warricane news: focus on superheroes and mobile homes
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
link September 12, 2005 President Visits 28th Street Elementary School, Gulfport, Mississippi
THE PRESIDENT: I can do more than one thing at one time. That's what - I hope you - by the time I'm finished President, I hope you'll realize that the government can do more than one thing at one time, and individuals in the government can... And so if I'm focusing on the hurricane, I've got the capacity to focus on foreign policy, and vice versa. But I thank you for asking that question.
link 9/20 - FEMA Sends Trucks Full Of Ice For Katrina Victims To [Portland,] Maine: The trucks started arriving this weekend, and they're expected to keep coming through Sunday. City officials say they have no idea why the trucks are here.
...The truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice, stayed for a few days, and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.
...City spokesperson Peter Dewitt says as many as 200 trucks could come to the city by the end of the week.
link Mark Kostinec, a driver for Universe Truck Line of Omaha, never thought he'd unload in Nebraska when he picked up 20 tons of ice destined for the hurricane relief effort. But after 17 days on the road and thousands of miles on the odometer, that's exactly what he did.
link Johnny Jennings hauled a load of ice from Cincinnati to Joplin, Ark., where it was loaded into a quarry cave being used as an ice house. He hauled another load from Fort Wayne, Ind. that was distributed directly to people who needed it near Hattiesburg, Miss. He set out with his third load from Indianapolis on Sept. 9 bound for Meridian, Miss., then he was sent to Selma before being dispatched to Portland.
link Hired by ice firms contracted by FEMA, Cool Express filled 75 trucks with 40,000 pounds of ice each and shipped them to the Gulf Coast. Eventually, though, military officials began turning ice trucks away, sending them as far away as Boise, Idaho, and Allentown, Pa., to "await further instructions," says Cool Express owner Dan Wessel. Late last week, nearly 1,400 ice trucks were scattered across the country, still awaiting further instructions. Yet orders for ice still rolled in from FEMA, says Wessel.
link 9/20 - The Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered tens of thousands of mobile homes and travel trailers on Tuesday to accommodate Katrina evacuees... FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said Monday that at least 30,000 travel trailers would be ready in Louisiana by Oct. 18, with another 170,000 to be installed soon after. State officials were working to identify plots of land where the trailers could be placed.
link It's certainly true that thousands of the displaced will need some sort of government-provided shelter... [But] one only has to contemplate the real needs of the displaced to suspect that, at least for many, a huge federal distribution of emergency housing vouchers, for example, might work far better.
...By their very nature, the coming encampments - whether in state parks or military bases or adjacent to existing mobile home facilities - will cluster the homeless in dedicated new congregations that could well prolong their isolation from family ties, job networks, and good schools.. The focus on mobile homes is perverse: Expensive, confining, and provisional, these Dust Bowl-like encampments could well perpetuate victims' dislocation and dependency for months or even years.
Vouchers are an alternative. Like direct cash assistance, vouchers can help hundreds of thousands of people quickly - say, within days. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's basic Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, which serves 2 million American families around the country, already exists and can easily be adapted. At the same time, widely available vouchers good to pay the rent anywhere in the country would allow poor and dispossessed evacuees to move as they see fit.
...Has a family been evacuated to Albuquerque, N.M.? Why shouldn't it receive a federal housing voucher to help it buy stability for a year or two so the kids can enroll in school and the parents get work? ...If a family has close relatives in St. Louis, why isolate them in a Gulf-area trailer park miles away from that family support?
link Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career... He called it a "new journalism order."
link A Web site called Now That's Fucked Up... [is] offering U.S. troops free access to amateur porn in exchange for soldiers' photos from the war... NTFU offers a picture depicting what's left of the head of a man shot with a .50-caliber weapon next to the words "I'm just here to masturbate" and above an ad for a Web site offering video of a mother and her daughter in a three-way sex act.
