Can You Forget What happened to the folks in Nawlins, and along the Gulf Coast; following Hurricane Katrina ? Neither can we, because some of them are family..
I Think since Mr. Obama and Mrs. Obama claim to be interested in helping where there is a genuine emergency, maybe they can take a moment and check out what’s happening to these folks who are still suffering from their predecesors promises of restoration.
So Today on F^cked UP Friday we’re askin the First Family, Do Ya Have enough Bedding for the Rest of the folks who are about to become homeless, due to your lack of attention, Mr and Mrs Obama ?
Hurricane Katrina Part 3- post Katrina Mississippi
We’re Gonna Keep our Attention Focused on This Issue this weekend and report basically on this because we know there is a real mess and somebody’s gotta fix this right now,, not later NOW.
“I need the trailer. I ain’t got nowhere to go if they take the trailer…This storm broke me. I need some help. And I got a long way to go.”
Ernest Hammond, 70, on pending FEMA trailer evictions
Dear KIN Folk,
FEMA is at it again and we need your help.
The agency has announced that on May 30, 2009, it will act to evict thousands of residents from FEMA trailers in the Gulf States in spite of the fact that these residents have had limited support and lots of barriers in their efforts to find permanent housing.
Mr. Ernest Hammond is a case in point. Hammond, a 70 year old, former New Orleans homeowner, could not get financial help from Louisiana’s Road Home program for his triplex since the housing structure was ineligible for a grant. To help himself, Mr. Hammond has collected almost $10,000 in aluminum cans but that won’t even begin to cover the costs to rebuild his home in the 7th Ward. His FEMA trailer is keeping him off the street while he struggles to return home.
Mr. Hammond is one of thousands of families living in FEMA trailers because they are either caught in a web of deeply flawed, bureaucratic home repair grant programs, a victim of all too rampant contractor fraud or simply priced out of a rising rental markets where affordable housing is being demolished or gentrified.
No one chooses to live in a FEMA trailer, but it is better than no home at all. Evicting residents without providing access to safe, permanent housing will only lead to homelessness and further destabilize families.
Thursday, May 28th is a National Day of Action organized by the US Human Rights Network to turn this around. Together, we helped keep survivors off the streets. Please take a minute to click and send an email or make a callto let the Administration know that evictions are a bad idea.
Say NO to FEMA’s decision to forcibly evict residents from trailers!
Tell President Obama and FEMA that they must stop FEMA’s plan to forcefully evict Gulf Region residents from temporary trailers.
The Facts:
Nearly 5,000 FEMA trailers continue to provide housing to residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina
2,800 FEMA trailers in Louisiana, with 1, 000 trailers located in Orleans Parish, LA
2,000 FEMA trailers in Mississippi
Most FEMA trailer occupants are elderly and/or disabled persons in desperate need of effective support and case management services to stabilize their housing and wellbeing.
FEMA trailer occupants are displaced homeowners and renters still struggling to rebuild their homes or secure affordable housing after Katrina and Rita.
Human Rights Begins at Home!
The United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement is a human rights policy that, for several years, has guided our government in providing temporary and permanent homes for people in foreign countries displaced by earthquakes, typhoons, and flooding. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only recently announced that the U.S. will apply the UN’s standards to assist displaced persons in Pakistan.
Hurricane Katrina displaced over a million people, many of whom have yet to fully recover as a result of governmental actions that are contrary to the UN’s standardsand human rights treaties ratified in the US. Gulf Region residents, both renters and homeowners, have worked tirelessly to access safe, permanent housing, and should have the support that our government provides to foreign countries under the Guiding Principles.
Abrupt removal of residents from their only source of shelter is unacceptable!
Hold our elected leaders to their promise of Gulf Region recovery, and demand equal protection under the same human rights policy that the U.S. government applies to displaced persons in other countries.
Tell FEMA to provide an extension to all homeowners and renters living in FEMA trailers to allow them sufficient time to repair their homes and/or find alternative housing.
Additional time would allow:
Louisiana homeowners to appeal denials of Road Home grants, or go to a Road Home closing.
Mississippi homeowners to be matched with available Katrina cottages that sit idle.
Renters more time to obtain rental assistance or other permanent affordable housing.
Demand Action Now!
Call the Obama Administration and FEMA to demand action now!Tell our government not to carry forward yesterday’s short-sighted policies and to apply the same human rights standards to displaced persons in the Gulf States. Demand a stop to the FEMA trailer deadline and the guarantee of safe, permanent housing in the Gulf Region.
Can You Forget What happened to the folks in Nawlins, and along the Gulf Coast; following Hurricane Katrina ? Neither can we, because some of them are family..
