'These authorities always have their guns at the ready and look like they're enjoying intimidating the people' posted by Richard Seymour

That's according to Michael Barnett, former Special Forces soldier who is now holed up on the tenth floor of a building in New Orleans (via):

If you watch the cam or walk the streets, you see that almost every civilian is approached, evaluated for threat potential, then either patted down or left alone. The disconcerting thing is that these authorities always have their guns at the ready and look like they're enjoying intimidating the people. Two of us have already had guns aimed at us by police.

The abiding hallmark of the handling of this situation has been a noxious combination of incompetence, indifference and authoritarianism. From martial law to road blocks which prevent residents from leaving to forced evacuations, it has been all sticks and no carrots (excepting any you might manage to loot). They prevented the Red Cross from entering New Orleans, but mercenaries were waved in without the slightest flutter of an eyelid. New Orleans' French Quarter was transformed into a "militarised zone". Scratch that. New Orleans tout court has become a war zone, or if you prefer - as does Brigadier General Gary Jones - a "little Somalia"

Pause for a second. The reason Red Cross was not allowed to enter New Orleans, the government said, was because it would discourage people from leaving. Yet, they set up a roadblock on the only accessible highway out of there and turned people back. What swift, supple, Rumsfeldian logic underlies this policy, I wonder? Africa watches, and has some thoughts on the matter.

Whatever the answer, the somnambulist Federal Emergency Management Agency is so mortally ashamed of itself that it is blocking photos of the dead from appearing in the media. Where, I wonder, did they get that idea from?