It begins with Katrina

[UniverseSeven]

Trinity:

They just showed on CNN the "lucky ones" who were able to take a FREE, air conditioned, Catered, Delta flight out of New Orleans today.

Guess what? EVERYONE coming off that air craft in Atlanta was WHITE! And guess where they came from? They were guests at the Uper class Hilton and Hyatt hotels! The ones who have family in Atlanta are staying there, the others are being flown FREE to wherever they want in the country. This was just reported on CNN.

[UniverseSeven]

6 days


Pentagon scrambles to get the media under control.


Kanye West rebels and goes off script LIVE during that bullshit concert they dared put on tv today.
www.godlikeproductions.com/scans/Kayne-West.wmv


Sheppard Smith becomes human / excellent Geraldo coverage as well.
www.godlikeproductions.com/scans/SmithRivera.wmv

My hat goes off to some of these reporters on the ground.

[Os3y3ris]

Mad props to Kanye. He fucking handld that shit.

[Healthy Merking]

i still never heard a west track

but give bro props for spitting how he felt

that shit seemed almost historical

whatever that means

[Os3y3ris]

Never heard a West track? You'd be surprised as some of the shit he puts out.

[UniverseSeven]

Time of Arrival?

[UniverseSeven]

Notes from Inside New Orleans

JORDAN FLAHERTY | September 3 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.

I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want to be here at night."

There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.

To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New Orleans itself.

For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.

It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.

It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don't need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.

There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.

The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child's education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.

Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.

Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane down" to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.

While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.

No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.

Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties focus on "welfare queens" and "super-predators" obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.

City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.

The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.

In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be "rebuilt and revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.

Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.

Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.


Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine (www.leftturn.org). He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

prisonplanet.com/Pages/Sept05/030905notes.htm

[jonnygemini]

My flight plans are on standby at this point

Everyone I have consulted from my girl, my brother and my friend with family in Mississippi have appreciated the plan but cautioned me not to go before power is restored to the disaster area, gas is available and communications return. I am very conflicted on this decision to pause...I may be a coward or punk...I sure was inciting action yesterday...I don't always heed the advice of my woman but usually; when I do I have not regretted it...I am not ready to go yet.

april (my girl) says this:

It is not a good time to travel to the area, no matter how good intentions may be. Several doctors and surgeons from the hospital where I work (some who used to be on staff at Tulane Med Ctr.) volunteered to travel to the area, including New Orleans, Alabama, and Mississippi, but were turned away from several organizations and hospitals due to the lack of medical supplies. They have a surplus of volunteers, but no bandages, IV supplies, RX drugs, sterilized supplies and meds, etc. The doctors were told that they would be an extra weight on the relief effort (food, shelter, medicines in case they were injured/sick), and would have to be processed through a relief organization (i.e. Red Cross) and undergo disaster training. These are doctors who live and work in a large city on a fault line, and who are required to do hours of varied disaster training as a requirement of their employment/admitting privileges of the hospital!
One of the doctors was born and raised in New Orleans and was on staff at Charity Hospital (which has not been evac yet). His family lost everything, and only yesterday he received word that his uncle and cousins were rescued from a roof, and his other cousin and her daughter were evacuated from the Superdome. He told me yesterday that relatives have been told to stay out of the area, as they may be extra weight on the area. They were told to offer shelter and money to their relatives at this time, as the entire infrastructure is down. He is beginning a fund for the survivors as he doesn’t want his donation to go to administrative salaries, etc. Even, the Red Cross was prevented from entering New Orleans by government checkpoints, and has been told they will slow evacuation and pull more people into the area. While I am disgraced by the way this situation has been handled, I don’t think it is safe for untrained people to show up to help at this time, when little equipment is available, and when even trained personnel are not being accepted. Though I have medical training and feel strongly that I need to help, I don’t want to go there alone, get injured or sick and be another person to treat. It’s hard to feel so helpless when so many people are suffering, especially when our country has the resources available to efficiently relieve that suffering.

