Slashdot Mirror
Sonic 'Lasers' to be Deployed in Hurricane Region
MacDork writes "Wired News is running an article about high powered acoustic technology to be deployed in the hurricane Katrina disaster recovery. Apparently, the technology will allow authorities to communicate with others up to a mile away along with providing a non-lethal means of crowd control. No word on additional busses and shelters..."
how about some frickin sharks ?
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
Geraldo is reporting there are "buses" at the New Orleans Convention Center.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No word on additional busses and shelters...
*sigh*
I am having a hard time with this one. I think the camel's back was broken sometime last week. What person in their right mind would decide that shooting out the eardrums of an already broken people would be of any tactical use at all?
What a clusterfuck NOLA has become. Buncha dimwit politicians can't wrap their heads around the value of human life, the need for expidited aid for refugees (and how not to treat a refugee like a criminal), so they figure it's best to simply treat it as a run-of-the-mill race-riot.
Good luck with that situation, Uncle Sam, you're gonna need all the luck you can get at this point.
With the response thus far, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole south broke into complete chaos. Might not happen this time, but the water is starting to boil, as is the blood of every American, uniformly.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
" No word on additional busses and shelters..."
First things first, I guess.
But will we have those "lasers" on the "moon", too?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
... talk?.. :P
But will it go to 11?
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Wow, looks like they found a great opportunity to test some of the new toys out.
-HmmmT Vzmo
What would be more usefull and most likley more reliable is a radio system which could be deployed quickly.
One simple and effective system would be a deployable phone cell. This acoustic "laser" is a pointless waste of resourses. Better to use a mature tried and tested technology instead of one which probably doesnt even work without line of sight.
Dual purpose! They let you communicate reliably and induce blinding pain in bystanders!
Instead of a sonic laser perhaps they should bring some food and water.
Can you hear me now? GOOD!
:-/
I hope this will be helpful somehow although I just can't see it doing much.
until a crowd goes nuts and in the process of communicating and controlling the crowd someone forgets to throw a switch and blows away their support staff a mile away.
welcome our new sonic laser remote voice unit overlords
No shelters for these people, supplies are too late, the beginnings of what might turn out to be an all-out class/race war in place...but hey, now we can zap those dirty black people from space!
Nice to see that the Bush administration has its priorities straight.
I wonder what the going exchange rate between high-powered acoustic lasers and, say, MREs and bottled water is at this point.
Mike Hoye
M16. Instant crowd control.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Damn, why didn't I think of that?
Shoot lasers at the hurricane and we can SCARE IT AWAY.. either that or there will be a fierce battle of lasers vs. wind, and we all know lasers are the strongest thing ever.
Fuck. The answer has been here the whole time and we just didn't see it.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
sasers
The presumption with these as a form of crowd control is that the targets will move away when these are directed upon them. That may not always be possible in a mob situation. And we have too many people getting killed by cops getting aggro with "non-lethal" weapons as it is.
This is ridiculous. We're the richest nation in the world, and it takes us over 7 days to evacuate 100,000 poor people from a disaster area?
We don't (or didn't) need high-tech toys to control the crowds. Simple, common-sense, things like on-going airdrops of food and water, combined with convoys of buses, and temporary shelters at schools, etc, would have prevented major losses of life in this fiasco.
Sure, news photos of helicopters rescuing people look cool, but helicopters are 100 times as expensive as simple, tried and true tech like small boats.
We had advanced warning (36+ hours) that this was going to happen. Where were FEMA, the NG, Homeland Security, etc?
I'm disgusted and depressed at the bureaucratic mess that allowed this situation to get so out of hand.
Why didn't we just use this to yell at the storm to go away?
Warning: dopey science rant follows!
Man, I wish people would get this right. Sonic laser doesn't make any sense. Can you really call longitudinal waves coherent? There's more to a laser than just high fluence and the ability to be focused. Sonic waves don't even have a particle nature, really, unless you wanted to count the vibrating atoms. Since you can't amplify atoms, you really can't get a sonic laser. Here, let's look at this:
"... like the sonic equivalent of a laser, or spotlight."
That's from the article. A spotlight and a laser really don't have much in common besides producing lots of light. A spotlight isn't coherent, or even monochromatic. It's just really, really "bright." Photons of laser light all have a fixed phase relationship--coherency, basically. This leads to lots of interesting properties like, oh, the entire science of interferometry. More importantly for the purposes of this discussion, lasers are _really really really_ "bright." I'm using "brightness" as a misnomer for fluence, or power through an area: you can get a much higher fluence from a decent laser by reducing area than from a spotlight by increasing power. I wish people wouldn't abuse the term laser so very much.
At the _very_ least, don't say "laser," because the "L" means light, and we're not talking about light here. Say "saser" or something, even though that's meaningless--stimulated emission of sound waves makes no sense under the traditional definition of stimulated emission, which really only applies to photons.
I realize that perhaps the functionality of the equipment makes the "beam" have laser-like properties, but I'm just irritated that "laser" is one of those fancy new buzzwords that the military and businesses like to toss around so much. They seriously degrade the good name of the device and, by doing so, cheapen science and help contribute to the scientific ignorance of the American population.
But in all seriousness, take a look at what's going on down there. There is an insane amount of looting and anarchy, stores are being looted, people are hoarding anything they can find. Hell, even reports of horrible crimes such as rape have been going around, because there is no way to control a mob the size of a city...
The government *is* doing what it can, which isn't much really, the city is flooded, and we're trying to fly as many people out as we can, but in the meantime, we need some order, and a nonlethal method of maintaining order seems very appropriate.
If the USA could manage disaster recovery at least at the rate of a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY they wouldn't need some fancy 'non-lethal' (yeah right) crowd control.
"Products from both companies could be used, at high volume, to harm subjects who do not comply with commands." So instead of crowd-control we have gone to torture?
LRAD Deals 2d6 sonic damage, fortitude save for half.
Bubba: How, Joe Bob, what's happening?
Joe Bob: Aw, there's a buncha Niggers trapped down in the city. We trying keep in penned, and shit, well, you know...
Bubba: Hey, you coming over for beers at the icehouse after house?
Joe Bob: You betcha!
But seriously, folks, that was just a joke. Bubba and Joe Bob aint to blame for the Lake New Orleans tragedy. The people to blame for that are those in power in Washington DC. By failing to tax the wealth and income of the rich in order to rebuild our national infrastructure and emergency services, the political elite in DC murdered them.
In my opinion, Bush, his cabinet, and all the GOP congresspeople and Democratic congresspeople collectively (hereinafter, the "Political Elite") are responsible for the deaths in New Orleans because they failed to properly tax the rich and use that money to protect New Orleans. That was murder.
Therefore, I hereby petition the US Justice Dept to indict all of above aforesaid Political Elite for those New Orleans murders, and try them on capital murder charges in a court of law, in accordance with custom and due process.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Provide Water. Then provide food, and then transportation out of there (or at least a clear path).
By the sound of it, there is just a small group of people who are out of control. The rest are dehydrated.
If I were the cops, I would worry more about the person(s) who is running around starting fires.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For those that haven't seen Dune:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/
I don't get it.
They don't want to evacuate the remaining residents of New Orleans until they absolutely have to. That much is clear. It is also clear that there are certain prejudices that still exist against those who are poor and those who are black.
What is surprising is that this is actually news to people. This situation regarding the class divide and the racial divide has been a reality in America for hundreds of years and it takes something like this for people to wake up.
What is happening down in New Orleans right now is a tragedy of the highest order. But lesser tragedies of a similar nature occur in all major cities in the United States every single day. The fact that nobody normally bothers to care about such things and are generally ill-informed about them is, perhaps, the greatest tragedy of all.
To me, the people still stuck down in New Orleans represent everybody that America would just as soon forget. Shame on us all. And let us not forget from now on.
Tell me why the idiotic democrat mayor of NOAL did not use the city's buses to evacuate his people?
Why are they sitting half submerged in water?
Oh yeah, it's all Bush's fault.
Why is it that it seems the US is so keen to send in troops: "They have M-16s and are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," Kathleen Blanco said., and test out it's latest anti-civilian weaponry?
It's easy enough for the US to get thousand pound bombs to Iraq, but saving people in its own country seems to take a back seat. Why not use all that money, and technology for good, and help the poor, the elderly, the pregnant, the disabled.
