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DirectNIC Crisis Manager Braves the Chaos of New Orleans
Aleks Clark writes "The Interdictor, a DirectNIC crisis manager, is currently braving the madness of post-Katrina New Orleans. Server rescues, OC4 repairs and live video and audio feeds abound as he and his crew battle the odds with what seems like the entire internet at his back. 1700+ People are tracking his blog, and IRC channels are full to capacity."
These guys set the bar for uptime and connectivity... I've been continually impressed. Bravo!
...until you realize how many people are using blogs and other internet services as their only means of communication.
Tim
It was interesting to see in that blog that what I've heard elsewhere is confirmed: Police are doing much of the looting.
Its unfortunate that government sweeps in during disasters and starts making mandates that make things worse. Like prohibitions against price "gauging". What, they htink things get cheaper when the infrastructure is destroyed?
Gauging actually helps-- it brings in more supply to service that demand, and ultimately prices go down FASTER when the free market is allowed.
Here's an economists take on the issue:
Price Gauging saves lives: http://www.mises.org/story/1593
And another: http://www.lewrockwell.com/akers/akers16.html
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
...were so diligent. Seriously, the madness and 'Lord of the Flies' atmosphere that has taken place in my home city of New Orleans with no food, no water, no communication, and no signs of help are heartbreaking and a true tragedy. The loss is immense and our government has failed us--this is the United States and we needed to do better for our own.
sig my booty, check my website
Your worst team meeting, software development project or vacation gone wrong is 1/1,000,000 as complex as what the relief personnel are handling. You may have been thwarted by snow on the road, delayed flights, crashing computers, lost data, wrong cellphone numbers or ill coworkers; these guys are dealing with non-existant roads, riots, gun shots, power loss and starvation. This is spread across 50,000 square miles of cities turned lakes. None of us can possibly fathom the details evacuating 60,000 people must be, tending to their transportation and health through an almost literal warzone.
We may know it's complex, but unless we're intimitely involved we cannot accurately critique the relief efforts. It'd be comparable to Brian Williams analyzing the Linux kernel structure, or attempting to explain fighter tactics. Without first-hand knowledge, opinions on sophisticated matters are worthless. As slashdotters who regularly tear apart the mass media on technical inaccuracies, we all should know this well
http://americablog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/gu itar-710427.jpg
Pictures of bodies floating by are currently on the front page of the New York Times.
I posted the following quote on the previous article, with no conclusions, but it was modded down by people who dislike facts they disagree with. Additionally there's more information now and I am posting a link to the original article from editor and publisher:
"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." June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, in the Times-Picayune
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
The above article also details what cuts were done by Bush to the SELA grants (for levees in New Orleans), which, by the way, were started and funded in 1995.
Additionally it appears that Louisiana should have been "high on the list of FEMA's biggest disaster mitigation grant program" but received nothing. Here's the article that states this: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-09-2 8/cover_story2.html
Now, as before, mod this post into oblivion so that you don't have to see Bush smiling and playing the guitar yesterday while bodies float around. I'm not sure what disgusts me more -- him doing that, or people closing their eyes to truth.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
I'm pretty sick of this "somebody do something" nonsense. The government has "failed you?" What the fuck should the government have done? And bear in mind before you answer that I'm expecting you to have at least a basic working knowledge of the Constitution of the United States and a grasp of the principles of federalism before you say something stupid like "Bush should have built bigger levies."
Wanna be mad at somebody? Be mad at God for sending the monster hurricane in the first place. Being mad at this nebulous thing called "the government" because it didn't do, I don't know, something is just plain stupid.
Merchandise sitting on shelves (and gas sitting in storage tanks!) does not magically cost the business 3x more.
No, but the merchandise they have to buy to replace that merchandise does.
If a business can't make enough on the merchandise on their shelves to purchase replacements, they go out of business.