I Think since Mr. Obama and Mrs. Obama claim to be interested in helping where there is a genuine emergency, maybe they can take a moment and check out what’s happening to these folks who are still suffering from their predecesors promises of restoration.
So Today on F^cked UP Friday we’re askin the First Family, Do Ya Have enough Bedding for the Rest of the folks who are about to become homeless, due to your lack of attention, Mr and Mrs Obama ?
Hurricane Katrina Part 3- post Katrina Mississippi
We’re Gonna Keep our Attention Focused on This Issue this weekend and report basically on this because we know there is a real mess and somebody’s gotta fix this right now,, not later NOW.
“I need the trailer. I ain’t got nowhere to go if they take the trailer…This storm broke me. I need some help. And I got a long way to go.”
Ernest Hammond, 70, on pending FEMA trailer evictions
Dear KIN Folk,
FEMA is at it again and we need your help.
The agency has announced that on May 30, 2009, it will act to evict thousands of residents from FEMA trailers in the Gulf States in spite of the fact that these residents have had limited support and lots of barriers in their efforts to find permanent housing.
Mr. Ernest Hammond is a case in point. Hammond, a 70 year old, former New Orleans homeowner, could not get financial help from Louisiana’s Road Home program for his triplex since the housing structure was ineligible for a grant. To help himself, Mr. Hammond has collected almost $10,000 in aluminum cans but that won’t even begin to cover the costs to rebuild his home in the 7th Ward. His FEMA trailer is keeping him off the street while he struggles to return home.
Mr. Hammond is one of thousands of families living in FEMA trailers because they are either caught in a web of deeply flawed, bureaucratic home repair grant programs, a victim of all too rampant contractor fraud or simply priced out of a rising rental markets where affordable housing is being demolished or gentrified.
No one chooses to live in a FEMA trailer, but it is better than no home at all. Evicting residents without providing access to safe, permanent housing will only lead to homelessness and further destabilize families.
Thursday, May 28th is a National Day of Action organized by the US Human Rights Network to turn this around. Together, we helped keep survivors off the streets. Please take a minute to click and send an email or make a callto let the Administration know that evictions are a bad idea.
Say NO to FEMA’s decision to forcibly evict residents from trailers!
Tell President Obama and FEMA that they must stop FEMA’s plan to forcefully evict Gulf Region residents from temporary trailers.
The Facts:
Nearly 5,000 FEMA trailers continue to provide housing to residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina
2,800 FEMA trailers in Louisiana, with 1, 000 trailers located in Orleans Parish, LA
2,000 FEMA trailers in Mississippi
Most FEMA trailer occupants are elderly and/or disabled persons in desperate need of effective support and case management services to stabilize their housing and wellbeing.
FEMA trailer occupants are displaced homeowners and renters still struggling to rebuild their homes or secure affordable housing after Katrina and Rita.
Human Rights Begins at Home!
The United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement is a human rights policy that, for several years, has guided our government in providing temporary and permanent homes for people in foreign countries displaced by earthquakes, typhoons, and flooding. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only recently announced that the U.S. will apply the UN’s standards to assist displaced persons in Pakistan.
Hurricane Katrina displaced over a million people, many of whom have yet to fully recover as a result of governmental actions that are contrary to the UN’s standardsand human rights treaties ratified in the US. Gulf Region residents, both renters and homeowners, have worked tirelessly to access safe, permanent housing, and should have the support that our government provides to foreign countries under the Guiding Principles.
Abrupt removal of residents from their only source of shelter is unacceptable!
Hold our elected leaders to their promise of Gulf Region recovery, and demand equal protection under the same human rights policy that the U.S. government applies to displaced persons in other countries.
Tell FEMA to provide an extension to all homeowners and renters living in FEMA trailers to allow them sufficient time to repair their homes and/or find alternative housing.
Additional time would allow:
Louisiana homeowners to appeal denials of Road Home grants, or go to a Road Home closing.
Mississippi homeowners to be matched with available Katrina cottages that sit idle.
Renters more time to obtain rental assistance or other permanent affordable housing.
Demand Action Now!
Call the Obama Administration and FEMA to demand action now!Tell our government not to carry forward yesterday’s short-sighted policies and to apply the same human rights standards to displaced persons in the Gulf States. Demand a stop to the FEMA trailer deadline and the guarantee of safe, permanent housing in the Gulf Region.
Now I’m sorry for making this a sunday story – but it’s better than a monday story so police, give the girl back the peoples jewelry, and get on with the get on. more on these two blackeyed susans after the trial on the 28th of April – Wednesday. Stay Tuned, cause they’re still not done; we sure of that.
Rihanna had been wearing the jewellery to a pre-Grammys party
Singer Rihanna has asked the LA police to return jewellery taken as evidence the night she was allegedly attacked by her boyfriend Chris Brown.
