The People Are the Only Reliable Force
• “Government Obstructing the Response”
• Community Labor United People's Hurricane Relief Fund & Reconstruction Project
• Thousands of Latin American Immigrants Among Katrina's Victims
Reject the Failed U.S. State
• Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans • New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown
• Wage-Cutting and Profit-Gouging in the Midst of the Katrina Disaster
For Your Information
• Unnatural Disaster: The Lessons of Katrina
• The Perfect Storm: New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good
“Government Obstructing the Response”
The locally-led, mutually based community relief effort in Algiers is now being called Common Ground Algiers. Currently, more than 40 volunteer medics, doctors, cooks, communications technicians, community organizers and concerned people are directly involved in the Common Ground collective effort. Emergency services that have been created include a community garbage pick-up program; mobile kitchens to provide free hot meals to anyone in the area; a first aid clinic in a local mosque and a mobile first aid station staffed by doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians; and bicycles for volunteers and residents to transport aid around the area; and the development of a free school for children.
These efforts could serve as a community-based model for creating both emergency response and long-term infrastructure for people affected by the hurricane and who are in need of these kind of vital services.
They Said It: Common Ground Wellness Center
“You can’t start a clinic here [the 9th Ward]. That would give people hope. My job is to make their lives as hopeless as possible so they will leave.” New Orleans Police Dept. officer berating relief workers in the 9th Ward.
“The Administration of this country needs to be put on trial for human rights violations and treason against the people of the gulf coast region; as well as negligent homicide for every person left in this region to die.” Noah, Emergency Medical Technician-B with the Common Ground Wellness Center, Algiers, New Orleans.
“Neighborhood folks find it a lot more friendly to get their health care and healing from a community clinic with friendly faces rather than a militarized zone with soldiers toting M-16s. If the government got off their high chair, and worked with us grassroots relief people, we’d have health clinics all over the city. Believe me, we have the know-how to really help and we have the spirit of true compassion flowing here.” Michael Kozart, a doctor from San Francisco, CA volunteering in the Common Ground Wellness Center, Algiers, NOLA
“Our number one national priority right now should be to clean up New Orleans and rebuild vulnerable areas in a safe and environmentally sound way. Then, every single evacuee must be offered the opportunity and the resources to return to rebuild their neighborhoods in exactly the same way. We cannot allow evacuees to be forced into becoming refugees.” Roger Benham, Emergency Medical Technician-B with the Common Ground Wellness Center, Algiers, New Orleans.
“It’s not so much that the government is not responding [with storm relief], they are obstructing the response. They are telling us we can’t bring people the basic necessities of life because that would give them hope. It is a question of oppression vs. mutual aid. That is the revolution.” - Jesse, an organizer with MayDay DC volunteering in the Common Ground Wellness Center, Algiers, NOLA.
Algiers First to Reopen to Residents
Mayor Ray Nagin announced Thursday that Algiers will be the first of the communities in New Orleans to reopen to residents. While FEMA and the Red Cross will surely trumpet their efforts, the real success of Algiers belongs to those courageous community members who stayed through the storm and activist Malik Rahim who helped to catalyze the bustling Common Ground Relief effort. Common Ground was the first on the ground relief effort of any kind in Algiers and one of the first along the Gulf Coast. The multiple success stories of Common Ground mutual aid has resulted in donations from Army personnel who wanted to see relief actually get to the community. The FEMA/Red Cross effort, bounded by razor wire, has played a poor second fiddle to the local efforts.
We anticipate an even greater need for relief support when residents begin moving back to the area. To support Common Ground, send donations to Common Ground, PO Box 3216, Gretna, LA 70054. Please pace your donations. Please no clothes or food. More information and online monetary donations will be available soon at the new action website at http://www.commongroundrelief.org.
Taken from Naomi Archer’s September 16 report published by counterpunch.org.
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Community Labor United People's Hurricane Relief Fund & Reconstruction Project
PRESS CONFERENCE
Monday, September 19, 2PM
People's Hurricane Relief Fund Collection Point
1733 N. Dorgenois, New Orleans
New Orleans Resident Opens Community Center In Her Home People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Reconstruction Project Expands
September 19, New Orleans -- Mama Dee of 1733 N. Dorgenois has not stopped since the day of the storm, August 29th. She, like so many New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents, is doing everything in her power and beyond imagination to maintain some semblance of everyday life and to rebuild from the shattering of the storm and neglect.
