RoadDave

It seems that arrests and apologies dominate this week.

RADAR Online (Jeff Bercovici) NEW YORK  50 Cent is being held at New York’s Midtown South precinct house on West 35th Street after being pulled over for a traffic violation. An officer on the scene told Radar the rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, had been charged with a section 509 violation, driving without a license or with a suspended license.

A crowd of at least 75 people gathered around the precinct house, taking photos of Fiddy’s vehicle, a chrome-finished Lamborghini Murcielago with dealer license plates reading "Unique Auto Sport." Unique’s website features a photo of the rapper posing with the car, worth an estimated $466,000. Officers were trying to keep the traffic-snarling crowds on the opposite side of the street, but one did pause long enough to provide Radar with some color on the arrest:

"He was being an asshole, speeding or some shit. They stopped him and he wouldn’t give up his license. He kept saying, ‘You know who I am. I know you know who I am,’ so they had to lock him up." The officer then turned to a colleague and said, "You believe this mook?"

At least they didn’t Taser him first, like the LA Cops do.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Celebrity Paris Hilton was arrested in Hollywood early on Thursday for suspected drunk driving, but she said the incident had been blown out of proportion and that she may have been speeding to get a late-night burger.

Hilton, 25, the heiress to the Hilton hotel dynasty known for her hard-partying lifestyle, was pulled over by police in Hollywood around 1 a.m. for driving erratically.

She told KIIS-FM radio in an interview on Thursday morning that she had been to a charity fund-raiser party after a long day shooting a music video and had just one margarita.

"I had one margarita (and) was starving because I had not eaten all day," she said. "Maybe I was speeding a little bit and I got pulled over. I was just really hungry and I wanted to have an In-N-Out Burger and get my famous face all over the media as my career is tanking by the hour.  I might have to do another night-vision porno.”

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized on Friday for calling a Latina state lawmaker "very hot" in private remarks obtained by a newspaper — although the legislator herself said she wasn’t offended.

Schwarzenegger made the comment about Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia during a closed-door meeting with members of his staff last spring. A tape recording of the informal session was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, which printed them on its front page.

"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor said of Cubans and Puerto Ricans, according to the paper. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them and together that makes it."

According to the Times, the film star-turned politician was referring to the fiery personalities of Cubans and Puerto Ricans in general and of Garcia in particular.

"Anyone out there that feels offended by those comments, I just want to say I’m sorry," Schwarzenegger said during a news conference. "I apologize because that was not the intention. The fact is that if I would hear those kind of comments in my house, by my kids, I would be upset."

Gov. Schwarenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver, said that “He should talk about hot, he’s got a schvantz on him like a baby’s arm holding an apple in its fist.  But he also knows I’ll cut it off and shove it up his ass if he wants to dip his wick anywhere but my tight little Cape Cod Cooch.”

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA scrubbed Friday’s launch of the space shuttle Atlantis again, this time because of a problem that has bedeviled the space agency before: a faulty fuel tank sensor.

The launch was rescheduled for 11:15 a.m. EDT on Saturday, when NASA will try a fifth time to get Atlantis off the ground and send it to the international space station to resume construction on the orbiting outpost, which has been on hold since the Columbia tragedy 3 1/2 years ago.

Saturday is the last time NASA has to launch Atlantis before it has to go to the back of the line, behind a Russian Soyuz capsule that is slated for liftoff Sept. 18 on a flight to the space station. Both Atlantis and the Soyuz cannot be at the space station at the same time.

ISS Astronauts are now down to one can of Ocean Spray Cranberry Jelly, two boxes of Kraft Dinner and a partially eaten box of Wasa Crispbreads.  Astronaut Michail Bitchakokoff, in a NASA two-way radio interview said he was “So goddam pissed that jets of steam are coming out of my freakin’ head.  Over.”

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I wish I could make this stuff up.

The chief of NATO, General James Jones, says the next few weeks could be decisive for the alliance in the fight against the insurgents in Afghanistan.  Big surprise that, as the Taliban funfest has been heating up from beyond a peace making operation to a balls-out war for the past six months.  Canada is up to its armpits in Afghanistan, with a few thousand boots on the ground getting shot at, killed and wounded.  The most recent casualties were several injured and one killed in a friendly fire incident near Panjwaii.

The call for reinforcements overlooks an elemental feature of the whole Afghanistan/Iraq battle zone:  You can’t hold ground unless you have people on the ground.  This is Tactics 101 and has been true since Roman times.  Unless you have troops in the location, you cannot hold the location. 

This was never more true than in Viet Nam.  The Viet Cong could control vast areas of the south, using the wonderfully effective tool of terror.  The Viet Cong could hold ground with a lightly armed company as the non-combatant civilians were utterly cowed.  The US would get annoyed by this and send in a couple of thousand troops by helicopter.  The troops would patrol aggressively, shooting up everything in sight.  Lines would be drawn on maps in various colour grease pencils, press conferences would be held, body counts taken and more rounds fired off.  A week later, the US troops would helicopter out feeling all victorious.  By the afternoon, the Viet Cong were back in control of the area. 