Get your own free personal location tracker
This is about convincing the public to accept these
tools as ways to control crowds. Shooting
a bunch of protestors isn't acceptable, but finding
a 'non-lethal' means to control a crowd is a
lot more palatable.
So this guy needs to be removed from his job immediately. Clearly he's disappointed that he now has to rescue black people with his statement of "the victims bear responsibility". WTF?!?
Why didn't Bush fire his sorry ass for stating that all these destitute black people, with absolutely no money or places to go, were at fault for not evacuting?
Does he think all these people, on food stamps and welfare, would suddenly magically find the $20 it takes to even buy the Gasoline needed to drive out of the city? And that's assuming they even HAD a car or a place to go!
Does he assume everybody is rich and has a big cozy SUV? And that everybody in America has a magical pile of $20 bills tucked away somewhere in their suburban picket-fenced single-family home lined with Crape Myrtle trees and big black SUVs with "W" stickers ready to evacuate people?
Clearly this suburban redneck had no clue what the real world was like in New Orleans. "Oh why don't you guys all pack up in your minivans and rent a hotel room for at the Marriott for the night, and we'll all get together after this whole thing is over." Yah right, moron.. Instead, he sees large groups of black people, and immediately thinks 'guns'. Shiny sci-fi guns, no less!
BTW, if this disaster is the victim's responsibility, then what exactly is YOUR job? How does 'government helping people' fit in with your capitalist's view of 'poor people deserve what they get'?
Bub' Rub and Lil' Sis: The whistles go... woo woo!
Apparently, the technology will allow authorities to communicate with others up to a mile away...
Um, I don't want to sound like an idiot, but don't radios do this? And aren't they a proven technology that everybody is familiar with? Why aren't we using something that is known to work and that can be operated by anybody?
Near as I can tell, this is the only thing it does that radios don't, and this is of dubious value.
Representatives of both companies say that within days, they will ship some units of their respective products to areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations.
Ohhh... I get it now. The companies are doing this for PR. The last thing the authorities need right now is to beta test some experimental stuff on behalf of private companies. Did the authorities ask them for it, or are they shipping them only to sit in a corner untouched, useful only for good publicity?
The way some people are milking this disaster for PR makes me sick. I got an email yesterday from tribe.net pointing out that for every new person you sign up, they'll donate a dollar. Maybe their hearts are in the right places, but it just stinks of a crass attempt at using other peoples misery for your own gain. So I'm dumping tribe.net.
Well, the lasers could be used to warm the Soylent Green.
Verizon: Latin for "poor rural service".
Sorry, IMHO, any blame here goes from the bottom up.
and
Loose lips lose spit.
This is the local governments (State and NO) fuck up. They were not ready for this, they could not cope with this, and they did not know what to do. New Orleans always knew this would happen, and they did not spend the money to fix the levees first (The fed were ready to do it, but New Orleans did not do the paperwork). It has taken the Fed Government to step up and take control of this, which is why you see the Army there now. Bush went down and looked for himself at the mess, and is getting it fixed. If anyone is to blame for this it is the State, County and City governments, not Bush or the feds, and I hope that people are held accountable for it.
The political elite are responsible because they let the plutocrats strip America of its wealth without taxing them aqequately. If they had kept some of america's wealth for our protection and infrastructure, all the 1000s who drowned in New orleans would still be alive. I petition the Justice Dept to indict the politcal elite for murder.
I say indict them for capital murder, try 'em in a court of law, convict 'em, and sentence them.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Government is good at only a few things. Disaster recovery is not one of them. It would be MUCH, MUCH better if the government got out of the way and let the free market take care of this problem, thankyouverymuch.
This disaster has been caused by excessive reliance on government. Don't blame FEMA. Blame yourself.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I believe nobody cares about new orleans the people are black and they are poor.
"In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war."
5 18,372455,00.html
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
....doesn't get his hands on one of these... 'Developers, developers, developers....'
Unh huh...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Sure we're all discusted by what's going on down there, but this irritates me even worse!
/Proccessing.htmlwebsite address
l
Today I received an email solititing donations from somebody pretending to be the American Red Cross!!
I can't tell you how discusted I was to see that!
I would do anything to see this guy punished!! I'm so god damn pissed by this guy I'd get myself in trouble if I knew it was.
The original message is pasted below.
Note the fake http://www.redcross.org. cgiin.net
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Subject: Individual donation-Hurricane Katrina
From: "AMERICAN RED CROSS" Add to Address
BookAdd to Address Book
Date: 03 Sep 2005 17:35:52
WASHINGTON, Friday, September 02, 2005 * The American Red Cross has
launched an immense emergency relief effort to meet unprecedented
humanitarian needs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The American Red Cross, with support of the worldwide Red Cross,
EarthLink, Comcast, Yahoo, SBC Group, Google, Microsoft, NBC, CNBC and
Red
Crescent Movement is launching a Web site and hotline to help raise
money by encouraging viewers to donate to the American Red Cross
Disaster
Relief Fund.
Follow the link bellow and You can and will help the victims of
Hurricane Katrina:
http://www.redcross.org.cgiin.net/Proccessing.htm
Financial contributions to the American Red Cross are tax-deductible.
Thank you for supporting the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
Sincerely,
Red Cross Team.
This system's sole use has to be crowd control. If you are trying to broadcast information to people a mile away, how loud would the information be to other people only 1/4 mile away?
They need to be sending fresh water and buses into new orleans, not this kind of useless "technology".
nt
Just like when we went into Baghdad, the priority was to protect the building of the Oil Ministry.
Not the bunkers filled with lots and lots of shells and all kinds of ammunition, not the National Museum to protect the Iraqi culture, not even the nuclear power plants with all that extra radioactive stuff laying around.
Or so I've heard, according to Rumor Control Central.
Obviously, here the priority is not to help people, but to follow the rules and regulations, even if it costs lives. Thus we get people sitting on resources because no one got an official request from the Govenor of Louisiana. The bureaucrats probably wanted it in writing, in triplicate. Maybe signed in blood, just to be careful.
Obviously, here the priority is not to help people, but to maintain power and control, even if the people would be a lot more cooperative if you actually rescued them and got them food and water, etc.
this is looking like GWB's Chernoblyl. What's he going to do, declare war on Mother Nature? he's done a good enough job of that as it is, and it looks like Mother Nature is going to fight back.
[Sarcasm Mode = 0]
It is likely the easiest thing to help people, if that is your actual intention. If you have some other agenda, like profiteering, maintaining power, or what have you, then something else happens. And you can see the obvious results.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I disagree with you both. The Fed did fuck up. The local gov did fuck up too, but the Fed should have been better ready to handle the situation. They could have called a pre-emptive evacuation on Thursday, but the weathermen weren't sure until Sat/Sun. The federal government should have seen that regardless of where the hurricane was going to hit the gulf coast, that a response would be needed. They could have started sending the navy on the Thursday before it hit instead of taking 4+ crucial recovery days to travel there. Every year for the past 5 years, the US congress has had to override Bush's request for cuts in funding to the leavies in NO. Every year. I hope Bush is held accountable for his glaring disregard for the people of the gulf coast. - Looking forward to the War on Weather!
The government *is* doing what it can
Well here is a video of some fine government officials who certainly are doing what they can...
Tor
It Worked Really Great In Dune. They Should Probably Get Some Freemen In To Use The Sonic Tech. Properly Though.
You think looting and people SHOOTING at rescuers is insane? I'd say getting thousands of people to go to a stadium expecting some assistance and leaving them without food, water or any organisation and NOT expecting such problems in a nation of gun nuts is insane. Evidently the state authorities didn't have the resources, preparation or whatever to do the job that FEMA was supposed to be doing on a Federal basis. If only the foresight had been there to arrange ORGANISED looting, scouring the area for water, food, pampers and clothing (and leaving IOU's so that the governement could compensate Walmart or whoever afterwards) then distributing it in an organised way to those people in the stadium. As it was, from what I've read some people were doing that themselves, and being hailed as heroes by those inside. The image that the first priority of the USA is to shoot its starving citizens in case they're taking private property in these circumstances is absolutely dreadful.
-----
Does "No Child Left Behind" mean they'll all be right arses?
The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows. - BoingBoing
Link
No word on additional busses and shelters...
No word on intelligent comments and perspectives on the disaster...
Hm. I don't see how God can think that way. God is infinite, after all, which means it's impossible for God to care. --God is the Hurricane, God is New Orleans, God is each and every person in that mud-hole. God is the mud. And God is you and me. Maybe you already get it, but I do enjoy pointing it out; Infinite means there is nothing God is not, and thus God cannot judge, because God is both sides of every coin.
