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From a Stratfor report circulating around the internet, on the geopolitical significance of the Bush/Katrina disaster:
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States.
Let's go back to the beginning. The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.
Katrina [and the negligent governance of the Bush Administration --tm] has taken out the port -- not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system -- the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.
It follows from this that the port will have to be revived and, one would assume, the city as well. The ports around New Orleans are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by ocean-going vessels. The need for ships to be able to pass each other in the waterways, which narrow to the north, adds to the problem. Besides, the Highway 190 bridge in Baton Rouge blocks the river going north. New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.
New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.
Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.
From the WFMU message board, via bill s:
bill kelly: How about this. Instead of proselytizing and politicizing, we all write a check for an amount of money we can afford and send it to a legitiimate organization equipped to offer some relief for those in need?
fatherflot: Bill,
I love you buddy. I'd take a bullet for you, if it would give you a chance to play one more Chesterfield Kings or Shadows of the Knight 45. And I back you up 100% in your call for people to donate. I did it this morning and I hope every American does the same.
But don't tell me not to "politicize" this. Everything is "political" when it affects the polity. If you have any opinion whatsoever about thousands---maybe tens of thousands---of your fellow citizens dying like pigs in the middle of a major American city while Nero, Jr. dithers and spins and poses for photo-ops and waxes eloquent about the redevelopment opportunities this temporarily difficult situation presents, that opinion is "political."
Did you complain about Republicans "politicizing" Bill Clinton's blowjobs?? Distracting the President from important business like fighting Al Qaeda with utter bullshit? I don't seem to remember that post.
Since 2000, we have been living with the most blatantly, brazenly, ruthlessly "political" ruling elite this nation has ever seen. They have "politicized" everything, from supposedly non-partisan government documents (like the budget, which contains more ruling-elite propaganda than a North Korean newscast) to the fucking phone messages at the Social Security Administration, to the FCC, to 9-11 (the bullhorn photo op, the "hugging the child" photo op, the entire 2004 RNC), to lies about how Jessica Lynch was captured and released, to lies about how Pat Tillman died, to the despicable "mission accomplished" photo-op, to lies about Kerry's war record, to the Terry Schiavo melodrama, to the "purple fingers in solidarity with the Iraqi people" photo op, etc. etc. fucking etc.
Face it: much of the policy of this one-party government has been directed by the "political" calculation of a vicious, soul-dead bastard named Karl Rove who would laugh in your face if you ever suggested there was any such thing as a "non-political" person, place, thing, or event.
No one who voted for or supports this filthy, incompetent batch of robber-baron scumbags can EVER, EVER cry "don't play politics." Nothing is sacred to them---not God, not country, not the flag, not the Constitution, not life, death, war, freedom, liberty, Nothing. It's all fair game for "political" calculation. And you goddamn well know it.
Karma's a bitch: Live by the sword, DIE by the fucking sword.
Steve Gilliard reposted this CNN article contrasting rosy assessments from FEMA and Fatherland Security about New Orleans with statements from people on the ground there. A commenter on Gilliard's blog pointed out that this is not like Iraq with controlled, embedded media--reporters are actually reporting. Part of the reason for this sudden attack of integrity on the part of the coiffed, high paid talking heads is that they feel they can go after local politicians in a way they can't go after the more powerful, vindictive Bush--e.g., Anderson Cooper grilling Mary Landrieu. Also, images of violence and mayhem feed the need of the masses for "good TV." Whatever the reason, word finally seems to be getting out after five years that the Bush Administration is incompetent and racist.