NEW NICOLAS CAGE FILM NAMES WORLD’S BIGGEST ARMS DEALERS

$2 TRILLION SPENT MAKING BOMBS TO STOP WARS0

By Darryl Mason

The new Nicolas Cage film ‘Lord of War’, which examines the global trade of mass-murder machines, ends with a revealing footnote :

"The world's biggest arms suppliers are the US, UK, Russia, France and China.”

Not a surprising fact, perhaps, but there’s a second line to the footnote to put it all in perspective :

“The US, UK, Russia, France and China are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.”

So the five countries entrusted to contain war around the world are the five countries who sell the most head-exploding guns, organ-shredding bullets, child-maiming cluster bombs, skin-melting napalm, family-slaying missiles and graveyard-filling tank shells.

The global arms trade is the world’s biggest and most profitable business, with annual estimated sales in excess of $US2 trillion.

FIVE BILLION BULLETS FIRED BY US IN IRAQ WAR

TWO AMERICANS CASUALTIES FOR EVERY INSURGENT KILLED

BUSH RALLIES AMERICANS TO DONATE TO IRAQ REBUILDING

BUSH RAISES A MEASLY $600

By Darryl Mason

After more than two years of levelling Iraq cities and towns, spending more than $US200 billion and laying waste to tens of thousands of women and children, US president GW Bush recently appealed to his fellow Americans to “contribute” to the spiralling costs of rebuilding the devastated country.

Weeks after his rallying cry for financial aid, Bush’s appeal has managed to raise a total of $600, or the equivalent of two iPods, according to the London Observer.

In comparison, a seven year old American raised $1000 in a week from a lemonade stand for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Also in comparison, a controversial website launched earlier in the year raised $15,000 to save the life of a rabbit, whom the owner threatened to eat unless a ‘ransom’ of $25,000 was paid.

USAid, the United State’s overseas aid agency, originally estimated it would cost US taxpayers only $2 billion to reconstruct Iraq in the early days of the war. The reconstruction costs are now $50 billion plus according to conservative estimates.

The London Observer said it understood this was the first time in history the US government has made a direct appeal for American taxpayers to ‘donate’ money for foreign aid.

Despite only $600 being raised in September, a USAid representative claimed, "every little bit helps"”

The Coalition of the Willing has so far refurbished thousands of Iraqi schools and in the process removed the presence of former US-CIA ally Saddam Hussein from historical textbooks.

Hospitals and medical facilities ravaged by a decade of UN sanctions have also benefited from rebuilding and refurbishment projects, although there is now a critical shortage of life-saving medical supplies in Iraq.

US officials are now carefully floating into the public mind the concept that many key Iraq rebuilding projects, including water and sewerage works, will have to be abandoned due to lack of money.

The costs of rebuilding in the US due to the Katrina and Rita hurricanes are expected to top $300 billion, and even Bush-allied Republicans are now claiming the cash cupboard of the US economy is bare.

If there is not enough money to rebuild US states, it seems unlikely there will be money to rebuild many of the Iraqi water and sewerage systems targeted during bombing raids in the early part of the war, thus explaining why Bush is now passing around the hat to American citizens.

In two and a half years of the Iraq War, the US Army has collectively discharged more than five billion bullets at an estimated cost of more than $US30 billion to kill some 10,000 'insurgents'. This estimate means that at least 100,000 bullets were fired to kill each enemy ‘insurgent', excluding bullets fired during anti-insurgent training.

With the US wounded and dead casualty toll reaching 20,000, this means two US soldiers were killed or maimed for each insurgent killed.

The Iraqi insurgency was estimated by US Department of Defence officials in August, 2005, to still number more than 20,000 people.

(sources for this story include the US Department of Defence, the UK Independent news service, the Washington Post news service and the London Observer)

THE UNLOOTABLES

NOT EVERYTHING WAS WORTH STEALING IN NEW ORLEANS

By Darryl Mason

While Fox News remains obsessed with a handful of images showing Hurricane Katrina survivors loading computers and big screens TVs into trolleys (from a well-lit store in an electricity-free disaster zone? We won’t go there), there is now far more important information leaking out about the items even the hard-core looters didn’t think were worth stealing.

A year ago a new Wal-Mart store opened in uptown New Orleans. The shopfront survived the storm and floods but it was picked clean by looters in the days following the hurricane.

Well, almost clean.

There was something even the looters wouldn’t touch.

A rattled Wal-Mart security officer, John Stonaker, was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter in the ruins of the store on September 16, and he detailed the missing inventory - Crates of bottled water, camping equipment, mountain bikes, umbrellas, DVD players, all the food, sports equipment, running shoes, clothing, nappies and baby wipes and prams.

“The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs,” said Stonaker.

“You can still get a Shania Twain album."

There you have it.

Confirmed.

Shania Twain is looter-proof

ALL OF MAINLAND NORTH AMERICA NOW IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY

BUSH WANTS US MILITARY TO CONTROL DISASTERS AFTERMATH

NORTHERN COMMAND CLAIMS AUTHORITY OVER US, CANADA AND MEXICO

By Darryl Mason

With the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, all of the United States are now under a state of emergency. Since August 28, President Bush has used executive presidential orders to declare an emergency in every state, in every county, of the mainland United States.

This is the first time in US history that all the states on mainland North America have fallen under such jurisdiction. The declarations mean the states can apply for federal funds to house and feed and educate Hurricane Katrina evacuees, but less than one third of the ‘emergency’ declared states are actually hosting those who took flight from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

In the past week President Bush has been softening up Americans to get used to the presence of the US Military patrolling their streets, manning checkpoints, taking part in heavily armed house to house searches and roaming suburban neighbourhoods in Humvees and troop transports.

Active duty troops are blocked in the US from undertaking domestic law enforcement activities by Posse Comitatus, created when British troops still roamed the US, and the Insurrection Act.

Only the National Guard has the authority to enforce law, even in a state of emergency, and they are controlled by the governors of their respective states.

While active duty troops are at work in the Gulf rescue and recovery operations, they are officially only allowed to supply logistical support and humanitarian aid under Posse Comitatus.

Republican senators have begun a campaign for the lifting of Posse Comitatus, the major law blocking US troops from undertaking law enforcement.

In a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Virginia senator John Warner said there would be an investigation into "the entire legal framework governing a President's power to use the regular armed forces to restore public order in ... a large-scale, protracted emergency.”

Warner pushed for Rumsfeld to seek ways to make this possible, and it appears word filtered up to the top.

Bush is now pushing hard for Americans to accept the necessity of US troops being deployed in disaster zones, and is edging Congress to grant him further powers to deploy troops wherever he deems necessary within the national state of emergency.

To be granted such authority (which his chief adviser Karl Rove admitted in a speech last week could have allowed the White House to “over-ride” the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi) would see Bush gaining powers unheard of in any Western democracy.

If further disasters were to hit the US, such authority would allow Bush to install Military rule without needing to seek the permission of Congress.

In a Q & A with reporters last week, Bush laid out the reasons for why he believed Military deployments in the homeland were vital.

“...a storm, for example, of a certain category, which will require an overwhelming response by government that can only be provided by, say, the United States military through NORTHCOM, because of its ability to muster....logistics and supplies so quickly.”

While the shocking images of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath has quietened resistance across the country to the idea of US troops ‘occupying’ cities and towns, Bush now plans for such deployments to become standard during any national disaster, including the outbreak of a bird flu pandemic.

Through a series of speeches following Hurricane Katrina, Bush made it clear he would act quickly to deploy “all assets” of the Military to deal with the disastrous panic and social disorder following the declared outbreak of a killer virus, but he needed Congress to grant him the power to do so.

“If avian (bird) flu were to hit this country, do we have the proper response mechanisms?” Bush said. “Does the federal government have the authorities necessary to make certain decisions?”

Bush repeatedly painted vivid scenarios requiring Military control, referencing the panic and looting that swamped New Orleans two weeks ago.

During his address to the nation, President Bush said he viewed the aftermath of Katrina as “an opportunity” during which Congress should “review all different types of circumstance to make sure that the President has the capacity to react....”

With virtually all of the United States now in a state of emergency, and no deadline for removing the declarations, Bush now has the “opportunity” to be granted the powers he desires to install Military rule under the auspices of Northern Command, who already claim on their website to have authority over the US, Canada and Mexico, plus territory five hundred miles out to sea off all coasts.

With the looming threat of further massive hurricanes, a bird flu outbreak, previously unknown volcanic activity in Oregon and earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault in California, it seems unlikely Bush’s plan will meet much resistance in Congress.