Afghanistan and Iraq are exactly the same.  You cannot hold ground with an absentee landlord. 

There are two ways to get a population to accept your position.  The first is to terrorize them beyond all possible sense.  Ask any former Soviet-bloc country, like Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia or Poland:  Terror works just fine. 

The second is to have a lot of well-armed troops, visible, all over the place.  Again, ask any former Soviet-bloc country.  Knowing that there were a couple of dozen divisions of armoured troops just the other side of the border with Russia, tends to adjust your attitude as a country.

Since NATO has decided not to pursue Option #1, (thank heavens) that leaves Option #2. 

NATO and the US in their other conflicts have tried to use air power as a way to hold ground.  It didn’t work 1963 through to 1972 until Nixon turned the B-52’s loose and used them as a terror weapon to bomb the snot out of anything that moved.  Total destruction of whole swaths of Ha Noi convinced the North Viet Nam government to come back to the bargaining table.  Only by using air power as a terror weapon can you change anything except narrow areas of landscaping.  Ask Israel about using air power as a terror weapon:  They can explain it just fine. 

Boots on the ground are the only way to bring about change in a vaguely humanitarian way.  The problem is NATO and the US do not have enough boots on the ground.  To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you fight with the army you have, not the army you want.  Except Rumsfeld has had nearly three years to get the army wanted over there and working to adjust some attitudes.

The only way to close down the insurgency in Afghanistan and stop the civil war in Iraq is to put a lot of troops into the area.  We’re talking about units on most street corners, ready and willing to bring all kinds of hell down on anyone dumb enough to fire at them.  This would require, according to some estimates, close to 500,000 troops.  There aren’t enough troops available to do it in Iraq or Afghanistan, which explains General James Jones’ comments.

The US might be able to muster some more if they bring back Selective Service and draft about 100,000 able-bodied citizens.  There is the other issue of how to pay for it, but Dubya and Rumsfeld have proven that they have no shame about racking up the biggest federal deficit ever.  What’s another trillion, right?  Especially when their buddies get a big slice of that pie, those two would do it.

The other contentious issue is the political will to reestablish the Selective Service draft and then actually draft a lot of people into the military.  Wrap it up in the “War on Terror” and that sandwich would be swallowed by the Conservative Right with a big glass of milk.  Needless to say the bulk of draftees wouldn’t be the children of the Republican base, as the college deferment would pop up instantly.  There would also be a draft deferment based on owning more than one cell phone and having five pieces of Abercrombie and Fitch apparel in your closet.  Oh, and being white, wealthy, lazy and from Texas. 

I dare not suggest that mandatory Selective Service for all undocumented aliens wanting citizenship is a solution.  Those swine in DC like Cheney and Rove are vile enough to figure they could make it fly, especially if Halliburton and KBR do the selecting and the initial training for a fee.  I don’t want my name anywhere near that idea and I feel guilty for even having the concept come to mind.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.

Could the US and NATO win in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Nope.  Not with the way things are today.  There are not enough feet in the dirt.  It hasn’t worked in the past.  It won’t work now, even with the most high-tech of high-tech weapons.  Ground is held by armed troops, not computer screens and consultants.  And you can’t improve the current situation until you hold the ground. 

By the way, I define “win” as having the local population confident enough to run their own affairs.  The lights have to be on, the water has to work and there has to be some kind of infrastructure for security that will keep the local market operating so people can buy, sell and grow food.  The rest of it (Full Jeffersonian Democracy bowing to Washington five times a day) is immaterial and will never happen if the people don’t have food, water and a little bit of security.

So, the options in front of us change. 

The first is to put as many feet as possible over there and try to control things long enough for change to happen.  This could take another year or two of deaths, horrific injuries, shattered lives and destruction beyond all sense for everyone involved.  It might even mean a massive military mobilization on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II.  Run by who?  The UN?  Please don’t make me laugh that hard; my lips are chapped and my leg hurts.

The second option is to pack it up and go home.  Pull up the tents, pack up the tanks and say “Thank you for playing.  Good Bye.  Whoever is left alive in six months’ time can call us.”  This means making a difficult moral decision to look at our responsibilities for causing a lot of the madness in the area.

My personal thought is that we may be responsible for half of the insanity.  Remember that Saddam was a US ally, funded and CIA-supported when he was fighting Iran.  The Taliban were our allies, funded and CIA-supported when they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, so the US and by extension the Western World, does have some blame to shoulder. 

I could bring up a lot of oil and politics jiggery-pokery about Hamid Karzi being a former Unocal fixer, Halliburton having their fingers up the arse of  the Iraq State Oil Company as well as ARAMCO from Saudi Arabia and the whole House of Saud being propped up by Big Oil.  But I won’t, as it is too long a post as it also includes monomaniacal American support for Israel and some other stuff that is too disturbing to contemplate or explain.

Iraq and Afghanistan also have to smarten up a goodly bit.  Stop behaving like tribal assholes and remember that you are part of the whole world.  Otherwise the West is going to have to cut you loose to kill each other and live with our guilt over causing it.    

