You are on your own

What happened in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was so bad that some have theorized it was an intentional failure, an experiment. How do Americans react when put into concentration camps? How do police officers react when told to fire on US citizens trying to find food and water? How do police and residents react when the cops are asked to go door to door confiscating guns illegally? How do parents react when they are put on a bus and their children are taken to a separate bus, to be relocated to a different state for no discernible reason? How do internally displaced Americans behave in their new communities?

But perhaps it was no experiment. Perhaps, here at the end of our empire, we are simply that stupid, that incompetent, that frightened, that bureaucratic, that inhuman. I direct you to Greg Palast's excellent piece on the miserably lousy US response to the Haiti disaster:

6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.

9.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

Iceland, as we all know, has been economically crippled by currency collapse and massive deflation. But they still managed to be far more helpful to civilians on the ground than the US, which behaves like the cartoon elephant scared of a mouse, and isn't willing to deploy food and water until the police state apparatus is well underway. Blackwater before drinking water.

Take note. If we run out of diesel, if hyperinflation shuts down food production, if we can no longer import food (we are net importers of food), if we can no longer properly fertilize and harvest our crops due to the absence of bank credit-- if, in short, the food runs out--

You Are On Your Own.

Ain't nobody gonna be distributing sacks of rice in the town square, unless Iceland cares to fly in on a humanitarian mission. Our sad government isn't capable. All the soldiers and planes and MREs in the world are no match for stupidity at the top, and we have stupidity in spades.



ADDENDUM:

Another report from Haiti (January 17):

Thousands - or tens of thousands - more are still trapped under the rubble and need rescue. Today is an absolutely critical day. If these people don't get water today they will die....

President Barack Obama, flanked by his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton said, "By coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world."

Finally we hear the truth on a major foreign policy issue from Obama. A message has been sent: we have come to pillage your country in its greatest hour of need....

Yesterday, Secretary Hillary Clinton was sent to Haiti and gave a speech saying that the US is doing "every thing we can" to help the Haitian people. But that fact that her trip to the Haitian airport stopped all aid from arriving for three hours - three critical hours on a day when the difference between life and death for tens of thousands is a drink of water - should tell you everything you need to know about the US relief effort.

Remember that the rich are post-national; they don't care whether the poor are Haitian or American... either way, they're the nameless rabble. George Carlin's message was "They don't care about you," which -- harsh as it is -- is true. So do something to protect yourself, and to help the Haitians. (I went through Medecins sans frontieres / Doctors without Borders, here, but I don't honestly know which charities are best.)