Price controls are counter-productive.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
why was the evacuation order given only 24 hours in advance? why aren't there airlifts of food and water to people literally starving and dying of thirst? why did Bush wait two days to curtail his cozy vacation to respond to the crisis? why weren't buses used before the storm to bus out those without cars, the elderly, and the sick? why are the police looting and deserting their posts?
government has a role and a government that can't protect its citizens on basic issues of physical security and competence in the face of disaster is a government that doesn't deserve the consent of the governed.
sig my booty, check my website
About the fact that this was a relatively minor disaster that was experienced and this was how an entire country, the (arguably) richest in the world both in terms of economy and innovation was able to deal with it?
What if we had a larger disaster on our hands such as price/rarity of gas skyrocketing to the point where farmed goods can no longer be delivered in quantity to major metropolitain areas?
As far as the crime situation goes, I can "understand" the looting and mugging, but why the raping? What racial/moral justification is there for that?
I dropped my donation off at the Red Cross for a lack of anything better to do in order to help. My respect goes out to the people risking their ass to get aid to that place.
Maybe I sound tin foil hattish but prior to this hurricane footage, all i was really expecting to see post-hurricane was generic flood photos and cheesy clips of people grabbing TVs from shop windows, not stories of cops siphoning gas from cars for their patrol vehicles and stealing ammo from stores before other people do while "rape gangs" walk around.
Truly a sad day for the human race. Maybe we'll look back on how *we* behaved when we look at other countries and remark about how "uncivilized" they are in the future.
Let's pretend that I own a gas station with a 10,000 gallons of capacity in my underground tanks.
Decision time.
Option one:
I keep the price of my gas at $1.25 until I run out. I lose no money because that gas is already bought and paid for. At the bottom of my tank I find that I have raked in $12,500 - before paying any other expenses such as insurance, electricity, employee salaries and benefits, taxes and so on. Figuring my two cent/gallon profit I have earned $200 for myself.
But wait! I now need to replace 10,000 gallons of gas which will now cost me $25,000. Even assuming I had free utilities, labor and overhead my last storage tank fillup would only allow me to buy 5,000 gallons of gas. A couple more price hikes and I'll be out of business and nobody will be able to buy gas from me because I'll be closed.
Option two:
I jack the prices up to match what I expect my next delivery will cost so I can keep the tanks full and stay in business. Unfortunately, no matter what I charge I'll never make more than two cents/gallon profit - and that doesn't count all of the people who feel entitled to rip me off because I'm "gouging". Or don't come in and buy my fountain drinks and candy bars which is where 80% of my profits come from.
Yes, I could refrain from "gouging" but a quick failure of the business is a definite certainty.
Anti-gouging laws are one of the sillier things ever supplied by pandering politicians to stupid, demanding citizens. During normal times I can charge $15,000 for a generator and nobody will care because they'll go to Home Depot and buy one for $700. I would be in violation of the law but nobody would care because nobody wants to buy generators. But when the disaster strikes and everybody sells out of $700 generators (which are covered with dust because they sat on the shelves for 2 1/2 years because nobody thought that the designation "hurricane zone" actually meant something") and they see my stock of $15,000 generators (covered in dust because in 10 years nobody except the government wanted to buy my generators at a price so far above market) and I would be the greatest villian in the history of mankind, even if I -lowered- my price from $15,000 to $14,000.
Then you have a shortage. In times of normalcy 100 people are willing to buy a generator at $700 and everybody who wants one gets one. In time of natural disaster 50,000 people want a generator at $700 and 49,999 people are SOL because the first person in line buys all of them then sells all 100 out of the back of his truck for $2,000 each. Just because the government says that generators are only worth $700 doesn't mean that that is what they will be sold for.
No, but it is what prevents our economy from looking like Cuba (no food is available), Russia (no heating fuel is available) or Canada (9 months of waiting for a mammogram).
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
This is why I think we need to take a deeper look at ourselves:
1: We knew Katrina was coming...
2: We knew it was big...really huge and as such, the damage would be enormous...