This New Orleans thing is just Karma balancing the scales. And I don't think the goal is to become disgusted with what we are so much as it is to learn that it is far less painful to be selfless than it is to be selfish. Every bit of pain and joy is a lesson. --And one of the biggest is learning not to judge; to be disgusted with ourselves means that we hate ourselves simply because we don't know the answers yet. That's not an effective way to learn. Learning is not about hating what we are, but about learning how to love, and this cannot be achieved through hate.
-FL
The lazy, the fat, me
cgiin.net = [ 68.142.234.58 ]
Domain Name.......... cgiin.net
Creation Date........ 2005-09-03
Registration Date.... 2005-09-03
Expiry Date.......... 2006-09-03
Organisation Name.... John Pate
Organisation Address. 438 EAST SPRUCE AVE UNIT 135
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. INGLEWOOD
Organisation Address. 90301
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... John Pate
Admin Address........ 438 EAST SPRUCE AVE UNIT 135
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ INGLEWOOD
Admin Address........ 90301
Admin Address........ CA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... theosdaar@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... 1.3106732295
Admin Fax............
Tech Name............ YahooDomains TechContact
Tech Address......... 701 First Ave.
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Sunnyvale
Tech Address......... 94089
Tech Address......... CA
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... domain.tech@YAHOO-INC.COM
Tech Phone........... 1.6198813096
Tech Fax.............
Name Server.......... yns1.yahoo.com
Name Server.......... yns2.yahoo.com
India pledges 5 million dollars for Katrina relief operations
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Domain Name.......... cgiin.net
Creation Date........ 2005-09-03
Registration Date.... 2005-09-03
Expiry Date.......... 2006-09-03
Organisation Name.... John Pate
Organisation Address. 438 EAST SPRUCE AVE UNIT 135
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. INGLEWOOD
Organisation Address. 90301
Organisation Address. CA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... John Pate
Admin Address........ 438 EAST SPRUCE AVE UNIT 135
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ INGLEWOOD
Admin Address........ 90301
Admin Address........ CA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... theosdaar@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... +1.3106732295
Admin Fax............
If you're relying on the government to rescue you from a natural disaster, you're making a huge mistake. We don't live in a country where the government is expected to wipe the ass of all its citizens. When there's a category 5 hurricane barring down on you, you get the hell out of there. People leaving the city and not just sitting there would have prevented much of the loss of life. Sure a few people here and there didn't have the means to leave, but surely if everyone who could have left had evacuated beforehand, overwhelming all the emergency services would have been avoided. Oh and looting and sniping doctors doesn't help much either.
Using boats to rescue people? Where are you going to get the boats from? Boats are slow and they'd have to be brought in from far away. An area the size of a small country just got leveled after all.
We were expecting a hurricane but instead ended up with broken levees, massive anarachy, a total communications breakdown, etc. NO ONE knew the scope of this disaster until it was too late.
Non-lethal until they find out that their name is a killing word.
well in advance of the storm. So WHO was supposedly in charge at that point, again? The Feebles at FEMA. Their boss, the chump, hid his thumbs and people died.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
This is the local governments (State and NO) fuck up... New Orleans always knew this would happen, and they did not spend the money to fix the levees first (The fed were ready to do it...
Hmm, seems the Feds were aware of the danger too -- since 2001.
Things I've read seem to disagree with you
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
Great paradigm. I roll to Disbelieve. I get a +100 bonus, because my character can see that the Emperor Has No Brain.
When shit hits the fan, be happy! It is an opportunity to help your neighbors and to spread calm and love and resources! Be kind and supportive work hard to make things better, folks! It's the only way out.
Remember; the most important things in life are not things.
-FL
Outrageous!
Well the mayor may not be directly to blame because of the school distict issue but i can say this much.
WHO CARES WHAT THE RULES AND REGULATIONS ARE. IN TIMES OF CRISIS LEADERS NEED TO LEAD AND TAKE THE INITIATIVE.
do you really think that the mayor would have had their ass spanked after the event for taking the initiative and saving lives?
seems everyone is happy to pass on responisibility....
The Governor flatout stated ...I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilties of the State and the affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance will be necessary."
The assistance was dismal.
The citizens of the USA have just witnessed the complete failure of government on all levels, from local to federal. At every stage of this disaster there has not been a single competent person orchestrating the rescue efforts.
As a result of years of cronyism, privatization, classism, and racism, this has become an unmitigated disaster that one would expect to encounter only in the impoverished third world.
And here is the kicker: it will happen again and again if the public does not rise up and demand a clean sweep.
The entire system needs to be overhauled, from the very foundation of democracy -- secure, honest voting -- to the very notion of government's role in ensuring its citizens have access to shelter, food, and safety at all times and in all situations.
The time to act is now. You should be very angry and you should be demanding accountability and change. Do something before it happens again.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Flood insurance in this country is handled by the federal government. Even if you purchase your policy through a private agency, they're simply the go between. Try to purchase flood insurance with the same coverage and deductible through several agencies and they'll quote you around the same price.
Because the feds handle all flood insurance, does that mean they are more liable for handling flood protection measures, NO's levees in this instance, then they would be handling other infrastructure?
I'm just curious what people think.
Its not enough that you couldn't send relief until 3 to 4 days AFTER the hurricane hit, but you have to send shit to control the crowds when just giving them more relief would control them anyway. Bush is a sick fuck. Help the people, not deafen them. Flame away Bush loyalists. A lot of the country is pissed off as well, and not just us liberals but even your own kind and everyone in-between. Don't tell me not to point fingers. The GOP and Bush are attempting to do damage control for a situation they could have and should have been able to handle very quickly.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
...stop your looting and turn yourself in!"
"If you need assistance, find a "sonic laser" and talk to us!"
Seriously though, your telling me that the US can't afford to ship out Sat phones to communicate?
How about eBay for some CBs?
The range is much greater and surely cheaper to deploy and operate.
For crowd communication, how about a mega-phone?
I have yet to see any groups rushing the relief personnel there, it's too hot!
Screaming at them, given that you have the unit pointed in the right direction at the right time and in the right location, seems unrealistic.
Just a footnote:
Hurricane season runs through Nov. 30 and the Atlantic ocean temperature hit record highs.
I'm guessing there will be a few more letters of the alphabet to use up before this season is over.
Ok let's start with the fact that even when I was 13 years old and learned that New Orleans was below sea level I thought "Wow I bet that really floods." Secondly they was a MANDATORY EVACUATION of New Orleans days before the storm hit. If your stupid ass is stuck on a roof or in a stadium because you didn't leave then it's your own damn fault. It's a terrible tragedy but I like to think of it as evolution in progress. Let's move on to the stupid ass Mayor Nagin blaming the federal goverment for not coming and bailing them out. UH that's what local government is responsible for, planning for this kind of thing. It's not like terrorists came in and made a hurricane to destroy those cajuns. Finally New Orleans has hundreds of busses they could have used to evacuate the city, but they didn't. Here's a solution for next time. DON'T re-build a city below sea level. DON'T build a city where levees are needed to keep it safe. DON'T elect a dumbass Mayor who doesn't plan for disasters that have been predicted for decades. DON'T blame other people for your own stupid decisions. DO plan a meeting with other major city governments to see how to plan for disaster.
This comment is ridiculous. The two aren't even comparable. When Andrew (another cat 5 storm) hit Miami, we were able to handle it. The problem in New Orleans was not the hurricane but the flooding it caused. In a normal hurricane, The hurricane goes over, the damage is done, and then you dispatch teams to clear the roads etc. and things start getting back to normal right away. In this situation the flooding meant the usual response doesn't apply. you cant drive a truck through 5 feet of water, you can't clear debris and get the communications infrastructure back up to organize relief efforts. The situations are entirely different. We are completely prepared (as much as you can be) for a "normal" hurricane. This is completely different.
... a desperate president thoughtfully strums a guitar while the deep south burns (because movie presidents are either heroes or bill clinton and the deep south is evil); a valient mayor battles the dodgy paper-shuffling governor (because politics stinks, apart from mayors who always clean up towns - kinda like sheriffs) ... and bruce willis as the heroic maveric loner ex-cop who accidently shot his partner/ex-SEAL who accidently led his men to certain death/ex-navy cook who accidently poisoned his captain/ex-JAG officer with a fighter pilot past who accidently shot-down a Serbian general's evil-eyed son. Can bruce save his cute daughter/sexy but unloving wife/cute but dangerously curious son from the floods, terribly black & poor rioters, rape gangs and insane local army unit commander; lead a rag-tag gang of possibly feckless neighbours to safety AND discover the truth behind the hurricaine (a military experiment gone wrong), the sharks (a military experiment gone wrong) and the burst levys (a corporate / military engineers experiment gone wrong)?
