The Puerto Rico Thing: Trump's Katrina

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. -- attributed to Mark Twain

 We'll have to wait till the veil lifts to learn what has transpired in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands devastated by the two hurricanes that have passed through so far this year, but a week in to the aftermath it doesn't look good.

Much talk these days that Puerto Rico's lack of relief is the rhyming equivalent of Bush's Katrina.

Yet from the White House -- once they realized there was a problem down there -- we've heard little but happy talk and boasting.

Outside of San Juan, and in parts of San Juan itself, there's been little or in many cases no relief at all. People have no potable water, no food, no electricity, no functioning plumbing, they may have no roofs over their heads, and they have little or no communications with the outside world. They're on their own to manage as best they can -- or to die.

"Help is on the way." But.... It's already been too long, and "help" is either stalled at the San Juan docks, or has only now been deployed to the islands, and won't reach the people for another week or more. Likely more.

The military has apparently taken control of relief efforts, and I saw a report yesterday that an aircraft carrier the USSKearsarge has been sitting off shore since the day after the storm and has been ferrying supplies by helicopter ever since. If true, good. I guess.

Well, what happens to those supplies is something of a mystery, no? Are they pre-positioning for the coming relief-occupation? That's my guess.

Supposedly, 7000 troops have been or will be deployed, along with some 3000 contractors. Their objective, however, remains murky.

Trump has essentially blamed Puerto Rico for its plight, a belief echoed by FEMA, DHS, and other spox, who claim that Puerto Rico didn't "prepare" and there is little local coordination of relief efforts.

The issue is complicated by the fierce austerity regime imposed on the island by the Wall Street vultures who insist on being paid in blood and flesh or money for Puerto Rico's $72 billion debt. Cf: Greece.

Well before the latest hurricanes, the island's infrastructure, never robust, was allowed to deteriorate to the point where much of it simply collapsed. Because there was so little public or private sector money available -- thanks to the extractions of the vultures -- little or nothing could be done to prepare the island for twin hurricanes, and very little or nothing could be prepositioned for relief purposes once the hurricanes passed.

To blame the Puerto Ricans for this situation is outrageous, but that's how the game is played. Almost exactly the same playbook was used in New Orleans after Katrina. It was their fault entirely.

So here we go again, and the regime is whining and complaining that "the media" is unfairly fostering the notion that nothing is being done fast enough to prevent a humanitarian crisis on Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.

"The media" got over its obsession with Trump's NFL tweetstorm over the weekend and began focusing on Puerto Rico only to find a horrible situation on the ground and a total lack of relief for the residents on the interior and very little relief in San Juan. The fact that they reported on this situation was furiously denounced by the White House as undermining "morale" on the island. What nonsense, but there you are. The fact that Puerto Ricans are suffering and are not receiving aid while containers pile up in the port is not to be reported, apparently, as it is not flattering to the regime. Only "good news" is to be reported.

"The media" is reluctant to play along. But we'll see.

They have a way of failing at crucial moments.

Meanwhile the catastrophe worsens.

Katrina was seen as an opportunity by the Disaster Capitalists, and we can assume the same for Puerto Rico and the other devastated islands. Until profits are assured to the capitalist vultures, relief will be slow walked, the point being to get rid of undesirable and surplus brown and black people on the islands, much as poor refugees from Katrina were left to die, and the survivors were hustled out of the region.

New Orleans' population was cut by something like a third.

The disaster capitalists made out like the bandits they are, and most of the poor and black residents have been dispossessed, exiled, and otherwise "disappeared." Win-win, right?

So it goes, and so it is likely to go in Puerto Rico and the islands.

There will be the usual hand wringing objections, but nothing substantive will be done about it.

"It's for the best..."

"From Relief to Resistance..." From The Rockaways and Beyond

 

Something's happening here...

The situation for the victims of The Storm continues to be dismal as winter makes its way into the the vast stretches of despair and destruction along the Eastern Seaboard, particularly in the hard hit coastal areas of New York and New Jersey, where simple official neglect has left the People without electricity, heat, running water, food, clothing, livelihoods or the means and materials to repair their dwellings and businesses... hm, sounds somewhat like the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

What is happening here?

Interestingly "Bloomberg" is blamed for the continuing catastrophe on Staten Island and the Long Island shore, as well as the mess still afflicting parts of Lower Manhattan. It's his fault, not anyone else's, that there is still no coordinated relief effort from his office, his lofty perch, his corner of Paradise. He drops in for occasional inspection tours and then drops out again in order to go in front of the cameras and once again to counsel "patience" and "resilience" and all the rest of it that he has been counseling from day one.

There is still no coordinated relief effort... Electricity is still not on, water is still not flowing, temporary housing is still not being provided, food and clothing are still hard to find or impossible to get through reliance on official resources... People are suffering.

What's happened?

