I was listening to news from New Orleans last night, and wonder what kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare the city of New Orleans is turning into?

The story involved the Fall of Saigon-like ‘retreat’ from the Tulane Medical Center inside the city. The hospital staff was triaging the injured and medivac-ing them and patients already in the hospital out of the city from the hospital’s roof-top helicopter pad. The conditions in the hospital were primative and deteriorating.

Looters began penetrating into the hospital and ‘disrupting operations’. (This does not include shooting at the medivac choppers.) Hospital security was ‘out-gunned’ by the Looters. However, with the aid of US Marines (including snipers) flown in, a withdrawal of patients and staff was made into progressively smaller and more defensible positions within the hospital as patients, staff, and eventually the rear-guard abandoned the facility to the Looters.

The story reminds that the "1st World" is a very thin veneer.

Ever think that maybe some people wanted this to happen? Or that maybe it was predicted and encouraged to happen?

The corporations are pleased.

quote:

The corporations are pleased.

Supporting statement?

Boogerhead, I'm going to have to ask you to expand on your statements. Preferably with evidence to support your position.

I'd expect a big, ugly fallout, since the whole racial issue, how 'the white fled and the black had to stay and weren't rescued sooner' has been simmering. And that would be quite bad; who needs more riots on cities already brewing racial stress? Yes, this could be a watershed event (even some people are amazed at the reaction of some press and tv reporters, who seem to have got the courage to dare and criticize their government), but I fear the conditions aren't there for the real possibility of political changes in a big scale. Too many interlocking pieces, too many interests.

quote:

Ever think that maybe some people wanted this to happen? Or that maybe it was predicted and encouraged to happen?

Getting into, erm, 'highly speculative'ground is difficult. Weather modification tests, maybe gone haywire? Specific 'cleansing'? Don't know; I'd rather consider Barbara Bush's comment, how that people was worse off to begin with so relocation and shelter living will be a good thing for them, as showing the mentality that let this disaster grow: 'Who would have thought there would be people with no means to escape?'

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fuldog,

I can't support what is merely opinion. I just think with all the chemicals the industries and corporations have been pumping into the sky for so long, and with all the billions they spend in r and d, it's entirely concievable that they've known for a long time that this was coming. It really explains the budget cuts that deprived the levee reinforcement from back in 2003, and the lack of response on the part of fema. They're just killing the poor. It looks to me that this is the only obvious outcome to those actions, and that it was just a matter of waiting it out.

I think they probably noticed that with so many ppm flurocarbons a year the hurricanes strength increases gradually, so they pump up the chemicals that generate the results they're looking for and cut the budgets of the areas that are traditionally hit the hardest, which are coincedentally the poorest areas of the south...

"The belief in coincedence is the prevalient superstition of the age of science."

I try not to "believe" things, so I realise all there is, is opinion.

"At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the lobby saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you have got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts..."

Sheez. If that's real, no wonder people started shooting... And here I thought the last joke on this Bill Maher monologue was tasteless...

I can't say I think there's much to the suggestion that the post-Katrina fiasco was the result of a deliberate policy of urban renewal / ethnic cleansing; my own thoughts on how "deliberate" this travesty was are adequately expressed in my sig*. That said, there are a number of credible allegations of bizarrely "counterproductive" behaviour on the part of the authorities:

that FEMA frequently turned back aid e.g. bottled water

that FEMA refused to allow agencies (including Red Cross) access to the area because they wanted to encourage people to leave

that FEMA cut communications to people in the city

that people from the convention centre were turned back when they tried to leave on foot

etc

There's plenty more out there in the wild and woolly intarweb. Go crazy! Following the threads of the building conspiracy theory will certainly be more interesting than watching the pointless buckpassing that will dominate the mainstream debate, as partisan hacks try to shift the entirety of blame either to the Federal agencies (Republican) or the state and local governments (mostly Democrat). I think they could all easily share the love. Certainly, one thread does seem to run consistently through both the local authorities' hopelessly inadequate pre-Katrina evacuation efforts and the extraordinarily incompetent response of the Feds after the hurricane's landfall: poor people can go fuck themselves.
_{* which, at the time, was "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.}

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RobW,

Never mind. Finally parsed what RobW said, I think (where you say that the Federal gov't is mostly Republican, while the state and local are mostly Democrats).

