As the nodal point for two major transportation/commerce systems, between the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans or a city not too far from its former location is going to have an important economic role for the foreseeable future (however long that is)

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Aug 31 2005 21:22 utc | 4

Bush just had a press conference where he said he had an overflight over the area – at 35,000 feet?
The stupidity, as Billmon points out in another way, is to now promise to rebuild everything. That city is lost. Landsides change because what we as humans do. Even if we change our influence, some damage will be permanent. NO is one of the damage sides.
On the side of human death. My estimate is 10-20,000. Compare that to 9/11 and the resources to prevent another 9/11.

Posted by: b | Aug 31 2005 21:27 utc | 6

Exactly b, the city is lost. The GOP are spinning like tops to try and do something. This is truly a “Day After Tomorrow” event, they know it, and they haven’t a fucking clue how to deal with it.

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Aug 31 2005 21:57 utc | 8

What a bizarre Trail of Tears: to transport that most unfortunate element of New Orleans’ population from one uninhabitable stadium to another hundreds of miles away. It is as if the poorest of the poor will be penalized for having the luck to survive the calamity. Will the Texans charge admission to see the refugees?

Posted by: Petronius | Aug 31 2005 22:32 utc | 10

Unfortunately, climate change policies won’t solve the problem either. It goes much deeper. The greed that leads people to build societies in unstable places, thus overpopulating, over consuming, and creating waste disposal impossibilities is the culprit. Until we learn to live in harmony with our surroundings we will continue to experience these catastrophes. Man and water are especially at odds. People in the business tell me that flooding is the worst of disasters. And forcing its flow in all the wrong places and directions will eventually give in to greater forces. Or trying to block it. Water is the means to sustenance, transportation and wealth, so this constant courting of destruction will bear fruit.
The distribution of population is what I think has been our biggest problem. The growth of cities has also led to politics, as the means to control the group, and then the growth of corruption, coming full circle in inadequate planning for this inevitable event. The good old exit strategy that seems to have gone missing. Man often gets caught in the traps he so loves to construct.
Until people respect the earth and live in smaller groups that can sustain their survival in intelligently chosen locations, with reasonable consumption and waste removal, we will experience population control in this manner, and the earth’s shedding of too much weight and density for the spot.
It’s plain senseless. People can live in relatively safe places.

Posted by: jm | Aug 31 2005 22:50 utc | 12

I’ve been waiting for two days for your thoughts-and as ever-wonderfully done.
After so much flack given to people saying it could be over for NO, you rationally imply the obvious. Remove the levees, and NO is no longer there, an under water attraction like the sunken ships at Pearl Harbor. If this storm could flatten houses in Biloxi that have stood since 1854, what is the point of restoring the levees (and the most active part of the hurricane season has not even started). Every attempt to dry out will be threatened with yet again, another couple inches of rain, not to mention another hurricane. Residents will want to return but businesses, not so much. It would be far more economical to hand people very big checks and say “you really have to move on”.
I work a block from, as we in lower Manhatten affectonately call, the Big Hole. The spring was full of much whining and wailing about what to do with the Hole-Bloomberg was distracted by the West Side Stadium and the Olympics-nobody was moving forward-“We hate the plan, we need a plan, we need leadership, we need focus and direction” and then Donald the Trump states the obvious-to paraphase, “nobody is going to rent in a very tall building there again-it’s a looser”. Since then, NADA about rebuilding. And yet, as time has gone on, what had (I thought) become a tourist attraction for rubber neckers, has now (I think) become a place of pilgrimage for Americans and tourists from abroad, like a Mecca or a Bethlehem. That Hole means something. Maybe an NO forever returned to the Mississippi can become a monument to hubris, and another place of pilgrimage.

