From The Ramparts

Gran Theft New Orleans

Grand Theft New Orleans

“New Orleans residents are hopping mad and full of defiance. A proposed building plan has been unveiled, and under the plan the mostly working class and poor residents of the hardest hit areas, some two-thirds of the city that includes more than half the homeowners, would not be allowed to move back and begin rebuilding their homes for at least four months. During this four-months, residents would have to demonstrate the existence of sufficient “critical mass” in their neighborhoods by showing, for example, that half of the population planned to return and rebuild. Neighborhoods that failed the test would either be reduced in size or plowed under, and a new city agency, the Crescent City Redevelopment Corp., would buy out homeowners or seize their property through eminent domain. These areas would be returned to wetlands and green space. The estimated cost would be $12 billion and which the city would seek to receive from us taxpayers via the federal government. This is a calculated and cruel scheme to permanently depopulate low-income areas of New Orleans, and build up more affluent residential areas, as well as tourist districts. We believe connected elitist interests and cronies of local and state politicians will end up with the land at fire-sale prices and further enrich themselves. Tens of thousands of working class New Orleans residents, stripped of their homes and their jobs and scattered across America, as a result of incompetence, collusion and theft by government and its thieving appendages as our country sinks to new lows. The city is being given to the elite, privileged and wealthy. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be? You have to have a reward for creating and directing hurricanes.” Robert Chapman www.theinternationalforecaster.com/trainwreck

On Sunday January 22, 2006 I had Del Jones The War Correspondent www.whattheproblemis.com on my Internet radio program and we discussed the ongoing domestic holocaust against African people and the government’s recent dry run for a military takeover and lock down of a major urban area namely New Orleans. There have been subsequent Congressional hearing on New Orleans that were telecast on C-Span where the residents verified our worst fears, the US government engaged in ethnic cleansing, “Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that racism contributed to the slow disaster response, at times likening themselves in emotional congressional testimony to victims of genocide and the Holocaust. The comparison is inappropriate, according to Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla. ‘Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed,’ Miller told the survivors. ‘They died from abject neglect,’ retorted community activist Leah Hodges. ‘We left body bags behind.’ Angry evacuees described being trapped in temporary shelters where one New Orleans resident said she was "one sunrise from being consumed by maggots and flies." Another woman said military troops focused machine gun laser targets on her granddaughter's forehead. Others said their families were called racial epithets by police. ‘No one is going to tell me it wasn't a race issue,’ said New Orleans evacuee Patricia Thompson, 53, who is now living in College Station, Texas. ‘Yes, it was an issue of race. Because of one thing: when the city had pretty much been evacuated, the people that were left there mostly was black.’” www.sfgate.com
Following the Congressional hearings which were energized by charges of racism and deliberate government complicity in genocide by the New Orleans residents who testified before the Congressional Committee. Raising the specter of race caused the corporate media to back off and downplay it as an issue despite the fact the whole world saw first hand for themselves just how inept and callous the US government’s response was to the crisis. Moreover, people heard about the numerous abuses by the military and Blackwater mercenaries who were called in to “restore order” by setting up a hostile military environment, simulating martial law but who did little to search for or save the residents most who were still in need of rescue, food, water, health care and shelter. Del shared with our listeners how FEMA used the catastrophe as a dry run to test the modern configurations of the King Alfred Plan and Rex 84 fascist programs designed to set up martial law, a totalitarian governmental police state featuring massive relocation, displacement and even internment. The allegations of ethnic cleansing by the New Orleans residents were pooh poohed by the white Congressmen and the media but as time passed we are now seeing just how on point the residents really were.
In his latest post Robert Chapman explained what is going on in New Orleans, how most of the poor and working class neighborhoods are being abandoned by the government with plans to take them over via eminent domain and turn them into wetlands and green space. Referring to the plan Chapman stated, “This is a calculated and cruel scheme to permanently depopulate low-income areas of New Orleans, and build up more affluent residential areas, as well as tourist districts. We believe connected elitist interests and cronies of local and state politicians will end up with the land at fire-sale prices and further enrich themselves. Tens of thousands of working class New Orleans residents, stripped of their homes and their jobs and scattered across America, as a result of incompetence, collusion and theft by government and its thieving appendages as our country sinks to new lows. The city is being given to the elite, privileged and wealthy. Isn't that the way it is supposed to be? You have to have a reward for creating and directing hurricanes. Behind this theft is G. W. Bush's good friend N.O. developer J. C. Canizaro. We are currently checking to see if he is connected to the Traficanti's. Canizaro is a commission member. All we get from lizard blood Bush is personal contempt and indifference toward the suffering of the city's poorest residents. In Bush's visit he visited the rich and connected only and in his own unequally moronic way displayed his ignorance and callous stupidity...The Latin Quarter has come to life and the city's wealthier areas have as well. The poor and middle-class areas are a shambles. Our President is giving the city $3.1 billion to fix the levees, but experts say $32 billion is needed. Our government has allocated $25 billion for relief; $250 billion is needed. We believe the disaster was deliberately caused and the part of government is a classic case of gross negligence and a colossal misallocation of resources away from social needs and infrastructure and into the private bank accounts of the rich and super-rich. Washington and local politicians and the elitists will rape what is left of the city.” www.theinternationalforecaster.com/trainwreck.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Kelo vs. City of New London will be used to facilitate the theft of the black people of New Orleans’s homes and lands using eminent domain what one dissenting Justice called reverse Robin Hood stealing from the poor to give to the rich and connected. We already saw the no bid contracts to Bu$h cronies, that was the first phase. Subsequent phases will be the acquisition of the homes and lands of the poor and working class neighborhoods. The residents won’t be able to reclaim their homes and also will not be able to afford the new homes, condos and apartments that will be constructed. What we are seeing is grand theft New Orleans. New Orleans was just one of the models the plutocrats will use to continue the massive transfer of wealth from the working poor and lower middle classes to themselves. The new Federal Reserve, and Bu$h imperialist policies will also be used to erode the wealth and lifestyle of the rest of AmeriKKKa as well as dismantle the social welfare programs that serve as a safety nets for the least of us. It is all part and parcel to their agenda to bring about a radical change in AmeriKKKa . Their goal is to usher in wage and debt peonage, massive unemployment to force more and more young folks into the waiting arms of the US imperialist military as canon fodder for the elites perpetual wars the one party fascists plan to wage around the world, unless people of good will and conscience determine to derail their agenda.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 10:37 AM