BS: Genocide in New Orleans

Subject: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: kirstenanderberg
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:22 AM

American Genocide in New Orleans
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

I was seriously hoping that I would not have to write this article. But it has been too long now, and I have to say something. Regardless of whether the deaths en masse of poor black folks in New Orleans is due to neglect or maliciousness, the end result is constructively a genocide on poor blacks in America, right now, in 2005. The lack of aid to New Orleans at this late hour (7 pm, Sept. 1) is not explicable. I have only one explanation that I can muster up. And that explanation is classism and racism.

The reality is these refugees in New Orleans right now were already poor, so that tells you how much the government cared about them BEFORE this disaster. Why would you expect the government to all of a sudden, now, prioritize the group they did not care about before, to the tune of inadequate health care, inadequate and expensive housing, etc.? So this is not a shock, I guess, that the American government is apparently going to let poor black Americans die for no apparent reason, right on the nightly news. They were already not caring about the health of these people, so I guess they are still in that mindset.

Look, New Orleans is not on Mars. I cannot explain why military aircraft carriers, the like we saw during the South Vietnamese evacuation in the Vietnam War, are not landing in New Orleans and airlifting these folks out. Are they all in Iraq or what? I also cannot explain why they are not, at the very least, airdropping food and water onto the people in New Orleans, like they did in Afghanistan after 9/11. These people are literally DYING because America is not doing that! I cannot explain why they did not evacuate the New Orleans jail until AFTER the disaster, either. The many, many ways that the American government has now jeopardized the lives of poor black Americans in this Katrina disaster has literally scared me to death, as a poor person. I feel very strongly that if those were middle class white people stuck in those conditions in New Orleans right now, that relief would have come days ago. For some reason, just as the cops let L.A. burn in the Rodney King riots, this smells of racism to me.

New Orleans is not even a day away from the West Coast. I cannot explain why it is taking days to get help to those people dying down in New Orleans right now. But I remember when I was in the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, that the white middle class people had all the water they could use from the national guard, while only a few miles to the south, the mostly Hispanic communities, were standing in lines for hours in the sun to get only 5 gallons of water. My son and I drove up from the San Fernando Valley into the Santa Clarita Valley in 1994 after the quake collapsed our apartment, after seeing block-long lines at stores for water and long lines at high schools and parks with National Guard trucks giving out water to anyone with a 5 gallon container. When we hit Santa Clarita, there were cases of bottled water at every I-5 off ramp, with military personnel just sitting there, waiting for these middle class families to drive up. When I hit the Santa Clarita Red Cross, they also asked me to take some water off their hands, unloading a few cases of Evian water into my trunk! They had a surplus. I asked both the military and the Red Cross to please load the water up and drive just a bit over the hill where the water was desperately needed. And they refused. Maybe that story is a microcosm of what is going on here in New Orleans right now. No one wants to drive over the hill with supplies?

I cannot explain why there is not at least food and water for the people we are seeing suffering in New Orleans, and the idea there is no landing strip is not true. I have seen flat lawns with massive people littered on them, I have seen abandoned highway strips that could sustain a landing, and I am sure if you told the refugees if they move out of the area for the plane to land, they will be airlifted out, they would cooperate right away!

I have watched insane police hold machine guns to the bodies of mothers carrying clothing out of department stores on TV news. I saw the cops force the mothers to drop the clothing, with his gun in her chest, and she dropped the clothing, and it floated away. A pure authoritarian waste. Even Nazi-ish in nature! I saw police allowing their own into stores for food, but holding the people back from the same luxury, calling poor blacks desperate for food and water "looters" while the cops do the same exact thing and are NOT called looters. I would assume some cops are gonna die if they keep trying to act like this. I see America fueling a heavy crisis in New Orleans, then blaming the refugees for getting desperate. Just as it is in the Middle East, if people were fed by American government, instead of patrolled and pointed at with guns while hungry, things will be safer for all.

The racist cops of L.A. used the Rodney King riots to validate some kind of weird racist theory that blacks are violent and riot. But that is bull. The movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd is a beautiful movie about this idea where you drive someone to desperation then call them criminals. My friend was cleaning pools in Beverly Hills during the Rodney King riots and she said there was a cop car on every block. But when she got into the lower income areas, a cop could not be found. So, from my own disaster experiences, I guess the class/caste separation of even disaster rescue in America is obvious and dominant.

I just told my 21 year old son that he is watching a genocide of people in America right now on TV, as this is what this feels like to me. I have heard NO logical argument as to how on earth those people could still be stranded in New Orleans. It is not Mars. This is ridiculous. And it has become obvious this delayed response in New Orleans is fueled by classism and racism, unless the U.S. government can spit out some logical explanation, but I have not heard one yet. New Orleans is a scene of constructive genocide right now on America's poor blacks, and I do not know how Americans are just sitting quietly as they watch this on TV. I am out of my mind about this right now. Just out of my damned mind. I have never hated GWBush more, and I have never seen a better living example of classism and racism alive in America today. According to resources in Canada, Canadian TV is reporting they offered planes full of food, water, and supplies to help New Orleans refugees and America turned them down! Again, I wish I did not have to write this article. And I hope I am wrong in this conclusion. But again, I have waited days now for logical answers from the U.S. government and it appears those answers are not coming!

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 02:01 AM

I have heard NO logical argument as to how on earth those people could still be stranded in New Orleans.

Americans expect to be taken care of, they don't think about having to survive in life-threatening instances when no one can reach them. The people who are stranded may not have realized that part of the responsibility was theirs, to be taken on their own behalf. Keep supplies handy, have an escape plan, and go when you're told to evaculate.

I also cannot explain why they are not, at the very least, airdropping food and water onto the people in New Orleans,

You haven't been paying attention. They have been airlifting this stuff in for some time now. There hasn't been enough, but you can't say nothing has been done.

I have seen abandoned highway strips that could sustain a landing,

What kind of plane do you propose fly in and land on a short strip of precarious highway? Have you seen how many of those bridges have already buckled? You'd have to be nuts to try to land a jet on one of those.

My friend was cleaning pools in Beverly Hills during the Rodney King riots and she said there was a cop car on every block. But when she got into the lower income areas, a cop could not be found. So, from my own disaster experiences,

That wasn't your experience, that was your friend's, and it is hear-say here. A cop on every block? Surely you exaggerate.

Again, I wish I did not have to write this article. And I hope I am wrong in this conclusion.

I think you were wrong--you're overwrought. Turn off Fox News and listen to NPR for a while. And why start this new thread? There are plenty of others going on the topic. You could have vented on one of those.

I understand where you're coming from, but your defensive post in support of this targeted (as you suggest) homogenous poor minority underclass paints this group as innocent childlike victims, sheep for the slaughter. It doesn't allow them agency, yet most of these people are the agents of their own difficulties--they should have listened and gotten out. The services to move people were inadequate, but they were not unavailable. Many of these people made the conscious decision to stay in their houses and wait it out. And now they are paying for that tragic miscalculation.

The ones who did move to the stadium, who did what they were asked to do, have been victimised as much by those free agents on the outside as by the storm. Those outside who waylay buses, fire shots at aircraft and people, have held those in the stadium hostage. They're caught in the middle, but no one is practicing a subtle or unsubtle form of genocide against them.

We've been discussing the state of race and population and wealth versus caste on other threads. But no one has so far gone off so half-cocked as you have. I'm sure my response is going to start a big defensive argument, but your rant doesn't demonstrate any critical thinking, it exhibits the kind of knee-jerk emotional reaction that just makes things worse. It also disenfranchises vast groups and shows great misunderstanding of the rest. The rescue workers who are there in New Orleans and in Mississippi and Alabama are working until they drop. But you would suggest that they are not really there and this is all a giant defacto genocide.

Sorry. I just can't buy it, won't support it, and can't let it go by without a strong comment response.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 03:44 AM

Well said SRS.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 04:10 AM

Resorting to the use of the emotive word genocide is to try to manipulate peoples emotions by the use of propoganda words. Does your sweeping statement that it is all "poor black folks" cover Fats Domino, yep he's a black man, and yes he's a 'folk', but I would hesitate to describe him as poor.Your article sounds to me as if you have a hidden agenda.
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much"
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 04:50 AM

Total incompetence? Possibly(probably). Institutionally racist? Possibly. Genocide?yawn yawn. Don't be ridiculous.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:14 AM

Is it because black usually vote democrat?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,racist mudcat enclave
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:47 AM

Well, you people are sad, lost campers. The first comment is pockmarked with so many NONtruths it is stupid. I cannot waste time on this idiocracy. Just think next time you speak please, as there is a GENOCIDE going on and it is not a freakin joke! You complain Americans expect to be taken care of, they should have had supplies stocked up...DO YOU GET IT ASSHOLE? ALL OF THEIR STORED SUPPLIES WERE WASHED AWAY!!! You need to actually READ and LISTEN, not just flap youir racist ignorant gums. PEOPLE ARE DYING AND THIS AIN'T NO JOKE and everything I said here tonight I saw Ted Coppel saying last night to the fema director, it makes me sad this place is so politically insensitive. YOu obviousky do not have any respect for the poor, for minorities, or for one of the most MUSICAL places on earth...sad sad sad and shame shame shame!

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:57 AM

Genocide is the deliberate extermination of vast numbers of people of a particular group or group.

Anybody calling this terrible tragedy "genocide" either doesn't know the meaning of the word or else is trying to make several problems worse.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Midchuck
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:13 AM

If I went to try and help people out, and got shot at, I'd probably go away too. If that makes me a genocidal racist, then I'll just have to be one.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Whistle Stop
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:22 AM

Agree with SRS and others; that's a pretty irresponsible article.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: MMario
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:44 AM

gee - no mention in the articles of the people who were SHOOTING at rescue boats attempting to help; the attempts to bring in medical supplies and food that were prevented, again by weapons fire, or the fact that over 1500 rescue workers have had to be diverted from rescue work to prevent the refugees from being driven from the collection points by armed rioters.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,G
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:48 AM

Agree with SRS - and talk about a thread that needs to be closed, let alone never started!

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 09:00 AM

Silly, irresponsible, ignorant hate-mongering.

If you want to actually do something, go volunteer on the Gulf Coast. More than New Orleans is suffering. (And yes, I've set wheels in motion up here in Idaho to do what we can.)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 09:30 AM

Having been researching a genocide (the real thing) for three years, I don't like to see the word devalued like this, but with that one proviso I welcome Kirsten's provocative article. Why is Guest G so frightened to see these issues aired?

SRS's arguments are mostly along the lines of "...services to move people were inadequate, but they were not unavailable..." - in other words nitpicking. The fact is that the Mississippi/Louisiana tragedy was predictable; indeed it was specifically predicted. (I myself have been banging on for years about America's vulnerability to climate-change, whether through forest fires, or the permafrost melting in Alaska or storm damage in the south.) To all this, the US admin response has been to stick to its selfish, consumerist program of planet abuse, and to divert funding from flood defences and other national emergencies into a war an Iraq war that will leave the whole region destabilised for generations to come.

And the victims? Lo and behold - mostly what could best be described as a deprived underclass. As a reporter with ITN in the UK put it: "America's shaming secret, the grinding poverty of its urban poor, is now exposed to the gase of the whole world." What perhaps was not foreseen was the extent to which US material interests were focused in one fragile region - as a result of which, the bubble that is the US economy could finally burst.

Kirsten, welcome to this most self-absorbed of forums. I've just looked back at the patronising rubbish you've had to take in earlier threads (you will have had gushing PMs too, and no doubt WYSIWYG will have fired off prayers for your salvation). Because you hung in, I've seen your website, so many thanks. And I've bookmarked the website, so if you decide you've had enough of Mudcat, I'll know where to find you.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Amos
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 09:52 AM

Peter:

As far as I have heard, there are large numbers of heroic efforts underway to aid people in New Orleans. The deprived underclass, as you describe them, are victims of this storm, but so are the now-deprived middle class, the drowned hospital patients, and scores of others.

One difference, of course, is that those who had the means got the hell out of town before the catastophe, often landing on relatives in far places and ending up with nothing but good will and what they brought with them. But in MOST cases, those who had that means procured it through the sweat of their brows. And those that left when it was possible todo so did so out of the exercise of their wits.

I think Kirsten's point about this massive exposition of the shameful inabililty of those who have the means to care for those who do not is quite telling, except that she chose to embed it in the most inflammatory and hysterical language. We all make choices, every time we act or speak.

I do not think genocide is a fair word, either; but what this does reveal is the perpetual and discomfiting gap between classes. This is not a race issue, it is a money issue.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 09:55 AM

There are people who take advantage. Whether it is the people taking guns and TV sets from stores or people using this situation to promote political agendas, they are all opportunists.   What is being neglected are the people who are suffering the most. It is easy to complain, it is harder to help.   There will be plenty of time to be Monday Morning Quarterback. Right now people are dieing and there are things that each of us can do - whether it is calling our representatives and demanding faster action, donating to the Red Cross and other agencies, or getting down there and asking how we can help.   If you are less than a days drive away, why not bring supplies yourself?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,SINSULL
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:03 AM

There can be no excuse for not air dropping water and food to the people starving and dying of dehydration in the Superdome. This is a national disgrace. And YES. If these were middle class white people there would be water. Heads will roll but not those repsonsible.

