Bush has bitten the bullet and realised that the only way out of the watery grave into which his political fortunes were washed by Katrina is by the time-honoured means of throwing money at the problem. However, he is still George W., and that means that the money will be heading into the pockets of his friends, cronies, and puppet masters. His apology appears directed at the recipients of this new government largesse: "Sorry I took so long to figure out another way to steal from the poor and homeless. That Sheehan woman must have rattled me more than I thought."

In the tradition of some of Bush's most memorable media events, the somewhat mistimed "Mission Accomplished" banner weeks into the Iraq invasion and occupation comes to mind, the wag the dog specialists dressed the stage of the royal master's mea culpa:

Bobby DeServi and Scott Sforza were on hand as we drove up about 8 p.m. or so EDT handling last-minute details of the stagecraft. Bush will be lit with warm tungsten lighting, but the statue and cathedral will be illuminated with much brighter, brighter lights, along nothing like the candlepower that DeServi and Sforza used on Sept. 11, 2002, to light up the Statue of Liberty for Bush's speech in New York Harbor. Here's a quote from DeServi on the lit up cathedral: "Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud.'' Bush will be hidden from street view by a large swatch of military camouflage netting, held in place by bags of rocks and strung up on poles, if I remember correctly. (Elisabeth Bumiller NYT, Cited by Wonkette)

Bush's speech to the victims was sorely missing the purported audience -- those left homeless by the devastation. Rather than face their wrath in the Astrodome or one of the detention camps into which they have been herded, Bush was carefully hidden behind military camouflage in the city his storm troopers had been fighting to empty of the hold-outs, the ones who suspected that were they to leave, they might never be allowed back in. As New Orleans' mayor Ray Nagin announced that certain neighborhoods would be open next week, we wonder about the real reason behind driving out those who wished to stay? Has FEMA suddenly become so efficient and effective that the threat of disease has ceased?

A report from Houston says that according to a poll, 44% of those evacuated don't want to return. They plan to stay where they are. That's one way to rid the city of its poor.

Behind the heart-felt manipulation of last night's speech lies a major political operation meant to save his administration and his political testament. So before we get all teary-eyed at the compassion Bush is showing for the victims, let's look at some thoughts on how the money is going to be spent...

First, the majority of those stranded in New Orleans were poor and black. So the first thing Bush does is to declare that the federal legislation requiring that minimum wage be respected during the reconstruction, the Davis-Bacon Act, does not apply. Is the logic that it will be better to poorly pay more people?

Will the contractors be forgoing part of their profit margins in the name of a humanitarian cause?

The next few articles look at what may be in store over the next months and years, and how the disaster will be turned into an opportunity to further entrench the neocon, neoliberal vision.

There are important questions, of which one of the most evident is how the reconstruction will be financed? Bush is promising $200 billion. Will he cut on the war in Iraq? Yeah, right! But it will have to come from somewhere, and the US economy is already in trouble with the huge deficits the war is imposing.

Drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, suspend environmental regulations including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, suspend prevailing wage labor laws, promote vouchers and school choice, repeal the estate tax and copiously fund faith-based organizations. These are just some of the recommendations a trio of hearty Heritage Foundation senior management officials are making to best facilitate the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.

Just as the Iraq War has been a Petri Dish for the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could prove to be the mother of all testing grounds for a passel of active Heritage Foundation's domestic policy initiatives.

Washington, DC's most prestigious and influential right wing think tank has been rocking and rolling since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

In a WebMemo entitled "President's Bold Action on Davis-Bacon Will Aid the Relief Effort," Senior Research Fellow Ronald D. Utt applauded Bush for suspending provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act applying "to federally funded construction projects in the Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina."

Utt wrote that the president "is to be commended for showing the courage to take this important but controversial stand... eliminating the 'prevailing wage' clause [which] should lead to a more efficient and lower cost recovery." Finally, without a hint of irony as to which entities will actually capitalize on the disaster, Utt praises the president for showing courage "in denying the politically powerful labor unions the unfair benefits they would otherwise have reaped from others' misfortune."

Two Heritage Press Room commentaries warned against playing the "blame game":

In her September 9, commentary entitled "Preventing future catastrophes," Helle Dale, the director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the foundation, deflects blame from President Bush while praising him for "the creation of an investigatory committee to look into 'what went right and what went wrong,' as the president put it."

James Carafano's September 13, Press Room commentary entitled "The Limits of Relief," provides a litany of so-called reasonable hypotheses as to why it took so long for the government to provide relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

It will be interesting to see how the foundation's commentators spin President Bush's remarks on Tuesday, September 13, when he said that he "take[s] responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.