Posted by: Mary | Aug 31 2005 23:09 utc | 14

Slightly off topic but look at this President. In five short years he:
a) Gains power in the greatest subversion of Democracy in our country’s history.
b) Presides over the greatest “terrorist” attack in our country’s history. No one is held reponsible.
c) Turns the largest budget surpluses in our country’s history into the largest deficits.
d) Embroils our country in what now looks like the worst military and diplomatic defeat in our nation’s history.
e) Presides over the costliest and one of the deadliest (so far) natural disasters in our nations history.
d) Presides in a 250% increase in the cost of energy supplies for the country.
e) Presides over the greatest rise of partisanship in this country since the Civil War, and it’s getting worse.
I mean who, in their right mind (maybe that’s the key here), actually supports this guy. This is some bad news, and I fear we’re not at the end of it. Even Ralph Nader should be able to get elected on a platform of “Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?”
Outside of Radical Statism, early-onset fascism, and faithism, this guy is just plain bad luck. He has always been bad luck his whole life. Looking in his eyes as he spoke today, you could see he knew it. Nothing he does works. Ever. His whole life. Something to remember and repeat. Just plain old bad luck to have this guy around. BAD LUCK.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 31 2005 23:25 utc | 16

Had to have one more blues, from Charley Patton, from the same 1927 flood.
High Water Everywhere.
So high the water was risin’ our men sinkin’ down,
Man, the water was risin’ at places all around, boy, they’s all around,
It was fifty men and children come to sink and drown,
Oh, Lordy, women and grown men drown,
Oh, women and children sinkin’ down, Lord, have mercy,
I couldn’t see nobody’s home and wasn’t no one to be found.

Posted by: James E. Powell | Sep 1 2005 0:18 utc | 18

The total annihilation of New Orleans will surely be the Albatross that finally drowns Team Bush.
There was a politician of Democratic stripe, who foresaw energy and environmental problems heading our way, this country’s elite bet against him by selecting GW in 2000. And like good gambling addicts they doubled down again in 2004. Only now the bill from the first term is coming due. Can anyone really afford the bill that’s accruing from the current term? We’re barely 9 month into a second term and we’ve already lost a major historic southern port. How much more blood and treasure do we need to piss away?
If there was poetic justice in this world. Gore would be nominated and elected in 2008. No Democrat has had the spine to call Bush on his crap, where Gore has consistently done it. Gore has spoken elegantly and accurately in the face of omni-present media hostility- talk about character! Hillary may have the fundraising lead, but by right of honor, 2008 should be Gore’s.
Al if you’re out there, come back to us, we need you.

Posted by: patience | Sep 1 2005 0:18 utc | 20

@jdp, imho one reason people build and live in impossible places is cheap fossil fuel. rice farming in SoCal. a city called Las Vegas in a hostile desert. Los Angeles, irrigated by terawatts’ worth of pumped water from hundreds of miles away. cheap energy means we can make like the inky-dinky spider and build our home up the garden spout. those days are almost over.

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 1 2005 0:44 utc | 22

“…They’ll also reduce into insignificance the price tag on the Kyoto Treaty — which itself may be too little, too late. If Shrub really thinks that doing something about climate change would “wreck the economy,” he should spend some of his unused vacation time thinking about what just happened to New Orleans.”
As best I can tell, Bush Co. thinks “the economy” is synonymous with “dividends.”
I think it reasonable to ask how much interest this regime has in the well-being of the country. In the modern world, capital has historically high mobility. I can see a Bush family “compound” in Riyadh. Then again, there’s always the later nineteenth century model, where private police forces helped to keep a respectable distance between the paragons of our culture and the people who worked for them.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 1 2005 0:49 utc | 24

It is alarming to note that Canadian govts are poised to send aid but no one in the US govt can tell them what to send.
Wheels falling off?

Posted by: ab | Sep 1 2005 1:06 utc | 26

De,
you are likely right. That time will soon be over. The place where I live, Michigan, is surrounded by one the greatest natural resources in the world. Fresj water. Our family is really thinking of taking advantage of the bust housing bubble nationwide and bust economy here in Michigan and buying some acreage for farming. I believe horse farming will again rise as one of the means of agricultural production. Las Vegas will go back to what it was, barron desert.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 1 2005 1:31 utc | 28

