Here is a detailed story behind my new hero from Mississippi……….
Physician who told Cheney to go F@#k Himself Lost his Home in Katrina, Detained, Cuffed by Cheney’s M-16-carrying Goons
Jackson Thoreau / Opednews | September 10 2005
Dr. Ben Marble, a young emergency room physician who plays in alternative rock bands and does art on the side, needs our help. Since he was the one who told Dick Cheney to “go fuck yourself” on Sept. 8, that’s the least we can do.
Marble is a complex guy, to say the least. Some of the lyrics he writes can be considered harsh by some – personally what I’ve heard is very much on target – but he has a softer side as an organizer of breast cancer fund-raisers, not to mention an ER doctor.
When he, like thousands of others, lost his home due to Hurricane Katrina last week, it was the single most traumatic week of his life. That led to his Sept. 8 confrontation with the man who best represents the worst of the most callous, heartless, shittiest administration in U.S. history.
As Marble explains, he was driving to his destroyed house Sept. 8 in Gulfport, Ms., when military police refused to allow him to cross a barricade that was about 200 feet from his home. They forced him to drive an extra 20 minutes and spend even more on gasoline.
“Thanks to Dubya Gump and Mr. Cheney, gas is really expensive and extremely hard to get anywhere Katrina has destroyed,” Marble wrote. “So needless to say, I was extremely aggravated that they wouldn’t let me pass.”
Suddenly a long line of dark cars pulled up, and they honked at Marble to back up to let them through the barricade that supposedly no one could drive through. That only made Marble madder so he did what most of us would do – or at least consider doing.
“I waved a middle finger at the caravan,” Marble wrote.
After driving the extra 20 minutes and filming video of destruction along the way, he made it to his home. Marble overheard a neighbor say that Cheney was down the street talking to people. That’s when he got the idea to go meet Dr. Evil himself.
“I am no fan of Mr. Cheney because of several reasons,” Marble wrote. “For those who don’t know, Mr. Cheney is infamous for telling Senator [Pat] Leahy ‘go fu** yourself’ on the Senate floor. Also, I am not happy about the fact that thousands have died due to the slow action of FEMA, not to even mention the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e. Iraq.”
So Marble, who was wearing an old Mr. T “I Pity Da Fool” t-shirt since he was sifting through the wreckage, asked a couple of police officers if he and a friend could walk down to Cheney. They told him Cheney was “looking forward†to talking to “the locals.â€
“So we grabbed my Canon digital rebel and my Sony videocamera and started walking down the street,” Marble wrote. “And then right in front of the destroyed tennis court I used to play on Dick Cheney was giving a pep rally, talking to the press. The Secret Service guys patted us down and waved the wands over us, and then let us pass.”
As he stood about 10 feet away from Cheney and his friend and some camera operators from CNN and other media filmed the scene, Marble suddenly yelled, “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you asshole!”
Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as “Mr. Cheney.â€
“I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr. Cheney’s infamous words back at him,” Marble wrote. “At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back to my former house.”
His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble’s house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble’s home, two military police waving M-16’s showed up and said they were looking
for someone who fit Marble’s description who had cursed at Cheney.
“I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and ‘detained’ me for about 20 minutes or so,” Marble wrote. “My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go.”
So let’s get this straight: A physician with a newborn baby loses most everything he owns in the hurricane, does what most of us WANT to do and “echoes†Cheney’s words he spoke on the Senate floor last year, walks away harmlessly, mission accomplished, and then once the media cameras leave, he is treated like a foreign terrorist as Cheney’s goons waving M-16s handcuff him in front of his destroyed home? Had it not been for the media cameras filming the initial scene, I doubt Cheney’s goons would have just let Marble go after 20 minutes.
America, land of the free?
Marble and his family have been in the media spotlight before, including his wife, Lisa, and baby, Sofia Grace, who was born shortly after the storm, on CNN. Marble has also been interviewed in art magazines and the Biloxi Sun Herald about his concert fund-raisers and musical success — one of his bands, dR. O, has had at least 20 No. 1 songs on the MP3.com charts.