And just who cut the funds earmarked for fortifying the levees? Three guesses.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:27 AM

People in the Superdome now have food and water. The idea that resources would be more readily available for "middle class white people" is simply absurd. If you think otherwise, you just don't understand what this catastrophe is like.

I'll ask a question I've asked elsewhere: what is the evidence (other than your own prejudices) that the conditions in N.O. would allow middle-class white people to be rescued sooner?

Even Bush has said that results of the rescue so far are "unacceptable." That's very different from saying that FEMA, the National Guard, the Red Cross, and everybody else involved is not working full time at fever pitch to do what all can. (Which is very different from saying that they're succeeding in every case.)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,SINSULL
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:41 AM

According to last night's news and on site interviews, a private hospital, directly across the street from the city hospital where looters forced doctors to move critical patients up to higher floors, was evacuated. The doctors were told help would come. I believe they are still waiting. Why?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:50 AM

The Katrina disaster is real. It is not a movie. There are space, time, conflicting imperatives, poor communications, and inefficiency to contend with in addition to destruction, and flood waters, and armed gangs of desperate thugs made more desperate by the awareness that nobody is much interested in rescuing them.

Somebody was quoted on TV as asking, "Where's the cavalry?" There is no cavalry in real life. Have you never made a crucial phone call only to be told the recipient will call you back? And you wait, and wait, and wait....

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,G
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:56 AM

PeterK, I am not concerned about any issue being aired. My ignorant Rednecked self thought that 'genocide' was caused by a differenct race, not from within as is happening in New Orleans. So many misinformed people. Superdome inhabitants are getting two meals a day
plus bottled water.

The shooting at potential rescuers and their equipment had greatly hindered efforts. 1500 would be rescuers had to be diverted to law enforcement. IF those people would have left on the buses starting last Saturday, the scope of this problem would so much more narrow.

Was personally involved in preparing a large dump truck and a Bobcat to volunteer for a months worth of cleanup with the operator being paid for by the firm. When word came out regarding the shooting towards volunteer rescuers who were using their own boats, etc., this provoked a confused state of mind regarding those shooting at you when you are trying to help.

At present, we don't have an eager vo;unteer to send so the equipment sits.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 11:41 AM

Almost everything everyone said above is true...part of the truth true...from a certain perspective. To use the word "genocide", however, is emotional posturing. Better call it "classicide" if you want to give it a more accurate inflammatory name and get people mad enough to go out and kill someone.

The World you see is the World of your perceptions.

Are certain cops behaving wrongfully toward some people there? Yes.

Are certain people shooting at rescue personnel and helicopters, raping fellow refugees, beating people up, and stealing from fellow victims of the disaster? Yes.

Was the goverment's response inadequate? Yes.

Are they trying to get the people to safety? Yes.

Is there prejudice against blacks and poor people? Yes.

Is there hatred of white people by many blacks? Yes.

Are people partly to blame themselves for their own lack of preparation for dealing with a disaster like this? Yes.

Is it a disgraceful situation? Yes.

Are many rescue personnel trying desperately to help people? Yes.

So you can see exactly what you wish to see, and focus ONLY on that, can't you? Or you can have some compassion.

But no, just look at it through your own particular enraged set of emotional trigger points...pick out some "evil" people to obsess about...and rave on. But how does that help anyone?

Kirsten, there is much truth in your article...and much prejudice as well. You do not by nature work for peace, Kirsten, you are eternally psychologically at war with the people and society you have labelled as evil. As such, you can expect to see and have plenty more conflict in your life, since that will meet your chosen assumptions and expectations perfectly. There are brutal people on the other side of the issue from you...trigger-happy cops and soldiers and cynical politicians and businessmen...who will always be there to confirm your worst expectations. They are your ideal spiritual partners in the dance of death. They were made for you. They fit your viewpoint of Life (sacred Life) like a glove. Your chosen symbol is the clenched fist. You will always find someone to blame for your rage, but it won't solve anything. Hatred begets more hatred.

(And don't think I haven't been at war with society too at one time or another. I have. I slowly learn though, bit by bit, just how unproductive that attitude is.)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:32 PM

A rebuttal to the first essay.

There will be, as the mud is scraped away, a growing number of stories of individuals and families who got out of the flood alive because they were resourceful. Women who float their children to safety after being repulsed by conditions at the Superdome or the Convention Center. Strong-willed people who couldn't get out before but managed to wade and walk to the last standing bridge and cross the river or to build a raft and paddle slowly out of the miasma.

This resourcefulness is something that too many Americans never learned in the last couple of generations. We now have 911 and fire trucks and ambulances. We have Civil Defense and first aiders and Mountain Rescue (I did that for several years). We assume someone else will come help us when we call. If a tornado scours away a town the survivors quickly move along and find new housing and hopefully their same jobs. The human ant hill quickly moves in to hand out the survivors and to spread the loss among the larger community.

Disasters of the size of the tsunami last December received a lot of world attention, but the populations around the impacted area absorbed much of loss and people relocated. I have read that villages in many places aren't being allowed back in the ravaged areas--but I'll have to go look for updates to see if this is truly still the case, so don't quote me.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast had several days warning. Katrina was at first considered a low-threat category one hurricane as it approached Florida--I remember hearing the description of it as a big sloppy wet storm but not particularly dangerous. But when it crossed over into the warm water of the Gulf people began making noises about how large and strong it was becoming. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were given the entire weekend to evacuate. The tsunami victims had no such warning.

I heard an email message read out on the Diane Rehm show earlier in the week. It had come from someone listening in that area hit by the tsunami, and the writer registered his offense at hearing the hurricane compared to the tsunami, because the circumstances were so different. How CAN Americans make such a claim, when they had a warning but didn't have the common sense to get out of harm's way?

But think about it--this glass is more than half full. 80% of the population got itself safely out of New Orleans, most under their own power, and is safe somewhere else. They are also homeless and needing the same support as those still in the cesspool that New Orleans has become. The local LA/MS/AL response has been tireless and has worked to the limits of their ability and beyond. To criticize them for an inadequate response is to offer a huge slap in the faces of those working to save lives. But all of a sudden Americans can see for themselves here at home what the rest of the world has know all along--the process of moving people who are suddenly refugees to safe places is difficult. The Corps of Engineers is working to stop the holes in the levees and to fix the pumps. The difficult task of clearing paths through and retrieving and burying bodies will then begin. Corpses, when found. won't be recognizable or identifiable. It will look and feel like a disaster in a Third World country.

I actually would like to set politics aside and let this rescue work move ahead without all of the finger pointing slowing it down. It is too late for George Bush to experience any political comeuppance from this event, since he can't run for office again anyway. He has wasted his political capital fighting an immoral war in Iraq and now the money and human capital that could so easily have been called upon to help in New Orleans is overseas being strafed by snipers and suicide bombers. Halliburton is a company big enough to handle many of the logistics for moving and feeding large numbers of people--but they're already tied up doing that in Iraq. They were looking for work and Bush supplied it a few years ago. Now lets move on, we're stuck with that.

The big test, the battle of wills, will come when New Orleans is pumped dry. Scrape up the billions of pounds of rubbish, bury the dead humans and animals, de-toxify the soup of chemicals (deja vu here--we've discussed this recently somewhere else) and then convince people they can't move back without huge changes. Houses on tall foundations, reinforced infrastructure, and above all, restored wetlands to absorb much of the water that hit New Orleans so hard. It will take resourceful people to figure out if any of that area can be restored to be more than a port and a refinery town. I won't write off the enterprise completely--this could be a marvelous example of how to do it right this time. But only build there with the knowledge that this isn't the last storm of this size that will hit that place, and if you're going to live there, you need to be prepared to bug out at a moment's notice, and you can't build there if you don't follow some strict rules that make the dwellings safer from wind and water. You think there was a big sucking sound when Bush's billions hit Halliburton in Iraq? Americans can be just as corrupt as corporations and citizens of other nations when faced with tons of money with fewer strings than usual. Lets hope the resourceful folks are the ones who get their hands on it and make some good decisions.

In the meantime, I want to see those stories start emerging of the resourceful survivors. We need to hear people in other regions of the U.S. start saying "if something like that happened here, what do I have set aside for an emergency?" and then go buy a bunch of bottled water and canned food and first aid kits to keep in their houses for disaster preparations. Let's look for people to stop pointing fingers and shouting contemptible accusations, and let's instead learn from this and as we in large cities in surrounding states absorb the equivalent of entire small cities into our midsts. There's no Pollyanna speaking here. Things are going to be grim and nasty for a long time to come, and we in surrounding areas are going to be feeding and schooling and housing and nursing back to health a lot of injured people. If people want to help, then be ready to find housing and employment for those who are displaced from New Orleans. Chances are they're going to stay where they land, because the rebuilding will be a long time in the making. Are those who are pointing fingers and shouting "racist" and "genocide" going to make room in their neighborhoods for some of these families to take up permanent residence?

We shall see.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:39 PM

Sit on your fucking keyboards and grind your axe at a time like this,, makes me sick. Pointing fingers will really help. You got time to write this drivel, you got time to write a check

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:39 PM

Good post, Stilly.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:50 PM

Yes. Also LH. (It won't be called "socialism," though, except by opponents.) Not so sure about the war part, but otherwise certainly a voice of reason. Thank you, SRS.

I've sent as a big a check to the Red Cross as I could. Maybe it will save a life.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:52 PM

With that thought in mind, Guest, I am going to turn off this computer, go have lunch, and follow your advice. Bye.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Wesley S
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 12:58 PM

And Guest - the amount of YOUR check was......

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:03 PM

Thanks, SRS, well put.

LH, yur last paragraph to Kirsten is some of the most brilliant I've read of yours. Thanks and keep it up!

Yesterday, the mayor of Boston said something to the effect that he realises their evacuation and prepareness plans are woefully inadequate based on what we have seen in NO this week. Therefore, he has called for a complete revamping, etc. and hopes that other cities will do likewise. That's the kind of good we will see, imo, along with the things SRS mentioned.

How folks are turning to the Internet for help in finding loved ones: click here.

Also, helping to find housing: click here.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:18 PM

SRS, here's some "feel good" stories: click here

Here's the beginning of the article:

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A newborn evacuated to a Fort Worth hospital from Louisiana will be reunited with family Thursday night, one of several children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Zachary Breaux was in good condition at the neonatal intensive unit of Cook Children's Medical Center. He was born Aug. 23 and admitted Thursday, said hospital spokeswoman Marti Quisling.

Zachary's family had taken shelter in Houston and called the hospital Thursday evening after learning of the baby's whereabouts, Quisling said.

KHOU

Zachary Breaux was located in a Fort Worth hospital Wednesday. He had been separated from his parents after Hurricane Katrina.

Similar reunions have occurred in the last few days at the hospital, she said.

Cook's officials are trying to contact parents of a 1-week-old baby girl in good condition.

The hospital also expects to receive more children evacuated from hurricane-ravaged areas, Quisling said.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Wesley S
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:25 PM

Thanks Kat. I live about a mile from Cooks Childrens Hospital and I've got nothing but good things to say about the staff there. Our son Patrick was there if you remember. Those babies are in very good hands - be sure of that. I know of a local ageny that should be able to help the parents with a place to stay. I'll make sure they are aware of this situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:31 PM

This should go on that thread about misusing language - it isn't genocide, and it wouldn't be even if all the blacks in New Orleans were killed by the white administration - (a)not all the blacks that there are live in New Orleans, (b) there are plenty of poor people dying who don't happen to be black, and (c) it isn't only whites doing the extermination. Yes, it bites, but not in that particular way.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:35 PM

Let's solve the problem. Then, when there is time and leisure for real research and digging, let's investigate.

But first, there are people hungry, people sickening, people dying, people homeless. Pointing finger, writing essays about "genocide," casting blame on everyone else EXCEPT those that we agree with, is a bloody waste of energy and is solving nothing right now.

I've already sent a check, and we're working on doing more. Were I closer I might well be in thick of the efforts -- I've been shot at before.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:40 PM

gee....it took singer Harry Connick Jr. one hour to drive from Baton Rouge to the Convention Centre in NO yesterday and speak with the people there. How long should it reasonably take to truck in food,water and medical supplies or load those poor bastards on buses and truck em out? Jeezus fucking Christ.

Riki Tiki Tavi Mongoose is Gone, he's been gone for a very long time.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:45 PM

I sent a donation to the American Red Cross via Amazon. They simply charge my card same as they would if I were purchasing a book. It's quick, and all of it goes to Red Cross. This is quick because I didn't have to enter all of the usual card information in a new site. Can it get any easier?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:53 PM

Did I hear this right, the Mayor of New Orleans is staying in Baton Rouge?   Why isn't he with the citizens of his city?   Please tell me this isn't true.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 01:53 PM

Wesley, I DO remember. Thank you for contacting the agency. I cannot imagine how it would feel to be separated from any child, esp. a newborn!