A far more impressive Heritage Foundation document, however, says it all: An expansive Special Report written by Ed Meese, Stuart Butler, and Kim Holmes, lay out the foundation's cross-pollinated all-encompassing plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Entitled "From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities," the Special Report provides a set of guidelines and recommendations which come from the foundation's two-plus decade playbook.

Meese and comrades maintain that it is imperative "that taking action swiftly does not lead to steps that cause dollars to be used inefficiently or unwise decisions that will frustrate rather than achieve long term success."

The Heritage Foundation's "Guidelines" for rebuilding the Gulf Coast include:

• The federal government should provide support and assistance only in those situations that are beyond the capabilities of state and local governments and the private sector. State and local governments must retain their primary role as first responders to disasters. The federal government should avoid federalizing state and local first response agencies and activities.
• Federal financial aid, when necessary, should be provided in a manner that promotes accountability, flexibility, and creativity. In general, tools such as tax credits and voucher programs, which allow individuals and families to direct funds, should be utilized to encourage private-sector innovation and sensitivity to individual needs and preferences.
• Consistent with genuine health and safety needs, red tape should be reduced or eliminated to speed up private-sector investment and initiative in the rebuilding of facilities and the restoration of businesses. Regulations that are barriers to putting people back to work should be suspended or, at a minimum, streamlined.
• Congress should reorder its spending priorities, not just add new money while other money is being wasted. Now is the time to shift resources to their most important uses and away from lower-priority uses to use taxpayer dollars more effectively. It is critical that America focus on building capabilities for responding to a catastrophic disaster, not on catering to the wish lists of cities, parishes or counties, states, and stakeholders.
• Private entrepreneurial activity and vision, not bureaucratic government, must be the engine to rebuild. New approaches to public policy issues such as enhanced choice in public school education should be the norm, not the exception...The critical need now is to encourage investors and entrepreneurs to seek new opportunities within these cities...The key is to encourage private-sector creativity -- for example, by declaring New Orleans and other severely damaged areas "Opportunity Zones" in which capital gains tax on investments is eliminated and regulations eliminated or simplified.
• Funding from the federal government for homeland security and disaster response and relief activities should focus on national priorities, better regional coordination and communication, and capitalizing federal assets.
• Catastrophic disasters will require a large-scale and rapid military response that only the National Guard can provide. The National Guard needs to be restructured to make it both more effective and quicker to take action.

According to Meese, Butler and Holmes the key to successfully rebuilding the Gulf Coast is to "encourage creative and rapid private investment through incentives and reduced regulation, and to channel long-term education, health, and other assistance directly to the people and areas affected so that they can control their future."

The report suggests that, "New Orleans and other affected areas" be declared "Opportunity Zones." In these areas, "the President should direct an Emergency Board, drawn from federal, state, and local agencies and the private sector, to identify regulations at all levels that impede recovery and should propose temporary suspension or modification of these rules."

Suspending Davis-Bacon "would significantly reduce the cost of reconstruction and provide more opportunities for displaced Americans who are without jobs to work on federal projects to restore their neighborhoods." They do not detail the putting in place of any mechanisms aimed at preventing the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast from turning into an Iraq-like rip off. In addition, they do not explain how workers, many of whom have lost everything, can possibly afford to rebuild their homes and their lives by working for wages at, or close to, the minimum wage.

They recommend "repeal[ing] or waiv[ing] restrictive environmental regulations that hamper rebuilding a broad array of infrastructure from refineries to roads and stadiums." They also advocate "substantial changes in environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act" which they charge "have contributed to Katrina's damage,"

They believe the best way to get the energy infrastructure up and running is to "waive or repeal Clean Air Act (CAA) regulations that hamper refinery rebuilding and expansion," "waive or repeal gasoline formulation requirements under the Clean Air Act so as to allow gasoline markets to work more flexibly and efficiently and reduce costs to the American consumer," and "increase the production of oil in the United States" by drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

As an indication of how out of touch the Heritage Foundation is with the vast majority of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, they are offering a so-called tax relief package that will have little to no effect on most of the victims' lives. Front and center are recommendations to: "streamline or suspend" parts of the federal tax code in the so-called Opportunity Zones; repeal the estate tax in order to prevent the victims of the disaster from being "hounded by the IRS"; "postpone payment of 2004 and 2005 individual and business income taxes for Katrina's victims," and "waive penalties for withdrawals from tax-advantaged savings such as IRAs and 401(k) plans."

How many of the folks that you saw on the roofs of their houses and stuffed into the crumbling Superdome have IRAs and 401(k) plans, Mr. Meese?

The report goes on to propose "refundable tax credits for the purchase of the kind of health insurance that best meets their personal needs," voucherizing public school education, and encouraging public/private partnerships "through leasing" instead of constructing new public schools.