& all the time the suffering of people – represented in som for ov volkspirit. the demeaned & degraded media do nothing but charge their deaderotic eys on damage, on loss, on carnage – as long as they are far from the centre of it – or worse they profit directly from the suffering of others
this culture which tries to control in every sense – that which is beautiful in man – his sense of wonder – & equally his sense of shame. his sense of construction & of a human atonement. human not religious qualities that exist in every man & woman – that is being demolished – & demolished utterly by that which passes for information
why do they not speak of why a situation – such as this is allowed to become as grave as it is & – then pose the question of why is it that the poor in these situation suffer loss dispoportionately to the those who have too much already
i will not be made to cry over what man has created in his infinite venality – i will not raise my fist when those who suffer are my natural brothers & sisters – because they do not pose nor activate the obvious question. marx put it a great deal more eloquently than i am capable – but the poor must ask & respond to that very basic question – why is it they who must always carry the burden – in every sense
there are those of a generation who experienced est, forum rajaneesh guru maharaji etc etc who will say that the poor demand their proper suffering – these fuckwits who are now technocrats – a culture of which billmon is part even if he does not share their implicit hatred of people – but that is what i hear or read – in commentaries in all media – the false tears – the false concern – & the playing with that falseness until it turns into a burlesque – until it is transformed into something so sordidly vaudevillian – the real person dissapear as they do literally in the floods of new orleans or in the cities & villages of iraq
these people who are lost to us, their histories, their legends, their myths, their gifts are lost to us forever – & they are – these people – based not in some conception of people – but of their concrete reality – human flesh – they are reality based. they are not floating bit of flotsam or jetsam but human history that is dissapearing
why do these pornographers degrade all that is – constitutionally honourable in humanity & turn it into some competition of celebrity or carnage. the biggest. the worst. the smallest. why do they never speak of our common humanity – why do they never speak – of that which is the richest in us – instinct. o would suggest because that is what they want to destroy most & they are not afraid to use the most fearful means & take advantage of human tragedy
when the russian armies swalllowed germany armies whole – the corrupt leadership was never concerned with the story of their soldiers, they were not even concerned with historical forces – they were concerned with their own benefit – to the last second – to the last hour
the theology of liberation was perhaps the only real moment in divided cultures when groups of persons could ascertain the human cost both in the short term & long term – & could see the impoverishment that would happen at almost every level & of why power needs to create victims – naturally or unnaturally. power does so in the end because it can profit from it. as it always has
someone has said here in a post – that this could be the last straw – but for five years we have been waitin g for the last straw – for the deception or the cruelty to be exposed for what it is & for the people to wake up. & they do not
we are being sent as quietly as any jew to birkenau – to the degredation of our species
when there is no fight in humanity – when it has lost the power to question – then for me it has almost lost everything & that then everything becomes then a machinery for creating victims