Today Dubya has finally admitted that the Central Intelligence Agency has some high value prisoners in custody at various places around the world.  In an afternoon press conference a fartcatcher for Dubya said that he will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.  It has been rumoured that the CIA was operating what they call “rendition” flights using private aircraft to ship captured Al Qaeda prisoners around the world in a global shell game.

The reason for the off shore jails are simple enough.  If the captured folks, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, were put in American or Department of Defense prisons, the CIA would be forced to play by the commonly accepted rules of international behavior.  Off shore, the CIA can use the rules of “whatever works” to get confessions and information from the persons in question, or the local legal rules, whichever is harsher. 

As an example, Romania has a simple human rights charter:  You Ain’t Got None, Now Shut Up. Consequently the CIA folks could start their questioning with simple concepts like:  “How many of your fingers will I have to cut off with these here bolt cutters before you tell me everything I want to know?” or “Would you like 90 volts or 120 volts applied to your balls in the next 30 seconds?  Concepts like evidence, innocent until proven guilty, rights to legal counsel and the right to not self-incriminate go out the window.  However, Khallid Sheikh Mohammed never gave the people in the World Trade Centre or in the airplanes that crashed into it, a warning that bad things were about to happen, so I am of two minds here.

The interesting part is that Dubya is now admitting that these kinds of things have gone on and are going on.  Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have kept the pressure on the US, resulting in the CIA closing down their little off shore hideaways in Poland and Romania back in December.  Now it is rumoured the detainees are treated to the hospitality of some small Pacific Rim countries and a resort or two in Afghanistan. 

The black-helicopter brigade are all a-twitter about it.  The general plot-line being if the CIA is now being caught at (well, let’s call it what it is) prisoner torture in 2006, how long has it really been going on?  Since the Bay of Pigs?  Since Watergate?  Since the Second World War?  I hate to fan the flames of the black-helicopter fires, but the kidnapping and torture of suspected spies, terrorists and assorted other bad guys has been going at least since the American Revolutionary War. 

My family originally lived in Brockton, Massachusetts and were prosperous textile merchants.  The Smiths were on the boat that followed the Mayflower.  One night a small group of armed and very angry men came to the house and invited the family to leave immediately or die in a horrible fire.  The family, having a lick of sense, packed up what they could carry and headed for Canada the next day, abandoning the textile mill and all their possessions that wouldn’t fit on a wagon.

This happened in 1775.  The original Smith clan were what were called Loyalists.  Upper Canada welcomed them with open arms and they settled in what is now Brockville, Ontario to become drunkards, gamblers, thieves and reprobates. 

During the Second World War, the Allies had a couple of facilities near Liverpool that obtained information from downed German airmen and any spies that were captured.  The methods were, um, effective.  The Germans did the same thing.  So did the Russians, the Japanese and the Americans.  For that matter Canada had a place near Oshawa that was used for all kinds of things including ‘special detention’ facilities.

At least Dubya has admitted it has been going on and now detainees will be treated ‘humanely’.  The out is the pronouncement only applies to those detainees in the custody of the Military.   CIA detainees are excluded and the real number in CIA custody is somewhere from a dozen to two dozen.  Fourteen have been admitted to by Dubya.  As for how many will survive long enough to be turned over to the military is anyone’s guess.  Oooopsie.  There was a terrible accident and, well, you know.  Business as Usual.      

There were two stories that got a vein on the side of my head to pulse today.  The first is a follow up to a RoadDave on the old website a few years ago.  In that old post, I pointed out that voting machines that do not provide for a paper backup record of my choices were evil little pieces of poo.  As our US neighbours go into mid-term elections, my attitude has not changed. 

Diebold, one of the two big names in e-voting machines, selling zillions of them, had their ‘secure’ e-voting machine physically hacked.  The work was performed by two middle-aged women with little or no skills except some understanding of ‘righty-tighty-lefty-loosey’ and an Allen key wrench.  Go to http://www.blackboxvoting.org if you want to see how it is done, as it is so simple as to make you fall over.  The most troubling problem with a physical hack is that the memory card that holds your ‘vote’ can be replaced without a trace. 

I wouldn’t suggest that the Republicans would do that, any more than I would suggest that a sitting President would lie to the American public about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The second vein-throbber for me was this one from ABC News correspondent Brian Ross’ blog: 

“Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life," Pakistani officials tell ABC News.

The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a "peace deal" with the Taliban.

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."

So far, this week, we’ve lost seven Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban who have cut a deal with the Pakistan Army.  To put a fine point on it, Pakistan is not interested in capturing Osama Bin Laden and bringing him to justice.  The Afghan Taliban have proven they don’t give a shit either. 

The US government is not serious about being in Afghanistan or Iraq, as demonstrated by their refusal to commit the number of troops needed to get the job done.  Too much of the budget needed to get an effective number of boots on the ground is being sucked up by Haliburton and the other contractors who look at these occasions as a payday.  They know that Dubya and Cheney will just stand up and say “war on terror, evil-doers, national security, axis of evil’ to distract anyone from looking too closely at the money.