Finally, the report advocates the elimination of any-and-all barriers that prevent "charitable and faith-based groups, as well as uncertified or non-union individuals," from participating fully in the reconstruction.

Let's all be clear about one thing.

As we suggested last night, and as President Bush has now put us on notice, the Gulf Coast reconstruction effort is going to be run as a patronage and political operation.

That's not spin or hyperbole. They're saying it themselves.

The president has put Karl Rove in charge of the reconstruction, with a budget of a couple hundred billion dollars.

They've announced this in various ways over the last few days. But here's another, from today's Times ...

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.

Karl Rove runs political operations and manages coalitions through patronage. That's what he does. And that's what this is about.

Everybody realizes that. Don't expect much if any discussion of this point in the major papers or on the networks.

It's shameless. But that's beside the point.

This is a time when the country needs an opposition party. Every Democrat should be hitting on this. Take the politics out of the reconstruction effort. He put his chief spin-doctor in charge of the biggest reconstruction and refugee crisis the country's probably ever faced. That tells you all you need to know about his values. Nothing that happened in the last couple weeks meant anything to him. And nothing has changed. Same as Iraq. Same stuff.

BATON ROUGE, La. - Brandy Farris is house hunting in New Orleans.

The real estate agent has $10 million in the bank, wired by an investor who has instructed her to scoop up houses - any houses. "Flooding no problem," Farris' newspaper ads advise.

Her backer is a Miami businessman who specializes in buying storm-ravaged property at a deep discount, something that has paid dividends in hurricane-prone Florida. But he may have a harder time finding bargains this time around.

In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real estate market and made it hotter. Large sections of the city are underwater, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom.

This land rush has long-term implications in a city where many of the poorest residents were flooded out. It raises the question of what sort of housing - if any - will be available to those without a six-figure salary. If New Orleans ends up a high-priced enclave, without a mix of cultures, races and incomes, something vital may be lost.

"There's a public interest question here," said Ann Oliveri, a senior vice president with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington think tank. "You don't have to abdicate the city to whoever shows up."

For now, though, it's a seller's market, at least for habitable homes.

Two months ago, Steve Young bought a two-bedroom condo in New Orleans' Garden District as an investment for $145,000. Last month, he was transferred by Shell Oil to Houston. Last week, he put the condo on the market.

In a posting on Craigslist, an Internet classified advertising site, Young asked $220,000. He got a dozen serious expressions of interest - enough so he's no longer actively pursuing a buyer.

"I'm pretty positive the market's going to move up from here," he said.

So, to their surprise, are many others.

"I thought this storm was the end of the city," said Arthur Sterbcow, president of New Orleans-based Latter & Blum, one of the biggest real estate brokerages on the Gulf Coast.

"If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I'd be getting the calls and e-mails I'm getting, I would have thought he was ready for the psychiatric ward."

Messages from those wanting to buy houses - whether intact or flooded - and commercial properties are outrunning those who want to sell by a factor of 20, said Sterbcow, who has set up temporary quarters in his firm's Baton Rouge office.

"We're pressing everyone into service just to answer the phones," he said.

These eager would-be buyers may be drawing their inspiration from Lower Manhattan, which proved a bonanza for those smart enough to buy condos there immediately after the Sept. 11 attack.

Of course, in southern Louisiana, everything is hypothetical for the moment. The storm destroyed many property records and displaced buyers, sellers, agents and title firms, so no deals are actually being done. Insurance companies haven't started to settle claims yet, much less determine how, or whether, they will insure New Orleans in the future. The city hasn't even been drained.

But people are thinking ahead, influenced by a single factor: the belief that hundreds of billions of dollars in government aid is going to create a boomtown. The people administering that aid will need somewhere to live, as will those doing the rebuilding. So will employees of companies lured back to the area, and the service people that attend to them.

All this will lead to what Sterbcow delicately calls a "reorientation" of the city.

"Everyone I talked to has said, 'Let's start with a clean sheet of paper, fix it and get it right,' " he said. "Some of the homes here were only held together by the termites."

What the owners of the city's estimated 150,000 flooded houses will get out of "reorientation" is unclear, especially if the houses were in bad shape and uninsured.

Some black New Orleans residents say dourly that they know what's coming. Melvin Gilbert, a maintenance crew chief in his 60s, stood outside an elegant hotel in the French Quarter this week and recalled how the neighborhood had been gentrified.

He remembered half a century ago when the French Quarter had a substantial number of black residents.

"Then the Caucasians started offering them $10,000 for their homes," he said. "Well, they only bought the places for $2,000, so they took it and ran."

The white residents restored the homes, which rose quickly in value. Gilbert said he expected the same dynamic when the floodwaters receded in the heavily black neighborhoods east of downtown.