Here's a very interesting op/ed piece from the NYTimes,
in particular the following paragraph (AND the ones right after it:)

Then in 1927, the great Mississippi flood rumbled down upon New Orleans. As Barry writes in his account, "Rising Tide," the disaster ripped the veil off the genteel, feudal relations between whites and blacks, and revealed the festering iniquities. Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away. The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north.

Civic leaders intentionally flooded poor and middle-class areas to ease the water's pressure on the city, and then reneged on promises to compensate those whose homes were destroyed. That helped fuel the populist anger that led to Huey Long's success. Across the country people demanded that the federal government get involved in disaster relief, helping to set the stage for the New Deal. The local civic elite turned insular and reactionary, and New Orleans never really recovered its preflood vibrancy.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 02:20 PM

"According to resources in Canada, Canadian TV is reporting they offered planes full of food, water, and supplies to help New Orleans refugees and America turned them down!"

Not true at all.

1) Disaster areas do NOT need 'helpful' people running around fixing things. It has to be coordinated.
2) Washington did not say no. Washington said they would accept the help when they could determine what help was needed.
3) Read this, SVP.

I don't really mind when folks call Bush an ass. He is. But call him an ass because he is, not to support a vitriolic agenda. What's happening in New Orleans is what happens in disasters. NO is about 70% Black. Expect that 70% of the deaths will involve Black people. If the numbers are higher--that is, if Black people die at a higher rate than other 'groups' of people, one should then maybe look at racism as a cause. But calling what is happening 'genocide' is reactionary claptrap, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:17 PM

The entire Times editorial by David Brooks is well worth reading.

About half of it recounts groundless, hysteria-based rumors that followed earlier disasters.

Before we compare 2005 to 1927, we should remember that in 1927 N.O., like many Southern and some Midwestern cities, was essentially controlled by Klansmen. They didn't much care about those "middle-class areas" because so many of them were occupied by Italian and Irish Americans, almost as much anathema to the KKK as were the Africans.

Eighty years ago. America has come a long way, in my view.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:47 PM

Incidentally, 150 Red Cross disaster-relief workers from Canada are now in Louisiana near NO. FYI.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:52 PM

PS   I hope that Condi Rice's shoes aren't hurting her feet.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:53 PM

The worst storm (hurricane) to hit the U.S. was the 1900 Galveston hurricane. That assessment may be revised after Katrina.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Jeri
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 06:32 PM

Closed minds drive me nuts, no matter what side they're on. People form a rock solid opinion based on what they see or hear, and they're no light getting in. In this case, people seem to be playing Monday Morning FEMA Directer and looking for someone to blame. Blame the damned hurricaine.

I think there were some major screwups. Harry Connick Jr reports yesterday morning there are people without their essential medication, without food and water, and that these people are dying. Last night there wasn't any change in the situation that I could notice, other than the talking heads acknowledged the fact those people in the Convention Center actually existed and something would be done. I don't know why helicopters couldn't have dropped food and water. I don't know why doctors and medicines couldn't have been sent in. That's the whole point though: I don't know why.

I've had some experience in training for mass disasters, and I've had some small involvement in the planning process. I'f you've ever heard "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" (the 'enemy' in this case being a natural disaster of epic proportions) - it's not a figurative statement. People like FEMA don't plan to have a plan. They plan so they know where to start, what questions to ask, and how to find the answers.

Authorities plan how to react to a likely disaster, not the storm of the century. They plan how to handle the small numbers of people who refuse to evacuate. There will be a lot of evaluating what went wrong when people are done dealing with the immediate problems.

There were screwups. There always are. It's not clear to me exactly what the screwups are. Is the problem that the authorities didn't provide busses to evacuate people from the Superdome? Or is the problem the fact that many of those people would have evacuated the city when told to if they'd had the means

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:07 PM

Having looked through this thread---a few thoughts:

The very first post is right on--though "classism" would be the most appropriate word.   Let us face it---the least desirable neighborhoods are peopled by the people closest to the poverty line. It ain't easy in The Big Easy. These were the areas hardest hit--and the pictures in the papers jumped out at me as it did, it seems, to many journalists---the color of the people we were seeing. We also must realize that over the years the city is predominantly Black (African / American---I am trying to be PC).   WHich is why I speak of "classism". Black/White it is all about economics---where you live.

Over the years the Corps of Engineers has urged the proper things needed to restore the barrier islands, the silt buildup that helps,etc;   Little was done.   Money was spent better elsewhere.

Our administration managed to quickly send troops to Irag (admittedly poorly equipped) and not that quickly to our own hard hit area. I won;t get into why we went there in the first place--and the using of a national force for our protection over non-existent Fed. Armed Services. WHich is why we are so thin in local NG people.

Photo Ops did abound, however, for our revered leader.   

One writer talks of "evacuation"---pictures abounded---disasterous. Just think people leaving on highways that did not even use the opposing lanes for that traffic---they stayed empty.

A few last thoughts:

New Orleans will surely re-build. Some people will get rich or richer in the process--which is what usually happens in this economy. Patriotism is a nomer from WW2. It is what always happens---even the Red Cross admits it would rather have cash to donations material to buy in the local area and rebuild the economy. Volunteers are not welcom---rightfully so--because of the danger and the lack of infrastructure. Being a drive or so away is not the answer---from reports it is not that easy to do that. Or that desired.

The best thing, I suppose, is to realize how vulnerable we all are to natural disasters and that we had also best realize that we live in a very class structured society. Help is on the way---if you are in the right class====or you may not even need it.

SUV owners take heed---best you can afford them. To steal from Dylan---The Times they are a changin'---sadly. I filled up my 28 mpg sedan yesterday---which still had 1/4 tank left---38.00. Guess that Escalade/Hummer/Tank or such is running over 80.00.   Guess to crush my little old car --unless you are Donald Trump--you will have to coast into me.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:18 PM

No, we didn't "quickly" send troops to Iraq. Certainly not in terms of "quick" that would be a meaningful comparison to this disaster.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 07:27 PM

Well--looks like a picker of picayune portions. Nice alliteration, Bill---thanks, Bill.

OK now that I have complimented myself on wit let me say Mr. Hardly---and, thankfully, I hardly knew ye---could not resist that little jab and insight into your name--- speed is relative. Ask Albert Einstein.   Sorry---deceased.

My point was that it was not an Iraq discussion---merely a comment about the sparcity of troops that were envisioned to serve local needs and not fight wrong wars for us on the cheap.   As it is we hire "contractors"===read "merceneries"--for triple the play our troops rcve.   But---this is about Katrina and not your petty peeves about Iraq--oh, those petty peeves. Alliteration just cannot cease.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:07 PM

I mostly agree with Jeri, but the indications that the various governmental authorities did nothing remotely effective, over a period of decades, to strengthen those levees for a category 5 storm should be the prime focus of inquiry.

The Engineer general in charge of the underfunded and lethargic levee project staied on CNN that the barrier broke at at least one place which had already been brought up to the "new standard," which was to withstand only a category 3 hurricane.

Compared to that statement (and I hope I misheard it!), any discussion about slowness of response is almost moot.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,G
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:14 PM

"Guy Who Thinks"; I pretty much agree with your take on Jeri.
Very sensible, Jeri.

ANd no, GWT, it is a documented fact that the standard for those levees is and always has been "built to withstand a Catagory 3".
Somewhere in this hallowed hall, I aske for someone to check with the Army Corps of Engineers to verify this. And once again, the ongoing levee project was to increase the height, NOT the strength, of the levees. I challenge anyone to prove this statement incorrect.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 08:21 PM

'Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the Corps, dismissed suggestions that recent federal funding decreases or delayed contracts had any impact on levee performance in the face of Katrina's overwhelming force.

Instead he pointed to a danger that many public officials had warned about for years: The system was never designed to withstand a storm of Katrina's strength.

"It was fully recognized by officials that we had Category Three [hurricane] level of protection," Strock said. "As projections of Category Four and Five were made, [officials] began plans to evacuate the city.'

from this sight

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0902_050902_katrina_levees.html

Sorry, link didn't work.
Does now. --JC

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: number 6
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 09:12 PM

"Or is the problem the fact that many of those people would have evacuated the city when told to if they'd had the means"

No, there were thousands of people who didn't have the means .... these are the thousands that live below the poverty line ... the thousands of people the tourists don't see when they visit the French Quarter, these are the people that the "haves" in the richest nation in the world don't see, let alone understand the problems and results of poverty. Poverty is the lowest depth of human misery .... no, they didn't have the means.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:01 PM

Thanks, JC, for making the link work.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Pauline L
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 02:55 AM

A comparison: San Francisco is built on the San Andreas Fault. People speculate about when -- not whether -- the Big One will occur. Emergency preparedness? Think about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:26 AM

Bill O'Reilly, not my favorite journalist, reports that Fox News has "established" that the state of Mississippi "had no emergency plan" for a category 5 storm.

Some perspective is in order, Hurricane Camille came ashore at Gulfport in 1969 as a category 5 with winds clocked at 200 miles per hour. It was far more severe than Katrina in that sense. Had the eye-wall hit N.O., the present situation would have come about 36 years ago.

An even worse storm, 200+ m.p.h, hit the Florida Keys in 1935.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Guy Who Thinks
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:30 AM

A Louisiana State Police official on Fox says that N.O. was quiet last night and that earlier reports of snipers, rapes, and violence were "with a few real exceptions mostly exaggerations and rumors."

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Tam the man
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:35 AM

I wonder if Bush and friends would of being so slow if it was a city that the majorty was white.

Money comes first for Bush, people come last, However that's just my views

Tam

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:44 AM

An Australian young (white) tourist lady rang home on a borrowed mobile from the Convention Centre, and told her parents she had been attacked, had all her money, her mobile and her clothes stolen. She hasn't been heard of since.

About 24 Aussies tourists (white, of course) managed to get a hitch out of the Superdome because they were terrified. The ladies had been constantly groped, and had it not been for the tall burly looking young Aussie lads with them, might have had other threats carr
ied out. They witnessed many rapes, theft, murders and stabbings.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:53 AM

It seems that The Speaker (US) has mumbled something about whether it would be economical to rebuild NO. He has been pilloried.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 09:27 AM

How about those pricks in the Sonesta Hotel eh?? Talk about compassion, is it any wonder those poor people in the Dome went crazy? Imagine eating gourmet meals and swimming in the pool with the devastation of Katrina outside your door.

My concern now is the flaming of racial tensions going on in the media(unless you watch Fox of course), I guess if the fuse is lit, you may as well toss the bomb.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: JennyO
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 11:02 AM

SRS mentioned earlier about stories emerging of resourceful survivors. I don't think anyone has linked to this story yet, but it made my day. I can't help wondering though how the young man in question will be treated over what he did. In my eyes he is a hero!

I'll post it as well as linking to it, in case the link doesn't last. There is a video of a report on it there as well.

Taking refuge in the Astrodome

Thursday, September 01, 2005   Updated: 11:32 AM

HOUSTON -- NEWSCHANNEL 5 crews were in Houston as some desperate refugees arrived in a stolen bus.

HOUSTON -- Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.

About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.

The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.

"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

"It's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where we're safe."

During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.

One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and hungry.

Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."

Sixty legally chartered buses were expected to arrive in Houston throughout the night. Thousands of people will be calling the Astrodome "home," at least for now.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: SINSULL
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 11:49 AM

I stand corrected. "Genocide" is not an appropriate term for the fiasco in NO. But I can't help but wonder if the same situation occurred on LI and thousands of blond haired blue eyed long legged ladies with big hair were trapped in Nassau Coliseum, how long would it take for help to arrive or at least food and water to be dropped to them?

And from a different perspective - with all the money spent on preparing for a nuclear (nucular, if you must) terrorist attack on a major city, is this the response time we can expect?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 12:08 PM

Kirsten:

When hurricaine diasters struck the south in the 30's and 50's, historians did not write about the plight of the black and poor.

The institution of racism back then was not challenged or examined as it is today.


Nor was there any videotape to instant replay the suffering.

PS
catch phrase of the day:
"Who are you going to believe, Bush and Chertof - or your lying eyes?"

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 12:16 PM

Thanks, JennyO. Locally we heard the story about that bus arriving after collecting survivors, but I hadn't heard anything about the young man who initiated the trip. It was a tough call, and I don't think he made a bad choice.

It does beg the question--if he was able to drive that bus out of New Orleans, how come other buses weren't doing the same thing all along? This story, along with the news that the Red Cross wasn't allowed into New Orleans and other resources weren't being delivered, smack of turf wars among the various rescue agencies. Was it FEMA or someone from "Homeland Security" (whatever that is) that decided that if food and water were provided to the cesspool that people might want to stay?

