*DAMN R6 Forum

Okay... The title is to get you political nuts in here.  I'm doing a paper on how the US government pretty much stopped all Katrina relief for 4 days.  Problem is... I don't have much evidence... If any at all!  So I need evidence supporting it and not supporting it, because it's a problematic essay not an essay I have to answer the question to!

So if you political nuts can help me out, I'll be grateful!

Blitz 8)

PS: You can post the links here or you can email them to me. As long as they are valid, not some horse crap like The Onion, even though I like reading it.

Blitz...

Sorry in advance for the long post, but theres some good stuff pertaining to your paper here.

You may or may not consider some of these references valid, but I think if you crossreference the stories, you'll find the corroboration you need.

The most striking Id say, are Fema cutting the communication Towers of the Parish Police Departments, and turning back the 500 boat citizen flotilla, who tried to go in on the second day to start rescuing people.

Some of these plain turned my stomach.

While no doubt there were failures at that level, fact is, once the hurricane hit, they thought theywere off the hook. They did not think they were going to have quite the catastrophe becuase the levees had not breached yet, therefore the relief was pulled back a bit. They thought they dodged the bullet.
That said, there were some amssive failures at the federal level, most notably FEMA. Yes the president is responsible here, but in their bid to consolidate control, FEMA will be the organizationt that should shoulder most of the blame.

Here is a PARTIAL list of their failures...and the almost criminal failures they perpetrated.
I personlly will be devastated if these failures are not punished.

One that missed the list was Femas commandeering the diesel fuel that the parishes had bought for the generators for punps and basic electricty. ..AND they cut the FuCKING COMMUNICATION TOWERS for the local law enforcement agencies...

Someone should fucking fry for these.
And if they dont, when its all over, these people wil ahve to answer to a higher power for their failures.

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e..
 
FEMA turns away experienced firefighters
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/5/105538/7048
 
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..
 
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspec..
 
FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm
 
FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=...
 
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering  aid
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/3/171718/0826
 
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital  on board
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509..
 
FEMA to Chicago: Send just one truck
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902dale..
 
FEMA turns away generators
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html
 
FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond"
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470
 
That last one is real -- not satire but straight from  FEMA

Also a short snippet from an interview on MEET THE PRESS with Aaron Broussard (sherrif of Jefferson Parrish)
"""The president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, Aaron Broussard, just issued an emotional appeal on NBC’s Meet the Press. By the end, he was completely broken down, sobbing uncontrollably:

Broussard then discussed the difficulties local authorities had with FEMA, including one case where they actually posted armed guards to keep FEMA from cutting their communications lines:

Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines…"""""

And I had to post the article, becuase i was unable to Find it in the PicayuneItem.com (95.05) newspaper....sorry.

""PicayuneItem.com
9-5-5
 



BATON ROUGE, La. - Volunteer  physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping  hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors even as  health officials worry about potential outbreaks.
 
Among the doctors stymied from helping out are 100 surgeons  and paramedics in a state-of-the-art mobile hospital marooned in rural  Mississippi.
 
"We have tried so hard to do the right thing. It  took us 30 hours to get here," said one of the frustrated surgeons,  Dr. Preston "Chip" Rich of the University of North Carolina at  Chapel Hill. That government officials can't straighten out the mess and  get them assigned to a relief effort now that they're just a few miles  away "is just mind-boggling," he said in a phone interview.
 
While the North Carolina doctors waited Sunday, the first  predictable signs of disease from contaminated water emerged on Saturday:  A Mississippi shelter was closed after 20 residents got sick with dysentery,  probably from drinking contaminated water.
 
However, the country's leading health official told The  Associated Press in an interview at a triage center Sunday that her biggest  concerns are tetanus and childhood diseases.
 
"Tetanus is something we'd be especially concerned  about," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the federal Centers for  Disease Control and Prevention. Tetanus lives in soil and can enter the  body easily through a scratch, and many flood survivors have endured filthy  conditions.
 
Gerberding also urged health care workers in the growing  multitude of refugee shelters to try to find out a child's shot history  and, "If you can't establish that a child has been vaccinated, then  vaccinate. We can't take chances."
 
Diseases such as measles and whooping cough could rapidly  spread in the cramped quarters, thousands of flood victims are now sharing.
 
So far, there have been relatively few cases of diarrhea  and infections, Gerberding said, but "we're early in the process."
 