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 1 2005 1:52 utc | 30

I was stunned watching Tv the morning Katrina reached shore. I kept hearing how New Orleans had dodged the blow, and what I was seeing on TV looked even then like almost a worst case scenario.
I think the TV people become to fixed on the location of the little red icon they put on a map. They completely seemed to forget both what happens around that red icon, and also their main talking point about New Orleans and hurricanes.
The main talking point, for every storm in the gulf in my lifetime is how New Orleans is below sea level, protected only by levees, and that is very vulnerable to a hurricane.
But when the little red icon moved to the right of the city on their tv maps, they seemed to forget this. They only focused on the fact that the little red icon wasn’t going to pass over the dot on the map that represented New Orleans.
I looked at that Monday morning, and saw the following. First, the stroms rotation was such that water would be pushed counter-clockwise up towards Lake Ponchatrain. Second, as the storm passed by to the east of the city, that same counter-clockwise rotation was going to mean that the winds in New Orleans were going to be coming from the north across Lake Ponchatrain into the city. This of course meant that the water in Lake Ponchatrain was going to be pushed up against the levees protecting the city by that north wind.
And besides, a hurricane is bigger than that little red icon on the maps. Even though the little red icon missed the city, the eye-wall of the hurricane pushed right across the city.
So the course of the little red icon did mean that New Orleans had slightly lower wind speeds … like maybe 110 instead of a 140 or so that hit the MS gulf coast.
But, the threat to New Orleans from a hurricane was never the high winds. At least no more than anywhere else along the coast. The threat to New Orleans, as we’ve heard endlessly every time there’s a hurricane in the gulf was that the city was below sea level and vulnerable to flooding.
And what I was seeing on the maps on tv, at the same time the people with the pretty hair were blathering about how New Orleans had been spared a direct hit, was that this looked like an almost worst-case scnenario for flooding in New Orleans, with those still strong winds in the eye-wall blowing from the north across the lake towards the levees. That looked like a coming disaster from the moment I saw it. If you remembered that New Orleans unique danger was flooding, this looked very bad.
But hey, all that counts on TV is the location of that little red icon and its latest updated position from the National Weather Service.
I guess that’s why I usually don’t listen much to the people with the pretty hair on TV. They seem to tend to be idiots.
Pretty much the same reaction to every single news person I’ve heard whine about how the water started rising AFTER the city appeared to be safe. Obviously brains is not a criteria to becoming a news reporter. Its the hair that counts.
In ANY flooding situation, the worst is likely to occur AFTER the heaviest rains stop. The reason for this is obvious. It takes time for the water that falls on a parking lot to run off across the land, find a creek, flow to a river, then eventually flow to the sea or a lake.
Again, the basic point is the unique danger to New Orleans has always been flooding. Anyone who walks outside right as the rain stops and the wind lets off and says “wow, we survived the worst” has forgotten that.
The question of what to do with New Orleans is interesting. For those not paid by oil companies to be in denial about global warming, its a dead cinch certainty that the sea levels are going to rise. Its also equally certain that major storms are going to be more frequent and stronger because of the increase in surface temperature in the ocean. Especially the Gulf of Mexico.
So not only do they need to fix the current levees, if you are going to rebuild New Orleans, then you absolutely have to build bigger, taller levees to keep stronger storms out when the sea level is higher than it is today. Or else this is a sure bet to happen again.
There is of course going to be a major city in the region. But would it make sense to find some higher ground to the north and put it there?
It might make sense, but it ain’t gonna happen. The people with power and money who own land and other investments in New Orleans aren’t going to give that up. Their attitude is going to be “this is what we have insurance for”. And if the insurance companies decide this is too big of a risk in the future, they won’t choose not to write the policies. No, they’ll just go to their bought-off congress people and get a bill passed putting the US taxpayers on the hook if the city gets destroyed again.
I feel for the people caught by this. I love New Orleans as a city. I loved walking its streets. The feel of the city. The openness of the city as opposed to the puritanical oppression that most of the rest of America runs by.
But the train of stupidity that led to this is amazing. From ignoring the problem of floods in New Orleans for too long. Then when they do spend some money to try to address the problem, it instead gets diverted to fight a war against an imaginary threat in Iraq. Then, the National Guard troops, who were the only organization in the area that might have had a chance to plug the hole in the levee when it was small and there wasn’t much flooding, well they are off in Iraq fighting that war against an imaginary threat. And no one at the state or national level of government, nor the morons with the pretty hair on tv, seemed to have any notion of how this train of stupidity added up to a coming disaster, thus did nothing to even try to cover the gap in the city’s defenses. For instance, knowing the dangerous state of the levees, and the removal of the national guard units, why weren’t groups like the Army Corps of Engineers mobilizing to help defend those levees two days before the storm even hit the coast.
It was obvious that if the hurricane came near New Orleans that a disaster was coming. But no one seemed to do anything but sit and watch it on TV.

Posted by: Marc | Sep 1 2005 2:09 utc | 32

patience, I wish you were right. But nothing nothing nothing seems to bring down Dubyanocchio. Indeed, although it’s enough to putrefy my few remaining brain cells just thinking about it, I can see his approval ratings going up as a consequence of this disaster.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 1 2005 2:31 utc | 34

Humans are great at denial and believing the world around them is permanent. In four years, two separate engineering failures destroyed two towers and flooded a city. All preventable except the fixes cost money and required foresight. Blame has to be placed on a society that worships accumulation of the almighty buck and selects a President remarkable for his lack of insight.

Posted by: Jim S | Sep 1 2005 3:19 utc | 36

Thank God we Control Nature now. Life musta been tough before 🙂

Posted by: jj | Sep 1 2005 3:34 utc | 38

From Pravda on the Potomac, Dan Froomkin’s blog.
Very interesting, and a fill in the blank poll on Iraq at the end.
LINK

Posted by: Groucho | Sep 1 2005 4:04 utc | 40

36
The fetishism of the commodity — the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” — attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.
37
The world at once present and absent that the spectacle holds up to view is the world of the commodity dominating all living experience. The world of the commodity is thus shown for what it is, because its development is identical to people’s estrangement from each other and from everything they produce.
From “The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord 1967 Translated by Ken Knabb
One of the greatest and most subtle books of the last century. Where would John Berger be without Debord? Where would Las Vegas be???? Like a flavor you know but can’t identify. A memory from the womb. Ineluctable.
For all the great posts here: RGiap, Mono, Marc, and of course, Billmon, for showing us the way…when, perhaps, there appears to be none.