No American politician could stomach repeat scenes of the screaming, dying women and children of New Orleans filling television screens and front pages. In the aftermath, senators rushed to the cameras to declare such tragedies would never be allowed to happen again.

US senators are also further distracted by the $200 billion costs of post-Katrina rebuilding and the recently floated Bush plan for using pre-emptive nuclear strikes on perceived enemies hiding WMDs.

In fact, the President’s calls to be handed the power to install Military rule across the US, if he deemed it necessary, have barely caused a ripple in the op-eds and letters pages of American newspapers.

Bush once infamously said he could see the benefits of a dictatorship, “as long as I’m the dictator.”

With the entire resources of the US Military at his command, and control by Northern Command proxy of the territories of Canada and Mexico, Bush would quickly learn what it feels like to be the most powerful dictator in the history of the world.

THE PUPPY OF MASS DESTRUCTION

CHAVEZ WARNS BUSH AGAINST INVASION OF VENEZUELA TO SEIZE OIL RESERVES

CHAVEZ OFFERS GUARANTEED SUPPLY OF OIL FOR 150 YEARS

FREE FUEL TO US POOR DURING THE KATRINA CRISIS

By Darryl Mason

In an interview with US network ABC, on September 16, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez claimed he had proof the Bush administration were ready to invade his country in an attempt to seize control of some 300 billion barrels of oil.
He warned the Bush administration to retreat from such aggression and spoke of “a 100 year war” and the doubling of oil prices to more than $120 a barrel if any attempts of invasion or occupation were launched against Venezuela.
“I'm telling you that I have evidence that there are plans to invade Venezuela,” Chavez said in the interview. “Furthermore, we have documentation (to prove it).”
Chavez claims military intelligence sources have revealed details of ‘Operation Balboa’, a US plan to invade Venezuela using bombers and aircraft carriers. If such a plan were carried out by the US, Chavez said he would withhold the 1.5 million barrels of oil his country transported to the US every day.
He called ‘Operation Balboa’ a “foolhardy plan” and said the US would not be able to control Venezuela, “the same way they haven't been able to control Iraq.”
Chavez gave the interview while in New York City attending the UN conference of world leaders, after meetings with some of the most powerful politicians and business leaders in the country, as well as leaders of OPEC countries.
He rejected claims his country harboured terrorists, or was a terrorist state, pointing out the US was refusing to extradite criminals wanted in Venezuela for assassination attempts against the president and for plotting to blow up a civilian airliner.
Chavez claimed the Bush administration had ordered his assassination and had used the CIA to attempt a coup d’etat in Venezuela on at least two occasions during his seven years in power.
Chavez said he was no terrorist but he was a revolutionary, in revolt against injustice, inequality, immorality and the exploitation of the poor.
During the speech to the UN, Chavez said his country had the highest child literacy rate in the world, and more than 70% of the people had easy access to free, universal health care, two statistics unmatched anywhere else in the world, including Australia and the US.
Chavez cited Christ as an inspiration and said he admired Christ for being “a great rebel” who fought against the established powers of the first century who subjugated the poor and the weak.
“That is what rebellion is,” said Chavez.
“It’s rebellion out of love for human beings. In truth, that is the cause, the cause of love. Love for every human being, for every women, for every child, for every man, for every brother.”
Under Chavez, Venezuela has grown into an economic powerhouse, and with the second largest oil reserve in the world, every dollar increase in the price of oil pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the Venezuelan economy.
Venezuela owns eight major oil refineries valued at more than $US10 billion, which employ more than 2000 US workers and their families. Chavez is routinely courted by the heads of the worlds biggest fuel companies, including Chevron and Shell.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has weaved oil and gas and investment deals with Russia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, China, Cuba, Iran and Malaysia, and in the process formed a wealthy and powerful new alliance outside of the EU and the Australia-US-England grouping of countries.
Chavez said he only wants friendly relations with the US and to continue the oil supply that has seen Venezuela come to own the majority of fuel stations across the United States.
He claimed Venezuela had the second most important oil reserve in the world, after the Arab states, citing the US reserve of 20 billion barrels compared to Venezuelan reserve of more than 300 billion. The US uses up 10-15 million barrels of oil a day, of which ten percent comes from Venezuela.
Chavez said if the Bush administration resumes friendly relations and dismantles the alleged ‘Balboa’ plans of invasion and occupation, then he would guarantee to keep supplying oil to the US “for 150 years more”.
The Venezuelan president said “we love the people of the United States. We want to be brothers and sisters of the people of the United States, independently of their government.”
Chavez hit world headlines in recent weeks after US televangelist Pat Robertson, a firm Bush family friend, called for his assassination. Under new anti-terror laws, and incitement to terror laws, such calls for violence against the democratically elected leader of a sovereign country could have seen Robertson jailed for decades.
Robertson has since denied making the claims, saying he was “misquoted”, despite having issued the assassination call during an interview on his own television network. In the last few days Robertson has tried to correct the record by saying he only meant Chavez should be removed, “kidnapped” by the CIA. Kidnapping a world leader is also an recognised act of international terrorism.
While Chavez is obviously troubled by the aggression of such influential Americans, he appeared in the interview to be amused by Robertson’s attempts to talk himself out of serious trouble.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Venezuela offered doctors, rescue vessels, shipments of medicines and emergency supplies within hours of footage of the tragedy appearing on CNN. Bush refused the offer, to the bewilderment of Chavez, who then watched on for days as Americans screamed for help in the city of New Orleans and died, on camera, in the streets of the world’s richest country.
Chavez claimed that despite the refusal of the US to accept offers of medical aid and rescue vessels from Venezuela they had staged their own rescues in the Gulf of Mexico and donated millions of dollars to the state of Louisiana and the Red Cross.
Chavez has now ordered five ships carrying 300,000 barrels of gasoline each to the US, despite Bush’s non-reaction to offers of help from Venezuela.
The US Military’s Northern Command controls an area that extends five hundred miles off the coast of the entire continent of North America, according to the Northern Command website, and the fuel ships will need clearance from Bush to enter US waters.
Chavez said he is not shipping the fuel for the benefit of Bush, or to curry favour. “We're not doing this for the administration. We're doing it for the people of the United States.”
Venezuela had never had problems with the US until GW Bush came into office, claimed Chavez, and he wanted to create an environment of normality, such as he shares with the majority of the world’s leaders, many of whom gave his speech at the UN a round of rousing applause.
The leaders of Australia, the US and Israel were noticeably absent during Chavez’s UN address.
“We love the people of the United States,” Chavez said on the ABC. “Our desire is to have a world of brothers in peace. God grant that that be the case.”
Chavez finished his visit to the US by fulfilling a childhood fantasy. He played baseball with members of the US Yankees during a training session.

America Rebuilds After Hurricane Katrina, And Karl Rove Is In Charge

$200 Billion And Counting....

Bush Warns Of Nature's Wraith To Come - Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Volcanoes And Pandemic Disease Outbreaks

By Darryl Mason

The costs of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina are already, a few weeks on, ten times the initial estimate of $20 billion, and these figures are expected to eclipse the total costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by the end of September.

With a rebuilding fund already hemorrhaging cash at $70 billion, Bush has ignored strong Senate calls for an independent ‘czar’ to oversee the distribution of funds and has, instead, placed his chief political advisor and White House chief of staff, Karl Rove, in charge of the entire rebuilding effort.

Republicans and Democrats were both calling for a figurehead like 911 New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani to head the largest, and most expensive, infrastructure outlay in American history. But Bush is going with Rove, despite the fact that a federal prosecutor is now investigating Rove for the Valerie Plame/Niger affair, and the forged documents that helped convince the US Senate to launch a war on Iraq.

In a quiet, restrained, prime time speech last night Bush promised the US they could and would recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

But even Republicans are now publicly saying the cupboard is bare, there is simply no money to pay for Bush’s grand vision of rebuilding entire cities, towns and villages, many from foundations up.

Placing such a controversial wingman as Karl Rove in charge of what may prove yet prove to be half a trillion dollars in rebuilding funds is not inspiring rallying cheers on the floor of the Senate. Democrats can’t believe the news, and even die-hard Bush backers are questioning the wisdom of Bush’s principle choice.

There certainly won’t be any grand ceremony to announce Karl Rove’s appointment, and it is unlikely he will hold a steady media presence through the rebuilding of more than 50,000 severely affected square miles of the United States.

