(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.

Also if you've read Blindness, this will sound creepily evocative

Gunmen are roaming the streets.

(NB: One thing is certain: if they are looting, they are probably black! If they were white, they would probably be Steven Siegal in: VIGILANTE DEFENDER, Rated R for Ponytail)

The best part is, according to the Mayor, New Orleans flooded post facto largely because the helicopters with that were supposed to salvage the 17th street canal levee never arrived to deliver their sandbag cargo on account of "too many frickin' chiefs calling the shots."

Mayor Nagin in a telephone interview with WDSU:

Because of the failure to sandbag the levee as agreed, it will take at least an additional 4 weeks before New Orleans is drained.

That's four more weeks of interrupted oil production. That ought to drive up the prices even higher. I'm just sayin'.


He also said: "we're TRYING to reach the White House"

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Oh, right, I forgot, never mind. This is the White House that, as Keith Olbermann said on Monday, "three months ago, the federal government cut the budget of the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project by 70 percent, and eliminated the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study to determine how to protect the New Orleans area from a category 5." Good thing it turned out to be a category 4, then! It's totally fine, it's a festive HURRAYcane!

I forgot. This is THIS White House.

Relatedly, does anyone else wonder how Keith Olbermann hasn't been Dan Rathered yet?

Seriously, though, let's talk about the manipulation of oil prices.

Also, I find it interesting that while the Nat'l Guard is in Iraq, relief management is being handled by NorthCom, the military arm of Homeland Security, designamed for domestic deployment, and under command of the Pentagon. This is the model of martial law enforcement that features a professional mercenary institution, rather than Your Friends and Neighbours the National Guard, which is more of a localized, community model. And just to kick up the festivities one extra notch, the recently restwhile First Commander (how Orwell/Kim Jong Il does THAT sound?) of NorthCom was the 9/11 NORAD head, General Ralph Eberhart, y'know, the person who probably knows some stuff we don't about the how come of the planes not being intercepted on time on na-na-la-la. I am not making conjectures here, but I think this is circumstantially indicative of where Creepy NorthCom maps.

LIHOP II, Electric Boogaloo?

I just keep thinking, "watch this drive," although Fiddle-Dee-Dee works better for the South, I suppose.
Fiddle: Rome = Guitar: ...well, do the SAT thing. At least Nero supposedly knew how to play the fiddle. And it's totally not like that AT ALL, because Rome BURNED and New Orleans FLOODED, you see, water:fire like papre:rock, what are you suggesting here, anthrochica, are you RETARDED, are you binging on historical analogy? 'Sokay, I will hold your hair later.

Any similarities between the dead of the past and the dead of the present are purely coincidental. Any claims to the contrary and we will get litigious on History's ass, sue it for everything it's got, that capital H and all.

Comments

[danschank.livejournal.com]

this is informative stuff. hopefully it will make its way to the forefront of some sort of national debate before the right kills it with claims of "politicizing the catastrophe."

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

I want no part of this circus.
I'd rather dance than clown around.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

??????

hehe

[spoonfeeding.livejournal.com]

I was just about to post in my lj the first part, about the only people being left in NOLA being those who were too fucking broke to leave (also, the crap they're looting is apparently going to be unsalavegable within 24 hours, regardless, so um, yeah... big loss).

My theory: One can't exactly blame the terrorists for this- I mean, we may have cast about for a plauisble "Saudis smuggling in moisture to the Southeast in jars!" story, but decided it was too far-fetched even for us- so we've had to fall back on hating mother nature. How humdrum. The weather is a poor, unfocused target for my righteous anger, what with its god-sanctioned ways.

But wait- black people, you say? Taking THINGS THAT DON'T BELONG TO THEM? IN A CRISIS? THAT IS BARBARIC! THEY SHOULD BE SHOT!!!!!! Oh, the fact that they're black is, of course, totally irrelavant. I'd be equally disgusted with a white person doing that. of course, it's just a coincidence that there aren't a lot of white people doing that. But I want you to know I'd hate them, too! Just as much! I'm no racist- I just love freedom! The freedom of waterlogged stereos belonging to the rich people who could afford to get the hell out of town!

Thank heaven I found a suitable outlet for my anger.

Ok, I'm done.

/crazy ranting

Re: hehe

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

See, but I wonder if it's NOT crazy ranting at all. There are cries all across the internet to shoot the (black) looters on sight, because they're the ones who are taking guns and electronics - things that are not bread, water, or diapers for their kids. Who's crazy now?

