Guard Sees Parallels to Iraq in Louisiana

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By ROBERT TANNER AP National Writers

September 03,2005 | NEW ORLEANS -- A month ago, this steamy riverfront offered Michael Rogers a much-needed vacation after a year's tour in Iraq. His head was spinning when he returned in his National Guard uniform, unable to shake the similarities to his time on the streets of Baghdad.

An angry crowd. A hot blazing sun. A murky mixture of resentment and gratitude.

He took a break in the shade Friday, smoking a cigarette as hundreds of newly homeless lined up outside the downtown convention center for the basics they'd gone without for days -- food and water. Emergency shelter was uncertain, and home either gone or underwater.

"This right here I'd have to say is very similar to Iraq, the way the people are -- hungry, very angry," said Rogers, a 33-year-old specialist.

Some of the thousands who spent days sleeping outdoors or on the center's soggy carpets applauded Guard members when they arrived, but others shouted at them.

"It's a two-sided street," said Spc. Terrence Haynes, 28 and shrugged. "Some accept it, some resent it. Same old song and dance."

Nothing's simple, not here or in the Middle East, the soldiers said.

Spec. Ricardo Richards, also of the Arkansas unit that had been in Iraq, stood squinting in the sun, armed with flak jacket, webbed helmet, assault rifle pointed to the ground.

"They're clapping on one side, because they see the security. On this side they're not clapping, they're hungry and thirsty," Richards said. "It's like Baghdad all over again ... The only thing different about this is there's no car bombs, no IEDs, nobody shooting at you."

As the troops prepared to hand out the Meal Ready to Eat, or MREs, and bottled water, one Guard member shouted out: "OK, guys -- 1 MRE, 1 bottle of water per person. Then we'll go to Afghanistan and do it again."

Sgt. Jamie Sutherland spent a year at Guantanamo Bay's holding center for combatants captured in the war on terror. She also saw echoes between that stint and her time here, with a small section of New Orleans' evacuees criticizing or even attacking those trying to provide aid and restore order.

"You have different mind sets -- gangs and cliques. People don't always get along," she said. "It's not only in New Orleans."

When Michael D. Brown director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, returned in January from a tour of the tsunami devastation in Asia, he urgently gathered his aides to prepare for a similar catastrophe at home.

"New Orleans was the No. 1 disaster we were talking about," recalled Eric L. Tolbert, then a top FEMA official.  "We were obsessed with New Orleans because of the risk."

So, they were "obsessed" with the potential disaster and funding was cut for anything that might prevent said disaster.

Wow... I wasn't expecting a bash fest from you.

You get back what you put out.   

Has it occurred to you that your statement is a bit ignorant to some of us?

Just because I don't like what you're saying, or don't agree with it, or maybe even find it eyerollingly ignorant, doesn't mean I'm going to get on here and go off like a spazzhead, "suggesting" that you retract your words.   You know, like you did with me.   Why?   Because you are entitled to your opinion.  Who am I -- or ANYBODY else -- to tell you that you're wrong and try to get you to conform to what *I* find acceptable?   That's probably one of the most childish responses a person can have.   Very immature.  "I don't like what you're saying!  You're OFFENDING me!   You're trampling on my sacred cows!  You better change what you believe and take back your words to make me happy!"

I've met a wide assortment of people in my life from all walks of life who all had interesting ideas, beliefs and takes on reality, the world and people.   Instead of wasting energy getting "offended" by what they believe, I listen with interest.  And in the process I've learned quite a lot.  It's extremely childish and self centered to believe that the world revolves around you and that others must conform to you.

Well, all I've seen, and this is just my perspective, is you adding material to the threads you start and rarely if never responding to the people who post there and ask you questions or offer up comments.  From this, I've deduced that you're possibly only interested in talking *at* people, not actually engaging in any sort of back and forth dialogue and interaction.  Oddly enough, one of the only people you have  responded to is me.   

