Looting: My story.

The word “looting” is a hot button. Push it and people reliably react with their prejudices about poverty, property, race, violence, and law. Use it on me, and I get a tape replay from the Los Angeles riots of ’92. Here’s what I saw then, and what I learned.

In 1992 I was living in West Los Angeles and working at home and downtown. I had a small failing DIY medical records business and my best friend Greg had a small failing DIY courier business. I used his courier business to deliver my work to California Hospital, which is in the industrial part of Downtown Los Angeles. I was also working part-time at Good Samaritan Hospital, which is just west of Downtown in the Westlake/Pico-Union district.

On the day of the Rodney King police beating verdict I was at a computer store run by some Iranian friends. When the news came out they shook their heads and said “There will be a riot”. I didn’t believe them and thought they were exaggerating or misinterpreting an adopted country. I went home that night feeling awful about the miscarriage of justice.

Good morning. Your city is on fire.

Three Things.

From 2001, here’s a Scientific American article that accurately describes what just happened.

From this week, here’s a speculative news article about shoddy archaeology. My favorite sentence is “Barkai is convinced this study is immensely valuable, despite the methodological flaws.”. The article is oddly truncated, as though the Templars got the reporter in mid sentence.

From tonight, this very strange boy wants me to post my pictures in many, many spammy Flickr groups. One is interested to find out that he is a qualified computer technologist and was president of the Gardening society at 11 years old, also Initiator/Founder of Global Online University! What the…

I move for a bad court thingy.

In the middle of the Gulf Coast remix of the Raft of the Medusa, we have the oddly synchronistic criminal “failure” of a hedge fund called Bayou, as beautifully reported by the Wall Street Journal. Entire latest article is behind the cut, because it’s sorta long. Here are the salient points for TL;DR purposes:

  1. $60 million “unaccounted for”!
  2. $101 million turned over to a gang of Arizona con artists who said they’d make up the shortfall for the fund manager!
  3. Fund manager’s attorneys have withdrawn from the case due to unspecified ethical considerations. Read: Oh shit we can’t defend this guy, oh shit he’s so fucking dirty, oh shit shit shit!
  4. Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm!
  5. $3.5 million in Spongebob Squarepants checks!
  6. CFO writes suicide note, is checked into mental hospital!

I tell ya if we’re gonna fix this country, we have to run it like a business. That means into the ground after looting it, in case you’re curious.

story

Don’t believe the hype

Watch out for hysterical urban legends, unconfirmed reports, and exaggerated nightmare scenarios about looting in New Orleans. There’s looting and violence all right, and when all is told there are going to be some sad and frightening stories about it.

But who benefits from a lot of scare talk about masses of armed looters, snipers, and great crowds of the unwashed attacking rescue personnel? The people who want to blame the victims, that’s who.

All those officials who failed us are going to talk long and loud about the breakdown in civil order and the need for zero tolerance and lots of soldiers with guns. Don’t forget the real villains here: the people who didn’t give the evacuation order in time, the local agencies that left people on their own without transportion to leave, the federal agencies that pulled the funding for the levees, the President who couldn’t be bothered leaving his vacation until the corpses were floating already. They’d just love for you to concentrate on all those grimy underclass losers stealing beer and taking potshots at helicopters.

Keep your focus. The “grownups” in suits who were supposed to spend our tax money to save lives stood around while Americans died. If they try to look good later by shooting some pathetic losers for boosting a beer, it’s doubling their own crime.

Ozbervations

Salad #3

Observation at the Sav-On Drug tonight, 10:15 pm: The receipt is congratulating me on my GOTH ANNIVERSARY. I’m not a goth. I didn’t think the drugstore was goth. What the… Oh. They’re having their 60th anniversary.

Observation on turning from Pacific Coast Highway onto Brookhurst Avenue: Christ on a crutch, “MEDUSA” is a terrible name for a hair salon.

Observation while driving up Brookhurst thinking about New Orleans and Burning Man: One group paid for an anarchy vacation of sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ art in a remote location. Another group was dumped into an anarcho-klepto-military dystopia by a colossal storm and a wicked, inept government. The Mad Max vacation and the Waterworld calamity at the same time. Amusement park anarchy is the new conspicuous consumption and Burning Man is the new Club Med. There’s no experience we can’t turn into a dude ranch for the children of the middle class.

Observation while traveling west on Victoria Avenue toward Pomona Avenue: That disoriented-looking old person carrying grocery bags in the middle of the opposing lane of traffic is probably not doing so well. Let’s call the Costa Mesa P.D., shall we?

Observation on checking email when I returned home: Well look at that. The objectivist “future Heinlein heroine” woman who blogged for a lover and travel companion to accompany her on vacation found a kindred spirit, a fellow named Terrence Chan, and they’re off to enjoy umbrella drinks, the Virtue of Selfishness, and finding out what other extensive requirements they have in potential mates. Bon Voyage, Jacqueline!

The Airborne Toxic Event

The enormous dark mass moved like some death ship in a Norse legend, escorted across the night by armored creatures with spiral wings. We weren’t sure how to react. It was a terrible thing to see, so close, so low, packed with chlorides, benzenes, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content. But it was also spectacular, part of the grandness of a sweeping event, like the vivid scene in the switching yard or the people trudging across the snowy overpass with children, food, belongings, a tragic army of the dispossessed. Our fear was accompanied by a sense of awe that bordered on the religious…

{…}

It was said that the governor was on his way from the capital in an executive helicopter. It would probably set down in a bean field outside a deserted town, allowing the governor to emerge, square-jawed and confident, in a bush jacket, within camera range, for ten or fifteen seconds, as a demonstration of his imperishability…

from White Noise, by Don DeLillo.

DEAR CORY, XENI, AND ALL THE BOINGBOING PALS

I READ YOUR POST ON HOW TECH PROS COULD HELP WITH RECOVERY FROM HURRICANE KATRINA AND ITS AFTERMATH, LIKE WITH ALL OUR TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE MAYBE OR FREE VOIP OR SOME TYPE OF INTERACTIVE PISSLET. I HAVE A GREAT IDEA. MAYBE ALL THE TECH PROS SHOULD WRITE A FUCKING CHECK, SINCE WE’RE OVERPAID WEENIES WITH NICE OFFICE JOBS? YOU KNOW, BASICALLY FORTUNATE FIRST-WORLD WINNERS WITH A LOT OF DISPOSABLE INCOME AND TIME TO FUCK AROUND ON THE INTERNET? YEAH.

OH I GUESS WHAT YOU REALLY MEANT WAS THAT YOU’RE ALL UNABLE TO FUNCTION AS ANYTHING EXCEPT GAMERS, DIGERATI, MEDIA WHORES, AND LOUDMOUTHS AND YOU WERE LOOKING FOR A WAY TO JUSTIFY THAT IN LIGHT OF A GENUINE HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY. CARRY ON!