“The truth is even with all our losses, we are still luckier than many people down here because at least we didn’t die,” Marble wrote. “But I thought I could try to raise some awareness to the bad policies of the Dubya Gump administration and also possibly raise some money to replace the many things we lost, and so I decided I would auction the videotape my friend shot of the event. I will also grant an interview to the winner if so desired.”
Is the Government Trying to Hide the True Body Count in New Orleans?
A very troubling development has arisen in the collection of bodies in New Orleans.The company brought in by FEMA and Homeland Security to process the bodies is a company called Kenyon International. Kenyon International is owned by SCI, a major Bush family contributor.
During George W Bush’s tenure as Gevernor of Texas, SCI was involved in “FUNERALGATE” -the biggest corpse mishandling scandal in American history, wherein thousands of corpses were allegedly disenterred and haphazardly dumped to make way for new gravesites. Family members of the deceased were shocked to learn that their grandmothers, fathers, sisters etc. were not in burial plots that had been bought for tens of thousands of dollars each, but dumped en masse and left to rot in swamps and mass burial pits. You may remember this…I do, it was on every major news network at the time.
What is not so publicly known, is that at the time, there were rather serious claims made about the complicity and/or direct involvement of the then Governor George Bush and his chief of Staff and future FEMA director Joe Allbaugh in a coverup of the allegations (Yes, the same Joe Allbaugh that brought his college roomate Joe “Drownie” Brown into FEMA, and the same Joe Allbaugh who’s consulting company has just scored muti-million dollar no-bid Federal contract to assist in the “cleanup” in New Orleans). There is an ongoing debate regarding the veracity and/or details of the claims involving the then Governor Bush, nevertheless, the appearences aren’t kosher. At the end of this article, you’ll find links to several news stories detailing some of the allegations and details of the scandal.
Whatever his involvement, George W Bush is fully aware of the matter, as he and Joe Allbaugh were deposed in a whistleblower lawsuit concerning it. SCI ulimately payed out over 100 million dollars to settle claims of wrongdoing. The question the American people should be asking is, why, when there were numerous Doctors and Coroners from around the country who volunteered to process the bodies for free, would the Administration give a no bid contract TO A COMPANY THAT HAS A HISTORY OF “MISHANDLING” BODIES!!!!!!!
Compounding the issue, are the following very troubling and suspicious actions on the part of the Federal Government:
1.Government’s attempt to quash the First Amendment by refusing to grant access to reporters during the collection of bodies even after being ordered to do so by a Federal Judge ruling on a lawsuit brought by CNN;
2.Reports by very reputable reporters such as MSNBC’s Brian Williams of law enforecement officials pointing guns at the media on numerous occasions in a blatant attempt to intimidate them AFTER the CNN ruling;
3. The presence of armed mercenaries in New Orleans such as BLACKWATER INTERNATIONAL, who has admittedly recruited war criminals from among Pinochet’s secret police and South Africa’s apartheid era military officers. When pressed on the issue, Homeland Security denied their presence in New Orleans, while BLACKWATER’s website and numerous reports from in the field of the mercenaries being used for “Search and Rescue” teams and “Security” (as readers may remember, these are some of the same types that provided “security’ at Abu Grhaib), say otherwise;
4 Reports from among Ham radio operators that emergency radio signals are being jammed with very sophisticated technology form somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as numerous reports from local municipalities, most notably Jefferson Parish in a report which was publicised on national TV that FEMA was cutting phone lines and emergency communications equipment in NEW ORLEANS;
5 Numerous inconsistencies, documented live on National Television, between the Administration’s version of what went on on the ground in the Gulf Coast, and what actually happened.
