Sonic 'Lasers' to be Deployed in Hurricane Region 619
MacDork writes "Wired News is running an article about high powered acoustic technology to be deployed in the hurricane Katrina disaster recovery. Apparently, the technology will allow authorities to communicate with others up to a mile away along with providing a non-lethal means of crowd control. No word on additional busses and shelters..."
What a horrible mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
*sigh*
I am having a hard time with this one. I think the camel's back was broken sometime last week. What person in their right mind would decide that shooting out the eardrums of an already broken people would be of any tactical use at all?
What a clusterfuck NOLA has become. Buncha dimwit politicians can't wrap their heads around the value of human life, the need for expidited aid for refugees (and how not to treat a refugee like a criminal), so they figure it's best to simply treat it as a run-of-the-mill race-riot.
Good luck with that situation, Uncle Sam, you're gonna need all the luck you can get at this point.
With the response thus far, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole south broke into complete chaos. Might not happen this time, but the water is starting to boil, as is the blood of every American, uniformly.
Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't (or didn't) need high-tech toys to control the crowds. Simple, common-sense, things like on-going airdrops of food and water, combined with convoys of buses, and temporary shelters at schools, etc, would have prevented major losses of life in this fiasco.
Sure, news photos of helicopters rescuing people look cool, but helicopters are 100 times as expensive as simple, tried and true tech like small boats.
We had advanced warning (36+ hours) that this was going to happen. Where were FEMA, the NG, Homeland Security, etc?
I'm disgusted and depressed at the bureaucratic mess that allowed this situation to get so out of hand.
May seem unneeded and cruel.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The government *is* doing what it can, which isn't much really, the city is flooded, and we're trying to fly as many people out as we can, but in the meantime, we need some order, and a nonlethal method of maintaining order seems very appropriate.
well (Score:3, Insightful)
Tragedies (Score:3, Insightful)
What is surprising is that this is actually news to people. This situation regarding the class divide and the racial divide has been a reality in America for hundreds of years and it takes something like this for people to wake up.
What is happening down in New Orleans right now is a tragedy of the highest order. But lesser tragedies of a similar nature occur in all major cities in the United States every single day. The fact that nobody normally bothers to care about such things and are generally ill-informed about them is, perhaps, the greatest tragedy of all.
To me, the people still stuck down in New Orleans represent everybody that America would just as soon forget. Shame on us all. And let us not forget from now on.
Buses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why are they sitting half submerged in water [junkyardblog.net]?
Oh yeah, it's all Bush's fault.
Wrong emphasis (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy enough for the US to get thousand pound bombs to Iraq, but saving people in its own country seems to take a back seat. Why not use all that money, and technology for good, and help the poor, the elderly, the pregnant, the disabled.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:5, Insightful)
br I'm quite content actually.
That is because you are not really American. Yes, you maybe do live in the US of A and have a house and a car or two and speak English and even have an American passport. Still, if your blood is not boiling at this you are not American. As in: you do not subscribe to the American values. That old, "quaint", Constitution of yours goes:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America".
But don't listen to me, a foreigner that I am, Ben Franklin said it better: "We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
And if what is going on in the South is to your "content", separately you will hang, indeed.
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:1, Insightful)
They did neither.
FEMA was there, and the police under the mayor never told them where to send the food. FEMA provides resources, but they are still under the direction of the local authorities. The local authorities are the ones in charge on the ground. Instead of being in charge and leading this situation they were on TV whining that the Republican administration in washington wasn't doing enough. Once again the liberals (both the mayor and governor are democrats) will exploit any tragedy for their own political gain, at the expense of suffering people. Shows how caring they really are most of the time. They only care when its politically helpful, and they don't care when not caring is politically helpful. Just typical of them.
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the people who didn't want to leave for any reason would have made great photo-ops displaying the cruelty and racism of the Bush Administration, for displacing poor blacks from their homes.