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 1 2005 4:35 utc | 42

In colonial times, it was the one American city where Afro-Caribbean and Creole culture enjoyed at least a measure of tolerance under a succession of masters – Spanish, French, British and American. In 1814, it was the site of the United States’ most complete victory over the Redcoats, a victory all the sweeter because it was crafted by the raw Celtic cunning of our most quintessentially American president, Andrew Jackson, and the Gallic conniving of his pirate ally, Jean Lafitte. Even the handful of Americans who died at the battle of New Orleans did so in Mardi Gras style, dancing atop the barricades before the last of the British snipers had skulked away.
For millions of Americans who grew up in strait-laced towns, the Big Easy has always been the city to dance, the one Southern place where the Bible Belt came unbuckled. A hundred years ago, the Storyville section was America’s best place for the world’s oldest profession and the birthplace of America’s best contribution to world music, jazz. Like millions of other young people in the preacher-haunted Southland, I bought my first legal drink in the French Quarter. We went for the booze, and in that world of cobbled streets and hidden gardens, some of us glimpsed the glory and costs of pursuing art or individualism.
This was the place where Thomas Williams of St Louis became “Tennessee”, and where that much-ridiculed postal clerk from Oxford, Mississippi made himself into William Faulkner, novelist. This was the place where you could come to find or lose yourself. Across the river in Algiers, William Burroughs shot his wife, and Kerouac and Cassady ate Benzedrine like gumdrops. In the backroom of the Maple Leaf Bar on upper Magazine Street, my classmate Everette Maddox, a poet so precocious he had published in the New Yorker before he left the University of Alabama, succeeded after two decades of steady effort in drinking himself to death. Oh, wondrous city of music that floats from the horn and poems drowned in drink! Oh, cheesy clip-clop metropolis of phony coach-and-fours hauling the drunken Dodge salesmen of Centralia, Illinois, of shaky-handed failed watercolourists hanging unloved pictures on the wrought-iron fence at Jackson Square, of gaunt-eyed superannuated transvestite hookers, of Baptist girls suddenly inspired to show their tits on Chartres Street in return for a string of beads flung by a drunken college boy on the balcony of his daddy’s $1,500 suite at the Soniat House – must we lose even these dubious glories of the only American city that’s never been psychoanalysed?

Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 1 2005 4:51 utc | 44

great post, billmon!
mono….when i get frustrated as you seem, i always fall back on the reality that 80+% of the populace truly are ignorant fools unable ton connect one event to another.
connecting the dots is the great talent that billmon displays.
keep it up!

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Sep 1 2005 5:18 utc | 46

Apropos of a number of upthread comments, I DON’T think the Bush administration will suffer any more political problems from this disaster than they would from any one for which their policies were any less responsible.
People will be annoyed, angry, or outraged, and they will to some degree vent on the powers that be, including local, state, and federal authorities.
But the policies of the Bush administration that have materially worsened this crisis — notably drastic de-funding of ACE levee repairs and drawdowns of local Reserves to support the Iraq joyride — will go largely unremarked and will not figure materially in the political effects.
Or at least, they won’t unless some enterprising media outlet makes a big deal out of it, and let’s face it, that ain’t very likely these days.
Meanwhile, the fundamental Republican task — the upward redistribution of wealth — will continue. For example, did you hear that the hurricane is going to cause all sorts of upward price pressures on oil AND gasoline? And any loans from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which of course would immensely benefit the oil industry, still can’t possibly have ANY beneficial effect on prices? And has anyone read anything recently about DOWNWARD pressure on oil prices?
Sorry, folks. It’s just another sideshow as far as the Bush administration is concerned.

Posted by: bleh | Sep 1 2005 5:24 utc | 48

In deed. Thanks anna missed.
To me, the flooding of New Orleans feels very William Gibson-esque. The major catastrophe followed – we shall see(?) – by those not directly affected, and eventually even those that are, blithly continuing their sleep-walking down the consumer’s path toward the monoculture of multi-national global colonization.