Today she announces that she will turn her home into a local office and collection point for the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Reconstruction Project (PHRF), representing more than 45 community based, grassroots organizations in the region determined to oversee all aspects of the relief, recovery and reconstruction of their homes, neighborhoods and lives.
She will be joined at the announcement by committee representatives Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United and Malcolm Suber, Executive Director of Urban Heart, an after school program based in four inner city schools focusing on building community schools.
According to Mr. Muhammad of the PHRF: "The government abandoned the people, the black and poor people. Now we are seeing the most remarkable determination, generosity, creativity and collectivity on the part of those whose lives have been ravaged, and from people far and wide. It is deeply moving, necessary, and hopeful in the face of the horror and neglect that can only be construed as the most blatant racism. Mama Dee is acting in the tradition of the powerful women in our community who have always stepped forward to make life possible."
PHRF stated days after Katrina that "the people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants and the wealthy white districts of New Orleans like the French Quarter and the Garden District."
PHRF is calling on the government to:
- Provide funds for all displaced families to be reunited;
- Allocate the $50 billion for reconstruction to the victims of the hurricane in the form of a Victims Compensation Fund;
- Accept representation on all boards that are making decisions on spending public collars for relief and reconstruction;
- Place displaced workers and residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in public works jobs, offering union wages;
- Publicly account for and show the entire reconstruction process.
The PHRF, initiated by Community Labor United, is committed to supporting the leadership and oversight by evacuees in all aspects of this process including documentation of all displaced persons, family reunification, legal and health support, education and delivery of urgently needed supplies. The coalition is also appealing to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to investigate the conditions before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.
For more information about the project, please email: bbelcore@hotmail.com
For tax-deductible donations that go directly to the communities impacted, checks should be earmarked for the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and made out to:
Vanguard Public Foundation
383 Rhode Island St.
Ste 301 San Francisco, CA 94103
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Thousands of Latin American Immigrants Among Katrina's Victims
Thousands of Latin American immigrants are among those left homeless by Hurricane Katrina in the southern United States, and at least three have died. But although governments and social organizations from the region have offered help, they have run into restrictions set by Washington.
Consular authorities from Latin American countries estimate that around 300,000 people from Mexico, Central America and several South American nations live in the area affected by last week's hurricane and the consequent flooding, which left millions of people with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
"It is very difficult for us to find and identify the Latin American victims, and to reach them with assistance. Furthermore, the U.S. State Department has so far placed restrictions on the efforts that we could make," Honduras' ambassador to the United States, Norman García, told IPS.
According to García, some 140,000 people from Honduras and their descendants were living in the greater New Orleans area alone, one of the hardest-hit areas. Nearly all of them were left homeless and without a job, including the staff of the Honduran consulate in that city.
García lamented that the offers of food and medical aid and logistical support made by governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have been turned down by the U.S. government. "For now, the government in Washington is only allowing monetary donations, through the Red Cross," he said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.
It will take years for the Gulf Coast region to recover from the damages wrought by Katrina on Aug. 29, said President George W. Bush. Some estimates put the number of dead at 10,000.
The Mexican government reported that around 100,000 Mexican citizens are among those affected by the hurricane, whose winds and rain devastated a large part of the states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez, who said Monday that the deaths of three Mexicans have been reported so far, will visit the Gulf Coast region within the next few days along with other Mexican officials to assess the best way to provide assistance.
Consular authorities from Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and El Salvador have gone to the outskirts of the affected areas, and to storm shelters, while setting up special hot-lines to offer help to those in need.
"But the consulates cannot operate as they would wish in the area, because the State Department is not allowing us to," said Ambassador García. His government sent presidential commissioner René Becerra to work directly with the victims in the United States.
"So far, we have information on 300 Hondurans who have been left homeless, but who are safe. But we don't know anything more than that, nor do we have reports on how many Hondurans might have died, because we have not been allowed access to the lists that the U.S. government is drawing up," the ambassador added.
Washington accepted the aid offered by Mexico, which will send a team of doctors, rescue workers and members of the military to the affected areas, the government of President Vicente Fox announced Monday.
Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Venezuela have also offered assistance, including doctors, medicine, rescue equipment and food, but the U.S. government has not yet responded.
Carlos Avila, an official at the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), told IPS from his offices in Honduras that the regional institution is designing a project for the provision of assistance to Central American victims of the storm.
