Friday, September 30, 2005
Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
Thursday, September 29, 2005
BigPicture.typepad.com (thanks to Michael C. for the link)
Things Creationists Hate http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/thingscreationistshate.htm
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Funky Music and Art of the Soul - Sri Poopy -Poopy and LeeP
* From The Ancient Teachings of Sri Poopy-Poopy (approximately 2000 BC, or before) translated into Modern Funky English by Sri Dookie-Dookie (2004 AD).
I say this, for I am Sri Poopy-Poopy,
Let there be funky Music and Art that extends from the Soul in honor of all creation !
Art and Music are mediums through which one can express their Joy and deep Love of the Supreme Reality !
So, let there be funky Music and Art that extends from the Soul in honor of all creation !
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Vortigern Studies
Note how Ambros looks very ordinary, not in the least like a wizard or a future Merlin. To the left are an 'adviser' and a soldier, clearly marvelling at the sight of the fighting dragons. In the background, the courtiers stay at a respectful distance.
Vortigern stands out in this illumination. His long red hair and beard clearly mark him as the archetype of a Welshman (this is, after all, an English manuscript). His robe is very royal, for some reason emphesizing his kingship, which after all is by no means certain with him being cast in the role of usurper. But is he crowned? His headgear could be a crown, but also a hat, the old guy in the red robe wears a similar one. A royal robe, but not a crown?
Another strange thing is his right foot, which I for all the world cannot identify as anything but a hoof! This is clearly not a shoe or a boot (see the enlarged image), so why a hoof? Any suggestions are welcome. And while I am talking about extremities, have you noticed that all people in the painting only show one hand and hide the other...
A last remark about the faces of the people in the foreground, which are all very vague. I would venture that these are rubbed off by the readers over the centuries, but one could think of a premeditated action.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Soldiers Spooked by New Orleans Spirits
Old Man On A Balcony: by Robert A. Wilson
*
A moon in the sky
After sunrise [a rare sight];
Seen it before, but --
A squiggly fractal--
the line of
floats above the fog
The cat licks its paws:
I watch, three floors above: it
Looks up straight at me
Gay flamingo sings:
"The sun rises and the world
Is ablaze with Dawn"
"Weep, weep!" cries a bird
Lost somewhere in fog and mist.
Fire on the mountain?
No, the deer are still, tranquil:
It must be sunlight
The orange cloudbank:
One bright touch in the grey sky
Above a grey bay
Dolphins in the bay
Playing, sporting, having fun--
World without money!
The weather bureau
predicted a sunny day:
All I see is fog
After the fog lifts,
A naked beauty: blue sky
With buttermilk clouds
Bay ablaze with light--
Tin-flash; silver; clear as gin--
After weeks of fog!
Flock of gulls appears
And suddenly -- disappears
Going God-knows-where...
White on white: bay lost,
Mountains lost, bleached into white:
A clean-cotton mist
Pre-dawn, silence, then --:
Out of unpulsating dark
An unknown bird chirps.
Bay like blackboard grey
While I slept they came:
Two unexpected flowers
Sprouting on the vine.
Grey and pastel pink --
A water-color painting --
This light before dawn.
*
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Anti-War March in San Francisco: Protest Warrior Chickenhawks by dave id

SF March Photos by Peter Maiden





NoGovernment.us
Current.tv
Its reach and influence are unparalleled. It makes or breaks products and politicians alike, paints our picture of the world, and glues our culture together. And yet, who controls it?
Now, you do.
This is our outpost in a locked-down television landscape. Here, the channel goes two ways. Here, you are viewer and producer. Welcome to Current.
Current is a new, independent cable and satellite TV network, available in 20 million homes around the United States -- and growing.
Current is about what's going on.
We follow the global pulse via Google Current, a real-time view of what the world's searching for, presented every half-hour around the clock.
We slice the rest of the schedule into short pods -- each just a few minutes long -- that range far and wide, from international dispatches to profiles of cool people to intelligence on new trends. This is not a traditional TV network; watching Current, you'll see more, on more topics, from more points of view.
And much of it comes straight from you.
We call it viewer-created content, or VC2, and it's created in the Current Studio, an online extension of our real studios in San Francisco and LA. Anybody can join in to produce VC2 (and get paid for it) or watch and vote for what goes on TV.
See those four squares in our logo? We call it the cursor, and like an old-school command prompt, it means we're awaiting input.