I don't care if people cuss, and I don't get offended by it.  They're just words.   But it does indicate someone who has a loss of self control, someone who can't get a handle on themselves.   You can cuss all you want, but when you do so it makes you look like a nut, ESPECIALLY in context with the rest of what you were saying.   You come across as being emotionally unstable. 

Whatever.   And you have NO idea the things that I, and montalk, and many more people on this forum have gone through.     So your computer was hacked.   Okay...and?    Get a grip on yourself.   IT HAPPENS.   These types of things happen, and your reaction determines whether or not it KEEPS happening, but you haven't figured that out yet.    Yeah, well, let's see, my phone's been tapped, I've been abducted on a regular basis, I have implants, I've had black helis hovering over my apartment, I've had "them" show themselves to me in public, my brother was a mind controlled pawn who's now dead, my dad was used by the Navy / NSA for who KNOWS what kind of experimentation and he mentally checked out years ago, etc. etc.  I could go on and on.   But it doesn't matter, because I'm not trying to turn this into a pissing contest.   This stuff happens, bottom line.   To A LOT OF PEOPLE, not just you.    And your best bet is to acknowledge it, and get a grip on yourself.  You have to, because if you can't get a handle on your reactions, then you're toast!   They rely on you reacting this way, because it lowers your FRV (frequency resonance vibration.)   

When I stopped having reactions to the things that were happening to me Bhang, they stopped. I don't get phone tapping anymore, and black helis, and "them" sightings in public with their crisp white shirts, gray slacks, belt, tie, and polished shoes, (the "uniform" as I call it) staring me down and saying crazy comments to me.   It stopped.   So while I mention in passing on the forum that these things have happened to me, in an effort to help others who are reading and may be going through the same thing, you don't see me wigging out about it, like a spazz-o, cussing and yelling at them, acting paranoid and bug eyed.   If I sincerely felt that reaction, it would all start up again, and I'd be back to square 1.  I got out of square 1, and I hope to keep moving away from it.

And that's all I have to say really.  The rest is not important.  If one positive thing can come out of this bump in the road moment I hope it's the realization that you'd probably be better off getting a grip on your reactions in life, because that is the ONLY way to get these things to stop happening.

If you want more information on how / why your reactions can affect what other people do or don't do, then I recommend reading up on FRV.  Montalk has written at least 2 or 3 articles on the subject.  Since you are a member of the forum, it makes sense to at least be familiar with the material of the person whose forum you're using as your venue.   Read the articles, you'll learn a lot.   I'll go search through the articles and find specific ones that pertain to this, then come back on and post the links to make it easier.

EDIT:

Okay, here are some good ones to get started.   They're worth the read, it's good material.  I can't see how it would waste anybody's time to read this stuff, no matter what your personal situation is:

"Realm Dynamics"  (How consciousness attracts experience)
http://montalk.net/matrix/112/realm-dynamics

"Emotional Management"
http://montalk.net/matrix/64/emotional-management

"The Art of Hyperdimensional War"
http://montalk.net/matrix/67/the-art-of … sional-war

It is your job as a civilian to make sure those troops are used in the right way.

I am not "picking sides" (lol) but this is an excellent observation.  The military and the government has as much power as we choose to give them.  If the police state arrives, it is because we have allowed it to happen.

As far as my cursing... well thats just the First Amendment in action baby. If you don't like it, China is just a plane ride away. And you have no idea the trouble I had just a few months ago online. My computer was hacked on three occasions and my forum has been brought down twice from hackers. Sure, I admit I'm a bit paranoid but I'm not stupid and I know God watches so I do my best not to lie.

Lyra - I'm not trying to attack you or trying to say your opinion isn't allowed. I'm saying it's not fair for you to degrade those poor kids just doing what their nation ask of them. You have not worked until you have been in the Army or the Marines - trust me. Try running off of 4 hours of sleep a day for months on end then holler back at me.