"In Central America, we have experience from Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, and we know that for the victims, a difficult process of reinsertion into normal life comes after the initial impact, because many have lost everything they had, including their jobs, and young people have been left out of school," he said.
The project, which is still being drafted, is aimed at coordinating with the U.S. government a plan to provide comprehensive support for the victims of the hurricane. "The idea is to find a way for them to be reinserted into society," said Avila.
The BCIE is comprised of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Its associate members are Argentina, China, Colombia, Mexico and Spain.
The regional bank finances and coordinates reconstruction efforts when Central America is hit by natural catastrophes.
Central America indeed has experience in hurricanes. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch left more than 7,000 dead in Honduras and 3,000 in Nicaragua, while causing economic losses of nearly 4.8 billion dollars.
García said Hurricane Katrina has led to "an extraordinary mobilization of the Latino community." Consulates from several Latin American countries and organizations that work with immigrants have pooled their efforts to identify victims from the region, he explained.
But the challenge is huge, because many of the victims are undocumented migrants and have avoided going to shelters to seek help, said Carlos Gonzáles, Mexico's consul in Houston, Texas, where tens of thousands of storm refugees have fled.
"Undocumented migrants live in a state of terror, and some believe they will be seized and deported," said the official.
According to the last U.S. census, 39.9 million people of Latin American origin or descent -- most of them Mexicans -- live in the United States, a country of 290.8 million people. Of those nearly 40 million, around five million are living in the country without legal documents.
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Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the U.S. occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
"This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States)," a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "We're much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq."
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governments.
Blackwater is one of the leading private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several U.S. government contracts and has provided security for many senior U.S. diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive U.S. retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."
Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the company's website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety," he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around here," and pointed down the road.
"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who are in Iraq?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the place."
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms.
"When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued level 5, explosion proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk (in the north of Iraq) where the real action is." Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to 6 months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."
If Blackwater's reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of "services" the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.
* Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo are in New Orleans.
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New Orleans: Dress Rehearsal for American Lockdown
The war has come home to America, right here, right now and so have myriad questions so disturbing that most Americans, even if they know what the questions are, are terrified to ask:
Why is Blackwater USA, the principal mercenary force outsourced by the Pentagon to fight in Iraq, now patrolling the streets of New Orleans?
Why the disgraceful, ghastly slowness of response by the federal government to the Katrina disaster? Why FEMA's destruction of communication lines and implacable refusal to allow food, water, and medicine into the city?[1]
Why have reconstruction and clean-up contracts conveniently fallen, with perfect timing, to Halliburton and Bechtel, the two U.S. corporations most infamous for their expertise in rebuilding Iraq and worldwide whatever the U.S. military has blown up?
Mainstream media and the Internet are abuzz with stories of FEMA's "gutting" by the federal government as the agency became part of the Department of Homeland Security, as if FEMA were some sort of altruistic savior who could have rescued New Orleans if only it had been granted sufficient funding. In reality, FEMA's obstruction of assistance, not only from the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several European nations, but from humanitarian organizations inside the United States is mindboggling.[2]
In order to begin answering the endless disturbing questions, we must understand what FEMA actually is. In Sheila Samples' excellent September 10 article[3], she emphasizes the origins of FEMA in the 1980s under its architect, Oliver North. North's Operation Rex 84, or Readiness Exercise 1984, was a plan by which the the federal government would accommodate the detention of large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency. Through Rex-84 an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state. Existence of the Rex 84 plan was first revealed during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987, and subsequently reported by the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987.[4]
For decades since North's operation was disclosed, many dissidents have assumed that as in Nazi Germany, concentration camps were being secretly constructed for the incarceration of Americans. While this may be more than merely an assumption, there has been little speculation about what specific purpose such camps might serve -- until the Katrina disaster. In the aftermath of the South Coast hurricane, we saw massive numbers of evacuees relocated throughout the nation.
Particularly since 9-11, FEMA has been very little about disaster relief and very much about "population management." Katrina has underscored what the federal government and virtually all Americans already knew -- the chaos that results from natural disasters. What the federal government knows, but most Americans don't know is the pandemonium that will result as the consequences of Peak Oil exacerbate.