Do remember that, my dear American friends, when you go to vote in a mid-term election on an electronic voting machine that can be fudged in four minutes or less.  The money to pay for the war on terror and that hackable voting machine came out of your pocket.

Steve Irvin, the insanely popular Crocodile Hunter, was killed today off the coast of Australia, by a stingray barb through the heart.  Irvin, 44, was the man who made “Crikey!” a catchphrase and his wide-eyed enthusiasm for all manner of wild and dangerous animals, reptiles, amphibians and fish will not be soon forgotten.

Despite the weirdness of someone deliberately wanting to get that close and personal with animals that would just as soon eat you as let you pet them, Irwin did manage to communicate some of the essential nature of the animal kingdom.  That is as good an epitaph as you can get. 

He was shooting footage for a new series called “Ocean’s Deadliest” for the Animal Planet network in the US.  His death also brings up a small observation:  Animals don’t necessarily like human presence in their environment. 

At best, wild animals tolerate us.  Humans should remember that we are guests when we go into places where undomesticated wildlife has the run of the joint.  As guests that means we don’t leave anything behind except footprints and take out nothing but photos or memories.  

The Walt Disney company is going a step too far.  The Mouse is taking the fingerprints of guests to ensure that those who buy tickets to the Orlando Greedfest are who they say they are.  According to a story on WKMG (www.local6.com) the newest wrinkle in getting into the park is to give up your fingerprints.

To prevent the widespread fraud and resale of Magic Kingdom tickets, you have to tie your identity to the ticket.  In the past, Disney used finger and hand shape recognition to check identity.  Now, the actual fingerprint is taken and, according to the Disney PR fartcatcher, the data is held for 30 days.

Disney, being a technologically advanced company, has developed a reliable, durable fingerprint reader that will scan the digit in less than a second and generate a numerical value to associate the ticket with the human.  After that, all the park has to do is ask for the human’s finger again to ensure that, yes, this human belongs here.  Of course, these readers will be mandatory at each attraction to “ensure security” and to see what attractions are popular, unpopular, over-attended or will be experiencing crowds. 

I’ve had to submit my fingerprints to get various security clearances over the years.  I have no problem with the general concept of a background check for government work and work that might entail material of a secure nature.  I can choose not to apply for those kinds of jobs and the government has reasonable controls over who has access to that information about me.  Those who have access to the nuclear launch codes should be screened extensively; no question there.

The identity of a human for the purposes of conducting day to day business has some value.  Your Driver’s License is proof to the police that you are remotely familiar with the Rules of the Road and have paid the fees and insurance mandated by law to access the privilege of driving a motor vehicle in Ontario.

Your SSN, or SIN number in Canada, is proof that you are entitled to have Social Insurance payments and taxes deducted at source then forwarded to the government on your behalf. 

Your health card number and picture means you are entitled to wait in a lineup in a hospital emergency room. 

Your passport means the Federal government has given you a cursory look, is satisfied that you are a citizen and in the Name of Her Majesty the Queen is asking a foreign government to give you all aid and assistance without let or hinderance.

CostCo wants to see my membership card to ensure that I have paid my membership fee and I should be allowed into the store:  Same with a library card, video rental card or a CAA membership.

For those purposes, I have no problem giving up the data.  It is legal, lawful, reasonable and sensible. 

The rest of the data collection is utterly unwarranted and I refuse to play, as the companies involved are just fishing.

My personal favourite is the request from certain stores for your telephone number along with your signature on a credit card slip.  On more than one occasion I have signed my name as Dirty Sanchez or Avery T. Deacon Harry.  The T stands for Tom.

I’ve also use 613-745-1576 as the phone number.  That phone number is the National Research Council Official Time Signal, by the way.  Call it as often as you’d like.

In every case, the clerk doesn’t give a rats’ ass, as long as there is some kind of squiggle on the slip.  All the credit card company cares about is the physical presence of the card in the reader.

As best as I can determine, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, does not contain high security data of National Security grade, or the launch codes for nuclear war.  As long as my ticket is not counterfeit and I have presented it myself, then I would like admittance.  Disney can choose not to admit me, as that is their right, as long as I get a refund.  I have the right to not buy their ticket in the first place.   

There is no reason why, including the elusive ‘security’ that you should have to give up fingerprints to a commercial organization.  Especially if there are no controls over the database of fingerprints except the lame mouthings of a PR flack who says they ditch the data every month.  If the Department of Homeland Paranoia demands the fingerprint data of all the customers in the Magic Kingdom, then Disney will give it up in less than ten seconds.

The time is coming when you are going to be asked for your fingerprints for even the slightest transaction, if the paranoia preachers have their way.  You can resist this by refusing to give out data that you feel is none of their business. 

The only entity with the right to demand your fingerprints are the police, and then, only if you are charged with a crime and arrested.  Tell the rest of them to stick a finger in their stink if they want some prints.       

The situation in New Orleans had deteriorated to the point where rescuers were not willing to venture out without an armed escort.  The Louisiana National Guard, who lost their headquarters in the flooding, were working at reduced capacity:  A third of their people and gear were in Iraq. 