The point is, the current administration can do nothing right, and will always be painted with evil motives, no matter what. Most Americans are sick of hearing it, but until the ClintonII administration takes office, that's all we will hear. That's why I've turned the news off.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
The civil war is coming. Natural disasters are getting worse (a possible raise in the level of Hurricanes to 6?) and oil prices are rising.
We have an administration in place that has questionable tactics and a family tradition to uphold. It's becoming more of a royal family than our traditional view of the Presidency.
It's very possible that continuous war, raising inflation, and declining rights combined with natural disasters and oil prices may end up causing civil war.
I'm scared.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the tourists? Flights were suddenly cancelled without warning. All of the taxi drivers fled. Were they supposed to try to walk out in the hurricane?
The "few" in hospitals were actually many thousands. The kids that you mention outnumber adults. Those in retirement homes, those guarding critical facilities (like prisons), etc - how the heck were they supposed to leave without an organized evacuation plan?
Very few people are actually "stealing TVs" and "shooting at the police". There were 200,000 or so people left behind in the city - how many do you think were doing this sort of stuff? 100? 500? Read some reports from the people that are actually on the streets - it's amazing how self sacrificing so many of the people are being, even people that you would often view as "ghetto thugs". People dressed like gang members rounding up the neighborhood to get them into boats, people who look to be in their 70s searching houses, etc. It's a testament to humanity more than anything else.
Back to the looting: I've seen about a hundred pictures of people either looting or carrying looted goods. I've not seen a single "big screen TV". I've seen a lot of food, water, diapers, etc. The worst pictures I've seen were couple bottles of alcohol, and even that was *anything* but representative. If you want a broad range of pictures, check out Yahoo's news picture site - they gather pictures from any online news reports that they can find, so you get the whole spectrum.
Really, more than anything, you sound like you're just looking for an *excuse* to be racist.
Re:Bus Report (Score:3, Insightful)
the people that matter were already out of there.
that's also the reason why more resources are spent on protecting property and chasing "looters" than actually helping people.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:2, Insightful)
anyone trying to score poliltical points in either direction on the back of this disaster should be taken out back for summary execution.
I guess you'll be starting the shooting any time now. I think your understanding of "political" is flawed. It was politics that led to the destruction of the Mississippi. It was politics that led to the destruction of the wetlands, and the idiotic construction right in the most dangerous areas. It was politics to dig canals right through New Orleans, thus dramatically increasing the risk of broken levees. It's certainly politics to propose the killings of people for saying something with which you disagree.
For people to speak out about incompetence, indifference, and horrible decisions is entirely proper. Politics is life.
Re:Bus Report (Score:2, Insightful)
A large percentage of those people down there really had no way to get out but walk, and so chose to stay. Yes we should have tried getting all the busses and such there sooner, but I think in all reality we're doing as much as we can.
Sadly there are cases of people shooting at the relief helicopters and looting in a time like this. With relief on the way some of these people are looting guns leaving the food and shooting at the people there to help.
Then with the news coming out about the forced rape situations down in the Dome, I'm starting to wonder if a small minority of stupid people is ruining the press for this.
Its sad to think, but it may be possible with all this bad publicity, and the cries that we're doing nothing may end up becoming a self-fullfilling prophecy.
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, this is simply fucking ridiculous.
Step one:
Get a bunch of school buses. This should be easy as hell. There's probably over two hundred just in my county (although I'm not nearby).
Step two:
Put food on the buses and drive the to New Orleans. This should take ONE DAY.
Step three:
Drop off the food and put fifty people on each bus.
Step four:
Drive the buses out to somewhere with food and water.
BAM! You're done.
I see this taking a MAXIMUM of three to four days. And that's if we had NO WARNING, which isn't the case here.
