FEMA and Blackwater
Now Playing: "One Hand Washes The Other"
Topic: FEMA & FAILURE
So yesterday after work, I decide to check into my favorite web cam site from New Orleans, I have been using the num.3 mirrored site with the best luck.

Well then, how did I know they were going to be blogging about one of my favorite subjects? yep.. FEMA! Oh this is interesting, cause I have been reading-looking at lots of first hand info from these guys web site all throughout the flood!! They have passed on some great pictures and stories now a FEMA story.....

... within a few paragraphs I notice "Ha-ha! A first hand account, that those FEMA bastards are rolling in the luxuries of the tax payers money and.., wasting that money that should be going to help those that really are needing help in that crises." (more on this sorry group latter)

Now from that web-cam-blogThe Interdictor I read, And I will quote a paragraph from their site on September 26 2005 at 7:49

"Please Don't Tell Me That FEMA Pays $500 Per Hammer!
Post by Sigmund Solares
Chief Executive Officer
Intercosmos Media Group, Inc.
300% of "Rack Rate" a Night for Hotel Rooms at the W
I tried in vain to obtain a hotel room for an employee downtown so that the employee would not have to sleep on an air mattress every night. It turns out that FEMA has rented the 190 available rooms from the W hotel by paying 300% of "rack rate." Rack rate is the ordinary price for a hotel room without any discounts. This is the standard rate that a hotel will quote you when you ask for a room.
Let's make some assumptions here... I am assuming that rack rate for the W in New Orleans this time of year is at least $200 a night since the convention season has already started. That would put the rooms at $600 a night per room. That comes out to $114,000 per day for 190 rooms at $600 a day each. With costs like this I can see how rebuilding New Orleans will be insanely expensive. I would imagine that the rates should come down some in the not too distant future, but, I am not holding my breath. Assuming a rack rate of $251 and the cost would be $1 million a week for 190 rooms.
Anyone know of any good deals on hotel rooms in downtown New Orleans? Any word on when additional hotels will be back in action?

Gee wizzz is this the same FEMA subject I had I just read about? and it was RIGHT HERE in the 'main' indymedia.us website that said quote
"Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers."

Well the FEMA workers are living good from judging what I have been reading here in this blog, at least when it comes to their lodging at the W in NewOrleans and its ritzy accommodations.
And ya know the security companies like Black Water and ISI or BATS (Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security) all which seem to be pretty well dug into this type of biz-nez with mercenary style of paid protection for the wealthy who, most likely seem to be, by a large part GOP supports, as are the founder and owners of Blackwater, themselves.


"Unlike ISI or BATS, The highly paid Blackwater guys are operating under a federal contract (Really? I am surprised?) (?) to provide 164 armed guards for FEMA reconstruction projects in Louisiana. Blackwater's success in procuring federal contracts could well be explained by major-league contributions and family connections to the GOP" Now these ISI and BATS guys ? ....whoaaaa where did they say these bad -asses came from? I mean take those guys names down for a private security company if you ever need one. Oh ya I remember, they were the veterans of the Israeli Special Task Forces thats who those ISI guys are! Yep! they probably are damn good hired killers! Now who was it that was hiring them? Do I got to look that up again.....?

But the part in the very last paragraph of the Indy article which I guess is really a Nation Article, is this comment, that describes the link as to how all this fits together, quote "After the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries in Falluja in March 2004, Erik Prince hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a PR firm with close ties to GOPers like DeLay. By mid-November the company was reporting 600 percent growth. In February 2005 the company hired Ambassador Cofer Black, former coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department and former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, as vice chairman. Just as the hurricane was hitting, Blackwater's parent company, the Prince Group, named Joseph Schmitz, who had just resigned as the Pentagon's Inspector General, as the group's chief operating officer and general counsel."
And then later it goes on to say ,"In May Blackwater's Jackson testified before Congress in an effort to gain lucrative Homeland Security contracts to train 2,000 new Border Patrol agents, saying Blackwater understands "the value to the government of one-stop shopping."" end quote.
oh brother you get what I'm smelling?

So these Right Wing supporters are now FEMA festeringing their services by being hired mercenaries un/(?)supported by our legal justice department? One hand washes the other or at least washes the stolen money fingerprints from the hands of the corporate feeding frenzy and our dis-honest government paws.