3: We knew that some residents would not beat the time required to vacate Louisiana, may be because of complacency or the traffic mess...
4: We had numbers of those who had managed to escape. We even knew where they were to be found...
5: We even knew the geography of New Orleans, so we could know where to go and how to get there...
6: We knew much more via satellites...since we take ourselves as being the most advanced country on earth...!
But...
1: There was 100% chaos in Louisiana...
2: ...because we seem to have been caught off guard...!
3: Dead bodies lying on the streets?
4: Desperate people walking in s**t?
5: Looting as if this is Somalia?
6: Despite all this, we have politicians ranting up their rhetoric...heck...folks are dying...all you hear is "we are doing all we can..." And this is AMERICA the great? Can some one tell me how a similar catastrophe would be any different in a third world country?
FUCK YOU, and anyone else who thinks a natural disaster is an opportunity to take a cheap shot like that. Why don't you, Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson and RFK junior just FOAD.
thugs are thugs with or without guns. the same for rapists, if this happened a thousand years ago they'd be using swords, knives, spears and bows. decent people with guns or any other weapon aren't going to rape girls or kill police or steal generators from barely functioning hospitals. this whole thing only shows me why it's wise to keep weapons, but also to be absolutely responsible and rational with their possession and use. My having a gun or a knife is not a threat to any good person and not a threat to police.
no food, no water, no communication, and no signs of help are heartbreaking and a true tragedy
That would be "no food or water" other than the tons and tons that are being flown and driven in every hour? I'm watching an interview right now with people sitting on top of an overpass eating military MREs (meals-ready-to-eat, as consumed in the thousands by our troops every day) that were just dropped off by a Navy chopper. Their response? That the food is "impossible to eat" since it's cold. Incredible.
No communication or signs of help? They've been flying people out for days now, and bussing thousands to Texas and elsewhere. There are thousands and thousands more to go, and it's not helping that people near hospitals are shooting at and near helicopters and convoys as they try to come in. What the hell sort of wanting help is that?
our government has failed us
By which you mean the City Of New Orleans? They are the ones that have zoned that city so that all of those thousands of people are living below sea level in an area that is guaranteed to be periodically hit by hurricanes. And you make it sound like New Orleans is the only place needing help... 90,000 square miles have been clobbered by this storm, and whole towns in Mississippi and Alabama are completely wrecked, too.
Why the city government in New Orleans has never recommended to people living there, as they watch - for days - a giant hurricane approaching, to do things like put aside drinkable water and several days worth of food... amazing. Or, is it that that advice has been shouted continually, and even louder every hurricane season, and that tens of thousands of people decided they didn't need to be personally accountable for their own food and water for a few days? "The government" didn't fail, here - they're spending $500 million per day scrambling to respond to a multi-state calamity. The failure was at the local level, where individual people weren't prepared.
I don't mean to trivialize the rapid rise of water that led to a lot of people losing their residences. But that's exactly what was predicted in advance, and even at a slow walk, thousands of the able-bodied people that I'm seeing trash stores and mill around shouting at the people trying to help - they could have strolled all the way out of town before the weather and water even hit. If the only people that needed rescue were those that couldn't physically take care of themselves, and didn't have the ability to fill water jugs or put aside some canned food while watching the news all weekend - then there wouldn't be nearly so much trouble right now.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sir, you have your ideologies mixed up. As far as I know, as per Ayn Rand, "altruism is a folly". Ergo, in a Libertarian society, following the sacred rules, there would be no aid. You see, all those poeple down there brought that disaster onto themselves by being ... I guess black, poor or the combination of thereof. Or something.
On the other hand, it is us, the "bleeding heart" pinko-commie libruls, who are evilly ploting to do those treasonous "social safety net" and "disaster relief" things. Which seems to work for us here in Canada, as the 1997 flood experience showed, but hey, we are all beavers up here anyhow, so thats probably why, eh?