As if it doesn't all come from the same desperation. Because no one needs anything to survive down there, not the people who didn't have enough of anything before and are now trapped in the high ground between pools of diseased, gas-laden water. And I'm sure that, having seen others walking the streets armed and dangerous, no one feels the need to protect themselves, their families, what's left of their homes and possessions.

Or maybe it is crazy ranting. Why don't I understand that, you see, this nation will be STRONGER and BETTER for having come through this crisis (most likely of global warming, which doesn't exist)?

Better yet: why doesn't any person delivering an address not get that there are PEOPLE there who are DOING the barely surviving, most of whom have been doing one variety or another of surviving all of their lives? Do they feel stronger or better?

Re: hehe

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, um, more crazy ranting here. Historical-analogy-laden or not. So angry and feeling utterly helpless.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

A little just-in-time delivery from the gods of manifest destiny. See, we have to "keep going" in Iraq now. You don't want to pay $5.00 a gallon for gas, do you?

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

I've just been waiting for something like this to encourage investment in hybrids and bicycles...

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

I hope you're right.

[castironskillet.livejournal.com]

Nice rant. I'd like to share mine, from today (http://www.livejournal.com/users/castironskillet/252153.html) and yesterday (http://www.livejournal.com/users/castironskillet/251770.html).

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links!

[bajatierra.livejournal.com]

A lot of what you say is dead-on, but it's not the whole story. My sister-in-law's family certainly had the means to get out of New Orleans, but chose not to -- one manages a halfway house for the Bureau of Prisons and was obligated to stay, one owns a bar in the French Quarter and felt she needed to stay, and the matriarch of the family didn't feel she could travel because of her health. They're holed up in a Catholic school right now with some food supplies, but not enough medication and without any means of communicating with the outside world.

Part of the reticence to forward an escape plan was a sort of cry-wolf feeling -- a lot of people have escaped the city several times in the last couple of years for near-misses and glancing blows. Part of it, though (and you're right here) was shifted from the city to those with the means to get out. The city does a pretty piss-poor job of taking care of its impoverished to start with, so what's happening now is not entirely a surprise.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

Part of the reticence to forward an escape plan was a sort of cry-wolf feeling -- a lot of people have escaped the city several times in the last couple of years for near-misses and glancing blows.

True. But that is what you sign up for when you live in New Orleans. During hurricane season, every year, you have to prepare for the fact that you might have to evacuate. I don't agree that it is crying wolf. Unless the meteorologists are God, they can only estimate the potential effects, they cannot predict.

I know people who also chose to stay, so I agree that it is not the whole story, and I also agree that the City and its administration is guilty of not preparing. Maybe they thought that after three years ago, when there were only 6 'refugees' in the Superdome, that they didn't need to be prepared because they could count on people to evacuate and they could count on the national gov't to come to their rescue.

I hope your family and friends are OK.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I am not exactly sure how what you are saying at the beginning augments what I was talking about in a way that deals with the issues I was trying to bring up. Certainly, there are people who, for a variety of reasons, chose to stay, but the point is, a lot of people had no choice, in the meaningful sense of the word, because there was no public infrastructure to make leaving possible for people who did not have private means to do so.

I hope your family is okay.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

"By Wednesday the stink was staggering. Heaps of rotting garbage in bulging white plastic bags baked under a blazing Louisiana sun on the main entry plaza, choking new arrivals as they made their way into the stadium after being plucked off rooftops and balconies.

The odor billowing from toilets was even fouler. Trash spilled across corridors and aisles, slippery with smelly mud and scraps of food.

"They're housing us like animals," said Iiesha Rousell, 31, unemployed after four years in the Army in Germany, dripping with perspiration in the heat, unable to contain her fury and disappointment at being left with only National Guardsmen as overseers and no information about what might lie ahead."

Wow. They have toilets and trash bags and National Guardsmen. And a refugee shelter.

When Kinshasa flooded in March, it was a little different. But I do sympathize, I suppose the more you have, the more you have to lose.

Maybe next week I'll call and find out if my storage unit drowned.

[pirat-ponton.livejournal.com]

stop whining, it's very important for the citizens in all affected areas to take personal responsibility (http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050901/2005-09-01T130142Z_01_DIT140857_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-WEATHER-BUSH-DC.html)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

right, and also oil-price fixing is allowed only on the Big Corporate level, not on a small-business level. Y'know, I'm kind of surprised the BushCo hasn't socialized the oil industry yet, since ATM that would be the ultimate in privatizing it for Bush's corporate cronies.

more from the SAT

[convivium.livejournal.com]

guitar: bush = shoes: condi (http://www.gawker.com/news/condoleezza-rice/index.php#breaking-condi-rice-spends-salary-on-shoes-123467)