Police took earrings and three rings from the singer hours before the Grammy Awards ceremony in February.
The items, which were on loan from a shop, are worth over $1.4m (£1m).
Lawyer Donald Etra, who represents the 21-year-old star, said the detective overseeing the case did not object to the return of the items.
The shop which owns the jewellery has asked Rihanna to give the goods back as soon as possible.
‘Photographs’
Mr Etra told the BBC: “Apparently, initially, the police felt that it would be needed as evidence. Now the belief is that photographs would be more than sufficient.
“That being the case, we’re asking the District Attorney to return the pieces.”
The request for the return of the jewellery states that lawyers for Mr Brown are also happy for the pieces to be released.
Mr Brown, 19, was arrested after rowing with Rihanna in a parked car. Both singers cancelled their scheduled appearances at that evening’s Grammy awards.
Later Mr Brown said he was “sorry and saddened” by the incident and had already sought counselling.
He also withdrew his name from Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards after coverage of the events “shifted the focus from the music”.
Last month Mr Brown was charged with assault and making criminal threats and is next due to appear in court on 29 April. He denies the charges.
These photos should have been released with the torture memos.. Don’t You Think that would have helped us to understand why they did what they did in their secret prisons?
Photos purporting to show prisoner abuse in Iraq were published in 2004
The Pentagon is about to release “hundreds” of photographs showing the alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, US officials say.
The alleged abuses by US personnel are said to relate to President George W Bush’s time in office.
The photos are being made public in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) five years ago.
The court order had been contested by the Bush administration.
The US defence department said the Pentagon had agreed to release a “substantial” number of previously unseen photographs by May 28.
“I think it will be in the hundreds,” added a Pentagon official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
‘Visual proof’
The images relate to around 60 criminal investigations of US military personnel suspected of abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2006.
The ACLU says the photos show that the much-publicised abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq amounted to a specific policy.
“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by US personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” said ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh.
But a Pentagon spokesman downplayed allegations of widespread abuse, saying it had acted swiftly to discipline some 400 personnel found to be involved in abuses.
The release of the photos will increase pressure on the Obama administration to consider prosecuting Bush-era officials for alleged complicity in torture and maltreatment of terrorist suspects, says the BBC’s North America Editor Justin Webb.
It follows the publication last week by the Obama administration of four sensitive memos outlining harsh interrogation techniques approved for use by the CIA by the Bush government.
Rights groups have called for CIA personnel involved in any torture cases to be prosecuted, while critics say the move would endanger national security.
This Woman in the white is a Mother who’s son was murdered by the Police in Barbados. so if you think the Islands are so nice, read this story of how they treat their own citizens. and look at how long it took to come out with this absolutely ridiculous decision. Please Judge,
Marguerita Maloney (right) with a friend before the verdict was announced. This scene changed dramatically after the verdict was announced as Marguerita fell to the ground and wailed.
TO screams of “Murderer”, “You kill my son”, “Dis is just de beginning”, was how the Coroner’s verdict of “death by misadventure” was greeted yesterday by Marguerita Maloney, mother of I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, and other relatives and friends.
It was minutes before 5 o’clock when Coroner Faith Marshall-Harris delivered her verdict at the Coroner’s Court, Roebuck Street, St. Michael, packed with Maloney’s relatives and friends including his mother and brother, Mandela.
After the Coroner left the courtroom and returned to her chambers, Maloney’s mother and others re-joined the Rastafarian brethren in the courtyard which included his father, David. Dozens had earlier lined the courtyard but had to remain outside during the verdict for lack of space.
Pointing and calling the names of the two officers who were first on the scene at Landlock, St. Lucy, where the 23-year-old chemical engineer died on June 17, 2008, Marguerita told Sergeant Wingrove Headley and Police Constable Wendell Walkes… “De inquest end, but dis is just de beginning. De Rasta brethren gine get you.”
Dressed in white, in stark contrast to the others who wore red shirts and black pants, Marguerita fell to the ground and wailed her son’s name, as well as those of Sojourner Truth, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X and the Rastafarian community.
She was eventually lifted up and left with the group, some of whom carried flags and placards.
I’Akobi Tacuma Maloney, by any standard, was a high achiever .
The 23-year-old, a devout Rastafari, was a recent graduate of the University of the West Indies, with a degree in engineering. Before that, he was valedictorian at his high school, where his classmates voted him “most likely to succeed.” He won a scholarship from the Barbados government that paid for his university education, and he was chosen by the Barbados Ministry of Social Transformation as a youth delegate at the 5th Ministerial Meeting on Children and Social Policy in the Americas. He had a black belt in martial arts and was an accomplished public speaker. He had just joined the Barbados Association of Professional Engineers, and was a summer intern at a cement factory. He seemed to be on a clear path to success.
