New Orleans and "the politics of weather"

Horrible, Biblical scenes from the southern US; combined with a hideous, Wild West approach to property rights. If you've not read them already, China has three excellent posts on Hurricane Katrina at Lenin's Tomb that you need to see (here, here and here). The last, especially: it looks as if IEM, the disaster management "experts" contracted to provide New Orleans' privatised hurricane relief plan are attempting to cover-up their failure to provide anything like a "hurricane relief plan". Or, as China asks, rhetorically, "So, the IEM team's approach isn't to siphon off tax money, spout management shit, provide a demonstrably catastrophically inadequate plan, then fuck off like craven fucking caveworms and hide the evidence when the fucking corpses start piling up?"

If a state government had screwed up this badly, you'd know who to point the finger at. You could perhaps even do something about it: force a resignation, vote someone out of office. But you can bet your last levee that this is exactly the moment at which a grey mist of contracts, sub-clauses and legalese will descend. There's nothing like privatisation for corporate irresponsibility.