Preparing for Armageddon [Morbid Robot v. Bush Crony Edition]
Never one to be unprepared for unthinkable and grotesque disaster, the Tokyo Fire Department is now using a robotic body collector.
“Robokiyu the Rescue Robot” is seen below in a demonstration of its cadaver collection skills, allowing corpses to be collected and transported from disaster sites.
Having just finished Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine I immediately began to visualize dozens of such robots roaming through a flooded and decomposing South American city, collecting recent victims of global-warming-realted climate disruptions or anti-Chavez American counter-terrorism.
It’s worth noting that the post-disaster collection of bodies has become a major growth industry in what Klein calls “disaster capitalism” — the marketization of human misery and unnecessary death. FEMA and the federal-state executive junta that ravaged Louisiana after the Katrina hurricane unnotoriuosly privatized the collection of the dead with a sole and noncompetitive contract to Kenyon International. The scandal-plagued Houston-based subsidiary of Service Corporation International is run by a close millionaire friend of the Bush clan. (Additionally, they outrageously edited their own Wikipedia article, which I quickly reverted.)
SCI has been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses and recently settled a USD$200 million lawsuit to that effect. From the Raw Story:
The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies… Peter Hartmann, general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, was later found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning outside his parents’ home in an apparent suicide.
I wonder who arranged the funeral?
Regardless, I’m sure the Bushes’ had a non-unionized aide send a condolences request for funds.
Waltrip, chairman of SCI, is a longtime friend of Bush’s father, former President George Herbert Walker Bush. The firm’s political action committee donated $45,000 to George W. Bush’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign.
The company also contributed more than $200,000 for construction of the George H.W. Bush presidential library.
“It is appalling that the Bush administration –- which has already badly bungled its response to hurricane Katrina –- would hire a company with a record of gross mismanagement of mortuary services,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington D.C.-based watchdog group. “I can only imagine that this decision was made because of President Bush’s long-time friendship with the head of SCI, Robert Waltrip.”
I’d much prefer a robot to remove my corpse from the smoking remains of a filthy, abandoned gymnasium than a bunch of corporatist circle-jerkers, thank you very much. At least the machine won’t dig through my pockets for money before he tosses me into his steely air-conditioned underbelly.
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