Or maybe this was just a huge disaster affecting an area the size of the UK, in a country without a welfare state, where the inequalities in society are trumpeted in the media, and commercial interests (i.e. a waterway near New Orleans that should have been filled in years ago) are always put above the common good (DCMA, Patent Law, etc.)
WAKE UP AMERICA AND SAVE YOUR COUNTRY; MAKE TONY BLAIR YOUR NEXT PRESIDENT
They call them "speakers". Together with an "amplifier", you can wake the neighbors a mile down the street.
Last Post!
... about bruce willis; Bruce Campbell would be my choice (or Sarah MG)
FYI:
Why is Michael Brown the head of FEMA?
The answer is simple enough: because he was the previous director's college roommate.
I'm sorry, but to me, HPV stands for Human Papilloma Virus (Google agrees), which initially made the company sound much more interesting.
The police and authorities are not treating people all the same.
Well it depends on how you look at it. A few (handful) of looters struck - the next day. Most of this wasn't as bad as it was reported, but because it was so heavily focused on *everyone* has had to suffer. The idea that it was "unsafe" to enter these areas was just plain wrong. People have been doing what they can to impress those working on relief, even going as far as forming single file lines! As far as treating people with equity, why is it being reported that Hyatt customers get busses before the dying people held up in convention centers or stadiums? (Just one source.)
Basically, everyone is suffering/dying because a few people are causing a problem. So everyone is being punished.
There is no firing into crowds, and that sort of thing. No doubt the authorities are overwhelmed and need all the outside help they can get, but they are coping as best they can.
Coping the best they can? We are talking about simple things like dropping bottled water and MRE's for fellow humans. Sure the local police might not be able to get a hold on the situation, but where is the Guard? Where?
If people are shooting, looting (not food - TV's, etc), causing violence and intimidation, they are being treated like the common criminals they are. If they are people in distress who need help, everyone is trying to get help to them.
Who even cares if someone loots a TV? It's likely ruined with all of the flooding, and by the time the insurance papers are filed it won't matter if it floated away or was water-logged. Sure, keep people out of the homes - but KMart, Wal-Mart and the rest are insured for these items. Still, people loot when they are given the chance. If you know what it was like to live your whole life poor, you'd understand what happens in your mind when the "all rules off" mode sets in. Plus you've got to figure, mob mentality. You can't blame an individual for doing what the crowd is doing. You may want to - but we've seen enough that these types of acts spread with the mob to understand that people just lose control.
But you're idea of treating looters like "the common criminals they are" really scares me. How do you treat criminals? Beat them? Shoot them? Are they less than human? Because that isn't the country I live in, this is America. Umm... have you ever thought that the way you treat someone changes their outlook on life? I just can't get over this part of your post.
"Everyone" trying to get help to these people is just a lie. People are trapped, still, and have people who can come and get them. People have set up ways out and places to stay but they are being told "No".
As an aside, anyone trying to score poliltical [SIC] points in either direction on the back of this disaster should be taken out back for summary execution.
Is it politics when you are pointing out that the federal government is failing these dying people? Is it politics to point out that FEMA has resorted to "worst federal agency" status that it held back before Hurricane Andrew? You can't make a statement like that in America - public life and politics is so intertwined that it is our duty to make an issue out of this. What makes me sick is that people out there are so loyal to the President they fail to acknowledge that he failed us - it makes me sick that they are downplaying the amount of suffering. Laura Bush has said, as well as FEMA Director Michael Brown, that the things we see on TV aren't what is going on. That's bullshit, we've not seen the worst yet. Even worse is that people like Harry Connick Jr (who made it out un-molested by these dangerous types) are saying that is in fact true.
Who is lying? The witnesses or the people who were miles away during Katrina's landfall.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Salon.com tells us Fox News perspective of the desaster.
You need to press "Get Pass" to view this article for free.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Cubans are experts at evacuations because of their constant practice in trying to leave their homes.
Bush was on VACATION for TWO DAYS after Katrina hit. The biggest disaster since Sept 11th - thousands of people drowning, crushed under buildings, and he thinks his bicycling and fishing are more important than the lives of those people.
That says EVERYTHING anyone needs to know about his attitude and his level of competence.
Cheney is STILL on vacation!
Jesus H. Mother-F*cking Christ!!!
I think my techno dj daughter could find a far better use for these things.
So we have people stranded for a week without food, water or a place to take a crap, babies perishing in their mothers' arms, no power, dead people and things floating through canals that were once streets...and our leaders apparently think it's some kind of priority to stage a live demo of some kinky terror weapon.
Seems we've pretty well lost it, folks.
He has police, fire departments, etc. Sanitation workers.
Under the terms of a mandatory evacuation, seize the buses and screw the legalities until the people are safe. No judge would interfere with that.
Of course, that would require a true leader with balls.
Rudy, perhaps.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I always thought that is what a Sergeant Major is for. A good SM can easily communicate with a crowd a mile away, using nothing but his voice...
Oh well, what the hell...
Channel 4 UK showed an interview with some UK Tourists who said they had tickets out of the city but the trains had all been cancelled (this is the day before) and the airport had been shut - but without making any alternative arrangements for other tourists who had tickets out.
i c.asp?TopicID=1766100&topic=my+wife+and+I+last+nig ht+at+the+astrodome ( via Xeni Jardin @ Boinbgboing) someone is talking about the lack of help at the Astrodome. Hopefully good people will awaken and take matters into their own hands - and try and help - Bush and his cronies like war and conflict - fear allows them power.
(they were relatively pink people).
ITV and BBC started out mouthing the US journalistic line that black people had stolen guns and booze and were looting - although NOT ONE image shown of looters had anyone looting anything other than food and clothes - not reporting but regurgitating news - the BBC has climbed down now and admits 'some' looting may be for essentials.
I think that this crowd control stuff is very interesting, I guess the Neoconservatives and their appointees in FEMA and DHS really are into mass Eugenics.
It is good Bush has admitted that efforts were not good enough, seems like they still aren't.
This Christian Fundamemtalism is a very scary thing. - theirs must be a very evil god.
Sorry to rant but I think what has taken place was and is quite evil - and it is only being caught out that has made anything happen.
Over at the Sonic Youth fan blog, http://www.sonicyouth.com/bboard/fanforum/viewtop
Does a President have to leave Office during a civil war / state of emergency / martial law ? Bush seized power in a coo, maybe he is reluctant to give up the reigns.
Do Good for God and Mankinds Sake.
So, let me get this straight about Nagin and his expletive filled rant today. This moron of a mayor can't get his city evacuated or prepared in 3 days BEFORE the storm hits and the levees break but everyone is supposed to come from around the country and do it in 20 minutes after the place is broken by the storm and floods?
This is what passes for 'leadership' in that city (which by all reports was barely under control in the best of times)?
Disgusting. I think Nagin's performance leading up to this is boarder line criminal. I bet in the aftermath we are going to find a lot of money that was supposed to be used for disaster preparedness went 'missing'.
It is very important that the country be able to distinguish Democratic blather from reality after this calms down. As far as I can see, Bush and the feds did everything by the book, as soon as danger was coming. The mayor of N.O. did absolutely NOTHING to prepare for this.
Drudge is currently showing a parking lot full of flooded school buses. Why weren't they sent through neighborhoods to pick people up? Why was the Superdome not stocked with at least minimal supplies? I have no answer, but I think when this is analyzed that the local government will be the culprit. But for now, the Dems are going to make every effort to make Bush look bad. Political posturing during a tradgedy is something I find simply disgusting.
All I have heard on the news is blaming the Feds for slow response to New Orleans.
But the preparation and execution of an evacuation of New Orleans in the event of such a disaster (which has ALWAYS been a possibility... a known issue) lies squarely on the municipal and state government... not the Feds.
It's so easy for the N.O. mayor and the LA governor to blame the Feds. It takes the spotlight off them and their incompetence. Just compare their preparation and response to other cities like NYC, SanFran and LA to their disasters.
