Natalee Holloway was a stupid whore / Katrina

[luke]

Yankees, man, they love to whine.

Meanwhile, we have a major city get wiped out by the most powerful force on the planet and "boo hoo, I'm tired of all this hurricane stuff, put the Runaway Bride back on, dumb rednecks shouldn't live on the coast."

Well maybe you dumb yanks should invest in a little something called a fucking AIR CONDITIONER.

[Fuzznuts]

Have a glass of ice water, for fuck's sake.

[rockysigman]

I don't remember too many people bitching about Katrina fatigue until months later, and even then, those people were total doofs.

Anyway, I don't want to hear any complaints from you two if you get two feet of snow this winter. Seriously, you'd better shut the fuck up.

[chrisfan]

We won't hear about anyone getting 2 feet of snow unless New York City does. Weather doesn't exsist in the rest of the country ... unless it's such a disaster that more than 10 people die. But if Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric is effected ... eek! Let's drop all coverage of world events, and focus on New York's weather.

[luke]

Haha, yeah. A friend of mine said that if New York ever really does get hit by a hurricane, he'll be the first to say, "We really shouldn't rebuild it, it's just going to happen again."

My main problem with the "Heat Wave" is that, well, when we DO get snow, and there ARE huge power outages and ten car pile ups on the interstate, the ONLY news coverage is local to regional.

Although, really, I'm mostly joking and being inflammatory, of course.

Couldn't help but laugh at the news story I saw saying that people were literally crying in buses in New York.

[rockysigman]

luke said:

Couldn't help but laugh at the news story I saw saying that people were literally crying in buses in New York.

Are you sure they weren't dying because the heatwave killed their grandmothers?

But yeah, extensive news coverage of weather is a little ridiculous, but most news coverage is ridiculous.

[luke]

It's the little things, too. Newscasters saying every chance they get, "Wow, Bob, it sure is hot out there!" Wah.

[Fuzznuts]

rockysigman said:

Anyway, I don't want to hear any complaints from you two if you get two feet of snow this winter. Seriously, you'd better shut the fuck up.

If we get two fet of snow, I'll be the first sumbitch out there driving around and playing in it. I love the cold weather and snow.

[strat-0]

We topped 100 F today, which is rather unusual here. It's 97 now, but the humidity is only 37%, so it feels about like usual in the shade. Normally in August it might typically be 90 to 95, but with humidity in the 85% to 95% range, which can be pretty oppressive. Probably much the same for Luke and Fuzz.

I don't complain much about it. Without the recent drought, I wouldn't have been able to work on my pond project like I wanted to, anyway. But once I get it done, yeah, some more cooling rains would be nice. I expect we'll get some nice tropical depressions or storms come through pretty soon. Obviously not wishing for more hurricanes, but it really isn't my call.

[Thorngrub]

I heard Spike Lee filmed a 4 -hour documentary, to be aired on HBO this week, about Katrina and its aftermath, focusing on New Orleans and showcasing all the people whose lives were forever altered. OUght to be some powerful stuff. . .

[skvorisdeadsorta]

The Katrina Anniversary
by Jordan Flaherty
August 23, 2006

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"I want as many people to come visit here as possible," a lower 9th ward resident named Calvin told me as we walked past the infamous breached levees and destroyed homes of his neighborhood. "The national media has forgotten us, the politicians in DC have forgotten us. I support anything to get the word out."

Among many people I've spoken with in New Orleans, this sentiment is common; the idea that the country has moved on, and if people would just come here and see for themselves, they'll bring attention and consciousness.

Beginning days after the storm, New Orleans hosted a stream of celebrities and political players, from Sean Penn to Spike Lee, a United Nations Human Rights envoy, and a series of PR visits from president Bush. Later, Women of the Storm, a nonpartisan group led mostly by wealthy white women from New Orleans, raised a lot of cash and publicity for their mission to fly to DC and convince congressional representatives to come here and view the devastation.

Now, we are days away from the long-heralded anniversary of the destruction of our city, and once again the tour buses are filling up.

To commemorate the anniversary, the Nagin administration announced a party - fireworks at the superdome, a masquerade, and a comedy show at the downtown casino were all initially a part of the official city festivities. Although those plans were widely seen as offensive - and have since been cancelled - there is still, for many, an unsettled feeling around this anniversary.

How do you commemorate the anniversary of something that is still happening? The devastation of our city is not just something that happened a year ago, it's something that is going on yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Half of the people of New Orleans remain dispersed around the US. Suicide rates have tripled. The national guard is still patrolling the streets. Most schools and hospitals - especially those serving poor people - are still closed. Central issues related to the planning of the city - including what neighborhoods will be rebuilt, how they will be rebuilt, and who will make the decisions - remain unresolved. Perhaps most importantly, few people here feel protected by the levees that surround this city.

We in New Orleans know that our moment is ending. This anniversary will bring one last deluge of media attention, but after that - barring another catastrophe - the spotlight will move on. The corporate media will reassign their reporters. Liberal foundations will redirect their money to the next urgent priority. Activist volunteers will be going back to school or onto the next volunteer hub.

"It was frustrating and painful at first," former mayoral candidate and lower ninth ward resident Greta Gladney recalls, referring to the people that have come to walk the streets around her home. "Before December, in order to see our own neighborhood, we had to ride on a tour bus, while contractors, insurance adjusters, journalists and police and soldiers could walk around there as much as they wanted. Politicians were using our neighborhood for leverage, to get more money from the federal government. But they don't want the lower nine to be rebuilt, so the money they get from our suffering is not going to come to us."