Posted by: stoy | Sep 1 2005 5:51 utc | 50

As I wrote yesterday on Kos, this, more than Iraq, evidences the failure of the US as a society, just as the USSR failed similarly.
(At least by western european standards. As a third world country, we’re doing OK.)
Greed, avarice, incompetence, stupidity.
The American People itself, not just its leadership (and many, but not enough, good people excluded) are at fault.
If it helps get rid of Bush I suppose it’ll be a silver lining.
On a personal note, I’m not the intuitive kind of person but my wife is one of those folks you’d call a “sensitive” if you believe in psychic stuff. I like my facts rational, but I’ve learned (over the course of 25 years) to respect her “feelings.”
One of the many reasons we finally left the country last year — and were strangely propelled by an “invisible wind” that got us a top sale on our previous house and an almost miraculous purchase on our new house in a place we’d bever been before yet felt immediately at home (the wife again) — is that she had that strong “feeling” of impending doom (no other words for it) over the United States. Like never before; chilly, really.
Personally, I think there’s plenty of rational reasons to forecast disasters for the US, and I had not, never until Katrina, factored in *natural* disasters.
Now I worry about California too. I remember in 94 before the Northridge Quake (we lived a mile down from the epicenter) there’d been a lot of tropical storms and abnormally hot weather. I know this is silly, and there’s no correlation, but I can’t help shake the feeling that we’re entering into a new era, and not a nice one.

Posted by: Lupin | Sep 1 2005 6:01 utc | 52

Billmon provides links to a wide variety of disaster relief organizations. For those who don’t mind giving through a religious organizattion, msy I suggest Episcopal Relief and Development.
http://www.er-d.org/

Posted by: Abby | Sep 1 2005 6:26 utc | 54

the scary thing is national geographic wrote this story last year – http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

Posted by: Geoff | Sep 1 2005 6:50 utc | 56

And there is this one from the 1984 text:
The construction of a present where fashion itself, from clothes to music, has come to a halt, which wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in a future, is achieved by the ceaseless circular passage of information, always returning to the same short list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries. Meanwhile news of what is genuinely important, of what is actually changing, comes rarely, and then in fits and starts. It always concerns this world’s apparent condemnation of its own existence, the stages in its programmed self-destruction.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 1 2005 6:59 utc | 58

Orwellian slip: its 1988 text, not 1984.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 1 2005 7:08 utc | 60

Is there anything really genuinely important?
One definition I came across of a genius is one who recognizes the folly of society in his time.

Posted by: jm | Sep 1 2005 7:13 utc | 62

If this were the action of a ‘just’ god why is it just the poor of Louisiana and Mississippi that are copping it? It could be karma in the sense that doing bad can leave you unable to look after yourself because you don’t ‘deserve’ something good but even then we’d be watching fat paleskins rolling and bobbing in the stagnant cess seeping throughout the only town in the US where it doesn’t feel like some angry presbyterian is gonna get you.
This isn’t about justice. If it were people would be thinking of the 1000 women children and old people trampled and drowned in Bagdhad by the actions of sociopaths. We’ll never know for sure whether the stampede was deliberately started and if it was which ‘side’ started it. I betcha there aren’t too many people in Amerika thinking about the Iraqi dead today. Not too many on any day but today is a day where self obssession can be blatantly displayed.
The only positive that may come outta this is that people could insist that New Orleans be rebuilt. My old town was levelled by a cyclone in 1974, over 90% of the buildings were destroyed and it was rebuilt even though it shouldn’t have been. That is there was no reason for the city except to show Indonesia that people lived in it and they better not think about moving in.
What follwed was a good lesson in Keynsian economics at a time when Tories were trying to supress govt spending on anything that they didn’t get all of.
The town took off and boomed and became a self fulfilling prophecy in that once it was rebuilt politicians kept throwing money to justify what they had already spent.
If that happens the poor in the South will get benefit and if it becomes an issue of spend the money in Iraq or in the South you’d have to think the south will win after the repugs try and pull the old switcheroo and get caught out. That means the eventual upshot will be a quicker end to the invasion. Not good long term for Iraqis since they’ll have Buckley’s chance of getting any reparations but it may save thousands of lives.
There won’t be any meaningful blowback on BushCo for neglecting the levees cause the media will be too busy flag waving and talking about the US pulling together and alla that crap they use to fool the sheeple. BushCo will want to be seen to be doing something though and can’t afford to be thought to be not doing enough because of ME committments. This is awful in the short term for humans but long term it may actually put an end to US Middle Eastern imperialism.
That’s what I’m hoping for.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 1 2005 7:15 utc | 64

Why stop the dying when you can stop the looting?