From you. * http://currenttv.blogspot.com/Signs From The Demo by Z



This is What A Police State Looks Like
I was literraly 2 feet behind the person who filmed this. The guy in the pink shirt talking mid way through is my friend who I went to the rally/protest with.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Agreements and The Anatomy of the Mind
Change Your Thinking.....Change Your Life
Friday, September 23, 2005
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898)
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Free Gardners, Rumi and Books
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Revolutionary Self-Theory
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Individual Sovereignty
Monday, September 19, 2005
Telesis
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Miscellaneous Day
*
In the sixth novel, The Emerald City of Oz (1910), Baum writes:
"There were no poor people in the Land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property belonged to the Ruler [the Fairy Queen Ozma]. The people were her children, and she cared for them. Each person was given freely by his neighbors whatever he required for his use, which is as much as any one may reasonably desire. Some tilled the lands and raised great crops of grain, which was divided equally among the entire population, so that all had enough. There were many tailors and dressmakers and shoemakers and the like, who made things that any who desired them might wear. Likewise, there were jewelers who made ornaments for the person, which pleased and beautified the people, and these ornaments also were free to those who asked for them. Each man and woman, no matter what he or she produced for the good of the community, was supplied by the neighbors with food and clothing and a house and furniture and ornaments and games. If by chance the supply ever ran short, more was taken from the great storehouses of the Ruler, which were afterward filled up again when there was more of an article than the people needed.
*
Saturday, September 17, 2005
SurrealChemist
Friday, September 16, 2005
A Book
Thursday, September 15, 2005
John Peel, Radio Rewind
Pt 1; Jah Lloyd, the Stones and British Lions
Pt 3; More Dave Gilmore, The Slits & Radio Birdman
Pt 4; Meditations, Laura Logic, The Slits & Residents
(John hopes the Slits will be signed up)
Part 5 - Stranglers, Link Wray and close of show
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Esoterica
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Chaos Linguistics by Hakim Bey
Of all the responses to Saussure's linguistics, two have special interest here: the first, "antilinguistics," can be traced--in the modern period--from Rimbaud's departure for Abyssinia; to Nietzsche's "I fear that while we still have grammar we have not yet killed God"; to dada; to Korzybski's "the Map is not the Territory"; to Burroughs' cut-ups and "breakthrough in the Gray Room"; to Zerzan's attack on language itself as representation and mediation.
The second, Chomskyan Linguistics, with its belief in "universal grammar" and its tree diagrams, represents (I believe) an attempt to "save" language by discovering "hidden invariables," much in the same way certain scientists are trying to "save" physics from the "irrationality" of quantum mechanics. Although as an anarchist Chomsky might have been expected to side with the nihilists, in fact his beautiful theory has more in common with platonism or sufism than with anarchism. Traditional metaphysics describes language as pure light shining through the colored glass of the archetypes; Chomsky speaks of "innate" grammars. Words are leaves, branches are sentences, mother tongues are limbs, language families are trunks, and the roots are in "heaven"...or the DNA. I call this "hermetalinguistics"--hermetic and metaphysical. Nihilism (or "HeavyMetalinguistics" in honor of Burroughs) seems to me to have brought language to a dead end and threatened to render it "impossible" (a great feat, but a depressing one)- -while Chomsky holds out the promise and hope of a last- minute revelation, which I find equally difficult to accept. I too would like to "save" language, but without recourse to any "Spooks," or supposed rules about God, dice, and the Universe.
Returning to Saussure, and his posthumously published notes on anagrams in Latin poetry, we find certain hints of a process which somehow escapes the sign/signifier dynamic. Saussure was confronted with the suggestion of some sort of "meta"-linguistics which happens within language rather than being imposed as a categorical imperative from "outside." As soon as language begins to play, as in the acrostic poems he examined, it seems to resonate with self- amplifying complexity. Saussure tried to quantify the anagrams but his figures kept running away from him (as if perhaps nonlinear equations were involved). Also, he began to find the anagrams everywhere, even in Latin prose. He began to wonder if he were hallucinating--or if anagrams were a natural unconscious process of parole. He abandoned the project.
