We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security. I even encountered Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke).
Now, it is kicking into full gear in Haiti. As we know, the member companies of the Orwellian-named mercenary trade association, the International Peace Operations Association, are offering their services in Haiti. But look for more stories like this one:
On January 15, a Florida based company called All Pro Legal Investigations registered the URL Haiti-Security.com. It is basically a copy of the company’s existing US website but is now targeted for business in Haiti, claiming the “purpose of this site is to act as a clearinghouse for information seekers on the state of security in Haiti.”
“All Protection and Security has made a commitment to the Haitian community and will provide professional security against any threat to prosperity in Haiti,” the site proclaims. “Job sites and supply convoys will be protected against looters and vandals. Workers will be protected against gang violence and intimidation. The people of Haiti will recover, with the help of the good people from the world over.”
The company boasts that it has run “Thousands of successful missions in Iraq & Afghanistan.” As for its personnel, “Each and every member of our team is a former Law Enforcement Officer or former Military service member,” the site claims. “If Operator experience, training and qualifications matter, choose All Protection & Security for your high-threat Haiti security needs.”
Among the services offered are: “High Threat terminations,” dealing with “worker unrest,” armed guards and “Armed Cargo Escorts.” Oh, and apparently they are currently hiring.
In what organizers said was a rarity, Gore took half a dozen questions from journalists, including one from Phelim McAleer, an Irish filmmaker who asked Gore to address nine errors in his film identified by a British court in 2007.
Gore responded that the court ruling supported the showing of his film in British schools. When McAleer tried to debate further, his microphone was cut off by the moderators.
Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth contains nine key scientific errors, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.
The judge declined to ban the Academy Award-winning film from British schools, but ruled that it can only be shown with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination.
In the documentary, directed by Davis Guggenheim, the former US vice president and environmental activist calls on people to fight global warming because “humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb”.
But Judge Michael Burton ruled yesterday that errors had arisen “in the context of alarmism and exaggeration” in order to support Mr Gore’s thesis on global warming.
His criticism followed an unsuccessful attempt by Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor, to block the Government’s plan to screen the documentary in more than 3,500 secondary schools in England and Wales.
The father of two claimed An Inconvenient Truth included “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush”.
The film’s distributor, Paramount, warns in its synopsis of the film: “If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.”
But the judge ruled that the “apocalyptic vision” presented in the film was politically partisan and thus not an impartial scientific analysis of climate change.
It is, he ruled, a “political film”.
The nine alleged errors in the film
1. Mr Gore claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water – “but only after, and over, millennia”.”The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.”
2. The film claims that low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls “are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming” but the judge ruled there was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.
3. The documentary speaks of global warming “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” – the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the judge said that it was “very unlikely” that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.
4. Mr Gore claims that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed “an exact fit”. The judge said that, although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.
5. Mr Gore says the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was directly attributable to global warming, but the judge ruled that it scientists have not established that the recession of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro is primarily attributable to human-induced climate change.
6. The film contends that the drying up of Lake Chad is a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming but the judge said there was insufficient evidence, and that “it is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.”
7. Mr Gore blames Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans on global warming, but the judge ruled there was “insufficient evidence to show that”.
8. Mr Gore cites a scientific study that shows, for the first time, that polar bears were being found after drowning from “swimming long distances – up to 60 miles – to find the ice” The judge said: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.”That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued – “but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description”.
9. Mr Gore said that coral reefs all over the world were being bleached because of global warming and other factors. Again citing the IPCC, the judge agreed that, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. However, he ruled that separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult.
A Government spokesman said he would not make any further comment on the case today.
A doctor who was working the rounds at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina has admitted euthanizing patients during a crucial shortage of energy and supplies at the hospital.
Despite the revelations, the state prosecution service in Louisiana says it will not re-open an investigation into the matter, the Associated Press reports.
The doctor’s admission comes on the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast, an event that would lead to the death of more than 1,000 people and the displacement of a city of one million.
It also comes at a time when the US is busy debating fundamental reforms to the country’s health system. The specter of “rationed health care” has been raised during the debate.
But in the panic and chaos of Katrina, the notion of “rationed care” was taken to a brutal new level.