RobW, I think you've got that reversed, the buck-passing, that is. My liberal friends are all on the "My God the Feds fucked this one up" bandwagon at this point.

Well, they did. I'm saying both sides will be attempting to reduce their culpability to zero; witness the bullshit lie to come from GOP flacks - guilelessly parrotted by various news sources - that the governor never declared a state of emergency. As an example from the other side: er, your liberal friends. The mayor and the governor are not heroes. (Apropos of which, here's China giving Nagin a kicking.)

[Edit: teach me yet again to go searching for links rather than responding quickly.]

My last remaining in-law in NO just MadMaxed his way out via the back roads and is now reclining in a La-Z-Boy in Alabama. All the clan is now scattered to the winds, staying with relatives. One of my cousins, a widow with two small boys, was set to hold a dinner marking the one year anniversary of her husband's sudden death... the day of the hurricane. So last year she lost her husband, this year she lost her city on the same day.

The stepfather-in-law fed us info from behind the lines until he left, and as usual, things were both better and worse than reported. He was in an area separated from the city center by downed bridges and washed-out roads. Even though damage was less there, and therefore things weren't too bad at first, the National Guard and other emergency agencies were focusing on the city center (as they should be), leaving some prime looting opportunities in other areas which will go unnamed. Stores were being looted, then set on fire. The spirit of nihilism running amok.


I hope we come up with something clever. I'd like to have something to be impressed about, other than the extreme courage and discipline shown by many of the refugees and emergency workers at the ground level.

I don't know what might happen to the City of New Orleans proper, but as for its displaced low-income and no-income population...

I have this recurring vision of a huge refugee camp, a mod-tent city. It's meant to be temporary, of course, but it rapidly turns into a vast shantytown that can neither be hidden nor bulldozed. Like the one our host wrote about, the one on the Golden Gate bridge.

Doesn't seem so fantastic.

quote:

I'd like to have something to be impressed about, other than the extreme courage and discipline shown by many of the refugees and emergency workers at the ground level.

I never cease to be impressed by that, although, unlike far too many, I am not surprised.

quote:

I have this recurring vision of a huge refugee camp, a mod-tent city. It's meant to be temporary, of course, but it rapidly turns into a vast shantytown that can neither be hidden nor bulldozed.

You're not the only one, brother.

And the person I'd most like to hear discourse on the subject is Jack Womack. You just know his brain is running at 9000rpm, scorching the hair off his head, generating an electromagnetic field.

quote:

Originally posted by RobW:

quote:

I'd like to have something to be impressed about, other than the extreme courage and discipline shown by many of the refugees and emergency workers at the ground level.

I never cease to be impressed by that, although, unlike far too many, I am not surprised.

I was rather disappointed in myself over being surprised over the extent of random, suicidal violence, such as the shooting at emergency workers and helicopters bringing in aid. I feel stupid for having overestimated humanity, even if only to a small extent.

Tip for anyone considering shooting at a rescue worker: The quickest way to make it all go away is to put the barrel to your own temple and pull the trigger. It's not pretty, but sometimes you have to lean in and take one for the team.

...and it will be in Texas.

quote:

Originally posted by Mean Old Man:
...and it will be in Texas.

I regret to inform you that Texas has never met a tent city it declined to bulldoze.

The snipings remain one of the more troubling examples of thuggish behaviour in New Orleans, particularly as other stories start to look iffy, because it's so difficult to conceive of a rational reason to behave that way. Here's Michael Neumann's attempt. I don't know that his argument is very convincing, at least as the second more elaborate explanation goes. But I can see why someone watching a copter flying to save someone else might fire at it out of frustration or in a dumbass attempt to summon its aid. That doesn't make that kind of behaviour significantly less reprehensible, but at least gives us a handle on how it might be something other than entirely deranged.