I wonder: if enough of this sort of data were crunched through a computer, would we begin to be able to model language in terms of complex dynamical systems? Grammars then would not be "innate," but would emerge from chaos as spontaneously evolving "higher orders," in Prigogine's sense of "creative evolution." Grammars could be thought of as "Strange Attractors," like the hidden pattern which "caused" the anagrams--patterns which are "real" but have "existence" only in terms of the sub-patterns they manifest. If meaning is elusive, perhaps it is because consciousness itself, and therefore language, is fractal.
I find this theory more satisfyingly anarchistic than either anti-linguistics or Chomskyanism. It suggests that language can overcome representation and mediation, not because it is innate, but because it is chaos. It would suggest that all dadaistic experimentation (Feyerabend described his school of scientific epistemology as "anarchist dada") in sound poetry, gesture, cut-up, beast languages, etc.--all this was aimed neither at discovering nor destroying meaning, but at creating it. Nihilism points out gloomily that language "arbitrarily" creates meaning. Chaos Linguistics happily agrees, but adds that language can overcome language, that language can create freedom out of semantic tyranny's confusion and decay.
Next: Appendix B: Applied Hedonics Back: Ratholes in the Babylon of Information Return to TAZ Go to Pirate UtopiasRead Books Online, for Free
- Adams, John
- Adams, John Quincy
- Aesop
- Alger, Horatio
- Altsheler, Joseph A.
- Anderson, Sherwood
- Arthur, T. S.
- Arthur, Timothy Shay
- Baum, L. Frank
- Beith, Ian Hay
- Bellamy, Edward
- Bierce, Ambrose
- Bolton, Sarah Knowles
- Brent, Linda
- Bronte, Emily
- Buchanan, James
- Buren, Martin Van
- Burgess, Thornton W.
- Burk, Martha Cannary
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson
- Burroughs, Edgar Rice
- Bush, George
- Bush, George W.
- Cable, Boyd
- Carter, Jimmy
- Cather, Willa
- Chesterton, Gilbert K.
- Chopin, Kate
- Christie, Agatha
- Clemens, Samuel Langhorne
- Cleveland, Grover
- Clinton, William Jefferson
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
- Collodi, C.
- Conrad, Joseph
- Coolidge, Calvin
- Cooper, James Fenimore
- Crane, Stephen
- Dawson, Coningsby
- Defoe, Daniel
- Dickens, Charles
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor
- Douglass, Frederick
- Doyle, Arthur Conan
- DuBois, W. E. B.
- Dyke, Henry van
- Eisenhower, Dwight D.
- Eliot, George
- Empey, Arthur Guy
- Ewart, Ernest Andrew
- Ferber, Edna
- Flaubert, Gustave
- Garfield, James A.
- Gaskell, Elizabeth
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
- Gorky, Maxim
- Grant, Ulysses S.
- Green, Anna Katharine
- Haggard, H. Rider
- Harding, Warren G.
- Harrison, Benjamin
- Harrison, William Henry
- Harte, Bret
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel
- Hay, Ian
- Hayes, Rutherford B.
- Henry, O
- Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
- Hogg, James
- Holmes, R. Derby
- Homer Butler Tr.
- Hoover, Herbert
- Hornung, E. W.
- Howells, William Dean
- Huxley, Aldous
- Irving, Washington
- Jackson, Andrew
- Jacobs, Harriet
- James, Henry
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jerome, Jerome K.
- Jewett, Sarah Orne
- Johnson, Lyndon Baines
- Kennedy, John F.
- King Jr., Martin Luther
- Kingsley, Charles
- Lincoln, Abraham
- Lofting, Hugh
- London, Jack
- Lowell, James Russell
- MacDonald, George
- Machiavelli, Nicolo
- Madison, James
- Madison, James
- McKinley, William
- Melville, Herman
- Monroe, James
- Montgomery, Lucy Maud
- Morley, Christopher
- Nixon, Richard Milhous
- Orczy, Baroness Emmuska
- Paine, Thomas
- Peattie, Elia W.
- Pierce, Franklin
- Plato
- Poe, Edgar Allan
- Polk, James Knox
- Publius
- Rand, Ayn
- Reagan, Ronald
- Rohmer, Sax
- Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
- Roosevelt, Theodore
- Scott, Sir Walter
- Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
- Sinclair, Upton
- Stockton, Frank R.
- Stoker, Bram
- Stout, Rex
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher
- Swift, Jonathan
- Taft, William Howard
- Taylor, Zachary
- Thackeray, William Makepeace
- Townsend, George Alfred
- Trollope, Anthony
- Truman, Harry S.
