Monday, September 25, 2017

Let Them Die?

I don't know what's going on in the Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico, but it sounds like something terrible is underway, worse perhaps than the botched Katrina rescue and recovery efforts.

The infrastructure throughout much of the Caribbean and Puerto Rico appears to have been destroyed to the point where there is no electricity, sewage treatment, potable water, and much housing has been flooded, wind-damaged or destroyed completely. This is much much worse than the post-apocalyptic hurricane situation in Florida and Texas. Hospitals are inoperative. There's little or no food available for millions of people.

"Looting" is underway (well, you know who's doing it, so it has to be "looting" rather than scavenging survival supplies.) Desperate measures are being taken by survivors on some islands, as humanitarian efforts appear to be absent or totally inadequate.

Under the circumstances, survivors do what they must, and it isn't always pretty.

There are reports that suggest Puerto Rico is being deliberately neglected by the High and the Mighty in DC, as if to say "let them die." After all, there are too many of "those people" anyway, aren't there?

Much the same was the case in Louisiana after Katrina. Volunteer rescue efforts were organized but not allowed to proceed. Innocent people walking on a bridge were shot and killed by police who then lied about what they had done. Those weren't the only ones killed by New Orleans' "finest." They were on a murder rampage. The lies about what was happening in the Superdome, where thousands of refugees had assembled, were nonstop and some of them are still being told. After all, so many of those who took refuge there were poor and black, and well. You know what that means? Babies are raped and eaten; the dead are stacked like cordwood under the stands; the animals are shitting and pissing everywhere.

Thousands died, to be sure, most of them drowned. Many of the dead were simply left to die.

And here we go again.

Monstrous.



6 comments:

  1. Che,
    Here is what Trump has said about Puerto Rico:

    "[...] US President Donald Trump said Puerto Rico is in 'deep trouble' and that its billions of dollars of debt to Wall Street and banks 'must be dealt with'.

    " 'Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble,' he wrote in a series of posts on Twitter.
    'It's (sic) old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.'

    "Mr Trump did not offer a pathway for dealing with Puerto Rico's debt.
    The US territory, struggling with $US72 billion ($90.6 billion) in debt, filed the biggest government bankruptcy in US history earlier this year. [...]"

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-26/puerto-rico-blackout-seen-from-space-after-hurricane-maria/8987530

    That's his main concern. Of course, PR's "debt" has not been verified or audited; nonetheless, Obama and Congress installed a debt overseer and demanded austerity measures to make whole (and then some) the hedge funds that took the PRan economy down. The Wall Street banks and hedges are getting not only their loan-shark "investment" money back, they are scheduled to make grotesque amounts of interest on these fraudulent schemes.

    The electric grid was privatized and workers laid off. Routine maintenance was cancelled. The hurricane was horrible, but the results did not have to be so dire.

    I think the plan is, yes, exactly, to let the people die. Then the bankers own the island lock, stock and barrel. And that is what they want, the land, which is PR's main asset.

    And Trump's only concern is to make sure the plan continues to be effected.

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    1. Indeed, the continuity of neglect and extraction is striking, as is the contrast between the relief and recovery efforts in Texas and Florida versus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

      I'd say the message is clear.

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  2. Here's one of those things in the category of I Did Not Know This Before Now (on the topic of Puerto Rico):

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/hurricane-puerto-rico-jones-act.html

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    1. Thanks. I kept seeing references to the maritime act of 1920, and then to the Jones Act, but the references were never explained. I had no idea what the deal was. Now I do.

      Isn't that special?

      I understand that as of this morning, Himself refuses to suspend the Jones Act because those people must suffer -- or something.

      It's about as obvious as you could want. But they're sending the hospital ship, after hearing some of the outcry.

      So there's that.

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  3. The ship called the Comfort, is that the one? Apparently Hillary Clinton said something about that the other night in an interview. Probably the current "administration" [sic] didn't know we had such a thing until she said something.

    But Trump says it can't leave where it is for four more days, and the trip from wherever it is to PR is 5 days, so it'll be 9 days until it arrives.

    WTF aren't they just using military helicopters to bring in water, food, cash, etc? Those suckers can carry some serious payload and land anywhere (the airports are too damaged for most planes to land, I read). Shit, we managed to carry huge pallets of cash into Iraq that way - but can't manage to do anything for our own people?

    Trump is an asshole and he's not the only one. Yeah, he said that people in the shipping industry don't want the Act suspended even temporarily. And those guys - hedge funds, large companies, banks, etc. - are his real base. I have maintained all along that if he hadn't been acceptable to them (the actual PTB) he simply never would have won, period. But this is as obvious as lynching people on the street; he/they really just don't care what happens to the people in PR and they WILL let them die.

    Lots of dark matter swirling around, bad juju being created. If humans, particularly American humans, don't get their shit together right quick, karma will demand a righteously heavy price.

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    1. Yup. Apparently the military is now in charge of relief efforts. I suspect they simply assumed command since the Trump regime is manifestly incapable, and Trump himself is embarrassing himself daily. Contradictions are heightened, but oh well.

      Nevertheless, the "logistics" are said to be daunting enough that slow-walking relief will continue.

      We are more or less ruled by a junta; they will do as juntas do, and that will include letting Puerto Ricans die. Trump himself is being irrelevated (what was that NFL Thing really about, after all?)

      The problem of course is that the junta hasn't shown itself particularly competent either.

      We're in a world of hurt, but many don't know it yet.

      Stay sane through the next phase...

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