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Katrina: Why America Must Act

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17 Sep 2005 19:38:26 -0000

Health Supreme Update: Katrina: Why America Must Act

sepp

 

 

 

 

((((((((( Health Supreme Update: Katrina: Why America Must Act

)))))))))

 

September 17, 2005

 

 

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Much has been written about the storm and the ensuing disaster.

Mishandling an emergency is bad by any standard ... cause for a

deep reorganization of who did not follow what are by now

standard procedures, internationally refined and perfectly

clear to the 'responders'. But obviously, these procedures have

not been followed and are not even now being followed in New

Orleans. What to do? Jon Rappoport of www.nomorefakenews.com

catches the essence of the situation and, in a chilling

conclusion, wakes us up to the price of ... inaction. Talking

about action, Michael Moore the filmmaker did the right thing.

He closed office and went to organize a citizens' relief effort.

They are finding that there is little or no help coming from those

that should be organizing relief.

 

Here is Michael Moore's message and then the comment of Jon Rappoport:

 

 

- - -

 

Update 14 September 2005:

 

Michael Moore has organized a relief effort together with others, and

here's what he says

 

Michael Moore

Wednesday, September 14, 2005.

We've Raised a Half-Million Dollars and Sent Over 50 Tons of

Food and Water

 

Friends,

 

Last week I closed my New York production office and sent my staff

down to New Orleans to set up our own relief effort. I asked all of

you to help me by sending food, materials and cash to the emergency

relief center we helped set up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain

with the Veterans for Peace. We did this when the government was doing

nothing and the Red Cross was still trying to get it together. Every

day, every minute was critical. People were dying, poor people, black

people, left like so much trash in the street. I wanted to find a way

to get aid in there immediately.

 

I hooked up with the Vietnam veterans and Iraqi war vets (Veterans for

Peace) who were organizing a guerilla, grass-roots relief effort. They

were the same group that had set up Cindy Sheehan's camp in Crawford

and now they had moved Camp Casey to Louisiana.

 

I have good news and horrible news to report. First, your response to

my appeal letter was overwhelming. Within a few days, a half-million

dollars was sent in through my website to fund our relief effort. This

money was immediately used to buy generators, food, water, a mobile

medical van, tents, satellite phones, etc.

 

Others of you began shipping supplies to our encampment. People in

communities all over the country started organizing truck caravans to

us in Louisiana. Twenty-two trucks from southern California alone have

already arrived. A semi-truck from Chicago delivered ten tons of food.

 

A group of friends in New Jersey got two 24 foot trucks, got their

community to load them up with goods, and arrived in Covington

tonight. Fifteen iMacs are inbound from California. One man gave us

his pick-up truck and another donated truck is en route from Houston.

 

Your response to my appeal has been nothing short of miraculous. And

it has saved many, many lives.

 

A number of you decided to just get in your cars and drive to our camp

to volunteer to help. We now have had 150 volunteers here doing the

work that needs to be done. Last night they unloaded twenty tons of

food from a tractor trailer in under two hours. Each day more

volunteers arrive. Everyone is sleeping on the ground or in tents. It

is a remarkable sight. Thank you, all of you, for responding. I will

never forget this outpouring of generosity to those forgotten by our

own government.

 

My staff and the vets spend their 18-hour days delivering food and

water throughout the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas.

What they have seen is appalling. I have asked them to post their

daily diaries on my website ( http://www.michaelmoore.com ) along with

accompanying photos and video so you can learn what is really going

on. What the media is showing you is NOT the whole story. It is much,

much worse and there is still little being done to bring help to those

who need it.

 

Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi

and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA haven't visited in over a

week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people

have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every

day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to

report the spin and PR put out by the White House, the happy news that

often isn't true ( " Everyone gets 2,000 dollars! " ).

 

The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is

picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA

presence, and very little Red Cross. It's been over two weeks since

the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point,

would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to

get real help down there?

 

That's why we decided not to wait. And we are so grateful to all of

you who have joined us. The Veterans for Peace and my staff aren't

leaving (and that's why we are hoping those of you who can't get to

Covington will make it to the Veterans for Peace co-sponsored anti-war

demonstration in DC on September 24: www.unitedforpeace.org.)

 

If you want to help, here's what we need in Covington right now:

 

Cleaning Supplies (glass cleaner, bleach, disinfectant, etc.)

Aspirin and other basic over the counter drugs. Bottled Water Canned

Goods Hygiene Supplies Baby Supplies - Baby Food Formula, diapers #4,

#5, Wipes, Pedialyte Sterile Gloves Batteries - All kinds, from AA to

watch and hearing aid batteries. Volunteers with trucks and cars Self

contained kitchens with generators, utensils, workers

 

Consider sending supplies in reusable containers. List the contents on

the outside of the package so the folks in the warehouse can easily

sort the items.

 

Clothes are not needed. If you go, keep in mind that you MUST be

self-sufficient. Bring a tent and a sleeping bag. People are driving

to Covington from across the country and often have extra room in

their cars for you or for an extra box of supplies. For more

information, go to the Veterans for Peace message board:

www.vfproadtrips.org/katrina/.

 

Send supplies via UPS to:

Veterans for Peace

Omni Storage

74145 Hwy. 25

Covington LA

 

Thanks again for funding and supporting our relief efforts. It has

been a bright spot in this otherwise shameful month.

 

Yours,

Michael Moore

mike

www.michaelmoore.com

 

forwarded by Louise of

Zeus Information Service

Alternative Views on Health

www.zeusinfoservice.com

 

 

- - -

 

 

Jon Rappoport: SOME NOTES ON NEW ORLEANS

 

SEPTEMBER 7, 2005. As a number of people have pointed out for years,

when you " solve " a tragedy by giving the government more power and

money to do better the next time, you are usually whistling in the dark.

