Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Why no negligent homicide charges for politicians?. IF THE OWNERS OF ST RITA'S NURSING HOME have been arrested and charged with negligent homicide, then why are Mssrs. Bush, Brown, Chertoff, and Nagin still running around free? After all, Bush has even confessed. Even if he hadn't, his negligence, which caused mass homicides, was on media display for all the world to see. What more evidence could you want? Impartial justice for all. Equality under the law. A nice, simple principle. [Wolfesblog] And one which has no place in this country, unfortunately. 8:22:08 PM    comment () Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA. As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA. [...] "They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet." [...] But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas. [Salt Lake Tribune] More details on one of the ways that FEMA interfered with rescue efforts in Louisiana. 8:16:00 PM    comment () Armed militia protects its New Orleans neighborhood. The Algiers Point militia put its armaments away Friday as Army troops patrolled the historic neighborhood across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter. But the band of neighbors who survived Hurricane Katrina and then fought off looters has not disarmed. 'Pit Bull Will Attack. We Are Here and Have Gun and Will Shoot,' said the sign on Alexandra Boza's front porch. Actually, said the spunky woman behind the sign, 'I have two pistols.' 'I'm a part of the militia,' said Boza. 'We were taking the law into our own hands, but I didn't kill anyone.' [FirearmNews.com] Now the Algiers Point militia has defiantly declared it will not heed any orders for mandatory evacuation. The relatively elevated neighborhood area is across the Mississippi River from the city's worst flooded areas and has running water, gas and phone service. "They say they're going to drag us kicking and screaming from our houses. For what? To take us to concentration camps where we'll be raped and killed," said Ramona Parker. "This is supposed to be America. We're honest citizens. We're not troublemakers. We pay our taxes. Note that the Gestapo and their Stormtrooper backup are not trying to disarm the Algiers militia. Slaming little old ladies against a wall is one thing, but taking on several dozen armed and organized defenders is more than those bullies are ready for. 1:13:21 PM    comment () Privacy Enhanced Computer Display. From the Mitsuibshi Research Laboratories: The privacy-enhanced computer display uses a ferroelectric shutter glasses and a special device driver to produce a computer display which can be read only by the desired recipient, and not by an onlooker. The display alternately displays the desired information in one field, then the inverse image of the desired information in the next field, at up to 120 Hz refresh. The ferroelectric shutter glasses allow only the desired information to be viewed, while the inverse image causes unauthorized viewers to perceive only a flickering gray image, caused by the persistence of vision in the human visual system. It is also possible to use the system to "underlay" a private message on a public display system. [Schneier on Security] From the description it doesn't sound like this would do any good as TEMPEST. 12:46:05 PM    comment () From smith2004: "The first American Revolution wasn't fought with petitions. People actually had to take stands and put their lives on the line. They had to be rude. They had to disobey the nice officers. "It worked. It can work again." -- Shelley Thomson [End the War on Freedom] 12:29:30 PM    comment () Aid. Linda has been working hard to find the answer to a simple question: how can we help people from New Orleans? (The government wants you to send money to Pat Robertson to fund his pro-assassination ministry, but we'd rather not. I know I'll get pounded for saying this, but there are historical reasons not to embrace the Red Cross. And lots of cash donations get turned into profits for Wal-Mart, which seems inefficient) Linda writes: I have been looking for ways to send stuff (not just money) to the people who need it. This seems to be very hard to do, as many of the large charities do not take material donations (except from large companies) and they discourage such giving. But it bothered me to know I had some perfectly good nearly new clothing for larger-sized women and no way to get it to people who had lost everything. In addition, with the number of discount stores around here it would be easy to put together care packages that would not cost a great deal. So I gathered some stuff together and started looking for places to send it. So far, I've found one small group that is filling semi-trucks in Medford and taking them to Louisiana, and I have a call into a former work colleague who now lives in Dallas and is going to research evacuee needs in her area. I've also been prowling through sites such as craigslist, which has individual postings from people supporting individual shelters or families. All in all, it is pretty fragmented, but check out Grace Davis's weblog. This is one of the better resources I've come across -- two women who seem to be better organized than most of the government organizations and large charities. This is a modest blog with a long list of Mississippi shelters (and their addresses!!) and information on how to make large and small donations directly to those shelters to help their guests, plus info on which shippers are shipping to which zip codes. There are many other ways to help, but this seems to me to be a very useful starting point if you want to make a difference for people in Mississippi, which is one of the worst-hit areas. [Mark Bernstein] The historical links seem to be broken, since they don't even mention the Red Cross. There certainly are historical reasons not to trust them, though. I sent a check to Direct Relief International, but for those who know somebody near (but not in) the affected areas, it would probably be more effective to FedEx a few cases of MREs and some water filters and arrange to have them driven in by somebody with an SUV. 10:18:50 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 2:06:27 PM.