September 3, 2005

It is mighty suspicious the New Orleans "refugees" (as the corporate media call the Americans removed from the disease-ridden swamp left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina) are being relocated far and wide. Most of them will probably never return and will end up in ghettoes in Baton Rouge, Houston, and elsewhere (it appears Baton Rouge is being groomed as an expansive slum, since the rebuilt New Orleans will be a casino and tourist destination with time-share condos and luxury housing). It should be noted that the usual suspects will "remove debris" and supposedly "restore electric power" and "repair roofs" (an absurd declaration, considering many if not most of the homes in the New Orleans swamp will be condemned). "The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co.," the Houston Chronicle reported on September 1, well before the current effort to "rescue" and "evacuate" those not killed outright during the storm and afterwards, as Bush was on vacation and FEMA twiddled its thumbs, allowing as many residents as possible to die before people who actually have a conscience and are not neoliberal sociopaths began to scream and demand Bush be impeached for criminal negligence. "Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so," that is to say after the "refugees" have been relocated in distant slums. "FEMA privatized hurricane disaster recovery planning for New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana. The firms that received the contract are big GOP contributors," writes Wayne Madesn. For some reason I am not surprised.

As for the hardy who have stayed behind, determined to rebuild their lives and city, expect the swamp of New Orleans to be declared a health hazard and the remaining residents (or poor and middle class residents with no stake in the new corporate Las Vegas on the Mississippi) to be removed by the National Guard and Army at gunpoint. "On the sixth day of disaster and despair, an urgent new problem erupted: disease. A suspected outbreak of dysentery compelled authorities in Biloxi, Miss., to hurriedly evacuate hundreds of people from a shelter. Medical experts have warned of epidemics sweeping through crowded, unsanitary shelters," reports Knight Ridder.

"By early Saturday morning, buses had evacuated most people from the frightening confines of the Superdome," notes al-Jazeera. "At the equally squalid convention centre, thousands of people began pushing and dragging their belongings up the street to more than a dozen air-conditioned buses, the mood more numb than jubilant." It is obvious the fiasco that was the Superdome -- in essence a prison where old people and babies died from neglect and gangbangers roamed free to terrorize, murder, and rape -- and the convention center are designated departure points for depopulating the ruined city. Abandoning people at these departure points -- sans water, food, or medical care -- was part of the psychological warfare plan: people are desperate to escape these two fetid and disease-ridden prisons and are thankful to be relocated, probably to never return. Most of them are unaware their homes will be bulldozed by Halliburton and the land sold for pennies on the dollar to corporate developers.

Since Bushzarro world is all about customizing reality for political reasons, chances are pretty good we will never know what happened in the wake of Katrina. "We can now report that the jamming of New Orleans' communications is emanating from a pirate radio station in the Caribbean," explains Madsen. "The noise is continuous and it is jamming frequencies, including emergency high frequency (HF) radios, in the New Orleans area. The radio frequency jammers were heard last night, stopped for a while, and are active again today.... However, we now have a new unconfirmed report that the culprit may be the Pentagon itself. The emitter is an IF (Intermediate Frequency) jammer that is operating south southwest of New Orleans on board a U.S. Navy ship, according to an anonymous source. The jamming is cross-spectrum and interfering with superheterodyne receiver components, including the emergency radios being used in New Orleans relief efforts.... A Vancouver, British Columbia Urban Search & Rescue Team deployed to New Orleans reported that their satellite phones were not working and they had to obtain other satellite phones to keep in touch with their headquarters and other emergency agencies in British Columbia." There are also rumors spreading on forums and blogs that troops are confiscating and destroying civilian cameras. Graphic photos are however surfacing on the internet, once again trumping the corporate media, handmaiden to Bushian crimes and cover-ups. (Note: the images posted at the site linked here are not for those with weak constitutions.)