From: Matt poot (mattpoot@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Sep 03 2005 - 21:18:49 BST
good writing.
poot
>From: "Mark Steven Heyman" <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>To: moq_discuss@moq.org
>Subject: Re: MD Katrina - Thousands Dead ?
>Date: Sat, 03 Sep 2005 07:41:19 -0700
>
>Hi all,
>
>Thanks to Sam for the link speaking of the "Social Capital"
>difference between the US and Cuba. Here's an essay by Michael
>Parenti which pushes the point even further, examining a totally
>ignored element of the New Orleans disaster.
>
>- - - - - - -
>
>How the Free Market Killed New Orleans
>
>By Michael Parenti
>
>The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New
>Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with
>advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to
>hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They
>played the free market.
>
>They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected
>to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means,
>just as the free market dictates, just like people do when disaster
>hits free-market Third World countries.
>
>It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual
>pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an
>optimal outcome for the entire society. This is the way the invisible
>hand works its wonders.
>
>There would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as
>occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that
>island last year, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood
>citizen committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.3
>million people, more than 10 percent of the country's population,
>with not a single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely
>unmentioned in the U.S. press.
>
>On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was
>already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had
>been lost in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to evacuate,
>media reporters explained, because they were just plain "stubborn."
>
>It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters
>began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee
>because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With
>hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they
>had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market
>did not work so well for them.
>
>Many of these people were low-income African Americans, along with
>fewer numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that most of
>them had jobs before Katrina's lethal visit. That's what most poor
>people do in this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally
>paying jobs, sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not
>because they're lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on
>poverty wages while burdened by high prices, high rents, and
>regressive taxes.
>
>The free market played a role in other ways. Bush's agenda is to cut
>government services to the bone and make people rely on the private
>sector for the things they might need. So he sliced $71.2 million
>from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent
>reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the
>system of pumping out water had to be shelved.
>
>Bush took to the airways and said that no one could have foreseen
>this disaster. Just another lie tumbling from his lips. All sorts of
>people had been predicting disaster for New Orleans, pointing to the
>need to strengthen the levees and the pumps, and fortify the
>coastlands.
>
>In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite
>reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of
>wetlands. Again, that old invisible hand of the free market would
>take care of things. The developers, pursuing their own private
>profit, would devise outcomes that would benefit us all.
>
>But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and barrier between New
>Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. And for some
>years now, the wetlands have been disappearing at a frightening pace
>on the Gulf' coast. All this was of no concern to the reactionaries
>in the White House.
>
>As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that
>relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private
>charity. It was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that
>"private charity can do the job." And for the first few days that
>indeed seemed to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane
>Katrina.
>
>The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went
>into action. Its message: "Don't send food or blankets; send money."
>Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network---
>taking a moment off from God's work of pushing John Roberts
>nomination to the Supreme Court---called for donations and announced
>"Operation Blessing" which consisted of a highly-publicized but
>totally inadequate shipment of canned goods and bibles.
>
>By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense
>failure of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief
>had not arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the
>looting than with rescuing people. It was property before people,
>just like the free marketeers always want.
>
>But questions arose that the free market did not seem capable of
>answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few
>helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it
>take helicopters five hours to get six people out of one hospital?
>When would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the
>feds? The state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses
>and trucks? the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies
>and water?
>
>Where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the
>$33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? Even ABC-TV evening
>news (September 1, 2005) quoted local officials as saying that "the
>federal government's response has been a national disgrace."
>
>In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of
>foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and several other
>nations. Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other
>materials for the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were
>quickly refused by the White House. America the Beautiful and
>Powerful, America the Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the
>Purveyor of Global Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from
>others. That would be a most deflating and insulting role reversal.
>Were the French looking for another punch in the nose?
>
>Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the
>truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the
>decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most
>extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would start thinking
>that George W. Bush was really nothing more than a fulltime agent of
>Corporate America.
>
>* * * * * END PARENTI
>
>
>Best to all,
>Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
>--
>InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors
>Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983
>Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com
>
>
>
>
>
>On 2 Sep 2005 at 17:33, Sam Norton wrote:
>
>less than 2 months ago, cuba was able to move 1.7 million people on
>short notice. the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to
>begin with. people know ahead of time where they are to go. they come
>to your door and knock, and tell you, evacuation is coming, then they
>come and tell you, now. if no electricity, they have runners who
>communicate from a headquarters to central locations what is to be
>done. the country's leaders go on TV and take charge. but not only
>the leaders are speaking. the TV weatherpeople are knowledgeable. and
>the population is well educated about hurricanes. they not only
>evacuate. it's arranged beforehand where they will go, who has family
>where. not only pickup is organized, delivery of people is organized.
>merely sticking them in a stadium is unthinkable. shelters all have
>medical personnel, from the neighborhood. they have family doctors in
>cuba (!), who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already
>know who, for example, needs insulin. if they evacuate to a
>countryside high school -- a last resort -- they have dormitories
>there. they also have veterinarians and they evacuate animals. they
>begin evacuating immediately, and also evacuate TV sets and
>refrigerators, so that people aren't relucatant to leave because
>people might steal their stuff. it's not throwing money at the
>problem. it's not financial capital, it's social capital. the u.s. in
>this sense has zero social capital. dealing with hurricanes in cuba,
>as compared with how it's done in the u.s., is similar to the
>differences in how they deal with medicine. it's not reactive; it's
>proactive. they act as early as possible. the u.s. doesn't have civil
>defense, it has civil *reaction.*
>
>
>
>
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