Oh, and I HAVE checked out Montalk's work and I find it rather enlightening.

Having a look at the above paragraphs I see that the thread is titled very well... "Tales of woe shame a nation". You and I most likely share a lot of the same ideas and feelings on many subjects and are more aware than those who sleep walk, yet this thread alone shows why America is in such trouble. My opinion offends you and yours offends me - so now what? Should we meet at high noon and sling mud pies? I'm not looking for a fight or a debunkathon or a slander-orama. I was just sticking up for my brothers and sisters in arms.

Your right about me in the sense that I DID do a lot of yelling but I think I kept that contained in one thread. I got a good f'n reason to be angry and I think more of my fellow Americans should get angry. When your boss gets blown up and you have to pick his flesh out of your pockets hours later, then maybe we can begin to understand eachother better. I RISKED MY LIFE FOR A LIE Lyra and I learned this in the middle of my 15 month tour. I'm as pissed as can be and I think I've earned a right to be.

I do not want to be the bad guy on this forum. I will not say sorry for what I have said and I think you know I've toned it down a bit. I enjoy this forum and I enjoy 99% of your post Lyra, I think you are an intelligent woman with insight and dedication. I just don't like the fact that you can sum up those soilders with a glance at a photograph on CNN. In my opinion that's a bit ignorant and arrogant.

Lyra wrote:

Yeah, I noticed that this morning when I looked at a photo on CNN showing military looking guys trolling up and down the streets with their automatic weapons pointed in the air, their faces blank and emotionless.   My thought was, "Assholes."   Driving around, blankly, not doing a thing to help any of the people they drive by over and over.   It's just like the stories / pics from Iraq.   The "American baddass military" trolling around, pumped up with power because of their automatic weapons, and doing nothing.  I got the impression they just enjoyed reveling in their power and "AUTHORITYYYYY."

I could go a hundred different directions with this one... but I'll keep it simple. First of all Lyra, until you are screamed at, belittled, over worked, underpaid and generally made to feel like a piece of shit no matter how good you do - for years on end: you have no right to talk about our soilders that way. I know because I was one. In war and a Purple Heart recipient I am.

These poor children join the military because they are told by their elders that is is a good and honorable thing to do. They get treated like shit from day one and have to fight and claw their way up the ranks. They go to war and see good friends die for no good reason - then get redeployed back to the states to gaurd people's oh-so-precious material goods from looters...

I know people who would kill just to eat Lyra. In our material society do you think that the masses, if given the oppotunity - would not pillage a system that they have served and still have not received?
Wealth is so unbalenced in our country it's a joke and embarrassment to our founding fathers. So do you blame a poor black man stealing water after the whole of his world comes tumbling down about him?

Did you ever consider that the military is paying it's own people to shoot at - but not hit - these rescue helicopters - so F.E.M.A has another reason to do training exercieses on the American Urban population? Maybe New Orleans had too many ethnic minorities for the Elite to stomach and utilized a hurrican and steered it right into this city... seems to me like no one is talking about Bush and Iraq on the major news networks now... what an excellent diversion!

With these thoughts plus a million more do you think you'd be smiling while PULLING GAURD in your own f*cking country???

I'm sorry Lyra but if you were in the public eye - I'd ask for you to retract that statement.
Brainwashing or not - these SOLDiers have given (Sold) their freedom, liberty, rights and lives to SERVE YOU. It is your job as a civilian to make sure those troops are used in the right way. Until the sounds and sights of war come bashing down in your neighborhood - you should thank God that they are there.

You're free to defend what you feel you need to defend, but let me tell you this Bhang............When  somebody says something I personally don't agree with I would NEVER even THINK to suggest that they "should retract their statement."   It's called an opinion.   And I'm entitled to have it.  Just as you are entitled to have yours.

Thought police, anybody? 