Bush promised in his prime time speech to the US last night that the White House would team up with governors and local officials of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, the city of New Orleans, and other Gulf Coast cities, to co-ordinate the rebuilding efforts. It will be the biggest infrastructure upgrading project in the world. The largest and most expensive and most extensive in history. Hundreds of miles of trainlines, highways and roadways, dozens of bridges, thousands of miles of sewerage and water pipelines, new schools, new towns housing thousands of Americans completely rebuilt from scratch.

In the speech Bush claimed 250,000 houses affected by Hurricane Katrina were “unlivable”, meaning they would could not be salvaged and repaired. Rebuilding will mean new building.
Unlike previous addresses the nation Bush was subdued, and dressed casually, there was no knowing grins, or smirks, and his minders had even positioned the main camera lower than his podium, so as to give the appearance of the president filling the screen. The aim may have been for him to project an image of power and control, but he looked scared, overwhelmed by the enormity of what now lies ahead.

“Our goal is to get the work done quickly. And taxpayers expect this work to be done honestly and wisely -- so we'll have a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures.”

The team of inspectors are not yet in place, but more than $2 billion a day has been flowing out of the White House for the past two weeks. The first approved budget of $50 billion will be used up within days.

In the speech Bush pushed for changes to zoning laws and building codes, to “break the bureaucracy” that he now claims led to Americans dying of dehydration in the Superdome and is the reason why corpses were left on the streets of the city for weeks. He demanded the bypassing of zoning laws and building codes to keep pace with his plans for emergency rebuilding, “in order to avoid a repeat of what we’ve seen.”

In three states, tent cities to house tens of thousands of Americans are now a reality. More than a hundred thousand mobile homes and RVs, most of the showroom stock of the whole country, have been brought up with the first few billion dollars and are being rushed to the devastated areas.

Bush said he wants most of the new employment to stay local to the states affected, and for this mass employment program encompassing hundreds of thousands of workers Bush rushed through an Executive Order last week which removed the minimum wage for the two-thirds of the country still under a State of Emergency.

He said he hoped the wages paid in the rebuilding would be “fair”.

Bush proposed the creation of the ‘Gulf Opportunity Zone’, which will be lavished with tens of billions of dollars in federal funds to create jobs, “tax relief” and other fast-tracked changes to “break the cycle of poverty” in the Gulf states.

Now that the media focus has drifted away from the deprivation of New Orleans, Americans are realising just how many towns and cities were laid to waste by the hurricane.

Across three states, more than one million Americans queue for food and water handouts. In the more isolated regions of Mississippi the food and water trucks are only passing through once every two or three days. The displaced people are not allowed to stockpile the limited supplies.
Families get a small box of food and a few bottles of water.

Barbara Bush may actually have been right when she said the New Orleans evacuees camped out in the Houston Astrodome were “better off”. Better off than the tens of thousands of people across Mississippi and Alabama who are sleeping in lean-tos made from the splintered wood of their homes.

It is only now these Americans are reaching the television screens, but by and large the media is tiring of the ‘human suffering’ side of the story, so their desperate plight is moving out of the headlines and into the dump zones of the evening news.

Much of the mainsteam American media is already rallying around the president again, but some of the poorest people in the world are seeing the images coming out of Mississippi and are wondering, ‘what happened to America?’

A month ago the United States seemed to be one of the richest, safest nations on the planet. But now, with millions displaced and desperate, with ‘How To Survive An Earthquake’ handbooks being distributed in California, with a procession of hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic and, incredibly, rising fears of volcanic eruptions in at least four states, America appears to be a nation tilting on the edge of even greater chaos and destruction.

“Americans have never left our destiny to the whims of nature,” Bush said last night, “and we will not start now.”

Bush spent half the speech preparing Americans for what lies ahead. He talked of direct action on updating plans to respond to national disasters, terrorist attacks, a potential bird flu epidemic and “disease outbreaks”.

The spectre of Osama Bin Laden, for now at least, has been toppled by Mother Nature.
Many columnists in the US and the UK preparing their Sunday think pieces are wondering whether Bush just tried to prepare America for the rebuilding effort ahead, or for an even greater carnage and destruction to come.

A month ago Bush was putting The Fear into Americans about the threat of terrorism, now the clear and present danger is far more real, and incredibly vivid. Hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, outbreaks of disease that could turn pandemic....A bomb on a New York subway won’t even make the front pages if any of the catastrophes Bush outlined become reality.

“In the life of this nation, we have often been reminded that nature is an awesome force,” Bush said, “and that all life is fragile.”

Bush then spoke of the better life he believed God has prepared for mankind.

“I consider detailed emergency planning to be a national security priority,” Bush said, “I've ordered the Department of Homeland Security to undertake an immediate review....of emergency plans in every major city in America.”

National Guard rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan are being wound down, new deployments are being cancelled, and the Department of Defence has issued volunteer calls to thousands of their civilian staff. Off the Gulf of Mexico, a stunning armada of Navy ships and support vessels are gathering. There are seventy thousand pairs of ‘boots on the ground’ and hundreds of planes and helicopters fly thousands of missions a day. Private military manpower companies like Blackwater Security can’t employ ex-servicemen fast enough to fill the contracts they’ve been handed.

While Karl Rove may be in charge of the rebuilding effort, the US Military’s Northern Command has now assumed control over the entire land mass of North America – Canada, the United States, Mexico – and for five hundreds miles out to sea off all coasts.

The longest presidential holiday in US history is well and truly over.



.

HITCHENS VERSUS GALLOWAY

THE RUMBLE AND THE MUMBLE

Political Debate As Public Entertainment

By Darryl Mason

In England, maverick MP George Galloway is Tony Blair’s worst nightmare. In the US, Christopher Hitchens is a rumble-mumble mouth Limey-on-the-loose in the US, a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, who cheered on the Iraq Invasion and still thinks it was, mostly, a good idea.
This week George Galloway was in the US pumping his new book ‘Mr Galloway Goes To Washington’, which recalls his outrageously honest, righteously raucous appearance before a Capitol Hill Senate hearing into Iraq’s Oil For Food scandal. Galloway let fire in the Senate, and won himself a massive young audience in the US amongst independently minded youth and the hero-starved anti-war legion. We’ll be doing a Best Quotes list from that appearance, and recent Galloway interviews, in the next week.
Galloway and Hitchens banged into each other in a Washington DC street the day of the Senate hearings, they traded insults, then traded some more in the media and Hitchens decided a public debate was in order.
The unanimous verdict from the dozens of live bloggers in the 1000 strong crowd at the subsequent debate two nights ago was Galloway gave Hitchens a public flogging, but Hitchens came off the better because he didn’t insult the American audience.
They went toe to toe on Iraq, September 11, War in general and Dictator Love before an audience that hooted, howled, cheered, booed and railed with fury at some of the opinions aired.
There were no handshakes and no love lost. This was two hours of pure, unrestrained debate of a kind we rarely experience anymore in our super-sanitised public discourse. Hitchens and Galloway both later pointed out the curiousness of two Lads Of London debating the Iraq Invasion in New York City, and pulling such a huge crowd that hundreds were locked out, long before the debate began.
The issue of the night was the justification of the Iraq War, but it spilled out into a sumptuous slanging match where words burst like cluster bombs and opinion scorched the crowd like napalm.

Here is the best of Hitchens Versus Galloway, live from New York City.

Galloway on Hitchens :

"A drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay."

"What Mr Hitchens has done is unique in natural history, the first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly into a slug...The one thing a slug does leave behind it is a trail of slime."

"You have fallen out of the gutter and into the sewer."

"People like Mr Hitchens are ready to fight to the last drop of other people's blood."

Hitchens on Galloway :

"This man’s search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends. The Soviet Union's let him down, Albania's gone, the Red Army's out of Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia, Saddam has been overthrown....(but) the hunt never ends!"

Galloway on Hitchens' Shift From Anti-War to Pro-War :

"You start off being the liberal mouthpiece for one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever known and you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans."

Hitchens On Galloway’s appearance in the Senate :

"I believe it is a disgrace that a member of the British House of Commons should go before the United States Senate Subcommittee, and not testify, but decline to testify, and to insult all those who try to ask him questions with the most vile and cheap guttersnipe abuse, I think that's a disgrace. How can anyone who has had dealings with (Saddam’s) regime show their face at a city like this and not content with it, not content with it!"

Galloway On The Cause Of September 11 :

“I believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us...I believe that it's because of the total, complete unending and bottomless support for General Sharon's crimes against the Palestinian people."