One might ask one’s-self, is the same Administration which seemingly lied about Iraq, seemingly lied about the Valerie Plame/Karl Rove scandal, seemingly covered up the Abu Ghraib Scandal, and has already been caught in numerous lies about the Federal response to hurricane Katrina capable of covering it’s tracks in the worst loss of life on US soil due to the Federal Governments negligence in US history by manipulating the numders of dead? Sure seems that way to a lot of folks.
One thing is certain: President Bush has full knowledge of the allegations made against SCI, the parent company of Kenyon International, and against Joe Allbaugh. The American People and History deserve a better company to faithfully and honestly collect the dead on the sacred dying ground of New Orleans. The American people deserve better than to have a company that employs war criminals patrolling the streets of an American city. This is not Columbia, this is not Iraq, and this is not Chile or South Africa. This is the United States fo America, and regardless of whether or not the government is trying to hide bodies, which is up for debate, the presence of companies such as BLACKWATER and SCI taking part in any way in “recovery efforts” on American soil is sickening and should be shock any American who values Freedom and openness in our Government.
—-
Update: Since this post was first written, the office of the Governor of Louisiana has taken over the contract with Kenyon International. This action was taken due to Kenyon’s threatening to back out of efforts due to foot dragging by FEMA. To be fair, Governor Blanco is most likely not privy to SCI and Kenyon International’s seedy past.
Maybe somebody oughta give her a call and tell her.
————————————————-
Here are a couple of links for reference, there are hundreds more out there:
Tape of Colin powell and Condoleza rice clearly stating Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, capability, or will
to threaten the US. The tape was made in Feb 2001
Here is a detailed story behind my new hero from Mississippi……….
Physician who told Cheney to go F@#k Himself Lost his Home in Katrina, Detained, Cuffed by Cheney’s M-16-carrying Goons
Jackson Thoreau / Opednews | September 10 2005
Dr. Ben Marble, a young emergency room physician who plays in alternative rock bands and does art on the side, needs our help. Since he was the one who told Dick Cheney to “go fuck yourself” on Sept. 8, that’s the least we can do.
Marble is a complex guy, to say the least. Some of the lyrics he writes can be considered harsh by some – personally what I’ve heard is very much on target – but he has a softer side as an organizer of breast cancer fund-raisers, not to mention an ER doctor.
When he, like thousands of others, lost his home due to Hurricane Katrina last week, it was the single most traumatic week of his life. That led to his Sept. 8 confrontation with the man who best represents the worst of the most callous, heartless, shittiest administration in U.S. history.
As Marble explains, he was driving to his destroyed house Sept. 8 in Gulfport, Ms., when military police refused to allow him to cross a barricade that was about 200 feet from his home. They forced him to drive an extra 20 minutes and spend even more on gasoline.
“Thanks to Dubya Gump and Mr. Cheney, gas is really expensive and extremely hard to get anywhere Katrina has destroyed,” Marble wrote. “So needless to say, I was extremely aggravated that they wouldn’t let me pass.”
Suddenly a long line of dark cars pulled up, and they honked at Marble to back up to let them through the barricade that supposedly no one could drive through. That only made Marble madder so he did what most of us would do – or at least consider doing.
“I waved a middle finger at the caravan,” Marble wrote.
After driving the extra 20 minutes and filming video of destruction along the way, he made it to his home. Marble overheard a neighbor say that Cheney was down the street talking to people. That’s when he got the idea to go meet Dr. Evil himself.
“I am no fan of Mr. Cheney because of several reasons,” Marble wrote. “For those who don’t know, Mr. Cheney is infamous for telling Senator [Pat] Leahy ‘go fu** yourself’ on the Senate floor. Also, I am not happy about the fact that thousands have died due to the slow action of FEMA, not to even mention the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e. Iraq.”
