Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed - Out of $854 Million Offered, Only $40 Million Spent

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

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Sudan refugees reach U.S. to escape corporate oil war - Bill Gates Connected to Oil Profits

 

In Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have perished in what the United States calls "a genocide," the killing has been supported by profits from companies helping the government of Sudan tap its reservoirs of oil.

 The companies include China's Sinopec Corp., Malaysia's Petronas, and Schlumberger, based in the Netherlands Antilles -- all of whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

 The Gates Foundation's most significant connection to the Sudanese oil industry is through Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Bill Gates is a Berkshire director, and Berkshire's chairman, Warren E. Buffett, is a trustee of the Gates Foundation.

 Berkshire holds a $3.3 billion stake in PetroChina Co., a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, the biggest player in Sudanese oil.

 Buffett has pledged $31 billion worth of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation in annual installments, beginning last year with $1.6 billion.

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A Federal Judge dismisses lawsuit from Katrina

A federal judge has dismissed claims against the government in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the families of three people who died in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Ethel Mayo Freeman, 91, died in her wheelchair on Sept. 1, 2005, while waiting in the sweltering heat outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for help to arrive in New Orleans.

Her son, Herbert Freeman Jr., sued the federal government, including Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and then-FEMA director Michael Brown, accusing it of causing her death by negligence.

But the lawsuit can't continue, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey ruled.

"The government has publicly admitted that it made many mistakes in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One can only speculate at this point whether these mistakes caused the tragic deaths of the decedents," Zainey wrote in a decision issued Saturday and filed in court Tuesday.

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Obama Urges Help for Poor Black Communities in L.A. remarks

Invoking images of Los Angeles in flames, Sen. Barack Obama argued Sunday — the 15th anniversary of the nation's most violent modern civil uprising — that little had been done to fix the chronic social and economic conditions that gave rise to a three-day rampage that killed at least 53 people.

And although the riots occurred in L.A., the conditions that spawned them persist across the nation, Obama told an overflow crowd at South-Central's First AME Church. The Illinois Democrat is seeking his party's presidential nomination.

"There wasn't anything going on in Los Angeles that was unique to Los Angeles," Obama said. "If you traveled to Chicago, you would see the same young men on street corners without hope, without prospects, and without a sense of any destiny other than ending up in prison or in a casket."

Obama drew a sustained ovation when he rebuked the Bush administration for, as Obama put it, funding the war in Iraq instead of impoverished Americans — particularly those in minority neighborhoods.

"We have now spent half a trillion dollars on a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged," Obama said. "We could have invested that money in SouthCentral Los Angeles, or the South Side of Chicago, in jobs and infrastructure and hospitals and schools. Why is it we can find the money in a second for a war that doesn't make any sense?"

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Justice Department Study Says Black & Latinos are Twice as Likely to be Searched by Police

White People Still Deny Existence of Racial Profiling
Black drivers are three times as likely and Hispanic drivers are twice as likely to be searched as white drivers, the study shows. The data show that a similar percentage of drivers of each ethnicity was stopped, 8%-9% in 2005.

Police stopped 18 million drivers in 2005 and found evidence of a crime in about 12% of the searches, according to the report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"It tells us that there are a lot of things that need closer examination," says Dennis Parker, director of the racial justice program for the American Civil Liberties Union.

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