Bush orders FEMA to protect Upsidedownland
Katrina
Wednesday, 07 September 2005
Picking up on a thought bouncing around back at TMW after a Chris Floyd post, I thought I'd find out for myself exactly which Louisiana parishes were and were not included in George W. Bush's declaration of emergency effective August 26th, which you can also reach by clicking the map itself.
I checked the parish map against the White House's own press release, posted on their own site. I have tried to figure out how this is my own mistake, but I can't find it. And the results are frankly so bizarre I had to make the graphic in order to properly show you.
Welcome to upside-down-land: the areas at risk for Katrina were quite remarkably the areas not included in Bush's declaration of emergency.
What the hell?
Compare and contrast with the full and specific statewide list of parishes and the services they will receive issued after the storm hit.
Is this really what Bush authorized before the storm hit? Are they really that incompetent?
PS: Putting to rest any nightmares, the map doesn't correlate in any way I can find with demographics, income, voting patterns, campaign contributions, or the like. If I haven't made an obvious mistake, I'm just hoping now that the press release simply got the list of "emergency" and "non-emergency" parishes mixed up.
In other words, more galling incompetence in the White House, albeit trivial, is really the best-case scenario.
Otherwise, we're looking at more galling incompetence of a frighteningly non-trivial kind.
UPDATE: I've received numerous emails explaining that all of the coastal parishes were already declared disaster areas because of Tropical Storm Cindy, which struck in June. Checking with FEMA's own website... nope. Only five coastal parishes -- Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and St. Charles -- seem to be covered here, and only on a limited basis at that.
This is explicitly confirmed by the presidential authorization of August 23, as posted on the White House website.
I'm still hoping and half-expecting to find I've overlooked something. I hope so. Honestly. I do not exactly enjoy this, and I hope this is my own mistake in some way. But I've looked and looked on the White House and FEMA websites and Googled my fingers half off, and while I do find several parishes coming in line for various types of aid piecemeal at various times over the last several years, I cannot yet find anything which even comes close to accounting for the diagram above. It still appears that while northern Louisiana was covered, much of Louisiana directly in the storm's path was simply not covered by the president's declaration at the time the storm hit.
UPDATE 2: I've tried calling FEMA general number repeatedly, but the phone is ringing endlessly with no answer. Not even a machine or voicemail. They seem a bit overwhelmed. I'm reluctant to take anyone's time there anyway right now anyway. Instead, I've sent polite emails to the public FEMA email addresses that seems relevant, asking for a brief explanation of the above once things have calmed down.
UPDATE 3: My inbox has received many dozens of emails from people pointing to August 29th (post-storm) documents, which supposedly fill in the blanks but are entirely off the point. We're looking for a pre-storm explanation. Please check your dates carefully.
UPDATE 4: I've updated the graphic slightly. Since I used a map downloaded from the Louisiana website, the parishes not covered in red were still shown with a decorative blue-green color gradient from the original. I had no idea so many people would try to find significance in those colors. My mistake, and I apologize.
When I get a minute -- and I'm still trying to finish a book on a tightening deadline, remember -- I'd like to whip up a composite map showing Louisiana side-by-side with the pre-storm declarations for Mississippi and Alabama, where the coastal counties were declared as you'd expect. This will be even stranger-looking.
Incidentally, a number of angry Bush defenders have emailed me detailed explanations of the meanings of these colors in terms of staged relief deployment and such, when it was obvious they had absolutely no idea where they came from. Sigh. Not exactly reality-based.
On the other hand, I'd also like to distance myself from anyone trying to read this as proof of anything partisan beyond possible -- possible -- further evidence of incompetence. (As if we could possibly need more.) I have not claimed and do not claim there is any direct correlation between the parishes declared here and any conceivable underlying partisan cause.
I'm not sure how I can be clearer about that.
I'm still quite open to the possibility that the mistake is mine, or there's a simple explanation I don't understand, or that it was a clerical error corrected in any case by the 29th, or what have you. I don't actually have a pet theory. I have asked a simple question and am still seeking and awaiting a simple answer, sourced to actual official policies, an explanatory news report, an official statement, etc. That's all.
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Brownie wipes the blood from his hands with dilution and lies. Another "Heckuva job."
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Special Report:Katrina/Rita Fallout Part One
Martial Law: Police State America - We're So Close Now
Steve Watson / Infowars | Sept 27 2005
For years we have warned that the police state is coming, how Martial Law will become the norm, how ancient laws, rights and freedoms are being overturned and replaced with repressive mechanisms of control.
For years we have presented the evidence, the Army War College documents, the domestic military takeover drills, the draconian legislation, officials left right and centre calling for more centralized military control domestically.
For years people refuted the evidence, or passed it off as being intended for something else, or simply refused to believe it. Now everything we warned you about is happening.
In the wake of the recent natural disasters on American soil, dangerous precedents have been set. We have been forced to watch how in times of crisis we must submit and follow the orders of Federal Commanders, no matter whether they deny us basic human rights or not.
Whether it be a state attack, a terrorist attack, an accident or a natural disaster matters not anymore, the outcome will be the same. We are just one event, ANY event away from Martial Law.
Getting rid of Posse Comitatus - Setting the precedent
“In a police state the police are national, powerful, authoritarian. Inevitably, national governments yield to the temptation to use the military to do the heavy lifting….once the military is used, however minor initially, the march toward martial law … becomes irresistible.” - Representative Ron Paul of Texas - June 25 1997.
The Posse Comitatus Act is a recognition that the framers of the Constitution had a deep distrust of centralized power, particularly centralized military power that might be used against the people. State militias were preferred over a national army. In times of major disaster or emergency, it has been state governors - not the president - who call out that state's contingent of the national guard.
We have witnessed over a long period of time how Posse Comitatus is systematically being erased. After 9/11 this was particularly accelerated. All the so called "experts" were calling for changes to long standing laws, in order to "protect" us. This led to scores of lower level Government officials pleading for exactly what the criminal elements higher up wanted all along.
Take the following AP report from November 2001:
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
So let's get this right, "terrorists" attack us because they "hate our freedoms" and the answer is to get rid of our freedoms?
Here's another mainstream report from 2002 documenting a senators call to abolish Posse Comitatus and let troops arrest US civilians.
Here's former Homeland Security dictator Tom Ridge saying the same thing. And here he is saying it again.
But before the war on terror it was clear that there was preparation afoot for such eventualities. Nothing is under review, this has always been the agenda. They were erasing Posse Comitatus 14 Years Ago. In 911: The Road to Tyranny Alex Jones presents footage of troops training to put Americans into Concentration Camps. This footage includes interrogations and a retired Marine admitting that in 1988 he was kicking down doors in Norfolk, Virginia. The Marines would be ordered to the local Police station where they would don Police uniforms. They would then go to the local gun shop or dealers home and "Take Them Down."
In Alex Jones' feature Police State 2000 he covers Operation Urban Warrior where actors posed as American citizens who were Unconstitutionally seized from their homes by the military and police. These Americans: were rounded up and confined behind barbed-wire.
click full report:>>
http://philadelphians2.50megs.com/police_state.html
