* Image: shot by Helcat. The warehouse at Mardis Gras World in the Algiers neighborhood just outside of New Orleans has been transformed into an emergency supply depot. Pallets of MREs now cohabitate with giant love goddesses. Link to photo set.
* WaPo: “As crews rush to restore basic telephone and Internet services to areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, some executives, academics and analysts are urging a more ambitious approach: Make New Orleans and the surrounding areas super-connected communities, with advanced services that surpass what is available anywhere in the country, if not the world.” Link
* A video for the K-otix remix George Bush Don’t Like Black People” is here: Link
* “Internet access through RadioShack Corporation’s nearly 5,000 company stores nationwide is being offered free of charge to victims of Hurricane Katrina.” Link
* Prometheus Radio is asking folks to call their congresscritters to ask that they cosponsor HR 3731, which supports low power FM radio. Congressional phone numbers and FCC comment input site (until Sep. 21) here, along with info about Radio Katrina: Link
* Declan McCullagh’s Politech list has followups on previous posts there about Red Cross seeking tech aid: Link
* Salon: “The White House has devoted a lot of time and effort to blaming state and local officials for the flawed response to Hurricane Katrina, but others on the right have found a different target: environmentalists.” Link
* “The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.” Link
* Ned Sublette writes,
Ira Glass’s [NPR-syndicated program] “This American Life” had a New Orleans episode last week, called “After the Flood,” with a follow-up this week. He interviews a very articulate woman who was in the convention center. It’s devastating. He interviews one of the paramedics who witnessed the Gretna police turning back evacuees on the Crescent City connection and another witness to the confrontation. A high school girl from the Lafitte projects responds to Bill O’Reilly, saying, “I didn’t have no idea that it was a crime to be poor and the punishment was death… you know what it’s like not to have water?” A fourth interviewee talks about being an evacuee in Baton Rouge, and a fifth segment is a visit to a displaced persons’ FEMA mobile home park in florida, where people have been living for a year. There is a second program, to be aired this weekend, following up on astrodome evacuees. Downloadable (broadband, it’s an hour) from: thislife.org
* And, again, quoting Ned:
There was a struggle this week, perhaps over contract terms, between FEMA and Kenyon International, the firm to which body handling in Louisiana has been outsourced, which culminated in an exasperated Gov. Blanco’s hiring of Kenyon directly by the state of Louisiana. Link. Kenyon is wholly owned by SCI, a company that is not new to scandal, whose head is a political supporter of — guess who. Link.
* Here is the American Association of Museums’ exhaustive list of historic sites, gardens, zoos, and museums in the affected area, and what happened (or didn’t) to them. Link
* Bush to rename rebuilt French Quarter “Freedom” Quarter: Link.
* National Archives footage of the 1927 Mississippi River flood which displaced half a million people and led to a greater federal role in disaster relief. Then, as now, images of displaced persons reflect disparities along racial and economic lines. Link to archive.org footage.
* Snip from MSNBC’s Brian Williams, on the night of George Bush’s presidential address about Katrina:
I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It’s enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it… jump to certain conclusions.
* Following up on a previous Boing Boing post: here’s an NBC article, “Katrina floods wipe out years of research,” examining what happened to the lab animals and disease samples around NOLA.
(thanks, Vidiot, Jake Appelbaum, John Parres, Ned Sublette, Genie Ogden, Mr. Spocko, AKB, Frank Wales, Stephen Berg)