Katrina: failed responsibility, failed response ability.

The latest issue of Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design Journal contains a slew of interesting news related to Katrina and other recent "weather violence." Sterling says:

It's easy to predict the future when all you have to do is predict the past. Every time people in power who deny the Greenhouse get their ass kicked, they always proclaim that nobody could have imagine such a thing. We don't have to "imagine" it, guys. All one has to do is document it. (…) the lede is that climate change has overwhelmed the pretense of civilian capacity. It's not about Bush power versus government power. We don't yet have a society capable of responding to genuine Greenhouse enormities.

Link.

Boing Boing reader oboreruhito tells of a Rita-shuttered newspaper printing again.

The American Press of Lake Charles, LA., is publishing its first paper edition since hurricane Rita struck, from presses in Lafayette, LA. To be handed out free of charge at a selection of locations in and around Lake Charles, the special 12-page edition is presented here in PDF format.

Link.


Also from obereruhito, sent last week just after Rita struck:

These are from a friend in Delcambre doing search-and-rescue, shot by Zack Thomas. Delcambre is about 8 miles from the Gulf Coast and is bordered to the north by a small lake. He reports coffins from graveyards floating in the water, about 500 boats doing volunteer rescues of people trapped in houses. Image 1, 2, 3, and 4 [shown above], a family with their prize-winning pig, just rescued from a flooded house.

Kathryn Cramer says, "An interesting development, politically: at least some of the right is uncomfortable with the militarization of disaster relief. (…) here is the Cato Institute version, as told to CNN: Link."