Oh yes, and something interesting to note is that the head person in charge of the operation (don't know military titles, nor this man's name) even noted how these guys were posturing and coming across.  He told them "Point those guns down!  You're not in Iraq!"   

The pictures of these soldiers trolling up and down the streets in their military vehicles, guns pointing up in the air, with blank emtpy faces doing absolutely nothing for the desparate people calling to them says it all.  To me.  And that's MY opinion, which I'm entitled to have.  And if you don't like it, piss off.

Maybe some people here need to check out the Montalk Moon Cycles Research thread and read up on what the New Moon does to people, learn about reactivity.  Although to be honest Bhang, you're always spazzy and reactive, cussing, and acting like a nut.   What takes the cake are your posts where you're *yelling at the secret government agent "thems"*  who you are convinced are tapping your emails and messing with you.  Yelling and cussing and ranting and raving at them in your posts!   Convinced they're reading it!   How's that for nuts?    And it's boring at this point.   Your vibe doesn't mesh well with what this forum is all about.  This isn't your typical hyper crazy messageboard forum where people post crazy negative cussing ditribe rants, keeping their emotional distance from others thus allowing them to have an easier go at ripping into each other. (although we've certainly got that right now though, don't we!)    There's a relatively large group of regular posters here who've been posting for a long time and have gotten to know each other, often times off the forum.   And while we may all have our difference of opinions, we've learned how to deal with it.  I don't agree with lots of things some here say, but I enjoy their posts all the same and the fact that they see something different.  It's what makes the world go round, and it's called "Food for thought."

Good luck in life Bhang, trying to make everybody else conformm to what YOU find acceptable and what YOU think and believe.   Seriously, I wish you the best of luck.  You're going to need it. 

And to add another note - one of those "and furthermore's!" The fact is, you only show up here occasionally to update the threads you've started whose purpose is to yell *at* people about whatever topic it is.  You rarely if ever actually interact with anybody here.  And I doubt you even know anything about the Montalk site, his articles, research or anything else.  To me, from my vantage point, this forum is just another public messageboard venue - out of a list of forums - that you use to be able to post your stuff, just talking *at* people and sidetracking into paranoid rantings.   And nothing more.   It's not about the other posters for you, and getting to know them, and interacting with them, or reading the Montalk material.    I doubt you'd ever heard of Montalk before somebody (probably from the Goro forum) pointed you in this direction.   Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what it seems to me.

I could go a hundred different directions with this one... but I'll keep it simple. First of all Lyra, until you are screamed at, belittled, over worked, underpaid and generally made to feel like a piece of shit no matter how good you do - for years on end: you have no right to talk about our soilders that way. I know because I was one. In war and a Purple Heart recipient I am.

These poor children join the military because they are told by their elders that is is a good and honorable thing to do. They get treated like shit from day one and have to fight and claw their way up the ranks. They go to war and see good friends die for no good reason - then get redeployed back to the states to gaurd people's oh-so-precious material goods from looters...

I know people who would kill just to eat Lyra. In our material society do you think that the masses, if given the oppotunity - would not pillage a system that they have served and still have not received?
Wealth is so unbalenced in our country it's a joke and embarrassment to our founding fathers. So do you blame a poor black man stealing water after the whole of his world comes tumbling down about him?

Did you ever consider that the military is paying it's own people to shoot at - but not hit - these rescue helicopters - so F.E.M.A has another reason to do training exercieses on the American Urban population? Maybe New Orleans had too many ethnic minorities for the Elite to stomach and utilized a hurrican and steered it right into this city... seems to me like no one is talking about Bush and Iraq on the major news networks now... what an excellent diversion!

With these thoughts plus a million more do you think you'd be smiling while PULLING GAURD in your own f*cking country???

