Oops! Apocalypse! (or Why Did The Levee Break, George?)

I'm going to start off by adding my heartfelt sympathy to the devastated and ruined populations of New Orleans, Biloxi and everywhere in between. I can only try and imagine what it must feel like.

I'm curious to know, though, why Yahoo News, when showing a photo of a black guy dragging a refuse bag full of provisions through the water labels the photo :
" A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday"


...yet when showing two white people doing exactly the same thing labels the picture "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans".


This kind of blatant racism is completely unacceptable, especially in the midst of such a horror story. Whoever captioned those photos should be sacked.

Considering the fact that tens and tens of thousands of the poorest people of the region (mainly coloured, who could never afford to buy a Humvee and a U-Haul to flee the county in good time along with the other Rich White Folk from the Country Club), and who have lost absolutely EVERYTHING - Husbands, Wives, Children, Friends, Homes, Clothes, Food, Water... I mean EVERYTHING, why are the Police being diverted from rescuing those still stranded, and instead being sent out by the Governor to stop people helping themselves to food and clothing?

Compared to the tide of human misery in New Orleans, who in their right minds gives a toss about people helping themselves to food and bottled water and clothes when the entire area has been wiped out? This is utter peanuts. It's petty. It's nasty. It's Capitalism at it's most ugly.

Explain to me again how it's more important to protect a store full of perishable goods when the relief effort hasn't even started properly, and no-one's got any food or clean clothes? That food's going to rot anyway. People need food TODAY. The contents of those stores are insured.

This is all part of the REAL cost of Little Nero diverting money earmarked for reparing and maintaining the Levees to pay for his Circus of Death in Iraq.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

...rest of article here

These people are in deep, deep trouble. Federal help, when it eventually trickles down to the very bottom of the food-chain, will be too little too late. The need for housing is enormous. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to be searching for loved ones. It'll take weeks to gather up all the dead bodies, including those poor bastards who are dying as I speak, whilst the Police and National Guard do the All American thing and rush around threatening to kill people with shotguns because they're stealing food.

As long as there is a higher value placed on possessions than on the Right to Life, there will never be justice in this World.