Total societal collapse
The raw stories coming out of New Orleans are un-fucking-believable. Civilization has collapsed. The police have become desperate animals right along with the rest of the people who have devolved into survival mode in the flooded ruins of The Big Uneasy. The streets are ruled by armed thugs. Gunmen have invaded at least one hospital, rescue operations have been suspended because helicopters and rescue boats are being fired upon. The situation at the Superdome is sickening and is about to implode.
It's hard to believe that this is America. These are stories we only hear out of second- and third-world countries where survival was pretty much your own to begin with.
Ten-thousand National Guard on the way. Those with the least training and experience (all of those were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan). An estimated 100,000 survivors and survivalists are left in the city. Ten-to-one. Ten-to-one odds for the National Guard to attempt to quell the violence, bring relief supplies, and construct evacuation routes while attempting to hold the crumbling levees together and drain the standing water.
Can the Shrub smirk his way through this human and political catastrophe? These are the types of conditions which cause the citizens of other countries to march upon the palaces with rifles and baseball bats. Do you think once the survivors escape their situation--which most likely will mean little more than tent cities with minimal food supplies and sanitation--that they will be thankful? Or will they ask, "Why did it take so long to rescue us from that hell? How were conditions allowed to get so bad? Why wasn't the city and government better prepared for what they had known could happen for years?"
A year and a half ago, New Orleans was awarded $7.1 million in homeland security funds. Apparently most of the money was earmarked for anti-terrorism measures in the city's ports. Why, in what we learned from the aftermat of Sept 11, 2001, did the city's police experience a total communcations failure? In a city in constant threat of flooding and hindered by isolating geography why were mass-rescue plans and facilities never created?
So where did the money go? One thing's for certain: money is now meaningless in the lawless cesspool that used to be New Orleans.
"We tried to airlift supplies into Kenner Memorial Hospital late last evening and were confronted by an unruly crowd with guns, and the pilots refused to land."Quite honestly, I don't think the situation is going to come under control until either there is a mass slaughter of survivors amongst one another, or the National Guard is reduced to machine-gunning people from the air.
It's hard to believe that this is America. These are stories we only hear out of second- and third-world countries where survival was pretty much your own to begin with.
Ten-thousand National Guard on the way. Those with the least training and experience (all of those were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan). An estimated 100,000 survivors and survivalists are left in the city. Ten-to-one. Ten-to-one odds for the National Guard to attempt to quell the violence, bring relief supplies, and construct evacuation routes while attempting to hold the crumbling levees together and drain the standing water.
Can the Shrub smirk his way through this human and political catastrophe? These are the types of conditions which cause the citizens of other countries to march upon the palaces with rifles and baseball bats. Do you think once the survivors escape their situation--which most likely will mean little more than tent cities with minimal food supplies and sanitation--that they will be thankful? Or will they ask, "Why did it take so long to rescue us from that hell? How were conditions allowed to get so bad? Why wasn't the city and government better prepared for what they had known could happen for years?"
A year and a half ago, New Orleans was awarded $7.1 million in homeland security funds. Apparently most of the money was earmarked for anti-terrorism measures in the city's ports. Why, in what we learned from the aftermat of Sept 11, 2001, did the city's police experience a total communcations failure? In a city in constant threat of flooding and hindered by isolating geography why were mass-rescue plans and facilities never created?
So where did the money go? One thing's for certain: money is now meaningless in the lawless cesspool that used to be New Orleans.
posted by Olivander | 1:55 PM
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