On 17 June, 2008, everything changed. In circumstances that have not yet been fully explained, Maloney died in an encounter with the Barbados police. According to a police statement , at 5.30 that afternoon officers responded to a report of a “drug landing” at Cove Bay , near the northern tip of the island of Barbados. There they saw Maloney wandering near the top of a steep cliff overlooking the sea. They approached and interviewed him.
“Initial investigations reveal that Maloney suddenly ran and jumped off a cliff, landing on a ledge below. Shortly after this he was washed off this ledge by the pounding waves, which took him out into the sea,” public relations officer inspector Barry Hunte said.
Later, the assistant commissioner of police suggested that Maloney was “depressed” at the time of the incident:
According to the crime chief, police also discovered a note entered in his personal diary which suggested he could have been contemplating suicide.
But Maloney’s family was immediately suspicious of this version of events. His mother pointed out that the police claimed Maloney landed face down on rocks at the foot of the cliff, yet there was a prominent wound at the back of his head. Further, Maloney was reported to have jumped with his haversack on his back, and his body was in the sea for eight hours before it was retrieved — yet when the haversack was returned to his mother, there was no sign of water damage to its contents.
Within two days of the incident, the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari (ICAR) , a Barbadian Rastafari advocacy group, had set up a blog, AfriKa CRY BLOOD , to “promote, protect and defend the Ras Tacuma case.” ICAR began collecting evidence of possible foul play, disputed police allegations of Maloney’s involvement in drug smuggling, and made an urgent call for a full investigation of his death. The blog documented a protest held in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, as well as questions raised by members of the Barbados parliament.
There will be no public process to examine the circumstances of how he died while “in the company of” Barbados police. Eventually, the local news media will quietly let the story fade into the past, and people will say “Well, there was some sort of inquiry and it showed…” BUT THAT WILL BE A LIE.
BFP went on to remind its readers of a previous case in which a young man mysteriously died after an encounter with police. Meanwhile, Barbados Underground posted the full text of a statement by the People’s Democratic Congress, a political party.
… we in PDC ask that NOT ONLY must there be a Coroner’s Inquest into the circumstances of this death as soon as possible , BUT that ALSO the Attorney General allow his department to carry out their own fair and impartial investigations into this grievous affair.
I’Akobi was just like me. Young, intellectual, UWI graduate, ambitious, good job and with locks. You want to think that our society has advanced to such a point that all your other accomplishments mean something….
She linked to a thread at the Rastafari Speaks forum, in which Sis Ali suggested Maloney was the victim of police profiling: “someone saw Rasta up there and called the police.”
With Maloney’s family and the Barbadian Rastafari community still waiting for answers, ICAR has organised another protest march on Friday 1 August — the day when the end of slavery is commemorated across the Anglophone Caribbean — and launched an online petition calling for justice.
And We Are Still Talking about What To Do, In New Orleans – Why ?? Fix The Damn Levees so the city can be a city again, ACE You Asses. you know that the Mr Go made this problem, so undamn the shit and let the wet lands come back to life; and the natural reefs regenerate to save Nola.
Much of New Orleans was flooded by Hurricane Katrina
Building bigger, stronger levees in New Orleans will not be enough to save the US city from another Hurricane Katrina, a report has said.
The risks of severe flooding in the city could “never be fully eliminated”, said an independent panel of experts.
The report said the authorities should consider raising the level of buildings and even abandoning flood-prone areas.
More than 1,800 people died in the devastating 2005 hurricane, and about 80% of the city was flooded.
New Orleans has about 563 km (350 miles) of barriers, levees and other structures intended to protect the city.
But in August 2005, large sections of this system failed and much of the city was inundated by the storm surges brought by Katrina.
The report, from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Research Council (NRC), said the disaster had exposed the “many weaknesses in the hurricane protection and preparedness systems” for New Orleans and surrounding areas.
It said there had been “undue optimism” about the ability of the protection systems to withstand the impact of a storm on the scale of Katrina.
Voluntary relocation
FLASHBACK TO KATRINA
Katrina struck US Gulf Coast in August 2005 as a Category Three storm, killing more than 1,800 people
New Orleans was 80% flooded after storm surge breached protective levees
US government was blamed for slow, botched response that exacerbated disaster
The report said improvements made to the flood protection system since Katrina had “reduced some vulnerabilities”.
But, it said that “the risks of inundation and flooding never can be fully eliminated by protective structures, no matter how large or sturdy those structures may be”.
The authors advised that as there can be no absolute protection against storm surges and flooding, the authorities should consider encouraging people to move away from areas at risk.