Some historical background - "everyone" knew the hurricane with New Orleans written on it was coming:
October 2004 National Geographic Article about New Orleans getting whacked ... btw this site has been Drudged as opposed to Slashdot'd
October 2001 Scientific American article about New Orleans getting whacked
Informed discussion over at Belmont Club Blog
An obscure blog describes the hurricane's impact on YOU in Anywhere USA before the hurrican ever made landfall:
Perhaps this all means we can look forward to the next MikeMoore film proving that the "Bush Hitler Haliburton Rove Puppet Yale C Student Same As John Kerry" caused the hurricane.I believe Juanita
I would be in violation of the law but nobody would care. . .
No, you wouldn't be, because nobody would care. Normally what price you ask for generators is entirely up to you, just so long as you pay the applicable taxes on any sales you do manage to make.
And yet the price that Home Depot decides to charge for a generator is determined in exactly the same manner as "price gouging" prices are.
A)What do we have to pay to get another one? B)What can we sell the one we have for?
Make A as small as possible, make B as large as possible. Sometimes making B larger actually results in more sales (see the argument that people don't use free software because it's free).
The last time we had a generator shortage near me I had a truck sitting empty and local stores full of generators, but I could not move those generators to the people who needed them because I would have gone broke at the emergency price caps. It costs more to move emergency goods and the cost of moving goods is part of the perfectly legitimate price of those goods.
So people with money that was doing them no good under the circumstances, because they couldn't spend it on the things they needed, frickin' froze, some of them to death.
But hey, at least they died on a pile of cash, eh?
KFG
No need for "ethics". The price drop will be governed by what the market will bear. If your competitors start trying to take your business by lowering their prices, then you will have to as well. The "problem" you are suggesting doesn't exist except in the minds of people who think they are continually being screwed or that haven't taken a basic economics course.
Supply and demand regulates things quite nicely if allowed to. Price controls prevent necessary corrections from taking place (eg: people should be conserving gas at the moment, but instead they are draining all the stations. This is because the stations are not allowed to raise prices to levels that will reduce demand to only what people truly require).
Well, you might want to consider, too, the effects of not having a huge overpowerful country sitting beside you and being as annoying as it can because it does not like the way you at some point decided you wanted to be organized. You could really look into history to see where did the heating fuel actually go in Russia, and you could ask the average Canadian how much the idea of going under the auspices of the USian health system looks to him.
Hmm. Or you could simply look out of the little box you are in...
Disaster stockpiles don't seem to have been in place in New Orleans, even for the cheap stuff. A shipping container of water purification tablets would have been a huge help. Nobody seems to have thought to equip the Superdome, the designated disaster assembly point, with some basic water purification gear.
Congress and the voters need to ask some hard questions about where all that money goes and whether it's being spent properly.
You deserve a real big smack man..
1. These people, if they were able, probably DID put aside food and water. Which is now trapped under 9-20 feet of water in their houses.
2. There is only 1 road out of New orleans right now, and it's DANGEROUS to walk around. It's also on the opposite side of the most affected parts of the city. Put another way.. would you stroll through this with your kids? I'd wait for an escort with guns, thank you.
3. It is essential to get people moved out within 48-72 hours of a disaster. After that, the shock of loosing everything you own wears out and you go into survival mode.
3. These buses are driving right past thousands of people. Today was the first day that any serious evacuation was happening.
I'm not excusing the behaviour of NOLA people - but I understand it. There's looting, rape and murder happening - at the shelters. 60% of the NOLA police force quite because there's no command/control.
Most people got clean WATER for the first time since Monday. Even at the Superdome.
If I were FEMA last Tuesday:
1. Get school busses and get accessible people out now. Sort them somewhere else and reduce the need to ship in food. There should be armed escorts getting these people out. They should be swathing the city eastward so they can make effective use of the manpower instead of diluting it.
2. Evacuate all hospitals. Call in every ambulance you can and fly them out of Baton Rouge.
3. Air-drop food and water all over the city. Hell, have the coast guard drop food around as they're going to rescue survivors. It took 4 days to get those "tons and tons" into the city.