So Marble, who was wearing an old Mr. T “I Pity Da Fool” t-shirt since he was sifting through the wreckage, asked a couple of police officers if he and a friend could walk down to Cheney. They told him Cheney was “looking forward†to talking to “the locals.â€
“So we grabbed my Canon digital rebel and my Sony videocamera and started walking down the street,” Marble wrote. “And then right in front of the destroyed tennis court I used to play on Dick Cheney was giving a pep rally, talking to the press. The Secret Service guys patted us down and waved the wands over us, and then let us pass.”
As he stood about 10 feet away from Cheney and his friend and some camera operators from CNN and other media filmed the scene, Marble suddenly yelled, “Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you asshole!”
Hey, at least Marble was polite. After all, he referred to Cheney as “Mr. Cheney.â€
“I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr. Cheney’s infamous words back at him,” Marble wrote. “At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back to my former house.”
His friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble’s house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble’s home, two military police waving M-16’s showed up and said they were looking
for someone who fit Marble’s description who had cursed at Cheney.
“I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and ‘detained’ me for about 20 minutes or so,” Marble wrote. “My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go.”
So let’s get this straight: A physician with a newborn baby loses most everything he owns in the hurricane, does what most of us WANT to do and “echoes†Cheney’s words he spoke on the Senate floor last year, walks away harmlessly, mission accomplished, and then once the media cameras leave, he is treated like a foreign terrorist as Cheney’s goons waving M-16s handcuff him in front of his destroyed home? Had it not been for the media cameras filming the initial scene, I doubt Cheney’s goons would have just let Marble go after 20 minutes.
America, land of the free?
Marble and his family have been in the media spotlight before, including his wife, Lisa, and baby, Sofia Grace, who was born shortly after the storm, on CNN. Marble has also been interviewed in art magazines and the Biloxi Sun Herald about his concert fund-raisers and musical success — one of his bands, dR. O, has had at least 20 No. 1 songs on the MP3.com charts.
“The truth is even with all our losses, we are still luckier than many people down here because at least we didn’t die,” Marble wrote. “But I thought I could try to raise some awareness to the bad policies of the Dubya Gump administration and also possibly raise some money to replace the many things we lost, and so I decided I would auction the videotape my friend shot of the event. I will also grant an interview to the winner if so desired.”
Is the Government Trying to Hide the True Body Count in New Orleans?
A very troubling development has arisen in the collection of bodies in New Orleans.The company brought in by FEMA and Homeland Security to process the bodies is a company called Kenyon International. Kenyon International is owned by SCI, a major Bush family contributor.
During George W Bush’s tenure as Gevernor of Texas, SCI was involved in “FUNERALGATE” -the biggest corpse mishandling scandal in American history, wherein thousands of corpses were allegedly disenterred and haphazardly dumped to make way for new gravesites. Family members of the deceased were shocked to learn that their grandmothers, fathers, sisters etc. were not in burial plots that had been bought for tens of thousands of dollars each, but dumped en masse and left to rot in swamps and mass burial pits. You may remember this…I do, it was on every major news network at the time.
What is not so publicly known, is that at the time, there were rather serious claims made about the complicity and/or direct involvement of the then Governor George Bush and his chief of Staff and future FEMA director Joe Allbaugh in a coverup of the allegations (Yes, the same Joe Allbaugh that brought his college roomate Joe “Drownie” Brown into FEMA, and the same Joe Allbaugh who’s consulting company has just scored muti-million dollar no-bid Federal contract to assist in the “cleanup” in New Orleans). There is an ongoing debate regarding the veracity and/or details of the claims involving the then Governor Bush, nevertheless, the appearences aren’t kosher. At the end of this article, you’ll find links to several news stories detailing some of the allegations and details of the scandal.
Whatever his involvement, George W Bush is fully aware of the matter, as he and Joe Allbaugh were deposed in a whistleblower lawsuit concerning it. SCI ulimately payed out over 100 million dollars to settle claims of wrongdoing. The question the American people should be asking is, why, when there were numerous Doctors and Coroners from around the country who volunteered to process the bodies for free, would the Administration give a no bid contract TO A COMPANY THAT HAS A HISTORY OF “MISHANDLING” BODIES!!!!!!!