- Truth, Sojourner
- Twain, Mark
- Unknown
- Various
- Verne, Jules
- Washington, George
- Wells, H. G. [Herbert George]
- Wharton, Edith
- Wilson, Woodrow
- Wodehouse, P. G.
- Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville
Monday, September 12, 2005
Musical Interlude
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Mishlove and Campbell
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Intuition.org
Friday, September 09, 2005
More Katrina Survivor Help
Links
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Humans Being Amid Chaos
Pet Rescue Emergency
What Is Polymath?
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Louisiana
Individualist Spiritualist Anarchist Barbie
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Thanks 4 Tha Vizual
Monday, September 05, 2005
Katrina
Posted by: -B at September 5, 2005 09:36 AM
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Individualist Anarchist Barbie
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Evacuees will be able to make free calls
KatrinaHelp.blogspot.com/
KatrinaHelp.info Portal
the Survival of New Orleans blog
- You can reach me on ICQ at 21710340 if you're so inclined.
- The live cam feed is being rebroadcast by the heroic freedom fighters at mises.org,: http://old.mises.org:88/NO2
- RSS - American Red Cross - DirectNIC - vonmises.org - New Orleans LA post-Katrina Intel dissemination wiki
- If you want to link to my blog, please use this URL: http://mgno.com/
- IRC channel has been opened: IRC is on irc.freenode.net in #interdictor - #interdictor-scanner for transcript of NG radio and #interdictor-chat for discussion; JavaApplet
- Photos can be found here: http://www.nola-intel.org/pictures/ & http://www.nola-intel.org/pictures2/ Media has permission to use the photos with credit to DirectNIC.com
- If you are in the media and you want to contact me or any in Team SOTI here at Outpost Crystal, email me at operationn@yahoo.com
- Thank you NextGenStats for helping out.
Locate Lost Family Members
Donate by Phone Donate by Mail Donate Spare Change Donate In-Kind Products Donate Airline Miles Donate Stock Find your chapter
Volunteers and Donations Needed for the City of Houma, LA
Terrebonne Parish - Closings/Openings and Emergency Phone Numbers
Halliburton gets Katrina contract, hires former FEMA director
WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi. KBR has not been asked to repair the levees destroyed in New Orleans which became the primary cause of most of the damage. Since 1989, governments worldwide have awarded $3 billion in contracts to KBR's Government and Infrastructure Division to clean up damage caused by natural and man-made disasters. Earlier this year, the Navy awarded $350 million in contracts to KBR and three other companies to repair naval facilities in northwest Florida damaged by Hurricane Ivan, which struck in September 2004. The ongoing repair work involves aircraft support facilities, medium industrial buildings, marine construction, mechanical and electrical improvements, civil construction, and family housing renovation. In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR. Joe Allbaugh was director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration. Today, FEMA is widely criticized for its slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Allbaugh managed Bush's campaign for Texas governor in 1994, served as Gov. Bush's chief of staff and was the national campaign manager for the Bush campaign in 2000. Along with Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, Allbaugh was one of Bush's closest advisers. "This is a perfect example of someone cashing in on a cozy political relationship," said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. "Allbaugh's former placement as a senior government official and his new lobbying position with KBR strengthens the company's already tight ties to the administration, and I hope that contractor accountability is not lost as a result."