Where this is not possible, “significant improvements in flood-proofing measures will be essential”.
This would include raising the standard height for ground floors of properties, strengthening critical infrastructure such as power and telecommunications and improving evacuation plans.
The report also found that there had been “limited understanding and appreciation of the risks of living behind levees”.
It advised that these risks needed to be communicated more clearly and consistently to those in affected areas.
Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest storms in US history, causing billions of dollar of damage and leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.
The US government was heavily criticised for the extent of the damage and for what was perceived to be a slow response to the disaster.
What We Want to know is, Why would he be in Czechoslovakia anyway ? and who would read anything this asswipe put out ? obviously the leftists are reaching deep into the shit bins to put this type of filth out for circulation. thankfully the plot was stopped before it caught them off guard.
Duke once held a seat for Louisiana in the House of Representatives
Czech authorities have ordered a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, to leave the country.
The 59-year-old American was invited to the Czech Republic by a local far-right group and had planned to give lectures and promote a book.
But on Friday he was arrested and questioned by police on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, an offence under Czech law.
Mr Duke has not been charged, but was ordered to leave the country.
He has reportedly been given a deadline of midnight on Saturday.
His lawyer was quoted in local media as saying she would lodge a complaint against the police on his behalf.
The Czech interim prime minister-designate, Jan Fischer, appeared on Czech television to say the opinions expressed in Mr Duke’s book were “simply unacceptable, incomprehensible”.
David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the notorious white supremacist Ku Klux Klan group. He once held a seat for the Louisiana state House of Representatives, and made an unsuccessful bid for the US presidency.
By Rory Cellan-Jones BBC News technology correspondent
The IWF was set up in 1996 to police access to images of child abuse.
The BBC goes behind the scenes at the Internet Watch Foundation to see how its researchers cope with the psychologically demanding job of policing sites peddling images of child abuse.
The watchdog that blocked a Wikipedia page last year over a rock album cover says it still believes that the image at the heart of that controversy was illegal.
But the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says it has moved on after the row in December 2008, and claims its quest to eradicate child abuse images from the web is now having real success.
Critics have accused the organisation of being both unaccountable and ineffective. This week the BBC was given unique access to the work of the IWF, as the watchdog tries to fight back.
It’s in a house in a quiet village north of Cambridge that the Internet Watch Foundation runs a hotline for reports of child abuse images. It’s a job the self-regulatory body was given in 1996, as the internet industry sought to avoid direct control by the police or government.
Upstairs at its HQ there is a door marked “IWF staff only – image viewing in progress”. I was allowed in, to find four analysts at work, sifting through reports that have arrived overnight from members of the public.
The analysts, who mostly have backgrounds in IT, prefer to remain anonymous, but one of them, Karen, agreed to tell me about her work.
She showed me a list of the reports she had to deal with that day, some from members of the public who said they had been looking for adult sites but had been shocked to come across child abuse images.
Some callers fear they may be accused of downloading illegal images.
Her first task is to try to determine whether the images are in fact illegal under UK law. “My next step would be to chase that image or website to the country where it is located,” she said.
In almost all cases, the offending sites are abroad, and Karen contacts one of the IWF’s 35 sister organisations – if there is one in the country concerned – and informs the UK police.
I put it to Karen that it must be difficult to do such emotionally draining work, especially when some feel that it’s not even worthwhile. “There are times when I questioned my own sanity for doing this,” she admitted.
“However, I’m a mother with two children, I feel that it’s an important job and someone needs to do it. That’s how I get through the day.”
Karen sees some sites cropping up time and again, with the criminals moving them from country to country, trying to stay one step ahead.
She said: “We’re also finding a trend towards sexual abuse images of younger and younger children, and more severe forms of abuse.”
She explains that most of the sites operate a pay-per-view system, charging $80-100 (£55-68) per month for access to images and videos.
The offending sites are also added to the blacklist compiled by the IWF for internet service providers, which then block access.
There are times when I questioned my own sanity for doing this
Karen, IWF researcher
It was this process which led to the blocking of a Wikipedia page about a 1970s album cover featuring an image of a naked young girl. That ruling, reversed within days, threw a spotlight on the IWF, and the transparency of its procedures.
David Gerard of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and other similar projects, says the incident showed the IWF to be “ham-fisted and incompetent at every level”.
He maintains that there is no way to block illegal content “without massive collateral damage to speech, communication, learning and society”.
Dr Richard Clayton , a computer scientist at Cambridge University, has a different criticism – that the watchdog suffers from confusion about its aims.
Browse The Internet In Privacy using Vidalia Tools
His research shows that, while banks manage to get phishing sites taken down within hours, the IWF takes an average of 28 days to get child abuse sites removed. “‘Are they trying to get sites removed from the internet?’ he asks, if so they’re doing a poor job.
