Subject:
Re: the disappearing homeles
A
friend wrote: "Shelley...did you see the bizarre article
about how the
homelessness
in Utah is not to be found. They just don't know where all
those
people went.... i can't find the link to forward. It made me
depressed
so i think i didn't send it on. There is simply so much news
as
if out of a fantasmical movie that one can hardly begin to report
on
it
much less absorb it. I was speaking with 2 30ish kids inside XX
radio
this
evening. THEY ARE CLUELESS, and were defending , dodging my
comments
to them with such shallow remarks and Zero Logic that I am now
all
the more alarmed. What IS the world truly going to come to because
the
vast majority of X, Y Zers are simply clueless without a brain nor
will
to do anything but defend the status quo and tell us the opposite.
We
are sleeping ducks."
Yes,
I saw the article. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, so I paid close
attention
to New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. Kathleen Blanco
was
governor then. She had the opportunity to stand up for her state
but
chose
to toady to the Bush administration instead. (They kicked her to
the
side of the road. She couldn't get elected dog catcher anywhere in
Louisiana
after that.)
Bush
sent in FEMA, bureaucrats from DC and who knows what else. They
staged
a federal occupation of New Orleans complete with armed troops.
All
deliveries of aid to the city were stopped and sent back. Doctors
were
forbidden to care for patients including the critically injured
because
some bureaucrat in DC forgot to buy liability insurance for the
feds.
People died, yes. Meanwhile NOPD roamed the streets, shot the dogs
that
had been left to guard homes and businesses and robbed those
establishments.
The feds distributed no aid whatsoever to the
inhabitants
of the stricken city. A video of grinning NOPD police
looting
a Walgreen's Drug store was put on the internet.
The
poor who didn't have the means to flee the city were told to
evacuate
themselves to the Superdome. No arrangements whatsoever were
made
for their care. When they arrived they were stripped of all
firearms
and liquor and any pets they brought with them were killed in a
horrible
way. They were held under armed guard. Those who had valuables
were
relieved of them: "We'll take care of this for you." The
valuables
were
never seen again.
The
Superdome was not built for such a huge crowd. The bathrooms were
quickly
empty of toilet paper. The toilets overflowed and quit working.
Establishment
journalists who visited the Dome afterward wrote about the
unbelievably
horrible conditions there after the people were gone.
"These
people were filthy animals," they reported.
Well,
where did the people go, exactly? They were taken to FEMA camps
and
properties, mostly in the outback of rural Southern states.
Inhabitants
of those camps were held under armed guard and they were not
allowed
to leave. They had no phones and no way of contacting the
outside
world. In the beginning the residents of these isolated rural
regions
came to the camps bringing food and amenities. After a little
while
the gates to the camps were closed and local residents bearing aid
were
turned away.
The
feds never released a head count, a list of names or even a list
of
the
places they were taken to. For a couple of months some states
complained
about the increased welfare load, and then they suddenly fell
silent.
After 3-4 months the camps were suddenly empty.
The
apartment block they had been settled in, in Lubbock, Texas was
surrounded
by high chain link fencing topped with barbed wire, facing
inward.
A few months later the apartment block was empty.
Lubbock
is not a fun place. I have been there (before Katrina). It's in
a
more or less flat desert. The main industry is slaughterhouses.
Depending
on the wind direction you can smell the stench of blood and
feces.
Even on a good day you can hear the bawling of the terrified
cattle.
The hotel had nothing worth reading. In desperation I perused
the
phone book, hoping for a bookstore. There were a handful of
Christian
bookstores and several porn bookstores. Nothing else. The city
was
white and racist to the core. I don't know what the few hispanics
in
the
city thought. (I had gone there for a job interview, about which I
don't
remember anything. No matter what they had offered to pay I would
not
have lived there.)
Getting
back to the suddenly empty FEMA camps after Katrina, the states
suddenly
fell silent. The feds somehow made about 300,000 poor, mostly
black/mulatto
citizens of New Orleans disappear without a trace. I know
these
details because I paid very close attention to New Orleans and had
some
correspondents on the scene. These were first hand reports from
educated
people who were there.
