Up till now, I haven't been posting or linking to much stuff about Katrina, not because it isn't noteworthy or important; the implications are massive (understatement), but there's so damn much happening, plus what's being said about it online, that just trying to keep up and make sense of it all can be a full time occupation. And what more could I add, really?

This is The Crash, at the beginning of Act 2. Knowledge of Collapse is no longer the exclusive domain of prophets and visionaries, though there will still be many who remain in denial.

Steve Thomas sums it up nicely.

The whole situation is really exposing everything rotten within the American political-economic system. Consider:

1. The devastating effects of the industrial economy upon the natural world have been revealed.
2. The real role of the police force -- to serve and protect capitalist property relations -- has been exposed to any who will see it.
3. The National Guard, which is allegedly supposed to help in times like this, is instead halfway across the world slaughtering brown people.
4. The incredible fragility of the oil economy may be exposed, as gas prices soar. I'm told we're at $3/gallon in Pittsburgh. Elsewhere they're paying as much as $5 or $6.
5. With the vast increase in gasoline prices, the utter stupidity of non-local economics is going to be demonstrated.

What we see now, and in the following weeks, will serve as a preview of the fallout likely to occur the Peak Oil curve begins its slide in a downward direction, even as demand continues to rise.

From another synopsis...

As a living, functioning city, then, New Orleans has ceased to exist. Even if it can eventually be resuscitated, the patient's long-term prognosis is grim. Just as yesterday was a catastrophe in slow motion, the future of the Crescent City is likely to be a slow, lingering death by drowning: the environmental equivalent of pulmonary edema. In that sense, New Orleans is the canary -- peacock might be the more appropriate bird -- in the mine of global climate change. If melting ice caps continue to push sea levels rapidly higher, its death may also await many of the world's other low-lying cities.

As usual, Ran Prieur has also been posting a steady stream of insightful commentary. I'll snatch a few of the best bits from the past couple days:

People are calling this "anarchy." I call it reality, a painful transition back to a world where people are intelligent and adaptable and empathic and take care of each other, instead of putting their trust in "whoever is in charge." The dying people of New Orleans are being told they're "on their own." If only they'd been told that years ago, they would have had a chance to get ready. The rest of us still have that chance. The President is not going to help you. Congress is not going to "do something." Your imaginary sky father deity is not going to intervene. Only your equals will help you, and you will help them. There's nobody here but us chickens.

...

The Empire wants to dominate. It doesn't want us running wild in the streets, because that's unpredictable. It's showing looters not to make us steal, but to make us afraid of looters, so we happily give more power to authorities. The worst thing that could happen from the Empire's perspective, and the best thing from our perspective, is for the media to show people getting along, being helpful, working effectively, without any police or soldiers or bureaucrats around. Conversely, the best thing for the rulers is for us to see horrific violence in the absence of central control.

...

The change in policy will be to use New Orleans as an excuse to crank up the police state another notch, to suck even more power away from you and me and into central authorities that will get even more inefficient and insane, leading to more catastrophes that will justify more power-concentration, until the whole thing mercifully unravels from the edges.

If Ran is right, we can expect to see even more Patriot Act-esque behavior in the wake of the disaster, to be readily be accepted by most of the populace. I hope he's overstating it, but as Nero fiddles, there isn't much cause for hope in that department.

Meanwhile, the poor suffer the brunt of it.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning, I really have nothing to add. I posted this as an excuse to pass on a few links, as well as put the whole thing in perspective.