“Alternatively, if they think their aim is to catch the criminals putting up this material, then they should become part of the police.”
The IWF censored an image that appeared on a Wikipedia page
Peter Robbins, chief executive of the IWF, says the various critics are ignoring the fact that the watchdog’s mission is proving a success.
He says the IWF has learned from the Wikipedia controversy, though he still believes the image on the album cover was illegal. “Was that an image of a pre-pubescent girl? Yes. In our view it’s not OK,” he says.
But he accepts that it was not realistic to ban an image that was widely available in shops and on the internet. “I don’t want to dwell on this incident. The fact is that we are dealing with some horrendous content on a daily basis and we’re working really hard with hotlines and law enforcement bodies to try to stop the distributors of these images.”
One of the darkest moments in this nations history was the Hurricane Katrina Debacle. What we are waiting for, is the subpoena with the names of George Bush, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and The Brown Guy; for the Katrina Mess.
no doubt you remember the situation..
in case you’ve forgotten, let us refresh your memory
Beginning today we examine the various court cases which have begun as a result of the mishandling of the incident, by the government; insurance companies; and various individuals.
and to think Bush was eating cake.. and Condi was Shoe Shoppin.
Suit Claims ‘Mr. GO’ Made Katrina Damage Even Worse
By JIM AVILA, BETH TRIBOLET and REYNOLDS HOLDING
April 20, 2009—
The victims of Hurricane Katrina, their lives uprooted and homesteads washed away, will finally get their day in court today as a landmark trial opens in New Orleans to consider whether the government made a deadly storm even worse.
The Untold Story of Hurricane Katrina
The accused culprit in this legal dispute is nicknamed Mr. GO, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet that the federal government cut through 76 miles of swamps and cypress forests to make shipping easier between the Crescent City and the Gulf of Mexico.
The people who filed the lawsuit — six survivors of the area’s hurricanes — claim Mr. GO magnified Katrina’s power by destroying wetland buffers and funneling wind-whipped water into the city.
“It has been a catastrophe ever since it was built,” said John Andry, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case.
But the government argues that it cannot be sued over Mr. GO, claiming protection under a 1920s federal law and the principle of sovereign immunity. Besides, there was nothing seriously wrong with Mr. GO — and little that could have lessened Katrina’s destructive power, say the government’s lawyers.
“The catastrophe would have occurred regardless of the MRGO and regardless of the way the channel was maintained prior to the flood,” the lawyers wrote in their legal brief.
The stakes are unprecedented: If the plaintiffs win, tens of thousands of other Katrina victims will likely win their lawsuits as well, making the federal government liable for up to $100 billion in damages, according to Army Corps of Engineers estimates. That would be more than any court judgment in U.S. history, according to legal experts.
That the case has made it this far is itself extraordinary. Over the almost four years since Katrina hit, dozens of lawsuits seeking damages for broken levees and other failed hurricane defenses have foundered on the government’ defense of immunity.
The federal Flood Control Act shields the government from liability for defective flood-control projects. And another law says the government can’t be sued for acting with reasonable care or making a judgment call.
But the victims in this case say none of that matters. They argue that Mr. GO is a navigation canal, not a flood-control project.
Video of the 17th street canal floodwall collapsing. taken by New Orleans firefighters during Katrina. Read all about it here: http://wizbangblog.com/
They also say the Army Corps of Engineers wasn’t acting with due care when it botched operation and maintenance of Mr. GO, and it wasn’t making a judgment call when it ignored a requirement to tell Congress about the channel’s environmental problems.
The Corps “had the arrogance and power to ignore anybody they wanted to ignore,” said professor Oliver Houck of Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. “They were the Corps. Until Katrina, they were king.”
The victims’ arguments have been persuasive enough to survive a government motion to dismiss the case on immunity grounds, a motion that has succeeded in virtually every other Katrina lawsuit.
Now they will have to back their arguments with hard evidence if the judge in this case — Stanwood R. Duvall of the U.S. District Court in New Orleans — is to find the government liable. Then, it would take another stage to determine how much the feds owe the victims, people like Kent Lattimore, one of the lawsuit’s six plaintiffs.
Lattimore’s home was destroyed by Katrina, and only a grass-covered slab remains.
“To this day, four years later, I think, how do you fix this, fix these neighborhoods?” he said, while gesturing toward an area that used to be his yard. “It’s devastating.”
But it is the small losses — a ring he received from playing in a college football bowl game, for example — that seem to bother Lattimore almost as much as the destruction of his home and the ruin of his business.
“I miss the small things: pictures, letters,” he said. “Four years later, I’ve processed a lot of that, I’m dealing with that, and maybe it’s what I’m supposed to have in my life.”