In the United States, all non-organic food growers use commercial pesticides and fertilizers on agricultural products. These have either a petroleum or natural gas base, thus insuring that as petroleum and natural gas prices increase, so will food prices. Moreover, what happens when trucking companies go belly up from gas prices, when truckers can no longer afford fuel, and when their axles break because interstates are in dis-repair as a result of the prices or shortages of the petroleum needed to build roads? What happens when the housing bubble bursts, when massive unemployment engulfs the nation, and when hundreds of thousands or millions of people must walk away from their mortgaged homes? Add to this, the likely crashing of the U.S. dollar and the certainty of more natural disasters. Anarchy may not even approach the description of such a scenario. Enter FEMA's mandate and machinery, thanks to Blackwater, to maintain order.
One of the harshest realities of Peak Oil, but as old as the infanticide practiced by ancient civilizations is "demand destruction," also known as population control. In a recent article, Mike Ruppert explained its integral role in a global energy crisis:
"Demand destruction" has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate global warming. The United States, with 5% of the world's people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world's energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed "refugees" (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don't buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They don't use air conditioning because they can't afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissinger's infamous term "useless eaters," a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary. If energy demand destruction, as acknowledged by the Bilderbergers and the CFR [Council On Foreign Relations], is a priority, then the only -- I repeat only -- beast that must be tamed is the United States.
As we witnessed the American Apartheid of relocating masses of African-Americans to cities throughout the nation, how chilling was FEMA's promise of a $2,000 debit card for each person, then its decision to give these "useless eaters" a check for $2,000 when most have neither a checking account nor personal identification! In addition, the very fact that so many of these individuals are living from paycheck to paycheck, on the brink of homelessness, underscores the likelihood that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy which may accelerate freefall into homelessness as the Bush Administration's Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act becomes law on October 17. Remember the Patriot Act -- that 300-page piece of legislation passed in the middle of the night on October 26, 2001 which almost no members of Congress had a chance to read? You know, the one that shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How appropriate that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act will become law almost four years to the day after the Patriot Act was passed.
It appears that FEMA did not think this one through, but alas, things are not necessarily as they seem. Certainly, the ruling elite would not intentionally arrange for millions of indigent evacuees to suddenly "litter" the streets of America. A more likely scenario could be debt servitude. I can already hear the FEMA offer that no penniless refugee could refuse: "We'd like to give you a job helping to clean up New Orleans or the South Coast. We can't pay you minimum wage, however, since the President cancelled minimum wage by Executive Order. We also notice that you have quite a bit of debt, but never fear, we will give you the opportunity to 'work off your debt' by coming to work for us until you debt is satisfied." Will this be Readiness Exercise 2005, 2006, 2007, ad infinitum?
With every national emergency, the fascist agenda of this government will come more clearly into focus. On September 10, Tom Curry listed in his article, "Hurricane Spawns Flurry Of Deregulation,"[5] the Bush Administration's most recent rulings in the name of hurricane and oil supply relief:
* Starting last Wednesday and until next Wednesday, the federal Department of Transportation has eased rules on how many hours truckers can drive when transporting fuel.
* The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended until next Thursday certain federal fuel standards in response to possible diesel and gasoline shortages. The suspended rules are designed to combat high ozone and sulfur emissions.
* Bush has ordered suspension of provisions of the Jones Act, which requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal waters.
* Senate Environment and Public Works chairman Sen. James Inhere, R-Okla., said Congress would need to waive a law that limits federal emergency road building funds to $100 million per state per emergency and that limits full federal funding to 180 days.
* The House unanimously passed a bill allowing the Department of Education to waive the repayment requirement for low-income college students who received Pell grants. Normally if a college student drops out of school, he must pay back the unused portion of his Pell grant.
* On Thursday, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon law on all federally financed construction in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. That law requires the federal government to pay the "prevailing wage" on construction projects, which is often higher than the local minimum wage. Suspending Davis-Bacon will allow the government to pay lower than prevailing wages, and Bush said, "will result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."
* House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, saw a need for a new energy bill as a result of the hurricane. "When one hurricane, as massive as it was, can knock out about 20 percent of our (oil and natural gas) facilities, it shows how vulnerable we are," he said. In order to expand the long-term U.S. oil and gas supply, DeLay wants to open parts of the country that are currently off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Large swaths of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts are under a federal moratorium on oil and gas exploration until the year 2012.
Congress does not need to approve these decisions. They have been pronounced by fiat, frighteningly reminiscent of Hitler's unilateral directives in Germany in the 1930s. As Sheila Samples notes, FEMA has not been gutted; it is the Patriot Act on crack!
