And this AP story run by Dow Jones:
NEW ORLEANS (AP)–The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has been inadequate, the head of New Orleans’ emergency operations said Thursday.
“This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control,” said Terry Ebbert, speaking near the Superdome. “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans. We have got a mayor who has been pushing and asking but we’re not getting supplies.”
He said the evacuation was almost entirely a Louisiana operation. “This is not a FEMA operation. I haven’t seen a single FEMA guy.”
No, and you won’t, either. Empires are about bossing, managing, forcing, coercing, bombing, killing, and dominating. Not about helping or assisting. FEMA doesn’t exist to help in a crisis; FEMA exists to take charge in a crisis. Not quite the same thing.
It doesn’t matter, either, whether we’re talking about “our own people” or not. Empires have no citizens, only subjects, and all are to be ruled and managed by the elite. The elite might be open to any and all comers who accept the ruling imperial ideology, but the rest us — American, Iraqi, whatever — we’re just cattle, resources to be moved, branded, and used as necessary.
And disposed of when inconvenient.
1:01 pm on September 1, 2005