Dr. Ewing Cook told ProPublica’s Sheri Fink that he gave the order to give an elderly patient a dose of morphine he knew would kill her.
‘‘Do you mind just increasing the morphine and giving her enough until she goes?’’ Cook says he asked the patient’s nurse.
In a sign of his certainty the patient would die under the morphine overdose, Cook penciled in “Pronounced dead at” on the patient’s chart and left it blank to be filled in later.
‘‘To me, it was a no-brainer, and to this day I don’t feel bad about what I did,’’ Cook told ProPublica. ‘‘I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor.’’
He added, ‘‘There’s no question I hastened her demise.’’
The complete investigative article from ProPublica, which appears in the August 30 edition of the New York Times, is here.
Doctors and Feds list who won’t get care in flu pandemic
There are many police and law enforcement officials who are concerned with the growing trend of using military-experienced mercenaries to train and work with local police officers in the United States, but there are many who believe the events of September 11, 2001 dictate the need for this new paradigm.
For example, Kentucky’s Lexington Police Department contracted Blackwater Security International to provide what’s described as homeland security training. Meanwhile that city’s Mayor Jim Newberry and its chief of police Anthony Beatty refused free training provided by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement federal program that prepares police officers to enforce immigration and border security as part of their duties.
Lexington is on the nation’s list of so-called Sanctuary Cities in which police officers are prohibited from working with ICE or Border Patrol agents in the United States. Critics are angry over the use of local tax dollars to hire Blackwater personnel to train the police.
But Lexington isn’t the only city using hired guns to help local police officers. In New Orleans, heavily armed operatives from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of that beleaguered city.
Some of the mercenaries were reportedly “deputized” by the Louisiana governor and were issued gold Louisiana State law enforcement badges to wear on their chests and Blackwater photo identification
cards to be worn on their arms.
Blackwater or Bloodwater? The New World Order’s New World Military.
New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S. Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet January 27, 2009
A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.
The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.
The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.
Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.
Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.
The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.
The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.
The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”
As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, was more recently updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”
Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.
Yep, these are cheap plastic coffins. Hundreds of thousands of them. Don’t believe it?
Why coffins? Why in the middle of Georgia? Well, apparently the Government is expecting a half million people to die relatively soon, and the Atlanta Airport is a major airline traffic hub, probably the biggest in the country, which means Georgia is a prime base to conduct military operations and coordination. It is also the home of the CDC, the Center for Disease Control. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but usually you don’t buy 500,000 plastic coffins “just in case something happens,” you buy them because you know something is going to happen. These air tight seal containers would be perfect to bury victims of plague or biological warfare in, wouldn’t they?
FEMA sources confirm coming martial law Wayne Madsen Online Journal October 13, 2008
WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.
In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.
On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document·The document is being called the “C & R” document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. “Conflict” is the “C word” in the document· The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. “Revolution” is the document’s “R word.
Pastors to calm the public during Martial Law -KSLA Reports
A Continental Airlines plane carrying seven members of Congress from Houston to Washington D.C. was forced to make an emergency landing after it lost cabin pressure and took a major nosedive Tuesday afternoon.
Congressmen Ted Poe, Nick Lampson, Ron Paul and Henry Cuellar were among those on board.
Officials say the oxygen masks came down and the plane went into a “steep dive” before landing safely in New Orleans.
There are no reports of injuries. Most of the passengers have been put onto another flight to Washington.
After Angela Garbarino was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana last November on suspicion of drunk driving, she wound up lying on the police station floor in a pool of her own blood with two black eyes, a broken nose, two broken teeth, and other cuts and bruises.
Garbarino says that Officer Wiley Willis beat her up after turning off the police video camera. Willis’s attorney insists that Garbarino slipped and fell when Willis tried to prevent her from leaving the room. However, Garbarino says that the extent of her injuries are proof that she was beaten.
The police video obtained by ABC News shows Garbarino demanding the right to make a phone call. “I have the right to call somebody right now and I know that,” she yells. Officer Willis instead begins handcuffing her. She wiggles away, he pulls her back sharply by her wrists, and she hits the wall and falls on the floor.