Notes
1. http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/, September 6
2. For a complete list of efforts blocked by FEMA see: http://www.rense.com/general67/femwont.htm
3. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/samples7.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84
5. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9259887
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Wage-Cutting and Profit-Gouging in the Midst of the Katrina Disaster
In a shameless display of a brutal class policy, President Bush on Thursday suspended the provisions of a law that requires employers to pay the locally prevailing wage to workers on federally financed projects. The suspension applies to areas of the country devastated by Hurricane Katrina -- parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
The move will affect the thousands of workers who will be employed in the massive reconstruction operation in the wake of the hurricane disaster. With the suspension of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, companies will not be obligated to match the wages in these areas, which are already lower than in most parts of the country. In the New Orleans area, for example, the prevailing wage for an electrician is $14.30 and for a construction worker or a truck driver working on a levee it is about $9.
Presented by the Bush administration as a means to cut costs, trim bureaucracy and speed the relief effort, the suspension in fact amounts to a gift to the corporations inundating the area to carry out the reconstruction, who are under no obligation to pass the savings along. Under conditions where hundreds of thousands of displaced hurricane survivors -- the overwhelming majority of them working class and poor -- have lost everything, including their jobs, Bush's action is particularly despicable. Many of these same people will be potentially affected by the decision as they seek employment in the reconstruction effort.
Bush and his congressional supporters have seized on the Katrina tragedy to implement by fiat what they have until now been unable to achieve through legislation. The 1996 and 2000 Republican Party platforms called for revisions in Davis-Bacon. As unknown numbers of corpses of hurricane victims remained floating in the fetid floodwaters, 35 Republican representatives urged the president in a letter to Bush early last week to take action. He signed the proclamation suspending the act September 8.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued a perfunctory statement criticizing Bush's action. "Taking advantage of a national tragedy to get rid of a protection for workers the corporate backers of the White House have long wanted to remove is nothing less than profiteering," Sweeney wrote. He concluded with a toothless appeal to Congress to reverse "this short-sighted decision."
The relief bill passed by Congress on Thursday included another boon for corporations, who have descended like vultures on the hurricane-stricken region to get a piece of the $62 billion so far allocated. In a significant change to federal contracting regulations, contractors will be allowed to spend up to $250,000 on hurricane-related contracts and expenses without seeking competitive bids. Restrictions have also been eased that favored the contracting of small and minority-owned businesses. Previously only purchases up to $2,500 in normal circumstances, or $15,000 in emergencies, were exempt. Republicans have sought a change in these regulations for years.
The Bush administration is also hoping to capitalize on the disaster to change laws that bar the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from giving money directly to religious organizations. By allowing FEMA to directly fund religious groups that are assisting Katrina survivors, Congressional Republicans hope to pave the way for their long-standing goal of increasing government funding of religious institutions -- at the expense of federal spending on social programs.
In the two weeks since Katrina struck, private companies have already been awarded multimillion-dollar contracts, many of these on a no-bid basis. The government is drawing down on relief money at a rate of more than $500 million a day and corporations are lining up at the trough. "They [the government] are throwing money out, they are shoveling it out the door," Washington lobbyist James Albertine told the New York Times, "Sixty-two billion dollars is a lot of money." It is estimated in excess of $100 billion will be spent on the relief effort, with much of it going into the corporate coffers.
In ways reminiscent of the private contractors' charge on occupied Iraq, companies are seeking to profit-gouge at the expense of human misery, this time on U.S. soil. "You are likely to see the equivalent of war profiteering -- disaster profiteering," Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, told the Times. With the suspension of Davis-Bacon these contractors will not be obligated to pay workers the locally prevailing wage, boosting their profit margins even further.
Three companies were awarded no-bid contracts by the Army Corps of Engineers to repair breaches in the New Orleans levees -- the Shaw Group, Boh Brothers Construction and Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of oil giant Halliburton (the company formerly run by Dick Cheney, the vice president). Louisiana-based engineering and construction firm The Shaw Group, with estimated yearly revenues of $3 billion, announced it had received two $100 million contracts -- one from the Army Corps of Engineers, one from FEMA -- to work on the levees, pump water out of New Orleans and provide housing assistance.
Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) has already begun work on a $500 million U.S. Navy contract for repairs to Gulf Coast naval and marine facilities on the basis of a competitive-bid contract won last July for emergency work related to natural disasters.
KBR was awarded a no-bid, five-year government contract to restore oilfields in Iraq shortly before the U.S. invaded the country in March 2003. Strong evidence exists, including White House emails, that Dick Cheney was directly involved in selecting the Halliburton subsidiary for the contract. Halliburton has reported being paid $10.7 billion for Iraq-related work during 2003 and 2004.