It does sound like there are entrenched groups, not the poor or looters or police or others, but area residents in tall buildings who are making due. That link that PoppaGator provided (http://www.uta.edu/lc/) is an example.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Scoville
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 06:22 PM

I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a single city in the U.S. with an escape plan for a storm/disaster of this magnitude. In 2000, during the coverage of the 100-year anniversary of the Galveston Flood, it was estimated that it would take a minimum of 36 hours to evacuate the island if another storm that size hit. Thirty-six hours. The 1900 hurricane didn't even last that long. What do you think the odds are of such an evacuation going as planned, even if everyone did as they were told, the bridge off the island wasn't damaged, and people weren't in a panic? Not likely.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:20 PM

You have to prepare for disasters - you rehearse and you have drills and it's a pain, but that's what you do.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a single city in the U.S. with an escape plan for a storm/disaster of this magnitude." Very likely true. If so it's a clear case of "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad" (Euripides back in the fourth century BC)

When a major city is built below sea-level in a place where hurricanes are an ever-present possibility, there is a certain duty on those in authority to respond appropriately to that situation. And, as they used to claim to believe, "the buck stops here", in the White House.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 03 Sep 05 - 07:35 PM

The magnitude was not larger than others---the problem was the skimping over the years in not financing the rebuilding of the barrier islands, the levees, etc;

New Orleans is particularly vulnerable---yet, pork barrelling alloted much money to building bridges to nowhere in Alaska, for example. Idealism and need are forgotten words in our political climate.

You have to wonder how we got to where we are as a nation given today's priorities and thinking. Probably that we had leaders and idealists at some point---some corrupt, surely---yet not of the magnitude we see today.

I won't repeat my comments re: sparcity of NG troops and Iraq.

Our revered leader had some more photo ops yesterday---interesing ones---news pictures showed mostly Black people in dire straits and his shots were hugging and commisserating with the "dear folks I have met"--all white.   And, even that is a world removed from his and his empathy.

To be fair minded---Jesse Jackson is not better---he showed up but brought a camera crew with him to cover his appearance---even some of his people yelled at him about his hypocrisy.

In the end---NO will rebuild, people will have moved to other cities, and many people--as I said earlier---will get rich on the rebuilding. It comes with our society.   Private contractors in Iraq---mucho dinero there---less for the poor folks that we urged to join the armed forces.   

I must ask---where oh where has our "morality" and "patriotism" of the WW2 years gone?    The words, even, have been comandeered to mean totally different things.   I believe we all know who has done the commandeering---and I am saddened to find that even on ex Pres. who, one might have thought, had more backbone has embraced the Bush admin. and volunteers to help whenever asked---instead of calling it for what it is. And I am not speaking of Daddy here.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 01:33 AM

Not THIS noble President by any chance:

Rory Carroll in Johannesburg
Wednesday March 31, 2004
The Guardian

"President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.
Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak."

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Pauline L
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 01:50 AM

I have two naive questions. Can someone please explain why (1) people are killing and raping other people in NO (I know that they're hot, tired, thirsty, hungry, and stressed, but really) and (2) Fox is not showing photos of the African Americans in deep trouble there?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 01:53 AM

1) The raping and killing seems to have been exaggerated slightly.
2) Fox may not perceive Blacks to be worthy of consideration by their news network.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Carping Cybersnipe
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 11:16 AM

This is more horse shit than I can stand. But you believe it because you want to.

*Plenty* of "pictures of Black suffering" have appeared on the Fox News Channel. i've been watching it and CNN. They have shown plenty of pictures of suffering, and 99% of the people they show are Black.
No network has been downplaying Black suffering. Shepard Smith was broadcasting live outside the Superdome for at least two days, showing dead bodies on the bridge and practically shouting at O'Reilley on two coinsecutive nights to take the slowness of the rescue operation alot more seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 11:35 AM

I think a lot of people are confusing incompetence or unpreparedness with design.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 11:54 AM

Good point, Saramouche.

Here online this morning, a turning of the tide:

---

As last refugees escape, New Orleans turns to its thousands of dead
September 04, 2005 10:08 AM EDT

NEW ORLEANS - With the last weary refugees rescued from the Superdome and convention center, New Orleans turned its attention Sunday to gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in thousands of corpses.

The bodies of those killed in Hurricane Katrina are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating in the ruined city, crumpled in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.

"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday on CNN, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week about the death toll.

Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.

"We need to prepare the country for what's coming," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on "Fox News Sunday." "We are going to uncover people who died hiding in the houses, maybe got caught in floods. It is going to be as ugly a scene as you can imagine."

Chertoff said rescuers going house to house have encountered a significant number of people who have said they do not want to evacuate.

"That is not a reasonable alternative," he said. "We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city. ... The flooded places, when they're de-watered, are not going to be sanitary."

Sunday morning, a woman's body remained lying at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street - a business area in the lower Garden District with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday.

As days passed, people covered her with blankets or plastic.

By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around her body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."

Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten to death and another commit suicide at the Superdome. Womack was beaten with a pipe and treated at the airport center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.

"One guy jumped off a balcony. I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn't leave," he said.

Three babies died at the convention center from heat exhaustion, said Mark Kyle, a medical relief provider.

But some progress was evident. The last 300 refugees at the Superdome were evacuated Saturday evening, eliciting cheers from members of the Texas National Guard who had been standing watch over the facility for nearly a week as some 20,000 hurricane survivors waited for rescue.

On Sunday, utilities planned to send trucks into the city to assess storm damage for the first time since Katrina struck. Morgan Stewart, a spokesman for electricity provider Entergy Corp., said the National Guard would escort the company's vehicles.

The convention center was "almost empty" after 4,200 people were removed, according to Marty Bahamonde, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Earlier estimates of the crowd climbed as high as 25,000.

Thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had been stuck at the convention center for five days, was among those who filed past corpses to reach the buses.

"Anyplace is better than here," she said.

"People are dying over there."

Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter, where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days, his stocking feet poking out from under a quilt.

By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets around the convention center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.

The exact number of dead won't be known for some time. Survivors were still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city. President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast on Saturday.

"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were there," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.

The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape - and, overwhelmingly, they were black.

"The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a man-made disaster," said Phillip Holt, 51, who was rescued from his home Saturday with his partner.

Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from the city, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and many other states.

Texas Governor Rick Perry warned Saturday that his enormous state was running out of room, with more than 220,000 hurricane refugees camped out there and more coming. Emergency workers at the Astrodome were told to expect 10,000 new arrivals daily for the next three days.

In Washington, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced that more than 10,000 people had been flown out of New Orleans in what he called the largest airlift in history on U.S. soil. He said the flights would continue as long as needed.

Thousands of people remained at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where officials turned a Delta Blue terminal into a triage unit. Officials said 3,000 to 5,000 people had been treated at the unit, but fewer than 200 remain. Others throughout the airport awaited transport out of the city.

"In the beginning it was like trying to lasso an octopus. When we got here it was overwhelming," said Jake Jacoby, a physician helping run the center.

Airport director Roy Williams said about 30 people had died, some of them elderly and ill. The bodies were being kept in refrigerated trucks as a temporary morgue.

At the convention center, people stumbled toward the helicopters, dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.

Around the corner, a motley fleet of luxury tour buses and yellow school buses lined up two deep to pick up some of the healthier refugees. National Guardsmen confiscated a gun, knives and letter openers from people before they got on the buses.

"It's been a long time coming," Derek Dabon, 29, said as he waited to pass through a guard checkpoint. "There's no way I'm coming back. To what? That don't make sense. I'm going to start a new life."

Dan Craig, the director of recovery for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it could take up to six months to get the water out of New Orleans, and the city would then need to dry out, which could take up to three more months.

A Saks Fifth Avenue store billowed smoke Saturday, as did rows of warehouses on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where corrugated roofs buckled and tiny explosions erupted. Gunfire - almost two dozen shots - broke out in the French Quarter.

In the French Quarter, some residents refused or did not know how to get out. Some holed up with guns.

As the warehouse district burned, Ron Seitzer, 61, washed his dirty laundry in the even dirtier waters of the Mississippi River and said he didn't know how much longer he could stay without water or power, surrounded by looters.

"I've never even had a nightmare or a beautiful dream about this," he said as he watched the warehouses burn. "People are just not themselves."

---

Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill, Robert Tanner, Melinda Deslatte, Brett Martel and Mary Foster contributed to this report.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 03:09 PM

I think a lot of people are confusing incompetence or unpreparedness with design.

Interesting point, Le Scaramouche. Something similar has been gradually dawning on me. Would you be willing to go into any more detail about your thoughts on this?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: SharonA
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 04:03 PM

Suicide in New Orleans: I heard a report on the local news this morning that two N.O. policemen were so overcome by the horror they were facing that they killed themselves. There was no mention of their ethnicity, so this may be off-topic.

On another note, Bill H says: "Our revered leader had some more photo ops yesterday---interesting ones---news pictures showed mostly Black people in dire straits and his shots were hugging and commisserating with the "dear folks I have met"--all white.   And, even that is a world removed from his and his empathy."

Actually, he had a "video op" in Mississippi hugging a young black woman and walking along with his arm draped over her shoulders, but I've read reports that it was highly staged ("Mr. Bush, walk over here, hug her, now turn and walk"... that sort of thing). As for the situation being "a world removed from his and his empathy", Bill is more correct than he may know. Bush is quoted here on www.newshounds.us referring to New Orleans as "that part of the world" as if it were a foreign country. Foreign to him, to be sure.

Bill H also asks, "Where oh where has our 'morality' and 'patriotism' of the WW2 years gone? " In light of this discussion, I couldn't help but think as I read Bill's question that the World War II years were part of the Jim Crow era, so the "morality" of that time dictated that it was acceptable to segregate, discriminate against, deny higher education and higher-paying jobs to, and even lynch African-Americans. The "patriotism" of that time dictated that it was acceptable to be proud of a government of the people, by the people and for the people while not considering certain races and ethnicities to fall under their definition of "people". Thank goodness THAT "morality" and "patriotism" is changing, but many people (especially in the Deep South) did not want that change forced upon them and they have been pushing back at it since the Civil Rights era of the 1960s.

Now, in the particular case of the N.O. evacuation debacle this week, I think the problem was incompetence and unpreparedness, not a "design" or plan to wipe out the African-American population of N.O. (For one thing, the N.O. jail was evacuated after the flood so that criminals would not break out and make the streets even more unsafe -- and most people in the video I saw of that evacuation were black -- but if there were a plan to kill off blacks and poor whites, allowing criminals to run rampant and do the killing would have been part of the plan). However, it certainly can't be denied that an undercurrent of hatred of blacks and poor whites has existed in N.O. and has proliferated under corrupt local government, so at the very least, that didn't help any!

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 04:46 PM

SRS, where would be a good place to store your food and water if your home and street was about to be destroyed? How are people supposed to evacuate, when they haven't got cars, can't afford public transport, and in any case there's no public transport to be had at any price?

The BBC carried an itneresting quote today from a guy called Musib Na'imi, writing for an Iranian publication, Al-Vefagh:

About 10,000 US National Guard troops were deployed [in New Orleans] and were granted the authority to fire at and kill whom they wanted, upon the pretext of restoring order. This decision is an indication of the US administration's militarist mentality, which regards killing as the only way to control even its own citizens.

And this from Ambrose Murunga in Kenya's Daily Nation:

My first reaction when television images of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans came through the channels was that the producers must be showing the wrong clip. The images, and even the disproportionately high number of visibly impoverished blacks among the refugees, could easily have been a re-enactment of a scene from the pigeonholed African continent.

Interesting to see people being searched for weapons on their way into the refuges. The NRA must be seething. We'll know that normality has been restored when people have been given back their so-called right to bear arms, and they are again able to intimidate rescue services. (Where else in the world would first responders to a national emergency come under fire from among those they're trying to help?)

At what point will America wake up to the fact that caving in to low-tax, everyone-for-himself, survival-of-the-fittest attitudes results in one of the shabbiest societies on the planet?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 07:53 PM

Sharon A: You make valid points. When I spoke of the WW2 era I was (unconciously) seperating it from the other wrongs---merely thinking of how we all worked together---B & W.   Was our society wrong in its mores---surely.

Another reason why this may be more "classist" than "racist". Perhaps a better description would be to describe it in Ws own words via a paraphrase----intelligent design.   Priorities of "pork" for those who matter to the fund-raising and political ends. Bridges to nowhere, hwy projects, national security dollars to empty areas, etc;

Best to read today's NY Times and Frank Rich---brilliant piece. Even their conservative op -ed writer David Brooks is taking the administration to task.    Frank Rich made one point--among many that jumped out at me---9/11--where to go for W/ N O disaster--stop in Sand Diego first for some political maneuvering---BUT Terry Schiavo--one person in the headlines---get the hell back to DC and make publicity hay.   My goodnes---a veritable FDR, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln===probably more like one who plays with Lincoln Logs.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: SharonA
Date: 04 Sep 05 - 09:34 PM

Yes, indeed... for Terry Schiavo. That one hits close to home: I live near the town where she attended high school. The Schiavo story has been in the local news here for years and years, and I'm well aware of his middle-of-the-night maneuvering. Yup, yup, yup, he loves to play the "right to life" card when it comes to the unborn and those in a permanent vegetative state, but for those anywhere in between (babies starving from post-flood lack of formula, young adults sent off to fight his war, people going off to Canada to get affordable medications), genocide appears to be an option...