But... eventually, a post mortem on all this will occur... and I think the N.O. mayor and the LA governor's incompetence will come into full view.
In the meantime, the Feds have basically taken over Louisiana and New Orleans... as they have no effective, competent government.
When Northridge earthquake took place; did everyone sit around waiting for the feds to come rescue them? Hell no, people pulled together and helped each other. In NOLA, people pulled together and... helped themselves to some new shoes and whatever else they could get their hands on. Now we're going to see endless news reels of these "poor helpless criminals" who "couldn't help themselves".
The RED CROSS has said that they were holding back on delivering food until they had adequate armed escorts to protect them going into this war zone.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I think the people should go flood the white house and use sonic lasers on them.
Fascist will reap what they sow.
The german THW (Technisches Hilfswerk / technical first aid) has the technical equipment to filter 9.000 liter of contaminated (chemical & bacteria) water.
German news report that several THW teams are on their way into the desaster zone.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
This was a "normal" hurricane. AFAIK there was nothing whatsoever unusual about Katrina.
The reason Katrina caused flooding is that New Orleans happens to be in a position where only dams keep water out. This being the case, it was certainly not impossible to predict that damage to said dams would result in flooding, or that a major natural disaster (such as a hurricane) could cause such damage. Therefore, being prepared to handle natural disasters means, in New Orleans, being prepared to handle dam damage and resulting flooding. New Orleans wasn't prepared to do this, therefore paren't comment about inadequate preparedness is completely justified.
New Orleans wasn't prepared to handle Katrina and it's results. Both Katrina and it's results were predictable. Therefore, New Orlean's disaster preparedness was inadequate, and its citizens are now paying the price.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I've heard of phonons, but never really understood them, especially since we never really discussed them in detail in either of my semiconductor courses, the closest thing I've taken to solid state. I'm tempted to think that, like you said, they aren't defined outside of a crystal lattice, but if these are the longitudinal-wave equivalent of photons, it's difficult for me to find a reason why they should require special properties of their medium in order to exist. Maybe the correlation isn't as one-to-one as I'd like to make it seem. To create an "acoustic laser," one would think that you could create an analogous situation to that found in an optical laser--more or less to stimulate atoms to emit photons with the same character as the stimulating photons. I don't know if phonons can cause this sort of behavior in atoms, and I have to think that there's something about the nature of a phonon that answers this question. Again, I don't know.
One thing I found interesting while thinking about this is a little memory of mine: once a friend and I came up with the idea for a rudimentary mass laser. We called it a "laser," meaning "Lapine Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Rabbits." Essentially, you put a bunch of rabbits in a box with an electrified floor and a small, one-way door and the end of the box. Assuming that the rabbits have time enough to breed between pulses of the floor--which itself stimulates their movement via a shock--you could eventually get a sort of resonance going that would have some of the properties of a laser: lots of bunnies out, all with (eventually) similar genetic properties. When I think of the article's acoustic laser, I think that the term "laser" is being used in the same rather loose way. However, the difference is that while the Lapine Laser was, basically, for laughs (and to ease the study of the diffractive properties of bunnies through a small lit), this "acoustic laser" is being seriously pitched as a solution to a real-world problem.
People around the world are looking at the situation of the poor blacks in N.O. and saying this is the true nature of America. Those rich, privledged, racist white Americans still treat blacks like that.
That is nothing but lies and a big misunderstanding of the large picture. For decades - even centuries - the majority of black people in America have created for themselves a "I'm a victim" mentality. This does not engender motivation to make one's life better. Witness all of the other foreigners who have come to America - some literally "off the boat" at Ellis Island in N.Y. - and became successful.
What we are seeing in N.O. is the result of socialism in America. I can't count the number of times on T.V. I've seen the poor black people complaining about "what is the government going to do", "where is the government to take care of us", "why has the government let us down." Instead of taking personal responsibility for their actions, they have been conditioned by receiving welfare checks and other government handouts, mainly from the Democratic Party, to not think for themselves.
I think that "leaders" like Jesse Jackson actually do more have than good for the black people of America by perpetuating the "I'm a victim" mentality.
Thus, the true nature of America that your foreigners are seeing today is the disgust we have with the failures of socialism and the continueing concept amongst blacks that they are "victims" of something that happened centuries ago. Any person, any group, any race, any religion, any civilization has been a "victim" or a descenent of "victim" of some event many years / decades / centuries in the past. You get over it and move on.
I would really like to see my fellow Americans get over and move beyond this "I'm a victim" mentality. Only then will we all be productive and work together to make America great again. If that cannot happen, then America - the republic and now the empire - will collapse into a 3rd world dictatorship under martial law like so many other African and South American countries have.
And so as not to be totally off-topic, I am quite concerned about this increase of weapons for controlling larger and larger crowds. What is our government thinking? Why the need to control many large amounts of people unless they see something awful coming...
Why send sonic disrupters into the disaster area? Because that way they can be tested without pissing off too many likely voters.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
No link yet, but here is an excerpt from a FEMA Timeline by Henry Breitrose, Professor of Communication at Stanford Univ.
Oh right... Shit.
Oh for crying out loud.
There's blame to be scattered around just about everywhere and with everyone. No one was controlling the weather -- that shit happens.
As for being unable to get people out of there? Damn if it ain't just bad luck? The people left behind had good reason to stay behind. Either they didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was or they simply had no way to get out. One vacationer literally had no means out as the story was told... couldn't get a rental car or anything.
As for looters? There's a culture in New Orleans and that general area where I am completely unsurprised about that. I'm still sickened by it, but completely unsurprised. Can you blame "culture" for being what it is? Yeah... no... maybe... I don't know. I know I'm not like that. It c could be that many people stayed behind so that they COULD loot the place.
I haven't heard much about other countries offering aid -- I guess the news sources don't want to talk about that. Another thing the news isn't talking about much is the things going on in Iraq now.
Is this effort being delayed? I don't know. I wish I knew more about the whole thing. But it's clear that attention is being directed here rather than elsewhere. If I could read from reliable sources that help is being turned away, then I would think there is something very bad happening.
If a huge disaster hit in my area, I'd have no place to go... I have no idea what I'd do. None of this stuff is easy.
it is I believe an audio-vibratory-physio-molecular transport device...
This post is quite wrong on MANY MANY levels.
" continueing concept amongst blacks that they are "victims" of something that happened centuries ago."
Perhaps you are not aware that until the voting rights act of 1965, black were largely disenfranchised and segregated. Hardly centuries ago.
"What we are seeing in N.O. is the result of socialism in America. I can't count the number of times on T.V. I've seen the poor black people complaining about "what is the government going to do", "where is the government to take care of us", "why has the government let us down." Instead of taking personal responsibility for their actions, they have been conditioned by receiving welfare checks and other government handouts, mainly from the Democratic Party, to not think for themselves."
A vast and very child like generalization. Many of these people are working poor who pay taxes. Many of them don't own vehicles. By call them "welfare recipients" you simply reveal your ignorance. What data is this based on? Knowing what I know about the difficulty of receiving welfare after the welfare reform act I doubt that many of them are welfare recipients.
Take a look at the reponse the government had in regards to Hurricane Andrew - it was much better.
As far as your immigrant success stories - yeah sure people come here and are successful. Usually because they have a great deal of money to begin with. Your quote
some literally "off the boat" at Ellis Island in N.Y.
is quite telling. Ellis Island hasn't been used as an immigration facility for 51 years.
Thalasar
I just wanted to say THANKS for all the offers of assistance from around the world. It's the first I've heard of it. I've been busy pitching in myself.
Most impressive to me are venuzuala and cuba who we have animosity with as a nation. The offers from all the nations are appreciated! Please pass the word on to your countrymen that we here in Texas appreciate the gesture!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
but given that it will take weeks to pump out the water, theft and looting will not be a barrier to "further restoration efforts, including returning electricity to the area".
The looters have no where to store their loot (unless you're talking gems/jewelery/cash) and no place to sell it.
Every person assigned to watch for looters is a person that is not available for rescue operations.
People first
Property last
You say Bush called to order a mandatory evacuation, but your source says he appealed for one.
To be honest, appealing makes a lot more sense ot me. I don't like the Feds mandating things at the local level (it's called Republicanism).
And honestly, that's all hot air anyway, because the Mayor is not stupid, he was speaking of how bad is was going to be days before Katrina hit. Katrina was possibly going to hit NO square, and so he would have mandated an evacuation anyway.
