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Is the former Republican mayor of New Orleans really blameless? Not by a long shot. From lefty blog Lenin's Tomb, which points to evidence that New Orleans officials "never put plans into place" to evacuate the poorest of the poor. [thanks, Aknaton]
posted by mediareport at 10:50 PM PST - 70 comments

English as she is spoke : Infamous as the world's most ludicrously inept foreign phrasebook, the misbegotten work of Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino was revived in a new edition by the Collins Library in March 2002. Some background.
posted by dhruva at 10:08 PM PST - 18 comments

Buy your own penguin! Have a pool? Want to recreate March of the Penguins in your backyard? No problem!
posted by amandaudoff at 10:02 PM PST - 15 comments

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go. Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes... "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable.. Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

The Two Americas. See also A Nation's Castaways, 'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked' & White Man's Burden
posted by y2karl at 9:54 PM PST - 69 comments

New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize A very enlightening article for anyone needing a little refresher in geography. New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange... Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.
posted by well_balanced at 9:02 PM PST - 17 comments

SomethingAwful.com, which has been running on fumes since Thursday because they're hosted in New Orleans, added a Paypal donation link for Katrina relief to their barebones status update site yesterday, raising more than $3,000 an hour. Paypal then froze the account for "suspicious activity," preventing over $30,000 in donations from reaching the Red Cross.
posted by MegoSteve at 8:26 PM PST - 20 comments

States That Do Not Actually Exist. (Flash, in english, but link is in french). Norwegian photographer Jonas Bendiksen, with credentials from Magnum, has been working on a project he calls SATELLITES. It is a photographic journey through the scattered enclaves, unrecognized mini-states, and other isolated communities that straddle the sourthern borderlands of the former USSR. The itinerary goes through such places as TRANSDNIESTER, a breakaway republic in Eastern Europe, ABKHAZIA, a unrecognized country on the Black Sea, the religiously conservative FERGHANA VALLEY in Central Asia, the SPACECRAFT CRASH ZONES between Russia and Kazakhstan, and the JEWISH AUTONOMOUS REGION of Far Eastern Russia.
posted by derangedlarid at 8:06 PM PST - 25 comments

365 Stuffed Animals. And Pancakes.
posted by nylon at 7:31 PM PST - 12 comments

Unconfirmed good news: In case you were really, really, worried, like I was after reading this, it looks like Alex Chilton survived the hurricane after all...
posted by lilboo at 6:44 PM PST - 28 comments

Judy, please turn off the lights while Wayne starts the projector. Streaming video of old educational films with a forum for snickering.
posted by longsleeves at 6:39 PM PST - 16 comments

Oh, the irony... The Bush administration, long critical of the United Nations, has accepted a U.N. offer of help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a U.N. team has gone to Washington to see how it can complement American efforts.
posted by saketini99 at 6:31 PM PST - 36 comments

There has been much criticism, both in the US and world media, of the handling of rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina. However, the Washington Post ran a survey Friday evening (registration required - bugmenot ) and of American's citizens 46 percent -- approve of the way Bush has handled relief efforts while 47 percent disapprove, a result that might offer some cheer to beleaguered White House staffers who feared a stronger negative reaction.
posted by dig_duggler at 6:24 PM PST - 79 comments

In-depth site details the swan-song of American technology and domestic manufacturing capability, the RCA videodisc engineering effort of the 1970/80s. Learn about CEDs, their manufacturing, see the high-tech players. Plus a nifty timeline of video technology and the CED.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Storm Hits, Capitalism Preserves Profits, Humanity Drowns. Beyond pointing out that Bush cares greatly about rich white people, what does the Left have to say about Katrina? How accurate is it to blame racism and capitalism for the federal governments's lack of response?
posted by cleardawn at 1:54 PM PST - 62 comments

FEMA fudging dates? (scroll down a bit). That's their screenshot, and then the current google cache, and the current page.
posted by 31d1 at 1:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Mayor Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool? The city of New Orleans owns buses - lots of them. So why weren't they used to evacuate the citizens BEFORE Hurricane Katrina struck? A rough count shows two hundred and five buses owned by the city of New Orleans. "Houston is 350 miles from New Orleans. At 50 miles per hour, 13,530 people could have reached Houston in seven hours. Turn the buses around. 14 hours later another 13,530 people are in Houston, far away from Katrina's wrath. In a little more than a day's time, you've gotten the poorest people who wanted to leave but couldn't leave on their own out of the city".
posted by Serena at 1:25 PM PST - 75 comments

"I'm sure the thugs at OMB are happily gnawing on Mike Parker's bones." Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers from 2001-2002, was forced to retire because he vocally criticized Bush administration plans to cut funding for their anti-flooding projects. Here's a bit of Mike Parker's testimony from a Senate Budget Committee meeting in 2002, shortly before he was forced to resign: "After being in the administration and dealing with them, I still don't have warm and fuzzy feelings for them. I'm hoping that OMB (White House Office of Management and Budget) understands we're at the beginning of the process. If the corps is limited in what it does for the American people, there will be a negative impact." So, what is he saying now about what would've happened had New Orleans recieved proper funding? "Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in. I'm not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."
posted by insomnia_lj at 12:10 PM PST - 21 comments