...Even some of the site's customers seem to have qualms about what's going on there. When a poster on one of the site's message boards asked soldiers to contribute pictures of some "fresh kills," he was upbraided by his fellow posters and ultimately apologized, saying he had thought that calling for some "sand Nazi" blood would help boost the morale of the troops. But that sort of dialogue is in short supply at Now That's Fucked Up. More common are exclamations of support for the troops, juvenile jokes about dead people and name-that-body-part contests.
link September 21 FORT HOOD, TX - A day before the trial of Lynndie England, the US soldier who held an Iraqi prisoner on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison, a military judge has barred the release of photos which have already been published around the world.
...Some photos have not been made public. For example, one charge since dropped against England alleged she had been photographed engaging in fellatio with Graner, the abuse ringleader who is serving a ten-year prison sentence and who has since married a woman who pled guilty in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
[The judge's] order could however affect what is released under a 2003 lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain information on the treatment of US-held detainees.
link Sept. 21 - Crude oil and gasoline jumped as Hurricane Rita barreled toward the Texas coast, threatening the biggest concentration of U.S. refineries.
link PETROL prices could get even uglier in coming months with a new report suggesting crude oil could hit $80 [US] a barrel.
link 9/21 - Wall Street concluded a third successive day of losses as Hurricane Rita gained strength... "We are seeing the effect of dwindling consumer sentiment numbers, zero savings on a personal level, debt and an economy teetering on the brink of slowing down," said Chris Johnson, director of quantitative analysis at Schaeffer's Investment Research.
...But oil companies offered a bright spot.
link An estimated 1.8 million residents or more in Texas and Louisiana were under orders to evacuate to avoid a deadly repeat of Katrina... Service stations reported running out of gasoline, and police officers carried gas to motorists who ran out. Texas authorities also asked the Pentagon for help in getting gasoline to drivers.
...To speed the evacuation, Gov. Rick Perry ordered a halt to all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 and took the unprecedented step of opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles.
...The stretch of coast threatened by Rita is home to 87 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage installations... Southeastern Texas is also home to more than a dozen active Superfund sites.
link September 20 - Under President Bush's plan to cover most of the cost of educating students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, parents could enroll their children in a private or religious school this year at federal expense, even if they had gone to public schools back home, administration officials said yesterday.
link 9/20 - The Labor Department has temporarily suspended government requirements that its contractors have an affirmative action plan addressing the employment of women, members of minorities, Vietnam veterans and the disabled, if the companies are first-time government contractors working on reconstruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina... The move comes as President Bush has tried to address the perception of unfairness in the government's response to the hurricane.
link As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of America's cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions... Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III.
...A possibly deadly incident involving Quinn's hired guns underscores the dangers of private forces policing American streets. On his second night in New Orleans, Quinn's security chief, Michael Montgomery, who said he worked for an Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security (BATS), was with a heavily armed security detail.
...Montgomery told me they came under fire from "black gangbangers"... Montgomery says he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. "After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said."
Then, Montgomery says, "the Army showed up, yelling at us and thinking we were the enemy. We explained to them that we were security. I told them what had happened and they didn't even care. They just left." ..."One thing about security," Montgomery says, "is that we all coordinate with each other - one family." That coordination doesn't include the offices of the Secretaries of State in Louisiana and Alabama, which have no record of a BATS company.
...One might ask, given the enormous presence in New Orleans of National Guard, US Army, US Border Patrol, local police from around the country and practically every other government agency with badges, why private security companies are needed, particularly to guard federal projects... Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP.
...Blackwater's CEO and co-founder, billionaire Erik Prince, has given tens of thousands to Republicans... As a young man, Prince interned with President George H.W. Bush, though he complained at the time that he "saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills."
...His father, Edgar, was a close friend of former Republican presidential candidate and antichoice leader Gary Bauer. In 1988 the elder Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council. Erik Prince's sister, Betsy, once chaired the Michigan Republican Party and is married to Dick DeVos, whose father, billionaire Richard DeVos, is co-founder of the major Republican benefactor Amway. Dick DeVos is also a big-time contributor to the Republican Party and will likely be the GOP candidate for Michigan governor in 2006. [and so on.]
link The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism... the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.
link The nearly $200 billion that American taxpayers have already ponied up for the war in Iraq... is apparently not enough to get the job done. Now, the brain trust running the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has come up with a new fundraising plan that asks the American public to dig a little deeper into their pockets in order to help rebuild Iraq... IraqPartnership.org.