They didn't do that. Instead they:
1. Advised everyone to gather at central locations.. and instantly had supply issues because there's only one friggin road into town.
2. They thought they could fix a 500' levee of MOVING water in 24 hours. Huh?
3. The advised people to evacuate, but didn't coordinate escorts with the National Guard they had.
4. The police were overwhelmed. Many of them didn't even hear that they were under martial law! The city government left town leaving people with no knowledge of the city to coordinate the effort.
It's just totally wrong. Even an 8 year old could figure it out. If you've got limited access you're not going to be able to provide needed services.
FEMA gets billions of dollars to figure this out and completely botched it. Now they're complaining that people are shooting at them, which is wrong, but these people are mentally in survivor mode and if you don't have food or water then you don't matter.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
News flash: Many, many people have young children. With 48 hours notice, walking is not an option.
why was the evacuation order given only 24 hours in advance?
Recommendations to get out of town started days before that. Not that it should have mattered - the people that live their entire lives below sea level on a coast that is regularly scheduled to have hurricanes hit every year - they've got no excuses not to know that water flows downhill. But the voluntary evac announcement came before that, and the mandatory one (ignored by tens of thousands) still came in plenty of time for people to even walk out of the low lying areas if they cared to.
why aren't there airlifts of food and water to people literally starving and dying of thirst?
There are. There have been since the first day, and tons of food and water have been being driven and flow in every day. They are running into problems, though. In one place, they couldn't even put the the helicopter because people were too dumb not to crowd directly under a descending aircraft. After several attempts, they had to just heave the supplies out to people from 10 feet in the air. Other people are getting huge piles of military rations (and actually complaining to TV reporters that the food is no good because it's "cold" - the same way that thousands of military personnel eat it every day). And, of course, the 10,000+ that are now sleeping in cots in Texas, with showers, hot food, water, communications - they'd probably disagree that they're not getting supplies. They've been brought to the supplies, and it's continuing non-stop, 24x7.
why did Bush wait two days to curtail his cozy vacation to respond to the crisis?
Are you really so desperate to score political points in the middle of this that you're willing to pretend you don't know what a presidential "vacation" is like? Everything - everything - that a president can and has to do follow him wherever he goes. Complete communications, briefings throughout the day, reports to read, findings to authorize, press briefings, and C-in-C duties that occupy much of every day. Just as true of Bill Clinton while he wiled away his time in the Hamptons with his show-biz buddies as it was for Jimmy Carter, or for Bush today. "Curtailing" his vacation just means changing the location where his teleconferences take place - the job is full time, 365 days a year.
why weren't buses used before the storm to bus out those without cars, the elderly, and the sick?
That would be a question for the local government in the city. Many civic organizations, churches, families, and companies did bus their people out of town.
why are the police looting and deserting their posts?
Because you're choosing to call it that. Lacking communications gear in many areas, the city police have no "posts" - they are tasked with using their own professional judgement about how they can be the most useful. In many cases, that's proving to be responding to bogus reports of conflicts, or having to report to real conflicts, such as where people are carjacking ambulances or taking pot shots at rescuers in boats and choppers. As for "looting," they are deliberately removing guns and ammo from sporting goods stores and other repositories, and arranging to haul out the safes that pharmacists use to store narcotics. In order for the cops to continue to function at all, they are comandeering vehicles, fuel, and other tools they need. They wouldn't have so much to do if some residents of the city weren't using this opportunity to roam the streets in gangs causing incredible distractions from the work of saving vulnerable people.
government has a role and a government that can't protect its citizens on basic issues of physical security and competence in the face of disaster is a government that doesn't deserve the consent of the governed.
So, when your neighbor's house burns down, or your whole block is destroyed by a tornado... has your government failed y
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Then, why, WHY have they chosen to give birth to, and raise kids while living below sea level in the path of recurring hurricanes that happen every year like clockwork? Every year? When was the last time a hurricane hit New Orleans? When was the last time ANYTHING like this happened?