[Healthy Merking]

jonnygemini said:

My flight plans are on standby at this point

Everyone I have consulted from my girl, my brother and my friend with family in Mississippi have appreciated the plan but cautioned me not to go before power is restored to the disaster area, gas is available and communications return. I am very conflicted on this decision to pause...I may be a coward or punk...I sure was inciting action yesterday...I don't always heed the advice of my woman but usually; when I do I have not regretted it...I am not ready to go yet.

nobody doubts where your heart is at G

be wise

PEACE

[UniverseSeven]

Due to pressure on my cousin from his father late last night, he has regrettably been forced to back out.

Leaving only me, and the female driver (a friend). I am not willing to be the only male on the journey (I also do not have a drivers license) and two drivers were needed, so the trip in canceled. Though I had no qualms about driving a little.

My Uncle is 3 days from selling his house in Naples Fl. and moving to Hawaii. He told my cousin he can forget about coming to Hawaii if he goes down south to help and investigate.

My Uncle was concerned about the FEDs, Martial Law, and the OPs going on in the region.

Myself unwilling to drive a wedge between family, so I'm not going to push him to go.

Though I am upset that my uncle would put stipulations on my cousin if he were to go.

I completely respect Jon's decision to stand down for the time, because there were no stipulations against him. We spoke on the phone and Jon was very serious about going.

I loaded up on supplies at Ark Surplus (a military surplus shop) and will just keep the material for any emergency.

We have seen what can happen in a populated area when the infrastructure is shut down, while the FEDs play the fiddle.

Be Prepared! Everyone will have their chance to get "saved" by FEMA.

Meanwhile they have regained control of the media.

Sheppard Smith was not on yesterday. Geraldo was "calm" and those 30,000 people still remaining at the Superdome and 20,000 at the Convention Center area have all been "evacuated". Its all in the past now, forget about those images you saw the night before, and many nights before that.

Funny how when the buses rolled in, LIVE coverage ended and they began looping. Why not let US SEE those people being "evacuated".

Meanwhile Renquist has died.

Bush gets TWO appointees to the US Supreme "court".

The gloves are off.


PEACE

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 911 finance

Documents point to attack on America by White House crime families

www.tomflocco.com/fs/FinancialTerrorism.htm

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Anonymous:

I can confirm that people who were in north new orleans after the storm heard explosions in the city before the flooding started. I heard this firsthand, from several different persons living in the north-central part of new orleans and staying in a casino hotel in shreveport. They were adamant, and all saying basically the same thing.

The people of new orleans are angry at the federal government.

I´ll tell you this, more people were killed by the federal government in new orleans than by hurricane katrina. The fact is, the levees were intentionally opened. The hurricane didn´t kill HARDLY ANYONE in new orleans, and even after it had passed and the waters began to rise there were few deaths in new orleans. Nearly all of the deaths in new orleans were AFTER the hurricane, and were caused by either the rupture of the levy and subsequent flooding ( very few drowning deaths would be expected with such a slow rise in water level), or the total lack of a response by the federal government.

I also suspect the burning of the chemical facility upwind of the city was more than a mere coincidence.

The vast majority who died did so because of negligent and villianous behavior.

I am totally appalled, and pissed off enough to tell the first federal fucktard I see the way i feel.

I did earlier today when that FEMA idiot barred me from speaking with a group of refugees being held in a roadside makeshift camp in the blazing sun.

There were troops there with fatugues and automatic weapons but I never got clode enough to determine what type. I assume they were national guard. It was un fucking real and I couldn´t quite believe what I was seeing.

I have personally spoken to individuals who heard explosions in the city prior to the flooding. These people are openly cursing Bush and his gross incompetence, along with the rest of the federal government. The water came up slowly, about five inches an hour. IT WAS NOT A SUDDEN VIOLENT FLOODING. If there are many dead in new orleans, Bush and his bots are responsible for the most of them. Think it out.