The question of who should own New Orleans is already sparking tension. The first posting seeking New Orleans property "in any condition or location" was placed on Craigslist on Aug. 29, while the storm still raged. With small variation, it was repeated numerous times over the next week.

Some readers were infuriated. "Do you read/watch/understand any of the news broadcasts coming from the city? Or do you just go to 'Cashing in on Desperation, Despondency, and Depression: How to Make a Zillion Dollars investing in Disaster Area Real Estate' seminars. Sheeeeeesh!" wrote one.

The process of tracking down owners of deluged houses is greatly slowed by the absence of records. It's not going to be easy to find these people, said Farris, the Baton Rouge real estate agent.

What would she pay for a ruined house?

Farris demurred, saying it was too early to tell, but probably only the value of the land, if that. Though the French Quarter may be back to life within months, outlying districts such as North Bywater and the Lower 9th Ward will take years, if they ever do. Investors might hope this is the equivalent of buying land on the outskirts of a boomtown, but it's not a guarantee.

For one thing, there are already proposals to convert certain flooded areas - including some water-logged neighborhoods - into parks. Under the Supreme Court's recent ruling broadening the definition of eminent domain, speculators could be forced to sell their properties to the government.

That would be a great outcome for many homeowners in the parishes south and east of New Orleans that bore the brunt of the storm.

Six months ago, Todd La Valla, a Re/Max real estate agent, bought a four-unit apartment building for $59,000 in the community of Buras, an unincorporated hamlet in Plaquemines Parish 55 miles southeast of New Orleans.

The tenants evacuated in the storm, or at least La Valla hopes they did. He's sure the building is gone too, like just about everything else in the area. La Valla had no insurance, which means his $10,000 investment is probably a complete loss.

Yet where there's disaster, there's opportunity.

"I've had calls from investors in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York looking to buy property," La Valla said. "This is going to be hard for the poor, the elderly, those that didn't have insurance. But it's going to be great for some people."

At first, Lucia Blacksher thought she was in the bad news group. In June, she and her boyfriend put their entire savings, about $35,000, into their dream house - a century-old shotgun Victorian in the New Orleans neighborhood of Mid-City. When the storm came, they fled to Blacksher's parents' house in Birmingham, Ala.

The house, which cost $225,000, is partially flooded. Her boyfriend, a Virginian who figures he's seen enough of hurricanes to last him the rest of his life, wants to move. The insurance company won't return calls.

Last week, Blacksher was worried she would lose her beloved house either to foreclosure or a forced sale. One of those bottom-feeders would get it.

She was more optimistic Wednesday. Somehow, she would get through this.

"Because the house survived the storm, it will be even more valuable," she said. "You could offer me $300,000 and I wouldn't take it. No way."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fewer than half of the hurricane Katrina evacuees living in shelters in the Houston area want to go home again, according to a poll by the Washington Post and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Forty-three per cent said they wanted to move back home when they can. About the same number of evacuees - 44 per cent - said they wanted to permanently relocate, and most of them wanted to stay in Houston, said the poll published Friday.

The slow response to the storm strained faith in government. Six in 10 said the experience had made them feel that the government didn't care about people like them.

But their religious faith has been strengthened, eight in 10 said. And 90 per cent were hopeful about the future.

The evacuees polled, all from New Orleans or elsewhere in Louisiana, also said:

- More than half of their homes had been destroyed. Two-thirds were renters and a third were homeowners.

- Almost 75 per cent didn't have insurance to cover their losses.

- More than half didn't have health insurance, a usable credit card with them, or a bank or chequing account from which they could withdraw money.

- More than two-thirds said they didn't evacuate because they didn't realize how bad the storm and its aftermath would be. More than half - 55 per cent - said one factor was that they didn't have a car or a way to leave.

The survey of 680 randomly selected evacuees at Houston-area shelters was conducted Sept. 10-12 by ICR. The margin of error was said to be plus or minus four percentage points. The Harvard School of Public Health collaborated on the project.

As a consequence of the catastrophe that occurred in New Orleans, people in the US and throughout the world have started to re-examine the record of the present leaders of the first world superpower. A shift in opinion has taken place almost overnight. History, throwing us all back into our seats, suddenly opened its throttle.

Katrina - everyone refers to the hurricane by her name as if she were some kind of avatar - revealed that there is dire and increasing poverty in the US, that black people are typically treated as unwanted second-class citizens, that the systematic cutting of government investment in public institutions has produced widespread social disequilibrium and destitution (40 million Americans live without any aid if they fall ill), that the so-called war against terrorism is creating administrative chaos, and that within and against all this, voices of protest are being raised loud and clear.

