More Filthy Red Wisdom

China Mieville introduces the latest twist:

Mercenaries.

I’m sorry, that’s crude of me: firms like Blackwater, the Steele Foundation and Beau Dietl & Associates prefer ‘security consultants’, or even, if you can get the media to play along, the coy ‘civilian contractors’. You know what we’re talking about though: soldiers-for-hire. There are 25,000 of them in Iraq – and judging that it’s them, not army soldiers, who guard the very generals who order that army around, they’re obviously the more efficient killers. And now they’re heading for New Orleans....

The ruins are filling up with gunmen loyal to the corporate bottom line.

Blackwater USA, The Steele Foundation, Kroll Inc, AKE Group, Beau Dietl and doubtless others are all in or sniffing the city, and the numbers, with the demand, are increasing. And unlike the citizens’ desire for food, this is effective demand, backed by cash, and the service will be provided.

The ramifications for ‘public order’ are unthinkable. We already know the population is dispensable, that the police and troops were ordered to stop search-and-rescue and told to shoot-to-kill ‘looters’. We’ve heard the weirdly prurient way the Louisiana Governor described soldiers as ‘locked and loaded’, 'more than willing’ to attack. Now the city will be subject to a public-private partnership in brute force....

So while most of New Orleans has been left to die of starvation, thirst, heat, disease and violence, a few people have some support. Despite the lack of doctors for the dying, there's medicine for business, and while the state won’t even let the Red Cross in to help the dying, because it will ‘keep people from evacuating', the soldiers of fortune can come and go, to minister to their clients.

You know what we're seeing? Another mercenary boss, Bill Vorlicek, director of Kroll’s emergency management group, knows, and tells us without hesitation or dissembling, but with pride.

‘Corporate America taking care of its own.’

This is only an excerpt... China has more, lots more.

(Obviously) tongue-in-cheek comments about his political positions aside, China Mieville is writing some of the best commentary on the situation right now. I'd tell him to quit his day job, were he not so bloody good at it too.

Here's hoping he doesn't get an attack of creativity soon, because right now, you're writing exactly what we need, China.