Posted by: b | Sep 1 2005 7:23 utc | 66

@Lupin the only problem with the reaping what you sow allusion is that from what I’ve seen the people doin the reaping are almost 100% old or black or old and black ie the poor so I can’t see anyone that deserves a lesson getting one outta this. Chances are those drowning and being shot wouldn’t have been able to vote even if they had bothered to since they would have been chased outta the booth by some rednecked whitefella demanding to know why they hadn’t paid a fine for being poor in 1973 or somesuch.
One of the most upsetting subtexts in all this is the ‘looting’ bizzo. What sort of a human shoots another who is trying to eat. Yeah I’m sure that a few did grab plasmas etc at the start when they imagined life would get back to ‘normal’ soon. It won’t have taken long to figure that you can’t eat electronics and when there’s no power alla that consumerist shit is exactly that.
The stuff is all history anyway whether or not it gets ‘stolen’ since by the time New Orleans is up and running again alla the fashions and electronics will be outta date. Two months is a long time for retailing garbage and I’d be surprised if there’s much normalacy in 2 months.
So the worries about anarchy are just the rich not wanting the poor to find out that when you’re hungry it’s your duty to help yourself.
The other image that is hard to assimilate is the scenes of what I suppose to be Angola prison where inmates are balanced on the walls dividing their cells from each other as the water rises. Even in that circumstance the poor buggers are in orange with guards pointing guns at them. When our town was hit by a cyclone they freed most of the inmates apart from those that were dangerous to themselves or others or unable to look after themselves. I mean the poor buggers aren’t gonna be goin anywhere so why point guns at em?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 1 2005 7:48 utc | 68

Debs,
Supposedly, 70% of N.O. residents vote democratic, hence the focus on the poor, the destitute, and the black — looting in virtual iconic archival video footage of S.E.L.A. R.King gun toting riot-ers loading up TV’s and liquor. The Iraqi model of saving the oil ministry in the midst of looting will no doubt work here as well. Most of the “reconstruction” money will be spent on the economic infrastructure, then we’ll get the Warner disclaimer of “what are the Iraqi (New Orleanians) people giving us back?” to account for the pathetic civilian infrastructure reconstruction a-la S.E.L.A. post riot .

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 1 2005 8:19 utc | 70

Katrina exposed the shaky foundation of our “sustainable” way of living. Not only is our fossil energy supply finite and shrinking, our infrastructure weak and vulnerable to natural disaster and terrorist attack, but the ecological base supporting our lives is eroding. Katrina is a fateful example of how we have sacrificed the future for our short term interests, of how we have really warped our sense of priority and values.
We dream of how to get men on mars while we have failed to learn to live on earth. We unleash development on fragile ecosystems and condemn environmentalists as some evil force interfering with progress. We create jobs and taxes by building casinos, superdomes, and prisons.
If we do not soon learn how to uncouple our economy from this insane path of blind, unsustainable growth at any cost and couple it with energy security and ecological restoration we are certainly doomed to a continuous nightmare scenario like Katrina.

Posted by: lou | Sep 1 2005 11:43 utc | 72

There is a build-in bias. I always remember when the uneasy feeling turn out to be true, but NOT when it is not true. It is easy to overrate one’s prescience.
Prudence probably has survival value.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 1 2005 16:55 utc | 74

I see I’m not alone in being concerned about the toxic soup.
and yes, whoever upthead said this is Gibsonesque, or even Sterlingesque (Distraction?), I agree.

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 1 2005 19:25 utc | 76

Bernhard it pains me to know that you even read NYT, let alone copy a big chunk of it into yr own blog. You quote them in preference to me or other equally loquatious writers because they are what, the paper of record? You must then admit to being an idol-worshipper. And your idol is a documented liar.
Nice to seeya gain DeA.

Posted by: rapt | Sep 2 2005 1:05 utc | 78

“After all, how does one slime a hurricane?”
Say god did it because of the unpatriotic, the unfaithful and gay marriage…

Posted by: gmac | Sep 2 2005 2:10 utc | 80