All this though was evident before Katrina to those living it, and to those who wanted to know. What she changed was that the media were there for once, showing what was actually happening, and the fury of those to whom it was happening. With her terrible gesture she wiped the opaque screens clean for a little while.

In some gnomic way the as-yet-innumerable dead on the Gulf coast spoke not for but with the 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the ongoing disastrous and criminal war. Time and again in the US press, Katrina and Iraq are being mentioned together. Yet Katrina was regular. She belonged to the familiar weather conditions which affect the Gulf of Mexico. She was not hiding in Afghanistan. And merciless as she was, she did not belong to any axis of evil. She was simply a natural threat to American lives and property, and she was heading for Louisiana.

It was in the self-interest (as well as the national interest) of the president and his chosen colleagues to meet the challenge she threw down, to foresee the needs of her victims and to reduce the ensuing pain and panic to the minimum possible. If they, the government, happened to fail to do this, they would be able to blame nobody else, and they themselves would be blamed. A child could foresee this. And they failed utterly. Their failure was technical, political and emotional. "Stuff happens," murmurs Donald Rumsfeld.

Is it possible that this administration is mad? Let us try to define the variant of madness, for it may be that it has never occurred before. It has very little to do, for example, with Nero when he fiddled while Rome burned. Any madness, however, implies a severe disconnection with reality, or, to put it more precisely, with the existent.

The variant we are considering touches upon the relationship between fear and confidence, between being threatened and being supreme. There is no negotiation between the two. Their "madness" operates like a switch which turns one off and the other on. And what is grave about this is that it is in the long periods of negotiating between fear and confidence that the existent is normally surveyed and observed in its multitudinous complexity. It is there that one learns about what one is facing.

Five days after Katrina had struck, when President Bush finally visited the devastated city, he astounded journalists by saying: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." On the same day, in the wrecked small town of Biloxi, the president's flying visit was preceded by a team who quickly cleared the rubble and corpses from the route his cortege would take. Two hours later the team vanished, leaving everything else in the town exactly as it was.

The calculations of the present US government are closely related to the global interests of the corporations, and what has been termed the survival of the richest, who today also vacillate abruptly between fear and confidence.

The lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is a talking head for corporate interests and to whom Bush and co listened when planning their tax reforms for the benefit of the rich, is on record as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth, but here the disconnections are systematic and crop up not only in their announcements but in their every strategic calculation. Hence their ineptness. Their operation in Afghanistan failed, their war in Iraq has been won (as the saying goes) by Iran, Katrina was allowed to produce the worst natural disaster in US history, and terrorist activities are increasing.

An ignorance about most of what exists, and an abdication from the very minimum of what can be expected of government - are we not approaching disconnections which amount to what can be called madness when found in the minds of those who believe they can rule the planet?

Yesterday city councillor Lynne Pope woke up to find 191 emails waiting for her.

Now she is trying to figure out what to say to the family from New Orleans who, after watching police shoot a family member, pinned a note to his body - but now can't find him.

And how does she reply to the mother looking for her 22-year-old son who is autistic and can't communicate, or to the mother who asked to have her eight-year-old daughter's name taken off the missing person's list because the child's body has been found.

Pope, along with Peter Koch in Switzerland and Texan Jonathan Cutrer are the core of a group of volunteers who have set up a website, Katrina Evacuee Help Center at www.disastersearch.org, to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Pope, who runs an internet design business, was participating in an international software development forum, online, when a pastor from Louisiana, who is in charge of the shelters in his area, posted a message asking for help with his website, Pope said. "When Peter got talking to him we found the problem wasn't his website, but that there was not a centralised unified database for people to use. We actually thought that the Federal Government disaster agency would have set something up before the disaster . . . so as nobody had done it, we did."

In the first 24 hours more than 500 people visited the site and by the time it was launched 12 families had made contact with each other for the first time since the hurricane struck, she said.

"We didn't even get to develop the site and test it before people were using it.

"The need is so urgent."

The site contains the names of more than 300,000 people still missing after the hurricane.

While Pope receives a couple of emails a day asking to have names removed from the list because people have been found, she receives "dozens and dozens" asking to remove names because their bodies have been found, she said.

"There have been many tears."

The team members, who do not get paid, have had hundreds of volunteers from all around the world, including web designers and software programmers, helping out and have been working hard out for 18 to 20 hours a day for the past 11 days, she said.

A big problem is getting word out to people on the ground that there is a large website worth looking at, she said.

As well as missing persons, other features of the site include downloadable government aid forms, a volunteer register, morgue listings and a job registry. The database can be searched via cellphone and one volunteer group has been distributing cellphones around the shelters and others have been setting up internet booths at the shelters.

Pope said they are now getting support from US senators and many agencies were contacting them to add their databases to one central location.

