It's because states are capable of doing this:

Myanmar's junta seized U.N. aid shipments headed for hungry and homeless survivors of last week's devastating cyclone, prompting the world body to suspend further help on Friday.

The U.N. said the aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

"All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," U.N. World Food Program spokesman Paul Risley said. "For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time."

Myanmar's government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid "without delay by its own labor to the affected areas."

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, government spokesman Ye Htut said the junta had "clearly stated" what it would do and denied the action amounted to a seizure.

Yeah, anyone actually believe those last two paragraphs?  Now I'm hesitant to even donate to relief efforts, because the money may get wasted by the bureaucratic meddling of Myanmar's government.  If they truly cared about their people's welfare, they'd let relief workers just do their job.  I think the Burmese are a lot more focused on survival than staging an uprising at this point.

How ironic, that bureaucratic inefficiency leads to rather efficient mass murder.  And it's happened time and again.

It's worse during the holidays. Christmas, New Year's, Halloween. That's when they really start knocking. Calling him out in the middle of the night. Showing up at his stoop in angry packs.

"Christopher," they wheeze through the front door, "Christopherrrrrr - we know you're in there ... "

Christopher Risdon is a 35-year-old sex offender who was busted for child porn. But Risdon doesn't live at this Tropicana Avenue apartment. Hasn't for years. So when the curious (if that's really all they are) come calling, they're now ringing the wrong doorbell. Despite what sex offender-tracking Web sites say, this apartment belongs to Harry Berlin, 71 years old, frail and, frankly, petrified.

"I'm a nervous wreck," he says, holding out his hands. They quake like palsy.

For nearly two years Berlin's address has been reported as Risdon's on a Nevada Web site. Two months ago it popped up again, this time on Metro Police's new sex offender watch Web site.

From this article in the Las Vegas Sun.  The Metro Police even admit that self-reporting by sex offenders on their whereabouts is unlikely to be 100% accurate.  But the potential of innocent residents being harassed based on inaccurate data, for which neither the police nor the state appear to take responsibility, is outweighed (once again) by the "greater good".

Even more outrageous was the hoop Mr. Berlin had to jump through in getting his address removed from the sex offender registry:

On Wednesday, two Metro detectives went to Berlin's apartment to verify that he is, in fact, not Christopher Risdon. They checked his ID and, satisfied he isn't the sex offender, asked Berlin to sign a waiver saying as much.

Berlin refused to sign. He was scared and didn't want to do anything without consulting with the ACLU first.

Barry Berlin, explaining Harry Berlin's decision, said, "My brother believes that in America you do not have to sign papers stating that you are not a sex offender just so that you can live in your own apartment without police interference."

But police were satisfied enough with what they found that Berlin's address has been taken off the Public Safety Department's and Metro's sex offender Web sites.

Lovely.  Welcome to the new America, Mr. Berlin, where you're a pervert until the police say otherwise.

Update: Here's a related post on a convicted rapist who was released after serving two decades in jail, and was stabbed to death by a neighbor 35 days later.  His alleged killer claimed he was protecting his son, who had been a victim of molestation, except the guy he killed hadn't attacked children.

If you think the government is the only entity capable of bureaucratic fuckwittery, here's your reality check:

Just hours after Oklahoma football recruit Herman Mitchell was shot to death Friday in Houston, Adam Fineberg started raising money for Mitchell's family.

But after raising $4,500, enough to cover almost half the cost of Mitchell's funeral, Fineberg stopped. An OU compliance officer told him his actions would constitute an NCAA rules violation against the Sooners.

Now, Mitchell's mother likely will never receive that money.

That money is considered illegal financial assistance under NCAA rules because Mitchell's brother is a sophomore fullback at Westfield High School in Spring, Texas, and because Fineberg is an OU fan who attends Sooner football games and solicited donations through an OU fan Web site.

Because the Rules Must Be Enforced.  Fuck the NCAA.  The patina of respectability wore off of big-time college football long ago anyway.  Division 1 football exists to make a shitload of money for schools, all the while attempting to uphold the nobility of the "student-athlete" by preventing poor inner city kids from making a buck or two to help out their families.  What a farce.  What galling hypocrisy.

Fuck the NCAA, and fuck OU for lacking the balls to ignore a stupid rule and do what's right.

[cross-posted from libertarianism]

Pedro Guzman was jailed for a misdemeanor trespassing violation, then sent to Mexico in May, despite his mother's claims that he was born in Los Angeles.

Note that the LA County Sheriff's Department said they "obtained his signature for voluntary removal" even though Guzman's mother says he is mentally disabled.  And I love this bit:

Officials at the U.S. consulate in Tijuana say they have made calls to help search for Guzman and asked other consulates in Mexico if they have information.

"We are doing things to help that we are not obliged to do," said consulate spokeswoman Lorena Blanco.

Dear God, the fucking arrogance of bureaucrats.  They feel so put upon to be doing this frantic woman a favor by finding her son who shouldn't have been deported in the first place.  But we all feel safer, right?

