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During a live Charity Concert on NBC tv, rap star Kanye West abandoned his pre-scripted comments and spoke his truth.
“I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family and they say we are looting, you see a white family and they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because most of the people ARE black.
And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been (…)

Call to Action from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
National Day of Emergency Action Support the People of New Orleans! Jobs/Income & Housing for All Displaced Families Real Relief - Yes! Racism - No!
Wednesday, September 7
Join a protest on September 7 see below for details of protests in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle - or organize one in your community or on your campus. List your event on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website! (www.pephost.org/Sept7localaction)
What is (…)

by George E. Curry
I am angry. I am angry at the mayor of New Orleans. I am angry at the governor of Louisiana. I am angry at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I am angry at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now part of the Department of Homeland Security. I am angry at George W. Bush. I am angry because they were warned last November that New Orleans was one of the “Disasters Waiting to Happen” - and did nothing about it. Consequently, hundreds, if not thousands, of (…)

By CHARLES J. HANLEY | Associated Press September 3, 2005
NEW YORK - Beneath the giant dome of a Baghdad palace, facing his team of scientists and engineers, George Tenet sounded more like a football coach than a spymaster, a coach who didn’t know the game was over.
"Are we 85 percent done?" the CIA boss demanded. The arms hunters knew what he wanted to hear. "No!" they shouted back. "Let me hear it again!" They shouted again.
The weapons are out there, Tenet insisted. Go find them. (…)

GOD IS PUNISHING US FOR BUSH’S PRIDE
By Peter Fredson
September 3, 2005
I went to the local grocery store to get some hot-dog buns. While there I greeted an old lady, a Baptist neighbor. “How are you doing today,” I asked.
“Not too good. I’ve been watching the TV news about the terrible hurricane on the Gulf Coast, and I’m all upset.”
“Yes,” I said, in agreement with her, “All that death and destruction is terrible news, and our officials seem to be stumbling in the dark about (…)

By Matthew Rothschild
The scope of the disaster that goes by the name Hurricane Katrina is difficult to fathom at a distance. All the video on TV and all the photographs and words in newspapers, magazines, and on-line cannot adequately describe the loss. A million people homeless, a death toll likely to rise over 1,000, a great city submerged, a region devastated-the enormity was too great to take in.
Even in the first seventy-two hours after Katrina came ashore near New Orleans, it (…)

By DAVID GONZALEZ
The scenes of floating corpses, scavengers fighting for food and desperate throngs seeking any way out of New Orleans have been tragic enough. But for many African- American leaders, there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society.
The victims, they note, were largely black and poor, those who toiled in the background of the tourist havens, living in (…)

By Derrick Z. Jackson
PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday told ABC-TV, ’’there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud."
Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.
We are not referring to the people you currently see in endless footage, (…)

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After (…)

For the right to decent, secure housing
Fifteen percent of the world population is under threat of eviction for a series of reasons: foreign investment in countries with heavy debts, privatizations of the housing sector, deregulation of rented accommodation, ethnic cleansing, wars and occupation, as well as commercial speculation of natural disasters. Although Target 11 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 7 aims at improving the living conditions of at least 100 million (…)