The 82^nd Airborne and elements of 101^st were tasked to get in and get things working.  They came in force and like any airborne element came with as much support as they could grab, steal, reallocate or creatively manage.  It was loaded on big trucks and it got moving fast.  The key thing the military had with them, aside from food and water was leadership from competent people who were determined to make a difference.

There is the classic clip of General Russell Honore cursing out some National Guard troops in the French Quarter, telling them to “Get that weapon down now!  These are Americans.  Get those goddam weapons down!”  He might look like a camouflage-clad bulldog in a bad mood, but General Honore got it done.   

As the military rolled in, things began to move fast.  People were evacuated.  Food, water, ice and support poured in, despite the streets being flooded.  Order was being restored.  The great migration out of Louisiana started to roll, filling Houston’s old Astrodome and the new Reliant Centre.

The Red Cross appealed for donations and the world responded with money.  The US has bailed out so many other countries in the past that it was touching to see places like Kazakhstan, India, Turkey, Indonesia and even Cuba offer emergency aid.  Canada had their rapid-response DART unit ready to fly on the second day of the disaster.  Everyone was waiting for the invite that never came.

There is the real heartbreak behind it all.  Asking for help.  People and organizations asking for help and not getting a reply.

FEMA was chartered in 1979 by Jimmy Carter after a season of hurricanes that trashed much of the Gulf and Florida.  Before FEMA there were, according PBS’s Frontline, close to two dozen federal agencies that could be involved in a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane.  There was no overall coordination, so FEMA was designed to plan in advance and organize a timely and efficient response.  One their first jobs was the Three Mile Island near-meltdown in Pennsylvania. 

A data point here:  Emergency Planning is not something you pick up in an afternoon at a correspondence course.  Emergency Management is, frankly, a doctorate level of study combined with years of expertise as a front-line EMS, Fire, Police, Military or 911 dispatcher.  The dilettantes and the unskilled are weeded out early.  

There have been some notable blunders.  Hurricane Andrew in 1992 saw thousands of survivors wandering around for several days in the wreckage of their Florida homes and communities, looking for someone, anyone to help.  FEMA under Wallace Stickney, took it in the ear again.  Not that it matters, but Stickney was pals with John Sununu, one time Bush fixer and New Hampshire Governor.  James Lee Witt was head of the Arkansas Emergency Management group under Bill Clinton.  Witt got to head up FEMA and was one of the first FEMA leaders who actually had Emergency Management experience. 

Let’s serve up some blame now.  It is time to get to the point of all these posts.

We’ll start with Blanco and Nagin.  The National Hurricane Centre said it was going to be bad.  Regular folks were evacuating three days before Katrina made landfall.  The oil companies evacuated rigs even earlier.  If those two melon-heads, Blanco and Nagin, hadn’t spent time bickering over who was in charge and who was going to get the credit, more people could have been evacuated from the area.  The levees still would have failed and the city still would have been flooded, but the horrors of the Superdome and the Convention Centre might not nearly have been as long and vicious. 

FEMA.  If Chertoff and Brown had half of a set between them, I’d be amazed.  Neither would push the State or Local idiots to get it in gear.  They sat back and sent emails regarding wardrobe choices.  There was no preparation beyond a cursory call down to alert people that something might happen. 

After the initial hit, neither Brown nor Chertoff pushed as hard as they should or could have to get the military mobilized.  It would have taken one, emphatic phone call to the White House or the Pentagon to get it moving. 

The FEMA bureaucracy kicked into high gear, making sure that things were ordered and made ready, but that final step, actually doing it, was never accomplished.  This way FEMA could blame Nagin and Blanco for not requesting the specific resources, but could cover their asses by saying they had it ready.

Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defence has the authority to stand up the Army for natural disasters.  Rumsfeld was not watching TV that week.  Neither was anyone in the Joint Operations Centre. 

Dubya, being the ‘decisive war President” could order every National Guard and Reg Army person to show up and be ready to move on four hours’ notice.  The Army is a natural choice as response of first resort:  They have the gear, training and transport to work in primitive conditions without infrastructure for long periods of time. 

Everyone was concerned with looking good and not stepping on toes.  There are times when toes must be stepped on and someone has to lead.  Dubya was elected to lead and he didn’t.  Blanco was elected to lead:  She didn’t.  Nagin was elected to lead:  He didn’t

The results of this lack of leadership all down the line was the complete disintegration of an American city, televised live, into our living rooms.  We got to see exactly how broken the whole system was.  The whole system still is broken, based on the industrial-strength screwing people are taking from insurance companies and FEMA.

On the first anniversary of Katrina, nothing much has changed. 

Michael Brown got fired, but he’s back as a pundit and commentator showing no shame whatsoever. 

Ray Nagin got re-elected, which proves that you can fool all of the people all of the time. 

Kathleen Blanco is still the Governor of Louisiana. 

Haley Barbour is still the Governor of Mississippi, but at least he called for an evacuation and had the National Guard up and helping within 24 hours of landfall.  Haley is doing good and his state got hammered worse than New Orleans, except they didn’t get the media coverage.