As reported by New Orleans ABC affiliate WGNO / ABC26 LA National Guard Wants Equipment to Come Back From Iraq
posted by theora55 at 11:26 AM PST - 11 comments

"They killed a man here last night." Stories of rapes, murders, and suicides are emerging from survivors of the "shelter" of the Superdome. From a National Guard soldier: "We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom. Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."
posted by cerebus19 at 11:13 AM PST - 112 comments

A just released report [pdf] from the organization OpenTheGovernment.org states that the federal government has been classifying records at an astonishing rate. An example from the report: "The 'state secrets' privilege allows the sitting U.S. president to nearly unilaterally withhold documents from the courts, Congress, and the public. At the height of the Cold War, the administration used the privilege only four times between 1953 and 1976. Since 2001, it has been used 23 times." Lots more numbers like that in the report. A newspaper summarizes the report here.
posted by marxchivist at 10:39 AM PST - 9 comments

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night." Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans damns FEMA on Tim Russett this morning. (WMV clip)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:50 AM PST - 202 comments

Pocketmod: free disposable personal organizer. It's as cheap as one piece of paper (Because that's all it is!)
posted by signal at 9:38 AM PST - 8 comments

Why some people stayed behind in New Orleans Wealth buys many things, not the least of which is safety and connections. What role does the society have in looking after all the poor? Should it have a role and if so, why? What could these people have done to help themselves? Why did it only take a few days for society to fall apart?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:56 AM PST - 22 comments

Hugh Sawyer is an Oxford law graduate. He wears a Gieves & Hawkes suit and works at Sotheby's, London. He also lives in a ditch.
posted by Blue Stone at 8:39 AM PST - 41 comments

Oveta Culp Hobby and the Women's Army Corps. Early in 1941 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts (the first woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives) met with General George C. Marshall, the Army's Chief of Staff, and informed him that she intended to introduce a bill to establish an Army women's corps, separate and distinct from the existing Army Nurse Corps. Rogers remembered the female civilians who had worked overseas with the Army under contract and as volunteers during World War I: serving without benefit of official status, they had to obtain their own food and quarters, and they received no legal protection or medical care. Upon their return home they were not entitled to the disability benefits or pensions available to U.S. military veterans. Rogers was determined that if women were to serve again with the Army in a wartime theater they would receive the same legal protection and benefits as their male counterparts. After a long and acrimonious debate, the following year the bill was finally approved by Congress and signed into law by FDR. Oveta Culp Hobby, chairman of the board of the Houston Post, was appointed as Director of the WAAC. (more)
posted by PenguinBukkake at 8:15 AM PST - 4 comments

A cached google page says Loyola thought the city of New Orleans contracted with private companies for hurricane evacuation. Did I miss something? Where we these mysterious buses? From here and here.
posted by nospecialfx at 7:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Atchafalaya. As part of its coverage of the hurricane, the New Yorker has reposted on-line John McPhee's 1987 article on the Atchafalaya basin and the Army Corps of Engineer's long-running efforts to control the Mississippi. An excellent piece from one of our best writers.
posted by Kat Allison at 7:07 AM PST - 16 comments

YUM! Human hair in your food!
posted by loquacious at 5:58 AM PST - 15 comments

Over 2000 Katrina refugees bused to Muskogee, Oklahoma will "be met by approximately 300-400 National Guardsmen" who will check them for weapons and interview them before allowing them into barracks and tents at Camp Gruber, a World War II training facility deactivated in 1947 and located 14 miles southeast of Muskogee near the village of Braggs (population 301). This after 250 were arrested during a riot as the buses were loading. A 9 pm curfew was passed by Braggs councilmen in anticipation of the refugees' arrival. However as of Friday night, "there is no food or water on site". Further, Braggs High School enrolls 60 students and Braggs Elementary School enrolls 168. For those (few) wondering why Camp Gruber sounds familiar!
posted by mischief at 3:29 AM PST - 21 comments

The real disaster in New Orleans. David Aaronovitch of the London Times observes, "It isn’t the failure to act in New Orleans that is the story here, it’s the sheer, uninsured, uncared for, self-disenfranchised scale of the poverty that lies revealed. It looks like a scene from the Third World because that’s the truth. It’s a quiet disaster that ’s been going on for years." The truth is the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans has a poverty level of 36.4 percent. A quarter of households have an annual income of less than $10,000, while half live on less than $20,000. Over half of the population in the ward is categorized as “not in the labor force,” mainly because they have ceased looking for work. The truth is that even on a normal day, New Orleans is a sad city. "Sure, tourists think New Orleans is fun: you can drink and hop from strip club to strip club all night on Bourbon Street, and gamble all your money away at Harrah’s. But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can’t take care of itself even when it is not 80 percent underwater." The National Review is already blaming it - predictably - on the breakdown of the family. Conservatives in America are already dismissing the problem, as they have for years. But to those outside the United States, the scale of poverty in the world's richest country comes as a shock.
posted by three blind mice at 1:30 AM PST - 86 comments

Brief gallery of the works of a Brazilian mural artist who works using the medium of apples of varying colors.
posted by jonson at 12:37 AM PST - 18 comments