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In NOLA, the Fruits of intermingled Incompetence & Racism

Or, as Michael Moore put it:

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After you've done what you can do immediately for the victims of Hurricane Katrina....what do you then?

Agonize over how this came to be? Seethe with understandable rage and frustration? Churn with constant cortisol and anxiety over the probable future of this degraded nation?

Instead, go to the 'Better Times' website, and read/print out their Printable Flyers for use during a big, long-lasting, fast-happening disaster.

Yes, you can take steps to prepare now, should your community ever be hit by disaster.


Doesn't matter how much or how little your current resources. As the Better Times Almanac says:

'Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.'

My no-brainer prediction:
The Future belongs to those who know how to 'do' true Community.
Let's get to it.

The Cynic's Question of the Day:

"Was Relief Withheld ON PURPOSE TO COINCIDE W/ BUSH'S VISIT????"

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'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...'

--Michael Parenti

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In the howling wind comes a stinging rain
See it driving nails into souls on the tree of pain
from the firefly, a red orange glow
See the face of fear running scared in the valley below

Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue

In the locust wind comes a rattle and hum
Jacob wrestled the angel and the angel was overcome
Plant a demon seed, you raise a flower of fire
See them burning crosses, see the flames, higher and higher

Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue

This guy comes up to me
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colors of a royal flush
And he’s peeling off those dollar bills
Slapping them down
One hundred, two hundred
And I can see those fighter planes
And I can see those fighter planes
Across the mud huts where the children sleep
Through the alleys of a quiet city street
Take the staircase to the first floor
Turn the key and slowly unlock the door
As a man breathes into a saxophone
Through the walls we hear the city groan
Outside it’s america
Outside it’s america

Across the field you see the sky ripped open
See the rain come through the gaping wound
Pounding on the women and children who run into the arms...of america

--U2 Bullet the Blue Sky

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One of NOLA's heros: Jabbar Gibson