Katrina aftermath - what the fuck???

[Halfdeck]

I'm glad I donated to the Red Cross and I'm proud to know that many webmasters on this board also donated. It tells me unlike some people that were slow to respond in this disaster, webmasters here responded quickly and generously.

People believe what they want to believe and sometimes what we end up believing can be so far from the truth its scary.

I'm not down in NO nor was I with George Bush on Monday so I'm not going to pretend I know shit about what's going on just because I have access to a TV set and the internet.

[CaptainJSparrow]

Hey, a buddy of mine is in the National Guard and he called and said that the military has shot 9 people so far for looting. He also said that the Army Rangers are in there now. Also, he walked Bourbon Street and said it doesn't even look like a hurricane came thru...said no water and it was clean!

[CaptainJSparrow]

For anyone that is still interested, following is a copy of an article that a friend of mine sent to her e-mail list:

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure

out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them,

because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going

on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think

that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is

obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation

to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop

the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists,

natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary

people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of

doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up

and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to

do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they

are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself

included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind,

and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by

federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane

Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel

has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not

happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades.

Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be

confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave

in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in

other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have

been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is

not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.

They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously

organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in

America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own

initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of

us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town

whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get

out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars

through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of

New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a

description from a <http://tinyurl.com/auyju> Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,

knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and

police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured

in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened

Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with

shoot-to-kill orders.

"'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,'

she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops

know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if

necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article

shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an

armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of

squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It

looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for

an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to

storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the

drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to

attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further

destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help

them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a

sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News

Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She

studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is

located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert

Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in

America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for

uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since,

mercifully, been <http://tinyurl.com/9hu4u>

demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a

whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the

informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news

channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the

residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and

of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's

public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional,

crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had

no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they

just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap

between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the

jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the

deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from

two

groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over

decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The

welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent

administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of

the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the

city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city

corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure

the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political

supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of

emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact,

some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for

example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans

had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an

execrable piece from the <http://tinyurl.com/ah5j7> Toronto Globe and

Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American

"individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was

caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the

welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is

behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the

responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to

a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to

overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain

that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos

of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about

saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own

anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their

businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried

about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But

living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains

and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral

ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one

is reporting.

[Bill]

You do know that most of the news agencies are now saying the stories of armed gangs, rapes, and shooting at rescuers have been proven to be false, or at best, unsupported?

I've been looking for hard, confirmed evidence of crimes like these. So far, there has been almost nothing.

There has been suggestions that these stories were invented, I gather the prime suspect is FEMA and "anonymous senior officials" to justify their inaction.

Has anyone seen hard news stories confirming "Road Warrior" type shit?

[Halfdeck]

Nice article Captain.

[Lemmy]

The problem isn't with the welfare state, because America isn't one. Among all the countries in Western civilization that we like to compare us with America is the one that cares least about the welfare of the individual.

I suspect most of us would have acted like animals after a while if left to our own devices in a disaster stricken city. It's a typical American response to "shoot to kill" rather than address the cause of the problem. It's also probably cheaper in the short term and has the added benefit of thinning out the population of stupid, incompetent, lazy, drunken fucks in the public housing projects. It's a win-win situation.

Here's my response to that: Fuck the governor of Louisiana, who, from her dry safety in Baton Rouge, advocates a shoot to kill policy against people with no other means who help themselves to baby formula, bread and soda in an effort to stay alive.

Anyone who still denies incompetence at local, regional and national levels in connection with Katrina really hasn't been paying attention. Or they're just plain dumb.

The same goes for anyone who doesn't see the connection here with the racial divide America still is struggling with some 140 years after slavery was abolished. Imagine had this happened in Boston MA or Westchester County, NY. But it happened in NOLA, a city with 60% mostly poor, dumb, black crack heads. I'm beginning to see where Neil Young got his inspiration from.

[furrygirl]

Besides the same old, "Do we blame those poor black crackheads, or do we blame the rich white cokehead running the country?" debate, does any have any leads for groups that are taking on-the-ground volunteers WITHOUT medical training?

I've been looking for days, and I can not find a group who does human or animal rescues in flooded areas that accept non-professionals. Seriously, do really I need a degree to be able to round up stray dogs or pass out blankets? It's incredibly frustrating that with the current bottle-necking of resources coming in to the area, everyone wants money, but not personel. I don't drive or own a car, I don't have a boat, I don't live in the south, but surely there's some sort of formal project that needs actual physical help.

[Linkster]

furry girl
http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer...cane_volunteer
although no one is gonna allow someone to enter the city to rescue animals without training right now - there are plenty of volunteer jobs available in the area - someone needs to care for these animals as they are brought in and for someone that hasnt been trained in the handling of possible rabid, contaminated animals, it would be suicide to try the rescue phase - but the shelters are begging for volunteers to take care of the animals

[furrygirl]

Thanks for the link, I've already emailed every animal group in the area, although HSUS and the ASPCA seem to be the only ones at the timewho are being allowed into disafter areas. No one's gotten back to me yet, and as far as I can tell from message boards, there simply are no openings for non-pros in animal or human aid.

If I lived down there, I'd be happy to open my yard to a bunch of dogs, but as a non-driver, trying to get dehydrated, hungry, sick, possibly injured animals to my home in Seattle would be too much of a headache.

I've actually gotten quite a biting from a (possibly rabid) stray cat before and been through rabies treatments, so it is a risk I'm truly aware of the pain of. I've known a few people who have done animal rescues in SoCal after major fires, and it's pretty much being scratched to hell, fighting with scared, injured animals who have found themselves their own safe place and don't want anyone touching them. It's not a fun vacation, and it's not about snuggling with cuddly wuddly puppies and kittens. Animals, like humans, tend to go a bit feral when left to completely fend for themselves.

[Linkster]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

The problem isn't with the welfare state, because America isn't one. .

Lemmy - the problem is that (having lived there and going back constantly) New Orleans is a welfare state - true the rest of the country is not on average but there are pockets in Wash DC, Chicago, etc - and I think the point here is that what was left after the initial call for evacuation was a complete welfare state.
The interesting comment I heard yesterday - and most people have missed this - the murder/rape/injury rate in New Orleans that youve been hearing about (possibly blown out of proportion for news casts but thats another topic) is way lower than the normal rate for that city - all the tourists and cabbies are gone so they dont have anyone to kill.
The gang related violence is a hidden, but definitely a huge part of New Orleans - it doesnt get a lot of publicity - they would lose the convention and tourism trade if it was publicized.
Most of the people that are causing the problems that are being reported are the gangs that dont want to lose their "turf" and are protecting it - the police units know who they are - and are trying to deal with them - but its tough when you still have a quarter of the police force out of communication (not their fault - its a command and control issue with the mayor) and still holing up in certain parts of the city as separate "police forces" that are slowly being brought back into the response organization - its just a matter of getting them the comms and directing the separate "precincts" into one force.

I also disagree that it has anything whatsoever to do with race - its class - and that is something the city just did not plan for - no matter what the politics and news spinners spew - it is just a logistical fact that the class of people that are still there are not people with the means to get themselves out of the city - and every city in this country has the same problem - they dont have a plan to evacuated "everyone" - they depend on personal vehicles for most of it.
The only difference in this case against other cities is that New Orleans is actually a smaller city and we are just lucky this was not a city like NYC where we would be facing hundreds of thousands of deaths - something to think about.