FEMA also suspended normal bidding rules in awarding contacts to The Shaw Group and CH2M Hill–a multinational engineering, construction and telecommunications company -- to provide immediate housing in the disaster area. Bechtel Corporation, a private company with close ties to the Bush administration, is doing similar work under a longstanding FEMA contract. In April 2003, Bechtel was awarded a $680 million contract by the U.S. Agency for International Development, for work to rehabilitate Iraq's power, water and sewage systems destroyed in the U.S. bombing campaign.
Two high-priced private consultants are playing a key role in steering corporations towards the windfall profits potentially to be made off the Katrina tragedy. One is Joe M. Allbaugh, close personal friend of the president, Bush's 2000 campaign manager and FEMA director from 2001 to 2003. The other is James Lee Witt, an Arkansas crony of Bill Clinton and a former FEMA director. Their businesses offer services to companies seeking or holding federal contracts in the hurricane relief operation.
Witt's clients include Nextel Communications, telecommunications equipment company Harris Corporation, and Whelan Engineering, a manufacturer of warning systems, who all stand to profit in the reconstruction of the hurricane-ravaged areas. Witt's employees include Wesley Clark, former NATO commander and Democratic Party presidential candidate.
Two of Joe Allbaugh's top clients are Kellogg Brown & Root and The Shaw Group, both of which are already profiting handsomely from reconstruction contracts. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Shaw invited Allbaugh to Louisiana where he advised company executives on how to match Shaw's capabilities to the relief effort.
Allbaugh suggested another client, UltraStrip Systems, Inc., send its representatives to Louisiana where it could market its water-filtration products. He claims not to have been paid for his hurricane consultation services.
As destitute hurricane survivors -- having lost everything, including in many cases loved ones -- are herded into evacuation centers that resemble detention camps, the Bush administration is proclaiming wage cuts and corporate America is calculating the immense sums to be made on the backs of their suffering.
The incestuous relations between government and big business -- including both Democratic and Republican figures of past and present administrations -- laid bare by the gold rush in the beginning days of the Katrina disaster reconstruction are a chilling manifestation of the ruthlessness of the profit system and its political representatives. The White House, Congress, lobbyists and CEOs of the biggest corporations are all participants in this filthy display.
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Unnatural Disaster: The Lessons of Katrina
The overwhelming human and financial impacts of Hurricane Katrina are powerful evidence that political and economic decisions made in the United States and other countries have failed to account for our dependence on a healthy resource base, according to an assessment released today by the Worldwatch Institute.
Alteration of the Mississippi River and the destruction of wetlands at its mouth have left the area around New Orleans abnormally vulnerable to the forces of nature. According to many scientists, the early results of global warming -- 90 degree Fahrenheit water temperatures in the Gulf and rising sea levels -- may have exacerbated the destructive power of Katrina.
"The catastrophe now unfolding along the U.S. Gulf Coast is a wake-up call for decision makers around the globe," says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. "If the world continues on its current course -- massively altering the natural world and further increasing fossil fuel consumption -- future generations may face a chain of disasters that make Katrina-scale catastrophes a common feature of life in the 21st century."
"The appalling images from New Orleans demonstrate that the world's richest country is not immune from the need to respect natural systems and to invest in their protection," continued Flavin. "This will likely be the most expensive weather-related disaster the world has ever faced."
According to an assessment by Worldwatch researchers, the long-term lessons of Katrina include:
1. Maintaining the integrity of natural ecosystems should be a priority: Indiscriminate economic development and ecologically destructive policies have left many communities more vulnerable to disasters than they realize. This, together with rapid population growth in vulnerable areas, has contributed to worldwide economic losses from weather-related catastrophes totaling $567 billion over the last 10 years, exceeding the combined losses from 1950 through 1989. Losses in 2004 exceeded $100 billion for the second time ever, and a new record will almost certainly be set this year once Katrina's damages are totaled.
2. Short-term thinking is a dangerous approach to policy: During the past few years, the U.S government has diverted funding from disaster preparedness to help finance the Iraq War, and has reduced protections for wetlands in order to spur economic development. Both decisions are now exacting costs that far exceed the money saved. Natural ecosystems such as wetlands and forests are often more valuable when left intact so as to protect communities from floods, landslides, drought, and other natural occurrences. Failure to protect ecosystems contributed to the massive loss of life when the tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean last year and when Hurricane Mitch killed 10,000 people in Central America in 1998.
