Katrina fall-out

Matt Whiting wrote:
How is that clear? Some experts think quite the opposite is the case.

This from this mornings paper...

Case shows threat of homegrown terrorism
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Jeremiah Marquez
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES — An alleged plot targeting military facilities, synagogues
and other sites in the Los Angeles area has highlighted what experts say
is a novel terrorist threat: homegrown American militants operating with
little or no help from Islamic extremists abroad.

Four suspects were charged Wednesday with conspiring to wage war against
the U.S. government through terrorism. Named in the federal indictment
were Levar Haley Washington, 25; Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21; Hammad
Riaz Samana, 21; and Kevin James, 29.

All but Samana, a Pakistani national, are American-born Muslim converts.
Counterterrorism officials have found no evidence directly connecting
the group — described as the cell of a California prison gang of radical
Muslims — to al-Qaida or other foreign terror networks.

Law-enforcement officials and terrorism experts said it could represent
one of the first Islamic terrorism cases involving U.S. natives without
such connections.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack, an international dragnet has
broken up training camps, disrupted finances and sent terrorist leaders
underground, making it more difficult for al-Qaida to mount attacks.

Yet despite tougher border control, a radical ideology shared by the
terrorist network seeps into the United States through propaganda
distributed via the Internet, books, pamphlets, DVDs and the media — a
"passive recruiting strategy," terrorism experts say.

That’s helped transform al-Qaida into a movement with disciples acting
without funding, expertise or guidance from foreign advisers.

"Al-Qaida can’t get their militants to the places they want to hit, so
they rely on an ideology to gain converts who do it for them," said
Professor Brian Levin, a terrorism researcher at California State
University, San Bernardino.

In the California case, prosecutors say cell members largely supported
themselves.

Washington, Patterson and Samana allegedly robbed gas stations to
finance their plans to target military sites, synagogues, the Israeli
Consulate and the El Al airport counter in the Los Angeles area.
Patterson bought a .223 caliber rifle. Samana underwent "firearms
training and physical training" at a local park, the indictment says.

They even conducted Internet research on potential targets and Jewish
holidays — dates they allegedly planned the assaults to "maximize the
number of casualties," prosecutors said.

Samana’s lawyer, Timothy Lannen, described his client in a statement as
a "peace-loving, law-abiding member of our community" and said "he did
not intend at any time to commit violence against anyone."

An attorney in Washington’s robbery case had not reviewed the federal
indictment and had no immediate comment. Patterson’s lawyer has said his
client asked him not to comment.

The plot’s suspected mastermind was James, a state prison inmate who
founded the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, authorities said.
Washington converted to Islam while imprisoned there for a previous
robbery conviction.

Self-made groups are smaller and have fewer financial resources, and
that, said former counterterrorism chief Buck Revell, means "they may be
successful because they’re extremely hard to detect."

john smith wrote:

Matt Whiting wrote:

How is that clear? Some experts think quite the opposite is the case.


This from this mornings paper...

Case shows threat of homegrown terrorism
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Jeremiah Marquez
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Well, John, you should learn how to use your newsreader. I wrote no
part of the sentence above that you have erroneously attributed to me.

Matt

Matt Whiting wrote:
Well, John, you should learn how to use your newsreader. I wrote no
part of the sentence above that you have erroneously attributed to me.

Sorry Matt, I inadvertantly pasted over your line about no attacks since
9/11.

One persons historical perspective...


Katrina’s worst damage will take the form of recriminations
Friday, September 02, 2005
DAVID BROOKS


Hurricanes come in two waves. First comes the rainstorm, and then comes
what the historian John Barry calls the "human storm": the
recriminations, the political conflict and the battle over compensation.
Floods wash away the surface of society — the settled way things have
been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices,
the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you
look back over the meteorological turbulence in America’s it’s striking
how often political turbulence has followed.

In 1889 in Pennsylvania, a great flood washed away much of Johnstown.
The water’s crushing destruction sounded to one person like the sound of
a "lot of horses grinding oats." Witnesses watched hundreds of people
trapped on a burning bridge, forced to choose between burning to death
or throwing themselves into the churning waters to drown.

The flood was so abnormal that the country seemed to have trouble
grasping what had happened. The national media were filled with wild
exaggerations and fabrications: stories of rivers dammed with corpses,
of children who died while playing ring-around-therosy and who were
found with their hands still clasped and with smiles still on their faces.

Prejudices were let loose. Hungarians then were akin to today’s illegal
immigrants; they were hard-working people who took jobs no one else
wanted. Newspapers carried accounts of gangs of Hungarian men cutting
off dead women’s fingers to steal their rings. "Drunken Hungarians,
Dancing, Singing, Cursing and Fighting Amid the Ruins" a New York Herald
headline blared.

Then, as David McCullough notes in The Johnstown Flood, public fury
turned on the Pittsburgh millionaires whose club’s fishing pond had
emptied on the town. The Chicago Herald depicted the millionaires as
Roman aristocrats, seeking pleasure while the poor died like beasts in
the Colosseum.

Even before the flood, public resentment was building against the newly
rich industrialists. Protests were growing against the trusts, against
industrialization and against the new concentrations of wealth. The
Johnstown flood crystallized the public’s anger, for the fishing club
was, indeed, partly to blame. Public reaction to the disaster helped set
the stage for the progressive movement and the trust-busting that was to
come.