Re:Relying on government (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First up, the mayor (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree with you here in the sense that blame goes to the cult of extreme selfishness and disdain for everything "common" or "public" which the neo-cons with the help of libertarians have been instilling in the American public for a few decades now. The result are cowering, frightened local government who consult with lawyers for days before declaring mandatory evacuation because they are afraid of "lawsuits by the casino and hotel owners". Then comes fright of lawsuits by citizens if they are forced to leave on buses. And then there is cost. FEMA is now under these people a "charity coordinator". Dont expect a "charity coordinator" to pre-emptively force an evacuation. And so on and so forth. Weak, and attuned to the rich exclusively, government is the source of all of this. Grover Norquist (one of the chief ideologues of neo-con moement) wants to "get the government to the size where we (neo-cons/libertarians) can drown it in a bathtub". He got his wish, except the bathtub he spoke of is the city of New Orleans.
outrageous (a rant)!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Outrageous!
Re:Longitudinal wave lasers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bus Report (Score:5, Insightful)
Enforcing order in a situation such as this is critical in saving lives, because it provides a sense of returning structure to the lives of the affected people. Without that, further restoration efforts, including returning electricity to the area, become impossible, and more people suffer because food and water remain unavailable and hospitals cannot function.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:2, Insightful)
with that said, sure, you get the best in people and the worst in active emergencies. I have been through a few riots, glad I was armed for self defense. Some people looking for an excuse to go medieval all the time, whereas most folks just want to get by. No one race or culture or society has a lock on "all good folks" or "all bad folks". the civilization veneer is quite thin, no one would be immune to becoming desperate I would think.
Not sure about the rest of the nation, but we just came back from our weekly trip to town, in just our little community I counted ten tractor trailers being loaded up with provisions to be sent down there (we chipped in of course). This is probably happening all over the USA.
Re:Lay Blame. (Score:3, Insightful)
I repeat, blame falls at all levels. The Mayor failed to evacuate his people, despite having 300-odd buses at his disposal, laid useless because they were left in a lowlying area prior to the storm. The Mayor failed to organize volunteer rescue efforts. The Mayor relied far too much on the next-higher-up level of assistance.
The Governor failed to evacuate her people, despite having the ability to commandeer every bus in the state. She failed to ensure water and food was delivered to stranded citizens. She failed to call upon the people of the state to take their boats and rescue the refugees. She failed to put her ass on the line and take responsibility for any fuckups from making snap decisions. She passed the buck to FEMA and then failed to recognize they were not helping.
Michael Brown, head of FEMA, is a fuckup from the word "go." One only has to look at his history and how he came to be head of FEMA to recognize the cronyism and stupidity of the entire FEMA debacle. He is a failure.
George Bush, Commander in Chief of the USA, failed to find out that FEMA was useless, failed to call in the National Guard and US Military, failed to call upon the American people to take direct action, failed to immediately invite expert assistance from other nations, failed to do anything useful whatsoever.
I repeat: the US government is broken at every level.
Get off your asses and get it fixed. Maybe this only requires writing to your representative, or maybe this requires overthrowing a dishonest, disreputable, dysfunctional government. I dunno. But the bottom line is pretty fucking clear these days; SOMETHING needs to be done, and it falls upon the American public to do it.
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of a F!-ed up society do you guys live in, anyway? In most places around the world (not all, admittedly), when a natural disaster hits, or even a power failure, people's natural instincts are to help one another, not steal things from stores, or beat and rape each other.
Is the USA really in such a state that law and order are maintained only by the presence of police? And if something happens to disrupt the power of the police, that the first things that come to people's minds is to break into the neighborhood shops and take the TV's? Is your country filled with people who are so ready to backstab their neighbors?
If this is true, it seems like a really, really sick (and scary!) society. You've got far bigger problems than worrying about the DMCA or the Patriot Act. Yes, those things are a danger to any society, but it sure sounds like you are way past the point where changing the laws or changing the administration will help very much. Wow!
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:3, Insightful)
BULLSHIT.
Bush deserves every bit of blame he's getting, and probably more. He has done virtually nothing to make a horrible situation better, and aruably has made it worse by not reacting in a timely fashion.
He also says something stupid seemingly every time he opens his mouth these days.
Look, I voted for the guy. I felt he was the best available choice. I supported going to war in Iraq. But his second term has frankly, thus far, made me absolutely regret that vote. This situation is not helping any at all. The one thing he should be doing more than anything is LEADING. Get up there, be definitive, tell people what to do and see that it's done. He's not doing that.