Hitchens in reaction as the crowd boos Galloway :

"Our fault? No, this...dangerous piffle....this is masochism. And it is masochism being offered...by sadists."

Galloway on the NeoCons' rule of the US :

“How far has the Neocon rot seeped into your souls?"

Galloway on the Iraqi Resistance to the Occupation :

"The (NeoCons) intend, if they can, to have an Iraq Americana, but the Iraqi people have decided otherwise."

"The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces."

Hitchens On Iraq If The Coalition Had Not Invaded :

"Saddam Hussein would be the owner and occupier of Kuwait. He would have succeeded in the annexation - not merely the invasion - but the abolition of an Arab and Muslim state that was a member of the Arab League and of the United Nations. And with these resources, as we now know, because he lost that war, he was attempting to equip himself with the most terrifying arsenal that it was possible for him to ..."

Galloway On The Results Of The Invasion :

“Mr Hitchens's policy has succeeded in making 10,000 new Bin Ladens."

Hitchens On Galloway’s Anti-War Credentials :

"To hear him speak you would think - would you not? - that he was a pacifist, that he defines himself as anti-war? Now how can this be said in good conscience by someone who has just (stood) by the side of the dictator of Syria on the 30th of July, and referred to the 154 ‘heroic’ operations conducted in Iraq by the so-called resistance?"

Galloway On Hitchens Regarding His Attacks On Anti-War Mum Cindy Sheehan :

"You are covered in the stuff you like to smear onto others. Not just me ... but people much more gentle than me, people like Cindy Sheehan ...who gave the life of her son for the war that you have come here to glory in."

The debate ended with no handshakes and now clear winner, but plenty of dark scowling. The audience left wired and wanting more, hitting blogspace to log hundreds of entries in the hours after the debate.
In the end Hitchens got the last word in, hours later on a radio show. Commenting on the debate, Hitchens said he tried not to look at Galloway, because "it was like looking straight into the piggy eyes of fascism."

Galloway, meanwhile, mused on the concept of "taking the show on the road."

Show?

A touring political blood-letting debate as public entertainment?

Philip K Dick's Top Ten Predictions Of The Future That Have (Mostly) Come True

We're All Living In A Philip K Dick Novel

By Darryl Mason

Philip K Dick was the creator of such novels as 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep', 'A Scanner Darkly', ‘The Man In The High Castle' and 'Now Wait For Last Year'. A number of his books and short stories have been turned into films, including 'Blade Runner', 'Minority Report' and 'Total Recall'. Through the '50s, '60s and ‘70s PKD had powerful visions of a tech-heavy police state future, where robots fight our wars, where designer drugs replace love and people compete in dehumanising television games shows for a shot at a better life.

In 1980 he wrote a list of predictions he thought would become reality over the next thirty years. This list was published in the 'The Book of Predictions' in 1981. He got a few things on his list very right, and some vastly wrong. At least they're wrong in our reality. Maybe he was thinking of another reality, the one he lived in.

I've included today's interpretation of his predictions (in brackets) where appropriate. Feel free to comment on what you think he got curiously right, and very wrong.

1983

“The Soviet Union will develop an operational particle-beam accelerator, making missile attack against that country impossible. At the same time the USSR will deploy this weapon as a satellite killer.”

(Russia has now abandoned the idea of a missile shield, while the US is still very keen. A particle beam has been developed by DAPRA and has been field tested in Iraq. The Pentagon loves the idea of weaponising space, after Ronald Reagan talked up the idea in 1983-84. Satellites orbiting above our heads right now can ‘blind’ other satellites with lasers)

1984

“The United States will perfect a system by which hydrogen....will serve as a fuel source, eliminating the need for oil.”

(Hydrogen is now a fuel source, and GW Bush is talking up its prospect as a replacement for oil because he won’t be getting much out of Iraq)

1985

“By....this date there will be a titanic nuclear accident either in the USSR or in the United States, resulting in a shutting down of all nuclear power plants.”

(Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, he was out by a few years)

1986

“....satellites will uncover vast, unsuspected high-energy phenomena in the universe, indicating that there is sufficient mass to collapse the universe back when it has reached its expansion point.”

(Sonds like something I read recently, but buggered if I know what it means)

1989

“The United States and the Soviet Union will agree to set up one vast metacomputer as a central source for information available to the entire world; this will be essential due to the huge amount of information coming into existence.”

(Top marks for that one. Dick wrote of an information-rich age way back in the mid-1950s, he saw computers in our pockets and information serving as a currency. Seen the Google stock price lately? PKD obviously didn’t foresee the downfall of the Soviet Union, however)

1993

“An artificial life form will be created in a lab...thus reducing our interest in locating life forms on other planets.”

(Scientists have just created an embryo without the need for sperm. Is this artificial life?)

1995

“Computer use by ordinary citizens will transform the public from passive viewers of TV into mentally alert, highly trained, information-processing experts.”

(We might be alert, trained and processing, but passive TV viewing is still a necessity, because we spend so much time being alert whilst processing)

1997

“The first closed-dome colonies will be successfully established on Luna and on Mars. Through DNA modification, quasi-mutant humans will be created who can survive under non-Terran conditions - alien environments.”

(The interplanetary dome colony idea must have made a big impact on science fiction writers in the 1950s, and Dick was no exception. Was it the fear of getting nuked by the Soviets? PKD loved writing about dome life, and was partial to the odd genetically modified quasi-human)

1998

“The Soviet Union will test a propulsion drive that moves a starship at the velocity of light, a pilot ship will set out for Proxima Centaurus, soon to be followed by an American ship.”

(Are the SF writers of the 1950s shocked that we never really got off this rock in a major way?)

2000

“An alien virus, brought back by an interplanetary ship, will decimate the population of Earth but leave the colonies on Luna and Mars intact.”

(SF writers of the 1950s and ‘60s, like Philip K. Dick, hated to imagine we might get back around to nuking ourselves out of existence, particularly after the decades of Cold War fear that shuddered their generation. If it wasn’t nukes, then it had to be insanely communicable interplanetary biological alien hitch-hikers that would do ultimately waste humanity)

2005

“Bereft of a decent idea, Hollywood film producers continue to mine my old books and stories for all the best bits, characters and concepts. Their relentless thieving is shameless and curses their black souls to an eternity of satanic flaying. Some producers will buy the rights to one story and then think this means they can go and five finger discount whatever else they please from my tales. Blade Runner will stand tall as best film made from one of my stories, but I predict good things for an experimental adaptation of ‘A Scanner Darkly’.”

Note : Okay, I made up all of the 2005 prediction about the movies, but all the rest of PKD’s predictions are authentic.

In various old stories and novels PKD also envisaged a great many other realities of our day. Some were long shots, others were extremely prescient.

Here’s a smattering of PKD realities that are becoming our own : Criminals being tracked by satellites, remote control robot machine-gunners, synthetic and cloned pets, swipe cards to enter buildings and malls, laptop computers, reality television, hacker anarchists, mega-global corporations that rule entire continents, android babysitters, a military controlled United States divided into police-state zones (post-Hurricane Katrina, this was New Orleans), whole towns as nostalgia amusement parks, a technology-interconnected global humanity and a president who bankrupts his country and creates fictional wars to distract his people from their dark reality.

Sound familiar?

BUSH READS A BOOK ON THE DEADLIEST PLAGUE IN HISTORY

TWO THIRDS OF US IN STATE OF EMERGENCY

HAS BIRD FLU ESCAPED FROM A BIORESEARCH LAB IN NEW ORLEANS?

By Darryl Mason.

GW Bush is not known for being a big reader. If you’re thinking of ‘My Pet Goat’ on the morning of September 11, remember that was being read to him by a school kid while the US was under attack by jet-hijacking freedom haters.

But things have changed. The White House issued a short statement a few weeks ago to inform the media that GW Bush was spending the longest holiday in US presidential history catching up on some light reading.

Not ‘My Pet Goat II’ but a weighty tome entitled ‘The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History.’

So what’s it about? ‘The Great Influenza’ details the stunning impact of the Spanish Flu pandemic that swept the globe from 1918-1919, and explains how the death toll of 60 to 100 million people changed society and politics across the planet.

There was little warning before the Spanish Flu hit. Unlike most flu epidemics this one killed without discrimination. It laid waste to infants, old people as well as healthy young men.

If you caught it, chances are you were dead within a week.