In 1900, another great storm hit the United States, killing more than
6,000 people in Galveston, Texas. The storm exposed racial animosities,
for this time equally false stories swept through the press, accusing
blacks of cutting off the fingers of corpses to steal wedding rings. The
devastation ended Galveston’s chance to beat out Houston as Texas’
leading port.

Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans.
As Barry writes in his account, Rising Tide, the disaster ripped the
veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and
revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work
camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the
waters rose. A half-empty steamer, the Capitol, played Bye Bye Blackbird
as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped
persuade many blacks to move north.

Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease
the floodwater’s pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to
compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the
populist anger that led to Huey Long’s success. Across the country,
people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster
relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite
turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered
its preflood vibrancy.

We’d like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always
stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. And,
indeed, each of America’s great floods has prompted a popular response
both generous and inspiring. But floods also are civic examinations.
Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster — tales of sudden
death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease — there
is also the testing.

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or
wanting. What’s happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a
human tragedy. But look closely toward the people you see wandering,
devastated, around New Orleans: They are predominantly black and poor.
The political disturbances are still to come.

David Brooks writes for The New York Times.

On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:30:38 GMT, john smith wrote in
::

One persons historical perspective...


Katrina’s worst damage will take the form of recriminations
Friday, September 02, 2005
DAVID BROOKS


Hurricanes come in ...

Interesting.

David Brooks was full of recrimination for baby Bush on the News Hour
with Jim Lehrer:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit..._9-2.htmlDAVID

BROOKS: This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see
bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But
second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of
institutions.

Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the
first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure
of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate
scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of
scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling
the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must
say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the
70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's
get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a
cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of
it.

....

DAVID BROOKS: But to reiterate the point I made earlier, which is this
is the anti-9/11, just in terms of public confidence, when 9/11
happened Giuliani was right there and just as a public presence,
forceful -- no public presence like that now. So you have had a surge
of strength, people felt good about the country even though we had
been hit on 9/11.

Now we've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people
feel ashamed and part of that is because of the public presentation.
In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand
immediately the shame people felt.

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was
terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was
terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his
politics quite often.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how
Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe
it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are
furious right now.

Larry Dighera wrote in message ...
On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:30:38 GMT, john smith wrote in
::
[snip]

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was
terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was
terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his
politics quite often.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how
Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe
it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are
furious right now.

There's not one thing Bush could do that could not be harshly condemned.
There has been harsh condemnation for him showing up at the site, when his
choppers could be used for rescue efforts. The same would be true for any
President. It's just too bad the NOLA Mayor didn't call for evacuation
sooner, and didn't carry out the plans that were in place.

http://tinyurl.com/crkal
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisi...8/112523994020
1382.xml&story
list=louisiana
"Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said
President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for
the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."

NOLA Emergency plans:
http://tinyurl.com/94wrz
http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26

These buses could have been used, along with city buses:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...lpc21109012015

- Rick

When the mandatory evacuation was ordered on Sunday, the school bus
drivers left town.

The fault really lies with the state as evacuation is a regional
problem. Orleans Parish (New Orleans) has a population of 485K .
Jefferson Parish across the Mississippi and actually south of the city
is 455K. The Interstates which should be the main road out are on the
New Orleans side of the river.

"Rick" wrote in message
...
Larry Dighera wrote in message ...
On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:30:38 GMT, john smith wrote in
: :
[snip]

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was
terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was
terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his
politics quite often.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how
Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe
it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are
furious right now.

There's not one thing Bush could do that could not be harshly
condemned.
There has been harsh condemnation for him showing up at the site, when
his
choppers could be used for rescue efforts. The same would be true for
any
President. It's just too bad the NOLA Mayor didn't call for evacuation
sooner, and didn't carry out the plans that were in place.

http://tinyurl.com/crkal
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisi...8/112523994020
1382.xml&story
list=louisiana
"Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference,
said
President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory
evacuation for
the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."

NOLA Emergency plans:
http://tinyurl.com/94wrz
http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26

These buses could have been used, along with city buses:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...lpc21109012015

- Rick

On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 18:16:17 -0500, "Rick"
wrote in
::

There's not one thing Bush could do that could not be harshly condemned.

I doubt he would have been condemned for taking an interest in the
disaster area a few days earlier.

He signed the orders declaring the states eligible for Federal disaster
aid the week before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. How much earlier do you
want him to take an interest?

Whether the orders were effective soon enough is obviously open to
debate, but the Federal government did start the ball rolling before the
disaster.

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 18:16:17 -0500, "Rick"
wrote in
::

There's not one thing Bush could do that could not be harshly
condemned.

I doubt he would have been condemned for taking an interest in the
disaster area a few days earlier.

Larry Dighera wrote:

On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 18:16:17 -0500, "Rick"
wrote in
::

There's not one thing Bush could do that could not be harshly condemned.

I doubt he would have been condemned for taking an interest in the
disaster area a few days earlier.

He signed the Fed side of the papers declaring the area a disaster BEFORe
the hurricane hit. The Stte side of the papers had to be executed, though,
before the Feds could move.

He took an interest.


--
Saville

Replicas of 15th-19th century nautical navigational instruments:

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Restoration of my 82 year old Herreshoff S-Boat sailboat:

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