Dear colleagues,
I am not sure how many of you have seen the New York Times online section that provides day by day satellite images, maps of New Orleans with flooding, fires, etc. marked, and notes on response.
See http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/2005_HURRICANEKATRINA_GRAPHIC/index_02.html .
Humans are good at ordering disorder, or, at least, going through the ritual motions. This slick graphical display -- and there is no denying it's usefulness -- seems somehow rather futile nonetheless. The city is now almost empty except for occupying troops and stray animals and the dead (no doubt now in the thousands). The genie is out of the bottle.
The U.S. has finally asked Canada, the EU, and NATO for assistance: disaster diplomacy, as Ilan Kelman would say. Cuban doctors are standing buy, and there is an offer of more Venezuelan oil, but that is probably too much for the Bush administration.
Condoleza Rice has vehemently denied that racism played any role in the lack of plans for evacuating New Orleans' poor, predominantly Black population (some 112,000 households known from the U.S. Census to be without private automobiles) and slow response. Well, that's her job in the WHITE house, isn't it?
Ben Wisner
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