Art and katrina. Thought you might enjoy this one http://vimeo.com/8057642

This is what insurance is for?!?!

Do you remember people in hurricane Katrina that couldn't afford to even get out of town? I mean, they had no means of leaving the area. Poor people. Proper poor people. Do you think insurance was within their grasp?

And even WITH FEMA look at the mess that area is still in.

Its laughable that libertarians think that volunteerism is going to solve everything when there are a plethora of things that need volunteers now and a major shortage in charity.

I am not a "statist" by any means. If anything I am a socialist libertarian. However, all I hear from you libs here is $$$ and freedom freedom freedom. What about actual physical needs of people far less fortunate than yourselves? Proper poor people. Proper disaster victims. Your lack of compassion or understanding of the real world makes me think that you are all closet social darwinists.

dannym3141:

Claiming that people should stop burning fossil fuels would HEAVILY dent the income of just about every country because of how much tax they can charge from it. Britain's economy is almost based on fossil fuel tax. How can you possibly argue that they are a politically influenced source over fossil fuel use when they criticise such a money earner?

Politics aside, fossil fuels remain the cheapest, most abundant source of energy, and new supplies of it are being discovered all the time. I never said people should stop burning them.

I hesitate to even mention that "science" as a global community is above reproach in ways that hardly anything else can be due to the method of a scientist. If you are not performing science for truth and discovery, you are not a scientist, so you're not part of the community anymore. That's why it's above reproach. I'm sure you'll argue with me about that, but i know that you'd argue about the time of day if you were proven to be wrong.

I'm not arguing, but I am astonished you would believe scientists are above politics (and reproach), not because the scientific method is flawed, but because scientists are fallible humans with their own beliefs and interests. As W. Pennypacker said in so many words, governments reward scientists which confirm a pre-determined outcome (like secondhand smoke killing 100 billion people a year). Junk science is real; it may not be everywhere, but it's out there. And not just "the oil companies" which have "scientitians" in their corner.

Another thing, gang. Over the last few years, global warming hysteria has been relentless. It's the alarmists who declared, "The debate is over." There was even one smug a-hole who compared "climate deniers" to Holocaust deniers. Classy! There was the faked data scandal. These are not the actions of scientists confident in their conclusions. Yet the lazy media continues to back the alarmists without question.

100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem:

1. The deaths of Aspen trees in the West
2. Incredible shrinking sheep
3. Caribbean coral deaths
4. Eskimos forced to leave their village
5. Disappearing lake in Chile
6. Early heat wave in Vietnam
7. Malaria and water-borne diseases in Africa
8. Invasion of jellyfish in the Mediterranean
9. Break in the Arctic Ice Shelf
10. Monsoons in India
11. Birds laying their eggs early
12. 160,000 deaths a year
13. 315,000 deaths a year
14. 300,000 deaths a year
15. Decline in snowpack in the West
16. Deaths of walruses in Alaska
17. Hunger in Nepal
18. The appearance of oxygen-starved dead zones in the oceans
19. Surge in fatal shark attacks
20. Increasing number of typhoid cases in the Philippines
21. Boy Scout tornado deaths
22. Rise in asthma and hayfever
23. Duller fall foliage in 2007
24. Floods in Jakarta
25. Radical ecological shift in the North Sea
26. Snowfall in Baghdad
27. Western tree deaths
28. Diminishing desert resources
29. Pine beetles
30. Swedish beetles
31. Severe acne
32. Global conflict
33. Crash of Air France 447
34. Black Hawk Down incident
35. Amphibians breeding earlier
36. Flesh-eating disease
37. Global cooling
38. Bird strikes on US Airways 1549
39. Beer tastes different
40. Cougar attacks in Alberta
41. Suicide of farmers in Australia
42. Squirrels reproduce earlier
43. Monkeys moving to Great Rift Valley in Kenya
44. Confusion of migrating birds
45. Bigger tuna fish
46. Water shortages in Las Vegas
47. Worldwide hunger
48. Longer days
49. Earth spinning faster
50. Gender balance of crocodiles
51. Skin cancer deaths in UK
52. Increase in kidney stones in India
53. Penguin chicks frozen by global warming
54. Deaths of Minnesota moose
55. Increased threat of HIV/AIDS in developing countries
56. Increase of wasps in Alaska
57. Killer stingrays off British coasts
58. All societal collapses since the beginning of time
59. Bigger spiders
60. Increase in size of giant squid
61. Increase of orchids in UK
62. Collapse of gingerbread houses in Sweden
63. Cow infertility
64. Conflict in Darfur
65. Bluetongue outbreak in UK cows
66. Worldwide wars
67. Insomnia of children worried about global warming
68. Anxiety problems for people worried about climate change
69. Migration of cockroaches
70. Taller mountains due to melting glaciers
71. Drowning of four polar bears
72. UFO sightings in the UK
73. Hurricane Katrina
74. Greener mountains in Sweden
75. Decreased maple in maple trees
76. Cold wave in India
77. Worse traffic in LA because immigrants moving north
78. Increase in heart attacks and strokes
79. Rise in insurance premiums
80. Invasion of European species of earthworm in UK
81. Cold spells in Australia
82. Increase in crime
83. Boiling oceans
84. Grizzly deaths
85. Dengue fever
86. Lack of monsoons
87. Caterpillars devouring 45 towns in Liberia
88. Acid rain recovery
89. Global wheat shortage; food price hikes
90. Extinction of 13 species in Bangladesh
91. Changes in swan migration patterns in Siberia
92. The early arrival of Turkey’s endangered caretta carettas
93. Radical North Sea shift
94. Heroin addiction
95. Plant species climbing up mountains
96. Deadly fires in Australia
97. Droughts in Australia
98. The demise of California’s agriculture by the end of the century
99. Tsunami in South East Asia
100. Fashion victim: the death of the winter wardrobe