...Visitors to IraqPartnership.org can check out a selection of current USAID Iraq projects, including providing water pumps to Iraqi farmers... With a click of the mouse, contributors choose the projects they are interested in supporting.
link 9/19 - According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday...51 percent did not consider [Bush] strong and decisive, 50 percent would not call him honest and 56 percent said he didn't care about people like them.
link 20 Sept - Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR [Kellogg Brown and Root] subsidiary.
But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.
link Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. in Arlington, VA received $15 million for... [an]indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity construction capabilities contract for post-Katrina recovery efforts in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for "unwatering activities" in Plaquemines, East and West basins, New Orleans, LA.
link September 22 - National gambling companies - already rushing to rebuild casinos on the Gulf Coast - would be granted access to millions of dollars in tax breaks under President Bush's plan to entice businesses into the Katrina disaster zone.
link Medical care for the evacuees from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is urgently required. As Mark McClellan, the top federal health official in the Department of Health and Human Services, said last week... the way to do that... is to make the evacuees eligible for Medicaid for the next few months so they will know that their hospital, doctor and medication bills will be paid.
The governors, through their national association, agreed, and a measure to make all the evacuees Medicaid-eligible for the next five months (with an option for the president to extend the time) is pending before the Senate...But it appears that the Bush administration, rather than backing this simple and effective measure, is insisting on a slower, more cumbersome approach, requiring each state to negotiate its own waiver from the rules limiting eligibility for Medicaid benefits.
...[However,] The administration has given Texas, which has the largest number of evacuees, a special Medicaid waiver to cover the costs of the thousands of hurricane victims living there temporarily.
other waivers link ...The regional declaration of emergency issued by FMCSA, which went into effect Aug. 31, waives safety regulations for the "emergency transportation of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, natural gas/CNG, propane and ethanol." [includes CT, DC, DE, MD, MA, NH, ME, NJ, NY, RI, VT, PA, VA, WV, AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NM, NC, OK, SC, TN, TX.]
...The White House's declaration of emergency for the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas resulted in a waiver of safety regulations for truckers delivering "direct emergency relief to, from, or within" those states, "regardless of commodity carried."
...The White House's authorization of emergency relief in support of evacuees in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia automatically triggered the waiver of safety regulations for the "emergency movement to, from, or within those States of items needed to house, feed, or clothe evacuees."
...FMCSA will allow drivers to assist the Gulf Coast efforts who are not otherwise qualified to drive, and trucks delivering fuel in most parts of the country will not have to meet standard levels of maintenance and service. Further, the declaration waives the hours of service regulations, which limit the number of consecutive hours a truck driver can work without taking a break.
link The government wants to quit forcing companies to report small releases of toxic pollutants and allow them to submit reports on their pollution less frequently.
link Women's groups reported in shock last week that Norris Alderson, PhD, a specialist in veterinary medicine, had been appointed to replace Susan Wood as acting director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Women's Health.
However, late on Friday, the FDA appeared to do some damage control, announcing the appointment of Theresa Toigo, who has a pharmacy degree and an MBA, to the post.
On Monday, FDA spokesperson Suzanne Trevino told The Washington Post that Alderson had never been appointed to the position, despite the fact that he had been listed as acting director on the official website for the Office of Women's Health, a statement announcing his appointment had been sent to women's groups, and he had been introduced to the office's staff as the acting director.
link The U.N. World Food Program warned on Wednesday that its emergency operations in Iraq, which feed about 3 million people, were at risk because donors have only come up with 44 percent of the necessary money.
...Last year, a Norwegian research group, in conjunction with the United Nations and the Iraqi government, reported that malnutrition among Iraq's youngest children had nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, from 4 percent to 7.7 percent.