But fuck, keep blaming the victims. Don't you feel better about yourself now? You're so smart. So good. Why, tragedy beyond your wildest expectations or control would NEVER happen to you.
People are DEAD. People are being RAPED. There are infants dying in the fucking streets and your focus is on blaming them, their parents. For all you know their parents DID stock up. But guess what? Their houses are now under nine feet of water. It is the government's JOB to maintain law and order, and they.. have.. FAILED.
This is a little OT but I don't understand why officials are trying to send aid INTO the city as opposed to getting PEOPLE OUT. The whole place is a biohazard and must be completely evacuated minus engineers and health officials. If they do not do this perfectly healthy people are going to start dying in droves. They should be putting people on anything with wheels and sending them tent cities 20 miles out of town. I've heard nothing along these lines in the media. Can someone exaplain that to me?
Thank YOU. I'm not a big fan of libertarianism (see my sig) but by God I'm going to give you mad props for a reasonable and insightful post. The *fundamental* job of the government is to maintain law and order. Without it, man naturally descends into anarchy and chaos, as we are seeing stark proof of now. If the government cannot of will not prevent such chaos then it has failed at its most fundamental responsibilities.
In a libertarian society, there would be massive amounts of aid there. But say you live in Baton Rouge and want to drive a truck down with water and food. Can you? Hell no- the police won't let you in... and if the do, they certainly won't let you sell the food and water. So, less people are doing it. Where is the RED CROSS? Where is anyone with food or water or medicine? The National Guard is tooling around in empty trucks. The cops are too busy keeping people from leaving the city, and herding them at gunpoint. This is not libertarianism-- this is fascist socialism.
500 tourists were stopped by the police as they tried to exit the city tonight. One was interviewed on CNN. They were stopped at gunpoint. Their busses, which they had paid for, were commandered. And not to pick up people who needed them-- there are thousands standing outside the superdome, who have been there for 3 days, and have gotten ZERO busses. No, the police just stole them, and forced the tourists back into the city at gunpoint. Wouldn't let them walk out. If some of those tourists had had firearms and the sense to use them, less of them would die than will now die because of this police action. THIS IS THE SOCIALIST POLICE STATE IN ACTION.
You socialists want people disarmed and dependant on the state-- and this is what you get.
Congratulations. Thousands dead. You happy?
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
1) Declare marshall law; put the military in charge
Last I heard, martial law was declared. However, you do NOT want to put the military in charge and the military generally does not want to be in charge of a situation like this. Leave FEMA in charge like their charter is set up for and just have them give tasks to the military.
2) Drop paratroopers to secure sites for coming supply drops
Paratroopers would probably break their leggs coming down in some of those areas. Either that or be close to drowning in others.
3) Do air drops of food and medical supplies (water too)
Already being done or trying to be done.
4) Send in the SEALS with their dingy boats to begin to rescue people/pick off snipers/gangs.
Those boats don't hold many besides the seals, recruit all the people from the LA Bayou to do the rescuing (being done) and have the seals take out the idiots shooting at people.
5) Send in forward air controllers and ham radio operators- by parachute if needed. I would include military medics as well.
What would air controllers be able to do? hams? don't need them, just satelite phones or something similar. No need for licensed civialians that are good for nothing else. Medics? should already be on their way. However, there are a lot more civilian ones than military ones already on hand.
6) Commondere every single bus in the state of Texas, LA, MS, AL and AR and move into the city heavily fortified by military support
Aside from those other states still needing them, and some pesky 4th ammendment issues, it is also a case of being able to get the busses to the people or the people to the busses. It's not easy driving a bus through 3 feet of water. Also, at 60 people/bus, over 100,000 people (not sure how many still in the evacuation area) you would need over 2,000 bus trips. Drivers for the busses and a place to put the people afterwards along with food. Also, don't bother with the military escorts, just find a safe area that doesn't need a route to be guarded and get the busses and people there. Will take up much less resources and anyone who can be guarding can be used to keep order in other areas.