The book describes how doctors, hospitals, morgues and graveyards were overwhelmed by the endless casualties. It cited the US city of Philadelphia as one example where 5000 people died in a week. Mass rioting broke out, whole streets full of cramped dwellings were torched and corpses were piled in mounds a dozen bodies high. They were tossed into carts and transported to mass burial sites.

In some European cities entire towns were burned to the ground, with the dying still in their homes, to try and contain the spread of the virus. Ships were torched in harbours before passengers could get to land. The author of ‘The Great Influenza’ described how ships still at sea were blocked from entering ports and became “floating caskets.”

The flu virus originated in animals but mutated quickly and crossed over into humans. Exactly the scenario now forcing the World Health Organisation to make claims that the threat of a bird flu pandemic in humans was not a case of If, but When.

Some details of the book make for uncomfortable reading today, and no doubt GW Bush had some sleepless nights as he worked his way through its pages.

The global conditions that encouraged the spread of the Spanish Flu have some striking parallels to our own time.

Of particular significance were the overcrowded military, refugee and evacuee camps of World War I that gave the virus plenty of bodies in which to thrive through the last days of the Great War.

For today’s world, think of Iraq’s ‘Green Zone’, the post-Katrina camps and shelters across 20 US states and the numerous hunger camps filled with millions across Africa.

Massive troop deployments also encouraged the spread of Spanish flu, as the rotations of troops through Iraq and Afghanistan would encourage a pandemic today.

A lack of capable medical facilities, vaccines and a shortage of doctors and nurses also helped the 1919 death toll to move into the tens of millions. There are few countries in the world today that can honestly claim to have a universal public health system that could cope with a bird flu pandemic.

Australia’s health minister Tony Abbott doesn’t even try to deny that the death toll would be enormous and that there is little his government can do to help those infected.

Then, as now, the sick will be quarantined in their homes and left to die.

In Australia the Spanish Flu killed an estimated 20,000 people out of a population of four million, and that was in the days when interstate travel was virtually unheard of for the majority of people.

Incredibly, hundreds of young Australian men who had survived the incomprehensible horrors of World War I returned home only to catch the flu and die shortly afterwards.

In Australia, schools, churches, concert halls, theatres, train stations, public squares, pubs, were all locked down. Farms, factories and city business districts ground to a halt as people fled to the country to escape the pandemic. They only succeeded in transporting the virus to rural Australia, where it killed as effortlessly as it had in populated centres.

Two weeks ago, GW Bush returned from his holiday reading to find his country awash with at least 300,000 people crowded into camps and shelters across some 20 states. He has already declared a state of emergency that encompasses more than two thirds of the US, and some 80,000 troops and support crews (including deployments from Mexico, Canada and Israel) are on the ground in at least four states smashed by Hurricane Katrina.

New deployments of National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan are being cut back, soldiers are being recalled from the war zones and the Department of Defence is calling for at least 3000 volunteers from within their civilian ranks to deal with an unspecified ‘crisis’.

In Q & As with journalists as he toured the Hurricane Katrina disaster zones, Bush made reference to “a possible avian flu pandemic” and how the US would cope with such an outbreak. He was short on details.

GW Bush will deliver an Address To The Nation on Thursday night. Don’t expect much talk about “winning the War On Terror”, he’s got bigger issues on his mind now.

Finally, the US Centre For Disease Control has issued guidelines on reporting damaged, lost or stolen ‘stock’ for the many bioresearch labs and facilities that are in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone.

One such bioresearch facility in New Orleans is located on the campus of Tulane University. The facility was flooded. Amongst the active bio-agents listed in its ‘stockpile’ believed to have been affected by the flooding is avian flu.

FASHIONABLE SYDNEY SET OUTRAGED AT AL QAEDA TERROR THREAT SNUB

MELBOURNE JOINS 'MOST BOMBABLE' WORLD CITIES LIST

"SYDNEY IS, LIKE, SO OVER," SAYS AL QAEDA'S AL ASUQUF

By Darryl Mason

Sydneysiders are reeling this morning over news that Al Qaeda has announced Melbourne as a possible new target of their worlwide campaign to scare the piss out of people.

This is being seen as a major snub in social and political circles of the 2000 Olympic City, and leading Sydneysiders are calling on Al Qaeda to reconsider their choice of future targets.

The Al Qaeda announcement is also expected to make it even harder for Sydney poltiicians to redirect millions of taxpayer dollars from spending on education, child care and medicines for the elderly to buy CCTV cameras and other anti-terror related security measures.

"It's terrible news," said one Sydney security specialist who has been campaigning for the NSW government to spend $100 million on his line of robot dogs that sniff out bombs concealed in the buttholes of Islamomaniac poodles.

If Sydneysiders are disappointed by the Al Qaeda snub then Melbournians are absolutely gloating at the news that hit front pages and headlines around the world today.

Fashionistas down south claim the Al Qaeda announcement is yet another sign of just how 'cool' Melbourne had become.

"Obviously even Al Qaeda knows Melbourne is the city to be seen in if you have any taste at all," said socialite Rita Tayor. "Melbourne is so cool right now, everybody is flocking here, even bomb-happy, kill-crazy matyrs who hate our freedom."

An Al Qaeda spokesman has confirmed that Melbourne was chosen over Sydney because it is now seen internationally as the 'IT' Australian city of today.

"Sydney is, like, so over," said Al Qaeda media whiz Al Asuquf. "Well, not over, like bombed to hell over. Just over as a fashionable target for self-detonating suiciders."

"We do monitor what's hot and what's not in terms of the world's great cities," said Asuquf, "and Melbourne is definitely hot. We don't want to be seen as being out of touch with fashion trends, and so Melbourne was an obvious choice as the Australian city to honour with a September 11 anniversary threat of looming carnage and mayhem."

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the new Al Qaeda threat confirmed the necessary validity of his plan to track terrorist suspects by satellite, install 'hate thought' detectors in peoples' brains and lock up four year old children fleeing war zones until they learn what Free Australia actually means.

"When you're dealing with terrorists who hate our freedom," said Howard, "it is vitally important to stand up to their threats by restricting the freedoms of Australians as much as possible, and to show the terrorists that we will freely continue to fire bomb Muslims from the sky with our freedom jets until the whole world is free."

In the US, President George W Bush celebrated the September 11 anniversary by opening a string of new freedom-related enterprises. Bush oversaw the ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new Freedom Juice Company, the Freedom Jail for Jihadic Newborns, the Freedom Torture Centre and the plush new Freedom Execution Hall.

Bush has also endorsed a new line of products to help fight terror, including Freedom Shackles, the Freedom Infant Decapitator Bomb, Freedom Napalm and Freedom Testicle Electrocuters.

"We have always loved freedom, we continue to love freedom and we will never stop loving freedom," said Bush, who loves freedom, during ceremonies to officially announce that September 11 will now be known as ‘Freedom Day’.

"To celebrate Freedom Day every free citizen of free Western society will be required by threat of torture and detention to freely celebrate their freedom by being free and freely repeating 'I love freedom' one hundred times," said Bush.

"Being free requires the strict enforcement of free laws to enforce freedom," Bush said. "You cannot be free unless there are free laws to make sure you are being free correctly."

Both Bush and Howard have also denied rumoured plans to build a 100 foot tall wall completely encircling Iran, Iraq and Syria to create the 'Republic of Freedomistan'.

"I thoroughly, and freely, reject these scandalous lies," said Howard at the joint media conference. "But all options are still on the table."

Bush then searched under the table before asking Howard, "I can see the media but where's the joint?"

MEXICAN ARMY ENTERS US UNDER POLICE ESCORT

THE MERGING OF THE US, CANADA AND MEXICO HAS BEGUN

STORM 'OPHELIA' REACHES HURRICANE SPEED OFF US COAST

Under the guise of Hurricane Katrina rescue and recovery operations, hundreds of armed and unarmed Mexican troops have crossed the US border into Texas. Another long convoy of Humvees and trucks packed with soldiers are scheduled to cross over into the US today.

The entry of Mexican troops has been confirmed by the Austin, Texas, Police Department, US Congressmen and US-Mexico border control officers.

Although the Mexico Army deployment has been officially announced by the White House as being part of Katrina relief operations, US weblogs and message boards are humming with questions about why the Mexican Army is on US territory. There are already tens of thousands of US troops, Special Forces and police deployed throughout the four states ravaged by the hurricane almost two weeks. Hundreds of fire brigade, paramedics and general rescue workers sit around hotels and motels enduring FEMA 'training courses' while waiting for FEMA to give them the official clearance to move and start their specific operations.