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 03:28 AM

i just heard on the news that a ship capable of making 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day was in the Gulf, but apart from its helicopters, it was not used.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:20 AM

Nobody here seems to understand an essential truth. The present President of the United States of America was appointed, BY GOD HIMSELF, to make the rich of America even richer - AND NOTHING MUST STAND IN THE WAY OF THAT SACRED MISSION - certainly not a few uppity poor people down south. After all a much larger number of Iraqis and American soldiers have been sacrificed, so far, in pursuit of THE CAUSE, and that has all been worth it, hasn't it? Well, possibly ... it's just too early to tell ... maybe ... sort of... ?????

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 10:30 AM

SharonA wrote: There was no mention of their ethnicity, so this may be off-topic.

It isn't off-topic, because we have concluded that the racial card has been misplayed in this instance, at least in the way the early pundits were trying to play it.

PeterK (Fionn) wrote: SRS, where would be a good place to store your food and water if your home and street was about to be destroyed? How are people supposed to evacuate, when they haven't got cars, can't afford public transport, and in any case there's no public transport to be had at any price?

Okay, Peter, you're excused from preparing an emergency cache of food for your house in case of a weather emergency. You can just assume your house will be completely destroyed and you will be killed so the shopping and storage would be a fool's errand.

For the rest of us, however, who understand that there are more than hurricanes in the world, keeping a stash is one thing to do in case the local infrastructure is compromised but our houses are still standing, or at least enough of a house to use for shelter until we can get out of the area, whether under our own steam or with the assistance of rescue crews. And frankly, even if I were killed in the destruction of my house, if there is a stash here that my neighbors know they can find and use, I'd be glad to have provided it. I live in tornado alley, where neighborhoods and towns are scoured away with alarming regularity. (Our most recent big hit, March 28, 2000.)

It has not been established that these people didn't leave town for the want of a bus fare. It has been established that a lot of people stayed behind because they wanted to guard their property and belongings or just didn't want to deal with the fuss of evacuation, after the chaos of a false alarm the year before. There WAS public transportation to be had, if residents had elected to use it.

Does that answer your question?

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 11:35 AM

SRS, your posts have assumed taht the victims failed to make provision. You've got no way of knowing.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 12:08 PM

It has not been established that these people didn't leave town for the want of a bus fare. It has been established that a lot of people stayed behind because they wanted to guard their property and belongings or just didn't want to deal with the fuss of evacuation, after the chaos of a false alarm the year before. There WAS public transportation to be had, if residents had elected to use it.

This is simply not true. There were many people who wanted to leave and had no way to do it. And to then be blamed for not leaving, when they are pretty damned angry for being left behind in the first place, is just a bit too much.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 12:34 PM

I don't, Peter, but you appear to be trying to defend the position that everyone did make provision and it was all washed away.

On Saturday's Weekend Edition on NPR I heard an interview with a fellow who had evacuated on Friday and housed in a Memphis hotel. He had done everything correctly, right from watching the weather and having enough of an understanding that the flooding was going to be a problem. They need to find that guy and hire him to run the Common Sense In the Face of a Pending Disaster Department.

CarolC, I say that some people didn't leave because it was their choice and you say that they couldn't get out and are angry about it. There is room in that city for both events to have happened to a lot of people, and as we can see now, there are a lot of people who still resist leaving. It is possible to acknowledge the agency of the people who were trapped there without blaming the victims, possible to acknowledge that a lot of people made the wrong decision when told to evacuate. Wrong decisions can extend to those who ran public transit--but I haven't read anything yet about what happened to public transit, so I'm not going to second guess that part of the story.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:03 PM

An informative article, but a poorly worded headline.



Perry Orders Refugees Moved Out of Texas
September 05, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas - With Texas shelters reaching their limit of refugees from Hurricane Katrina, state leaders want to fly some of them to other states that have offered to help. Gov. Rick Perry said Sunday that Texas needs other states to help manage the growing crisis. Nearly a quarter million refugees are already in Texas and more are still pouring in. "There are shelters set up in other states that are sitting empty while thousands arrive in Texas by the day, if not the hour," Perry said. "We are doing everything we can to address the needs of evacuees as they arrive, but in order to meet this enormous need, we need help from other states."

Under a plan set up Sunday, aid centers will be established at airports in Houston and Dallas where incoming refugees can be given food, water and medical care before they are flown out. The Texas National Guard will coordinate the air operation and the governor's office said that people should not just show up at an airport expecting to be transported. Perry said that American, Continental and Southwest airlines, all of which are based in Texas, have agreed to lend their help.

Since Thursday, Perry's office has been in contact with several states, including the governors of Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa, New York, West Virginia and Pennsylvania about providing shelter for Louisiana evacuees. Perry's office said arrangements also were being made to bring cruise ships to Galveston to help house Louisiana residents. More ships could be stationed in Beaumont and Corpus Christi.

Texas has been taking in refugees since Wednesday. By Saturday, Perry warned the state was nearing its limit. About 100,000 Louisiana residents are staying in hotels and motels across the state and another 139,000 are being temporarily housed in 137 shelters throughout the state from the Houston Astrodome to El Paso.

Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said she didn't know how many refugees might ultimately end up in other states. "Gov. Perry has been heartened by the number of governors who have called him," Walt said.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:17 PM

This is the part of your post that I take exception to, SRS...

It has not been established that these people didn't leave town for the want of a bus fare.

It has been established that large numbers of people (many of the sources I've read have said the majority of those who remained) are those who were too poor to have any means of leaving. And you are assuming that there were busses operating during the evacuation that would have taken people out of the area. But even if there were, there were still many who would not have been able to afford the bus fare.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:26 PM

A military base on Cape Cod is expecting 2,500 refugees. Ironically, there are no vacancies in homeless shelters anywhere on the Cape for its own residents in need from whatever circumstances. The shelter is not begrudged to refugees of NO, just the irony noted, esp. among those who are in the trenches, daily, trying to help people who have nowhere to live.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:36 PM

Alabama and Georgia have been taking in refugees right from the start. Many of the refugees plan to resettle in these areas, and are receiving all kinds of financial and other support to help them with resettlement.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:44 PM

I'm not assuming anything Carol, but you're putting words in people's mouths. Lets wait until something appears about what was going on in New Orleans with the municipal bus folks, shall we?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:47 PM

I quoted you directly, SRS. I did not put any words into your mouth.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:51 PM

But what I do know is that there are many, many people who have said that they wanted to leave, but couldn't. And many who were too sick or weak to evacuate themselves. And many who were too poor to be able to pay for bus fare. NO had quite a large homeless population. They had no access to any transportation that was not provided free of charge.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 01:57 PM

And even the computer models that were generated in recent years projecting what the effect of a hurricane like Katrina would be for the area around New Orleans, projected that there would be about 100,000 to 200,000 people who would not have any access to transportation out of the area. But the disaster plans did not include any provisions for getting these people out.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 02:19 PM

You must remember that the Mayor of New Orleans is also a Black person and he had no plan to get those poor folk out of the City did he?I do not for one minute believe that racism is or was the problem.Classism yes but not racism.The poor have no real voice.But again let us not forget that the approach of throwing money at this kind of problem is not the answer either.Oprah Winfrey tried it and it failed miserably.This is a very complicated problem and will take some very deep objective thinking and dialogue to fix.It is hard for me to see why if all it takes is money to fix things did welfare fail so miserably.People have to want to do better first and welfare is nothing but a trap.We have people of all different nationalities and colors come to this country with almost nothing and work very hard and do very well for themselves.The answer has to be in a hand up not a hand out.Feed a man fish and you will feed him forever.Teach a man to fish and he will feed himself and be a much happier productive person.Dialouge like this is part of the solution but it must be objective and honest and not about throwing stones.Let he who has done everything they can to try to solve problems like this be the first to throw the stones.mississippitom

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 02:27 PM

Hmm! Just as an aside. . . .

I have discovered—the hard way—that when I make a statement about the actions or behavior of SOME members of a semi-specific group (Christians, conservatives, left-handed people, inhabitants of California, etc.) I have to be very careful to say that "some" people in this category tend to behave in this manner. But not just that:   In an attempt to make my meaning abundantly clear, I often make use of some HTML codes and display the word "some" in boldfaced, underlined, and in CAPS, thus:

SOME.

Otherwise, someone is bound to get on my cas, accusing me of claiming that ALL people in the category in question behave this way.

But even when I do take great pains to make my meaning abundantly clear, there are STILL those who will claim that I said something that I did not.

In our enthusiasm to make our points, let's not let our adrenaline get out of hand, shall we?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 02:40 PM

I think that had FEMA been left as it was and had it not been absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security, things would have unfolded quite differently than they did, mississippitom. I credit a large chunk of this tragedy to the gutting of civil infrastructure in this country that is being undertaken by the Bush administration (and to some extent some of the previous administrations, but not anywhere near the extent of the Bush administration). I don't think it's necessarily motivated by racial considerations, but the effect is being felt much more severely and disproportionately by the Black people of the area. And that can make it look like it is motivated by racism.

But the reality is that the local governments don't have the resources to conduct these kinds of disaster relief efforts. That's precisely why we have agencies like FEMA. And since it was, by definition, the responsibility of FEMA to manage this emergency, and since they did not do so, they (and the people they answser to) are the primary people who are responsible for how things turned out.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 02:51 PM

By the way, mississippitom, being poor doesn't necessarily mean the person in question is on welfare. There are many, many "working poor" who are working very hard, often at more than one job, who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have any financial cusion at all, and who barely survive on what they do have. These are the people who make it possible for the rest of the country to buy goods cheaply at places like Walmart and McDonalds, and who do the jobs that no one else is willing to do. This country depends on these people, and they don't deserve anyone's contempt. It's quite an insult to these people to suggest that they have not done all they could to better their situation.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 03:05 PM

It is an interesting point, one that I haven't seen often made, that the absorbtion of FEMA into DHS certainly seemed to have a hand in furthering the disaster.

To further federalize programs -- to further centralize programs that apply to specific regions -- is, by witness of this disaster, probably not a wise move.

I just spent quite some time looking over the NO "Comprehensive Emergency Plan" in which it is quite plain that evacuation is absolutely the responsibility of the local government. And given the nature of evacuations, who would want to further federalize a local evacuation plan? What? ...so we don't evacuate until we get federal agents in to direct the evacuation out of real estate with which they don't have the slightest familiarity? ...and we wait for a signal from Washington to tell us?

We seem to have such a federal view of every problem. We seem to think that we can centralize every issue that America faces. Certainly this should show some of the folly in that kind of thinking.

Excellent posts, SRS.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 03:11 PM

FEMA was working pretty well before it got absorbed into the DHS, John.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 03:55 PM

Keep in mind, also, that the Mayor of New Orleans was not responsible for the areas outside of the city limits that were similarly abandoned by the federal government.

Here is what the FEMA and Department of Homeland Security people have to say about what they are responsible for. Under the circumstances on the ground at the time, because of the state of emergency that had been declared by the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, condition number 2 applied at the time in question. And condidion number 4 could have been applied by President Bush at any time, but was not...


"The Homeland Security Act of 2002 established DHS to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States; reduce the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism, natural disasters, and other emergencies. The act also designates DHS as "a focal point regarding natural and manmade crises and emergency planning".

Pursuant to HSPD-5, the Secretary of Homeland Security is responsible for coordinating Federal operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. HSPD-5 further designates the Secretary of Homeland Security as the "principal Federal official" for domestic incident management.

In this role, the Secretary is also responsible for coordinating Federal resources utilized in response to or recovery from terrorist attacks, major disasters, or other emergencies if and when any of the following four conditions applies:

(2) the resources of State and local authorities are overwhelmed and Federal assistance has been requested;

(4) the Secretary has been directed to assume incident management responsibilities by the President."

http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 04:12 PM

Rather than spending time subtracting political leanings before fact-checking posts from here at Mudcat, folks might want to go to the direct sources of good information:

The Times-Picayune

The Clarion-Ledger

The Mobile Register

I've saved a desktop icon for each, and go back periodically to read new entries. It's heartbreaking.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 04:19 PM

...and also this from the Department of Homeland Security:


Emergencies & Disasters

Planning & Prevention

National Response Plan: Prevention, Preparedness, Response & Maintenance

Response

"The National Response Plan provides the policies and processes for coordinating Federal support activities that address the short-term, direct effects of an incident. These activities include immediate actions to preserve life, property, and the environment; meet basic human needs; and maintain the social, economic, and political structure of the affected community"

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0570.xml

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 05:28 PM

An interesting development: Bush and his Mrs. visited Louisiana without including the Governor in their plans. She found out and showed up less than happy. I thought he said he was going to work with national, regional, and local people to get the job done?

They met for close to two hours. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during that meeting. Seems his nose is out of joint because she refused to allow the military to take over control of the National Guard.

No politics at work here.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 06:11 PM

You have a situation where there's been an official warning that the city needs to be abandoned because of a hurricane - and you charge them bus fares to be evacuated; and you have people who are scared to leave because they haven't the money to pay for a place to live and for food to eat when they get there?

This is "free enterprise" and "the market economy" gone completely crazy. And this is the model of how to run a society that is supposed to be copied by other countries all over the world - and even imposed on them by economic pressure and even military force?

I only hope that this is going to open people's eyes to what kind of primrose path they are being led down by those who are selling these sort of ideas.

