Disasters

by Jordan Flaherty

September 15, 2005

New Orleans was not devastated by a hurricane. From my travels around New Orleans and surrounding areas, it's clear that very little damage was done to my city by hurricane Katrina.

Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Gulfport and other Gulf cities have suffered extensive hurricane-related damage. However, the damage to New Orleans came from brutal negligence - a lack of planning and a stunningly slow response, created by a federal government that didn't care about the people of New Orleans, and still doesn't. Academic Cornel West has called it Hurricane Povertina. Poet Suheir Hammad has referred to the "survivors of the rescue," others have referred to the displaced as "victims of hurricane FEMA," or simply "Michael Brown's victims." The houses of New Orleans were not hit by 35 foot tall waves or 200 mile winds. On the day after the hurricane, most of the city was in good shape, and many of us still in the city felt that New Orleans had once again come through battered and bruised but all right. Then, over the next few days, the levee broke and water rushed into the city, and relief rescue and repair efforts were far too little, far too late.

Israel, which claims it no longer occupies the Gaza Strip and wants the world to see it that way, has not taken long to take back some Gazan land, according to AFP:

Israel is to set up a "security zone" extending into Palestinian territory in northern Gaza to avoid militants infiltrating the Jewish state, the defence ministry said Friday.

The Guardians of the Cedars, an outlawed ultra-nationalist mostly Christian party set up during the 1975-1990 civil war has resurfaced in Lebanon. Lebanon's Al-Safir newspaper reported that at a Sept. 14 news conference, the long-dormant faction announced that "the civil war has never ended," and called for "every Lebanese to kill a Palestinian." It also declared that "not one Palestinian will remain in Lebanon." (Ynet, Sept. 15) The three members who gave the press briefing were arrested by Lebanese authorities for "issuing a statement that incites internal sedition." The group's leader, Etienne Saqr, was sentenced to death in absentia in 1996 for collaboration with Israel, where he is believed to be residing.

At least 80 are reported dead and twice as many wounded in suicide car bomb explosion near a gathering of laborers in Kadhimiya, a Shiite area of north-central Baghdad. About three hours later, another suicide car bomb targeted shoppers in the busy Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, killing four and wounding 22 others. In Taji, about 10 miles north of Baghdad, men wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed homes and pulled 17 Shiite men from their homes, shooting them execution style, police said.

Attacks were also staged on at least three military convoys. A suicide car bomb targeted an Iraqi army convoy in the al-Adil intersection in western Baghdad, killing three Iraqi soldiers. About 40 minutes earlier, another suicide car bomber hit a US military convoy in eastern Baghdad, wounding two soldiers and damaging their Humvee. A roadside bomb also exploded near a US convoy in the capital. There were no reports of casualties.

Cindy Sheehan, the grieving military mother whose vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, focused the nation's attention on the human cost of the Iraq war, will be arriving in Covington, LA, joining the ongoing national volunteer effort to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Immediately after Sheehan's vigil at "Camp Casey" in Crawford ended on Aug. 31, veterans who'd participated in the vigil drove all leftover supplies from the campsite -- toilet paper, medicines, water, and food -- to Covington, La., for distribution to hurricane victims. Since Sept. 2, they have been in Covington, operating a relief operation out of "Camp Casey III."

In a Sept. 13 update for the Village Voice, Sarah Ferguson reports that Houston mirco-radio activists have sidestepped FEMA bureaucracy to broadcast relief info to Katrina survivors:

After a week of wading through FEMA red tape, media activists finally fired up a low-power radio station to serve Hurricane Katrina evacuees still living in the Houston Astrodome and adjacent Reliant convention center.

KAMP (Katrina Aftermath Media Project) 95.3 FM, Dome City Radio went live at noon today, broadcasting from a donated Airstream trailer in the Astrodome’s parking lot.

Kristen Lombardi in the Village Voice Sept. 6 remembers 9-11's forgtten victims—who continue to suffer in silence:

Sarah Ferguson reports for the Village Voice Sept. 12 on how the conspiracy set crashed the official 9-11 commemoration:

The anguish was palpable at Ground Zero yesterday, as family members made their way down a long ramp into the vast emptiness of the World Trade Center site, then took turns reading out the names of their lost loved ones.