffhanger, a role-playing story for all humanity. It turns out that, a couple of million years after we left the trees and conquered the savannahs with our omnivorous appetites and tool-making ways, it’s time to return to eating like gorillas.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Schlosser is a big magazine writer, but don’t let that turn you off. He writes like a good cop thinks. His style is tuned liked a Kawasaki 1000 police motorcycle and he investigates like he’s got a grudge against corporate evil. He chases down the bad actors other reporters call boss for the same reason every muckraker rakes muck – he hates what he sees because what he sees is ugly as hell. But he’s a diligent professional. He doesn’t babble jargon like a zealot. He builds his case. He bags and tags his evidence meticulously, unobtrusively footnoting his extensive sources. Then he presents it all in a very detailed and convincing exposition that reveals a complex criminal conspiracy operating an ongoing criminal enterprise. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll be ready to issue indictments.

We’re a long way even from defunding the fast food industry, much less indicting it for its crimes. Our parents didn’t eat the way we do. We don’t know why we’re eating corporate burgers, munching oil-soaked fries, and downing vats of iced sugar soda. We don’t know why we eat in plastic environments built like school cafeterias, attached to plastic playgrounds. We don’t know why we don’t find fresh foods attractive, why antacids are the most popular over-the-counter medicine.

Knowledge is power, and knowledge is often difficult to acquire, which may be why so few people have any power. This book makes acquiring vital knowledge easy, with crisp chapter titles and a story that starts at the beginning, studying the deeds of four old white guys — Walt Disney, Ray Kroc of McDonalds, Carl Karcher of Carl’s Junior, and Colonel Sanders of KFC. These four men each streamlined their products, automated production, marketed uniformity, and anonymized their employees to proselytize their visions of life and commerce. Although Kroc approached Disney solicitously with a plan to operate McDonalds restaurants in Disneyland, and was painfully rebuffed, Ronald McDonald is now far better known than Mickey Mouse. Indeed, the surrealistic purveyor of Happy Meals is giving Santa Claus, the number one imaginary being, a run for the money.

The Mechanization of Food Production

Kroc didn’t invent Ronald McDonald out of whole cloth. The original McDonald brothers operated a massive drive-in burger joint in San Bernardino, complete with young waitresses bringing trays of food to those enormous rolling fortresses they called cars. The cars were filled either with families or young men looking to hit on the carhops. The business was very successful, but the brothers tired of hiring platoons of carhops and replacing broken glasses and stolen silverware. So they closed the place for retooling, installing bigger grills and a burger production line, so skilled cooks were no longer needed. They threw away all the glasses and silverware, and henceforth served only foods that could be wrapped in wax paper or sucked through a straw. They ditched the carhops and made everybody line up at the window, but the burgers were cheap and business took off like a rocket. Kroc, then a traveling salesman in his early fifties, admired the McDonalds operation because they bought enough mixers to make forty milkshakes at one time.

The formula that Kroc bought from the McDonalds and franchised to the masses was a hit, and others followed the trend toward assembly-line food preparation. Carl Karcher copied McDonalds because they were just twenty miles away from his successful barbeque restaurant down in Anaheim, and Karcher knew the future when he saw it. Harland Sanders reinvented himself as a Southern gentleman, adopting the string tie and white suit as a marketing gimmick, and achieved his goal of putting at least two drumsticks in every bucket by adopting the new method of mass-produced cooking pioneered by the McDonalds brothers. Southern California loved the new way of eating, that fit perfectly into the seventy-mile an hour lifestyle, and soon the era of monumental sign architecture began to mark the landscape. Kroc built Golden Arches so big they dwarfed the stores, but they could be seen from a distance in time to let freeway drivers maneuver to the next exit. Eventually, the profile of the fast food industry has come to loom equally large over our entire civilization. Schlosser summarizes the numbers: “In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music – combined.”

The mechanization of food production turned people called cooks and waitresses into something much less dignified – burgerflippers. Burgerflippers are underpaid, and generally work a job less than six months. Small wonder. The job is statistically incredibly dangerous, like late night cashiering in a gas station or liquor store. Bet you didn’t know that the largest cause of employment death today is homicide. That’s because security at your average McDonalds sucks, because the money handling system is as uniform as the food, and sometimes angry employees come back to take their share of the loot they used to count, and sometimes decide to even the score with an assistant manager or two. Schlosser interviews one McDonalds employee who matter of factly packed a pistol to work and expressed no concern about a possible holdup, since he intended to act proactively in any armed encounter.

The Cruelest Business

The philosophy and method of manufacturing fast food turned into a machine with such tremendous money-moving power that today, when McDonalds says “jump,” the meat industry says “how high?” For years the USDA has been unable to obtain clean ground beef for the school lunch program, and it still can’t. But when McDonalds saw European store sales falling off the chart, and Jack In The Box demanded clean meat for its restaurants, the meat packers fell into line. Fast food ground beef at Jack and Mac’s are much cleaner than the cow crap laden meat that the nation feeds to its schoolchildren. And it make them sick, by the thousands. Food poisoning is far more common and deadly than you would think, afflicting 200,000 Americans every day, sending 900 to the hospital, and 14 to the morgue. For those whose eyes glaze over when they see latin names like Salmonella, Listeria, Staphylococcus, Clostridium or E Coli, Schlosser boils it down into “a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat.”

