I feel angry. People are trapped in the rafters of their houses 24 hours after the hurricane hit, and the water is rising. Are they a priority for our corporate government?
Shrub's at another deluxe fundraiser. Cheney...well, his heart's not so good, frankly, and unless there's quick bucks to be made by Halliburton, he's probably not too engaged. And he's a certain kind of Darwinist, in a flock of Dominionists and Intelligent-Designers.
No doubt the indiduals on the scene are doing all that they can. But is there a large-scale, well-equipped rescue effort going on? I'd envision hundreds of ready boats, for example, or a fleet of helicopters, not to mention the National Guard at home where they belong. How about commandeering helicopters from the oil companies --the kind used to support offshore oil rigs -- to help with rescues?
NOT ONLY did our corporate government fail to have a plan for quick action to rescue people trapped in their houses, but don't they actually discourage citizens from jumping in to help? In more self-reliant times, the men of a town might be axeing their way into the roofs of those houses from where people's desparate voices can be heard. To "protect property" -- and yes, to prevent additional lives from being endangered -- people are often stopped from entering disaster areas, and if they are in a safe place, they are being told to stay put. Leaving it to the experts makes sense, but the experts seem to be gone, in so many ways, and the public has been passivated to authority.
One principle of the Zapatista movement is to replace the functions of the federal government with the locally-based, locally-organized citizen's actions. Think about the man in Florida who was tased for trying to buypass a roadblock to re-enter his hurricane-damaged neighborhood, and ask yourself whether a government that doesn't respond to emergencies as they should would nonetheless prefer its population to remain defenseless and undefended.
Perhaps Mr. Maestri, Director of Jefferson Parish' office of emergency management, is no longer
'flabbergasted' at Bush cuts in disaster mitigation funding for Louisiana, but is now flat-out white-hot angry. Perhaps the
outsourced disaster mitigation plan isn't yet working. Perhaps after the
plan to privatize disaster mitigation services has been implemented, the fantastic efficiencies of capitalism will be brought to us by Halliburton or Dyncorps. I fully expect that the blame for TODAY's deaths -- not yesterday, which was an act of nature, but today's -- will be placed solely on the victims (for ignoring calls to evacuate); and we will see conservative commentators will be arguing that the cost of such rescues should be shouldered by those who require them.
Perhaps it is cynical to think that poor people in a flood in New Orleans aren't a priority to the Bush Administration.. but they never have been before. Perhaps all that can be done has been done.
A government that is by, for, and of the corporation has little interest in heroic rescues, except to the extent that it can boost corporate-TV ratings with a simple bit of real-life drama ("girl trapped in well" for example). We have no reason to trust that it will place human life as its highest priority. And that makes me angriest of all.
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