Last year in Cuba there was Hurricane Dennis, and it meant one and a half million people having to be evacuated in one hell of a hurry. Terrible devastation was caused, and the cost was estimated at $1.4 billion. But the total death roll was 16. Which was considered unexpectedly (and no doubt in Bush terms "unacceptably") high by the people in gharge.

"The level of disaster preparedness in Cuba is extremely high and it is thanks to this that even more losses of lifeand property was prevented. In advance of the hurricane local authorities evacuated over 1.5 million people, including thousands of tourists, to safer areas. Of these, 245,106 people were moved to State provided shelters and the rest of the people weathered the storm in the homes of family and friends, 8 million people were at risk. About 475,000 animals were evacuated, 225,000 cows and 170,000 chickens. (Oxfam Canada)

Perhaps the USA could consider contracting out the job of dealing with natural disasters to Fidel Castro...

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 06:15 PM

Yes, it appears that the government of Cuba actually cares about its citizens.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 06:16 PM

Cuba made an offer to the US to help. Does anyone know if it was accepted?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:40 PM

This whole thing has brought to the fore the wide schisms in the nation.   

An inept and uncaring administration. The sad fact that the economy is going to hell---and the oil CEOs will still be rcvng their multimillion salaries.   

Aside from all of the above. I was listening to some callers to a local station here that was talking of what can be done to help---many offered their homes, food, air fares, etc; I kept thinking--great Capitalistic economy---so ==where are the offers of lodging and food from the hoteliers and the food chains---read---Trump/Hilton/Hyatt/etc; Are only the downtrodden and middleclass relegated to helping?

You can rest assured that rebuilding will make the magnates more millions. I understand that Halliburton has already been called in---at their usual price. And we pay for it.

I must, however, agree with one of the above correspondents---it is, as I said too, classism as opposed to racism.   

It certainly is a comfort to know that the person in charge of the FEMA activities was a political appointee who's last position was with an Arabian Horse Assoc.---bet he knows a few well placed Saudis. Never hurts---perhaps he can get us robes and nurkas wholesale.

CHeck below for a brillian piece I rcvd via e mail today:




Subject: FW: REMEMBER MICHAEL MOORE?



Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
[e-mail]
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:42 PM

Did not mean to leave out my name:   Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 07:55 PM

SRS, what's your source for this: "There WAS public transportation to be had, if residents had elected to use it."

You've argued that as New Orleans is majority African American (which I think we knew already) then obviously most of the victims would be black and therefore there was no racism at play. Had it crossed your mind that this might have been a subconcious factor in the decision to withdraw funding for flood defences? I have read that in meetings to plan the response in the event of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans, the question was several times raised about those who would not be able to evacuate. People then looked uneasily at each other but had no answers. I wonder if flood-defence funding would have been withdrawn from Long Island or Boston had either of those been one of the country's three biggest disaster risks?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 08:13 PM

Had it crossed your mind that this might have been a subconcious factor in the decision to withdraw funding for flood defences?

No.

And shame on you for suggesting it. It's that kind of idocy that STARTED this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 08:24 PM

WOW!!!   Wish I knew how to make that larger.    I am surprised, srs, that you are alive after having your head in the sand so long---breathing must have been very hard. Perhaps as hard as the poor folks trying to overcome the stench, crowding, and sad events that engulfed them are suffering.

Tough to get on a bus without a fare.

Sadly, we find it better to send expensive helicopters to rescue some people rather than to evacuate them early for no charge on a bus.

I am sure that the appeances by cabinet members in pressed shirts and platitudes are a really warming momemt for the sad multitudes that are suffering.


But--as said before---the people are asked for donations to help. The Hyatts, Trumps, et al are still renting rooms---and selling food.
We--sadly--make money on wars and calamities. Even wars we start to help the economy---and now are biting us in the proverbial----ass


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 08:39 PM

Nothing ridiculous about it that I can see. Isn't the practice of favouring publicly funded projects in places where they will help win votes and protect candidates from defeat (and vice versa) quite common in the USA? Isn't there even a term "pork-barrelling" that's been coined for it?

Discriminating in practice against black Americans - for example downgrading public projects especially affecting them (such as maintainance and improvement of the New Orleans levees) wouldn't have to be done on the basis that they were black. Doing it on a basis of voting records and expectations would have exactly the same effect. And very few black Americans were likely to vote for Bush, even before New Orleans was washed away. (Nobody will ever have a chance to do so ever again now, of course.)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 08:42 PM

I AM GLAD I LIVE IN AUSTRALIA

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 09:01 PM

Why was a busload of hotel evacuees put on evacuation buses ahead of the people who sat for days without water, food, or sanitation? Not discrimination based on race or money? What then?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 10:03 PM

Excuse me for suggesting you're naive, BillH, but you need to learn to think outside of that little box you have your head crammed into. In the face of a hurricane and the order to evacuate, do you really think the bus driver is going to keep someone off of the bus because they don't have a buck? Really? Think about it. The order goes out. The driver knows the area, and knows there won't be many more runs and knows this is a matter of saving lives. Most of the bus drivers I have met in my life (and I've ridden a lot of buses over the years, in many urban areas) are nice folks and would understand this. Many of them would bend over backward to help people. So don't give me the nonsense about not being able to afford the bus.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 10:12 PM

Geez, let's hope that's a spoof.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 10:57 PM

SRS, can you please provide documentation that there was, in fact, public tranportation going OUT of the area to be evacuated? It would seem to me that the bus drivers would be sitting in that evacuation traffic in their family cars with their families evacuating the area along with everyone else.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 11:09 PM

Nah - can't be ol' Marty!

I can tell - he didn't use his favourite word - he woulda said 'shit for brains'...

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Sep 05 - 11:18 PM

Carol, you go get the proof that they WEREN'T trying to save people. I'm tired of arguing with you on these points. Bus drivers have been badly maligned in this whole argument.

Next thing, someone is going to start a thread called "New Orleans: America's Palestine."

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:20 AM

GEE--SRS---my head is in a box and yours is stuck in the sand so I wonder how you know how generous Ralph Cramden would be----bet he would have had a money making scheme that Norton would have disabused him of.   I am still trying to figure out how you came to the conclusion that bus drivers are the topic of this thread---unless you are Ed Norton and got overcome by sewer fumes.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:28 AM

Bill H, it isn't your fault. You don't seem to have the critical thinking skills that let you examine the issue and figure out what is important and what isn't. The nonsense of "genocide" was dispatched early in the thread. My head isn't in the sand, it is squarely on my shoulders and is thinking about what is going on and examining the agendas of the various folks posting here. There is some hefty baggage being slung around in this thread, and if you're not up to keeping score, go do some research.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 10:22 AM

I thought about my last post overnight--I should apologize to BillH, whose measure I haven't taken as far as his approach to discourse. We haven't crossed paths often. I will simply restate that last observation to note that he isn't showing evidence of critical thinking on this particular issue--it's too emotional right now. I don't know how his reasoning processes work on other topics.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 11:52 AM

You know, all this fine political/social intellectualizing could easily end up robbing the main participants of experiencing any real life at all. What if an airplane crashed through your ceiling right now...and you died...and found yourself suddenly in Spirit realizing that you had done fuck-all with your restless mind in the past 7 months besides typing on a damned computer keyboard!

Would it matter anymore who won the argument?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:16 PM

Carol, you go get the proof that they WEREN'T trying to save people. I'm tired of arguing with you on these points. Bus drivers have been badly maligned in this whole argument.

Pretty much all of the authority figures on the ground in the area have said that most of the people who were left behind didn't have access to transportation out of the area. Many of the people who were left behind who have been interviewed have said they didn't have access to any transportation out of the area. If that's not enough proof for you, your problems are bigger than you realize, and they have nothing to do with me.

The bus drivers are NOT being maligned in any way. They shouldn't have been expected to solve a problem that was the responsibility of FEMA and the government.

Next thing, someone is going to start a thread called "New Orleans: America's Palestine."

Clearly you are not above taking cheap shots at people with whom you disagree. Nice going, Maggie.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,CCO
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:24 PM

The ego likes to argue, likes to "win" the argument, and takes absolute delight in ruining friendships in the process. It values the victory more than the friendship. Be warned.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:34 PM

ironic post from you, LH. *BG*

Interesting how uncomfortable everyone suddenly seems to be with mudcatters engaging in a disagreement. Why, suddenly, are so many people so interested in not continuing the arguement?

Arguing is most of what goes on "below the line" -- that and general bitching (that's where everyone waxes eloquent on what's wrong with the world and nobody calls them on it - nobody dares disagree). Why is this arguement any different?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 12:44 PM

I posted that, John, because I am subject to that same computer/internet addiction myself. I am keenly aware of it. The only way I can escape it for long is by leaving home (I don't have a laptop to take on the road with me). It's like a testimonial at an AA meeting for me to say that. ;-) I haven't beat it yet, but I hope to God I do, because it's robbing me of much of my life...and to utterly no real purpose whatsoever.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 01:01 PM

Last I read the Crocs are having one helluva picnic! and eating live people as well, so much for the fence sitters!

Here in SA Tx we are doing best we can- our house sent a carload of groceries and some money through local agencies.

BTW Of the total New Orleans population of 450000,Texas has taken around 230000 people so far; and, some other states are taking in some of these folks eg California where good ole San Diego is first at the plate, course I could have predicted that one! knowing what I do about LA and San Francisco ...

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Wesley S
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 01:23 PM

I noticed that Kirsten started this thread and hasn't returned. It makes me wonder which Kirsten considers most important - dialogue or diatribe ?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 01:36 PM

LH, for many of us, this is not about winning arguments. It is about trying to save our country and our society, which is going to hell, fast, in a handbasket. Discussions in the public arena (and the Mudcat is a part of the public arena), are an important part of how societies try to correct the problems they face.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 01:47 PM

joke by don H. based on the actual experience of the mayor of Hattisburg who called FEMA and did not get a call back for 7 days:

" You have reached the office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency who has outsourced all emergency planning to a private contractor*. We are currently on vacation until the 2nd week of September. If this is a real national emergency please hang up and call Canada."


* true.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:12 PM

Pretty much all of the authority figures on the ground in the area have said that most of the people who were left behind didn't have access to transportation out of the area. Many of the people who were left behind who have been interviewed have said they didn't have access to any transportation out of the area. If that's not enough proof for you, your problems are bigger than you realize, and they have nothing to do with me.

Nope, not good enough. Send some links or citations. I won't accept your telling of the thing to defend your position. Send someone else's story, with a link to a legitimate media outlet, not a blog somewhere. It's time you stopped analyzing people who argue with you as if they must be nuts because they don't agree with you. I've tried on several occasions to discuss things where you got your wind up, but your nasty rebuttals to all and sundry show no care for the fact that we agree on many things. You convince me again that you're more interested in the argument than in the relationships that exist here at Mudcat. I'm sorry for that.

Meanwhile, you're so terribly willing to blame everyone EXCEPT the people who didn't get themselves out of harms way. The biggest part of the responsibility lay with the individuals themselves to go when they were told to do so. The adults have free-agency and had to act on behalf of themselves and their children. Many of them made bad decisions, to try to protect property instead of life and limb. Those who did evacuate and go to the places set aside for use were doing what they were told and really were, along with those too ill to be moved and thus not moved at all, the first order victims in this horror, in the lack of care they received in the place they were stuck in.

But before you launch into another jeremiad, stop and think. No one is ever going to be able to truly parse out the real versus the imagined and the attributed reasons people didn't leave their homes in the path of the storm. A lot of people simply made a bad decision to stay. A lot of people for whatever reason weren't paying attention and didn't or couldn't get out when they realized how bad it was. And a lot of people are probably kicking themselves from here to next Tuesday for deciding to stay. But I doubt they're admitting it on national television and for the print media. It's too easy to suggest that they couldn't get out rather than that they didn't bother or waited too long until escape was no longer manageable through the usual channels.

There are many many true victims here. That isn't in dispute. But many who were caught up in this were the agents of their own misfortune.

I'm not going to try to identify who had what thought. I am pointing out that there were a lot of bad reasons for staying. There are still people who refuse to leave. On the radio this morning they followed some guys in a flat-bottomed boat who were in that Ninth Ward trying to rescue the last few. There were three guys on a balcony with no articulated good reason for staying, but refusing to leave. I think the boatmen were pretty canny in surmising that those three had something to hide or were sticking around to loot.

FEMA is a disgrace. But that's part two of the story. Once people found themselves in such a horrible situation, they all needed to be rescued. The reasons become moot. And George Bush's new and improved FEMA, politically-charged and top heavy as it is, is a big part of the problem, but to loop back around to the original essay, the problem wasn't genocidal. Letting Bush rework FEMA in with all of his Homeland Security nonsense was suicidal homicidal.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:12 PM

I listened to the Druge Report on Sunday night.   He replayed an interview with the Mayor of New Orleans from last Sunday night- just hours before the storm. WHAT A F*ING JOKE!

The mayor was calm drinking from his Starbucks coffee. He told Druge how well the evacuation was going and how everying was proceeding smoothly.   When asked about opening the airport or convention center he said there was no need.   The superdome was just fine.