Louisiana Homeland Security Contacts
PARISH | DIRECTOR | OFFICE | FAX |
Acadia | Cecelia Broussard | (337) 783-4357 | (337) 788-8852 |
Allen | John Richer | (337) 584-5156 | (337) 584-5156 |
Ascension | Jim Wilks | (225) 621-8360 | (225) 621-8362 |
Assumption | John Boudreaux | (985) 369-7386 | (985) 369-7341 |
Avoyelles | Weber "Chip" Johnson | (318) 253-7291 | (318) 253-9218 |
Beauregard | Glen Mears, Sr. | (337) 463-3281 | (337) 463-6347 |
Bienville | Rodney Warren | (318) 263-2019 | (318) 263-7404 |
Caddo/Bossier | Charles Mazziotti | (318) 425-5351 | (318) 425-5940 |
Calcasieu | Richard "Dick" Gremillion | (337) 721-3800 | (337) 437-3583 |
Caldwell | Dale Powell | (318) 649-5707 | (318) 649-5930 |
Cameron | Freddie Richard Jr. | (337) 775-5111 | (337) 775-5567 |
Catahoula | Debra Renda | (318) 744-5697 | (318) 744-5697 |
Claiborne | Dennis Butcher | (318) 927-9118 | (318) 927-2115 |
Concordia | Morris White | (318) 757-8248 | (318) 757-7200 |
DeSoto | Alan Bounds | (318) 872-3956 | (318) 872-2304 |
East Baton Rouge | JoAnne Moreau | (225) 389-2100 | (225) 389-2114 |
East Carroll | Joseph Jackson | (318) 559-2256 | (318) 559-1502 |
East Feliciana | Travis Prewitt | (225) 634-5113 | (225) 634-7267 |
Evangeline | Liz Hill | (337) 363-3345 | (337) 363-3308 |
Franklin | Bill Mulkey | (318) 435-3169 | (318) 435-9420 |
Grant | Robert Meeker | (318) 627-3041 | (318) 627-5927 |
Iberia | James Anderson | (337) 369-4427 | (337) 369-9956 |
Iberville | Laurie Doiron | (225) 687-5140 | (225) 687-5146 |
Jackson | Kenneth Pardue | (318) 259-9021 | (318) 395-4263 |
Jefferson | Walter S. Maestri, III | (504) 349-5360 | (504) 349-5366 |
Jefferson Davis | Ricky Edward | (337) 821-2100 | (337) 821-2105 |
Lafayette | William Vincent | (337) 291-5075 | (337) 291-5080 |
Lafourche | Chris Boudreaux | (985) 446-8427 | (985) 446-3599 |
LaSalle | Joe P. Stevens | (318) 992-0673 | (318) 992-4324 |
Lincoln | Dennis Woodward | (318) 513-6200 | (318) 513-6209 |
Livingston | F. Ray Chidester, Jr | (225) 686-3066
(225) 938-0237 | (225) 686-3074 |
Madison | Earl Pinkney | (318) 574-3230 | (318) 574-2773 |
Morehouse | Scott Henderson | (318) 283-3382 | (318) 283-3322 |
Natchitoches | Leigh Perkins, Jr | (318) 352-8101 | (318) 352-7377 |
Orleans | Joseph Matthews | (504) 658-8700 | (504) 658-8701 |
Ouachita | Dean Dozier | (318) 322-2641 | (318) 322-7356 |
Plaquemines | Jesse St. Amant | (504) 682-0081 | (504) 682-8632 |
Pointe Coupee | Donald Ewing | (225) 694-9014 | (225) 694-5408 |
Rapides | Sonya Wiley | (318) 445-5141 | (318) 445-5605 |
Red River | Russell Adams | (318) 932-5981 | (318) 932-6651 |
Richland | Tommy Burgess | (318) 728-0453 | (318) 728-7004 |
Sabine | Kenny Carter | (318) 256-5637 | (318) 256-9652 |
St. Bernard | Larry Ingargiola | (504) 278-4267 | (504) 271-7343 |
St. Charles | Tab Troxler | (985) 783-5050 | (985) 783-6375 |
St. Helena | Brad Graves | (225) 222-4723 | (225) 222-4724 |
St. James | Gerald Falgoust | (225) 562-2364 | (225) 562-2269 |
St. John the Baptist | Paul Oncale | (985) 652-2222 | (985) 652-2183 |
St. Landry | Lisa Vidrine | (337) 948-7177 | (337) 948-9139 |
St. Martin | Sheriff Ronnie Theriot | (337) 394-3071 | (337) 394-5705 |
St. Mary | James Bernauer | (985) 385-2600 | (985) 384-9897 |
St. Tammany | Dexter Accardo | (985) 898-2359 | (985) 898-3030 |
Tangipahoa | John Ballard | (985) 748-9602 | (985) 748-7050 |
Tensas | William 'Rick" Foster | (318) 766-3992 | (318) 766-4391 |
Terrebonne | Michael Deroche | (985) 873-6357 | (985) 850-4643 |
Union | Brian Halley | (318) 368-3124 | (318) 368-2728 |
Vermilion | Robert LeBlanc | (337) 898-4308 | (337) 898-4309 |
Vernon | Kenneth Noble | (337) 238-7225 | (337) 238-4987 |
Washington | Tommy Thiebaud | (985) 732-5200 | (985) 732-5830 |
Webster | John Stanley | (318) 846-2454 | (318) 846-2446 |
West Baton Rouge | Sharlot Edwards | (225) 346-1577 | (225) 346-0284 |
West Carroll | Peggy Robinson | (318) 428-2704 | (318) 428-0122 |
West Feliciana | Jesse Means | (225) 635-6428 | (225) 635-6996 |
Winn | Harry Foster | (318) 332-1960 | (318) 628-7182 |
Hurricane Katrina Survivor Resources
LedgeOfLiberty.com
Katrina Timeline: Why Bush is to blame for disaster
Timeline1893, A hurricane in southern Louisiana and Mississippi kills more than two thousand people.