So Bush didn't save any lives here, not at least in the aspect of whether it was mandatory or not.
IMHO, the deaths in NO can be put square on the people in NO, mostly. Why did they stay there instead of leaving? And why when the levees broke did they still stay? Look at the satellite maps, if you just WALK two miles west (best take a circuituous route to stay in the shallow water), you're on dry land. Why would you stay in a flooded area with no power when you can go to somewhere where there is dry land and electricity? It's not like they had anything left in NO anyway after the waters started to rise.
I know there were infirm people there, that's why the Superdome was a shelter of "last resort". But the rest have no one else to blame for why they are still in a disaster area in a trash-ridden stenchhole days later.
Of course, none of this applies much to the areas east of NO like Biloxi and Gulfport that were destroyed in the storm, not in the floods.
I think just the blame game is way out of hand. What official did or didn't do this or that. Like this: why weren't school buses used for evacuations? Well, did you see reports of people lining up to leave before the storm with no way to go?
If there were buses, these people wouldn't have boarded them. They didn't want to leave, because they didn't think it would be this bad. And they were told if they leave, they possibly couldn't return for weeks, perhaps months.
So they did the math, probably figured that if they left their homes would be looted before they got back, and meanwhile, they're paying to stay in a hotel or something for days or weeks that they cannot afford. So they went to a local shelter of last resort when they should have left.
That's the problem. That's why these people didn't leave. It's not the government's fault.
Now, doubly stupid is once your home is destroyed, your job doesn't exist (at least at the moment), all your possessions lost, and you're in an area with no water and no power, staying there. For the life of me I don't know why those people didn't walk S to the river (the land is highest by the river), W by the river and onto the dry land W of town. There is no breach in the levee down there to stop them or anything. I don't get it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Hmmm Iv'e been saying that for a long time now.
And todays lesson: Dont live in a damned bowl under sea level and near the ocean..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its obviously very difficult to compare two hurricanes. However, regardless of the flooding, it seems reasonable to assume that if more people had been evacuated, then more would have been saved, and I would think levels of evacuation can be relatively easily compared, and it seems like Cuba did a better job of evacuation in preparing for Dennis than was done in this case.
The flooding of course is another matter, but again, the flooding was somewhat predictable, and thus should have been better prevented / prepared for - I'm sure this point will be debated a lot over the next few months, and hindsight is always a wonderful thing, but you touch on the point yourself that the hurricane itself wasn't particularly bad. Surely this is supports the argument that _more_ could have been done to prevent the catastrophe, given that the catastrophe wasn't anything all _that_ unusual in terms of the strength of the hurricane, and given that the resultant flooding was also not that unpredictable?
I would argue that New Orlenas was _not_ completely prepared for a 'normal' hurricane, given that what happened is precisely the result of what a 'normal' hurricane can do to such a sunken city.
From the Department of Homeland Security Website:
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.
NOT DESIGNED TO MOVE FAST you say? how about swiftly, comprehensively, effectively? they use billions of dollars to move slowly, unswiftly, and not at all?
(we're putting aside FEMA and army corps of engineers for the moment)
i'm not saying nobody in LA made any bad decisions, but it's ridiculous to claim that all the death can be put "squarely on the shoulders" of the government of NO and LA.
"not designed to move fast" looks like another way of saying "it's not the government's job to do anything, losers." and i've seen a lot of that lately. despite....those um.... TAXES everyone pays, and the mission statements and budgets of these federal agencies and departments.
I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other locations.
I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want to be here at night."
There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand this tragedy, its important to look at New Orleans itself. For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremecy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state and federal goverments that have abdicated their responsibilty for the public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don't need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Po
If you're able to speak to them, that means they have shelter. Most people left do not.
As an aside, anyone trying to score poliltical points in either direction on the back of this disaster should be taken out back for summary execution. Sorry, I'm pretty close to this, and politics has no place until after this is sorted.
This isn't "politics". It's "life and death" and "people in power not doing anything to prevent mass-scale crime and rioting". That's criminal negligence and/or gross incompetence. A similar disaster occured in the 1920's and they had aid to people within 2-3 days. In this day and age, it took a week before the National Guard even decided to start doing anything (I suspect because staffing levels are so low thanks to the Iraq war; there's a lesson there in sending your civil defense people to fight a foreign war.) A US Navy hospital ship didn't even set sail until 2-3 days ago. Nobody's sending the number of busses needed to get people evacuated to other cities and states. The CDC has managed to set up under a half dozen command centers and medical teams...over a WEEK! There were two hospitals that went utterly IGNORED by the mayor, the governor...to the extent that doctors had to get ahold of AP/Reuters reporters and desperately plea for water, medicine, food, and protection from looters that were breaking into the place.
We KNEW this was going to happen; the levees were rated to category 3, and Katrina was a category 5. Yet ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was done on a Federal or State level to prepare for the mass devastation. The major of New Orleans has flat out accused the President and the Governor of Mississippi of doing nothing but holding press conferences and smiling for cameras with refugees. The evidence is on his side- neither has done more than pat people on the back, say "it's gonna be okay, we'll get ya some aide real soon" and walk away.
Someone on NPR just described it best- it's like a dog trying to grip a basketball with his mouth. Top government officials just can't seem to wrap their heads around how massive a problem this is. A MILLION PEOPLE have no homes anymore. They need to GO somewhere, semi-permanently, until New Orleans is rebuilt. We're talking months before basic services are up...
Please help metamoderate.
Again, that's the problem. 1965 was FOURTY years ago. Except for old people in their 60's no one today was a teenager back then, much less born. That is history.
I pointed to Ellis Island because that's how the poor people came to the U.S. And look how well they've turned out compared to blacks who have been living here for centuries.
And it was on FOX News last night that the government is setting up desks/stations in the refugee camps so the poor blacks can pick up their welfare checks.
"for decades - even centuries - the majority of black people in America have created for themselves a 'I'm a victim' mentality."
Might want to note the fact that african americans still were victims, i.e. actively under slavery less than two hundred years go.
It doesn't matter how long it would have taken to evacuate 100,000 people.
What matters is that SOME of the people WERE evacuated.
You're thinking along the lines of "if it is not a perfect solution for the entire problem, it is not a solution for any part of the problem".
If he only saved 10 people, you think that's a failure.
If he saved 10 people, I think that's 10 people who were saved and that's a success.
Black living here for centuries have faced centuries of discrimination and slavery. So after 40 years of saying "ok blacks, you can vote now and not get lynched," everything is fine in your mind? What an isolated little life you lead.
" FOX News last night that the government is setting up desks/stations in the refugee camps so the poor blacks can pick up their welfare checks."
First off - When I look at the TV I see many retired elderly people who need to pick up their Social security checks. I see a lot of old folks in the refugees. Please provide a link or some other evidence other than Fox News told me.
Thalasar
Cuba - "1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medicine and equipment."
In other words, Cuba has offered to send in 1100 terrorists for free. What a deal!
More of this anti-libertarian and anti-conservative hate bull that I hear from leftists like you. For the final time, the events in New Orleans is NOT representative of the right-wing view of small government at all!!! The breakdown in New Orleans has nothing to do with the size of government; it just shows how inefficient the local, state, and federal governments are! This is representative of how local, state, and federal government breaks down under a heavy load. The local and state governments weren't able to evacuate their citizens quickly enough (which they should have done so at least 4 days before the storm arrived), and FEMA (federal government) acted in the way that the federal government always acts: slow and bureaucratic. It took the feds four days for them to finally show up to New Orleans. Meanwhile, thousands of people ended up dying because help didn't come their way quickly enough because of the snail-pace speed of these layers of government. It's not because a conservative is in office.
And what is so "selfish" about free-market ideas that libertarians and conservatives champion, such as school vouchers, privatized social security, privatized health care, negative income taxes, limiting inflation, and more? Sounds to me you're a socialist or communist who have heard that "capitalism is evil" rhetoric and "rich people are greedy and selfish" and want to blame the entire situation on (neo)conservative and libertarian ideas. Sounds to me that you don't fully understand right-wing government at all. You need to read some Milton Friedman, some libertarianism, and some conservatism, and some neoconservatism before you start spewing some crap about how conservatives and libertarians are rich, selfish individuals who don't donate and don't help out people who are in dire need. Libertarians and conservatives generally wish that the layers of government had stepped in a bit quicker. However, because of the molasses-slow response of the federal government, it looks like these people will be dependent on the citizen's donations from Red Cross and the rest of these private organizations, which is normally the case in a disaster, since the government is slow and apathetic.