The CDC chief, who traveled to Louisiana with Health  and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, Surgeon General Dr. Richard  Carmona and other top health officials, spoke with the AP after visiting  an impressive triage center on the basketball court at Pete Marovich Center  at Louisiana State University.
 
Next door in Mississippi, the North Carolina mobile hospital  waiting to help also offered impressive state-of-the-art medical care.  It was developed with millions of tax dollars through the Office of Homeland  Security after 9-11. With capacity for 113 beds, it is designed to handle  disasters and mass casualties.
 
Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite  Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery  in the field, including open-chest and abdominal operations.
 
It travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers,  which on Sunday afternoon was parked on a gravel lot 70 miles north of  New Orleans because Louisiana officials for several days would not let  them deploy to the flooded city, Rich said.
 
Yet plans to use the facility and its 100 health professionals  were hatched days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, doctors  in the caravan said.
 
Other doctors also complained that their offers of help  were turned away. A primary care physician from Ohio called and e-mailed  the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after seeing a notice  on the American Medical Association's Web site about volunteer doctors  being needed.
 
An e-mail reply told him to watch CNN that night where  HHS Secretary Leavitt was to announce a Web address for doctors to enter  their names in a database.
 
"How crazy is that?" he complained in an e-mail  to his daughter.
 
Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University  who has been in contact with the mobile hospital doctors, told The Associated  Press in a telephone interview, "There are entire hospitals that are  contacting me, saying, 'We need to take on patients,'" but they can't  get through the bureaucracy.
 
"The crime of this story is, you've got millions  of dollars in assets and it's not deployed," he said. "We mount  a better response in a Third World country."
 
Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of health  affairs for the Defense Department, acknowledged there were problems and  said it's a priority "to get the medical community at work and up  and operating as soon as possible."
 
Many other doctors have been able to volunteer, and were  arriving in large numbers Sunday in Baton Rouge. Several said they worked  it out through Louisiana state officials.

ABSOLUTELY APALLING. good luck with your paper.

You might also want to take a look at some international news feeds etc, and look at just how much aid was offered (aid being not just food, water, medical supplies, but also highly skilled rescue teams, helicopters, ships, tents and shelters, generators, mobile hospitals etc ) and how all of this was turned down. (until recently when america actually asked for some blankets etc).

Im not sure how wide your paper is covering the whole issue, but you might want to touch on how a full comprehensive report on the defenses of New Orleans and the risks of a big hurricane etc was put on the desk of George Bush less than a year ago, and despite this Bush slashed the funding for keeping up the defense etc. 

if you find it hard to find information on a lot of this stuff, id seriously recommend you go to the Routers network,  Associated Press.. and the BBC World website   - you should fiind all this stuff archived, but it looks like Shiex has given you plenty to be chewing away on for a while!!

enjoy ;)

Blitz,

Not to poo on your party, but I would'nt write a paper on something that is still unfolding and current news. As you have probably noticed, it's not easy gathering information as most sources are unreliable if available at all and it just makes things a headache. My advice would be to try to compare it with federal responses to other recent emergencies (other hurricanes, 9/11)...that is the only way you will be able to write a good paper about this topic, imo.

Just my 2 cents....

I had to do a similar one page paper and I did it on the effect of the war effort in Iraq on relief efforts in New Orleans, found a lot of good stuff and not just from liberal anti-bush sites. Just find a good leg to stand on and google it. There are plenty of articles throwing the blame around on anyone you can think of.

Good luck,

Hazard

Well... I'm comparing it to the recent tsunami because there's a lot of info from relief organizations.  But I have a few sources saying that the US Congress dind't slow down relief, it was the State's fault.  So I have my bases covered, it's just finding reliable sources on the anti-congress side.

Blitz 8)

If anyone can give me the pro's of relief... Like it started sooner than usual or anything like that, post them here!

Blitz 8)

One more..sorry.
Good example of Beauracracy holding up even 'official' efforts..

Dont have any Pro relief stances, but still looking.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091505Y.shtml

It's okay now. I found some. Hopefully enough.  I won't know until this Friday if my essay is up to par.

Thanks for all the help! It is greatly appreciated!

Blitz 8)

Send me a copy of your paper in a PM...
Im interested to see how you wrapped it all into a package.

I dont care if its long.

double that up, i'll enjoy the read :)

me too, if it's any good i can sell it to some high school kid.

I'd also love to see what you have to say on the issue blitz.