The California Fires

Some truly outrageous wild fires have been burning through northern California continuing a pattern established over the last several years of drought and then a super-abundance of rain.

We didn't live in the affected areas, but we are certainly familiar with them. Santa Rosa, the Napa Valley, burned areas in Yuba Country (Loma Rica), Mendocino, Nevada County, Calaveras. Oh yes, all of them hold emotional connections either through people we knew or the many places we became familiar with.

They say 23 are dead from the fires, hundreds missing, thousands of homes and other structures destroyed so far, and there is no end in sight. For many, it's an Apocalyptic situation, one that has become all too familiar in this era of climate change.

To be caught up in it is almost impossible to imagine, though we haven't been spared firestorms in our area of Central New Mexico. The backside of the Manzanos burned spectacularly a couple of years ago, dozens of homes burned and many people left refugees. The fire scar is still slashed across the mountains.

When I was a kid, as I've mentioned, I would sit on my back fence and watch the slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains north east of Los Angelesburn almost every year, and one year, the fires came up the east side of the hills by our home, crested the hilltop, and were starting down our  side. Panic ensued, but the fire department arrived just in time to stop the progress of the fires a few hundred yards from the border of the housing development. I did a Google street view tour of the area not too long ago and saw those hills were now covered with houses. I thought, "Uh-oh" but people there didn't and don't much care about the intrinsic hazards of earthquake and fire I think. It just goes with the territory.

I remember my mother was horribly fearful of fire, and I never quite understood it until she told me that when she was just a little girl, three maybe four years old, she witnessed the family home in Indianapolis burn to the ground. She couldn't shake the memory and she was terrified of fire ever afterwards.

I don't have quite that fear of fire, but when she told me what had happened when she was a child, I understood her fear.

These visions of fires in California are disturbing, there's no doubt. Ms Ché is somewhat less disturbed -- more for the animals than the people, whom she refers to as "rich white people" -- which not all of those affected are by any means. But enough of them are that her sympathies can sometimes lie elsewhere.

Is this something like the Trump regime's disinterest in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? I don't know. But for the most part, the "rich white people" affected by the fires in California can and no doubt will  take care of themselves while the poor black and brown folks in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands can't very well, can they?

They were mostly impoverished by colonialism to begin with and have few resources to fall back on. How many of us are actually in the same leaking boat?

I mentioned to someone the other day that we are one, maybe two, catastrophes away from the Apocalypse and there isn't a lot we can do about it.

I'm not into Doom Blogging, but..

It's always darkest before the dawn. Or something.

The Chaos Continues

The Las Vegas Massacre (50-60 dead, 500 some odd wounded so far) has consumed all the oxygen and attention of a confused and frightened media and nation. WTF is it now?

I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay. Oh.

I haven't been to Vegas in many years, but Ms. Ché goes almost every year, sometimes twice or three times a year, and years ago when we would go together, Mandalay Bay was our favorite location. She was there last December, and she went once again in July of this year. When she goes, it's to meet friends from around the country, for the fun of it all and usually for country music concerts.

So.

Here we are witness to the aftermath of yet another mass slaughter by some white guy high up in the tower, shooting seemingly randomly into  folks just going about their business.

Allusions have been made to the UT Austin origin of the phenomenon, Charles Whitman, 1966, etc. How similar this seemed in some ways. Well, no. Not really. But it seems to comfort some observers to see commonalities and parallels with historical events. To place it in context, or so they say.

Because the shooter was a white guy, it's not -- and it can't be -- "terrorism," right? That's the narrative, always: when a white guy does the unspeakable, it's always about a Lone Wolf, almost always someone with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental issues, clearly deranged and exceptional because of it. We should not draw any conclusions about white guys because of it, right?

If a person of color does it, however, of course we can draw conclusions not only about the individual but about his family, society, race and religion. It's obvious as sin, right?

Yes there are commonalities between these shootings and shooters, ones that we probably should be paying more attention to but we don't.

• They almost never go after the High and the Mighty -- the Scalise shooting in DC and the Giffords incident in Arizona are startling exceptions to the rule. One could argue that neither Scalise nor Giffords are particularly high or mighty in any case.
• They almost always target the defenseless rabble going about their ordinary lives, shopping, going to church or the movies, or in this case at an open air concert. 
• It's almost as if these shootings are purposeful and deliberately terroristic, to terrorize and panic the Rabble, to make them fearful and easily managed/manipulated -- by whom, though? And to what object?

This massacre came at a particularly opportune time for the Regime of Chaos emplaced over us. Nothing will be done about gun violence per se, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with the sale and trade of firearms for the pleasure of the masses, but we can be almost certain that this incident of mass murder will be used for some political and practical end benefiting the Regime.

People are already being conditioned to accept a form of military rule, and I've pointed out elsewhere that the Government in DC is effectively that of a military junta. The Generals are in charge of everything that's important, not the Orange Menace. Yet he is the temporary face of the junta, and he is the one who ceded presidential power to them. It was no accident. I think this was gamed out behind the scenes well before the election, and it might have happened if Clinton had assumed the throne.

In other words, a civilian government may not have been salvageable given its own inherent instabilities and disabilities.

Obviously the Generals are playing it by ear. They're not skilled at this. But they do have skills and they are prepared to take over completely -- should the need arise.

They might bumble, but they'd do it.

During the recent hurricanes, the military was given almost free rein to conduct domestic operations in Texas and Florida, and according to reports, their operations were a "stunning success." Despite widespread destruction and devastation from the storm, few people died (and those who did "would have died anyway..."); relief efforts were mostly adequate or more than adequate, and survivors have little but praise for the operations of both civilian and military agencies on behalf of hurricane victims.

That all fell apart with regard to the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands hurricane aftermath. Many-many calls for military intervention were either not heard, or they were deliberately countermanded in DC. By whom? By Daddy Yankee? It's hard to say. More likely, he gave no direction at all. He went golfing instead. Weekend getaway and all that.

This left the Generals on their own, and to say they were flat-footed is an understatement. According to this article at Politico, the military resources for relief and recovery that were operating in Texas and Florida were not re-deployed to the Caribbean. They simply disappeared. 

Thus the chaos and continuing lack of relief on the ground in Puerto Rico that has led to so much recrimination. Now that the military is deployed in the Islands, it's looking somewhat less dire in some areas, but...

Puerto Ricans are well aware that the military can just as easily be an occupation force on behalf of corporate interest no matter what immediate and temporary relief they are able to provide.

Puerto Rico is a humanitarian disaster, but conveniently, there was a mass shooting by some white guy of a lot of other white guys in Las Vegas that takes some of the focus off the disaster in the Islands. The white guy that did the shooting in Las Vegas apparently had access to military grade weapons and used them to effect. The killed and wounded by one civilian have reached unprecedented numbers. Even the military would have trouble matching them without resort to 1000lb bombs.

Dude did a bad-bad thing, but...

He was a white dude shooting at mostly other white dudes (and their women and children) in what would otherwise be seen as a "military" operation -- it's what Our Valiant Troops have been doing in foreign lands for so long we've forgotten when it all began. 

It shouldn't be acceptable abroad, but it is definitely not acceptable at home. It is an invitation to chaos.

Yet another one.

The only force capable of controlling it is the military itself. 

Ergo, don't be surprised if over the next few months the military ("His Generals" according to Trump) take on more and more domestic responsibility and authority. They will be hailed as heroes.

Oh yes, they will...

Daddy Yankee Chaos

This is about Puerto Rico, but...

Billionaires doing their best to help Puerto Rico help billionaires. #Newsbroke pic.twitter.com/xx80874HRF

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 2, 2017

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..."