Michael Chertoff is proving that the Department of Homeland Paranoia is run by fools, egotists and the clueless who are supposed to be protecting the public.    

Then there is Dubya and his endless photo ops promising to fix things.  Dubya is now a punchline to a bad joke:  He has become the Jimmy Carter of the New Millennium.     

Perhaps that is the nicest Hell we can devise for George “Jimmy Carter” Bush. 

We know what real Hell looks like:  The New Orleans Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Centre.

Louisiana and Mississippi are rebuilding, but slowly.  FEMA is promising all kinds of money and assistance, but the streets are still full of rubble.  Insurance companies are dodging their obligations through clever use of fine print, despite posting their best revenues ever this year.  Electricity, sewer, water and phones are coming back, the crews working some mighty overtime.  The Army Corps of Engineers are going around the clock to patch, then upgrade the flood control system.  People are returning. 

The Gulf will never be the same again.  With any luck, the rest of us will never let it happen again either.  

Hurricanes have something called storm surge.  Anything moving that is fifty miles across will have a wake in front of it.  Add wind spinning at more than 150 miles per hour, a whole whack of rain and a storm surge is something even senior legislators can comprehend.

The levee system in New Orleans and the Gulf was designed by the Army Corps of Engineers to handle the anticipated storm surge and power of a Category III hurricane.  Historically, that was the worst that rolled through the area.  The anticipated storm surge was guesstimated to be fourteen feet above sea level.  Consequently, everything was designed for that kind of event. 

There is common sense in those numbers.  As an example, the World Trade Centre towers, designed in the late 60’s, were engineered to take a one time hit from the biggest aircraft of the day, the 707.  Fast forward almost forty years and things are different.  The same holds true with the levee preparations in the Gulf.  The worst experienced was a Category III, therefore engineer and build for that what you know might happen.

There are some folks who are determined to blame the Corps for the levee failures and the general collapse of the whole system of flood protection.  I’m not going to buy that loaf of blame:  The Army Corps of Engineers is funded by the Feds and have suffered all kinds of cutbacks from various governments over the years.  Muddy, messy and hidden from view, infrastructure stuff is not glamorous, vote-garnering super-deluxe projects for the Congress, Senate or White House.  It gets ignored and gets its’ budget cut to ribbons, usually to fund some more visible projects.

After the eyewall of Katrina hit, the storm surge came inland.  Some estimates put the storm surge at 20 feet, or more, above sea level in various areas. 

Twenty feet is, approximately, two storeys high.  Stand in your front yard and look up at the top of your single storey house.  That is around twenty feet.  Water weighs 1 kilogram per liter, or just under 7 pounds per US gallon.  Pile up twenty feet of 1 liter milk cartons.  Do the math, then repeat it hundreds of thousands of times.  You get a number that is, um…much big and heavy, moving forward.  Not good for houses, cars, trucks, trains, oil refineries, apartment buildings, humans or flood walls.

The flood walls actually survived rather well, considering they weren’t designed for that kind of walloping.  However, some did fail, flooding the topographic bowl that describes New Orleans.  Eighty percent of the city was flooded.  Further to the east, Mississippi coastal towns saw huge floating casino barges washed into the downtown streets.  Whole villages were scrubbed away.  Seaside homes simply disappeared along with the cars, trucks, trailers, chickens, cows, pigs, sheds, barns, boats, docks and everything else associated with human habitation.

In the New Orleans Superdome, part of the roof ripped off in the wind.  There was no light, ventilation or water to flush the toilets, as there was no electricity.  There were rumours though.  The rumours ranged from the city is gone completely, completely untouched, completely flooded, partially flooded and everything in between.  The more enjoyable rumours were that looters had already carried off most of the downtown to busses were coming in the next hour to evacuate everyone to Baton Rouge.  None of these rumours were true, but nobody in the area knew it, as they didn’t have access to media beyond basic radio coverage.

The video coming out of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf told the rest of us the real story.  Things were very bad.  There was a lot of flooding.  There was a lot of damage.  This wasn’t a special strange channel that only certain people received.  This was on CNN and the three major networks.  As best I can determine, cable television has come to Washington D.C., which means someone in power, like, oh, the President of the United States, might be able to have one of his aides turn one on and let him look at it.

The day ended.  No more food.  No more water.  No busses.  No medical aid.  No electricity.  No help and no information.  Those who didn’t or couldn’t get to the Superdome or the Convention Centre were confronted with rapidly rising water.  They climbed into the attics or up on the roof as the floodwaters rose.  Helicopters flew as long as light was available, plucking the lucky few off rooftops.  At night, the less flooded areas saw people trying to get by.  There was some crime, as the police was crippled by the flooding too.  A couple of hundred New Orleans Police looked around and said “to hell with it”  They quit on the spot and left.  Those who were left tried to keep some kind of order.

The next day the helicopter rescues continued.  HeliNet, who provide traffic helicopters for television stations, provided wall to wall coverage and commentary for the networks.  Every few minutes a Coast Guard helicopter plucked someone off a roof. 