June 1957, Hurricane Audrey kills more than 600 people. Damages estimated at $150 million dollars. [read]
September 1965, Hurricane Betsy destroys southern Louisiana and kills 71 people. Damages total more than $1 billion dollars. Congress orders the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to design and install 16-foot levees around the city. [read]
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
"Betsy prompted Congress to authorize a ring of levees 16 feet high around the city — a project the Corps of Engineers is completing today. This level of protection was based on the science of storm prediction as it existed in the 1960s. The question remains, however, whether this level of protection would be sufficient to protect the city from a category 4 or 5 hurricane today — or even a category 3 storm that lingered over the city." [read]
August, 1992, With winds peaking at 177 mph, Hurricane Andrew kills 23 Americans and causes $26.5 billion dollars in damages. South-central Louisiana was hit the hardest. [read]
May 1995, Torrential rains, hail, and tornadoes devastate the southwest; Dallas and New Orleans being hit the hardest. 32 people die and damages exceeded $6 billion dollars. Congress identifies and addresses the problem of flood control in New Orleans, amending the Water Resources Act to provide additional funding. [read]
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
As a result of the extensive flooding in May 1995, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana (SELA) Project with enactment of Section 108 of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1996 and Section 533 of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 1996, as amended, to provide for flood control and improvements to rainfall drainage systems in Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Tammany Parishes, Louisiana in accordance with the following reconnaissance reports of the New Orleans District Engineer: Jefferson and Orleans Parishes, Louisiana, Urban Flood Control and Water Quality Management, July 1992; Tangipahoa, Techefuncte, and Tickfaw Rivers, Louisiana, June 1991; St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, July 1996; and Schneider Canal, Slidell, Louisiana, Hurricane Protection, May 1990. [read]
April 1996, Technical reports are prepared to identify the initial work to be implemented under the SELA project authority.
From the PA Daily News:
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. [read]
2001, The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] ranks a hurricane strike on New Orleans as “among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country,” right after a terrorist attack on New York City. [read]
February 2001, Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, his campaign manager, to head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no prior disaster management experience and is mostly known for his role in Bush's funeralgate scandal back in the late 1990's. [read]
June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison produces rainfall amounts of 30-40 inches in regions of coastal Texas and Louisiana cause severe flooding, $5 billion dollars in damage and kill 53. [read]
2002, Bush begins a series of drastic budget cuts to the New Orleans U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
December 2002, Joe Allbaugh resigns from FEMA. Michael Brown takes his place, and like his predicessor, has no prior disaster management experience.
2003, FEMA awards $89,471,651 million in PDM [Pre-Disaster Mitigation] Grants; including $4,199,259.75 dollars to build Homeland Security Safe Rooms in nine Fort Smith, Arkansas public schools. Thirty-six states and nine Native American tribes benefited from the Presidential initiative mostly awarded for flood hazard mitigation or Homeland Security projects. Though Louisiana applied, they didn’t get a dime. [read]
Walter Maestri, Director of Emergency Management for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana:
"It is therefore difficult for me to understand how this parish, as well as any other parish in the State of Louisiana, was not approved for any PDM funding for (fiscal year) 03," he wrote, adding that FEMA's stated reasons for declining funds to Louisiana were vague.
"I can only simply state that FEMA has missed a golden opportunity to assist in furthering the process for resolving one of the most costly problems facing the National Flood Insurance Program, “Repetitive Loss,” Maestri concluded, "and would hope that you forward the contents of this letter to FEMA Region VI with a request that they be conveyed to FEMA Headquarters." He copied the letter to both of Louisiana's senators and three congressmen. A state DHS official wrote back, saying FEMA's headquarters would review Maestri's complaints. [read]
http://www.fema.gov/fima/pdmclist.shtm
March 2003, FEMA loses it's cabinet level status and is taken over by the Department of Homeland Security and refocused on terrorism.