The mayor said that the levees could only handle a level 3 and they were predicting a level 5 but he felt that if the levees broke, it could be pumped out in a week without any real problem.

WHAT GROSS INCOMPETENCE BY A DEMOCRATIC BLACK MAYOR.   (the racism claim is so bogus)   The mayor opened the Superdome but never thought to stock it with food or water . DUH!   The mayor had an emergency plan to use public busses and tranist to evacuate poor people but he never used them.   He preferred to spend most of his time on TV with photo ops.    Was he ever at the Superdome like Rudy was at ground zero?

The DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR was also a miserable failure.   According to the mayor (also played on Drudge this past Sunday) he had Bush and the governor in a room and told them they must get on the same page and that he wouldn't leave until they resolved the issues.   According to the mayor, Bush offered two proposals.   The governor said she needed 24 hours to review the two proposals and she would get back with them.   WHAT A DISCRACE!   She didn't have 24 hours.   How many people died in those 24 hours.   She also refused to turn over the national guard to the feds.   Once the feds came in, the General got 20,000 people removed in a single day.   (great job by the military in saving lives)

Meanwhile, 1/3 of the New orleans police force resigns while others are caught on camera looting stores. Senator Landreax's response is that she would punch Bush in the mouth. That really is productive.   The entire Lousiana government (mostly democratic) was a miserable failure from mayor, to senator to governor.   They had an emergency plan and didn't follow it resulting in the death of thousands of their citizens.   And all they can go is blame Bush and each other.

Bush was 24 hours late, (no excuse for that either) and FEMA was horrible.   Yet the mudcat forum puts the blame only on Bush and Fox News.... how sad and dishonest.   I urge you to listen to the interview with the mayor only hours before the storm and make up your own minds.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Azizi
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:22 PM

Bush was 24 hours late???!!!

Yeah, right. How did you figure that????

And I suppose you agree with Bush that FEMA's Brownie "did a heck of a job".

Seems to me that Rove and company are trying desperately to shift the blame for this miserable failure.

Sorry, it ain't gonna work.

This is beyond sad & dishonest.

It is outrageous.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:28 PM

Maggie, you are one of the worst offenders of the very thing you are complaining about. Just ask beardedbruce. And you have been ordering me around and bossing me and using huge brightly colored letters to tell me to shut up when you disagree with me. And I just ignored you at first because I didn't want to get into one of these kinds of arguments with you. But this is too much. You are one of the biggest hypocrites in the Mudcat when it comes to using personal attacks instead of reasoned argument. Makes me embarassed to have you arguing on the same side of the political spectrum as me.

I'll get some documentation for you as soon as I can.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Just Passing Through
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:31 PM

Diatribe, Wesley S.

The person who started this thread is a hard-charging, clenched-fisted, male-hating feminist throwback to the 1960s. Look up "Kirsten Anderberg" in Google and see what kind of material you find. There's a lot of it there. She has written a whole stack of angry. ball-busting articles for various publications. The post that started this thread is typical of her writing. And she's into "vulva art," sort of like Judy Chicago. Full of rage. She's a real piece of work.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:34 PM

Larry K, people in Mississippi are also complaining about the failure of the federal government in carrying out its responsibilities there. Are you going to try to pin that on the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:37 PM

I think the Louisiana state officials deserve some castigation. However, in Blanco's favour, she did ask for federal assistance on August 27, 2005. Bush played guitar. Condi shopped. Efforts to place the blame on mayors and governors--they will get their share. But Bush will get his share, too, and it's one friggin' big chunk.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:50 PM

You people are so damn hung up on placing the blame on why everyone wasn't evacuated that you keep missing the big picture. Who gives a rats ass who was at fault in the beginning. Everyone gambled and lost. You can get killed jumping out of an airplane or crossing a street, even after everyone tells you the dangers. If everyone was evacuated and the storm missed, this forum would be filled with whiners complaining how the goverment wasted our money in getting everyone out of NO.   Too many god damned Monday morning quarterbacks without any chance of influencing opinion.

The real issue is how the situation was dealt with when the problem occured. The rest of the discussion is going nowhere and just satisfying the egos of people who like to see their opinions in print. (I guess I include myself in that!)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 02:51 PM

So, of the two contributing factors to the human misery in NO (excluding the actual natural disaster), which, if it had been done properly, would have made more difference as we look back on it....

1. Lack of proper evacuation in the first place (regardless of whether or not it was volitional or not)?

2. Lack of fast federal response after the fact?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 03:10 PM

Both, John.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 03:15 PM

Interesting stuff about the mayor's early broadcast Larry K, well worth keeping in mind as part of the whole picture. But surely you've downplayed Bush's failures, and his sheer inadequacy for the moment (almost everyone I've seen interviewed has come across with more conviction and gravitas than Bush could ever show).

SRS I am amazed at what a shallow debater you're showing yourself to be - willing to move the goalposts and change tack almost on a whim, simply to save your pride. For instance this thread was never about criticisimg bus drivers. That's a straw man of your own invention. It was about discrimination. We've all seen photos of scores of school buses lined up in serried ranks, long after they could have been playing a role in saving lives. No-one here is blaming the bus drivers for that, but it lends credence to the argument that nothing like enough public-transport capacity was provided to meet the need.

You've responded to me with bold claims. You said that public transport WAS available for all who needed it (your emphasis, not mine). Yet when Carol C and I asked for a source, you ignored my request and rounded on Carol with venom - dmeanding, childishly, that she should prove otherwise. Frankly that's pathetic.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 03:40 PM

Here's some documentaton about the lack of transportation for many of the people who were not evacuated:

From the Washington Post...

"Many of the residents left in New Orleans are poor, and while some people have criticized them for failing to heed mandatory evacuation orders, many residents say they were simply unable to get out for financial or medical reasons.

'People are saying that those stuck in New Orleans now are those that wanted to stay, but that's not true," said Danelle Fleming, a New Orleans-based social worker. "They wanted to leave, but they couldn't.'

She said that the city's Greyhound station was closing Saturday afternoon -- even as people without cars were trying to leave.

After being rescued from her roof, Moses said she was among those unable to evacuate before the hurricane. 'My mother-in-law went out of town, but I didn't have any money, so I couldn't,' she said."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083000689_2.html


This is from the New Orleans Times Pickayune, in JULY, long before they even knew about hurricane Katrina, and clear demonstraton that although the local authorities were concerned for the people who were too poor to get out on their own, the local authorities just didn't have the resources to get them out. And the reason it was so important for FEMA to do its job in this situation...

"In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

http://www.nola.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1122184560198030.xml?nola

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 04:54 PM

"for many of us, this is not about winning arguments. It is about trying to save our country and our society"

Yes, Carol, I understand that. I know you are truly concerned about the issues being discussed. What concerns me is people's tendency to break up and seriously damage their sometimes lengthy friendships with other people as a consequence of debating and discussing current issues. Why does that happen? Too much pride? Too much self-righteousness? Too thin a skin? Too much hurt? Too much need to be "right" (and therefore better than the other person)? I think it's sad and unnecessary that that happens, and I would prefer that it didn't. It must be possible to debate strenuously about things and to disagree, without permanently damaging one's relations with other people. I have known any number of cases where people on this forum decided that someone else "wasn't worth talking to" after some disagreement they had about politics, society, or whatever. They then either ostracize the other person totally or they attack them repeatedly on the forum with contempt, sarcasm, accusation, ridicule, and various other forms of thinly disguised hatred. That's what happens when people's emotions get so wrapped up in defending their rhetorical position that it poisons the dialogue.

That's what I am advising against. It's not a healthy form of behaviour.

If people simply cannot forgive other people's obvious lack of perfection, how the hell are they ever going to come to terms with their own lack of perfection? And that applies to the political arena too, by the way! Big time. Wars happen because a lot of people are incapable of accomodation or forgiveness. Same goes for suicide bombings.

Kirsten's original post that set off this whole thread was a spectacular example of a mind that does not for a moment entertain the notion of forgiveness. Such a mind prefers to divide Life into "the good and the evil" and seek out final and bitter retribution upon the "evil" (those being, whoever the "good" don't happen to agree with about something at any given time).

It's a vicious mentality. It may identify with underdogs...or overlords...but it's vicious in either case.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 04:54 PM

LH: You have hit the nail on the head---sitting at a keyboard etc; Accomplishing what-----thinking what a deep thinker one is and what a great writer who is being read other really deep thinking individuals.

I paraphrase---once again Will Shakespeare---Sound & Fury signifying nothing.

Reminds of an old joke--these ponticating discussions here--of which I too am guilty many times:

Pres. LBJ---Welcome to the White House Mr. President

Pres. of Israel: Thanks---we have problems

Pres. LBJ---Not like me I have the problem of 138 million people to deal with.

Pres. of Israel: Yes, but in Israel I have 2 million Presidents to deal with

Sounds like this forum to me


Bill Hahn
(brightening your day and putting all the deep thoughts into perspective) (I think I will stick with Dan Schor and Frank Rich)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 04:59 PM

So true, Bill. So true. I sincerely have great compassion for people who are, like me, deeply addicted to pontificating on this forum, and I think that we might all benefit tremendously by going somewhere where there are no computers for a month or two. Seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:00 PM

LarryK's post was quite useful. Good perspective on what has happened.

Peter, this conversation has moved forward. They do that. The focus shifts. Go back to the beginning and read through and maybe you'll see what I mean. Introduction of new aspects of an argument is a logical way to proceed.

Carol, of the two, the Times-Picayune article is very good and the most useful. That's the kind of documentation needed here.

Truehill, Wilkins and others said emergency preparedness officials still plan to deploy some Regional Transit Authority buses, school buses and perhaps even Amtrak trains to move some people before a storm.

An RTA emergency plan dedicates 64 buses and 10 lift vans to move people somewhere; whether that means out of town or to local shelters of last resort would depend on emergency planners' decision at that moment, RTA spokeswoman Rosalind Cook said.

But even the larger buses hold only about 60 people each, a rescue capacity that is dwarfed by the unmet need.

These are the buses that I was referring to, the municipal variety, that have established routes that could be modified to take riders to the evacuation site, in this case, the SuperDome. Finding out what actually happened regarding this system that was discussed will no doubt be part of the investigation into this disastrous evacuation.

Only someone acquainted with NOLA and it's neighborhoods and bus and streetcar lines will know if any or all of this could/should have been pressed into service:

http://www.neworleanscvb.com/listings/index.cfm/catID/12/hit/1/sectionID/1/subsectionID/353/

Getting Around


New Orleans is one of the world's busiest ports and the cultural capital of the South, yet the city is remarkably compact and easy to navigate. Visitors are always pleasantly surprised to learn that many of the city's attractions, accommodations and event venues are within walking distance of each other; in fact, "hoofing it" (in New Orleans' case, translated as walking or grabbing a mule-drawn carriage) is a favorite means of transportation in the Crescent City.

But, if you prefer wheels to legs, New Orleans has a very accessible and reasonably priced public transportation system, too. It only costs $1.25 to take an RTA bus . . . or one of the city's famed streetcars, which travel St. Charles Avenue, the Riverfront and Canal Street. Where else can you actually ride on a historic landmark? Grab a free VisiTour Guide, a city map with hundreds of landmarks and attractions along with bus and streetcar schedules, and you are on your way in no time.

Of course, as one of the world's top convention and meeting destinations, New Orleans also has a range of national car rental agencies, and taxi and limousine services are available around the clock. Many of the city's hotels and attractions offer free shuttle services, and there are a great variety of guided tours throughout the city and its environs.

Being surrounded by water is not a complication in New Orleans; in fact, it offers one more reason to travel in style. Several luxury cruise lines call New Orleans a home port, and riverboats go rollin' on the river just like they've done for more than a century. If street traffic is tight, you can always take a ferry to Algiers or a river shuttle between Audubon Institute attractions!



http://www.neworleanscvb.com/static/index.cfm/contentID/543/sectionID/1/subsectionID/0/

Bus: $1.50 will get you from the airport to Tulane Avenue near Elks Place, a few blocks from the Superdome and Canal Street. Departs every 10 minutes from 6-9 am and 3-6 pm and every 23 minutes otherwise. Operating hours: 6am-6:30 pm.


St. Charles Avenue streetcar: Have you ever ridden in a national historic landmark? Shell out just $1.25, board a streetcar, and you, too, can answer "yes" to that question. Streetcars have been rumbling along St. Charles Avenue since 1835. The current route runs over 13 miles downtown from Canal Street along St. Charles, past Greek Revival mansions and raised cottages, Tulane University and Audubon Park and beyond the shops at the Riverbend, where it takes a right-hand turn onto Carrollton Avenue. The St. Charles Avenue streetcar made its inaugural run as the Carrollton Railroad, which shuttled passengers between the French Quarter and the resort town of Carrollton. Thousands of residents still commute to work on the 35 olive-green electric cars.

Riverfront streetcar: For $1.25, you can ride the new red streetcars, handcrafted in New Orleans by woodworkers and metal smiths. The two-mile route of the Ladies in Red includes stops at all the right places: the Convention Center at Julia Street, Riverwalk, the Aquarium of the Americas, the French Market and the Old Mint on Esplanade.