3. The links between climate change and weather-related catastrophes need to be addressed by decision makers: Although no specific storm can be definitively link to climate change, scientists agree that warm water is the fuel that increases the intensity of such storms and that tropical seas have increased in temperature by up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century. (Katrina transformed rapidly from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane when it passed from the Atlantic Ocean to the much warmer Gulf of Mexico.) In the next few decades, water temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise, greatly increasing the vulnerability of many communities. Global warming and its anticipated effects on the hydrological cycle will make some areas more vulnerable as storms, floods, and droughts increase in frequency and intensity.
4. There is an urgent need to diversify energy supplies: The national and global economic impact of Hurricane Katrina is growing by the day, with consumers around the world now paying significantly more for energy than they were a week ago. Decades of failure to invest in new energy options has left the world dependent on oil and natural gas that are concentrated in some of the world's most vulnerable regions -- the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Persian Gulf, and the Niger Delta in Africa. Biofuels and other renewable resources now represent viable alternatives to fossil fuels, which are not only vulnerable to natural disasters but could have a big impact on the severity of future disasters.
Background Fact Sheet
- In 2004, weather-related disasters caused $104 billion in economic losses, almost twice the total in 2003. Hurricane Katrina alone is expected to cause more than $100 billion in economic losses, according to Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
- An estimated 12,000 weather-related disasters since 1980 have caused 618,200 fatalities and cost a total of $1.3 trillion. Average annual economic losses from weather-related disasters rose from $26 billion in the 1980s to $67 billion in the last decade.
- Average annual fatalities due to weather-related disasters jumped from 22,000 in the 1980s to 33,000 in the 1990s.
- Since the early 1900s, the average global temperature has risen 0.6 degrees Celsius. The rate of increase since 1976 is triple that for the century as a whole.
- In 2004, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 377 parts per million, 16 percent higher than in 1960.
- Oil is responsible for 42 percent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal human-caused greenhouse gas.
- In 2004, approximately 30 million people worldwide were environmental refugees. The UN Development Program projects that number to climb to 50 million by 2010 and 150 million by 2050.
- Since 2001, the Bush Administration has frozen spending on the Corps of Engineers, responsible for protecting the country's coastlines and waterways, at around $4.7 billion.
- More than 20 oil rigs were reported missing in the Gulf, and the region's oil output was down nearly 95 percent after Hurricane Katrina.
- 25 percent of U.S. oil production comes from the Gulf of Mexico and 60 percent of U.S. oil imports come through ports located along the Gulf Coast. 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity is located in that region.
- Fossil fuels provide over 90 percent of world commercial energy use.
- Over the past decade, the energy produced from wind, solar, and, biofuels has doubled. These new energy sources are now growing at over 10 times the rate of world oil production.
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The Perfect Storm: New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good
"The river rose all day,
The river rose all night.
Some people got lost in the flood,
Some people got away all right.
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemine:
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.
"Louisiana, Louisiana,
They're trying to wash us away,
They're trying to wash us away."
-- Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927
The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.
Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.
It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty -- and many have paid the price with their lives.
Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding -- not even an attempt at understanding -- the destitution, the isolation, the immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.
This is from the "respectable" media; the great right-wing echo chamber was even less restrained, of course, leaping straight into giddy convulsions of racism at the first reports of looting in the devastated city. In the pinched-gonad squeals of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow hatemongers, the hard-right media immediately conjured up images of wild-eyed darkies rampaging through the streets in an orgy of violence and thievery.
Not that the mainstreamers ignored the racist angle. There was the already infamous juxtaposition of captions for wire service photos, where depictions of essentially the same scene -- desperate people wading through flood waters, clutching plastic bags full of groceries -- were given markedly different spins. In one picture, a white couple are described as struggling along after finding bread and soda at a grocery store. But beneath an almost identical photo of a young black man with a bag of groceries, we are told that a "looter" wades through the streets after robbing a grocery store. In the photo I saw, this evil miscreant also had a -- gasp! -- pack of diapers under his arm.