To paraphrase the grandparent post, the blame starts from the bottom (local government) to the top (federal government). They all broke down. However, IgnoramusMaximus (bravo, you just got another explanation of libertarianism), what you are seeing is NOT representative of neither libertarianism or neoconservatism (the latter tends to support more social spending), no matter how much you disdain right-wing politics. This is government breakdown.
The problem was that those people who had somewhere to go ... left and went there.
... stayed. (I'm not including the idiots who believed they were indestructable in this.)
... but he did not put any FEDERAL resources into providing locations for the people to evacuate to.
Those people who did NOT have anyplace close and secure to go
Bush called and asked for a mandatory evacuation
All talk, no action.
As for you other item of everyone should just walk to a piece of dry land you've found, without some means of housing them, you'd have the same problems with food/sanitation/medical/etc.
Compare that to Cuba's actions. Cuba has governmental sites prep'ed for the disaster and evacuated people to them BEFORE it hit.
They have had these crowd control devices for a few years now and had deployed them in new york to control the anti-war protesters during the 2004 republican convention. But what is not very well known is the fact that these same weapons were and are being used by the military in iraq against the enemy! The militarization of our police forces is what really has me worried....I saw the exact same device shown in the article's pictures in a Alex Jones documentary..
Source: infowars.com
I say we send them back to Africa, I'll even pay for a one way ticket.
when you gotta need a nice pair of designer rubber boots...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
A National Disaster is clearly an excellent opportunity to trial new R&D in the field; harsh environmental conditions, long uptime, contingencies at a maximum - like a 'warzone' really. It would seem Bush has chosen to test future battle tech on his own people at home rather than random foreigners or US folk abroad. He doesn't miss a beat does he?
Anyway, I guess these sonic cannons are cheaper than food, shelter and tear-gas or else he surely would have.. nevermind.
Except you're on dry land, you have water and you have electrical power.
I know just walking away from the Superdome doesn't solve everything. it's a lot better to be on dry land with electrical power and water than to be in a stadium that is described as disgusting now.
I do appreciate those people didn't leave because they felt they had nowhere to go. It wasn't true, there were other shelters, the Superdome was the one of last resort for people who weren't fit enough to travel out of town. On top of this, in NO, once the storm came through, they had no reason to stay either.
I mean, if you are down to nothing, what's so great about an underwater city that you would stay there. If you have to start from scratch, maybe there are better places to do it, especially in the short term!
And again, I do understand this doesn't apply to those in cites outside of NO. Once they decided to stay, and the storm left, they were out of impending danger, and as big a mistake as they made, it was over with. For those in NO, the storm was just the beginning, and once the waters began rising and destroyed all they had, they then should have not compounded their mistake by continuing to stay.
As the to Cuba comparison, we did have sites. Were they prepped? Well, perhaps not as well as they should have been. But they were better prepped than the Superdome. No, they weren't governmental sites (unless you count schools), but they were there and ready for people. The problem was again PEOPLE DIDN'T LEAVE. It isn't an issue of governments. Perhaps Cuba can force their people to leave, we cannot.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Unfortunately, it has a few problems:
Sorry, not the feds' fault.
Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake! Condoleeza Rice: Mommy needs some new pair of shoes!
The Bush administration is the only administration we've actually got running the country that we can get rid of.
Clinton has been gone for years. I know Bush people don't know how to run a country, just how to make fun of an expresident who retired more popular than practically any president has ever been. I know Bush people don't know how to run a country, just blame Clinton for everything. Because they call facts that show their incompetence, written by anyone, "biased". Well, the facts are clearly biased against the Bush administration (to paraphrase the Daily Show). Whatever resistance Clinton might have had on that one day (nevermind what subsequently was done, like perhaps fully funding it) 10 years ago, before the past 5 years of Bush's rule, Bush certainly did not reverse that cut. He cut it as much as he could. He cut it, even after he's coasted on the coattails of one day in September 2001, when - after the smoke cleared - he climbed on top of a pile of rubble in NYC, and declared with a bullhorn that "everything changed".
The #1 predicted national disaster, terrorist attack on NYC, had come horribly true - though Bush had not prepared for it. In fact, he deprioritized terrorist attacks during that first year of his administration, while looking for an excuse to invade Iraq from day 1. Four years later (minus only two weeks), National Disaster #2, hurricane devastation in New Orleans, has come true. And Bush stayed on vacation in his Texas estate, then made some BS speeches about Iraq in California, then skimmed back to DC giving just a flyover blink to "Lake George" where New Orleans once stood. While his Secretary of State took in Spamalot on Broadway, then shopped for thousand-dollar shoes on 5th Avenue.
I know it's tough to admit that Bush is a miserable failure. That he's created catastrophe everywhere he's worked, in his whole career, but especially in the US and Iraq. I know it's tough to admit you're complicit in his catastrophes, because you voted for him and defended him. But its time to stop the BS apologies for the Master of Disaster. That old "it's Clinton's fault" BS only worked on a small percentage for a while, back around the turn of the century. It's useless now. Cut your losses and hang the blame on the Commander in Chimp now. Help us replace him with someone who can run the country some other way than into the ground. Or watch as Disaster #3, California Earthquake, kills thousands, millions more, cripples more of our ports and energy, all while we're still bogged down in Iraqmire, the Gulf Swamp, and across the nation that has been wallowing in stagnation and distrust since Bush was installed by the Supreme Court in 2000.
Because who knows - the next disaster could be the one that your local government has been sucking Homeland Security dollars away from New York, New Orleans and San Francisco for. And you'll find yourself screaming in the streets for Bush's head, when they stole the money like the New Orleans disaster plan funds, and abandon you the same way. While some other Bush apologist posts lies, blaming Clinton, for abandoning you when your own life is destroyed by a predicted disaster for which you paid tax money for relief.
--
make install -not war
It's a good question, but blame is 100% unhelpful right now (or for the forseeable future) on the Gulf Coast. Blame isn't going to rescue, feed, clothe, or house anyone. Blame isn't going to change the price of gas. Blame isn't going to change the weather in the past, or in the future.
Aside from being unhelpful, the blame is completely misplaced. Katrina was a weather event. People don't control the weather. It just happens.
Could there have been better preparation? Yes, always. For everything that's ever happened, there's a way it could have gone better (or worse, or just different).
There's a time to examine what went wrong to learn what to do different in the future. It's not that time yet. And even then, the half-informed opinions of a bunch of Slashdotters are of dubious value to that process.
I couldn't agree with you more. People are trying to call this "racism" and point the finger at other people, but the local government and the state government didn't prepare for it, the federal government didn't respond fast enough, and the city of New Orleans is paying big time mostly because of the incompetent mayor's and governor's actions, and because of the molasses-slow response of the federal government. This isn't about Bush and the rest of them deciding to "let the Negroes die."
The breakdown begins from the local government, all the way up. It is a shame that the Congressional Black Caucus is trying to politicize and racialize the entire drama happening in New Orleans. But hey, if people are listening, and if you have big people like college-dropout Kanye West saying ad hominems like "George Bush doesn't care about black people," then this racialism of the hurricane drama will continue. And this is coming from a African-American poster.
Does anyone else have the Tool song Aenima come to mind when they hear about Hurricane Katrina?
My point about "normal" hurricane was that a hurricane does not normally cause massive flooding. You can't compare the response to a category 4 hurricane without signifigant flooding to a cat 5 which hits an area so vulnerable to flooding it may take weeks or months to drain it out. The two things are disasters on a completely different scale. Cuba is neither below sea level (they are in the sea so that would be hard)or a signifigant flooding threat. It is more fair to compare a hurricane hitting cuba to a hurricane hitting florida, where such things are a pretty normal occurence (just like cuba) and any flooding caused dissipates quickly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/national/nationa lspecial/04storm.html/
"There was no electricity in the city, and almost every office and store was closed. Bodies still floated in the floodwaters, and everywhere were signs of recent disorder: shattered storefronts, the detritus of looting that showed help had come too late. There was no water or food for sale, and no one had any idea how many people were still in New Orleans. A police officer making rescues in a boat said several people in homes five feet deep in water had turned him away, saying they had plenty of food, water and beer.
Sigh, whenever I hear a U.S. poster attacking "socialism" I know that they are an ignorant jackass.
It seems that a country like China, much less developed than the US, managed to evacuate several hundred thousand people in a couple of days before the arrival of a typhoon.