I'm sorry Lyra but if you were in the public eye - I'd ask for you to retract that statement.
Brainwashing or not - these SOLDiers have given (Sold) their freedom, liberty, rights and lives to SERVE YOU. It is your job as a civilian to make sure those troops are used in the right way. Until the sounds and sights of war come bashing down in your neighborhood - you should thank God that they are there.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrin … index.html

I haven't seen this sort of reaction before - both from the media and from government officals.  It just seems that things are beginning to unravel - and I wonder when they will get a grip on things again.  But as of right now the spin coming out of the White House and Gov. Agencies is utterly blatent...

Anyway, it's a moon period.  "Will not feed the moon!.........will not feed the moon!............will not feed....."

NEW ORLEANS - Nature wrought destruction but human beings have brought disgrace.

It is disgraceful that countless people are still stranded five days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coastline, flattening communities and knocking a major metropolis on its ear.

It is disgraceful that hundreds of state troopers and National Guard soldiers have been deployed to protect property rather than help people.

It is disgraceful that thousands of hurricane refugees – including the elderly, the infirm, the sick, mothers with babes in arms, children separated from parents – have been essentially abandoned in the Superdome and the convention centre, left to fend for themselves without food or water.

It is disgraceful that not a single relief agency has any presence on the ground as far as those of us who are here can see. No Red Cross, no federal emergency administrators, no medical teams, no shelter officials, no angels of mercy.

That is why, beneath the damp and dank, New Orleans is seething.

That – and not rampant greed – is why there has been so much looting in recent days, to the extent that police and troops have been taken away from critical rescue operations and assigned to watch the inmates, or outcasts, who are being treated like vagrants.

And that's all they do: Watch. Patrolling up and down the main arteries, in their armoured personnel carriers – as if this were Baghdad – automatic weapons hoisted on their shoulders, never stopping to assist fragile citizens in wheelchairs and walkers or mothers with ailing, wailing infants.

I've seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo. Even the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are surely being cared for better than this.

Could it be because the overwhelming majority of these dispossessed are poor and black that their very lives are apparently of less worth than business properties in the French Quarter, deluxe hotels on Canal St., chi-chi mansions in the Garden District, and tourist casinos on the riverfront?

Harrahs Casino, one of the largest and sturdiest buildings near the Riverwalk Palisade, barely damaged, has bolted its front doors, while scores of homeless families that might have taken temporary refuge therein are left to huddle on the torn-up grass, in the dripping humidity – and, yesterday afternoon, the deluge of another thunderstorm – waiting forlornly for promised evacuation buses that have yet to appear.

"We are a Third World city in a First World country," spat out one disgusted local as he propelled a grocery cart laden with personal possessions along Royal St., intent on getting the hell out of the city, out of the parish, even if he had to walk all the way to Baton Rouge, 130 kilometres northwest. Another frail fellow, a diabetic whose limbs are too swollen to walk – he's been unable to obtain dialysis treatment for nearly a week – was being pushed along in his wheelchair by an elderly friend. They had no specific destination – just away from here. Out, out, out. But a speeding scout car almost ran them over in the middle of the street.

Julie Holzenphal, 31, delivered her first child on Aug. 22 in nearby St. Bernard Parish, shortly before Katrina hit, but was turned out of the hospital the next day, even though maternity ward staff kept her newborn daughter, Zoe, who required medical attention. When Holzenphal managed to make her way back Wednesday, she found all the babies had been transferred to distant hospitals, some even out of state.

"I don't know where my baby is," the single mom sobbed. "Somebody said Houston. How am I supposed to find her? Where are the records? My house is gone, but I don't care about that. This is my baby daughter, for God's sake!"

Everywhere, the scenes are heartbreaking, the tales of woe pathetically similar.

"We spent four nights in the Superdome, but we just couldn't stay there no more," said Deion Franklin, as she and husband, Lamond, ushered five youngsters and one chow puppy onto an aluminum skiff – and how the couple managed to get hold of such a precious conveyance, they wouldn't say.

"There must have been 100,000 people in the dome, and you just wouldn't believe the mess, the heat, even the crime," Franklin continued. (Officials put the figure at 25,000.)

