An employee at a web ser­vices com­pany at New Orleans has a weblog. Appar­ently they’ve man­aged to keep every­thing run­ning with a diesel gen­er­a­tor. There’s a link to a web­cam, but it doesn’t seem to work for me.

New Orleans under water. AT FIRST IT LOOKED AS IF NEW ORLEANS DODGED THE BULLET when Kat­rina weak­ened and shifted her track. But levee breaks have now put most of the city under water — in some places as deep as 20 feet. That’s as high as a two-story build­ing! Some reports say the city is under mar­tial law. Other reports say those reports are wrong. But it appears that the poor slobs forced to take dubi­ous refuge in the Super­dome, are now locked inside, for­bid­den even to go out on a walk­way for fresh air. Note to self: Increase the three-day food sup­ply in the bug-out bag to a full week’s worth. Plan ahead for a non-government refuge if you must flee. Stay out of big cities … Oh, I already know that one. Stay the hell out of big cities …
[Wolfes­blog]

Or if you live in a big city, come up with a plan ahead of time for remain­ing in your home as safely as pos­si­ble. For peo­ple who live in flood-prone areas, it would appear that keep­ing an inflat­able boat in the attic is a good idea.

Dome has hole in roof. The roof of the Super­dome, where thou­sands of New Orleans res­i­dents have sought refuge from the storm, was dam­aged and there are reports of water pour­ing into the building.

Two sec­tions of the roof were miss­ing, about 1 foot wide by 6 feet long. Wit­nesses said rain was com­ing through; peo­ple were moved from a sec­tion of the Dome floor from the 30-yard line to the end zone, up into the con­courses of the build­ing. [The Times-Picayune]

I’d be will­ing to bet that the Gestapo, hav­ing made sure that every­one inside is help­less, is now refus­ing to let them leave.

Law and Dis­or­der. Manda­tory evac­u­a­tions, such as that ordered in New Orleans on Sun­day, are a won­der­ful invi­ta­tion to loot­ers, and they came in droves. Where was the law? “Loot­ing on Tues­day took place in full view of police and National Guard troops.… Loot­ers filled industrial-sized garbage cans with cloth­ing and jew­elry and floated them down the street on bits of ply­wood and insu­la­tion as National Guard lum­bered by.”

Far from pro­tect­ing prop­erty own­ers, they pro­tected loot­ers. “At a drug store on Canal Street just out­side the French Quar­ter, two police offi­cers with pump shot­guns stood guard as work­ers from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel across the street loaded large laun­dry bins full of med­ica­tions, snack foods and bot­tled water… ’ ‘We can com­man­deer what­ever we see fit, what­ever is nec­es­sary to main­tain law.’” [Mises Eco­nom­ics Blog]

New Orleans has a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing the most cor­rupt police in the coun­try, so this isn’t sur­pris­ing. It’s some­thing to keep in mind for any­one who ever receives word of a “manda­tory” evac­u­a­tion, though.

#
Jack Dug­gan at LewRockwell.com -

Super­dome of Shame — on the crim­i­nal delay of refugee entrance
into the Louisiana Super­dome so that they could be searched. [lew]
bq.
Think about it. They can allow in 30,000 scream­ing fans with
fifty-dollar bills and costly NFL tick­ets in their hands in a few
min­utes, but poor black peo­ple flee­ing for their lives, four
hours. Four HOURS!

…

This is the real story of the Louisiana Super­dome. Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina
can cer­tainly destroy the envi­rons of the Louisiana and her
neigh­bor­ing states, but that can all be rebuilt. What will never be
rebuilt is the dig­nity of the poor­est cit­i­zens of that region, since
the gov­ern­ment acted with a greater destruc­tive force than a
hur­ri­cane. The lamp of free­dom has been blown out by force-five
bureau­crats, their syco­phants and their head-embedded media enablers
who will insure that it will never get re-ignited. For our own good,
of course.
[End the War on Free­dom]

The vic­tims of this out­rage should all receive writ­ten apolo­gies and pay­ments for hav­ing to put up with this. The money can come from the salaries and pen­sion funds of every­one involved in search­ing them or giv­ing the orders for it to happen–they won’t be need­ing that money in prison, where they belong.

More police thug­gery. It seems there’s an arti­cle like this in the paper every day. And these are only the instances that get press. In this case, (see here, too)an inno­cent breast­feed­ing woman is tossed around by some cop in front of her… By Ryan McMaken. [LewRockwell.com Blog]

From one of the arti­cles on this case:

bq. “If (the detec­tive) had to spend a day in jail like I did and be scared, not know­ing what’s going to hap­pen, and have her fam­ily cry­ing and wor­ried about her, then I think she would under­stand where I’m com­ing from,” Mer­cedes said.

That sounds like a good idea to me.

It seems that Gmail is expand­ing again–my num­ber of invites has gone up to 100.

I rented Alexan­der over the week­end, and was amazed to find that some­one man­aged to make a movie about one of the most inter­est­ing peo­ple in his­tory tedious. Then at the end I saw “directed by Oliver Stone.” That explained it.

Locker­bie Bomb­ing Evi­dence Faked by CIA /A. August 29, 2005 (off­site) [Cryp­tome]

bq. A FORMER Scot­tish police chief has given lawyers a signed state­ment claim­ing that key evi­dence in the Locker­bie bomb­ing trial was fabricated.

The retired offi­cer — of assis­tant chief con­sta­ble rank or higher — has tes­ti­fied that the CIA planted the tiny frag­ment of cir­cuit board cru­cial in con­vict­ing a Libyan for the 1989 mass mur­der of 270 people.

15-year-old bur­glar shot by South LA woman. From GUNED.COM– A 15-year-old bur­glary sus­pect died Wednes­day, a day after being shot by a woman who told police she returned to her South Los Ange­les home to con­front a tire iron-wielding boy in her house. [FirearmNews.com]

bq. The shoot­ing took place about 8:30 a.m. Tues­day when Mary Ann Tal­ley, 59, returned to her home after her daily walk, police said in a state­ment. When Tal­ley entered her home, a young bur­glar con­fronted her with a tire iron and she shot him with a hand­gun she keeps for protection.

The story doesn’t say (and it prob­a­bly never occurred to the reporter), but it sounds like the lady was (ille­gally) car­ry­ing on her daily walk. Good for her! It’s too bad she had to use it, but it’s bet­ter that she had the means and will to defend her­self than the alternative.