Stevie Ray Vaughan | Couldn't Stand the Weather
Death by Water
If New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is to be believed, Hurricane Katrina, official ineptitude and general apathy have killed several thousand people in and around the landmark city.
Nagin ordered the city's late evacuation Sunday, with catastrophic consequences.
Tom Matrullo, who has some experience of hurricanes and, since last year, has provided penetrating analyses of FEMA's Kafkan responses to heavy weather, and Shelley Powers, who lives in the region, offer incisive responses to the devastation caused by inclement Gulf weather.
As far as Tom is concerned, politicians are greedy, self-serving bastards and, in Shelley's view, the people they're supposed to serve are generally loath to plan ahead. In a world where nature displays a remarkably detached indifference to our whimsies, both parties are playing a form of Russian Roulette.
The above graphic of New Orleans in the first I've seen giving me some idea of the city's topography, the function of levees and the stupidity of the human race. Building or living in a city below sea level is no big deal. The Dutch manage it with ease. But to plant such a city in an area trammeled annually by hurricanes—and then being shocked when the inevitable occurs—strikes me as somewhat weird.
The New Orleans disaster is great enough to warrant international sympathy and support. Those who can help, should. But, on their return in some three to six months, will the dumb residents of that city demand that their politicians spend their tax dollars on building a sustainable infrastructure?
I doubt it.
A Game of Chess
Lately, we've been flirting with a similar disaster in Cape Town. A couple of dry winters (a Mediterranean climate) left our dams virtually empty, the water eventually sloshing about at the 25 percent mark. This year, good winter rains have pushed levels up to close on 80 percent, but water restrictions are likely to remain in place. Why? Because the inept bastards we trust to plan our futures have not provided for an influx of people that started way back in the 1970s. We don't have enough water, no matter how full the dams.
Our (and the world's) chief problem is overpopulation, globalization and the swift ramping up of resource wars engendered by fast-increasing global inequity. The weather be damned. Should Cape Town experience drought and run out of water, we'll be deserving of relief, but not sympathy. It's a problem we're bringing into being by refusing to push along plans for new dams and the more effective management of our current catchment areas.
More, and like both the weather and globalization, overpopulation's seen us become indifferent to our basic needs. Focused on surviving in crassly commercialized consumer societies, we're too busy chasing money or building monuments to self-interest to worry about our and others' in-the-world problems. In short, we're too concerned with selfish superficialities to heed fundamental social needs.
The result is that, as individuals under threat, we're closing ourselves off and are starting to live in our heads.
The Fire Sermon
The effect, like Hurricane Katrina, can be cataclysmic. Look at Wednesday's Khadimiya Bridge stampede, a preventable tragedy that killed a thousand people a stone's throw from George W. Bush's privatized terror-generator, the Green Zone. Celebrating the eighth-century martyrdom of Shiite Imam Mussa Khadim, thousands of pilgrims (nervous in the wake of earlier deadly mortar attacks and suspecting poison in the food being sold them by vendors) headed under tight security across the Tigris and Baghdad's Al Aema Bridge towards the imam's Khadimiya tomb.
Rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd sparked panic and a stampede. A thousand people, mostly women and children, were crushed, their lives trampled from them by a mob panicked into attempting to outrun their greatest fears. (Three suicide bombers had blown themselves up in the vicinity in preceding days.)
Was the Wednesday pilgrimage unsafe? Was there a bomber on the bridge? Sure but, for the latter, he existed only in the minds of those present. Is it safe or wise to live under the sea in the path of hurricanes? Sure it is, but only if you tell yourself so. However, like the pilgrims of Khadimiya and the survivors of Katrina (would that the media gave Iraq such coverage), you shouldn't be too surprised when your fantasies clash with deadly realities you've chosen to ignore.
And so the Iraqis have been visited by fire from the air—man's stupidity visited on the natural order. And the Americans by water; the natural order wreaking havoc on man's stupidity. It amounts to much the same thing. To those of us left somewhere in the middle is The Burial of the Dead.
Yup. It's human nature and someone will profit from it.
If one day you come across me standing in line, waiting to fill my bucket at the water truck, point me to this post.
What the Thunder Said
"This recovery will take a long time. This recovery will take years."
George W. Bush
And Iraq was going to be an overnight job?
Like a train that stops at every station | We all deal with trials and tribulations | Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years | Entangled in yellow and cries all his tears | Changes come before we can grow | Learn to see them before we're too old | Don't just take me for tryin' to be heavy | Understand, it's time to get ready for the storm
Stevie Ray Vaughan | Couldn't Stand the Weather
