Surviving in New Orleans

Just judging from my personal experience with the police, their behavior was completely normal. What? Were we under the impression that cops were generally good people willing to give a band of strangers the benefit of the doubt? You have to be at least a bit psychotic to be a cop, it comes with the badge. Anyway you cut it, (if this account is true) those cops and sheriffs who ordered citizens to be turned back should all be fired and prosecuted for a minimum of manslaughter. And what’s up with cops going all military on us and calling us “civilians”? We’re fark’n CITIZENS, bastards.

I blame the War on Drugs for turning Andy Griffith into the Rodney King beaters.

This is frankly so weird I can’t make sense of it. In emergencies people are normally helpful. Americans are normally helpful. And a couple of trade unionists in town for a conference can’t have done anything bad enough to get all the city officials furious at them (not that it would excuse their behaviour to abandoned citizens if they did.)

These reports and the reports of FEMA’s actions in stopping aid getting through make me start thinking that these organisations are just evil, like monsters in a horror movie. I could understand the flooding and the people being trapped as being caused, like most big disasters, by a series of bad decisions and failures (not upgrading the levees, not having an evacuation plan for all the people who don’t have cars, not having a disaster-resistant communications system, etc, etc), but once the disaster is recognised normally people start actually trying to help. The officials in these stories appear to be doing the opposite. They should be given the organisational equivalent of being dragged out behind the barn, shot with silver bullets, staked through the heart, the head cut off, the body burned and the ashes thrown into the fires of Mt Doom. They are so dysfunctional and evil this is the only way I can see to start putting things right.

There was no need for a plan to commit this crime. All that was needed was a police force full of Old South crackers (face it, that’s what Gretna’s police proved itself to be) and no communication from the governor to make them behave like their country has a U and not a C in front of the S and A. We know the governor’s a flake. My question to you all, is when this police force is sued (and hopefully criminally charged with interfering with a mandatory evacuation order), will you donate to the legal offense fund? And if a year from now there are demonstrations, will you join?

I quote the American Red Cross “The state [as in not federal] Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.”

It also appears it was the state government that kept people from walking out. Looks like FEMA didn’t have a chance to screw up too much, the state government did all that was possible.

I also ponder why Hillary’s bill to investigate this massacre only wants a federal investigation, while Frist’s bill wants a top-to bottom, no rock left unturned investigation?

There was no need for a plan to commit this crime. All that was needed was a police force full of Old South crackers

Well, it may have helped. But the effort to block people from going out seems to have been lasting, and organized. And even a racist cop would know the risk he’s taking by blocking roads without backing from his hierarchy.

And this was applied from early on, instead of helping people.

For me, the explanation is simply that the unsaid consensus among right wingers (poor+black+too-dumb-to-follow-instruction=riotous) was acted upon.

I just wonder who exactly.