At the Superdome, nothing changed, except the stench and the rumours.  Over at the Convention Centre, the heat beat down on people clustered on the sidewalk.  The interior of the Convention Centre had become uninhabitable.  There was nobody in charge. 

People looted stores, at first to get water, food and clothing, having lost everything.  Then, looters changed their tactics:  Everything was open to steal.  They stole it.  Luggage, shoes by the dozens, makeup, furniture, electronics, anything and everything was looted. 

The Police, understaffed and unable to cope, tried to keep the most egregious of looting under control.  Except the local police stations were also under water, without power and no way to take in prisoners.  The authorities, including the Feds, promised everything was on the way to help.  Nothing moved.  Another night fell on another day of no food, no water, no help and no information.  The rest of us saw images of dead people floating in the floodwaters.

For two more days this was the situation.  New Orleans became a fourth world city without police, order, or food.  People were terrorized and traumatized by the heat, lack of water, lack of food and absolutely no help from anyone.  Fires started in various buildings.  Everything that could be looted, was looted.  Dead people were parked on the sidewalks, some draped to provide a modicum of dignity in an undignified death. 

Several dozen rapes were reported in the Superdome and the Convention Centre as gangs of thugs, with no hope and no morality did whatever they felt like doing.  Shootings were common.  Human waste piled up in the shelters of last resort.  More people died from exposure and dehydration.  Hospitals tried their best to get their most seriously ill patients evacuated.  The Louis Armstrong Airport had a mobile medical centre set up to handle all kinds of casualties, but nobody was being evacuated in any numbers.

In Mississippi, the survivors came out of shelters or back from high ground and started to pick up what little was left.  There wasn’t much they could do.  Everything that was needed to start the recovery was washed away or flood damaged beyond use.  Like New Orleans, the need was food, water and shelter. 

There was much promising of help, aid and assistance from the Feds.  We all remember the “Brownie, you’re doing a hell of a job” quote from Dubya on the fourth day when he jetted in for a photo op and jetted out as fast as he could.  We also remember his photo op in Mississippi when he conveniently stopped where an African American teen and her mom were pre-staged for another photo op in a sanitized area of Gulfport.  Those of us with good memory cells also remember a man yelling at Dubya during that photo op, pleading for help, until the Secret Service whisked him away.

There were a dozen stories of fleets of trucks of ice, water and food being delayed outside the flood area by FEMA people unsure of how to and where to distribute things.  The US navy sent a hospital ship and FEMA booked a cruise ship to dock in New Orleans to provide emergency housing, but it took more than six days for anything to begin to trickle into the area.

Adult humans can live without food for four or five days, without water for about three days.  At that point there are serious medical consequences to dehydration and lack of food.  The emotional consequences are permanent. 

The media is full of “Katrina – One Year Later” stories right now, as it is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina lambasting the Redneck Riviera.  This gives us a chance to look back at how things went down through the lens of the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise Monday Morning Deity.  To quote New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin “There’s plenty of blame to go around”.  We’re going to deliver a bunch.

To start, we must remember that Katrina was one of many last year, as it was a particularly busy hurricane season.  The US National Hurricane Centre did give New Orleans and Mississippi at least 48 hours warning that they were in the path of badness that was getting meaner by the minute as the storm gathered power in warm Gulf of Mexico water.  The oil companies, with hundreds of rigs in the Gulf, did the wise thing and got the hell out of Dodge when Katrina crossed Cuba.  The rigs were evacuated nearly four days before Katrina landed.  They had the sense to look at the maps and made their own predictions. 

A reasonable number of people looked at the weather map and said “time to go”.  Things looked bad, even to untrained civilians who have sat out several dozen hurricanes.  They loaded the vehicles and got going north, away from the Gulf of Mexico. 

A data point here:  From Galveston, Texas to Tallahassee, Florida, the land is mostly swamp or recovered swamp.  The high point is sea level:  A lot of the land is lower than the Gulf, protected by levees and dikes made by humans.  The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for much of the work.  The Corps is not filled with idiots, but like all humans, they make their best guess, add 20 percent for Murphy’s Law then cross their fingers hoping the science boffins got the numbers right. 

Unfortunately, the state of Louisiana, under Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans under Mayor Ray Nagin, didn’t look too closely at the TV.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, under Michael Chertoff, played in the puddles around the edge of the pond, sending a few emails and ordering up some ice.  Mississippi, under Governor Haley Barbour did start working the evacuation plan, but remember that this area of the US gets tropical storms and hurricanes every year, so complacency is an issue.

There is also the issue of the hierarchy of Federal, State and Local.  The US has a long tradition of the State Government being the one who must ask for assistance from the Feds.  The local mooks must plead their case to the State, who may or may not pass it up to the Feds.  States don’t usually have extensive resources for emergency help.  The State will rely on the National Guard.  The National Guard gets their resources from the Federal Department of Defence.  Now lay the whole Department of Homeland Paranoia/FEMA clusterfuck over top of the situation and you have a group of people spending more time pointing fingers and posturing for the cameras than actually doing anything.