From the Long Island Press:
In 2003, Congress approved a White House proposal to cut FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) inhalf. Previously, the federal government was committed to invest 15 percent of the recovery costs of a given disaster in mitigating future problems. Under the Bush formula, the feds now cough up only 7.5 percent. ... And indeed, some in-need areas have been inexplicably left out of the program. "In a sense, Louisiana is the floodplain of the nation," noted a 2002 FEMA report. "Louisiana waterways drain two thirds of the continental United States. Precipitation in New York, the Dakotas, even Idaho and the Province of Alberta, finds its way to Louisiana's coastline." As a result, flooding is a constant threat, and the state has an estimated 18,000 buildings that have been repeatedly been damaged by flood waters—the highest number of any state. And yet, this summer FEMA denied Louisiana communities' pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. In Jefferson Parish, part of the New Orleans metropolitan area, flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue is baffled by the development. "You would think we would get maximum consideration" for the funds, he says. "We were more than qualified for it." [read]
2004, The war approaches $204.6 billion dollars. To cut corners, Bush proposes spending less than 20% of what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers need to repair the levees on Lake Pontchartrain. The Hurricane Protection project is left incomplete.
Feb. 16, 2004, New Orleans CityBusiness:
The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."
June 2004, Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager, Al Naomi, goes before the East Jefferson Levee Authority and enters an urgent plea for aide in the amount of $2 million dollars to continue work on the sinking floodwalls.
From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he [Al Naomi] said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them.”
Walter Maestri, Director of Emergency Management for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana:
"It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle Homeland Security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
2005, FEMA awards $27,445,817 million in PDM [Pre-Disaster Mitigation] Grants, but again Louisiana gets nothing. The federal funds aren’t there either. Having just experienced the worst hurricane season in decades, Washington cut the New Orleans hurricane and flood-control funding by two-thirds, from $36.5 million to $10.4 million dollars.
January 2005, A U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control ‘Project Fact Sheet’, dated January 26, 2005, explains the urgency of New Orleans flood-control and the lack of federal funding:
PROJECT FUNDING FY04: Available funds of $24 million were not sufficient to support all on-going contracts; MVN, in conjunction with the local sponsors, established priorities for which contracts would be funded. Exhaustion of funds occurred in February 2004 on seven on-going projects. All contractors continued to work, although progress slowed significantly on some contracts. MVN finished FY04 owing SELA contractors approximately $5 million.
PROJECT FUNDING FY05: The FY05 net work allowance is $32.2 million. It is anticipated that this amount will be just sufficient to maintain current contracts. Additional funds would be required to permit awarding new contracts; there are fourteen contracts now awaiting award. Moving forward with this urgently needed flood control work is of great importance to the local sponsors.
June 2005, The New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers FY 2006 budget is cut by $71.2 million dollars; the largest reduction to date.
I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. [read]
August 1, 2005, In preparation for hurricane season, the Louisiana National Guard requests emergency equipment to be sent back from Iraq.
When members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq in October, they took a lot equipment with them. Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators are now abroad, and in the event of a major natural disaster that, could be a problem. [read]
August 2, 2005, President Bush leaves Washington, taking a 5-week vacation in Crawford, Texas.
From the Washington Post:
The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening for a stretch of clearing brush, visiting with family and friends, and tending to some outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.
The August getaway is Bush's 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford -- nearly 20 percent of his presidency to date, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS Radio reporter known for keeping better records of the president's travel than the White House itself. Weekends and holidays at Camp David or at his parents' compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, bump up the proportion of Bush's time away from Washington even further. [read]
August 29,2005, Category 5 hurricane, Katrina, is expected to hit New Orleans. The city is evacuated and those with money and means to leave, do. The poor, elderly and infirmed are left to stay put and hope for the best or seek shelter at the New Orleans super-dome. It’s predicted that the entire city could be washed away. [read]
The last-minute scramble to evacuate the New Orleans area Sunday ahead of powerful Hurricane Katrina put strains on the state's contraflow traffic system, especially for those heading west toward Baton Rouge. [read]
August 30, 2005, Massive Hole in Levee is Major Challenge for Engineers
From the Palm Beach Post:
Army engineers worked feverishly late Tuesday to haul in rocks, sandbags and heavy equipment.
They need more.