DC today link Folded into a couch at one end of the restaurant is Tom Hayden, silver-goateed eminence of antiwars past... Looking wan and wrung out in yet another corner stands Tia Steele, whose stepson was shot in the throat and killed in Fallujah.
It's not just the usual peacenik suspects... [but] includes David Meggyesy, the former Cardinal who quit the National Football League in protest of the Vietnam War.
Vietnam? The unquiet ghost, the untamed analogy, is loose in the air... United for Peace and Justice and the ANSWER Coalition have organized a rally and encirclement of the White House on Saturday morning that they hope will draw 100,000. That will be followed by Operation Ceasefire, an 11-hour concert... United for Peace and Justice is planning more antiwar activities for Sunday and Monday. The overall message: Bring the troops home now.
link "America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated," Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967. Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, "We shall stay the course."
..."What happens in Vietnam is extremely important to the nation's freedom and it is extremely important to the United States' security," he said from the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 1967.
..."Be assured that the death of your son will have meaning," Johnson told the parents of a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 6, 1967. "For I give you also my solemn pledge that our country will persist - and will prevail - in the cause for which your boy died."
link 9/22 - Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan... arrived in Washington after a three-week cross-country bus tour that began near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. She is expected to participate in an anti-war rally Saturday that organizers hope will draw tens of thousands... Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed last year in Iraq, wants Bush to explain why he sent the United States to war and say what steps he will take to end the conflict. [Thus far Bush has refused to meet with Sheehan.]
...Later [Wednesday], Bush paid tribute to the mothers of military men and women who have died in the line of duty. He proclaimed Sunday as Gold Star Mother's Day.
link At just past noon on Wednesday, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and the rest of the Bring Them Home Now tour were stopped by a pair of squad cars two blocks from the U.S. Capitol by members of the Capitol police force. Officers explained that they wanted to use bomb-sniffing dogs to inspect the caravan of three RVs and several cars. The officers said it was standard practice.
link As of Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005, at least 1,907 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The British military has reported 96 deaths; Italy, 26; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Slovakia, three; El Salvador, Estonia, Thailand and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia one death each.
Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,768 U.S. military members have died.
link 9/19 Basra, Iraq - In a major show of force, British soldiers used tanks to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen. About 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled as British commandos stormed inside and rescued their comrades.
link 9/22 - Officials in Basra say they will not cooperate with Britain until the restive southern Iraqi city receives an apology and compensation after a British raid to free two soldiers.
...Mohammed Al-Ubadi, head of the Basra Governing Council [said]... "We also ask for the return of two detainees to Iraqi custody, compensation for the casualties that resulted, and compensation to the major crimes unit for the destruction of the facility."
Ubadi told CNN the two detainees were being held because they were found with several weapons, had killed a civilian, and had beat an Iraqi police officer. They had been wearing traditional Arabic clothing and were not dressed as soldiers. He said they wanted these detainees to be handed over to the Basra authorities and to be tried before a judge in a legitimate trial. "Five Iraqi civilians were killed and 44 wounded as a result of the fighting that happened because of this raid," Ubadi said.
link 9/21 - US forces launched air strikes on the Sunni town of Dhuluiyah, an Iraqi security official said, where four US civilian contractors were killed a day earlier.
link Russia and China warned the United States and European Union on Wednesday against escalating the nuclear standoff with Iran, potentially blocking a Western drive to haul Tehran before the UN Security Council.
.."While Iran is cooperating with the IAEA, while it is not enriching uranium and observing a moratorium, while IAEA inspectors are working in the country, it would be counter-productive to report this question to the UN Security Council," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said... "Iran is not violating its obligations and its actions do not threaten the non-proliferation regime," he said in a speech in San Francisco reported by the RIA Novosti news agency.
And Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told an EU team... that kicking the issue from Vienna to New York "could encourage Iran to take extreme measures" and would not be constructive.
