Hurricane Katrina

[Admin]

Nice to see the Yanks aren't perfect :rolleyes:

Remember...It's the land of the free......unless your black, poor, or live in the South!!! :mellow:

Don't worry though, I'm sure the President has said a prayer, so for those who have lost family, it's Gods will, and everything will be just fine! ;)

Just wondering why they haven't got lines of milk tankers full of water? Haven't seen one!

[walesrob]

Originally posted by admin@Sep 3 2005, 06:02 PM
Nice to see the Yanks aren't perfect :rolleyes:

Remember...It's the land of the free......unless your black, poor, or live in the South!!! :mellow:

Don't worry though, I'm sure the President has said a prayer, so for those who have lost family, it's Gods will, and everything will be just fine! ;)

Just wondering why they haven't got lines of milk tankers full of water? Haven't seen one!

Quoted post

Don't you mean Katrina?!

It is shocking how these poor people were simply ignored for the last few days, just left to fend for themselves in a disaster zone, like something out of 3rd world country. The world looks on in disbelief at how the worlds richest country treats it very own people when disaster strikes. I hope Bush gets some serious flak about this.

What surprised me was that the local airport is/always was operating normally (Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport), yet all flights had been suspended except for the military. Surely its better to get everyone out using passenger jets from various airlines - I understand this is what happening NOW, but why couldn't they have done this days ago?

[Admin]

Same woman, just trying to hide her identity :lol:

They'll have 5 years of enquiries now...by the time they are concluded....new goverment, everyone has forgotten!!

[Joey]

What did I miss? Katrina is prejutice against poor blacks in Louisiana? What has the media forgotten to tell everybody this time? My information shows the National Guard was activated quickly, and was making rescues around the clock. The military has been flying supplies in and people out. Somebody missed it. There is a big thing going on in the USA where the media does not tell good news, so people think nothing good is happening. Some celebrity who hasn't heard what is going on assumes that nothing is going on, so he says on a big news station that nothing is being done. A whole lot is being done, and has been done. Good news just doesn't sell, so the media doesn't push it.

[peterdavid]

Originally posted by Joey@Sep 6 2005, 11:32 AM
What did I miss? Katrina is prejutice against poor blacks in Louisiana? What has the media forgotten to tell everybody this time? My information shows the National Guard was activated quickly, and was making rescues around the clock. The military has been flying supplies in and people out. Somebody missed it. There is a big thing going on in the USA where the media does not tell good news, so people think nothing good is happening. Some celebrity who hasn't heard what is going on assumes that nothing is going on, so he says on a big news station that nothing is being done. A whole lot is being done, and has been done. Good news just doesn't sell, so the media doesn't push it.

Quoted post


I don't know - Boscastle's response was pretty good news and that sold pretty well. The USA response did seem rather lethargic, notwithstanding the sheer enormity of the disaster.

If it were Manhattan that got swamped, instead of New Orleans (which is equally as likely, given its position) I'm sure the federal resources would have been out there immediately, certainly a lot faster than it got to New Orleans, and Bush wouldn't have so dispassionately told the starving millions to "be patient" two days after the disaster had happened.

I'm always wary of people playing the race card (as in, "the response was slow because it's full of poor black people"), and I don't necessarily think there was anything deliberately racist in how the response was handled, but I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been a lot better handled had it been New York. Or Washington. Or somewhere that "mattered", strategically, to the government.

The US government's tactless and incompetent response to major disasters which don't directly affect it is neither surprising nor unprecedented - their first response after the London bombings was to ban their own soldiers from entering London "for their own safety" - this after spending years preaching how they would never kowtow to terrorists or let them affect their way of life.....

[Pauldo]

Originally posted by peterdavid@Sep 6 2005, 07:39 PM

I'm always wary of people playing the race card (as in, "the response was slow because it's full of poor black people"), and I don't necessarily think there was anything deliberately racist in how the response was handled, but I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been a lot better handled had it been New York. Or Washington. Or somewhere that "mattered", strategically, to the government.


Quoted post

Strange, but no matter how hard everybody tries to impress us that race has nothing to do with the way the rescue operation was carried out, EVERY news reporter, spokesman or government bullsh1tter has to include the phrase "...in the, Predominantly Black, city of New Orleans....." somewhere in their litany of events.

I think it is fairly sound to say that the whole world sees some sort of racial injustice in the New Orleans disaster.

[Admin]

No mention of Latin Americans so I take they all drowned!!! :blink:

[Joey]

Originally posted by Pauldo@Sep 7 2005, 06:01 AM
Strange, but no matter how hard everybody tries to impress us that race has nothing to do with the way the rescue operation was carried out, EVERY news reporter, spokesman or government bullsh1tter has to include the phrase "...in the, Predominantly Black, city of New Orleans....." somewhere in their litany of events.

