America, We Need You
Editor:
From New Orleans to the Alabama Gulf Coast, we are living through a catastrophe of epic proportion. Your generosity and kindness in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina will never be forgotten in the "City that Care Forgot."  You opened your arms and your purse strings and you gave until it hurt, and then you gave some more. It is with heavy hearts that we have to ask for more.
Life here has not returned to normal.
Four months later, the city of New Orleans looks much like it did in those first few weeks after the storm. The people here are hurting. Our hearts are shattered into thousands of pieces. Our throats ache with unshed tears, when they can be held back. Tears are always close to the surface. Today, for me, it was thinking of so many of our citizens scattered across the United States and unable to get home, not even for the holidays. Yesterday, it was watching our neighbors pack up and move away for good. The day before that, it was walking down the block after dark and seeing no signs of life or rebirth, just a black abyss that used to be a thriving, busy neighborhood. There are still over 6,400 people missing, many of them children. Every street in our city is littered with debris on its curbs that represent the remnants of our lives.
Our people cannot return home.
So many areas are still without electricity. Entergy, our utilities supplier, is bankrupt and has only local crews.  All of their out-of-state relief workers were sent home because they couldn't pay them.  We have FEMA trailers scattered throughout the area sitting empty on our properties because FEMA did not think it necessary to have temporary electrical drops put down. There are no jobs and nowhere near enough schools to educate our children. A handful of our public schools will open at the end of January, but the balance will remain closed until August 2006. America has never had a major city close down its school district for an entire school year. Those of us who are lucky enough to still have a job, a home that can be lived in, and a school for our children are trying to hold down the fort.
While we desperately want our lives back, we are starting to accept that they are changed forever.
We are learning to live life in a different way. We don’t have mail delivery, land phone lines, or cable TV in most of the city. Cellular phone service is spotty at best and Internet access is difficult to find. Our once beautiful city looks more like what is left in the aftermath of a war. Some refer to it as "Beirut on the Bayou."  We were appalled to find out last week that FEMA presented the state of Louisiana with a bill for $155 million. We cannot imagine Japan or Western Europe getting a bill from the United States after being rebuilt following World War II. Maybe we should secede from the Union again. France or Spain would probably want us back, or maybe even the United Kingdom. Prince Charles came and viewed the devastation before many of our own senators and representatives did. The mouth of the Mississippi is some pretty prime real estate.   
We feel like our government has let us down in our darkest hour and we do not understand why.
We have had to watch our people literally dying in attics and on rooftops trapped with no water or food because FEMA pulled out of New Orleans and it took five days to get federal assistance back into the city. Thank God, when India was rocked by an earthquake a few weeks after Katrina, American troops arrived with help and supplies within 36 hours. Being a foreign country does have its advantages, help arrives faster and there isn't a tab to pay when all is said and done. We have paid our taxes and our insurance premiums for years. We have always kept the welcome mat out and shared our city with visitors.  Nothing makes us happier than having visitors fall in love with our little piece of paradise.
We offer you our undying gratitude for taking us into your hearts and your homes.

Many of us had little more than the clothes on our backs.  We hate to have to ask you for more, but we need you to help us help ourselves. You can do that by writing to your congressmen and your statesmen.  Please implore them to come visit our area and view firsthand this American tragedy.  Help us get some of the royalties from our oil (as other oil producing states enjoy) so we can take care of ourselves. Help us get artificial barrier islands built to slow these storms down and fight back coastal erosion. Help us get a levee system that will protect us from future storms. Help us to preserve one of the oldest and most important cities in the United States.
Most of all help us to heal so that we can feel like were a part of America once again.
Jeanne Duplantis Miranne  
New Orleans, LA

To All The Kind And Generous Spectrum Of Hope Volunteers And Donors
Editor
Thanks to your efforts, we were able to salvage a little of the spirit of the season. It was so nice to feel that there are compassionate people who care, especially since the rest of the country has gone on with their lives, and many feel that by now, we must be “getting back to normal.” I don’t expect to even know what “normal” is for many months to come, and I know other Katrina evacuees feel the same. But please know that your help means a great deal to us and we appreciate the warm welcome we received from the people of Colorado. Happy, happy New Year, and Go Broncos!
Tracy Saunders
Denver, CO

A Politically Useful Tool of Genocide
Editor:
Dick Cheney and other top Bush Administration officials involved in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) advocated the military conquest of Iraq in their September, 2000 report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” The report stated: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the [Persian] Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
Their report also said that: “advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.” In 1996, Dr. Vivienne Nathanson, the British Medical Association’s Head of Science and Ethics reported to a conference of the World Medical Association that ethnically targeted genetic weapons are now possible.
Genetic weapons would use small variations in DNA that distinguish individuals from different ethnic groups. Thom Hartmann’s article, “The Genetically Modified Bomb,” published on Sep.10, 2003 by CommonDreams.org explained: “`there are numerous genes for the various components of what we can race -- hair color and texture, skin and eye color, eye and nose shape, predispositions or immunities to disease like Sickle Cell Anemia or Tay-Sachs, and the like.”
These small genetic variations could be used, at least in theory, to bioengineer viruses or bacteria that would kill people with a specific genotype. As Hartmann wrote: “Imagine a bomb that only kills Caucasians with red hair. Or short people. Or Arabs. Or Chinese. Now imagine that this new bomb could be set off anywhere in the world, and that within a matter of days, weeks, or months it would kill every person on the planet who fits the bomb’s profile, although the rest of us would be left standing. And the bomb could go off silently, without anybody realizing it had been released--or even where it was released--until the victims started dying in mass numbers.”
An April, 2001 Air Force Report disclosed that the apartheid regime of South Africa ran a biological weapons program called “Project Coast” in the 1980s which sought to develop a “black bomb” to kill black Africans but not Caucasians. The Nazis would have loved genetically engineered bioweapons. Now Dick Cheney and company want to add such weapons to their military arsenal as “a politically useful tool.”

Gary Swing
Glendale, CO