...Meanwhile, the United States on Wednesday urged its fellow International Atomic Energy Agency board members to do their "duty" and vote in coming days to haul Iran before the UN Security Council.
link 9/21 - In Beijing, North Korea announced that it would give up its current nuclear program... But within a day it followed up that huge concession by demanding a light-water civilian nuclear reactor... "The U.S. should not even dream of the issue of the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea's) dismantlement of its nuclear deterrent before providing light-water reactors," the North Korean Foreign Ministry announced in a statement Tuesday.
At issue is not the providing of a new light-water reactor... The Bush administration is ready to approve that - but only after the current reactor program has been dismantled.
...The Bush administration in its second term has been strikingly more soft-spoken and conciliatory towards the North... The administration appears to have put a possible confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program as a higher priority than continuing to butt heads with North Korea.
compare link 9/22 - Iran's permanent representative to the Vienna-based international organizations, Mohammad-Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, said that technical and legal aspects of Iran's civilian nuclear have been ignored and the international community has been misled with biased, politicized and exaggerated by certain quarters.
... Akhoundzadeh pointed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks on September 17, 2005 that Iran is prepared as a confidence building measure to engage in serious partnership with private and public sectors of other countries in the implementation of the fuel cycle.
"This process provides utmost transparency and gives a solid basis for the best solution to this unwanted impasse." He noted that interaction as well as technical and legal cooperation with the IAEA would be the centerpiece of Iran's nuclear policy.
and contrast link 9/21 - North Korea accused the United States on Wednesday of planning a nuclear attack and warned it could retaliate. North Korea "is fully ready to decisively control a pre-emptive nuclear attack with a strong retaliatory blow," the communist nation's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an English-language commentary carried by the state Korean Central News Agency.
link Sep 20 - An unclassified draft of a US nuclear doctrine review that spells out conditions under which US commanders might seek approval to use nuclear weapons has been removed from a Pentagon website, a spokesman said Monday.
...The document gives examples of conditions under which US combatant commanders may request presidential approval for the use of nuclear weapons. They include an adversary using or planning to use weapons of mass destruction against US or allied forces as well as civilian populations.
...A number of scenarios envision nuclear strikes even without enemy weapons of mass destruction in the equation. They could be used, for instance, to counter potentially overwhelming conventional adversaries... or simply "to ensure success of US and multinational operations," the document indicated.
In the context of the US-led "war on terror", the draft suggests that states that provide surrogates with weapons of mass destruction could themselves be targeted with US nuclear strikes.
link 9/22 - Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick bluntly warned China last night that it must begin to take concrete steps to address what he called a "a cauldron of anxiety" in the United States and other parts of the world about Chinese intentions.
link The Bush administration urged China on Wednesday to begin a transition to democracy, contending the existing one-party system "is simply not sustainable."
one method of coping link 9/21 - Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great. I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening."
and another. link KURTATINSKOYE GORGE, RUSSIA – Father Anthony and his tiny band of Orthodox monks have turned their backs on the wars and political turmoil shaking the Caucasus region of southern Russia.
...The small, fortified monastery they are raising amid the ruins of a mountaintop 19th century cathedral, razed by the Bolsheviks 80 years ago, will be almost as isolated and self-sufficient as its medieval predecessors. Like them, it is devoted to seeking tranquility in a region that is mired in brutal conflict.
...Construction began last year amid grieving for the 331 people - half of them children - killed in a violent gun battle... in Beslan, just 25 miles away.
...The nine mainly youthful monks who have joined Father Anthony are committed to a rigorous regime of poverty, celibacy, and hard work... "I just dream of a quiet routine of work and prayer," says Brother Serafim, a young former distillery worker, who says modern life "ran out of meaning" for him. "When we've finished construction of the monastery, I want to begin raising medicinal plants and herbs from the mountains around here. I think that would be a worthy life."
The completed monastery will have space for 20 monks, all of whom will be expected to take on some sort of trade. "The first duty of a monk is to pray, and here in North Ossetia there is a great deal to pray for," says Father Stefan.
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