Visiting Drudgereport.com the past few days has been emotionally difficult. The devastation in Japan from the 9.0 earthquake is horrific, a powerful reminder that the forces of nature can never be tamed by man. Blackwater was needed after Katrina to make sure emergency workers would be safe A 9.0 earthquake is the energy equivalent of 474 megatons of TNT explosive force. The earthquake in Haiti, a 7.0, was the equivalent of 474 kilotons of TNT. What was unleashed by this explosive force is captured vividly in this video.
Entire cities were destroyed in a moment, battered by powerful waves that rendered once happy homes, busy markets and businesses a painful memory of a past nature swiftly uprooted.
100,000 troops will be deployed to help the stranded.There is no need for order to be restored. The Japanese are resilient, and though hundreds of thousands lack electricity, water, food and shelter, looting and rioting is not occurring.
Blackwater (now called XE) is not required to restore order to a nation that just endured a disaster ripped from the pages of a Toho Company script.
New Orleans in 2005 during the aftermath of Katrina was a completely different story. The racial aspects of the Japanese earthquake survivors and those in New Orleans are a stark reminder that though man can not tame nature, the worst impulses of man's nature can be tamed. Or they can be indulged.
In Japan, family, community, honor and loyalty are ideals that hold that nation together, even as the waters recede into the ocean reveling a hellish terrain that once was home. The threat of a nuclear meltdown isn't enough to conjure excesses that would replicate the behaviors of a much different community outside the Superdome in 2005.
In New Orleans during Katrina, a distinct portion of that community showcased for the world to see that nature has the ability to wash away man's civil mask, revealing the fragile reality of disorder within our nation. It only takes the absence of order to render one segment of the American population into a bubbling vat of chaos.
It took Blackwater engaging the Black rioters of New Orleans to restore order in a city where only Shania Twain CDs remained at a looted and pillaged Wal-Mart store:
In an hour long conversation I had with four Blackwater men, they characterized their work in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals." They all carried automatic assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition.
Blackwater is not alone. As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of America's cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235. Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers.
A possibly deadly incident involving Quinn's hired guns underscores the dangers of private forces policing American streets. On his second night in New Orleans, Quinn's security chief, Michael Montgomery, who said he worked for an Alabama company called Bodyguard and Tactical Security (BATS), was with a heavily armed security detail en route to pick up one of Quinn's associates and escort him through the chaotic city. Montgomery told me they came under fire from "black gangbangers" on an overpass near the poor Ninth Ward neighborhood. "At the time, I was on the phone with my business partner," he recalls. "I dropped the phone and returned fire."
Montgomery says he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. "After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said."
A 2010 flood in Nashville required no such intervention on the part of Blackwater (XE) to restore order.
Before emergency workers, food, water, and the US Army could get to New Orleans, Blackwater was sent in to restore order. They did their job.
They won't be needed in Japan.
There's not much else to say. Mother nature has the tendency to simultaneously bring out the best in man and the worst in man. Let Japan in 2011 vs. New Orleans in 2005 be a lesson for us all.
I'm not a geologist nor am I a seismologist. But I do know that an earthquake hit New Zealand two weeks ago and Japan on Friday. Both nations are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. So is California.
If an earthquake of the magnitude of the one that hit Japan were to strike Los Angeles, what type of behavior would the inhabitants of the City of Angels exhibit? What we see now in Japan or what we saw in Katrina?
