Tricked you, this isn't a post about sex, that hot, fuckable broad you see to your right or anything titilating.
It's about New Orleans...
Here's an email that I received, please read -- my comments are in Italics at the end.
Please Forward
>
>Notes From Inside New Orleans by Jordan Flaherty Friday, September 2, 2005
>
>I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the apartment
>I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone
>wants to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the
>victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee
>camps.
>
>In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway,
>thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud
>and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily
>armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus would come through, it
>would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the
>barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given
>about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be
>told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas,
>Dallas, or other locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for
>Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in
>Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through
>Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas. If
>you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could
>not come within 17 miles of the camp.
>
>I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation
>Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were
>friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how
>many, where they would go to, or any other information. I spoke to the
>several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able
>to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these
>questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates
>complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess. One cameraman told
>me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only
>information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall. You don't want
>to be here at night."
>
>There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set
>up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to
>get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members,
>special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment
>for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
>
>To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New
>Orleans itself.
>
>For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible,
>glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere
>else in the world. A 70% African-American city where resistance to white
>supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid
>beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians,
>Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New
>Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation
>unlike anywhere else in the world.
>
>It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can
>take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and
>where a community pulls together when someone is in need. It is a city of
>extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state
>and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the
>public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not
>only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.
>
>It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The city of
>New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300
>murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly
>black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted as saying that they don't
>need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a
>shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.
>
>There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of
>Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent months,
>officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to
>theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were
>recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several
>high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of
>Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several
>months.
>
>The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders
>will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per
>child's education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher
>salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop
>out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent
>from school on any given day. Far too many young black men from New
>Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where
>inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die
>in the prison. It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining
>jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.
>
>Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster
>is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence.
>Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the gasoline of cruelty
>and corruption. From the neighborhoods left most at risk, to the treatment
>of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims, this disaster is
>shaped by race.
>
>Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week
>our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence. As
>hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane
>down" to a level two. Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane,
>we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations,
>hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day
>of prayer. As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid
>dependable information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the
>water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors
>spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.
>
>While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to
>get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the local and
>national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As
>someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of
>this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
>
>No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely
>closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just
>what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and politicians talked of
>having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.
>
>Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into
>black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a store that
>will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the
>governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of
>damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a tactic, just as the
>eighties focus on "welfare queens" and "super-predators" obscured the
>simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass
>layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a
>scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.
>
>City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at
>least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to
>New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more
>about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated
>exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently
>refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black,
>city. While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New
>Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the
>city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused
>to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of
>increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers
>rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized
>vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.
>
>The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US
>President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of
>Huey Long.
>
>In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New
>Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the
>city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools,
>cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be "rebuilt and
>revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more
>casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former
>neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.
>
>Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism,
>disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply the damage from
>this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.
>
>Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused on
>Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to
>fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is a special place, and
>we need to fight for its rebirth.
>
>----------------------------------------------- Jordan Flaherty is a union
>organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine (www.leftturn.org). He is
>not planning on moving out of New Orleans.
>
>-----------------------------------------------
>
>Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
>organizations and institutions that will need your support in the coming
>months.
>
>Social Justice: www.jjpl.org www.iftheycanlearn.org www.nolaps.org
>www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/
>www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
>
>Cultural Resources: www.backstreetculturalmuseum.com www.ashecac.org/
>
http://198.66.50.128/gallery/
>www.nolahumanrights.org
>
http://www.freewebs.com/ironrail/
>
http://www.girlgangproductions.com/
>
>Current Info and Resources:
>
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
Okay check it, the Nation-wide disaster that is going to result from the Hurricane ravaging New Orleans is probably the final push this country didn't need into that seriously dangerous political state -- The Empire In Decline... look at every other Empire in decline - Rome, UK, Mexico in the early part of the 20th century, Russia, then the Soviet Union, any African nation post-colonialism, the destruction of the Death Star...
Did you know that the $1billion spent every week in Iraq for the past 2.5 years is effectively wasted money, and Bush's cronies in Haliburton are cleaning up. Surprise, surprise Haliburton has already been given the major contracts to rebuild New Orleans...
Did you also know the Bush diverted funds that were earmarked to bolster the flood control system for New Orleans to the post-miliatry operations in Iraq? More money in the Haliburton's pockets.
See what happens when an Empire is in decline is: the rich engage in snatch-grab tactics to horde the resources, consolidate their wealth and push the middle classes into poverty, and push the lower classes into the grave, jail or into rebel mode.
Usually there is a break-up of the control territories when an Empire Is In Decline. Which means that the Pacific States could easily jump ship, if an egregiously painful economic situation occurred. Such as funnelling money into parts of the country that can't create enough jobs to sustain the disappearing concept of The American Dream, nay the American Way of Life.
Watch what happens with oil and energy prices spike in the coming winter months. And LA, where anything auto related is a box of dynamite waiting to explode, is going to be hit with that gasoline lines. Will there be shootings at the Mobil stations? Firebombing of SUVs?
And we must thank the Bushes, the GOP and anyone who supported Reagan. yeah, it goes back that far. Peanut eating Jimmy Carter has his faults but he was looking for ways to stave of the imperial collapse that is predicated by reliance on the internal combustion engine. Not necessarily reliance on foreign oil, but how that oil is put to use. People trip because oil is directly related to the price of gasoline, but look around your house -- what the fuck is NOT made of plastic? The other major byproduct from petroleum... And why isn't failure to recycle a criminal offense?
Hmm....
) 
