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September 9, 2005
Alaskan in Exile
by Neil Zawicki

    I’m off watch now. For the past six hours, however, I’ve been steering Other Woman on a general course 210 degrees south by southwest. The wind held steady at around 30 knots for most of the time, and now the sun is an orange band across the horizon. There is nothing but ocean. It breathes and swells and glimmers indifferent in every direction. Two flying fish hurdled our bow a few hours ago, and an albatross hovers above the mast.

    Our satellite uplink allows me to file weekly dispatches to Insurgent Headquarters - into the capable hands of a chain-smoking and sardonic hallway-pacing editor.

    The uplink also allows incoming news, and the word from New Orleans made it especially strong to watch the mainland vanish to the east two days ago. We hear it took a little while, to say the least, for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get a handle on the situation, and that corpses were left in the streets, and that women were raped and mothers with babies had to live among death and desperation.

     The city collapsed into a lawless and chaotic fear cauldron almost instantly, and then our president sent Division-strength troops to take hold once again. Finally, a massive airlift took throngs of stunned, filthy, hungry survivors away. But these measures apparently were options three and four in a seemingly half-hearted reaction to the double disaster: first the hurricane, then the flood.

    Maybe the circumstance seems different, way out here on the ocean, but these are the three thoughts that resonated loudest on our little boat:

    A: Why did Bush hang out at a fund-raiser in San Diego after getting word of the flooding, and in the process end up in a photograph playing the guitar?

    B: If Malibu Beach were hit by a hurricane and subsequent flood, would there be thousands of stranded and dying victims?

    C:  Why are some people expressing outrage that this could happen in America?

    The final question is hardest to swallow for me. Sure, our president acts like a child who doesn’t want to eat his broccoli every time he has to deal with surprises from the real world, so his limp reaction was at best not remarkable. And no kidding that he and his people would not leap from the bleachers to help the impoverished minority hurricane victims, but what strain of arrogance leads people to wonder “how this can happen in America?” It is as if they are saying, “hardship and poor planning is a thing that happens ‘out there,’ but not in our shining society.”

    Yes. This type of thing happens in America. Last I checked, New Orleans is the first real test for FEMA. It is a genuine “worst case scenario” disaster. Mount Saint Helens, the Northridge Earthquake and 9/11 are the events I can reference at sea, without real research. While huge, each of those was rather specific. St. Helens affected mostly vast countryside, not a major metropolitan area. Northridge was an earthquake in California, so it was arguably a standard drill for FEMA. And 9/11 was one event, in one place, with basically one result. But Hurricane Katrina, in my view, is the classic event disaster relief professionals supposedly train for. I know this because when I was a bright-eyed American boy, I trained for disaster relief with the Civil Air Patrol, and participated in drills and exercises. The emphasis was on the worst possible situation, and the idea, like that of the military, is for disaster relief personnel to be able to jump into their boots and go, having trained and considered what to do for years. In contrast, PR flacks said things like, “Hey, this is a disaster, it’s not an easy thing to do.” Or, like the Navy PR lackey that when asked why the Navy took several days to mount any real response, laid that amazing line on the press about how “it’s more effective to plan carefully than to just rush in with people and equipment.”

    Given that logic, the next time there’s a house fire, I think the fire department should take their time, pick the best hoses, locate their shiniest boots and reddest suspenders, and then carefully make their way to the fire. That would be better than just running in there willy-nilly trying to save people. After all, the last thing we want in an emergency is urgency.

    Did that rhyme? Oh well, I’ve been sailing a boat for the past six hours.

    Some Democratic senators are suggesting the levees in New Orleans would not have failed if the Army Corps of Engineers had the funding they needed to build and maintain them properly – funding that is currently being pissed away in Iraq. Others are calling for an inquiry into the administration’s and FEMA’s handling of the disaster, and now even Bill O’Reilly has spoken out against the president. Bill never rails against our president, because he knows that if he does, he could lose his parking spot at Fox News headquarters, Rupert Murdoch will not invite him to anymore opulent dinner parties that play host to Sean Connery, Terri Garr and certain members of the cast of Mannix, and he will also receive 432 volts of household electricity straight through the seat of his 100 percent Corinthian leather anchorman’s high-back chair, which was given to him as a gift by the head of the U.S. Secret Service in March of 2002. It’s all spelled out in his contract.

    Yes sir, these are heady times.

     In a shallow attempt to remove himself from the interrogator’s lamp, Bush has offered to lead the inquiry. I think all thinking Americans, and even a couple blank headed, TV-watching Wal-Mart enthusiasts understand that a move like that just won’t make the nut. That’s like offering to search your own car when a police officer asks to look through it for illegal or questionable items.

    Perhaps the New Orleans disaster will blow the Iraq War and other administration pet projects wide open, and maybe now, even the most dull-eyed of Bush supporters will turn-to. And maybe then, our president will reluctantly and finally eat his broccoli.




Neil Zawicki, exiled Alaskan, is Editor at Large for Insurgent49, a former reporter for the Alaska Star, and winner of the Alaska Press Club's 'Best Columnist' award. He is now living out the rest of his days in an undisclosed location in Oregon. He can be contacted at -  neil@insurgent49.com
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





- also by this writer -
Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.