Bullshit. Bush deserves every bit of flake he's getting now, and that's coming from a supporter.
The Empire dispatches some of its Sonic Disrupters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That area was declared a Federal Disaster Area (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, it disgusts me how much finger pointing has been going on while there are still people stranded in that hell hole. ALL of these politicians need to get their priorities in order. FIRST, make sure the people stuck there have some food and water to survive on and finish picking up the ones who are stranded (maybe some of those helicopters dropping sandbags on the friggin' levees could be rescuing people still stuck on their rooftops). SECOND, get everybody out of the city. THIRD, plug the levees and start figuring out what to do with this mess. THEN they can all start bickering about who didn't respond quickly enough and who didn't prepare well enough and who should've done something first and should we even bother rebuilding the place. Somebody needs to step up and show some leadership here. It looks like Gen. Honore is the only one who has so far.
Re:Bus Report (Score:3, Insightful)
No, and I don't expect to. Because if I were to live my whole life in a below-sea-level town on a coast that gets hit with hurricanes every year, I'd probably save up the same amount of money it costs to buy one pizza, and put a few liters of water and a couple dozen snack bars in a cheap backpack, along with a $3 flashlight and some toilet paper, and be way, way ahead of the thousands of people in that town that decided not to do anything to help their town have less of a disaster on their hands.
There's no excuse for watching that storm approach for days, and not doing the simplest things to prepare yourself for a Tuesday-through-Thursday wait while the buses and helicopters get lined up. Of course that wouldn't have made everything just peachy for every person - but it would have hugely reduced the stress on the local help that was supposed to be taking care of the local people while other resources moved in. Honestly - it's like being responsible for your own well being is so out of fashion that a little food and water is too much to think about in advance, even as the news and your own city government is screaming at you about it.
Of course, there were thousands and thousands of people who did take care of themselves enough to not slow down emergency workers with other priorities - but those people didn't make for very dramatic sound bites, and since they weren't as ready to bitch about the government, there just wasn't any Pulitzer-winning spin to extract.
Re:First up, the mayor (Score:3, Insightful)
The old saying misses the possibility of malice being combined with stupidity, which is the way I see the Bush Administratiom.
Let me put it this way. Cuba managed to evacuate their people before the last big hurricane hit. Ponder that while you compare their resources with that of the richest country on the planet. Where was their "hubris" and disbelief at the climatologists?
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
One could, if one was an ungrateful arsehole. It saddens me to see Americans in forums and Usenet whining about how the rest of the world hates them and why aren't they getting the same help as the tsunami victims, and then turning around and saying things like that. America gets MORE than its fair share of aid after hurricanes, terror attacks and other disasters, probably because the world's media is largely based there. Anyone thinking any different ask yourself, how much did YOU give to help with the Mumbai floods a month ago?
Re:What a horrible mess... (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be true, I mean looting for food can happen at such a desaster it is natural and understandable, but taking away tv and other industrial junk in such a situation is out of any logic at all, because it is really junk at situations like that.
And no it is not normal that at such a situation severe looting and shootings arise, Europe was hit by a flood three years ago, I can remember similar chaos situations where the politicians simply were unable to do anything. People started to act on themselves, opened roads broke damns, just to save others, in the end people started to stick together, I cannot remember having people running around shooting and looting although it would have been possible, everybody tried to save everybody elses ass, by trying to control the flood or trying to rescue others.
I also can remember the stories of the days after WWII one thing my parents and grandparents told me was that people started to stick together like they did not used to ever before and afterwards to bring everything which was in ruins and ashes up again. There simply was no other way of survival.
Also the Tsuanmi an Asia did not lead to the chaos which currently is shown, although it was worse, people also seemed to stick together and start to rebuild things.
Same goes for the midwest flooding in the nineties, I am not sure what is different this time, but this is not normal behavior for a huge catastrophe, not even for the USA...