With Canadian soldiers also on the ground this is the first time in more than a century that uniformed soldiers from a foreign army have deployed on US soil.

What is less known, however, is that the United States, Canada and Mexico are now being merged into a 'super-America' state, under the guidance and momentum of the American Enterprise Institute and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).

But perhaps there is more relief operations on the horizon than those resulting from Hurricane Katrina, as massive as they are.

Hurricane Ophelia is now whipping up off the East Coast of the US and is expected to make landfall in the next week. Meteorologists are surprised by the erratic behaviour of Katrina and computer modelling is not revealing all the info expected.

On the West Coast, seismologists are melting down over massive tremor activity clustering around the highly unstable San Andreas Fault. While no evacuations have begun the tremors are making state officials in California extremely nervous.

If Hurricane Ophelia hits the US with anything like the force of Hurricane Katrina and there is some kind of major rupturing of the San Andreas Fault, affecting literally tens of millions of Americans, few Americans are going to raise hell about the Mexican and Canadian armies working on sovereign US territory.

The millions displaced by a combined assault of another Force Four plus hurricane and a string of earthquakes shattering California are going to be thankful for all the help they can get, from anybody.

Meanwhile in the Gulf Ophelia brews and brews, and behind her another two tropical storms are being watched closely. The hurricane season in the US doesn’t end until November 30.

It should be renamed 'Superstorm Season.'

What Was The Most Popular Item Looted In New Orleans Besides Water And Medicines?

By Darryl Mason

Everything in the shops in the flood zones will be destroyed, the goods can't be resold, by law. Everything goes into landfill, particularly now 'disease' is rising from the floodwaters.

But never mind all that.

If you google "New Orleans Looting photos" and have a good look through some of the sites, look at a few dozen photos, what do you see?

There's one guy with a big screen TV.

There's a guy with a case of beer.

There's a woman with an armload of jeans.

But what do you see again and again?

Zoom in, see those big parcels in the arms of all those black people? What do you think is in those brightly coloured, plastic wrapped packages?

Again and again it's the same thing, probably the most popular looted item in New Orleans.

Disposable nappies.

Yes, disposable nappies.

It's enough to break your heart...

The Battle Of New Orleans Will Not Be Televised

Is A Civil War About To Break Out In New Orleans?

FEMA Shuts Out Media As Americans Are Removed From Their Homes At Gunpoint

By Darryl Mason

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now refusing to allow camera crews into New Orleans as Marines and National Guard, bearing assault rifles, go door to door removing American citizens from their homes.

A number of camera crews are posting on news blogs that they are being turned back from the
dozens of check-points that now surround New Orleans.

The NBC News anchor Brian Williams, still inside New Orleans, claims his camera team was moved out of an area where National Guard were taking up position, but there was also serious intimidation on behalf of deployed police.

"...a police officer...raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media," claims Williams, "bvious members of the media...armed only with notepads. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look."

"The fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from leaving," Williams said, referring to the Convention Centre and Superdome, scenes of immeasurable horror, "is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history."

There are more than 65,000 Marines, National Guard and private security contractors deployed in New Orleans. By contrast, only 10,000 or so were deployed into Iraq cities like Fallujah and Mosul, and they were declared warzones.

FEMA now controls all Military operations in New Orleans. Under the overall control of President Bush, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Marines, National Guard and elite Special Forces (including the counter-terrorist specialist Delta Force of Black Hawk Down infamy) are ramping up the eviction of up to 10,000 New Orleans residents.

FEMA is refusing media access to New Orleans under the stunning excuse of Respect For The Dead. This is after the bodies of pregnant women, children and disabled old men have rotted in the sun on the streets of New Orleans for eight days in full view of the world’s media.

A FEMA spokeswoman claimed in an e-mail to media : "The recovery of victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect and we have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media."

A mandatory evacuation order has been issued by NO Mayor Nagin. Residents are being told there is a significant health risk in staying, but dead bodies are rarely the cause of disease outbreaks. There were literally hundreds of thousands of corpses strewn along the Indonesian coastline after the Boxing Day tsunami and yet there were no epidemics.

The threat of fear-factor outbreaks of typhoid are also highly unlikely, according experts quoted on BBC.

FEMA’s blocking of the media, and the disease 'threat' to the thousands on dry ground in New Orleans, work in unison. The stayers are being evicted for the good of their health and with the media out of the way, Bush can order the Military to use 'necessary force' to ramp up evictions without the world seeing powerful images of American soldiers dragging American citizens from their homes.

Or perhaps even worse, FEMA can block footage of raging gun battles between the hundreds of armed stayers who have already promised they won’t leave without a fight.

The idea of urban warfare, a mini-civil war, on the streets of an American city seems unbelievable, but that is what it appears is now being prepared for. Unless, of course, the National Guard and the New Orleans police stick to their refusals to engage in armed conflict with residents.

If such a mutiny did occur, or has already occurred, and the evictions must go forward, it will be up to the Special Forces and the teams of private security specialists (back from the urban warfare of Iraq, just like Marines) to get the job done.

Expect a news blackout over the next few days if total evictions go ahead.

Horrors Of Katrina Asftermath Cause White House Press Conference Meltdown

By Darryl Mason

The American media have turned on the White House over the failure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security to prevent the deaths of thousands of people in New Orleans, and other cities and towns smashed by Hurricane Katrina.

For months the media have cruised their way through press briefings with White House spokesman Scott McClellan who has regularly used a type of psychological warfare to confuse, intimidate and conjugate the mainstream media.

Not anymore.

A number of journalists in the room during yesterday’s press conference saw for themselves the incomprehensible death and destruction on the streets of New Orleans. The media, finally, are fighting back against the Lords of Spin, including the Grand Wizard of propaganda Scott McClennan himself.

Here’s some excerpts from the fiery press conference yesterday :

Q Scott, does the President retain confidence in his FEMA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, see, this is where some people want to look at the blame game issue, and finger-point. We're focused on solving problems, and we're doing everything we can --

Q What about the question?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're doing everything we can in support --

Q We know all that.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.

Q Does he retain complete confidence --

MR. McCLELLAN: We're going to continue. We appreciate the great effort that all of those at
FEMA, including the head of FEMA, are doing to help the people in the region. And I'm just not going to engage in the blame game or finger-pointing that you're trying to get me to engage.

Q Okay, but that's not at all what I was asking.

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure it is. It's exactly what you're trying to play.

Q You have your same point you want to make about the blame game, which you've said enough now. I'm asking you a direct question, which you're dodging.

MR. McCLELLAN: No --

Q Does the President retain complete confidence in his Director of FEMA and Secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: I just answered the question.

Q Is the answer "yes" on both?

MR. McCLELLAN: And what you're doing is trying to engage in a game of finger-pointing.

Q There's a lot of criticism. I'm just wondering if he still has confidence.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and blame-gaming. What we're trying to do is solve problems, David. And that's where we're going to keep our focus.

Q So you're not -- you won't answer that question directly?

MR. McCLELLAN: I did. I just did.

Q No, you didn't. Yes or no? Does he have complete confidence or doesn't he?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, if you want to continue to engage in finger-pointing and blame-gaming, that's fine --

Q Scott, that's ridiculous. I'm not engaging in any of that.

MR. McCLELLAN: It's not ridiculous.

Q Don't try to accuse me of that. I'm asking you a direct question and you should answer it. Does he retain complete confidence in his FEMA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?
MR. McCLELLAN: Like I said -- that's exactly what you're engaging in.

Q I'm not engaging in anything. I'm asking you a question about what the President's views are --

MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely -- absolutely --

Q -- under pretty substantial criticism of members of his administration. Okay? And you know that, and everybody watching knows that, as well.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, everybody watching this knows, David, that you're trying to engage in a blame game.

Q I'm trying to engage?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

Q I am trying to engage?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct.

Q That's a dodge. I have a follow-up question since you dodged that one. Does the White House feel like it missed opportunities to alleviate or head off some of the damage in the New Orleans area, flood damage? Did it miss an opportunity to head any of that off?

MR. McCLELLAN: In what way?

*********************

Q Does the President agree with his mother that the homeless taken from New Orleans to Houston are much better off now because they were underprivileged in New Orleans?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think she was making a personal observation on some of the comments that people were making that she was running into. I'm not sure that that's exactly what she said, but --

Q I have it right here if you need it.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- what we're focused on -- what we're focused on is helping these people who are in need.

Q Does he agree with his mother?

