Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

A new year marks a new beginning. Also for me personally, as I have taken on a new, personal project: starting Jan 1st 2010 I launched the "Without Rule of Law website: survival in WROL situations".

The last few years I have become more and more aware of the fact that "we", the general public, take our comfortable lives for granted. The more we are surrounded by technology, the more we depend on it. It is a bit contradictory because I - for one - am a great "tech-head". At the same time I try to imagine what life would be without all my high-tech gear and modern comfort.

What happens when we have a real pandemic on our hands? A flooding occurs, or something more basic like a power outage that lasts for a week?

Even in a stable country like Holland it is a good idea to prepare for situations like these. In fact, our own Dutch government cautions people to prepare for the unexpected.

Since I always have been interested in survival and anything that comes with it, I started to read more and more about the subject of survival and preparedness. And boy, there is a lot out there. But it's hard to find a good global starting point or general website that combines all the subjects that I have an interest in.

Hence the "Without Rule of Law website: survival in WROL situations" website. Here is a short snippet from the obligatory "About" page that explains more about my reasons and goals behind the website:

If you are lucky enough to live in a democratic country you probably are used to living under relatively comfortable circumstances. You live your life like anyone else. Work, eat, sleep, relax. You have electricity, mobile communications, public transport and stores to shop. You enjoy what is called the privilege of  “Rule of Law”: everyday life under protection of your countries law, military and emergency services like the fire department and medical care.

But the world we live in is far from perfect.

Conflict may be right around the corner. It may be the result of a breakdown of society (economical), riots, natural disaster, political conflict or just plain war.

When it happens we have a situation called: “Without Rule of Law”, or WROL for short.

In such an event you will find there is no police to call to help you out. Medical care may be non-existent. Electricity and gas may not be available. The streets may be have become too hazardous for you to venture out.

A WROL situation may last a few hours, days, weeks or months depending on the cause. When hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the WROL situation lasted for many weeks. Reports of carjacking, murders, thefts, and rapes in New Orleans flooded the news.

If you are realistic you will agree it can happen any moment. And if you are not prepared for it chances are, you will become a sad statistic. A victim of your own survival inadequacy.

But how do you prepare for such a situation? You can search the web and you will find hundreds of websites with information.

The “Without Rule of Law” website will assist you in gathering information to prepare you for the moment you find yourself in a WROL situation by gathering useful survival information for you and putting it on one handy website. No need to surf hundreds of different sources of information.

You will find reviews on various things and instructional information that can help you out when you need to protect yourself, your loved ones and your property.

So if you think you want to know more about how you can prepare for the unexpected, I invite you to go over to the website and see if you can learn a thing or two.

You can also follow WROL on Twitter and YouTube.

This is the time of the year that I hate that my girlfriend is living in Florida: hurricane season. Tallahassee isn't exactly the biggest target on the map, and luckily enough the last 6 years in a row the hurricanes didn't hit that area hard, but yesterday and today tropical storm Fay did hit. And this time Carrie didn't escape the effects of the storm: a huge tree fell in the backyard, hit the pool but missed the house by three yards. My girlfriend is taking shelter in the hallway of her own home: scary! Fay is on it's way to Louisiana but lot's of areas in Tallahassee are hit and even Lake Ella (less than a mile from Carrie's home) is flooded. Here in Holland we had our fair share of bad weather (even a small tornado) but nothing compares to a tropical storm. The Tallahassee area got hit with at least 30 inches of rain: that's a staggering 80cm! As you can imagine most damage is from the rain and not so much from the winds.

A year after Katrina struck the southern USA and New Orleans in particular, one can only conclude that almost no progress has been made rebuilding the hurricane struck city. The situation is still very bad. Indeed, one could say that one year after Katrina, New Orleans is the shame of a nation. The shame of a "super-power" that tries to justify pumping billions and billions into a war on the other side of the world, killing thousands in the name of 'democracy' and 'progress', but being utterly impotent and powerless at home when dealing with disaster. Millions of dollars disapeared into the back pockets of frauds or got wasted on the wrong stuff.

Still, Bush had the guts when he revisted the area to state he was seeing "a lot of progress". The thing was: he was visiting a rich, white neighboorhood. A couple of miles down the block he would have been standing on the same rubble and pile of debris that where there a year ago: in black neigboorhoods with the poor people.

Having witnessed the destruction first hand when me and my girlfriend Carrie made the mistake to visit Biloxi last Christmas, I can really say there are no words for the how bad it must be to people who live(d) there. Those who stayed or returned face a whole world of trouble. As Time Magazine reports:

Call it "Katrina stress" or the "Katrina funk", but it's all too real — and it has real implications for the future health of the city. While the physical devastation of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina has been well documented, the psychic toll is just becoming clear. The suicide rate has nearly tripled, depression is common, domestic abuse is on the rise, and self-medicating with booze is a favored method of forgetting.

Worse yet, the mental health care system needed to help deal with all this is in ruins. Private psychologists and psychiatrists are almost impossible to find. Emergency rooms outside New Orleans — those that survived the storm — are now packed with people from the city seeking mental health care. It's not just the pre-Katrina schizophrenics and crazies who have gone without meds for the year, but regular people who are stressed and depressed. "Life is just not easy in the Big Easy now," says Buras. "There's a lot of anxiety and deep depression."

The figures speak for themselves: half the population of New Orleans is still living somewhere else, over 60% of all the schools are still closed and only half the hospitals are open again. As always with bad situations, people are using humor to cope with everything. CNN reports that when you go downtown people are selling T-shirt with some funny texts:

"Make levees, not war," read one. Another: "FEMA evacuation plan: Run, motherfucker, run." And in a shot at the New Orleans police, some of whom were accused of abandoning their posts during the disaster: "NOPD: Not our problem dude."

In the meantime Florida gets the rain from tropical storm Ernesto. It's Nature's way of showing us there is just one real super-power in this world.

For those who missed the news: Associated Press has revealed that Bush was warned adequately about Katrina's potential destructive power although he denied this later, saying that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." In fact federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck in dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage. Bush didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared." Off course we all know by now this is a blatant lie. What's worse is the fact that White House officials now try to completely downplay the meaning of the tapes. See a report on the video tape and the AP story below: Continue reading "Bush lied about Katrina" »

Since I wrote about Katrina's aftermath, the looting, raping, shootings etc. a lot has happened. For starters, Bush got of his ass and kicked everything into gear. Now the storm has passed, stories keep pouring out and videos from tourist that got trapped are also published on the net. It is mind-boggling that more than 1 million people were evacuated and at least half a million - if not more - are homeless, jobless and left to their own devices.

Amidst all this one photo that I saw on flickr struck me in particular. It shows the whole drama in a very clear way.