Majikthise

New photog blog: Morgan and Owens

Good news: Brooklyn photographic power couple Morgan & Owens have launched a blog to keep fans abreast of their peripatetic shooting schedule.

Blackwater

Blackwater has been in the news again lately. Of course, they aren't getting kicked out of Iraq. Some Blackwater employees are being investigated for allegedly trafficking arms.  

Just the word "Blackwater" makes me feel slightly queasy.

The scariest people I've ever met were the Blackwater guys I found clustered around a van behind a New Orleans hotel shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

I saw a lot of disconcerting things during those two weeks, but the one experience that haunts me two years later was a five-minute conversation that crew.

We'd already encountered a few other Blackwater guys during our trip. One juiced up freak in mirrored sunglasses and a Blackwater bearclaw t-shirt actually lunged at our car when my colleague tried to take a picture of the hotel he was guarding. He didn't point his weapon or yell, or do anything a rational person in a defensive posture might have done. He just grunted really loudly and tried to stick his head in our window.

Mind you, he wasn't holding a position in an emergency. We were driving in broad daylight through downtown New Orleans with a bunch of other traffic (military and civilian).

The Blackwater dude was acting as a glorified rent-a-cop on the sidewalk, about two blocks from the main media staging area for New Orleans, which was already amply secured by US military and law enforcement.

What I didn't realize at the time was that these Blackwater guys thought of themselves as frontline soldiers in a literal war zone, ready to use deadly force at the slightest provocation. That was an unfounded estimate, in the middle of the day in downtown New Orleans several days after the city had been secured by the legitimate authorities.

We certainly weren't seeing that level of aggression or anxiety from the 82nd Airborne or the NOLA police, or the National Guard, or anyone else in the vicinity.

The real public servants greeted journalists warmly and told us proudly about all the things they were doing to help.

Some bored guys from the 82nd Airborne even agreed to watch our car for us for a few minutes when we got out to photograph the abandoned convention center.  A Louisiana sheriff offered us a ride when we really needed one. A California fire chief approached us on the Interstate and proudly gave us a grand tour of his department's joint recovery operations with US soldiers.

In retrospect, it seems like the Blackwater guys were inhabiting their own violent fantasy world. A more cynical person would say they were looking for an excuse to hurt someone.

A couple days after our initial encounter with the lunger, I set out to talk to some Blackwater guys in person. This was the last picture I snapped before I found them.

When I looked in their eyes, I felt something entirely new to me--a basic mammalian sense of dread. It was as if some part of my brainstem came alive and said: "These people are predators. They would kill you."

These mercenaries were nothing like the lunger. In fact, they weren't overtly threatening, or outwardly aggressive. Actually, some of them were friendly in their own twitchy dead-eyed way.

One guy lit up when I mentioned I was from Brooklyn.

His buddies wanted to know what kind of weapon I was carrying, as if this were standard bar chitchat.

I tried to interview them, but I couldn't get anything more than vague allusions to Iraq. One silent guy seemed to be getting more and more agitated as I asked questions of his friends. I figured it was a good time to go.

As soon as I got out of sight and back to the rental car, I started shivering and didn't stop for almost an hour.

In retrospect, I realize that I only dared to approach these guys because of a naive faith that I was an unarmed US journalist in the USA.

I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a society where these guys were around every corner, unbound by the rule of law.

Just deserts for Louisiana attorney general

Finally, some good news...

John Protevi reports that the Louisiana Attorney General who pursued baseless charges of mercy killing by medics after Katrina is now in hot water for giving lucrative consulting gigs to some of his more eccentric and disreputable buddies.

AG Charles Foi is also facing a civil suit from one of the doctors whom he tried to railroad on baseless charges of mercy killing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Suffice it to say that he's not in very good shape for the upcoming election.

Engineering expert: NOLA levee repairs flawed

On a recent fact-finding tour, civil engineering expert Bob Bea observed serious flaws in the repairs on New Orleans' levees:

The most troubling, Dr. Bea said, was erosion on a levee by the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a navigation canal that helped channel water into New Orleans during the storm.

Breaches in that 13-mile levee devastated communities in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, and the rapid reconstruction of the barrier was hailed as one of the corps’ most significant rebuilding achievements in the months after the storm.

But Dr. Bea, an author of a blistering 2006 report on the levee failures paid for by the National Science Foundation, said erosion furrows, or rills, suggest that “the risks are still high.” Heavy storms, he said, may cause “tear-on-the-dotted-line levees.” [NYT]

After being informed of the safety concerns raised by Bea and other independent experts, Sen. Mary Landrieu sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers asking whether the repairs were sufficient to protect the levee system.

The Corps stands by its work.

National Geographic sponsored Bea's tour as part of its ongoing coverage of levee-related issues.

Corps rebuilding floodwall weaker than pre-Katrina

Harry Shearer points to some disquieting news out of New Orleans: According to the Times Picayune, The Army Corps of Engineers is restoring the 17th Street Canal floodwall with steel pilings 13 feet shorter than the originals.

Read the whole Picayune article, it's some great science journalism.

The Corps insists that the shorter pilings pose no threat to the public because concurrent adjustments are being made elsewhere in the system to keep the water level from rising as high as it did in 2005.

