'Get Off The Fucking Freeway ': The Sinking State Loots its Own Survivors
To tell the truth, I haven't kept up on news reports from New Orleans for precisely the reasons this powerful article cites. God, what an awful, terrifying disaster -- and what an awful, terrifying response to a disaster from all of those in power who had the power to make it less awful but instead refused to act or, in some cases, knowingly made it worse.
2 Comments:
This article, along with this piece in Slate gives a concrete sense to the word "catastrophic" that seems to me to be missing from other coverage. Thanks for pointing it out.
Thank you for the link, Thomas.
This is perhaps an unforgiveably academic -- not to mention shallow -- question, but I can't help asking it: why on earth do people seem so attracted to building cities in unstable/inhospitable places? New Orleans should have been a lake to begin with, San Francisco with its earthquakes, various cities throughout history and in the present day that are built near -- or, worse, on -- active volcanoes . . .
Of course, most such place were settled, I imagine, long before anyone realized how unstable they were . . . but that known geological instability doesn't act a deterrent for an area's growth over time bewilders me -- no less than it bewilders me that I myself have chosen to live in on the most geologically vulnerable cities in the US!
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