Almost all of the early "looting" was like this: desperate people -- of all colors -- stranded by the floodwaters broke into abandoned stores and carried off food, clean water, medicine, clothes. Perhaps they should have left a check on the counter, but then again -- what exactly was going to happen to all those perishables and consumer goods, sitting around in fetid, diseased water for weeks on end? (The mayor now says it could be up to 16 weeks before people can return to their homes and businesses.) Obviously, most if not all of it would have been thrown away or written off in any case. Later, of course, there was more organized looting by criminal gangs, the type of lawless element -- of every hue, in every society -- whose chief victims are, of course, the poor and vulnerable. These criminal operations were quickly conflated with the earlier pilferage to paint a single seamless picture of the American media's favorite horror story: Black Folk Gone Wild.
But here again another question was left unasked: Where were the resources -- the money, manpower, materiel, transport -- that could have removed all those forced to stay behind, and given them someplace safe and sustaining to take shelter? Where, indeed, were the resources that could have bolstered the city's defenses and shored up its levees? Where were the National Guard troops that could have secured the streets and directed survivors to food and aid? Where were the public resources -- the physical manifestation of the citizenry's commitment to the common good -- that could have greatly mitigated the brutal effects of this natural disaster?
"President Coolidge came down here in a railroad train,
With a little fat man with a notebook in his hand.
The president say, "Little fat man, isn't it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land?"
Well, we all know what happened to those vital resources. They had been cut back, stripped down, gutted, pilfered -- looted -- to pay for a war of aggression, to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest, safest, most protected Americans, to gorge the coffers of a small number of private and corporate fortunes, while letting the public sector -- the common good -- wither and die on the vine. These were all specific actions of the Bush Administration -- including the devastating budget cuts on projects specifically designed to bolster New Orleans' defenses against a catastrophic hurricane. Bush even cut money for strengthening the very levees that broke and delivered the deathblow to the city. All this, in the face of specific warnings of what would happen if these measures were neglected: the city would go down "under 20 feet of water," one expert predicted just a few weeks ago.
But Bush said there was no money for this kind of folderol anymore. The federal budget had been busted by his tax cuts and his war. And this was a deliberate policy: as Bush's mentor Grover Norquist famously put it, the whole Bushist ethos was to starve the federal government of funds, shrinking it down so "we can drown it in the bathtub." As it turned out, the bathtub wasn't quite big enough -- so they drowned it in the streets of New Orleans instead.
But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed. For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies -- kept deliberately under informed by the ubiquitous corporate media -- can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line.
Again deliberately, with smear, spin and sham, they have sought -- and succeeded -- in poisoning the well of the democratic process, turning it into a tabloid melee where only "character counts" while the rapacious policies of Big Money's bought-and-sold candidates are completely ignored. As Big Money solidified its ascendancy over government, pouring billions -- over and under the table -- into campaign coffers, politicians could ignore larger and larger swathes of the people. If you can't hook yourself up to a well-funded, coffer-filling interest group, if you can't hire a big-time Beltway player to lobby your cause and get you "a seat at the table," then your voice goes unheard, your concerns are shunted aside. (Apart from a few cynical gestures around election-time, of course.) The poor, the sick, the weak, the vulnerable have become invisible -- in the media, in the corporate boardroom, "at the table" of the power players in national, state and local governments. The increasingly marginalized and unstable middle class is also fading from the consciousness of the rulers, whose servicing of the elite goes more brazen and frantic all the time.
When unbridled commercial development of delicately balanced environments like the Mississippi Delta is bruited "at the table," whose voice is heard? Not the poor, who, as we have seen this week, will overwhelmingly bear the brunt of the overstressed environment. And not the middle class, who might opt for the security of safer, saner development policies to protect their hard-won homes and businesses. No, the only voice that matters is that of the developers themselves, and the elite investors who stand behind them.
"Louisiana, Louisiana, They're trying to wash us away"
The destruction of New Orleans was a work of nature -- but a nature that has been worked upon by human hands and human policies. As global climate change continues its deadly symbiosis with unbridled commercial development for elite profit, we will see more such destruction, far more, on an even more devastating scale. As the harsh, aggressive militarism and brutal corporate ethos that Bush has injected into the mainstream of American society continues to spread its poison, we will see fewer and fewer resources available to nurture the common good. As the political process becomes more and more corrupt, ever more a creation of elite puppetmasters and their craven bagmen, we will see the poor and the weak and even the middle class driven further and further into the low ground of society, where every passing storm -- economic, political, natural -- will threaten their homes, their livelihoods, their very existence.
"Louisiana, Louisiana,
They're trying to wash us away
They're trying to wash us away
They're trying to wash us away
They're trying to wash us away"
* Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and regular contributor to CounterPunch.
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