Donald Sensing has an idea...
Donald Sensing
has an idea for survivors of Katrina:
Where are the leaflets?
There is no electric power in New Orleans and I assume most of southern Louisiana. There are huge power outages in southern Mississippi as well. With no power, mass communications to the people are significantly degraded. Televisions don’t work, there are huge gaps in cell phone coverage and batteries for radios are dying out.
The American military has decades of practice in mass communications to people with no electrical power or other means to receive information. US forces have been dropping leaflets to enemy soldiers since World War I and did so with great effect in the Iraq war in 2003.
The Army’s psyops units have the capability to print millions of leaflets per day. It is against the law (literally, a Congressional prohibition, not a mere regulation) to employ psyops personnel or use psyops equipment to communicate to a domestic audience, even the Army’s own soldiers. Update: However, in 1992 President Bush (the elder) authorized use of psyops units and equipment for Hurricane Andrew relief.
Another excerpt from a wonderful post:
...The leaflets could explain what aid is on the way, where aid can be found, how to move out of dangerous areas, how to signal critical needs to overflying aircraft, how to sterilize water, basic trauma first aid, where medical help can be attained – the list is endless.
One of the best things leafleting would do is psychologically reconnect the cut off victims to their governments and restore their morale and will.
Very good thought. There is a mantra in Engineering -- C.O.T.S.
Commercial-Off-The-Shelf -- this is a perfect example of a C.O.T.S. solution to communication. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to restore
some connection. Cheap and available right now. People are probably feeling pretty hopeless and this would go a long way to reassure them that help is on the way. Maybe not as soon as they would like it but on the way.
Posted by DaveH at September 1, 2005 10:57 PM