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Hurricane Helene: The Collapse of US State Capabilities and Caring
Roger Boyd 10/8/24
As the years go by the gap between the capabilities and orientation of the Chinese Party-state (high competence and lifting up the Chinese people) and the US Oligarchy-state (increasing incompetence and filling the pockets of the oligarchy) has become a chasm. The reactions of the US state authorities to a number of domestic disasters, both natural and man made over the past few years points toward an utter breakdown of any real competence and balance within the related state agencies.
The repeated state modus operandi has been one of disinterest, incompetence, covering up that incompetence, playing down the effects of the disaster, doing as much as is possible to benefit private corporations and the rich, forcibly removing “off message” journalists and members of the general public offering help, and even limiting the self-help of the affected populations. With the mainstream media acting as the mouth pieces of state propaganda to quickly shut down the general discussion of “inconvenient” facts. Such a reaction would be expected from an authoritarian oligarchic fascist state/society complex.
Lahaina
The official report on the Lahaina fire that brunt down a whole town and lead to the deaths of at least 100 people, just over a year ago, uses the passive voice to blame the inanimate object of a downed power line that was re-energized, but as residents themselves point out does not identify the systemic issues that lead to the scale of the disaster. Those included the lack of any substantive changes after a previous 2018 fire in the same area. To maintain an effective state sector, wrongdoing and incompetence must be punished and public service orientation and competence rewarded. None of this has taken place in the case of Lahaina. Instead all we see is state officials and staff patting themselves on the back, and not taking substantive action.
What about the rebuilding of Lahaina now that a whole year has passed?
Very different to the rebuilding of the much larger Mariupol by Russia, that was utterly devastated by war. How Mariupol was only two years ago:
Mariupol is a city of half a million population and Lahaina is a small town of 13,000, but isn’t the US supposed to be the greatest, richest nation on the Earth?
A little remembered fact is that at the same time as the Lahaina fire there was a huge Ukraine aid bill passing through the US political process, but no one seemed to consider that perhaps a few billion for Lahaina should be added onto it. Ukraine (i.e. proxy war with Russia and US defence contractor profits) first, US citizens se
East Palestine
In February of 2023, 38 cars of a Norfolk Southern train carrying dangerous chemicals crashed in East Palestine. Investigations deemed that 25% of the train cars had defects, showing the utter corruption and incompetence of the Norfolk Southern inspection systems. The industry had also been reducing the crew sizes on these huge freight trains to as little as one person, with little regulatory pushback (the related regulatory agency had been having hearings on crew sizes for a decade!), as detailed below. Only after the disaster were two man crews require through regulatory changes. Even this level is far too low for such huge trains, the East Palestine train had two crew plus a trainee for a 151 car, 9,300 foot long train.
The Ohio governor in discussions with the train company made the worst decision possible - to set the leaked chemicals on fire - combining the chemicals into even more dangerous substances and spreading them far and wide. It seems that the state authorities were kept out of the loop on some basic information, and were not given access to a specialist team that was on site:
This “controlled” burn spread the products of combustion, even more dangerous chemicals, over a very wide area; volatile organic chemicals that attach to everything. Very quickly, a massive coverup ensued to downplay the extent of this colossal disaster, the consequences of which may not be fully felt by the millions affected for decades as resultant cancers and other diseases slowly manifest and take hold. These extremely dangerous chemicals spread to at least 16 US states and Canada.
This video details very well the whole coverup, and the way in which huge numbers of American citizens have been left to live in a fundamentally poisoned environment, as Norfolk Southern was allowed to take control of both environmental testing and the official discourse; seemingly aided by the EPA.
Anything to protect corporate profits and the incompetent/bought and paid for politicians in Ohio and Washington D.C. Contrast this with the way in which corporate criminals and corrupt state officials are dealt with in China.
Hurricane Helene
And now we have Hurricane Helene, just as huge amounts of money are being given to Israel to continue its Gaza genocide and its illegal invasion and bombings of bordering sovereign nations. Which has included widespread bombing of civilian targets, including hospitals, in Lebanon. And also while money continues to be poured into the Ukrainian proxy war with Russia. Providing the ongoing corporate welfare for the US Military Industrial Complex.
While whole towns were wiped out, over 200 were confirmed dead and hundreds more missing, the US state functionaries seemed to be little concerned and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) showed incompetence and quite possibly corruption.
Contrast this to the Chinese state response to the Wuhan COVID crisis, where they built a whole new 1,000 bed hospital in 10 days.
Or this response to a breach of China’s Dongting Lake
A Failed State?
A state that is unable to effectively corral resources to deal with domestic natural disasters, a state that even in the midst of a disaster works to protect and advantage corporate interests, a state that does not effectively regulate its industries (Boeing?), a state that would rather send money and resources to proxy wars and a genocide than to aid its own population is one that is failing in its basic duty to its citizens; a failed state. The United States is not just becoming increasingly fascist, but its state apparatus is also increasingly incompetent in the basic tasks that define it and support its legitimacy. The competence gap between the Chinese state and the US state is widening each year, perhaps one of the reasons why the former enjoys high esteem and legitimacy among the citizenry and the latter does not. So much for the benefits of “liberal democracy”.
Not much has changed since Katrina in 2005.