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. . . . So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

— Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard, from an interview on CBS' The Early Show

irony, n: keeping a data center fully operational through a hurricane, flooding, looting and madness, only to be brought down by a Slashdot posting.

Yes, it's another Katrina posting.  Maybe you're well and truly sick of reading about it by now, for which I apologize—well, no, I don't apologize.  It's my blog and I'll continue to be pissed off if I want to.

Besides, if you aren't still moved by the plight of the victims of this, the worst natural disaster in modern U. S. history, you must be dead.  (Or maybe a Republican.)  I note that at least one of my LJ friends expressed outrage that there was so little coverage of the bridge disaster in Baghdad, where nearly 1,000 Shi'ite pilgrims were trampled or leapt to their deaths, and I can only suggest that it was the victim of unfortunate timing.  On any other week, such a tragedy might have resonated with at least some Americans (at least those willing to use it against their political enemies).  But I can't blame most people for turning their eyes inward, towards their countrymen.  The impact of this catastrophe will reverberate through the national psyche long after the flood waters recede from New Orleans; will persist, I dare say, long after the last troops finally leave Iraq and return home.

There is no parallel to draw with 9/11.  Those terrorist attacks, the shock of sudden, fiery destruction, can't compare to the human misery on display in the South.  With 9/11, at least, we had a face and a name towards which to direct our collective rage; even later, as the targets became less tangible—the "war on terror," the "axis of evil"—the grief over such senseless death and destruction could be externalized.  Despite the left's attempts to use 9/11 as a springboard into a deeper contemplation of U. S. foreign policy, the attacks engendered a siege mentality among many Americans that persists to this day.

But whom will we turn our shock, grief and rage towards in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?  The fact is that we can only blame ourselves: those who defied evacuation orders and then found themsevles stranded in the flood waters; the looters who acted on their most selfish, primal impulses; the government bureaucrats who could only offer incompetence and miscommunication instead of help and hope.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, in an interview with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC tonight, said that while many of the looters were petty criminals who had no excuse for their behavior, many others were simply living paycheck-to-paycheck, paying their taxes, who then watched helplessly as the government infrastructure collapsed around them at the time they needed it most.

This is the first time in memory that I find myself agreeing vigorously with Rev. Sharpton.  The state, for all of its obligations in upholding its end of the "social contract," whatever that means in this context, has utterly failed in its responsibilities.  The response from FEMA and the Federal government has been nothing short of an embarrassment, in the words of Louisiana's emergency management director.  The government can mobilize massive relief efforts for disaster victims overseas, yet when a catastrophe occurs in their own backyard, they can't be bothered to actually truck supplies and bring them directly to evacuees, instead just dumping them off the side of a bridge, where many of the supplies were destroyed on impact.  That has been the government's idea of a "massive" relief effort.

Chaos still reigns on the streets of New Orleans; looting has escalated to rape and murder; the police have been unable to establish any type of command and control (that is, when they haven't participated in the looting themselves), and the National Guard and other military units have been slow to respond.  There is no excuse for this, other than the notion that it's impossible for any entity to be prepared for a disaster of this magnitude.  But if that's the case, then why expect the government to ever be able to help you?  Why not simply take matters into your own hands?

Fortunately, that's what some people have done.  And they are the lone standard bearers for whatever dignity is left for those wretched people who were naïve enough to believe the state could save them.

Looking for more to read?  In the interest of saving my sanity, I've reduced my news sources on Katrina (and in particular its aftermath in the Big Easy) to just three reliable, no-holds-barred Web sites:

• The New Orleans Survival Blog, courtesy of Michael Barnett (aka interdictor) and DirectNIC.com.  Despite my crack at the beginning of this post, these guys are so hardcore they've kept their site up under almost impossible logistical challenges and a Slashdotting.  And what Mike and his crew are reporting from the streets are a very different and more disturbing picture than anything you'll see on CNN.  This has become an international phenomenon, with mentions on CNN, BBC, Slate, and many other sources.  Nearly 2500 LJ users have friended the blog and many thousands more are reading from around the world.  If you want a true sense of the desperation that engulfs New Orleans, you must be reading this.  (You probably already are.)
  
• The Breaking News blog from the Times-Picayune on NOLA.com.  Not only does the T-P deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their efforts to keep their paper running, the fucking award should be retired thereafter.  Despite having to abandon their newsroom and relocate to Houma (where they plan to restart printing of the paper) and Baton Rouge, the T-P staff have kept working in the city, posting stories in real time to the Breaking News blog, and producing electronic editions of the paper.
• A text blog on WWL-TV's Web site.  Not only do they include updates from their own news team, they aggregate stories from other sources, which makes it a convenient stop for surveying the mainstream media's reporting.

That's all I can really stomach now.  I did find one nifty tool, over at Scipionus.com: a Katrina Information Map, which is essentially a Google map annotated with hundreds of notes regarding the condition of neighborhoods and individual houses in Katrina's path.  It can be slow to load, so be patient, but try overlaying the satellite map, and then try imagining what it's like after a hurricane with 150 MPH winds has blown through.

You do still care, right?