What part of mandatory evacuation order can be interpreted as leaving people to their own devices? So maybe people aren't criticizing him for not managing events he doesn't have the resources to handle.
...In the days prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall, the 49-year-old mayor ordered New Orleans' first-ever mandatory evacuation. He told those in the most flood-prone areas to leave early, and he set up shuttles to get the 100,000 or so residents without cars to shelters. He announced that the potentially catastrophic hurricane represented "an opportunity for us to come together in a way we've never done before." Instead, Katrina's aftermath turned into a typical--if unimaginably and hellaciously tragic--scene from New Orleans politics, with the requisite allegations that the rudderless, incompetent city government can't deal with the city's intrinsic geographic, economic, and racial problems...
:: ::
http://www.slate.com/id/2125587/?nav=tap3
The President and the director of FEMA may not have consciously decided to let tens of thousands of people die but when the president barely mentions the people flooded in the Hurricane at a fundraiser, jokes about partying with Lott when they rebuild his house, smirkingly plays guitar and only sent help 4 days after the flooding because his incompetent political hack doesn't even know about the looting and starvation, people tend to get the impression that he doesn't care. Bush might not hate blacks but he certainly doesn't seem to give a damn about a whole lot of people. Not just blacks but also people who value reason over superstition (creationists); people who need abortions; people who need stem cell research; etc...
Since you've chalked the fuck-ups to incompetence, now would actually be a hell of a good to find out who's screwing up so they can be replaced with people who can actually do the job. Especially since the people we're pointing fingers at haven't gotten the fucking job done! Look at who is running FEMA now and compare him with the guy who ran FEMA under Clinton.
James Witt http://www.slate.com/id/2125224/?nav=tap3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lee_Witt
with Mike Brown
http://www.horsesass.org/
"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it's not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.
I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago.
* Goldy at HorsesAss's diary
*
He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.
I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.
Yes, that's right... the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for the International Arabian Hors
The Feds aren't designed to move fast, but they really should have thought ahead so that they'd never have to.
I'm not a citizen of the USA. If I was, though, I wouldn't think it too unreasonable for the Federal Government to at least coordinate with the state governments, make sure they're prepared, and to help arrange preparations if necessary. This might easily involve helping to provide caches of suitable resources in strategic places (whether in the state or nearby), providing expertise to make sure that the response plans are feasible, coordinating agreements with neighbouring states, etc. It might also involve issuing warnings directly to citizens if the feds believe that state officials aren't doing their job properly, or are ignoring federal advice.
If the Federal Government had had a proper programme ages ago to ensure that state governments had identified, were aware of, and properly prepared for possible future disasters in their region (such as this one), it might never have been such a serious problem.
call the busses and food that go in first a
Premptive Strike then there would be an emergency session of congress and 100,000 troops would have poured in there allready.
....Both Katrina and it's results were predictable.....
The prediction has been that the levees could be swamped by large storm caused waves, but nobody predicted that a levee would fail. Holland is a country where large sections are below sea level and the water there too is kept out by a system of man made barriers which also have been damaged by unusually fierce storms. Having an entire city depending on the effectiveness of anything man made to hold up against the unbridled forces of nature is a sign of human arrogance and pride. This is NOT our world since we did not make it and we don't have control over it to anywhere near the extent we think we do. It is always better to live with nature than to try to protect ourselves against it.
All theory is gray
Did anyone look at the pics in the Wired article? It's basically a whole mess of planar-magnetic drivers (e.g. Monsoon, Eminent, Apogee, Magnepan, etc.) mounted on a panel. Is it really that simple?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
*Sigh* .. how can parent possibly be 'flamebait'? It's 100% accurate and factual and makes a very good point. Slashdot need to change the system so you can see who moderated a post.
I hope others will pardon me for responding to a racist asshat, but...
> I say we send them back to Africa, I'll even pay for a one way ticket.
What for? We've already sent Africa to them.
You're a stupid fuck. Pontificating about shit you have no clue about, and then acting as though anyone who doesn't agree with you is evil. Yeah, there's a lot of people pissed off, and we can't wait for you whiney DU fucks to get off your asses and start that civil war you're always talking about, so we can finally show you fucktards what fucking gun control _really_ means.
They probably had plans to test these things somewhere like Iraq, but this situation is even better. Since the feds have fallen down on their job of handling this sort of large-scale problem, they're getting ready to perform the charade of blaming looters and rioters for everything that went wrong, just like they've been blaming terrorists for everything else. Going in waving a big stick is part of that performance, and using it on a few civilians is the perfect "shock and awe" gesture. Bush's zero-tolerance right-wing supporters will be cheering, and ordinary citizens will have one more reason to shy away from any sort of political action that the government might not approve.
Things like water cannons and riot gear are comprehensible threats to protesters, but when the government starts using spooky technology to bring a whole crowd to its knees, genuine sixties-like political unrest will cease to be possible in this country, no matter how appropriate it might eventually become. That's when America will cease to be a "free" country. Because if people are afraid to use their supposed freedoms then they no longer really have them.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=500+*+40& btnG=Search
If the director of FEMA needs to be told that his services are no longer needed monday morning. He is a bigger morn than I thought.
Root Cause of the problem is the under estimating of people left in the city. When all the people came from their houses, FEMA was surprised.
But I'll feed the trolls...
The free market of education for poor people would closely resemble the "free market" for poor people generally. They would get the "dollar store" version of education.
They would not have any real access to quality education, for the same reason why the poor lack access to quality products via the free market. There's not enough slack in the system to maintain fat profit margins - everything is tight. Choice is reduced, and people are given cut-rate product.
This is not to praise public schools. The ones serving poor communities suck. I just *have* to shine some common sense on this issue.
I think it is absolutely nauseating that you are using this unfolding disaster as a justification to take some cheap ideological shots.
A Swedish aid shipment consisting of two water cleaning systems capable of delivering 30.000 gallons/day in total was on it's route yesterday.
Now they've been told NOT TO COME.
Please read this.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Here it is again.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Between 10,000 - 30,000 death depending on who you believe to. Government's help broke down, people organized themselves to help each other all over the city. Still mentioned in radio and TV.
The entire population of the USA is ~280 million. That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 351 million.
When folks start using wildly inaccurate figures while ranting and raving, is it any wonder no one believes anything they say? A little truth goes a long way...
Just for the record: Bush officially won 62.02 million votes, while Kerry won 59.02 million. Interestingly, the reported percentage of eligible voters was 60.7%, supposedly the highest percentage since 1968. Hm.
My point was that the first failure lies with the black mayor who sent the people to "shelters" that were unfit for that purpose and who had no plan for dealing with them thereafter. He was partly responsible for the conditions at the Super Dome and Convention Center, so I think it's really stupid for morons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to pretend that this is some kind of conspiracy of the White Man to keep the Black Man down. This certainly was not the finest hour of the government's disaster relief organization, but it has nothing to do with race. If we start blaming it on race, then we are detracting from the critical look we should take at the poor preparation, planning and execution that is really responsible. And if we do that, we are doing a grave disservice to the eventual victims of the next natural disaster we face who may be lily white but who will suffer just the same when the system fails. Your own quote:
Sounds like you made my point for me. The incompetence and poor planning starts at the bottom and goes all the way to the top.Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Man Charged With Shooting at Helicopter.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Regarding people shooting at helicopters. My post stands. I'm not passing on any "false rumors"; I'm trying to stop them.
Free Hans!
Show me something that backs up the post I was replying to and predates it. My contention was that the poster had no proof of his claim. I stand by that contention.
Free Hans!
The most powerful prototype now has a more-or-less legitimate reason to be in the US. Now I'm a little nervous.
It seems like just a few weeks ago we were reading about non-lethal crowd control being tested on enemies and rioters.
Now one's being brought to a city in the US. They're here, now, wow that didn't take long!
Here, where, if necessary, it can be wheeled on over to your town and used against you if you assemble in a disagreeable manner. Rioting is the reason now, I know, that's deadly serious. But once non-lethal crowd dispersion is handy, cheap and convenient, can't other types of assembly be dispeled, as long as someone just has to push a button?
I scoffed when I read someone ranting that these things were just being tested on enemy combatants (to whom we attribute little humanity) so that they may someday be used on the country's own people. Paranoia!
Except here they are.
Maybe they will be brought to a town near you, soon. Try not avoid leading a peaceful protest against anything now.