connecting*the*dots

The Consumerist
Ma Bell To Shut Down New Orleans WiFi

One of the surprising acts of compassion and competency that came out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was that the city began providing a free WiFi service to business owners and residents whose phone service had been wiped out. The 512 kbps service allowed many business owners to begin struggling back to their feet and corporate sponsors like Yahoo and Google were in discussion to expand the service in the coming months.

Well, no longer. Telecommunication lobbyists from Bell South have put the lean on New Orleans, demanding that the free service be outlawed. Apparently, it violates a law that prevents the public sector from competing with the telecommunication sector. By law, then, cities can provide no more than a 128 kbps service to citizens.

“The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,� says Greg Meffert, New Orleans’ chief information officer. But Greg’s no lily-livered pansy. “If I have to go to jail, I guess I will,� he said. “If they really want to play that game, I guess they are right. But we simply cannot turn off these few lifelines we have to our city and businesses.�

[…]

More sources

• FactoryCity - BellSouth to New Orleans: Let Them Eat Cake
• Sploid - Telecoms out to kill NOLA’s free WiFi
• WebProNews - Telecoms Better Keep An Eye On The Big Easy
• Red Herring - WiFi Fight Brews In Big Easy

(via missrogue)

Guardian Unlimited
Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina

[…]

Six days of footage and transcripts obtained by The Associated Press show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Linked by secure video, Bush’s bravado on Aug. 29 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

A top hurricane expert voiced “grave concerns” about the levees and then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren’t enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

“I’m concerned about … their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,” Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

Some of the footage conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

-Homeland Security officials have said the “fog of war” blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. “I’m sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,” National Hurricane Center’s Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

“I don’t buy the `fog of war’ defense,” Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. “It was a fog of bureaucracy.”

-Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility - and Bush was worried too.

Just in case you didn’t catch that deceitful declaration, here it is:

Forget the lies surrounding the Iraqi War.

Forget the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

President Bush’s complete lack of leadership, responsiveness, honesty, hell, simple caring… regarding Katrina is more than enough grounds for impeachment.

At least on moral grounds.

(via The News Blog)

I’m searching for the video to corroborate…

UPDATE: The video hasn’t been released, but the mainstream press is all over this story. Without releasing the video, the AP described the stand-off as a 3 minute exercise of the police attempting to talk down the man before they opened fire more than six times, killing him.

UPDATE II: Here’s the video. The guy didn’t seem to want to give up his knife, but did they really have to shoot him dead?

Clayton James Cubitt is living in a world of shit.

His mother evacuated New Orleans when Katrina hit and lost everything, including the trailer she lived in, which Clayton bought for her. Now FEMA refuses to provide grant money to her because the trailer is in his name and he lives in New York City; FEMA considers him to be an absentee landlord and his mother a mere tenant.

Un-fucking-believable.

Clayton is doing what he can to keep on rebuilding, one part being a donation page on his blog. It’s the holiday season; do what you can to help.

Here’s a comment I pulled from his blog, left by one of our men in Iraq, which frames these times all too clearly:

clayton,

Although I cannot directly share in the pain you are suffering now, nor the pain that your family will experience in the coming months and years to rebuild the generations of your family that seem to now be lost, I can offer you one glimmer of hope and faith… there are many wonderful people who would be by your side right now if they could.

Unfortunately, we are stuck… because of the decisions of the same bureaucratic SOBs that are making your life hell right now. They are and have been affecting many lives recently. I am serving for a military that has failed to appreciate its members for the better part of a decade, for a people that barely appreciate us, in a country (right now) that wants fiercely for us to just go back to our own home. The worst part isn’t knowing that the destruction we have seen here in Iraq is comparable to that which is found in a once glowing city of vast residency, a landmark of what it truly means to be an American, but it is in fact worse to know that the destruction, while comparable… was caused by US here.

I do my job because I have to help provide for my wife and son… but I’d rather be in New Orleans!

Keep on keeping on, bud. Eventually we will all be home… and to tell you the truth, your pictures and your words have created a connection. From half a world away in a war zone I can somehow feel that every service member would be proud to call a little house between two levees right underneath I-10… HOME.

-feeling the connection, and I’d rather be in New Orleans.

from Iraq,
-josh

Props to Hashim for grabbing this before Atlantic took it down. And if you’re getting ready to dis Juvenile for trying to come correct with a conscious release, pause before going there. I mean, Katrina Klap was dropped on his beat, as New Orleans was his spot.

(originally uploaded by ACKemp)

I’ve now come across two separate stories of levees being torn open (or bombed) by the federal government, so the predicted flooding would spare the tourist areas.

I don’t know if either story can be substantiated, but given the fact that evacuees (not refugees) are being held in the city of New Orleans, not free to leave, one has to wonder if there’s a connection. I’m going to refrain from forming an opinion until I hear a few more, separate corroborating stories.

Original stories:
Boing Boing
Versionist.com

People are people:

except when people:

are viewed as less valuable than certain people:

If New Orleans has become "The Lost City," then what does this tragedy say about America? Why were hundreds of thousands of people knowingly left in harms way over the past forty years in New Orleans since the last major hurricane? You do the math.

Apparently, Kanye West did well in algebra, statistics, urban planning and business.