He and his neighbors, though, are hoping for much more, a hope nurtured by the slow but remarkably steady progress of the lawsuit that is finally coming to trial.
The trial is expected to last four weeks, and if it ends in favor of Lattimore and the other plaintiffs, the U.S. government will either be forced to settle — or face a crushing bill.
“If they win,” Houck said, “Katie bar the door, because the number of claimants out there for similarly situated money are in the tens of thousands.”
Starting in federal court today, a group of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish residents will square off against the Army Corps of Engineers in a trial they hope will prove that failure to properly build and maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet eroded protective wetlands and led to massive flooding that destroyed their homes and businesses during Hurricane Katrina.
The corps will try to convince Judge Stanwood Duval that even with the best possible maintenance of the MR-GO, only better and higher hurricane protection levees could have held back the storm surge.
The trial, expected to last three to four weeks, will be conducted by Duval without a jury.
The trial is getting under way as work continues to close the MR-GO, which opened in 1963 as a shortcut for large ships between the Gulf of Mexico and the Industrial Canal in New Orleans.
Almost two years later, Hurricane Betsy hit in September 1965, flooding parts of the city, including Gentilly and the Lower 9th Ward, as well as Arabi and Chalmette.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, among them WDSU-TV news anchor and eastern New Orleans resident Norman Robinson and his wife, have said that if Duval rules for their clients and the decision is upheld on appeal, thousands of additional Katrina flood victims in eastern New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard could seek compensation from the federal government.
Moreover, the plaintiffs’ attorney have vowed that if they win the case, they will ask President Barack Obama and Congress to help resolve the claims of all Katrina flooding victims.
The Robinson case and a pending MR-GO class action are the only surviving federal lawsuits against the corps on behalf of Katrina flood victims.
Last year, Duval dismissed a class action against the corps over failure of drainage canal levees during the 2005 storm. He cited a 1928 federal law that makes the corps immune from liability for damage caused by its flood-protection projects.
But Duval decided the Robinson case could proceed because it involves a navigation project, for which the corps has no immunity under law.
Besides the Robinsons, other plaintiffs in the trial starting Monday are former Tulane football player Kent Lattimore, who lost his St. Bernard trailer home and his real estate appraisal business to the floodwaters; nurse Tanya Smith, whose custom-built Chalmette residence, shared with two young sons, was ravaged by Katrina; and Lucille and Anthony Franz Jr., whose home and source of retirement income, a five-apartment complex, were lost to the flooding.
. . . . . . .
Susan Finch can be reached at sfinch@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3340.
The hurricane left many parts of the city underwater
A lawsuit filed by New Orleans residents against government engineers for damages caused by Hurricane Katrina is to be heard in court in Louisiana.
The residents claim that the US Army Corp of Engineers is liable to pay damages, because of poor maintenance of a shipping channel near the city.
If successful, some 120,000 other residents and firms could seek payouts.
More than 1,800 people died and much of the city was flooded by the devastating 2005 hurricane.
You may have seen this Video taken by the Guerra Family after Hurricane Katrina. Chalmette, LA.
this area is what was called the East, or East New Orleans. as you notice they are in their house as the storm starts. as the tape ends, look at how long they’ve been there. as well as the fact that they are alone in a sea of houses. this is actual footage so if you haven’t seen it – please watch this family and their fight for survival in the storm. even their dog has to fight to survive. it’s really heartwrenching. Now to think the government wants to shortchange someone after going through this ? no way.. These are Tax Payers; Land Owning Americans and They Deserve the Full Protection of the Law; if George Bush gets it.
‘Preventable’
The plaintiffs argue that because of the Corp of Engineers’ poor upkeep of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a shipping channel that links the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, flooding in the city’s St Bernard Parish and Lower Ninth Ward was exacerbated.
“They are responsible,” said Lower Ninth Ward resident Lucille Franz, 75, who lost her home in the flood, and whose sister died at a local nursing home.
“We wouldn’t have had that kind of water if it hadn’t been for the MRGO.”
The residents’ lawyer described the disaster as “the largest preventable catastrophe in American history”.
They are asking for damages of between $300,000 (£206,000) and $400,000 for each individual.
Government lawyers acting on behalf of the Corp of Engineers have not commented on the case, but court documents suggest they will argue that the flooding was caused by Katrina’s storm surge, and not by a failure of the MRGO’s flood defences.
This is from the District Chronicle from DC’s Howard University,
Remember Kanye Wests’ Comments - which are mirrored in this report
NEW ORLEANS (NNPA) – Contrary to a popular notion reported in news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 Gulf Coast disaster did not reveal to most Americans that widespread poverty and inequality are the nation’s ”dirty little secret.”