I think it is fairly sound to say that the whole world sees some sort of racial injustice in the New Orleans disaster.

Quoted post


The news would not be as exciting if they didn't make sure to point out that the hurricane was going after blacks or something. Every time you hear about a U.S. military death in Iraq, they say " ... thousand and ... deaths since the end of ... " I can't remember exactly what they say, but they want to go on about how many people have died since Saddam's government was gone. Nevermind that in other wars, that many people died in an hour or less.

The whole world? You are assuming that those spokesholes actually represent the rest of us. I suppose that if it was New York or DC (District of Cracksmokers), reaction may have been different. Was that an understatement? I don't think it is a race thing. I think it is a money thing. Like that girl who disappeared in Bermuda. She was everywhere in the news. Her family was rich, of course. But, when Christina Williams disappeared, they had one episode on America's Most Wanted, but then you didn't hear much more about her. Do a Google search. Her mom was my first daughter's godmother...

What I'm trying to say is, the news media is going to say what gets the story watched. They don't care if it is truth. They just care that everybody talks about it. If they said, "Katrina caused lots of trouble, but the Gov't is responding well and everybody is going to be fine," then nobody would care.

[Joey]

Here's an article that sums up what happened in Louisiana. Now I see things a little differently. As I always believed, the gov't is goind too much for the people...

I haven't found the source to give proper credit. Borrowed this
elsewhere.

by Robert Tracinski

It took 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 also took me four long days to figure out what was 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 four days last week. 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 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 a SWAT team 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 speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes
people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

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 one 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 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 those who remained, a large number were from the city's public
housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that 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.
[Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story,
but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous
reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans
Police Department; see here and here.]

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 incompetence of the city
government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city,
despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. 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 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. And 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.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly
complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them
and then shooting at those who come to rescue them?this is not just a
description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of
the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

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.


Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[peterdavid]

Originally posted by Joey@Sep 7 2005, 11:55 AM


What I'm trying to say is, the news media is going to say what gets the story watched. They don't care if it is truth. They just care that everybody talks about it. If they said, "Katrina caused lots of trouble, but the Gov't is responding well and everybody is going to be fine," then nobody would care.

Quoted post


Nope - still disagree. That's exactly what they said about Boscastle, and it was still a big news story, and everybody DID care about the story.

[Admin]

and everybody DID care about the story. 'Everybody' includes me, and I certainly don't feel sorry for anyone who decides to live on flood planes, in valleys cut out by water (slight proof that water may come again!!), on volcanoes, on fault lines, etc, their choice, and if they don't know the risks, then ignorance is no defence.


When I chose where to live, I took account of natural phenomena.

[peterdavid]

Originally posted by admin@Sep 8 2005, 09:48 AM
'Everybody' includes me, and I certainly don't feel sorry for anyone who decides to live on flood planes, in valleys cut out by water (slight proof that water may come again!!), on volcanoes, on fault lines, etc, their choice, and if they don't know the risks, then ignorance is no defence.
When I chose where to live, I took account of natural phenomena.

Quoted post


Ok, 'everybody except Keith' then. :)

Don't disagree with you, but wasn't Boscastle one of those areas where flooding had never happened before and noone foresaw it, unlike N Orleans? I too would make sure I didn't live in a flood plain and anyone who chooses to live there is a bit of a muppet (bit like an Israeli deliberately choosing to go and live in a settlement in gaza - they get everything they deserve) - but I didn't think Boscastle was actually a place like that...?

[Admin]

If you look at the geology map of Boscastle, it's a deep gully cut out by water over millions of years, so floods happen often in the timescale of the planet, but not human life.

An anti-Israeli :rolleyes: Hello friend :D

[Pauldo]

Originally posted by Joey@Sep 7 2005, 01:14 PM
Here's an article that sums up what happened in Louisiana. Now I see things a little differently. As I always believed, the gov't is goind too much for the people...

I haven't found the source to give proper credit. Borrowed this
elsewhere.

by Robert Tracinski

.........People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly
complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them
and then shooting at those who come to rescue them?this is not just a
description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of
the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

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. ...........
Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

Quoted post


It sure sounds like the American "take no responsibility" culture is breeding a new type of lowlife: one that has no respect for anything or anybody, not even themselves :o .

And, undoubtedly, the UK will surely follow in due course, as always :(

And the Philippines? Let's not even GO down that road B)