Paramilitary experts

Of course all the prominent business persons in New Orleans hire mercenaries with Iraq war experience to do stuff for them. That's just normal.

Sometime after the disaster, the developers hired “paramilitary experts” with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to try to recover the bodies, but they were not allowed to enter the site because of the danger of collapse, Miller said.

"Sometime after the disaster" is a regular occurrence in this town.  If you can afford to be prepared for that, then of course you are.

Frontier justice

Watch your step, narc.

According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, State Department investigator had already begun probing Blackwater a short time before the infamous Nisour Square shooting in 2007. But the probe broke down when Blackwater's top guy in Iraq threatened to kill the lead investigator, suggesting, not improbably, that amid the anarchy of Iraq it could be easily covered up as just another moment of sectarian violence or a terrorist attack.

In practical terms, police more often than not make the law. And this is not only the case in "fog of war" situations like Iraq 2007.  In New Orleans we call murder and body disposal a Number 2.  (In case you're wondering the Number 1 is a Ham Sandwich.)  

The scary thing in the Blackwater case is we're talking about a private police force with no straightforward accountability to any state.  Thank god we don't have that sort of thing here.

Cartman in Afghanistan

Blackwater Took Hundreds of Guns From U.S. Military, Afghan Police

Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military.

Hmm... I guess they really were trying to rescue Stevie Nicks.

Maybe they just wanted to make someone respect their authoritah

Maybe "The Coon" needed all those guns to stop "Professor Chaos"

He didn't want to but his hand was possessed by Mitch Connor

Because... he's a goddamn asshole. And... that's about it.

You guys, I am so seriously. I could do this all day.

Noteworthy

Recovery center at library closing
Friday, December 29, 2006
From staff reports

The Disaster Recovery Center inside the New Orleans Public Library on Loyola Avenue will close its doors for good today.

It will be replaced, beginning Tuesday, with a Welcome Home Center on the 14th floor of the building at 1250 Poydras St., the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a news release.

FEMA runs the recovery centers and will run the Welcome Home Center as well.

The Jefferson Parish Disaster Recovery Center at 15 West Bank Expressway in the Westbank Shopping Center will be closed Monday for New Year's. It will reopen Tuesday at 9 a.m.

Representatives of state, federal and volunteer agencies, as well as customer service representatives from the U.S. Small Business Administration are on hand at the centers to answer questions and provide recovery information, FEMA's news release said.

Normal operating hours for the centers are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Opening the main library building to FEMA last year helped get the building put on the city's priority list for restoring utilities and data lines. But I think we all agree it's time to once again allow patrons to enter the library without the obligatory Blackwater Security pat down.