Willis pushes her down into a chair three successive times as she repeatedly stands up again, increasingly distraught and screaming, “Get away from me!” Willis is finally shown leaning over her and asking, “Do you understand me?” to which she replies, “Yeah, I understand.” Willis then walks over and turns off the camera.
When the video resumes, Garbarino is lying in the floor in a pool of her own blood. There is an apparent cut in what ABC aired, but according to KTBS in Shreveport, Willis turns Garbarino on her back, telling her, “Lay down, don’t move,” and she replies, “I can’t believe you just did what you just did. I really can’t.”
Willis has since been dismissed from the police force. KTBS states that “Willis was fired by Police Chief Henry Whitehorn earlier this month for how he treated Garbarino during the whole episode, not for her injuries.”
Willis is appealing his dismissal, and his attorney insists that his client was following procedures in turning off the camera. According to KTBS, “Authorities familiar with Shreveport police policy said a person is read their rights and gets an explanation of what’s going to happen next. That is followed by a sobriety test. If the person refuses, the officer can turn off the tape and take them to an adjoining room, handcuff them to a bench, fill out the paperwork and charge them.”
However, experts suggested to ABC that Willis should have called for female backup when Garbarino began resisting. One criminologist stated, “I think we have a situation where the arrested person is refusing to cooperate and the police officer apparently overreacted.”
The U.S. government continues to expand its plans to setup a nationalized concentration camp system under the guise of emergency management. FEMA has already come a long way in establishing their concentration camp system, but now it looks as if they might be trying to figure out a way to transport people to these facilities. A disturbing revelation from a FEMA official confirmed that the institution is looking at ways to use passenger trains to get elderly and sick people out of harms way during an emergency situation. According to an Associated Press report, FEMA official Glenn Cannon made these revelations testifying in front of a congressional subcommittee in New Orleans. Although this might seem like a relatively minor development, it is actually very serious considering preparations the U.S. government has already made for martial law and the establishment of FEMA run concentration camps. Looking back in history, the Nazis used trains to transport large groups of Jews to concentration camps where many of them were put to death. It appears as if FEMA is moving in the direction of setting up a similar transportation system that could take not just the sick and elderly but all sorts of people to these concentration camps.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency may expand use of passenger trains to evacuate the elderly and sick if hurricanes threaten the Gulf Coast.
FEMA official Glenn Cannon today testified before a congressional subcommittee in New Orleans.
Cannon says FEMA is looking at passenger trains as a method to get people with physical impediments out of harm’s way.
New Orleans has become something of a guinea pig for train evacuations.
After 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Amtrak was hired to be on hand if another hurricane struck — to evacuate people with special needs. Cannon says FEMA is now devising disaster plans for other Gulf Coast cities based on the New Orleans model.
City officials say Congress and FEMA should create a national plan to use trains in disasters.
According to this report, it appears as if New Orleans was a test model to setup train evacuations. Cannon even admits that FEMA is devising similar disaster plans based off of the New Orleans model. With city officials saying that Congress and FEMA should create a national plan to use trains to transport people in emergency situation, this should immediately draw a great deal of concern. The U.S. government and FEMA failed to help people during Hurricane Katrina, so why should we put any trust in what they are doing now with these train evacuations? Cannon says that this is only for the elderly and the sick, but can this really be believed? In fact, considering the track record of FEMA, the true purpose of this organization appears not to be a vehicle to help people during an emergency, but instead to ensure government continuity and be the administrative and executive arm of the government during a martial law scenario.
During the Iran Contra hearings in the 1980s, the existence of a plan called Readiness Exercise 84 (Rex 84) was revealed. Rex 84 outlined a plan for concentration camps which would be placed under the operational control of FEMA should martial law need to be implemented. It is a matter of public record that a number of these concentration camps do exist. In fact there are even some reports indicating that there are hundreds of these FEMA run concentration camps. Video of these concentration camps indicate that they have fences with barb wire pointing inward so people that are in the camps can’t get out. Also, many of these concentration camps are accessible via rail which will allow them to conveniently transport large amounts of people into these facilities.