"It's getting bigger by the day."

WASHINGTON - President Bush is urging Congress to approve a massive reconstruction program for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast and promising that the federal government will review the disaster plans of every major American city.

The government failed to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina, Bush said Thursday night from storm-damaged New Orleans as he laid out plans for one of the largest reconstruction projects ever. The federal government's costs could reach $200 billion or beyond.

The president, who has been dogged by criticism that Washington's response to the hurricane was slow and inadequate, said the nation has "every right to expect" more effective federal action in a time of emergency such as Katrina, which killed hundreds of people across five states, forced major evacuations and caused untold property damage.

Disaster planning must be a "national security priority," he said, while ordering the Homeland Security Department to undertake an immediate review of emergency plans in every major American city.

"Our cities must have clear and up-to-date plans for responding to natural disasters and disease outbreaks or a terrorist attack, for evacuating large numbers of people in an emergency and for providing the food and water and security they would need," Bush said.

He acknowledged that government agencies lacked coordination and were overwhelmed by Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans. He said a disaster on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces. He ordered all Cabinet secretaries to join in a comprehensive review of the government's faulty response.

"When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I as president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution," Bush said, looking into the camera that broadcast his speech live on the major television networks from historic Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. "This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina."

Bush faced the nation at a vulnerable point in his presidency. Most Americans disapprove of his handling of Katrina, and his job-approval rating has been dragged down to the lowest point of his presidency also because of dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and rising gasoline prices. He has struggled to demonstrate the same take-charge leadership he displayed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks four years ago.

In his speech, the president called for a congressional investigation besides the administration's self-examination. [...]

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., speaking after the president's address, acknowledged that the recovery programs would add to the nation's debt. GOP leaders are open to suggestions from lawmakers to cut government spending elsewhere, but the task is urgent, he said.

"For every dollar we spend on this means a dollar that's going to take a little bit longer to balance the budget," Hastert said.

Congress already has approved $62 billion for the disaster, but that is expected to run out next month.

Even before Bush spoke, some fiscal conservatives expressed alarm at the prospect of such massive federal outlays without cutting other spending.

"It is inexcusable for the White House and Congress to not even make the effort to find at least some offsets to this new spending," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. "No one in America believes the federal government is operating at peak efficiency and can't tighten its belt."

Bush repeated a hotline number, 1-877-568-3317, for people to call to help reunite family members separated during the hurricane. Moments later, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., criticized Bush, saying "Leadership isn't a speech or a toll-free number."

"No American doubts that New Orleans will rise again," Kerry said. "They doubt the competence and commitment of this administration."

Bush proposed establishment of worker recovery accounts providing up to $5,000 for job training, education and child care during victims' search for employment. He also proposed creation of a Gulf Opportunity Zone in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama offering tax breaks to encourage businesses to stay in the devastated region and new businesses to open.

Bush said the goal was to get evacuees out of shelters by mid-October and into apartments and other homes, with assistance from the government. He said he would work with Congress to ensure that states were reimbursed for the cost of caring for evacuees.

He also said he would ask Congress to approve an Urban Homesteading Act in which surplus federal property would be turned over to low-income citizens by means of a lottery to build homes, with mortgages or assistance from charitable organizations.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate judiciary committee and was expected to identify the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said U.S. Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican.

Weldon declined to identify the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" - as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.

A Senate judiciary committee aide said the witnesses for Wednesday hearing had not been finalized and could not confirm Weldon's comments.

U.S. army Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman, said officials have been "fact-finding in earnest for quite some time."

"We've interviewed 80 people involved with Able Danger, combed through hundreds of thousands of documents and millions of e-mails and have still found no documentation of Mohamed Atta," Swiergosz said.

He added certain data had to be destroyed in accordance with existing regulations regarding "intelligence data on U.S. persons."

Weldon has said Atta, the mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks, and three other hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as Able Danger, which determined they could be members of an al-Qaida cell.

On Wednesday, former members of the Sept. 11 commission dismissed the Able Danger assertions. One commissioner, former U.S. senator Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) said: "Bluntly, it just didn't happen and that's the conclusion of all 10 of us."

Weldon responded angrily to Gorton's assertions.

"It's absolutely unbelievable that a commission would say this program just didn't exist," Weldon said Thursday.

Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two military officers, army Lt.-Col. Anthony Shaffer and navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.

Extremist organisations are operating on university campuses across the country and pose a serious threat to national security, according to a new report.

Yesterday the education secretary, Ruth Kelly, ordered vice-chancellors to clamp down on student extremists in the wake of the July terror attacks in London.

But a report due to be published next week by Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security studies, lists more than 30 institutions - including some of the most high-profile universities in the country - where "extremist and/or terror groups" have been detected.