Rather, most Americans were aware of these problems before they were highlighted by the devastation of Katrina, according to a new study by Stanford sociologists. As a result, the event did not become a watershed in the debate over poverty, as some pundits have claimed.
In fact, awareness of poverty and inequality actually decreased among some groups of Americans after Katrina, suggesting that some people may have reacted negatively to news coverage by what they claimed to be a ”liberally biased media,” according to the study, ”Did Katrina Recalibrate Attitudes Toward Poverty and Inequality? A Test of the ‘Dirty Little Secret’ Hypothesis.”
The paper, co-authored by sociology Professor David Grusky and doctoral student Emily Ryo, will be published in the spring edition of the Du Bois Review. Lawrence Bobo, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor, co-edits the two-year-old, peer-reviewed journal on race in the social sciences. The forthcoming issue, which also includes a paper by education Professor Emeritus John Baugh, will be wholly devoted to new research related to Katrina.
By way of polls, researchers gauged attitudes changed following the disaster. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of the U.S. adult population claims to have paid ”very close attention” to news about Hurricane Katrina, making it the fifth-most closely watched story in the last 20 years.
”It follows that Katrina had the potential to recalibrate public ideologies in ways far more profound than, say, the release of yet another government report on inequality and poverty,” Grusky and Ryo write in the study.
According to the researchers, journalists broached many themes in their coverage of the disaster, but a common one was that Hurricane Katrina cast a fresh light on the depth and extent of poverty in America.
Ryo, a fourth-year graduate student, said that after Katrina she, too, had accepted the premise that Americans had been ”completely unaware” of the size of these problems. ”It’s easy to buy into the story that if only we had known about the extent of poverty in America, we would have buckled down and taken care of it,” she said in an interview. The sociologists classified participants in the Maxwell survey according to:
1. Their level of knowledge about poverty and inequality;
2. Whether they thought that inequality and poverty were social problems;
3. Whether they thought something should be done about these problems and, particularly, whether government action should be taken.
From these categories, four groups emerged with coherent ideologies, which the sociologists described as ”activists” (strong supporters of state intervention to reduce poverty), ”realists” (skeptical of the state’s ability and responsibility to reduce poverty and inequality), ”moralists” (do not characterize poverty and inequality as important problems) and ”deniers” (allege that poverty and inequality are neither growing nor substantial problems).
But what was most striking was that the two uninformed groups from 2004, which made up 11 percent of respondents, virtually disappeared after Hurricane Katrina, Grusky said in an interview.
”We do see a growing awareness of poverty and inequality in the disappearance of the [uninformed] classes, groups that were unaware of these problems before Katrina and were susceptible to its lessons,” he said. ”They are the groups for which it was a ‘dirty little secret.”’
According to Grusky and Ryo, ”the coverage of Katrina is fascinating precisely because it converted a conventional story about a natural disaster into an unconventional and high-profile story about the socially constructed disasters of poverty, inequality and racism.”
As a result, the question emerges about why there is such an underdeveloped response to these issues since it is clear that most Americans know about them.
The authors conclude that for most people, the problems are only ‘’side commitments” and, as a result, politicians are not forced to address them. ”There has to be a deeply felt ‘master commitment’ to create a strong incentive for politicians to translate public sentiment into policy,” Grusky said.
In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards touched upon the growing divide between the ”haves” and ”have-nots” with his ”two Americas” platform. Although Edwards eventually lost, Grusky and Ryo said he selected a theme that resonated with many Americans.
Just as environmental concerns have been brought into the mainstream by framing them within issues such as ”global warming,” so, too, could poverty and inequality be developed into mainstream ideologies by emphasizing that costs are collectively borne by society, Grusky and Ryo assert.
The authors conclude, ”The coverage of Katrina, for all its shortcomings, may be understood as consistent with this renewed appreciation of how poverty, inequality and racism color almost everything, even how a natural disaster plays out.”
Do You Remember When the Cops were caught looting from Walmart ?
well it wouldn’t be BadGals without a lil music now would it ?
we’re gonna wrap it all up with this lil ditty, George Bush Is a Gold Digga.. Uh Uh cause he aint messin wit no broke..Uh Huh Uh Huh with of course the original informas “Kanye West and Jamie Fox“. Uh Huh Uh Huh.. it’s okay to turn your speakers up, because this is a booty shaker
The Black Lantern and The Legendary KO lay down the real story of Hurricane Katrina. No, the Saints weren’t coming then.
Tell Us, What’s your opinion on the Whole Katrina Debacle ? Do You Think That the Government should live up to the Bush Promises, to “Fix New Orleans” ?
Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it, 
There are times when I questioned my own sanity for doing this 
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