..so training for the Border patrolling ??hmmmmmm.., I have for the sheer interest in a Good Protest provided a link to see how one type of "border training session" was going, or should I say "not going"!

This training is not the same as the Blackwater one, this is a Minuteman training session
Although this protest was done to, stop their training session, there was some type of throwing stuff around and somewhat of a (?) disruption, which for my self let me say "I'm non-Violent"
Well non the less it was interesting to see Racism Training being stopped abruptly...rudely yes! but as I said abruptly!!
Smelly Minuteman were sniffed out since it was suppose to be a secret-private training session shhhhhhhhhh! Friends(sic) of the Border Patrol Training Sessions were not planning to have some loud protestors calling them "Racist" etc show up and disrupting their train-a-thon.

This was suppose to be a secret Training! Ha!
Looks like class is cancelled.
LISTEN to some people speak who were involved in this "direct action against the Minuteman Racism Training Session by closing it down. Their short audio MP3 download is I what I would say first hand reporting where the speakers-protestors tell why they were there, at the Scottish Rite and shutting down the training for that day.

Did I hear a tear drop?

Nader speaks at War Protest
Now Playing: Nader spoke at END THE WAR PROTEST
Topic: Nader's Good Fight
I heard that Ralph Nader was at the WAR PROTEST in Washington DC on Saturday 9-24-05.
Which by the way sounds like there was only a handful of Democrat Party leaders who even bothered to show up to support the March for Peace and to End the War.
But when I read the SF Chronicle web page on the event Ralph's name wasn't mentioned, Ha (nothing new there!)
Ralph has helped start up the Peace Activist Group located in Washington DC Democracy Rising.US who's mission is in part summed up by this quote from their website "Democracy Rising, a founding member of United for Peace and Justice, has been involved in opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning. The Democracy Rising peace project seeks to bring the troops home and end the occupation of Iraq by empowering activists so they cannot be ignored by decision makers in Washington, DC." for their mission statement click --> HERE <-- Ya I support this protest. You bet! I wish I could of went to it. I especially support this push to End The War when I see that around 29,000 Iraqi innocent civilians are now dead thanks to this insane war machine. Notice I used the word "civilian" most of which I must note are women and children that have suffered at the hands of Freedom.

What I did find, and is worth listening to was a short audio clip from Feb 2003 that last about 7 minutes. In the audio Ralph speaks on War and Peace and other various points of interest concerning our Radical Extremist Government's Abuse of the America we love and a reckless waged attack on the country of Iraq.
--> LISTEN HERE <--

Then here is the new web page I just surfed upon that as described by the old-data miner 'Google' - 'A non-profit organization founded by Ralph Nader which encourages citizens to become active and engaged in their communities' which is amply titled Essential Information now this is new to me so I pass the link unconfirmed but it does look interesting.

I do know there is this new book out that looks pretty good from Ralph "Crashing The Party"which is about the Corporate Strangle Hold on our lives and freedom and as Ralph says in his book "In an age of deepening concentration of conglomerate media corporations, their executives have their own interests to defend and expand. More and more, newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations are caught up in the larger megacorporate strategic objectives..." it looks like a good read that gets to the source of the problems in Government today, from NAFTA to the Debates sham to the voting problems to the power of money that controls the Two Major Parties.

What I really was surfing todays news for was the speech Ralph gave at the Protest yesterday. Let me dig a little further.....catch ya latter

POOLSIDE SUBJECT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
Mood:  silly
Now Playing: ~Time to get your feet wet~
Topic: Poolside & Surfing
Although not recently updated in quite a while. Check my web page that I also have been working on. Now that summer is over, it is amply named in the spirit of a good swim in the pool on on a hot summer day. http://home.comcast.net/~sittingbythepool/sittingbythepoolwithzebra3.html Click here for my poolside web page "Thanks for all the Good in the World" "Now Can We Clean Up Some of The Bad?"

Morning Coffee was Bitter as the News
Mood:  blue
Now Playing: America Tortures cause We Were Bored
Topic: Torture & Abuse
I awoke today with the sun hitting bright on the alarm clock, it was hard to read...