"This is a serious threat," Professor Glees told the Guardian. "We have discovered a number of universities where subversive activities are taking place, often without the knowledge of the university authorities."

The study states that the Islamist groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, which are subject to a "no-platform policy" by the National Union of Students, are active on many campuses and often operate under different names. The report catalogues the activities of far-right organisations and animal rights extremists. [...]

Prof Glees said personal tutors often had no idea about their students' views and that many undergraduates spent very little time in lectures or tutorials."It is in this environment that these groups can flourish without being detected."

But Wakkas Khan, from the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, said although there were individual members of Hizb ut-Tahrir at many British universities they were not organised as a group and did not pose a threat. [...]

Sometimes it's hard - when you're standing amid the rubble of the latest New World Order war zone - to determine whether things happen as a result of somewhat natural social evolution, or whether some hidden hand from a dark corner of the human psyche constantly steers us all toward misery and crisis.

Put more simply: Is it testosterone or is it Tavistock? (You know, that British think tank that scripted women's lib, the Beatles, Timothy Leary et al to mime the populace into passivity.)

The title of Aldous Huxley's 1955 novel, "Eyeless in Gaza," alludes to the Biblical story of Samson, who revealed to Delilah the secret of his strength - his hair - and was betrayed to his enemies the Philistines. Deported as a slave to their city of Gaza and blinded to make him harmless, he was forgotten until feast day. By then his hair had regrown, and even blind he was able to pull down the temple on the heads of the celebrating Philistines (and kill himself at the same time).

Is this a parable of the human future?

Today Gaza is the scene of one of the most bizarre political song-and-dances in human history, where a supposed country has been established in the middle of an oppressive police state. The imprisoned Palestinians don't even have access to their own water, and their borders are lined by the Jewish Israeli war machine ready to shoot children in the head at a moment's notice.

This is what happens when people pretend they are gods.

Palestinians are the Navajos of the 21st century, forever to be marginalized after they are exterminated down to acceptable, zoo-like levels. Palestinians are the prototype for future Earth citizens ineligible for membership in corporate elysia, a herd that needs to be managed and occasionally culled.

Unless you understand that this has been the fate of the majority of humankind throughout history, you probably are unable to comprehend that this is the inevitable future forecast for all of us.

Gaza vividly and viscerally represents the condition of much of the world at this time - and to be fair, at all times.

Favored Jewish residents of Gaza received hundreds of thousands of dollars APIECE for vacating their homes to make way for the new Gaza megaprison. The soggy survivors of New Orleans got a couple of hundred bucks and a few Wal-Mart gift cards.

Contemplate the new American rubble zones strategically trashed around the world: the festering sore of Israel inevitably spreads outward and wraps its conquered non-Jewish subhumans in giant walls, which likely we are soon to see in New Orleans, the newest New World Order reconstruction project now being forever shackled by contracts with the folks who built Guantanamo.

Fifty years ago America was taken over architecturally by Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel, who designed Las Vegas with the spreading mall virus, which has since infected the whole world. Now, the new standard of living will be set by the camps to which many New Orleans refugees will be assigned. It will resemble Guantanamo, and the code of ethics to be used there will be the manual for population control written at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Jewish movies from Hollywood will continue to be the standard viewing fare for all Americans, and all other "approved" citizens of the world.

Iraq remains a smoldering, poisoned cinder. The Garden of Eden, or at least the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, are now encased in a cancer-guaranteed zone of radioactive poison: truly, a stunning tribute to Western philosophy and technology.

Afghanistan is a free fire zone, also poisoned. Something there is about the powers that be wanting to keep rubbing two sticks together to keep the sparks flying, because it generates steady profits for their members by continuing the flow of ammunition and armaments. And this is the engine that creates our comfort, our leisure to debate these matters in cyberspace, then attempts to get them to spill out into the third-dimensional world without much success.

The names of nations and peoples being crunched up in the meat grinder of corporatization fly past our eyes, too extensive to comprehend. Somewhere between Kisangali and Kampala, people are actually eating pygmies. Two million everyday souls live in the landfills of Rio de Janeiro. In New Orleans, these same folks live in Houston.

War is where the real money is, although rebuilding entire societies like Sumatra is extremely profitable also. This is the gift that Western civilization has given us. We can even make money off the trashing of the planet.

Where in our own inner darkness do we process this information? What stratagem or philosophical canard do we use to explain this to ourselves?

How do we stifle the image that we are eating ourselves, as cannibalism's primal impulse glitters mysteriously in the bottom of the Communion cup?

Do we, like victims of the London Blitz, merely take cover and wait for the storm to pass? As a veteran hurricane dodger I can tell you it is definitely better to live to fight another day.

