No Photos of Dead â??Cockroachesâ?� Allowed in New Orleans

No Photos of Dead â??Cockroachesâ?� Allowed in New Orleans

Kurt Nimmo | September 14 2005

Let CNN sue the Bush administration all it wants. It will make no difference in the new New Orleans, where the Pentagon is in control (along with Blackwater mercenaries and militarized cops) and the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution no longer exist. â??On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims,â?� reports the San Francisco Chronicle. â??But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasnâ??t being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 metersâ??more than three football fields in lengthâ??away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.â?� No doubt journalists are relievedâ??in Iraq, when the media ventures too close to â??certain military operations,â?� they are often shot dead.

In the new New Orleans, an American city now sharing ominous parallels to Baghdad, the â??insurgents,â?� that is to say residents who refuse to leave their homesâ??likely understanding that if they do so their homes will be bulldozed, not unlike the homes of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bankâ??are now considered on par with common household pests. â??The cockroaches come out at night,â?� Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coronerâ??s Department, said of the residents who have defied military orders to â??evacuate,â?� or surrender their homes, possessions, and pets to the government (no word on what exactly will happen to the possessions, but pets are systematically exterminated). â??This is one of the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you,â?� he told a female reporter, insinuating that the remaining residents are not only flat-bodied insects of the family Blattidae, but also rapists and possibly murderers. Cecilia M. Vega of the Chronicle adds: â??Nugent, who is white, acknowledged he wasnâ??t personally familiar with the poor, black neighborhood, saying he only knew of it by reputation.â?�

Not documenting and possibly never reporting the actual death toll in New Orleans is apparently not a concern for most Americans, who remain almost completely in the dark, if we can believe polls conducted by the corporate media. â??A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey finds that 58% of Americans say they are following news coverage of the hurricane disasterâ??and a vast majority give the media high marks,â?� reports Editor & Publisher. Even more disturbing is the fact far too many Americans seem to not be troubled that Bush (or anybody else in government) will never be held to account for the fact thousands of people waited days to receive urgent water, food, and medical attention. â??At the same time, only 43% of Americans give President Bush a passing grade in response to Hurricane Katrina, with 54% disapproving, and 7 in 10 call for an independent probe of the federal responseâ?¦. Americans are also more likely to believe that the slow response was a result of bureaucratic inefficiency (49%) than a lack of adequate preparation (40%).â?� Of course, CNN and Gallup did not ask if Americans believe the government deliberately left the victims of Katrina to their fate. It is simply unthinkable government would do such a thingâ??Operation Northwoods, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Navy bacterial experiments on the people of San Francisco, CIA experiments with Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii on the unwitting people of New York, U.S. military releasing mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden), and countless other examples not withstanding.

Indeed, the New World Order crew considers millions of Americans as little more than â??cockroaches,â?� although they are not as forthright as the racist yahoo Dean Nugent. Our neoliberal rulers (and the current neocon clique) are adamantly opposed to the idea of the â??public goodâ?� (as in saving hurricane victims) because for the global elite the â??market rulesâ?� and no appreciable larger community or social consciousness exists outside of their own narrow economic interestsâ??thus neocons and so-called â??conservativesâ?� (who are reactionaries, not traditional conservatives) blame the impoverished victims of Katrina for their own lack of resources and class-bound ineptitude (such not being able to afford a car or a motel room out of harmâ??s way). But regardless of this facile blame game, the neolibs and neocons consider Katrina a sort of naturally occurring structural adjustment program that will punish the â??useless eatersâ?� (Untermensch) and ultimately reward the financial elite as they invest in a radically transformedâ??â?�demographically, geographically and politically,â?� as the elitist James Reiss unabashedly informs usâ??new New Orleans, now earmarked to become an upscale tourist destination minus a troublesome under class deemed expendable (or easily displaced).

It is the task of the Pentagon to make certain the corporate mediaâ??instinctively sniffing around ghoulish stories, such as the sensationalistic prospect of the New Orleans deadâ??are not allowed access, and for good reason: it is not so much the dead or the bogus claim of respecting the families of the dead, but rather the Pentagonâ??s desire to conduct operations under an impenetrable dark cloud of secrecy. In essence, Katrina is an exerciseâ??call it a war gameâ??to test out operational methods that will be used down the road as martial law (or martial law without martial law, as in New Orleans) is rolled out elsewhere in the country under the guise of a terrorist attack or some other tenuous (and manufactured) excuse. CNN and the alphabet corporate news ministriesâ??even though they faithful serve the Bushian agenda on most occasionsâ??will not be permitted to snoop around, as they are not allowed to snoop around Iraq where lessons in covert warfare (engineering â??pseudo-gangâ?� terrorist groups led by phantom terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) are learned and archived in databases. In the meantime, in true Orwellian fashion, the Army 82nd Airborne Division will threaten journalists as they claim to follow U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellisonâ??s temporary restraining order against a â??zero accessâ?� policy announced by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, a â??John Wayne dudeâ?� who can â??get some stuff done,â?� namely reduce a constitutional republic to a totalitarian nightmare in short order.

As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'

San Francisco Chronicle/Cecilia M. Vega | September 14 2005

New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.

Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.

"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department, who accompanied the soldier, added that it wasn't safe to be in Bywater. "They'll kill you out here," he said, referring to the few residents who have continued to defy mandatory evacuation orders and remain in their homes."

"The cockroaches come out at night," he said of the residents. "This is one of the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you," he told a female reporter.

Nugent, who is white, acknowledged he wasn't personally familiar with the poor, black neighborhood, saying he only knew of it by reputation.

Later Monday, the recovery team collected a body from a green house on St. Anthony Street in nearby Seventh Ward. The dead man, who was slipped into a black body bag and carried out to one of the white vans, had been lying alone on the living room floor for nearly two weeks, neighbors said.

"I told them weeks ago he was in there," said Barry Dominguez, 39, who lives across the street and has refused to leave the neighborhood he grew up in.

After the recovery team took away the St. Anthony Street body, two workers urinated on the side of a neighbor's house.

The CNN suit was in response to comments Friday at a news conference in which officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said members of the news media would not be allowed to witness the recovery of hurricane victims' bodies.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, had said Friday that the recovery effort would be done with dignity, "meaning that there would be no press allowed." Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore later said there would be zero access to the recovery operation.

During a hearing Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Houston, a lawyer who represented the government said FEMA had revised its previous plans to limit coverage.

Government agencies may still refuse requests from members of the media to ride along, or be "embedded," on recovery boats as crews gather the dead. "But, to the extent the press can go out to the locations, they're free to do that," said Keith Wyatt, an assistant U.S. attorney, according to a transcript of the hearing. "They're free to take whatever pictures they can take."

Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele said the government's position as explained in court Saturday didn't represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery efforts they come upon, but they won't be embedded with search teams.

"We're not going to bar, impede or prevent" the media from telling the story, he said. "We're just not going to give the media a ride.

Hey, it's the American way.. What do u expect from a Criminal Gov't, gotta hide the truth or 2many flag waving americans will wake up