Do you really expect free people to surrender to THIS?

>> ^goemon:

@SDGundamX Thanks for the additional background check on the video.
So, do you think the Japanese government is doing all it can to inform and protect their citizens?


I see little evidence of some big cover-up going on, as some have suggested. But there are clearly lots of mistakes being made. I would compare it to Katrina in the U.S. because it seems like the same kinds of difficulties are being faced--slow response times, bureaucratic management issues, lack of a clear plan, etc. The current political situation in Japan (Kan is currently a lame duck Prime Minister who refuses to step down) makes getting anything done extremely hard. Complicating matters even more is the fact that Tokyo Electric is a private company and not government-owned and they apparently aren't coordinating that well with the government in formulating a response, which sometimes results in press conferences where Tokyo Electric says one thing only to be completely contradicted by a Japanese government official in a subsequent press conference.

Certainly Fukushima residents have lots to complain about. For example, in the full version of the meeting, the government officials get asked if the government is taking into account internal radiation exposure (from inhaling or ingesting radioactive materials like Cesium) when determining "safe" radiation exposure levels (currently set at 20 mSv/year for Fukushima residents outside the mandatory evacuation zone). It's a great question. The government's response was along the lines that they are still investigating the issue, but that it is complicated by the fact that there's lots of research on "safe" external exposure levels but not nearly as much on internal exposure levels to the the types of materials (Cesium-137, for instance) that were released in the accident. That makes it difficult to determine a "safe" limit. Clearly that's not an answer that's going to put any Fukushima resident's mind at ease.

EDIT:

Just wanted to add that I give props to the government guys who showed up for this meeting. If you watch the 2.5 hour vid, you'll see they calmly put up with all of the interruptions and try their best to honestly answer the questions posed to them. Many of them show sincere sympathy to the people gathered there and express their understanding of the frustration they are facing. They look like they actually came expecting a dialogue rather than an inquisition. I probably would have walked out after the 1st hour but they remain until the very end of the meeting. The vid posted here makes it seem like they abruptly left but in the full version you can see the person who is chairing/MC'ing the meeting thanks them for coming and concludes the meeting. It was after the conclusion of the meeting that the urine-chasers appeared.

@marbles

-Yes, Ron Paul is naive when it comes to economics, by putting his faith in neo-liberal doctrinal scripture that has no evidence to support it, nor any basis in the reality of a modern economy. The fact that he believes capitalism to be the embodiment of liberty is the root of this naivety.

Privatization, deregulation, international 'free' trade agreements and austerity -all principles of neo-liberal thought- have caused the lion share of our current economic woes: massive income disparity, high unemployment, wage slavery, inflation, labor abuse, war profiteering, eroding of civil rights, the death of many a small business, massive corruption, environmental harm, etc. Think of all the major economic scandals of the last few decades - The Saving and Loan Scandal, The Foreclosure scandal, Enron, the oil spills, Katrina (the aftermath, not the weather event), etc. All of them are the result of deregulation. I know that government interference is a big boogey man to the capitalist libertarian set, but every single one of these scandals could have been prevented with proper regulation and/or proper oversight.

-Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but Ron Paul does play the game, and he is a part of the two party system.
Check out the damage control here: http://videosift.com/search?q=ron+paul+earmarks

-If you remember 4 years ago, people were saying the same things about Obama that you are saying about Ron Paul today - that he is the answer to all our problems - but then he moved into the White House and was forced to abandon or compromise nearly all of his promises. I warn you against political hero worship. No matter how much you like the guy, no matter how much grandfatherly charm he exudes, he is still a politician who must play by the rules of the broken system.

I could be wrong, and these comments will be here next year to rub in my face in the off chance that America is transformed into Galt Island.

As Sammy Hagar once said in his infinite wisdom, "Only time will tell if we can stand the test of time."

>> ^smooman:

wow, so she's the hipster of nerds?


Nerd has become a bit of a buzzword these days. Doesn't mean what it used to mean at all.

I'm with her on the reaction: I don't like bro-gamers and jocks calling themselves "nerds" or "gamers" just because they play Call of Duty.

http://www.hacer.org/chile/?p=22

Naomi Klein’s disastrous yet popular polemic against the great free market economist.

In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is a risk that they will ask you why you support dictatorships, torture, and corporate welfare. The reason for the confusion will be Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

In a very short time, the book has become a 21st-century bible for anticapitalists. It has also drawn praise from mainstream reviewers: “There are very few books that really help us understand the present,” gushed The Guardian. “The Shock Doctrine is one of those books.” Writing in The New York Times, the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called it “a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries."

Klein’s basic argument is that economic liberalization is so unpopular that it can only win through deception or coercion. In particular, it relies on crises. During a natural disaster, a war, or a military coup, people are disoriented, confused, and preoccupied with their own immediate survival, allowing regimes to liberalize trade, to privatize, and to reduce public spending with little opposition. According to Klein, “neoliberal” economists have welcomed Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asian tsunami, the Iraq war, and the South American military coups of the 1970s as opportunities to introduce radical free market policies. The chief villain in her story is Milton Friedman, the economist who did more than anyone in the 20th century to popularize free market ideas.

To make her case, Klein exaggerates the market reforms in question, often ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She confuses libertarianism with the quite different concepts of corporatism and neoconservatism. And she subjects Milton Friedman to one of the most malevolent distortions of a thinker’s ideas in recent history.

Now its going to be Japan aid, every year something like this happens, Haiti, Katrina, Sri Lanka etc..

Their infrastructure is going to be raped once this is over and done with.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'hbo, treme, john, goodman, george, bush, katrina, hurricaine' to 'hbo, treme, john, goodman, george, bush, katrina, hurricane' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Tour, abandoned, new orleans, louisiana, six flags, hurricane katrina' to 'abandoned, new orleans, six flags, hurricane katrina, godspeed you black emperor' - edited by xxovercastxx

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Tour, abandoned, new orleans, louisiana, six flags' to 'Tour, abandoned, new orleans, louisiana, six flags, hurricane katrina' - edited by xxovercastxx

The video became *dead as I was watching it. Godspeed You! Black Emperor would absolutely be my default choice for a post apocalyptic (or post Katrina) score.

>> ^ant:

Wow, Six Flags never recovered this one?


Six Flags? Hell, NEW ORLEANS hasn't recovered. They had almost 500,000 people pre-Katrina. It's taken 5 years to get back above 300,000. 200,000 is a lot of rollercoaster rides.

Closed for Katrina, Re-opened for the zombie appocalypse.

I remember.

I remember the levees that broke during Katrina was the fault of the state for not spending the necessary money. I remember that that state is a Democrat controlled state for the last 30 or so years. I remember school buses sitting still and not evacuating the population. I remember that the Democratic mayor made that decision.

I remember the Bush's deficit spending. You can thank Bush II for turning a lot of people into Independents.

I remember Obama 18 months of deficit spending being nearly as much as Bushes last 8 years. I remember.


You can Thank Obama for turning Bushes Independents solidifying into the Tea Party

I'll remember to thank Obama for doing such a great job when the American people thumb their noses at the Democrat party during tomorrows vote.



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