MR. McCLELLAN: And I think that the observation is based on someone who -- or some people that were talking to her, that were in need of a lot of assistance, people that have gone through a lot of trauma and been through a very difficult and trying time. And all of a sudden, they are now getting great help in the state of Texas from some of the shelters.

Q "It's scary that they're all coming to Texas."

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I think you can look at her comments.

Q: “It’s scary that they’re coming to Texas.”

********************

Q When did the President know that Katrina was the kind of hurricane that could overtop the levees?

MR. McCLELLAN: A lot of the media reports that were coming out Monday, Monday night, Tuesday morning were expressing that it had missed the massive flooding that some had projected in a worst-case scenario.

Q The President of the United States was getting his information about this major disaster from the media?

You don't need Scott McClellan to know the answer to the last question was : "Yes."

The Trillion Dollar Storm

Bush Rewards FEMA With $US60 Billion To Spend As They Please

$US1 Billion Spent On Caravans And Campers To House The Homeless

Texas, Florida Get Most Evacuees Now Being Granted $US2000 Debit Cards To Buy Food, Clothing, Medicines, As Florida & Texas Economies Boom

By Darryl Mason

After the Federal Emergency Management Agency blocked aid reaching New Orleans and ignored calls from the Navy to deploy doctors, water and medical equipment from a hospital-equipped ship that was waiting off the coast from New Orleans, FEMA has been given $US60 billion of taxpayers money to spend as they please. As most evacuees were shipped to Florida and Texas, most of the money spent housing them will be spent in these states. Texas is the Bush homeland, Bush brother Jeb is the governor of Florida.

The first billion went to buying up tens of thousands of caravans, campers and RVs to house the 200,000 homeless people now dispersed across one third of the US. There is now what has been termed a “critical shortage” of caravans and campers in the US.

One of the benefits of housing the poor homeless Americans in easy-to-move accommodation is they can be shipped around the country at short notice, from one state to another, depending on how locals react to their presence and how many jobs are going.

Over the next few days more than 70,000 debit cards with $2000 credit on each will be dispersed to evacuees to buy food, clothing, bedding and medicines. 90% of the homeless are now in Florida and Texas, which means hundreds of millions of dollars are now pouring into the local economies of Florida and Texas as a direct result of the devastation wrought on New Orleans.

As all the counties of all the states where evacuees have been sent are under Bush imposed Emergency Measures, 100% of all costs associated with hosting the homeless will be met by the federal government. Curiously, all 14 plus states involved had majority voting in favour of Bush at the last election.

The FEMA grants are expected to continue for months. US Congress is growing extremely nervous as $US60 billion has already been allocated, yet some estimates suggest $US200 billion minimum will be needed within months.

Counting in costs of rebuilding, loss of jobs, insurance claims, housing and feeding 200,000 evacuees and handing out quick cash in place of social security payments, The Trillion Dollar Storm is no long shot.

The Trillion Dollar storm is rapidly becoming a reality.


.

Hurricane Katrina Aftermath : 40,000 Missing, Rumours Of 10,000 Dead

Half Of United States Is Now Under 'Emergency Protective Measures' Declarations

50,000 US Military Deployed Across Five States



By Darryl Mason

"We will remove any...bureaucratic obstacles that may be preventing us from achieving our goals."

President Bush, September 6, 2005.

Thousands of US counties across fourteen States are today under FEMA/Homeland Security emergency protective measures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In Louisiana, New Orleans has been destroyed and the capital city Baton Rouge is cracking under the pressure of having its population doubled by evacuees to one million in less than 24 hours.

One million Americans have abandoned their homes or are about to be forced out.

Dozens of towns and villages across an 80,000 square mile area lie in ruins. More than 350,000 houses, some two percent of all America’s free-standing homes, have been leveled or damaged by the hurricane, rains and flooding. A half million more homes remain without electricity or running water.

50,000 US National Guard, Army, Navy, Airforce, Special Forces and private Military contractors have been deployed across at least five states, concentrated on the Gulf coastline

Unspecified operations that were announced as taking weeks, on Saturday, have now been updated to months.

At least one deployment of National Guard due to leave for Iraq has now been redirected to the Gulf coastline.

Some 3000 National Guard stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being brought home to search for family members, to recover possessions and to join the homeland deployments. The Green Zone in Iraq almost erupted into mutiny when footage of the devastation in their homeland was broadcast on televisions, the internet, on their telephones. There was no way to keep the images from the soldiers. The Guard demanded they be allowed to go home. The Pentagon could only say yes.

The world cannot believe what it is seeing.

How can this be America?

Cuba has offered 1500 doctors, some of the best in the world, and tons of medical supplies. Bush said no.

Syria, Iran and North Korea, the Axis Of Evil, have offered shiploads of aid and emergency rescue and recovery crews. Bush said no.

It seems like only days ago Pat Robertson was calling for Hugo Chavez to be killed, now Venezuela is offering free fuel and heating oil. Bush said no.

Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, some of the poorest countries of the world are sending aid to the poorest people in America.

The US media is fracturing. They are scrambling to find another story, a bigger story, a distraction, a celebrity scandal to fill all the airtime now consumed by these fucking awful images of human misery. But this is the only story.

Newsreaders are breaking down, on the spot journalists roar with outrage and scream on air, websites and newspaper front pages are running large photos of American corpses, adults first, they won't show the dead children, yet.

The hysteria in the media and on the street is fermenting, thickening, taking shape, brewing up like another hurricane.

New Orleans has been the focus of near total media attention, but there are other stories of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that appear as bad right now, maybe even worse. Bodies are floating down the Mississippi.

In US states the size of European countries for mile after mile have been stripped clean of houses, apartment blocks, offices, police stations, shopping malls, highways, forests, amusement parks and schools.

Bodies are piled by the roadside and hang from trees where the winds dropped them, there’s not enough power to run the fridges and not enough morgues to hold all the corpses. New Orleans Mayor Nagin chokes as he tries to prepare his city for a death toll, he claims, may reach 10,000.

There is talk of funeral pyres, comments drift into news sites claiming body burnings have already begun. Nothing is confirmed, but the media runs with almost every bizarre story that reaches them.

An emotional assault of imagery of Americans destroyed fill every news channel.

We saw New Orleans, now we will see the rest.

In Mississippi state some 30 miles of the coastline is utterly devastated and 100,000 plus Americans pick through the ruins and scavenge on a daily basis to find food, clothing, baby supplies and fresh water. In some towns, there is no such thing as illegal looting anymore.

Massive tent cities, empty factories and closed military bases are being examined to serve as camps to house 1000,000 people, but they’re not open yet. The tent cities of Biloxi, Mississippi are still in planning stage.

Even if FEMA opens 'temporary' accommodation they don’t know if the homeless masses will relocate. Most want to stay where they are. They’ve seen the lives their fellow Americans are living in the shelters and camps they were bussed to and they’re terrified.

Football stadiums in three states house tens of thousands of people. They live and sleep in areas of only a few square feet. What they have now is smaller than a Guantanamo Bay cell.

But these people have no partitions, no curtains, no privacy. The lights are never turned off. They live under curfews, armed guards patrol amongst them, they can be arrested for drinking, they eat military rations, some already spoiled, supplemented by donated food. The military rations are running low. In some camps they’ve already been cut off. The military need for them for own ranks.

There is little work in the new communities of these displaced Americans and local schools can barely hold and educate the children already enrolled. Mental health specialists see disaster, mere weeks away, yet these stadiums could be their homes beyond Christmas.

Some of the homeless have found floor space in churches, mosques and synagogues. Whole families live in cars parked in suburban streets. The police can’t tell them to move on, there’s no petrol left in the vehicles' fuel tanks.

Two weeks ago most of these people had jobs, homes, beds, air-con, DVDs, wide screen televisions and hot showers. Now they have nothing. They carry their possessions in plastic shopping bags. They weren’t allowed to bring their trolleys and strollers on the buses.

The Red Cross shelters are overcrowded and infectious diseases are breaking out. Typhoid, TB, rumours of West Nile virus. Doctors fear outbreaks, they whisper of pandemics. Post traumatic stress disorder already runs rampant, children cry non-stop, parents tremble as they rock them, nightmares scream from the lips of those who can sleep, but most don’t sleep, they haven’t slept for more than week, not real sleep, and now they’re hallucinating, their bodies are breaking down.