However, professor Bob Bea of UC Berkeley, the marine engineer who lead the NSF's post-Katrina flooding investigation, remains skeptical. He worries that the shorter pilings could be the "fatal flaw" that dooms the flood control system. (Bea was interviewed extensively for Spike Lee's 2006 documentary When the Levees Broke.)

Bea and other experts are calling on the Corps to submit to more outside scrutiny and independent review of their flood-control strategy.

Danziger bridge shooting case

NPR has the latest on the case against the NOPD officers accused of shooting unarmed black men on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. According to the article, prosecutors made a major tactical blunder when the promised three officers immunity for grand jury testimony only to indict them afterwards.

Do prosecutors go back on promises of immunity regularly?

It's not certain that a judge and jury will get to decide who was guilty and who was innocent on the Danziger Bridge that morning. Legal experts say prosecutors have already made a serious misstep. They offered immunity to three of the officers to testify before the grand jury, then turned around and got indictments against them.

Defense attorneys argued strenuously that immunized testimony cannot be used to incriminate a defendant. Last week, a judge gave the lawyers for the police a tactical victory and let them review the entire grand jury testimony.

Loyola professor Ciolino says that's invaluable for the defense. Prosecution of the Danziger Bridge case has, so far, provided him several "teachable moments." [NPR]

The defense attorneys for the officers are claiming that the prosecution used the grand jury testimony against their clients, and a judge gave them the right to review the grand jury testimony to search for evidence that officers' immunized testimony was used against them. However, news reports seem to be talking about the alleged misuse of testimony as if it were an established fact. Am I missing something? 
 

Gingrich blames "lack of citizenship" for Katrina deaths

The CPAC conference proclaims itself the "intellectual cornerstone of our modern conservative movement."

Here's what Newt Gingrich self-proclaimed student of history told CPAC about Hurricane Katrina.

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane. [Audio]

Facing South takes Newt to task for his racist revisionism and sets the record straight.

Seven NOLA cops indicted for Katrina shootings

new orleans police department beat me down, originally uploaded by fotogail.

Seven New Orleans police officers turned themselves in at the city jail Tuesday, having been indicted by a grand jury in connection with the Danziger Bridge shootings after Hurricane Katrina. Four officers face first-degree murder charges, and three others have been charged with attempted murder :

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Seven policemen charged in a deadly shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned themselves in Tuesday at the city jail, where more than 200 supporters greeted them in a show of solidarity.

Each of the indicted men faces at least one charge of murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the hurricane hit New Orleans. Two people died and four people were wounded. [AP]

The officers maintain their innocence. The AP doesn't mention this, but the Times Picayune notes that counter-protesters also showed up to watch the officers surrender.

The alleged crimes took place the week after Hurricane Katrina, while most of New Orleans was still under water. According to initial reports, the police killed a group of snipers who had been shooting at relief contractors on September 4, 2005. However, within months, the official story was called into question by survivors from two New Orleans families who came under fire on the bridge that day.

One teenaged victim says he was shot several times for no reason, at least once at point-blank range. A 40-year-old retarded man and a teenager died of their wounds. Four other civilians were injured in the shooting. Allegedly, a gun was found on the scene the next day but there is no evidence that it belonged to any of the victims.

John Burnett of NPR did an excellent piece on the Danziger shootings and the federal civil rights lawsuits launched against the police.

(This photograph by fotogail was taken a few months post-Katrina, but it's not connected to the Danziger Bridge incident.)

Insurance firm to cancel all commerical policies in NOLA

Scout Prime of First Draft has some very bad news about New Orleans:

St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc., Louisiana's largest commercial insurance provider, plans to cancel all its commercial property policies in the New Orleans area next year, sparking fears that other insurers will follow and slow the region's economic recovery.

The carrier's sudden decision not to renew any polices for businesses in Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard or eastern St. Tammany parishes. Some firms in other parts of South Louisiana, including St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes, may also have a harder time getting insurance with St. Paul Travelers.

The company claims that it is pulling out because of the sorry state of the levees of New Orleans. (Not an implausible rationale, given the state of the levees.) However, cynics note that the pullout follows on the heels of a court decision giving flood insurance policy owners the right to seek flood-related damages through other kinds of policies. The company insists that the pullout has nothing to do with the recent legal clarification of policy-holders' rights.

Analysts worry that other insurance companies will follow St. Paul's lead and pull out of New Orleans.

This is a very serious situation. If businesses can't get insurance, many will close, or never reopen. If businesses close, New Orleans will lose jobs, goods and services, and tax revenues.

A commercial insurance coverage crisis could doom the reconstruction effort in New Orleans.

Journalist Greg Palast faces criminal charges from DHS

Journalist Greg Palast may face criminal charges for photographing "national security site" while filming a documentary about Hurricane Katrina:

Yes, the rumor’s true. Greg Palast is facing a criminal complaint from the Department of Homeland Security stemming from his filming the Hurricane Katrina investigation for Link TV and Democracy Now. The film’s producer, Matt Pascarella, is also facing the legal wrath of Big Brother.

It appears the complaint is about filming a sensitive national security site owned by Exxon petroleum. It seems that photographing major Bush donors is now a federal offense.

Palast hasn't been arrested, but he has been questioned by the DHS.