It really wasn't that long ago that public disasters like this were met with coordinated disaster efforts that focused on the public necessities (rescue, food, clothing, shelter, etc.) first, then coordinated infrastructure rebuilding, then restoration of what could be restored, reconstruction of what couldn't. Some semblance of "normal life" was intentionally put back in place almost immediately; the point being to enable survivors of whatever disaster it was to get into a re-building frame of mind as quickly as possible, and to see to it that the rebuilding took place.

Now it seems like none of that even enters the pretty little heads of the Ruling Class, as their first objective seems to be to make it as difficult or impossible for the People to even stay in the affected area, and to provide nothing in terms of "relief" -- so that they will go away on their own. Just leave. Get gone. And don't come back.

Occupy Sandy stepped into the void left by official neglect, and has been providing food and clothing, as well as the means and materials for clearing and rebuilding from almost the moment The Storm moved on.  They've provided generators for power, volunteers for clean up, meeting hubs, coordinated supply efforts, and on and on, while "Bloomberg" and his ever vigilant staff have harassed and threatened them at every turn.

"You can't do this." "It's not your place." "Go away!" "It's not safe!"

Yes, well.

Their answer is "Mutual Aid, Not Charity."

The difference is enormous, and the difference they are making in people's lives is striking.

It's not so much that they are providing for the material well-being of the multitudes of suffering humanity -- though they are -- as it is that they are providing uplift for the spirits of the People, hope, and they are showing how to meet both the challenge of The Storm and the official neglect that left the People so bereft.

They are transforming their efforts from relief to resistance.

Something that happened after Katrina as well, though resistance had something of a different character in those days. The Bush Regime is all but forgotten (except for its precipitation of numerous disasters and its inability to fathom them let alone handle them) and it was Katrina and its aftermath that led to the de-legitimazation of the Bushevik Era. Once de-legitimized by events and bitter experience, they could not recover in the eyes of the People. And now, it's as if they never were...

Such is apparently going to be the fate of "Bloomberg." Of course he can purchase any future he wants out of petty cash, but apart from that, his neglectful response to The Storm is going to be remembered as the precipitating cause of his de-legitimazation. The response of the Occupy Sandy volunteers, on the other hand, will live on as examples of how the People themselves can aid one another.

And so it goes...

The following essay at Waging Nonviolence pretty much sums it up:

The Best Response to Disaster: Go On The Offensive

Illegitimi non carborundum -- as it were.

How Fares Teh Revolution?

The Raiders and Reactionaries are sure throwing one titanic hissy fit over the Debt Ceiling "issue." The Rs have dug in their heels and asserted that there will be no lifting of the debt ceiling on their watch (ie: in the House), no sir, no way, not unless there are massive cuts in the 2012 budget -- approximately cutting a third of total expenditures, with no cuts to the military, in fact, increases to the military.

The only way to do that, of course, is to eliminate Federal programs, shut down agencies, bureaus and whole departments, and have a "Closing, Going Out of Business" sale. The Raiders and Reactionaries would actually require cuts in the neighborhood of 50% to 100% in domestic non-military spending.

THAT is Revolutionary. Even talking about it is wildly Revolutionary. The Markets are threatening dire consequences if there is a Default on Debt obligations, or even if there is consideration of defaulting. The Raiders and Reactionaries are saying there will be no default. But if they get their way, of course there will be a default on Treasuries, just not the ones that bond coupon clippers hold. The default, apparently long planned, is to be on the Social Security and Medicare Treasuries, thus forcing cuts in funding of those programs and forcing additional costs (with no additional income) onto seniors, the disabled and the poor.

Sounds like a plan, eh?

The Democrats, liberals and "progressives" simply wring their hankies and say, "Oh dear, no!" as one draconian Rightist Revolutionary proposal after another is enacted. "Oh dear, no!" is considered a brave and bold (and deeply Realistic) approach to the Revolutionary Demands of the Raiders and Reactionaries, the purpose of which is to preserve what can be preserved of the Status Quo while the Revolution reverts the nation's government to some kind of fantasy of what it was supposed to be had there been no Civil War.

Radical, reactionary, and Revolutionary, all wrapped up into one. And in the Modern World, it's a grossly anachronistic vision.

It's as if there were a revival of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The world has moved on, yet there are former Soviets who pine for the days of Stalin just as there are Americans who pine for the Antebellum Era when Everything Was Beautiful.

Except it wasn't, of course.

The key here is that the world has moved on, and the reversionaries, the reactionaries, the raiders and the (actual) Revolutionaries in our midst -- not from the Left -- don't want to move on because they can't keep up. They see the Past -- or at least their little version of it -- as a fine and permanent space to be in.

If they can only get rid of the devilish 'programs' that force us Forward, what a Paradise it would be! Except it wouldn't be any such thing.

Meanwhile, The Man in the Chair, Mister Brother Harold Camping, Loon, has declared the End of Time to occur tomorrow (well, actually, it begins today in New Zealand with earthquakes and rending the Earth asunder, just you wait).



So what's to worry?

"And shall we take Our Next Call Please, WELcome to Open Forum."

That's all for now!