The meat is full of crap and the meatcutters are tweaking on methamphetamine, aka “crank.” Crank is the drug of choice for immigrant slaughterhouse workers that have to “make a knife cut every two or three seconds, which adds up to about 10,000 cuts during an eight hour shift.” The pace of production is insane, surpassing any prior known levels of cattle butchering: “The old meatpacking plants in Chicago slaughtered about 50 cattle an hour. Twenty years ago, new plants in the High Plains slaughtered about 175 cattle an hour. Today some plants slaughter up to 400 cattle an hour – about half a dozen animals every minute, sent down a single production line, carved by workers desperate not to fall behind.” No matter how much meth you do, though, there is no way to gut and extract the gastrointestinal system of a cow that fast and not make a regular mess of it, spraying shit all over the beef that is destined for America’s dinner table.

What’s A Prion?

In an afterword entitled “The Meaning of Mad Cow,” Schlosser updated his first edition of Fast Food Nation. In the afterword, Schlosser establishes that the destructive power of the meat machine has not been fully unleashed, because the truth about mad cow disease – its causes, vectors of transmission, and incubation period, are still unknown. Similarly unknown is how many people in the USA have in fact eaten meat infected with “prions,” the nearly-indestructible protein-based agents for the transmission of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (“BSE”). The answers to these unknowns will determine the number of victims and the scope of the cattle-destruction effort that the USA will have to undertake. The answers are lacking of course, for the same reason we don’t know how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in our liberation operation – bureaucrats aren’t good with big numbers.

Since the date of Schlosser’s afterword, published in 2002, we have been treated to a continuing coverup by the USDA about the extent to which BSE has afflicted the American cattle population. In case you thought your meat was cleaner because you live in the Pacific Northwest, where everything is better, it’s time to take a reality check. On August 20, 2005, the Associated Press reported that “slaughterhouses in Oregon and Washington have been cited at least eight times for breaking federal rules to protect against mad cow disease, putting the Northwest above average for violations.” The federal rules to protect against mad cow disease don’t require testing to be sure that BSE-prions aren’t in the meat, they just forbid the meatpackers from feeding people any “tonsils or small intestines,” or if the cows are over thirty months old, “the ban extended to the brain, skull, eyes and parts of the spinal column,” because these parts are “the most prone to mad cow infections.”

Are you surprised that the USDA tells you there’s no risk of BSE turning your brain into a mass of spongiform encephalopathy, but it still doesn’t test to see if cows have it? Well don’t be! It would be way too much trouble to test every one of those cows for mad cow disease. What’s a priority with our current President, as he made clear in one of his “State of the Union” addresses, was testing athletes for drugs, because an athlete on drugs would be far more dangerous than a hamburger full of BSE. Hmmm, now that I think about it, “athlete on drugs” describes California governor Schwarzennegger pretty well, and may be a good description of Bush himself. It just goes to show, politicians often know what they’re talking about.

More Than The Meat Is Rotten

Speaking of politicians, it’s not just the food supply that’s contaminated, my friends. The consolidation of food production forced by the fast food industry’s demand for uniform goods has turned potato production, beef production, chicken farming, and flavoring production into highly concentrated industries, each dominated by a handful of corporations that fix prices, suppress wages, and jointly wage a pitched battle against government regulation. But for the European ban on “Frankenfoods,” genetically engineered potatoes would be in every bag of French fries, and Taco Bell would still be feeding people corn that was meant for animal feed only. We know more about the industry’s insane drive to act as a law unto itself due to the heroic efforts of a couple of London Greenpeace activists who defended themselves, with almost complete success, against a libel suit McDonalds filed in England, by proving the truth of their harshest accusations. After eight years of litigation and a trial, Justice Rodger Bell concluded, in an 800 page judgment, that McDonalds advertising exploited children, McDonalds food endangered diners, McDonalds wages were unreasonably low, and McDonalds was to blame for animal cruelty violations by its suppliers. Through the litigation, the Greenpeace activists learned that their London group had been infiltrated by at least seven private detectives hired by McDonalds, so many that sometimes half the people at Greenpeace meetings were working for the Big Clown. At trial, Sidney Nicholson, a former South African policeman who supervised the Greenpeace spying, testified that McDonalds enlisted Scotland Yard’s Special Branch to track Greenpeace as a subversise organization, who then passed the information on to McDonalds.

Time To Take ‘Em Down

Like cancer, the fast food industry has taken over the productive capacity of the planet, and is busy reproducing its own cells at the expense of the entire organism. Like the tobacco companies, the fast food industry has been attacked for its policies, but has more successfully controlled the media and obtained government protection. Of course, when you can get a fat pig like Limbaugh to ridicule lawsuits filed by obese people, you’ve got a pretty good weapon. The fast food industry and its minions, agribusiness and the cattle and chicken tycoons, contribute disproportionately to publican candidates, seeking and obtaining the deregulation that makes the assembly lines move faster, keeps the crap in the meat, the grease in the fries, and all of their workers underpaid, uninsured, and at risk of violent death. Fortunately, Schlosser notes, we can vote with our feet. Here in Ashland, the voting has already started. A&W shut down a decade ago, McDonalds closed last year, and last week, we bid adieu to Dairy Queen. Perhaps 2005 will mark the high-water point for the industry that currently sits astride the world’s population like a huge, gross parasite. Do your part. Eat beans.