"We were always being told: `We'll get you out of here, there are buses coming.' But we never saw no buses.

"I didn't want my little girls in there any more. There were at least four girls raped, that's what I heard. Shots being fired, knives being pulled, fights breaking out all over the place."

The woman's daughters excitedly come forward to recount the worst thing they'd seen: "This man, he jumped right off the top section. I saw him do it," claims the oldest. "He was holding this little girl in his lap and then he put her down and then he just jumped, killed himself."

Franklin claims the man had scrawled his name and address on a sink before committing suicide. "Apparently he'd lost the rest of his family in the hurricane. They'd all drowned."

There was chaotic violence at the convention centre some 10 blocks south of the Superdome, as well.

Late Wednesday night, shooting broke out and at least one person was killed. But three or four others apparently died overnight and two bodies had yet to be removed yesterday morning. They were still lying on the pavement across from the centre.

"Police won't come in here to help us out," complained Leanne Zambloom, as she fretted over her 11-month-old son, Jahon, frantic over the child's listlessness, his refusal to take in fluids. "We've had rapes, we've had murders, but all the cops do is drive around with their shotguns."

Then, wrenchingly, she begs: "Will you take my baby? Please, get him some help. I'm willing to turn him over to somebody who can get him to a doctor. I'm terrified he's going to die."

For several blocks, to either side of the convention centre, thousands of refugees wait sprawled on the concrete, endlessly pleading for information and release. Insofar as they are surviving at all, it's because they are taking poignant care of each other, sharing their dwindling provisions, minding one another's children.

"I could never have lasted this long if it wasn't for strangers," adds Zambloom.

It is every day more apparent that these refugees and evacuees are on their own, to cope as best they can.

"I was stuck on the roof of my house for two days, and then a 240-foot barge smashed right into it," said Joceryn Moses. "It wasn't no police or soldiers who rescued me. It was just a man with a boat, and I never even got his name.

"So then I'm brought here and I end up sitting on the sidewalk for three days. Can't they at least bring in some portable toilets? You got to do your business, you squat down behind a car. Is this America? Are we animals? I don't know, maybe we're turning into animals."

But what I see are young people taking care of old people, the relatively healthy caring for the sick, people sharing their paltry supplies. It's true there's crime and violence, but tempers are terribly frayed, and feelings of hopelessness overwhelming. The only well-known and sympathetic face these people have seen was that of the musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. The New Orleans-born celebrity – his father was the city's famous district attorney for decades – spent yesterday wandering among the stricken.

There is also, it must be remembered, the underlying reality of impoverished and ghettoized New Orleans, where dangerous neighbourhoods were already segregated by more than race. And it is from these neighbourhoods, these resentful enclaves, that many of the refugees originate.

They didn't get out when they were told to get out because they couldn't get out. They're poor. They don't have cars. They don't have SUVs that could navigate the flooded streets. And they had nowhere to go, so they followed the advice of officials, pouring into the Superdome and the convention centre.

"Everybody's angry, can people on the outside understand that?" asks Kathy Jenkins, a 26-year-old single mother with a toddler and an infant. "Then you get different gangs from different projects who already have their rivalries, and they're thrown in together. What do you think is going to happen?"

The men, the heads of families, are palpably infuriated and shamed by their inability to look after loved ones. They feel impotent, and that also nourishes their rage.

"Every time I try to talk to a police officer, I just get blown off," grumbled Carl Davis, a labourer who has lived all of his 50 years in New Orleans.

"Man, I know we got us a disaster here. But how could they have been so ill-prepared? They knowed this was coming. There must be hundreds of public school buses in this city. Why can't they use those to get us out of here? What would it take to give a person two square meals a day?

"We're always sending food and doctors to people on the other side of the world. We have soldiers dying in Iraq. And they can't get help down to us poor people in New Orleans?

"I tell you, America has let us down."

http://tinyurl.com/avm6l