A front-page story in Army Times Sept. 2, "Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans," states:

Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so. KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees. (Houston Chronicle, Sept. 1)

The Jerusalem Post reports another incident of a pious Jew spitting at Christian clergy or symbols in the Israeli-occupied Old City of Jerusalem. According to Holocaust survivor Dr. Israel Shahak, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, this practice has ancient roots and has become increasingly commonplace:

If the uncorroborated quotes here are accurate, this reality is almost too horrific to comprehend. What is most alarming is that the refugees are effectively captives. This is turning into human warehousing of the same type practiced against the Japanese-Americans in World War II—and under much harsher conditions, if smaller scale. (Emphasis added.)

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 3 (Reuters) - People left homeless by Hurricane Katrina told horrific stories of rape, murder and trigger-happy guards in two New Orleans centers that were set up as shelters but became places of violence and terror.

Depending on who you ask, God sent Katrina either to punish the US for supporting Israel's disengagement plan:

On August 14, citizens in the United States, like people around the world, heard about the issuing of an order for the forced evacuation of Jews from parts of Israel’s biblical land.

For six days they watched as thousands of weeping people were pulled and carried from their homes, forced to leave their gardens, parks, communities, schools, towns and synagogues, everything they had spent decades building; banned from ever returning again. Those scenes were soon followed by pictures of bulldozers and other earth-moving machinery pulverizing the just-vacated homes into heaps of dust.

President Bush has ordered 7,000 active duty troops into New Orleans, including 2,500 from the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina, 2,700 from the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas, 2,000 from the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces. "I think you can expect to see the first plane land in New Orleans before sundown today," said Major General Joseph Inge, deputy commander of the US Northern Command. "I would estimate that the main part of the force will close within 72 hours."

Inge said the active duty troops will be used to reinforce National Guard troops that have been sent in to secure the city but will not be used for law enforcement operations. "Their purpose is to contribute to the effort to bring about a more stable environment," Inge said in a video conference from the Northern Command's headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. "They will not take on a law enforcement role nor have they been directed in any way to do so."

September 3, 2005

Don't You Know Me, I'm Your Native Son...

Notes from Inside New Orleans

By JORDAN FLAHERTY

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

From New York Newsday:

Toddler killed by SUV
Girl, 3, pushed in stroller by her mother, is run down by driver entering crowded Harlem gas station

BY MARLENE NAANES AND LUIS PEREZ

September 2, 2005

A 3-year-old girl being pushed along in a stroller in East Harlem was killed yesterday after a sport utility vehicle heading into a busy gas station ran her over, police and witnesses said.

A long line of motorists jammed a BP/Amoco station at East 125th Street and Second Avenue as Iris Gonzalez, 28, and her toddler, Jamie Roman, passed on the sidewalk at about 5:30 p.m., police and a relative said.