Catastrophe Capital (was R&D). (Score:3, Insightful)
A National Disaster is clearly an excellent opportunity to trial new R&D in the field; harsh environmental conditions, long uptime, contingencies at a maximum - like a 'warzone' really. It would seem Bush has chosen to test future battle tech on his own people at home rather than random foreigners [tomdispatch.com] or US folk [mediafilter.org] abroad [democracynow.org]. He doesn't miss a beat does he?
Anyway, I guess these sonic cannons are cheaper than food, shelter and tear-gas or else he surely would have.. nevermind.
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:3, Insightful)
I content that this is nothing but a false rumor, an urban legend, a lie. Where is your source for this? I've seen this repeated many, many times, but so far not one source has ever been named. I expect none ever will, because it simply didn't happen. The FAA has had no reports of air vehicles being fired upon.
When all this shit is over, people are going to need a better excuse than that.
Re:Shutup please (Score:5, Insightful)
How many sorties does it take to evacuate 100,000 people with Chinooks? Let's see, if I remember correctly, they'll carry 50 troops with gear. So call that 70 people, assuming some are on stretchers. 70 into 100,000, that's...1400 sorties.
Where are you going to take them? Houston? Dallas? Birmingham? Each of those cities would be about five hours away by helicopter, give or take.
How do you handle the air traffic around the Superdome? That's not trivial.
We've got some transport helicopters, yes...but not nearly enough to solve this problem. And then, can you imagine the flak that would happen when one crashes?
Suffice it to say, the problem is a little bit more complex than "Well, just get some helicopters!"
Re:Why not just machine gun the refugees? (Score:1, Insightful)
Go ahead and look at google earth at New Orleans.
Its got a lake on one side an ocean on the other and very few federal interstates connecting it.
In other words it is a choke point.
Re:The Straight Dope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody expected things to be fixed in 20 minutes. However, the whole point of disaster response is the response part. There is absolutely no reason why there should be a 5 day period of no response other than pretty words.
The money in the federal budget that goes to homeland security, you know the agency in charge of protecting the homeland, is obviously the biggest shell game in the history of the US govt. If this is what we can expect for a response, is crowd-control weapons being deployed almost as soon or sooner than food and water, than it is a pathetic country indeed. The interstate highway system in this country was developed for EXACTLY this kind of mobilization. Highways and bridges were built wide enough to allow military vehicles to cross the country in an organized fashion.
As far as your 'questions' that you even admit to having no answers to, well they are quite frankly disturbing. Where do you think the money comes to pay the people to drive all those busses around to pick up everyone. Where do you think the money comes from to organize the infrastructure for the eventuality of such a disaster? Obviously you are not aware that the funding stream to enable all of those 'questions' is from the federal govt in the form of 'homeland security grants'. Did New Orleans get any of those? I do know the answer to that, and you should stop being fed your information and learn for yourself. New Orleans did have a plan and countermeasures in place to deal with such a circumstance, however my friend, unless you are paying for these things out of your own pocket it would be to your benefit to realize that these things take a level of financial commitment in order to implement correctly.
As far as 'comparing' disasters, which is woefully innapriopriate, well lets compare them. What was the reposnse time for national guard troops being deployed to all the above incidents you cited? New York, less than one day. San Fran, also less than one day. LA, less than one day. How exactly does this compare to 5 days?
And bush doesnt need anyone to make him look bad. He does just fine on his own. Take some time away from the TV for a few weeks(better months), better yet, go on a vacation to see how people in other parts of the world live. Then come back and watch your TV... unfortunately, the only way for you to see that the government is failing is when it will fail you. I wish you and your family are never in a disaster so catasrophic, that you learn first hand how inept our system of social protections has become. But life is long, and you are just playing the odds if you hope, or think, it cant happen to you.
This is only a test (Score:3, Insightful)
Things like water cannons and riot gear are comprehensible threats to protesters, but when the government starts using spooky technology to bring a whole crowd to its knees, genuine sixties-like political unrest will cease to be possible in this country, no matter how appropriate it might eventually become. That's when America will cease to be a "free" country. Because if people are afraid to use their supposed freedoms then they no longer really have them.