The fact that we already have concentration camps in the United States many of which are accessible by rail makes it pretty obvious what these people have in mind. They need to have a system in place to transport large amounts of people to these concentration camps during a martial law scenario. All the evidence indicates that they are in fact setting up a concentration camp system for this purpose and it is comparable to what the Nazis setup in Germany. Whatever you do, do not go to a government run FEMA camp. If you do, you might end up dead like the Jews in the Nazi death camps.
Recent public disclosures of the InfraGard system no longer obligates silence on abuses. We’ve been following the developments behind the scenes. These are issues warranting increased public oversight at the State and Federal Level.
As reported, the InfraGard system is designed to protect the nation’s infrastructure. What has not been well discussed are the detailed operations of InfraGard, the policies, and the operational procedures used to gather intelligence.
InfraGuard has two broad functions. One is operational protection of infrastructure, the second is the intelligence gathering arm.
InfraGard members claim they are protecting the infrastructure. They’re more interested in abusing power, and using resistance to that abuse to broaden their intelligence gathering and intrusions. We need to know who is abusing their authority, end this misconduct, and ensure the public is treated with respect, not as “the enemy”.
The abuse of this intelligence gathering for non-official purposes designed to intimidate a civilian population and dissuade lawful activity, but not engage in bonafide law enforcement or infrastructure protection.
InfraGard relies on civilian contractors providing information to the State and federal authorities. What’s not been well discussed are the liberties these contractors have been taken under their deputization; and how law enforcement supports questionable InfraGard contractor conduct.
President George W. Bush failed to mention the plight of New Orleans in his previous State of the Union addresss and has overseen what some call more than two years of neglect since Hurricane Katrina.
During his address Monday, however, he was applauded for his plans to bring a high-profile summit to the business-hungry town.
Bush announced during the address that he, the Prime Minister of Canada, and the President of Mexico will visit New Orleans in April for the fourth annual North American Leader’s Summit.
Last year’s meeting took place in Quebec, Canada, and drew more than 1,000 labor and environmental activists who did not agree with the policies of North America’s political leaders.
But even Bush’s most vocal critics said the event, and the forums and seminars expected to be organized around its periphery, will be a benefit to New Orleans.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said the meeting will be a great opportunity to showcase that the Gulf Coast is coming back.
Protesters fought with police on Thursday in New Orleans as the City Council met over whether to approve a federal plan to replace three public housing complexes with a mix-use development.
Police confronted protesters marching to the council chambers at City Hall with stun devices and chemical sprays. The chambers had a capacity of less than 300 people. Officials earlier increased security surrounding the chambers in anticipation of the protests.
Police also made arrests, and one woman had to be taken away in a stretcher after she was sprayed with chemicals, according to the Associated Press.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans last Friday postponed plans to raze three public housing complexes damaged by Hurricane Katrina because it wants city officials to weigh in on the issue of where to put low-income families who will be left homeless by the demolition. The agency, together with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had plans to begin demolishing 4,600 government-subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized homes.
Bill Quigley: HUD Sends New Orleans Bulldozers and $400,000 Apartments for the Holidays
New Orleans Protesters Threaten War if HUD Demolishes Apartments
On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units – an 82% reduction. HUD is in charge and a one person HUD employee makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago – all decisions are made in Washington DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax credit units – which will still result in a net loss of 2700 apartments to New Orleans – the remaining new apartments will cost an average cost of over $400,000 each!
Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast. Over 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers are being systematically forced out. Over 90,000 homeowners in Louisiana are still waiting to receive federal recovery funds from the Road Home. In New Orleans, hundreds of the estimated 12,000 homeless have taken up residence in small tents across the street from City Hall and under the I-10.
In Mississippi, poor and working people are being displaced along the coast to allow casinos to expand and develop shipping and other commercial activities. Two dozen ministers criticized the exclusion of renters and low-income homeowners from post-Katrina assistance: “Sadly we must now bear witness to the reality that our Recovery Effort has failed to include a place at the table … for our poor and vulnerable.”
The bulldozers have not torn down any buildings yet and New Orleans public housing residents vow to resist. “If you try to bulldoze our homes, we’re going to fight,” promised resident Sharon Jasper. “There’s going to be a war in New Orleans.”