7) Use 2 aircraft carriers, park them as close to the city as possible. AC#1 gets used as military command and HQ. AC#2 is used to put evacuaees aboard for food/shelter. If AC#2 isn't available commondere a cruise ship and use it.
Much better to use a land HQ as HQ is then closer to the reports. Probably a few other advantages as well. As for putting evacuees on a Carrier? Not unless it is absolutely necessary. You would have to make sure none try to get near any ammo or restricted sections of the ship. Easier said than done. A Carrier holds ~5k people as is. When you "trust" everyone it works fairly well. Start adding random people, some of which who would probably try to break into a weapons locker (at the least) or try to cause some damage to the ship (at the worst, remember they have several nuclear reactors as a power source). Best use for the carriers is desalinzation of water and relay of food. But keep civilians that you can't necessarily trust off it.
Asking for British, Canadian, and Mexican forces to lend a hand is a good idea as well.
British and Canadian are fine, they all speak english and I'm prety sure I can trust them. Mexican forces probably do not and given some of the problems I have heard about I am not sure I would trust them.
This scenerio is NOT being managed in the right way and once this is over I want to see several independent and congressional studies as to what the breakdown was.
No one ever gets it right the first time (I don't remember something like thise happening to a city before). Nor do I a population of a million having to be relocated in under a week. I'm not sure there ever is a "right way" to manage a large disaster. As for an inqu
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Let me see, a party in power, which would significantly reduce or eliminate the last remaining restraints on multi-national corporations and allow rampant consolidation of ultra-wealthy companies. Then to remove all protective regulations, allow media to become completely consolidated and owned by the sellers, thus removing any independent information flow to consumers/citizens. Followed by removal of nearly all forms of government assistance to elderly and the sick etc etc. This kind of party would deliver a sledge-hammer blow to the entire society of the USA and although, luckilly, its power would be curbed at its borders, the citizens within would not be so lucky. Just look at what happened to FEMA. The same organization which handled the California erthquake or previous disasters like 9/11 is now paralysed shortly after a Libertarian was appointed its head. It wants people to donate to Pat Robertson's fatwa-issuing religious fund instead to directly assist the victims.
Any homogenous political system will fail--period. In its purest form, every party as we know them is utopian because they're all trying to build a world on a set of ideals. It's just the "ideals for whom" that sets tyranical dictators apart from democratic parties. Thusly, the usage of the word utopia here is relative.
Sure it is "relative". Some systems can fail within weeks (Marxism, Libertarianism) and some take centuries to falter (Socially-Responsible Democratic Capitalism of various stripes).
Seriously--your argument rests on the government being overthrown by a laissez faire group in one fell swoop, and disallowing the democratic principles that Libertarians champion. This is one of the most oft-repeated arguments, and one of the most pourus as well. If someone wants to argue real-world situations, an argument such as this is about the poorest way to do so.
No, my argument hinges on the true players, the already ultra-wealthy, laissez faire hyenas, who would immensly benefit from the naive goofuses calling themselves Libertarians, making way for them to take over in the short order via controlling the nations economy. That is what you seem to be missing in the whole scenario. Your silly utopia is in fact a battering ram with which these would-be robber barrons and feudal lords would smash the last remaining barriers holding them in place.
Might I add your flamboyant ignorance differentiates you little from that BitGeek fellow.
You are very long on bold proclamations and very short on actual logic.
Ahh, yes.
It must be said that of all the advances that the Internet has brought society, few can compare to the easy access to information that allows anyone to generalize their own particular point by finding a perfectly matched wackjob, out-of-context quote, or poorly-made comment to prove that the particular opposite group are, to a one, a horde of raging assholes.
So, here's the score: The Christian (nee, the entire!) right thinks the disaster's retribution from God. Everyone left of the aisle is using it to advance wackjob theories. The Islamic religion agrees that it's just peachy. 'Bout right?