Roughly 24 hours before the hurricane made landfall, Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco finished pissing on each other long enough to pull their heads out of their respective asses and ordered a mandatory evacuation.  New Orleans proper has a population just under 500,000, while the Metro area has a population around 1.4 million.  Gulfport, Mississippi houses about 72,000.  Biloxi, Mississippi, about 50,000 souls.  In round numbers, let`s call it 1.8 million folks who are in the path of badness on either side of the state lines. 

Economically, this area of the US is not in the class of an Atlanta, Boston or Charlotte:  Not everyone has the economic throw weight to pack it up and stay in a hotel in Baton Rouge or Jackson for a couple of weeks.  Not everyone has a car, or a friend with a car.  Some people didn’t want to leave, as they knew that if they did, other folks would steal everything, including things nailed down. 

Then there is the whole issue of domestic pets and how do you transport the family Rover, Fluffy and Nemo.  We’ll have to accept that a percentage of the population is not going to be leaving.  The estimates from a FEMA disaster planning exercise in 2004 were that 100,000 people would not leave the area.  This leaves, best case, 1.7 million people taking the roads out of town. 

Look at a map of the interstate highway system in the Gulf.  Interstate 10 goes from left to right.  I-59 and I-55 go up and down.  The rest are back roads and secondary roads that wind their way around a big lake in the middle, called Lake Pontchartrain.  There are not enough roads out of town, even if all four lanes are used.  Even if Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco conscripted every school bus and driver in the whole state, it wouldn’t have mattered.  The evacuation call was simply too late. 

Stores were swamped by people looking to buy food, water, batteries, diapers, gas and all the other little things that make a life.  Eventually the stores run out and the time runs out.

In large-scale natural disaster planning there comes a point where you have to just hunker in the bunker and let it blow over.  You need to have fire, police, ambulance, medical, power, water and sewer people alive after the event to pick up the pieces.  About four hours before the anticipated landfall, you climb in and bolt the doors shut.  One of those shelters of last resort was the New Orleans Superdome.  The other was the Convention Centre. 

If you invite 50,000 people to come over to your place, you have to find a way to feed them, give them water and provide a reliable way to get rid of the waste products.  Face it, 50,000 people create a lot of waste, even if everyone is neat, orderly, dignified and behaving as supportive and positive as they can.  Now, scare the hell out of 50,000 people and see how they behave.

As people entered the Superdome, the National Guard and the cops were frisking everyone, especially the males.  This takes time and made everyone feel like prisoners.  Lighters were confiscated as they posed a fire risk and naturally, those with guns were treated to handcuffs.  The Superdome did have a supply of water and military Meals Ready to Eat. 

MRE’s are acceptable foods in an emergency and are designed to be eaten cold or hot.  Each box contains a full meal in a retort, or boil-able, bag.  With the accessory pouch you also get instant coffee, whitener, chewing gum, Tabasco sauce, grape drink powder, paper matches and a wet nap.  They even include a chemical no-flame heater pack to warm up the MRE if you want.  So much for patting down the prisoners (sorry, our guests) for lighters and flammables.

The best that can be said about an MRE is that they are edible:  Tabasco is mandatory and wisely included.  MRE’s do have a five-year shelf life and in an emergency they are the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to feed 50,000 people.  One shipping pallet of MRE’s will feed about 500 people, once.  50,000 people takes 100 pallets, or roughly five transport truck loads. 

Three days of MRE’s would be the area taken up by, give or take, 45 tractor trailer loads.  Fill the football field in the Superdome with pallet after pallet of MRE’s to feed the people up in the stands of the Superdome and over at the convention centre for three days.  Of course, this was not done.  Nobody had the foresight, leadership or sheer nerve to make it happen, despite emergency planning exercises and nearly 48 hours notice that Katrina was coming to drill the Gulf right between the eyes.

The storm hit and the first thing that went out was the electricity.  New Orleans has, because it is below sea level, a very high water table.  Several huge industrial pump stations scattered around the city pump water out of the ground and into the canals to keep the city somewhat dry.  These pumps are powered by electricity.  Electricity is used to power pumps for drinking water and sewage systems.  Those pesky electrons also power the cell phone infrastructure, toaster ovens, lights, fans and traffic signals.    

Power being out for a couple of days is part of the planning for any disaster.  Hospitals have generators to keep things going on an emergency basis.  Radio and television stations have their own standby generators.  My highrise apartment has a diesel generator that powers the fire alarm, the rescue lighting system and one elevator.  Businesses in Ontario and Quebec commonly have gas, diesel or propane powered stationary generators wired into the system.  Quite a few rural houses do too.  We learned the “Electricity = Good” lesson in a ferocious ice storm in January of 1998.

Without electricity to run the groundwater pumps, New Orleans started to flood from the torrential rain in Hurricane Katrina:  Flooding, but copeable flooding.  A foot or two in the lowest areas.  It was expected, planned for and one of those things that happens.

Hospitals went over to standby power.  Radio and television stations swapped over too, covering the emergency as best they could.  The national media were live and on the scene.  It played out on our televisions for us and we watched.

More to come.