Disaster Profiteering: Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti Earthquake
Haiti Earthquake Victims Likely to be Targeted for Exploitation
January 21, 2010
By: Fat Lester
This article was loosely written in response to the following post appearing at TheNation.com: US Mercenaries Set Sights on Haiti.
As we New Orleanians learned after during and after Hurricane Katrina, unscrupulous disaster victims, recovery contractors, politically-connected corporations and even government officials think nothing of the further exploitation of the profoundly vulnerable disaster victims. Between the looters, the fraudulent contractors and insurance companies, the scandalously corrupt Governor Kathleen Blanco and her handlers at the Shaw Group, the predators why prey on disaster victims come from all walks of life and steal from those who have just lost everything.
Unfortunately for the survivors of the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, their plight is not over yet, as many will undoubtedly be targeted for further exploitation by those claiming to be the ones providing relief and assistance...
The Shaw Groups got a ton of corrupt contracts post-Katrina. It almost seemed as though the then-CEO of the Shaw Group and the then-Governor of Louisiana (Kathleen Babineaux Blanco) were in cahoots to dole out billions in taxpayer funds to Shaw pending some disaster long before the storm hit.
As a native New Orleanian, I personally suspect Blanco had arranged long before Katrina to blow up the levees in the event of a direct-hit hurricane so as to create a pretense for funneling taxpayer money into the Shaw Group. This would also explain why Blanco refused President Bush's offer for aid and troops until several days after the levees broke --- giving them plenty of time to clean up the crime scene and destroy any evidence before federal forces were allowed into the state.
Of course, they blamed Bush for the very thing they themselves were doing, a trick straight-out of the Communist Manifesto, and a reason for me to suspect something sinister when Governor Blanco (or "WhiteKat", as we called her) and the Shaw Group CEO chartered a private jet for a flight to Cuba so the two could meet in person with murderous dictator, the late Fidel Castro, supposedly to discuss "trade opportunities". Yes, they actually said they were going there to discuss "trade opportunities" with the dictator of a communist country against whom the United States has a long-standing trade embargo.
Unfortunately, the poor Haitians will most likely be subjected to similar exploitation by the country's rich and elites who are hoping to rake in some big profits in the wake of this already calamitous disaster.
Tags: Government, Hurricane Katrina
Comment on "Disaster Profiteering: Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti Earthquake"