(So, what's the line from the Flying Spaghetti people?)
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
They got people to gather in centralized locations so that they could more effectively distribute aid. You want aid dropped randomly around the city so that these tired, half-drowned people have to swim a few blocks to get it?
It was not a perfect plan, obviously things could have been done much better. Before the hurricane, the city should have been more forceful in getting people to leave, as that was their best opportunity to get people out of the city. In hindsight there's always improvements to be made. Why don't we criticize the founders of the city for putting it in a place with restricted land access and a vulnerability to flooding?
It's rediculous to suggest that shooting at doctors and police during such an emergency is in any way justified. Just two years removed from being consumed in riots, Los Angeles somehow managed NOT to erupt in violence after the Northridge earthquake. I don't remember any shooting in San Diego when it was on fire last summer.
You deserve a good smack yourself for suggesting that these people who are risking their lives to try and help somehow deserve the violence they're facing.
Not enough people are helping, and those that do help are to blame for the problems? Absurd!
I'll go one further. WTF is up with the government? Weren't all their efforts in the past four years supposed to prepare for a national tragedy /exactly like this/? Wasn't DHS set up to promote cooperation with all the agencies?
True, I rather suspect they where expecting to deal with a city nuked by terrorists or something of the like, but wouldn't the consequences be exactly what we are seeing in NO today? So WTF have the agencies been doing the past years?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Repeat after me, those people down there need
FOOD, clean WATER and MEDICAL SUPPLIES!
What are they thinking, flying a FedEx plane all the way from New York to bring in supplies (ok saw this on CNN, but anyway...)
For all I know they would consider flying in Moon dust by Apollo landers to fill the breached levees!
Why oh why can't they save the time and stop the waste of fuel for people who need it and commandeer the surplus of every Wal-Mart in a zwundred mile radius and just start carpet food/water dropping it to those desperate people? That would require only a fraction of the fuel needed to fly in FedEx from friggin' NYC.
I really don't get what's in those peoples' minds anymore.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
I can't make up my mind. First I hear about National Guardsmen given "shoot to kill" orders, Bush asking for a paltry 10 billion in aid (as opposed to 80 billion for Iraq this year - I guess a New Orleans citizen is worth 1/8th of an Iraqi citizen?), helicopters dropping sandbags instead of food, and Bush and congress were all on vacation when this went down. And now I come on Slashdot and read people saying, in effect, that because they didn't clear out of town when they were told, it's all their own damn fault?
Remember, 1 out of 3 New Orleans citizens live at or below poverty level. What can you do when you have no car? How can you hear a warning if you don't have a TV set or radio? How can you evacuate when you're told to go to a convention center and wait for a bus that never shows up?
The storm was devestating. The response and aftermath are sickening.
Well played sir...but the 'do something constructive' rang a little sour considering this is Slashdot and if it can't be done constructively with a keyboard it usually isn't done at all :D
Blar.
Bullshit like this gets modded as insightful? For Chrissakes, mods!
There was extreme looting and rioting in Baghdad the first week after the US takeover despites tens of thousands of coalition troops in each major city. It might be human nature to panic or abuse in such considitions. There were no operational utilities, terrible weather and shortages of all kinds too. We kid ourselves thinking the US is "special" and above this all. It might just be human nature.
essentially you called them up and said
"hey, the new decentralized individual based news media (you know, those things called "blogs"?) is providing great up to the minute coverage of the disaster while you traditionalists parade out a bunch of talking heads!"
of course they got pissed at you >:)
The other week on Fox news, they were talking about blogs and wiki-news, and one of their brain-dead pundits exclaimed "but how can we trust the WORDS?!"
My wife had a good laugh at that one. Yes FOX NEWS, indeeed, how can we trust their words, thank you for that FAIR AND BALANCED commentary.
btw, i get my news from blogs, wikinews, google-news aggregation (for the major media stories) and every night i filter it with a good helping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.