Driving through the lower ninth ward on any given day, you are likely to see scattered groups on guided or unguided tours, tourist-filled buses and vans filled with church volunteers or scruffy activists on bikes. People come to see the levee break - now rebuilt - and to view the general devastation - which is still very much present. In fact, until recently, bodies were still being discovered regularly, and few doubt that more remain buried amongst the rubble. Virtually no one from this large neighborhood has been able to return. Most of the area still has no electricity or running water.

Grassroots organizers have organized alternate plans for the anniversary, including vigils, press conferences, a tour of condemned public housing, and a memorial and march - beginning in the lower nine - organized by a coalition called the United Front to Commemorate the Great Flood. Local groups continue to organize in the neighborhoods of the city, and in the diaspora. Whatever happens in these coming weeks and months, for the people of New Orleans, the struggle - and the mourning - continues, with or without the attention of the world.

=====================================

Jordan Flaherty is an organizer with New Orleans Network and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. His previous articles from New Orleans are at:
www.leftturn.org/Articles/SpecialCollections/jordanonkatrina.aspx

=====================================

ONE YEAR AFTER KATRINA, a new report from Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, will investigate the state of the post-hurricane Gulf Coast; profile innovative community leaders; and outline the challenges ahead for a just and sustainable renewal. The report will feature 200 indicators and in-depth reports on 13 major issue areas, including Demographics, Housing, Economy, Schools, Healthcare, Arts and Hurricane Readiness. The report will also feature a comprehensive directory of organizations working on Gulf Coast issues in Louisiana, Mississippi and nationally. The report is due to be released Tuesday, August 22. For more information, see www.reconstructionwatch.org/


=====================================

For a comprehensive calendar of events during the anniversary week, go to www.neworleansnetwork.org =====================================

[phil]

After "War For Profit", now this ... ??


Disaster capitalism: how to make money out of misery

The privatisation of aid after Katrina offers a glimpse
of a terrifying future in which only the wealthy are saved

Naomi Klein
Wednesday August 30, 2006
The Guardian


The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the US government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: businesses do disaster better.

"It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for tropical storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources." But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatisation of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.

The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).

We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent.

But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditure for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatised disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).

I call it the Disaster Capitalism Complex. Whatever you might need in a serious crunch, these contractors can provide it: generators, watertanks, cots, port-a-potties, mobile homes, communications systems, helicopters, medicine, men with guns.

This state-within-a-state has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it. So far, that reality hasn't sunk in because while these companies are getting their bills paid by government contracts, the Disaster Capitalism Complex provides its services to the public free of charge.

But here's the catch: the US government is going broke, in no small part thanks to this kind of loony spending. The national debt is $8 trillion; the federal budget deficit is at least $260bn. That means that sooner rather than later the contracts are going to dry up. Insiders call it the "homeland security bubble".

When it bursts, firms such as Bechtel, Fluor and Blackwater will lose their primary revenue stream. They will still have all their hi-tech gear giving them the ability to respond to disasters, while the government will have let that precious skill wither away - but now they will rent back the tax-funded infrastructure at whatever price they choose.

Here's a snapshot of what could be in store in the not-too-distant future: helicopter rides off rooftops in flooded cities at $5,000 a pop ($7,000 for families, pets included), bottled water and "meals ready to eat" at $50 a head (steep, but that's supply and demand), and a cot in a shelter with a portable shower (show us your biometric ID, developed on a lucrative homeland security contract, and we'll track you down later with the bill).

The model, of course, is the US healthcare system, in which the wealthy can access best-in-class treatment in spa-like environments while 46 million Americans lack health insurance. As emergency-response, the model is already at work in the global Aids pandemic: private-sector prowess helped produce life-saving drugs (with heavy public subsidies), then set prices so high that the vast majority of the world's infected cannot afford treatment.

If that is the corporate world's track record on slow-motion disasters, why should we expect different values to govern fast-moving disasters such as hurricanes or even terrorist attacks? It's worth remembering that as Israeli bombs pummelled Lebanon not so long ago, the US government initially tried to charge its citizens for the cost of their own evacuations. And, of course, anyone without a western passport in Lebanon had no hope of rescue.

One year ago, New Orleans's working-class and poor citizens were stranded on their rooftops waiting for help that never came, while those who could pay their way escaped to safety. The country's political leaders claim it was all some terrible mistake, a breakdown in communication that is being fixed. Their solution is to go even further down the catastrophic road of "private-sector solutions."

Unless a radical change of course is demanded, New Orleans will prove to be a glimpse of a dystopian future, a future of disaster apartheid in which the wealthy are saved and everyone else is left behind.

· Naomi Klein's book on disaster capitalism will be published in spring 2007.

[Fuzznuts]

I was at lunch with one of our suppliers yesterday, and he is from Tampa. He said he and his wife were at the grocery store Monday night and the entire water aisle was cleaned out. Now, I'm all for being prepared for a Hurricane, but that's just ridiculous. This isn't a bad storm and it's not going anywhere near Tampa. It's just a case of weather guys covering their asses, and freaking everybody out in the process.

[Paul]

Damn Phil; that was a depressing read! What the fuck is the matter w/ people???

mabye Karl Marx was right....so much for the invisible hand, eh?

[chrisfan]

I don't think that's necessarily a case of people freaking out over a storm that won't hit them. Rather, I think that this storm serves as a reminder for people in Florida that hurricane season is REALLY here. That reminder always spurs the procrastinating "I need to get my hurricane supplies sometime" to change to a "I'm getting my hurricane supplies today". It's no different really than the fact that tire stores in Ohio are always super busy the first Saturday after the first snowfall. People know in November that snow will be coming soon and they need to get the new tires they've been putting off. But once that first flake falls, everyone and their brother acts on it at once.