A
detail: in New Orleans when it became clear that a flood was
imminent,
city
employees begged the feds to put sandbags around one of the
municipal
buildings. Its basement contained all the land records of the
city.
The feds refused. The flood destroyed those records. In
consequence
every property owner in New Orleans who did not have his
records
stashed in a separate, safe place lost the ability to prove
he/she
owned that property. When the DC bureaucrats and favored
interests
moved in, they took over those properties. It was a windfall
for
them.
Another
detail: when a county sheriff--I'm sorry to say, I can't
remember
his name--discovered that his emergency phone lines had been
cut
by the feds, he had them fixed and posted armed guards so it
wouldn't
happen again. Then he learned that the local Wal-Mart had been
ordered
to close. It's not as if people who had endured a hurricane and
a
massive flood need tarps, plywood and soforth. The sheriff had it
re-opened
and posted armed guards there here. Godbless.
And
another: when the feds arrived they brought in a piece of Coast
Guard
equipment which prevented local ham radio operators from calling
out.
I found out where it was and begged a journalist, one of my
correspondents,
to go over there and take a picture of it. He refused.
He
was afraid.
A
detail: when Katrina was bearing down on the city the Vietnamese
fishermen
took their fleet into a sheltered inlet and tied the ships
down
tight. Families live on those ships. The city asked if they would
be
safe. "Don't worry about us," they replied. "Those
are steel hulled
ocean-going
ships. We'll be fine." And they were.
The
Bush administration considered Katrina a huge success. It had been
a
trial
run of a new strategy. DC had taken control of a major city and
favored
insiders were in the process of stripping the city of its
assets.
It was made the pattern for all future federal "relief"
efforts.
The
really rich in New Orleans had no difficulty at all. They lived on
high
ground surrounded by walls and were guarded by armed Israeli
security.
So
what exactly happened to the missing 300,000 people? Even
afterward I
was
unable to get any journalist to pursue the story. They wouldn't
touch
it. "Wherever they went, good riddance." In truth, they
were afraid.
Who
was really responsible for the flood that devastated the city? The
answer
was the Army Corps of Engineers. They destroyed the salt marshes
that
had protected the region against storm swells and dredged the
channel
to the Gulf wider and deeper to facilitate commerce. The
hurricane
shot right down that channel. Several years after Katrina an
author
published a carefully researched book on the hurricane including
its
causes. (He also covered a volcano in Iceland and mud slides in
southern
California, and, if memory serves a disastrous freeze in
Florida.
(Search engines are commercialized now and won't search for old
books.
If someone knows how to search the Library of Congress, you can
probably
find this book or tell me how to do the search.)
The
soul of a city is vested in its people, not in its boulevards and
civic
buildings. New Orleans was a mighty seaport once, with a unique
culture
and a long history. Now it is gone.
After
Katrina there was Hurricane Harvey, which struck in northern
Florida.
The residents had been told not to worry; the hurricane would
not
amount to anything. They were totally unprepared for the violent
winds
and tornadoes. You do know that hurricanes bring tornadoes with
them?
This one did and devastated the area.
The
federal government quickly arrived and cordoned off the devastated
area,
with armed troops. Nothing, including food, water and desperately
needed
medical help, was allowed to pass through that cordon. A
survivor,
with serious injuries, was helped by a friend to get up. The
feds
sent a car full of men down a road inside the cordon. She
approached
the car; it stopped and she begged for medical help. They
said
nothing. Finally a man in the car showed her his gun. She backed
away
and the car left.
The following came from events following Hurricane Andrew in Florida where over 5,300 people died, in the late 1990's much like those described in the article above.
Deadly Silences
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_FEMA09.htm
She
later told this story at a Congressional hearing. It produced what
such
hearings always produced: nothing.
https://eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com/2017/09/vicious-ugly-face-of-hurricanes-harvey.html