Call that harsh if you want, it´s a fact. Bush used money normally earmarked to shore up the levies in new orleans for his war on freedom(which is normal maintainance in this area). I believe at this point that this was an "engineered disaster", and that the goal was to clean the rif raf out of new orleans. I am sorry to have to inform you, but a black is a refugee and a white is an evacuee. Think it out.

This whole thing is a sickening display of the racial caste system strictly in place in the land of america. I saw 3000 "niggas" on the side of the road at a makeshift refugee camp and the only white people there were holding guns and in some uniform.
Again, I am personally appalled at the obvious racial bias. A black person has as much right to expect help as a white, or in my case an indian.

Bush may be able to make people who are not from the area he is a hero, but these people who were in this disaster will hate him when they here the truth, that he held back funds that would have prevented the disasterous flooding.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NO Mayor Nagin openly worries of assassination
www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/breaking_news/12552588.htm


Mike Malloy explains why Red Cross was held back.
www.godlikeproductions.com/sounds/mikemalloy.mp3

Chertoff means devil in Russian

[UniverseSeven]

RedDawn
2:34 pm

Meet the Press with Tim Russert, Sunday 9-4-05

Chertoff: And one last point I´d make is this, Tim. We had actually prestaged a tremendous number of supplies, meals, shelter, water. We had prestaged, even before the hurricane, dozens of Coast Guard helicopters, which were obviously nearby but not in the area. So the difficulty wasn´t lack of supplies.

RedDawn
2:40

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we´re implementing it."

Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one.


Operation: Garden Plot
www.whatreallyhappened.com/suppression

[UniverseSeven]

Never, ever forget!

www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09.html#076464

OUR OPINIONS: An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

[jonnygemini]

www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3339900

SALT LAKE CITY — It wasn't confusion that prevented Hurricane Katrina evacuees from learning they were headed to Utah — it was intentional.

"I knew where Utah was, but nobody told me that's where we were going. Nothing personal. It's nice. But I don't know anybody here," said Jervis Bergeron, among the first batch of 152 evacuees to arrive at the National Guard's Camp Williams training site 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. The number rose to about 600 by late Sunday.

Like others who arrived in smaller military planes, Bergeron wasn't told where he was headed when he boarded the JetBlue airliner Saturday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

National Guard officials asked a reporter and photographer aboard two separate military planes not to identify their news organizations or tell the refugees where the planes were going.

They said some refugees on earlier flights complained or refused evacuation when told where they were going.

Federal emergency officials said pilots had their passengers' safety in mind. Few evacuees are holding a grudge.

But some argue that as a matter of respect and simple courtesy, they should have been told where they were landing.

"I asked four or five people, but they said they didn't know," Bergeron, 54, told The Salt Lake Tribune. "It wasn't until the airplane doors were shut and the engines started that they told us, Utah."

Michael Widomski, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said keeping destinations a secret wasn't an official policy decision, but more likely a last-minute response to trying circumstances.

He did know if the practice were unique to Utah-bound flights.

"This is not a relocation effort. It would be great to provide air service to wherever they want. But that's not logistically possible," said Widomski.

He said 13 states were sheltering refugees, with Utah and Arizona the farthest West.

"It isn't good or bad policy," said Widomski. "The priority is getting people into a safe, clean environment as fast as we can."

Not everyone was dismayed to find themselves thousands of miles from home in foreign surroundings.

"I was just happy to get out of there," said Antoinette LaFrance, 61, for whom it was her first airplane trip and first visit to Utah.

"People applauded when they heard it was Utah," said Adolph Dennis, who arrived on a Sunday morning flight. "We heard it was getting awful crowded in Houston. Everyone has been so hospitable here."

At least one volunteer at Camp Williams says the scattershot rescue will make reconnecting families tougher, and reinforces their feelings of helplessness, said Christine Hurst, a certified crisis counselor.