But only for a little while can avoidance be construed as prudence. When something nettles you for a long time it is always better to take definitive action to fix the problem rather than constantly continue to deal with its exasperations.

Will the parable come true? That's our question. Will Samson, in his blind, frustrated fury, yank on the chains so hard it will bring all of human society down in a heap of horrifying ruin?

Hey, blame our forebears. They made it happen. We inherited it. Now, the bus is moving, unstoppably toward its destination. If you stand in front of it, you'll be run down. I'd like to say sit back and enjoy the show, but it's probably going to hurt.

Just ask those folks who used to be from New Orleans. Or the displaced and debauched citizens of Fallujah and so many other places graced by the presence of those Zionist warmakers known as Blackwater mercenaries. They're stationed both in Baghdad and on the Cajun coastline, escorting Israeli advisers around the neighborhood to help out with the new fortification plans.

Now, contemplate the view of your future. Staring out vacantly from behind the barbed wire in your mind. Eyeless in Gaza.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the world. http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Saoud Faisal, 20, policeman:

"I drove my brother Mahmoud, 23, to al-Aruba Square, where all the labourers gather waiting for someone to hire them. Then I went into one of the restaurants to have breakfast. I saw an American military convoy of two Humvees driving past. I remember saying to myself that it could be really dangerous if anybody tried to attack the Americans while 300 people were gathered in one place. I never imagined that my thoughts would become true seconds later."

"There was a very big explosion and all the windows of the restaurant were smashed and my leg was injured by the glass. I was really worried about my brother. The scene was horrible. The place was covered with blood. Dead bodies, body parts lay scattered everywhere. I saw many cars burning."

"I was shocked and even forgot about my brother and started helping others to rescue the survivors and clear the bodies. I found my brother and both his left arm and leg were broken, and despite that he helped me to transfer four wounded people into our car."

"I drove fast but was too late. By the time I reached the hospital, all four men were dead."

Ahad Hussein, 19, came from al-Nasiriya to al-Aruba Square with his brother and cousin to look for work:

"There was a very big blast while I was standing there waiting. I was knocked unconscious and woke up here in the hospital and saw my cousin beside me."

"It took me a while to figure out where I was and what happened, then I asked about my brother. My cousin told me that he had been taken to another hospital as his injury was serious. I hope he is fine. We don't have any relatives here and our family in Nasiriya must be very worried about us now."

"It really makes you sad and angry when you find yourself a target. You see your friends and relatives getting killed daily without knowing who is doing that and why. What happened was just part of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. After the fall of the regime we thought Iraq was going to be a big workshop, then we ended up in a situation which is ten times worse than it used to be under Saddam."

WASHINGTON - With Chief Justice nominee John Roberts concluding his Senate testimony on Thursday and headed toward confirmation, both sides began maneuvering for the looming battle over the next Supreme Court vacancy.

Three days of questioning by Senate Judiciary Committee members left Roberts, President George W. Bush's conservative nominee to replace late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, largely unscathed and steaming toward confirmation by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

Roberts' most ardent opponents on the left promised to keep up the fight against him, but said they would shift some of their effort toward framing the upcoming debate for the vacant seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"Part of the story at this point is keeping the next nomination in mind. We want to be sure we're talking about the right issues," said Ralph Neas, president of the liberal People for the American Way, which has led the fight against Roberts.

In the next few days, Senate Democrats must grapple with the question of whether to push for the strongest possible showing against Roberts or save their ammunition for the next fight, party strategists said.

Republicans hold 55 of the 100 Senate seats and even a united Democratic caucus has little hope of swaying six Republican senators to vote against Roberts.

With confirmation all but assured, Democrats have to calculate the tactical and political ramifications of their vote. Some Senate Democrats from conservative states, like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida, are up for re-election next year and could face campaign pressure to back Roberts.

Neas said he would push all Democratic senators to oppose the nominee in hopes of putting the White House on notice.

"It's important to have a strong progressive Democratic vote against John Roberts," Neas said. "If there is a vigorous opposition, that will send a signal on the next vacancy that there could be a contested nomination."

ALTERED DYNAMICS

Democrats and liberal interest groups voiced frustration at Roberts' refusal during the hearings to describe his views on a host of legal issues. Republican supporters and interest groups on the right said his smooth performance ended any suspense about the confirmation fight. [...]

Activists on both sides of the aisle said they did not expect Bush's political problems in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would force him to choose a more moderate or less controversial replacement for O'Connor.

"I don't think that's in the president's character. Do you expect him to reject his conservative supporters? These are people the White House has built the entire administration around," Rushton said.

Neas said Bush "almost always chooses confrontation over cooperation. If I were to guess, I would say that one more time he'll stick his thumb in the eye of Democrats."