Compounding the issue, are the following very troubling and suspicious actions on the part of the Federal Government:
1.Government’s attempt to quash the First Amendment by refusing to grant access to reporters during the collection of bodies even after being ordered to do so by a Federal Judge ruling on a lawsuit brought by CNN;
2.Reports by very reputable reporters such as MSNBC’s Brian Williams of law enforecement officials pointing guns at the media on numerous occasions in a blatant attempt to intimidate them AFTER the CNN ruling;
3. The presence of armed mercenaries in New Orleans such as BLACKWATER INTERNATIONAL, who has admittedly recruited war criminals from among Pinochet’s secret police and South Africa’s apartheid era military officers. When pressed on the issue, Homeland Security denied their presence in New Orleans, while BLACKWATER’s website and numerous reports from in the field of the mercenaries being used for “Search and Rescue” teams and “Security” (as readers may remember, these are some of the same types that provided “security’ at Abu Grhaib), say otherwise;
4 Reports from among Ham radio operators that emergency radio signals are being jammed with very sophisticated technology form somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as numerous reports from local municipalities, most notably Jefferson Parish in a report which was publicised on national TV that FEMA was cutting phone lines and emergency communications equipment in NEW ORLEANS;
5 Numerous inconsistencies, documented live on National Television, between the Administration’s version of what went on on the ground in the Gulf Coast, and what actually happened.
One might ask one’s-self, is the same Administration which seemingly lied about Iraq, seemingly lied about the Valerie Plame/Karl Rove scandal, seemingly covered up the Abu Ghraib Scandal, and has already been caught in numerous lies about the Federal response to hurricane Katrina capable of covering it’s tracks in the worst loss of life on US soil due to the Federal Governments negligence in US history by manipulating the numders of dead? Sure seems that way to a lot of folks.
Still unsure if the administration is capable of lying? Watch this video:
http://www.tvnewslies.org/images/03102003colincondoleeza.wmv
One thing is certain: President Bush has full knowledge of the allegations made against SCI, the parent company of Kenyon International, and against Joe Allbaugh. The American People and History deserve a better company to faithfully and honestly collect the dead on the sacred dying ground of New Orleans. The American people deserve better than to have a company that employs war criminals patrolling the streets of an American city. This is not Columbia, this is not Iraq, and this is not Chile or South Africa. This is the United States fo America, and regardless of whether or not the government is trying to hide bodies, which is up for debate, the presence of companies such as BLACKWATER and SCI taking part in any way in “recovery efforts” on American soil is sickening and should be shock any American who values Freedom and openness in our Government.
—-
Update: Since this post was first written, the office of the Governor of Louisiana has taken over the contract with Kenyon International. This action was taken due to Kenyon’s threatening to back out of efforts due to foot dragging by FEMA. To be fair, Governor Blanco is most likely not privy to SCI and Kenyon International’s seedy past.
Maybe somebody oughta give her a call and tell her.
————————————————-
Here are a couple of links for reference, there are hundreds more out there:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_outsources_Katrina_body_count_to_firm_implicated_in_bodydumping_scan_0913.html
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/09/08/bush_cohorts_profiteering_at_all_levels.php
http://www.hereinreality.com/funeralgate.htm
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/09/324559.shtml
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2005/archive/090505btw.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/04/285253.shtml
http://www.ntimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=902&topic=iraq
http://www.tvnewslies.org/images/03102003colincondoleeza.wmv
————————————————————-
Tape of Colin powell and Condoleza rice clearly stating Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, capability, or will
to threaten the US. The tape was made in Feb 2001
http://www.tvnewslies.org/images/03102003colincondoleeza.wmv
————————————————————-
Please send to everyone you know, and if you can, make copies and send to all the Democratic Senators and Representatives
And dont forget to join the Impeach Bush Coalition:
http://impeachbushcoalition.blogspot.com
current actions:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/515
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/2700
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