Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, “the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.”

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And you probably didn’t even know we were gone.

This blog uses the Radio UserLand platform. It lives on a notebook computer and publishes to the server. (Other blogs, like WordPress and Movable Type live on the server. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.)

This morning, CounterSpy reported a medium risk spyware infection. It cleaned it, then the PC locked up. Uh oh. I rebooted. Just got the entry screen, then nothing. Damn.

Took it to my pals at CTTSweb (where I also host my websites.) You won’t get Sunday service like I did, but you will get what I got - they fixed it. Restored the Registry back to Thursday, did an XP rebuild from the install CD, downloaded all the updates, and bang, I’m back online. Not many places have their expertise. If you’re in LA and have a serious system problem, call them.

They said CounterSpy, among the highest rated antispyware programs, probably erased some system files trying to kill the infection.  I said, I’m doing everything right, have all the latest programs, what else should I do. They said, you want complete security, turn off the computer, unplug it, and store it in the garage!

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US Senator Mary Landrieu on Dubya’s staged photo op at the 17th levee on Friday.

But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.

Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.

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From Sue:

Blacks, dogs, and foreigners are left to fend for themselves. Babies die in their parent’s arms from illness and heat exhaustion. Pets are ripped away from weeping hurricane victims by soliders and left to starve. Doctors and nurses, who have been hand ventilating the ill at Charity Hospital for days, euthanize their pets in makeshift gas chambers, rather than abandon them.

Now I hear that Bush is sending in the Marines.The Governor of Louisiana gloats that their guns are locked & loaded. The military tells the Red Cross to stay out of New Orleans, and photographers to stop taking pictures. I fear this is Tienamen Square, the sequel. The Chinese shoot symbols of free speech, and the U.S. shoot symbols of the oppressed and impoverished lowest classes? Are the 20,000 remaining in New Orleans no more than rioting prisoners in a makeshift SuperMax? Or are they fellow citizens: families, the elderly, the frail, the impoverished, the stupid, the mentally ill off their meds, the stuck.
 
Three days before the hurricane struck, I was asking Bob how the poor of New Orleans, with neither car, money for gas and lodging, nor a place to go, could possibly evacuate without help. Where were the buses?  Where were the emergency shelters to the North and West? Why did nobody think of security, food, water, port-a-potties? Hasn’t anyone ever heard of a latrine trench and lime?
 
There is no such creature as a “compassionate conservative.” Our government has reneged on its duty to protect and provide for its people. No so-called “faith-based” charity lifted a finger to prevent this tragedy from unfolding in miserable slow motion.
 
The mind that chooses money over life is the mind of a monster. Capitalism has shown its toothy blood-stained smile. Who could believe now that an unrestrained “Free Market” would lead to anything but this … as Adam Smith himself said … every man for himself.

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From Zeni Jardin at Boing Boing whose reporting on New Orleans has been incisive and quite amazing.

An article in the Army Times is referring to American citizens in New Orleans as “the insurgency”.

While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.

Link

Update: Many readers have written in to ask why I find the use of the word “insurgency” alarming in this context. Let’s start with the definition:

an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict

We often hear the term used by military leaders or politicians to refer to armed entities in Iraq and other war zones overseas.

We are talking about fellow American citizens here — in America.

Not insurgents. Not refugees. Not enemies. Americans.

Tell that to the military

Many in New Orleans described nights at the mercy of rapists and murderers. They complained security forces sent to guard them at the city’s convention center were trigger happy and killed innocent people.

“They killed a man here last night,” Steve Banka, 28, told Reuters. “A young lady was being raped and stabbed. And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them, and he jumped up on the truck’s windshield and they shot him dead.”

Shooting an unarmed man who was probably screaming Help indicates the military is treating NOLA like a war zone and everyone is the enemy. They are also banning reporters and photographers from entering the area. This does not bode well for anyone still in the area who wants to get out.

Why is that Sri Lanka, a poor country, successfully helped their citizens during their much worse tsunami - while a vicious civil war was going on, no less (both sides agreed to a cease fire to help the victims) - yet the US wasted days before responding to Katrina, now has hugely over-reacted and appears to be treating anyone in the area as the enemy.

While the whole world is watching.

The mask has dropped. Perhaps now many in the US are beginning to comprehend what other countries have been saying for decades about US occupation and imperialism. Bringing the war home, indeed.

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The idea of $100-a-barrel oil, which was scoffed at as recently as two weeks ago, is now not so far-fetched. And its effect would be substantial.

Other financial wreckage

Will the banks let the mortgages slide for those whose homes are gone?

Will insurance companies actively fight paying claims?

Will the onerous new bankruptcy laws which go into effect next month condemn these new refugees to years of debt with no way out?

You know the answer.

Of course, if thousands of home owners default because they have no home and no income, then banks will fail (or be bailed out by the Feds who can’t afford this, what with all the insane wars already bankrupting the county.)

In a few weeks, we’ll be seeing some seriously cranky refugees, probably millions of them too.

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