"We're attempting to contract for materials, such as rock, super sandbags, cranes, etc., and also for modes of transportation — like barges and helicopters — to close the gaps," said Walter Baumy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project manager overseeing the work. [read]
August 30, 2005, Corps scrabling to plug levee breaches as New Orleans floods [read]
August 30, 2005, The President travels to the San Diego, North Island Naval Air Station to celebrate the 60th anniversary of V-J day. He begins his a 40-minute WWII/Iraq speech, with a one minute address to the devastation that has occurred in New Orleans. Then he goes golfing.
August 31, 2005, The unrepaired levees give way in New Orleans; city under water
From the Associated Press:
Two levees broke and sent water coursing into the streets of the Big Easy a full day after New Orleans appeared to have escaped widespread destruction from Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 80 percent of the below-sea-level city was under water, up to 20 feet deep in places, with miles and miles of homes swamped. [read]
August 31, 2005, Levee Pump Fails; a second flood in New Orleans.
From the Associated Press:
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin says a new wall of water is expected to flow into the east bank of the city beginning around 8:30 a.m. or 9 a.m., causing floods of nine feet or more in some areas. ... Nagin had hoped to have Army Blackhawk helicopters drop 3,000-pound sandbags on the levee at Pumping Station No. 6 before it became too waterlogged to continue operating. That, he says, "didn't happen" because there were too many chiefs calling the shots in responding to the disaster, he told WWL-TV. "My heart is heavy," said Nagin, as he ticked off New Orleans' current problems: no electricity, for at least four to six more weeks; contaminated drinking water; gas leaks sending flames shooting up from beneath the water; bodies floating in the water; a leaking oil tanker which ran aground; two bridges gone; both airports flooded; and no clear path in or out of the city. [read]
September 1, 2005, Bodies float through the streets of New Orleans, thousands are predicted dead, one million people are expected homeless, and we find this disaster was completely avoidable.
A business week has passed since hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans, and STILL there has been no coordinated military action to provide relief to the victims. No water, no food, no airlifts, no medical assistance -- Bush has done nothing.
From Channel 4 News:
Where is the airlift? Where is the water? The food? Why has it taken nearly an entire week for our federal government to respond with help on the ground to the hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling to survive along the Gulf Coast? Tangible help. The kind you can drink and eat. Not words, fly-bys and news conferences. Food and water are needed. Today. Now. [read]
September 1, 2005, Condi Rice does some shopping and plays tennis with Monica Seles.
SECRETARY of State Condoleeza Rice, here on three days' vacation to shop and see the U.S. Open, hitting some balls with retired champ Monica Seles at the Indoor Tennis Club at... [read]
From the LA Times:
September 1, 2005 -- A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in. By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today. "We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again. At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for. [read]
September 2, 2005, New Orleans Descends into Anarchy [read]
[The timeline is an ongoing project that will continue to be updated as information becomes available. If you would like to make a submission, please use the email link on the upper right side of the page.]
Friday, September 02, 2005
HURRICANE KATRINA INFORMATION (spread it far and wide)
"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."
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https://secure.hsus.org/01/disaster_relief_fund_2005?
Humane Society of the United States to assist the animals affected by Katrina.
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America’s Second Harvest—The Nation’s Food Bank Network, the nation's largest charitable hunger-relief organization has activated its disaster mode in response to Hurricane ‘Katrina’.
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Web sites help lost loved ones find each other
Desperate for information, concerned friends and families look online
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/laf/
http://www.wdsu.com/news/4919183/detail.html
http://www.hurricanekatrinasurvivors.com/main/
http://www.nowpublic.com/node/17228
http://qso.com/satern/emailfrm.htm
http://slidell.weblogswork.com/
https://disasterhelp.gov/portal/jhtml/index.jhtml
http://boards.news.yahoo.com/boards/
http://katrinafamiliesandfriends.com/
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/
http://messageboards.weather.com/3/OpenTopic?a=frm&s=253291764&f=457105398
http://picayunekatrina.blogspot.com/
http://www.katrinasurvivor.net/find.cfm?PageNum_GetAll=1&sort=name
http://216.25.101.57/katrina/status.aspx
http://survivedkatrina.proboards54.com/index.cgi
http://community.pensacolanewsjournal.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi
http://katrinaslost.com/connect
http://forums.chron.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=hc-katrina
Thursday, September 01, 2005
InformationIsGolden.blogspot.com
Templex.org
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