What 11:30 already?
Next thing I know I have a cup of hot coffee and the New York Times in my hand.
I can hear the neighborhood kids playing ball down the street. The Sun is shining and it’s the 3rd day of autumn. I am feeling pretty rested and good. I like days like this.
The Headlines say in bold letters on the front page to the sleepyheads of America who typically are just droning their way in the sand day after day.
“Three in the 82nd Airborne say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine"
Well from then on the coffee was as bitter as this pathetic story I was holding in my hand.
I am strongly against beating or in terrorizing a pinned down or caged man, period! That’s final anything along that line is WRONG! period! And no respected Official or Leader should allow it to be happening. I hold them to be accountable. They should stop this now if they cared.

Anyway….the report brought by Human Rights Watch, and also reported by one of the soldiers, a decorated Army Captain to two senior Republican on the senate Armed Service Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, and chairman, and John McCain of Arizona.
These abuses reportedly happened between September 2003 and April 2004 right during the investigations at Abu Ghraib. Pretty blatant and bold during a tragic semi publicized time of year of abuse being discussed in the media if you ask me. Of course comments such as "you didn’t see that did you?' were heard often as the abuse and ‘softening’ was being done.

Ooouuchh! A broken leg from being told to bend over then he (the cook) hit him in the leg with a metal bat called a min-Louisville Slugger.
One solider said he was "acting under orders" "we kept it to broken arms and legs"
Ya this coffee is bad,
but it sure is pretty outside ...and as I gaze back I say to my self " wait! lookie here what is this" ......'The Army captain who made the allegations gave Human Right Watch and Senate aids his long account only after his efforts to report the abuses to his superiors were rebuffed or ignored over 17 months according to Senate aides and John Sifton of Human Rights Watch. Seventeen Months? And he was ignored did I read that right? Why? Hey is this happening am I the only one to just read this and wonder what in the hell is going on?

Hey! Now its time to skip this coffee and crack a beer.
Maybe I will start a Web Blog to get my opinion out and to at least try to get some attention on this injustice (I say to my self) as I drink half the can in one long slow drink.
I can write then take a few comments and get to the stories I see that are slipping through the cracks un noticed or discussed by the average Joe Anybody. By me discussing these issues and at least getting them noted and off from my worried concerned mind I can say I’m trying.
For now I guess I am pissed and disgusted.
...one Beer latter and I’m writing this blog here

It would seem that this abuse of foreign prisoners
and the right we strip from them and the practice's of getting information should be considered criminal.
This is not 'my America' that is doing this to captives. Who is in charge of all this?
How can this be going on day after day? Are they not doing their job?.......or Is our Government really allowing this to happen time and time again?
I will be exploring these issues in the next few ramblings I post in the near future, I can hardly wait.

There are hundred of documents that support this assumption that we in America can say “We do Torture and We do Abuse” and until proved other wise the facts are yet to be seen to prove my assumptions wrong. But does anyone care. The sand for one to put his head in is so deep and readily available.
Maybe if the Government and military had shown some Facts, that if they had or will quit their dirty ways it may prove they are being honest and trying to do what is right. But with the Prisons in Iraq and Cuba and other we have on foreign soil and with our Pentagon using the Ghost Planes to capture and fly people out of the country where laws "don’t apply" we call this rendition by the way, but hey its a sunny Autumn day and the kids sound like its a soccer game they are playing, I should go walk through the park its a perfect day for that.

Yep a walk would be nice ....I hate to know or have to research this topic but I need to keep updated on this sad state of neglect for Human Life and Rights that belong to all Humans captive home or afar. Prisoner's treated worse than animals can't happen on my watch! Is it ok for yours?
And damn it seems this old warm beer is getting pretty damn bitter too. Not surprised after all this sad bitter news.

This is just one of many many reports that Zebra 3 will be bringing to you. Please send me your information and comments to

Joe Anybody
sittingbythepool@comcast.com
STOP THE WAR PROTEST DAY TODAY
SPREAD PEACE IN YOU LIFE


The article from NY Times 9-24-05 is in the link directly below here titled "Prisoners Beaten"
Read what the USA has been doing

Ref Linkhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/politics/24abuse.html