Hurst said one young evacuee on Saturday told a family member in Texas that she was en route to Houston only to wind up in Utah.

"Now the Red Cross has to send her to Houston. That's where her family is. There's no family here. It's been quite a culture shock for her," she said.

She said that all she can do is "validate their feelings and tell them they have the right to be angry."

[jonnygemini]

More than 70 Vietnamese Feared Dead in Empire, Mississippi

News Flash, Viet Bao staff writers - Compiled and translated by Andrew Lam,
Viet Bao, Sep 05, 2005
Viet Bao
September 5th, 2005

According to Mr. Phan Bao, who wrote to Viet Bao newspaper, “Just within one small group of people who lived in Buras and Empire area of Mississippi, there are more than 70 who died. It’s an area where the Mississippi river pours into the Gulf of Mexico, about 2 hours south of New Orleans.” It’s so far south and remote, “It’s why nobody bothered to come and rescue and that’s why there’s no news of what happened there.”

“The entire area is now under water. The church, which is central there, can only be seen with its cross poking out of the water.”

There has been no news of what happened to the Vietnamese community who once lived there. Many worked in the fishing industry. Viet Bao is unable to confirm the number of people who have died there.

More than 55,000 Vietnamese Americans have been affected by Katrina. The majority worked in the fishing industry. If only one small community loses more than 70 people to the hurricane – many are divers, many worked as ship builders – it is not difficult to imagine the over all number of Vietnamese who died will be in the hundreds. And, hoopefully, it will not be in the thousands.

news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=71657f52e44d95748f5fa390a1700e50

[jonnygemini]

Katrina prompts Carnival to cut earnings estimate
September 6, 2005
The Associated Press

MIAMI -- Carnival Corp. said Monday that cruise cancellations, the chartering of three ships for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and other costs related to the catastrophic storm should cut earnings by a penny to 3 cents a share, with most of the impact in the fourth quarter.

The world's largest cruise operator said it had to cancel one voyage and shorten two others for its Carnival Cruise Lines brand because of the storm, which hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The brand has chartered the Sensation, Holiday and Ecstasy to the federal government for six months to be used as shelters for up to 7,000 hurricane refugees.

The home port for Sensation and Conquest had been New Orleans, but the company does not expect them to operate from there for an "extended period of time" because of the damage. The Conquest will relocate indefinitely to Galveston, Texas.

"We have every intention of relaunching cruise service from the great city of New Orleans as soon as the infrastructure is in place so that our ships may contribute to the economic recovery of the area," said Micky Arison, Carnival Corp.'s chairman and chief executive.

He said that the Holiday will return to Mobile, Ala., after the charter ends because hurricane damage to the port wasn't extensive.

www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050906/NEWS05/509060342/1064

Rev Jesse Jackson responds:
8:10 P.M. - Rev. Jesse Jackson: There must be a moratorium made on banks/businesses foreclosing on home owners who’ve missed payments because of Hurricane Katrina. The federal government should put a freeze on all foreclosures for the time being.

8:08 P.M. - Jackson: There is a surplus of water and diapers, what we need are mobile homes.

8:06 P.M. - Jackson: Venezuela offered help, but was turned away.

8:05 P.M. - Jackson: Sending people away to Utah, Montana and Minnesota makes no sense. Send them to local military facilities that are not in use, and bringing mobile homes in for people to stay in. Cleo (Fields) is talking about opening up state parks that have cabins and living facilities for evacuees. Louisianans should be living in Louisiana.

FEMA did not have a plan for a massive rescue or of receiving of evacuees. Said Homeland Security turned away the American Red Cross by saying it was too dangerous.

7:42 P.M. - Congressman Bobby Jindal: People who want to volunteer for search and rescue operations, police from outside the state who want to help, all should be able to come to New Orleans without fear of wading through bureaucratic red tape. My constitutients don't care who brings them food and water, or take them to safety, just help these people.