 

The entire collaboration between government and big medicine speaks of

such madness. Every human behavior and " symptom " is chopped up into a

new disease name, and toxic drugs inevitably follow. Whereas, on a

level playing field, without government welfare for NIH and other

major med institutions, America would be in far better health.

 

Mike Ruppert (From the Wildnerness) has an article about the dangers

of feeding more $$ and power into the FEMA machine to handle " the next

Katrina. " That way lies: further corruption, less freedom, and no

solution.

 

If FEMA is geared to do anything that verges on sanity, it's about

forming contingency plans to deal with disasters. We can see how well

that's been working in New Orleans.

 

I have a number of eye-witness reports that state looting and crime

exist at a far lower level than has been suggested in the press. If

so, then of course these press articles serve to explain/justify why

rescue efforts have been too little and too late. " We couldn't get in

there. People would shoot at us. "

 

I just got back from a trip. I observed that most people are in a

semi-dazed shock at the destruction of a major American city. They

can't really believe that something like this could happen in this day

and age. We're supposed to be, with all our vaunted

technology/communication/organization, beyond it.

 

People of every political stripe assume " the government will take care

of us. "

 

But the government isn't saving New Orleans.

 

In fact, as everyone now knows, federal funds for the improvement of

those now-famous levees were cut.

 

For the last several decades, it's been an open secret that a number

of factors have been conspiring to set New Orleans up for exactly what

has just happened: the destruction of all-important tree cover to

protect the city against a direct hurricane hit; the mangling and

shredding of the surrounding wetlands by thousands of miles of dug

channels laid in by oil companies; New Orleans' position below sea

level; the inability of the levees to deal with massive rains and

wind; the strategic bottling up of the Mississippi River.

 

A Katrina has been predicted by scores of people.

 

It appears that there is at least one decent model for averting this

horrendous tragedy: Holland. In the 1950s, that nation was flooded in

many sectors. Its position vis-a-vis the level of the surrounding seas

was a key. So Holland successfully instituted a plan to keep a

disaster from reoccurring.

 

The bland and impotent and leaderless position of the White House has

driven home the fact that this administration lives its sealed-off

life at a different level from what the rest of us would call human.

 

Statements from federal officials have taken a vile tone: " We knew

there could be some flooding, but the failure of the levees was a

total shock. " Serenely delivered bullshit.

 

I often make pharmaceutical analogies, and here is yet another

occasion for doing it. When you stop and add up the overall toxic

effects of thousands of medical drugs, you are faced with a choice.

You can say the millions of deaths and maimings caused by these drugs

is the result of serial blundering by well-intentioned people, or you

can go to another place and view, at the very least, a crime of

depraved indifference---negligent homicide. You can go beyond that,

because who benefits when a population is rendered unable to think or

function or react in a normal fashion, as more and more people are

poisoned?

 

New Orleans, in all respects, has been sitting there without

protection, a perfect target for a storm like Katrina. It's too easy

to call this serial blundering.

 

And images of armed troops now moving through the city add up to the

idea that help is really all about restoring order, not saving lives.

 

Conditioning the American population to martial law is a goal of the

government and those men who, in the shadows, stand behind the known

government. All the lunatic hoopla, for example, about the coming

" pandemic flu " has the same purpose. Ditto for the so-called war on

terrorism.

 

To save democracy, we must destroy it.

 

What better way to drive this point home than to allow a whole city to

disappear?

 

George Bush is the perfect puppet for this current " quickening. " In

all respects, he is a man who has been foreshortened in perspective by

a desperate effort to assert his position as a legitimate member of a

royal American family. The approaching end-times, the mission of

saving the world from evil forces ranged against the messiah, the

sword-wielding crusader against the heathens, the closed-out

consciousness that builds walls against admitting mistakes, the

sloganeering posing as intelligence...it all feeds into the maw of

reducing the kind of freedom in which he, Bush, would sink like a

stone. Unrecognized, unappreciated, unsung.

 

And a very large part of the American population, bent on claiming

" true values " as its territory, has bought into the premise that those

values are quick phrases engraved on blood-soaked pieces of cloth

framed behind glass, hanging on walls in living rooms and kitchens.

 

The so-called liberals are no better. They have their own slogans and

shallow banners. They, in fact, are the standard bearers for setting

up the nation as a virtual hospital, in which every citizen will be

treated with kindness by doctors who know that every move we make,

every breath we take, is a symptom of a disease that must be alleviated.

 

Both sides of the aisle are fronting for a vicious cartoon, Mickey

Mouse bleeding out of both ears.

 

This is what happens when the thread of a real life and its dimensions

are lost, when the wellsprings of the soul are replaced by a desert of

pure nothing.

 

As one tragedy after another is engineered, we can postpone, under the

rubric of emergency, this need for regeneration at the core of what we

truly are. We can do that, but the returns will diminish, the price

will escalate.

 

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

 

 

- - -

 

See also:

 

 

War on terror 'causing US deaths'

Response to Hurricane Katrina has been affected, Professor Frank said

The US government's focus on the war on terror has diverted funds from

healthcare, leading to many deaths, a leading health expert claims.

 

FEMA Turned Away Aid, Rescue Crews, Cut Emergency Communication Lines:

Witnesses

 

After Katrina Fiasco, Time for Bush to Go

by Gordon Adams

 The disastrous federal response to Katrina exposes a record of

incompetence, misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to

serious doubts that the Bush administration should be allowed to

continue in office.

 

SHOOT-OUT 17TH STREET CANAL? Between Police & Military Bombing Levee

 

 

 

posted by sepp on Thursday September 8 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

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http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/08/katrina_why_america_must_act.htm

 

 

 

 

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