New Orleans: built on exploitation; destroyed by policy. posted by Richard Seymour

A couple of decent articles on the background to the New Orleans catastrophe:

A city built on brutal exploitation. Historian Brian Kelly looks at New Orleans' history of oppression.

Hurricane will be used to drive out the black poor. By Mike Davis, one of my favourite authors and an excellent writer on the interaction between policy, economy and environmental change.

Finally, from Democracy Now, a clip from that show in which everyone saw Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard break down and cry over the lack of assistance:

AARON BROUSSARD: Three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines."

[Update]. Associated Press have discovered a memo which shows that FEMA delayed on requesting aid. The memo also tells employees that part of their job is to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public." That's worked out pretty well, hasn't it?

Some guys reckon this is all a jack, or even ethnic cleansing. Let me put it as circumspectly as I can - the government is culpable, and not just for incompetence. Others call it "Hobbesian disorder" and "rape" - not inflicted by the government, you understand, but by the black population, its "underclass" who need healing - who was it that remarked on the connection between Hobbesian anarchy and non-whites in the racist imaginary?