In the streets of some of the towns that have taken in the new homeless, the shock of it all spreads like the flu. Locals want to be good Americans and look after their fellow Americans in this terrible time of need, but something is wrong. It’s all falling apart. It’s not supposed to be like this. There are streetfights between families in their white picket fence, flag draped towns. The supermarket shelves are emptying. People are attacking each other in lines for fuel or stealing it from each other’s cars.

Thousands who fled to the shelters and the perceived safety of larger communities are now returning, or trying to return, to their splintered homes.

"It’s safer here," they say. Those who can get past the armed checkpoints declare they won’t leave again, all they have now are their ruins and their guns.

Electricity and running water might be months away, they’ve been told. They cannot stay. There is nothing here, no power, no water, no shops, no jobs. But they don’t want to leave. And it’s the same in New Orleans, a few thousand remain, a few hundred with guns who said they will fight rather than go. The Army has said they will drag them out of their homes, if necessary.

"When I'm thinking about how we can help this part of the world," President Bush said when he toured the area for a few hours, "Mississippi is on my mind." He was in Mississippi. A food station was built in the storm-torn street before he arrived, it was manned and people were fed as he held a press conference. When Bush left the food station was dismantled.

But new food stations are opening up, though few are permanent. There are no buildings to house them. The stations open up shop in car parks, on corners, in suburban streets. The queues of desperate, hungry, bewildered Americans can stretch for half a mile. They are given a few bottles of water and two small boxes of food per family then sent away until tomorrow.

Some who have cars to drive to the food stations return to their flattened towns and share their meagre rations with other families. There’s already rules coming into play about the food and water. You can’t pick up for other families, you might be hoarding, there’s not enough to hoard. There’s not enough to go around in the first place.

The volunteers think the food people will be back tomorrow, but they’re not sure. It depends on the trucks that ship in the food and water. Six trucks are needed per town per town to get in the most basic necessities. Food can be shoved out of helicopters, but that can cause riots.

If the trucks stop coming, there will be no food, there will be no water.

Gas prices have almost doubled, but the prices don’t matter because the pumps are running dry in more and more towns.

President Bush said he wants to be back in Mississippi when the towns are opening up new stores and shopping malls, "in about two years." He wants to cut the ribbons.

In about two years?

William Bissell is a retired Airforce captain. He served in Third World countries. He looks around at what has become of his community, his town, his beloved Mississippi. “People were better off in some of those Third World countries,” he said.

He cannot believe that this is America.

"The federal government," said William Bissell, "they’re not here."

Military convoys full of troops and supplies rumble by, but few stop. The supplies are going to an Army base.

In New Orleans there are gun battles in the streets.

The police are handing in their badges. Others put their guns in their mouths and blow out their brains.

National Guardsmen are refusing to follow orders. Some of them have killed Iraqis, but they won't open fire on fellow Americans.

In the White House a cadre of vicious liars are plotting their next move. Desperation is setting in.

In the glittering office towers of Washington and New York, big business make plans and dream of a new New Orleans, without so many poor black people, once the bulldozers have finished their work.

There’s another hurricane on the way, but this once has been born in the cold hearts of greedy men.

This is a proud society in decline.

This is the world’s greatest superpower coming apart at the seams.

This is America, September, 2005.

Dead Orleans : "Show Us Your Tits And We'll Rescue You"

By Darryl Mason

British tourists now back home have told sickening stories of rescuers snapping ‘souvenir’ photos and telling young women to expose their breasts if they want to be rescued.

Talking to the BBC, survivors Sandra and Ged Scott of Liverpool, England, explained how young girls standing on the roof of a hotel were told "Show us what you’ve got", as rescuers signalled them to lift up their t-shirts. When the girls said no the rescuers moved on.

"That's the sort of help we had from the authorities," said Scott.

The tourists knew nothing of the tragedy unfolding in the city, their only means of communications was shouting questions to police passing by the hotel in boats.

"The only information we ever got off them was negative, 'Do not go here. Do not go there'. There was no, 'Are you OK? Are you safe? Have you got water?' Most of the time they would ignore us."

The police presence vanished at night and the hotel guests were left to defend themselves as gunfire exploded across the blacked out city.

Like other survivors Scott told of having blockade doors and of bodies floating by. Looters arrived to try and sell the tourists radios, clothing and phones.

They were rescued by Louisiana game wardens, armed with rifles and fixed bayonets, as ammunition was running low.

The British couple now fear for the mental welfare of their seven year old son.

"He has been exposed to things no seven year old should ever see," Scott said.

Batty Barbara Bush Laughs It At Evacuation Camp

Former First Lady Barbara Bush is now so disconnected from reality she actually thinks that poor black children left homeless by Hurricane Katrina enjoy living in a vastly overcrowded football stadium where the most basic childcare needs are in short supply.

She waved her hand at a gaggle of black children and announced with a big smile, "This is working very well for them."

The Houston Astrodome is now the biggest homeless peoples shelter in the world, and is expected to be the only home some five thousand plus children will know until long after Christmas.

Most of those in the Astrodome were evacuated from the nightmare-world of the New Orleans Superdome where more than twelve people died, children were raped and conditions were so foul people were forced to defecate in plastic bags or where they stood.

Not suprisingly the evacuees were pleased to have found a refuge where people were not being stabbed and shot and raped and where the toilets worked. Barbara mistook the evacuees relief in finding safety as being a sign of their love for the Bush family homeland of Texas.

"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston," said Barbara, perhaps not realising they had already moved to Houston and not by choice, but by necessity.

"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," observed Barbara, pausing to chuckle before continuing on, with a broad smile, "...this is working very well for them."

They lost their homes, their pets, their clothes, their neighbours, their communities, all their possessions, and gained a camp bed.

Dead Orleans : Emergency Communications Lines Cut By FEMA

Psychological Warfare In The Disaster Zone

By Darryl Mason

Police, paramedics, disaster recovery, truck drivers and news media have all reported that radio communications in and around New Orleans were jammed or cut during critical days last week and over the weekend. Massive failures in the ability of rescue services to communicate meant total co-ordination was next to impossible.

Incredibly, this jamming of radio frequencies occurred across the spectrum, from emergency frequencies to trucker CB radios.

The 'dead zone' for most radio communications in and around New Orleans stretched for miles into the next district, Jefferson County. Some cell towers were down which meant many mobile phones didn’t work, and reporters said satellite phones were also on the blink.

On Meet The Press on Sunday, Jefferson County president Aaron Broussard said FEMA was responsible for cutting emergency communication lines. Once restored Broussard said he then had to post armed deputies to stop FEMA officials from trying to cut the lines again.

"FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines," he said.

"They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, 'No one is getting near these lines.''"

In warzones cutting, blocking or jamming radio and communication lines is a common tactic, dating back to World War One. Today such activities are called an 'information blockade'.

In modern warzones these kinds of activities are usually conducted as part of ‘Psychological Operations’ or PSYOPS, and are designed to plunge enemy forces and civilians into chaos and confusion. Today, information blocking can be done remotely, from Naval ships stationed off the coast of enemy territories, or by utilising portable frequency jammers.

Why FEMA is cutting communication lines and conducting information blocking in a disaster area, on American soil, is unknown.

FEMA Turned Back Food, Water, Medicine, Generators And Baby Supplies

Bush "They're Doing A Great Job"

By Darryl Mason

On Monday the Mayor of Slidell, Ben Morris, told WWL TV in New Orleans that FEMA agents and officials had turned back volunteers trying to bring generators into his county. Checkpoints now ring the entire area, FEMA are in charge, backed up by armed police, soldiers and non-uniformed militia.

"We’ve heard that they’ve gone around seizing equipment from our contractors."

Morris was furious and warned that if FEMA were going to continue blocking aid reaching his people then FEMA personnel “better be armed”.

"I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them deprive our citizens," roared Morris. "I’m pissed off, and tired of this horseshit."

What horseshit is that? The incredible long and growing list of citizens and volunteer professionals who have turned up from across the country and tried to enter the disaster zones with medical supplies, food, nappies, toys for children and boats for water rescue. FEMA officials have repeatedly turned these supplies away, or made the volunteers trying to bring them in wait while they got the action “cleared” from higher up their chain of command.

While people died in the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Centre, one convoy of truck drivers from, bringing vehicles filled with food and baby supplies and medicines, were halted by FEMA and armed guards as they tried to cross a bridge into New Orleans. They were made to wait for almost 40 hours by the side of the road while they watched the carnage on portable TVs. They were mere miles away while Americans screamed for help and babies died in the street.

According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan and President Bush, FEMA were doing "a great job".

This is America, September, 2005.


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