Canal Streetcar: After a 40-year absence, streetcars have returned to Canal Street in 2004, a central artery of New Orleans that forms one of the boundaries of the French Quarter. On the Canal streetcar line, passengers can ride over four miles from the Mississippi to the city's famed cemeteries, with a "spur" near the end leading to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park. The 24 new streetcars on the line closely resemble the historic Perley Thomas 900 Series cars that currently operate on the St. Charles Avenue line, and which ran on Canal Street until that line was discontinued in 1964. Traditional in appearance, they will offer two welcome updates: wheelchair accessibility and air conditioning.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:07 PM

Come to the Getaway, Little Hawk. NO computers, no phones, no radios, no television. Or at least, none that I heard. There is a big TV in the big room but I don't know if it works. We didn't even think of turning it on.

One month? Hmmmmmm. It was ALMIGHTY cold.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:08 PM

LH, I agree with you about the ways in which people can be destructive in discussions in places like the Mudcat. But I cannot agree with you if you are suggesting that these discussions don't serve an important function. They really do, even if you can't see it yourself.

Think about it though... when, in the history of humankind, did we ever have such an amazing opportunity to get out of our locally defined way of looking at the world and to be able to see things from the perspective of so many people in so many parts of the world? Although you may not see it, this is precisely what humankind needs right now to help each of us become more empowered to do what is needed, and to make the world a better place. When we are able to find things out for ourselves instead of having all of our thoughts and our information spoon fed to us by our "designated thinkers". This is an amazing time we are living in.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:09 PM

Sounds like paradise, Ebbie. I loved Cuba. Not a friggin' computer in sight, and people were doing things instead of watching other people do those things on a TV screen.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:12 PM

The municipal busses were being used to get people to the shelters like the Superdome and the Convention Center. Had it been possible to use them for getting everyone without cars out of the city entirely, I don't think Mayor Nagin would have said that the local authorities didn't have the resources to get everone without cars evacuated.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:35 PM

So, of the two contributing factors to the human misery in NO (excluding the actual natural disaster), which, if it had been done properly, would have made more difference as we look back on it....

1. Lack of proper evacuation in the first place (regardless of whether or not it was volitional or not)?

2. Lack of fast federal response after the fact?(John Hardly)

If there'd been a proper evacuation (see the quote about how Cuba managed that last year) the people would have been out of harms way, so there woudln't have been such a need for fast federal response (and more help could have been chanelled to all the other Gulf communities that have been wrecked and virtually ignored, according to our media coverage in the UK).

But while it is possible (if you really try) to come up with some kind of explanations and half-excuses for the evacuation failure, and at least some of those staying behind did it of their own volition, the failure to respond quickly and adequately after the disaster is incomprehensible and completely inexcusable.

The third factor of course is how could it come about that the levees protecting New Orleans broke down so catastrophically. If that hadn't happened, while Katrina would have devastated the Gulf Coast, New Orleans would in fact have got off relatively lightly.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 05:38 PM

Yes, Carol, I can go along fine with what you said there...as long as it doesn't become a daily addiction. Then it's out of proportion. I agree that the Internet is allowing ordinary people all over the World to communicate directly with each other for the first time, and that is a tremendous opportunity to advance human awareness.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 06:27 PM

"But while it is possible (if you really try) to come up with some kind of explanations and half-excuses for the evacuation failure, and at least some of those staying behind did it of their own volition, the failure to respond quickly and adequately after the disaster is incomprehensible and completely inexcusable."

And isn't that funny? (funny "peculiar", not funny "ha ha" to quote Radar O'Reilly)...

Your first paragraph outlines what, to me should be the major issue. If people had followed the Comprehensive Emergency Plan that is laid out in black and white -- clearly delineating, to the finest detail, exactly how an evacuation should occur -- who is responsible for calling for one, what the means are of executing one -- there would not have been the human disaster that it became. That is just the black and white of it. The local officials were to instigate AND provide the means for the evacution to those who had no means.

It isn't a subject for monday morning quarterbacking -- that is how it was supposed to occur.

The local officials called for an evacuation, but then acted as though it was not their resposibility to execute it. Plain and simple.

And had they executed it, there would not be the huge human tragedy story.

But if one were to read the mudcat as a news source (ouch), one would get the idea that the evacuation was the duty of the federal government. It is not. It cannot be. The federal government cannot be ultimate responsible to oversee the evacuation of every local municipality that might need to be evacuated.

Where you live is no bigger than some of our States. We have a southern coastline that a hurricane can hit anywhere for thousands of miles. We have hundreds of midwestern cities and towns at risk for tornados and earthquakes (the "big one" in our history was not in CA, but rather, in the midwest), and we have California hanging off our edge, a foot-fault away from a love match with the Pacific.

No doubt the federal government did not respond fast enough when the local governments dropped the ball so incredibly -- I mean so incredibly -- but they also had to respond to the hurricane all along 100+miles of coastline AND they had to respond to an altogether different, and chronologically sequential, but different catastrophe -- the breach of the levies.

And yet you see your way clear to excusing the actual cause of the human disaster, but can't see any logistical complexity that might have made any of the delayed response time possible? You can only excuse the actual culprits, but cannot excuse the bumbling rescuers?

hmmmmmm.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 06:32 PM

They were having to deal with reality, John. The reality is that they didn't have the resources to do it. They said they didn't have the resources to do it. That's reality. The other aspect of reality is that FEMA was charged with the responsibility of taking up the slack for anything that the local governments didn't have the resources to deal with. That's the job of FEMA. That's why it exists. That's reality.

The idea that the local governments could have done better with the resources they had available to them, and the idea that the federal government and FEMA did not have any obligation or responsibility in this situation is fantasy. Not reality.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 06:34 PM

Blanco ask for Federal aid back on August 27, 2005.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Napalm
Date: 06 Sep 05 - 10:07 PM

Local is always the frontline to any disaster and should bear as much blame as the government for failure and lack of planning. Telling everyone to go to a stadium to await for federal aid is passing the buck. This would never happen in NYC. The buck would not be passed because it stops here with all our first responders and OEM services. To depend on President-Commander Coo-koo Bananas and his is sheer insanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: dianavan
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 12:09 AM

Here is an article that claims that FEMA has been made inoperative by the newly created Dept. of Homeland Security. Funds that would have normally been available for the operation of FEMA were diverted to cover the "war on terrorism".


http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3235fema_ruined.html

Subject: BS: ONLY Whites Deny Katrina Response Racism
From: kirstenanderberg
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 01:44 AM

Only Whites Claim Katrina's Poor Response is NOT Racist
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

I have not seen one person of color, anywhere, on any news broadcast, on any TV special, in any print article, even on the streets themselves, saying that the response to Katrina in New Orleans had "nothing to do with race." The mere fact that the ONLY people saying that are white says it all to me. Last night, I saw the Mayor of Houston whose name is ironically "Mr. White" pooh-poohing the racist part of this wholly. There is something totally obnoxious about this white mayor of Houston, saying it is "divisive" to try to address race in the Katrina response. Indeed, white boy President Bush said that any mention of this massacre in New Orleans being racially driven is merely a "political agenda" put out there by his opponents. I am sure Bush is scrambling to find some black faces to publicly deny the racist part of this, and that is why we have Condi Rice around. For times like these. You can tell just how racist this country is, by how many white men are working round the clock to pooh-pooh what is obvious to the world at this point.

Yesterday morning, Sept. 2, 2005, I went out and wrote "Stop the genocide in New Orleans NOW! Impeach GWBush" in chalk on sidewalks near my house. I found it wildly interesting that as I was writing one of these, a white male in his 20's came up and said "If you were not a woman, I would beat the sh*t out of you right now." I said, "Why, for writing this in chalk?" He said "You are so ignorant. You do not even know what genocide is." I said, "Excuse me sir, I have a degree in political science from the University of Washington and also have successfully passed all my prerequisites in law school, and I am well aware of what the word genocide means." I quoted the Webster Collegiate Dictionary definition: "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." It was as if steam began coming out his ears at this, he puffed his chest, and began to stand in a physically threatening manner close to me. I said, "You know, I am twice you size. And I can be absolutely crazy if you push me. Just know you may endanger yourself physically if you touch me." He left with his legs between his tail, but why did a white male want to BEAT ME for saying that?!

I watched this trend continue all day yesterday. White men threatened me with violence ALL DAY yesterday for not giving an inch, calling this a genocide. I took a very large protest sign out to the streets yesterday. It said "No more RACIST and CLASSIST genocide in New Orleans. Impeach Bush Now." The first bus I got on, a black man immediately said to me "You got that right, sister." Then as I waited for the next bus, a black delivery man unloading near where I was waiting came up to me and said I was 100% right with my sign. When I got on the bus, I sat down, and an older black man turned around from the seat in front of me and said my sign was right on, and wondered how a white girl like me ended up out there protesting the racism. We talked for quite some time. Then I got off the bus into downtown Seattle.

Sadly, I was the only protester on the Seattle streets yesterday. I began to walk to the Market and a white businessman in his 50's said "Ma'am, ma'am…" and I kept walking thinking he was going to hassle me. He ran after me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "I just want to thank you for that sign." That was a good turn around from the morning threats, but it was brief. I got to the Market and a white middle class man in his late 60's came up to me and said, "You have a lot of nerve. No one is listening to you." I said, "No, it is old capitalist racist sexist white men that no one is listening to anymore and I think you are defensive because you know that." He said "You better watch your mouth girl." I said "There is free speech in America and I will call you a racist capitalist pig to your face again, so there!" Fuming, he threatened to go get cops. I laughed in his face and kept on walking and talking.

Next, I walked along First Avenue thinking maybe someone with a conscience was protesting at the Federal Building. As I walked down First Avenue, a white male cowboy started glaring at me, then walking next to me at my pace, then began berating me for saying this had to do with race. I pretended I did not hear him and kept walking. Sadly, when I got to the Fed Building, I was the only protester. I stood on the street there protesting for a while. Then decided to move to a place with more foot traffic, Westlake Center.

When I got to Westlake Center, it was packed with shoppers. Disgusted, I began saying very loudly, while holding my sign, "Your children are going to ask you what you did to stop the racist genocide of 2005 in New Orleans and you are going to have to tell them you went shopping! Can you live with that?" Black folks walked by with very wide grins as I was screaming this on the corner. Three black teen girls came up and said their aunt had said what I was saying. We talked at length at why this is blatant racism. They wanted to protest. I told them that even one person protesting makes a difference and they could see I was certainly getting a reaction.

As I stood at Westlake, Seattle's insane Police Department rode up on their little bikes. They walked right up to my face, and one of them, in FULL UNIFORM, ON DUTY, made circles around his ears at me to symbolize that I was "crazy." And yes, he was white, of course. I no longer am amazed at the gross lack of professionalism in the beater police squad in Seattle. But that seems very inappropriate to me.

As I stood on the corner with my sign, black males and females were coming in a solid stream saying that I was right, thanking me, etc. Yet white male after white male came up to me, pointed to the word "racist" on my sign, and called me crazy, a bitch, and many other slurs. The police stood by monitoring me, ready to arrest at one wrong move. Three men in a row threatened me with violence, and I was getting louder with each for safety. The police moved closer. Then a fourth white man and his wife approached. The police moved within hearing distance, within two feet of us. I knew they were getting ready to arrest me as a public nuisance or to try to put me in some weird psych thing they keep for logical women such as me. But as they leaned in, they heard the white man saying "What the hell is wrong with those men hassling you? You are absolutely right and you have courage." Ooops, not what the cops wanted to hear. For about 5 minutes, these folks from Canada began to tell me they are teachers, they have to explain this to kids, and it is impossible without bringing in the race and class equation. The police got bored and rode off.

By the time I got home yesterday from my one woman protest about town, I felt absolutely exhausted. I tried to figure out WHY this was so agitating to white men. I cannot believe I am going to be this honest, but I have to say, that my conclusion after yesterday is, that these white men really do WANT genocide, they really do WANT those poor black people in New Orleans dead. They are not even neutral on the subject. They want them DEAD. And they will try to beat and silence anyone who works against that. Is it mere coincidence that not ONE person of color threatened or harassed me yesterday and white male after white male threatened me with violence? How do YOU explain it?

Yesterday, someone wrote me an email claiming I was nuts to apply racism to this lack of response. I wrote back and said, "without knowing you, I can guess with certainty that you are 1) white and 2) male." This was his response this morning via email: "Kirsten, I am white. I am proud to be white. And I have no idea why you even brought that up. Was it my vocabulary that gave me away? You sound like a racist. I said nothing about your education. I was not referring to you when I talked about education as the key. I was speaking about people in general. You seem to want to make you and race the focus of everything. I was hoping that you actually had something valid to contribute. But it sounds like you are filled with hate. You sound like another one of those who need to blame the entire worlds problems on American white men. Too bad. I tried. Rmartin" Do I even need to add commentary to that? LOL! These white men try to play some patriarchal game, calling me ignorant and uneducated, then when I bust out the reality that I have more "education" than THEY do, they lose their minds and begin calling ME the racist! LOL! I have begun posting this crap on my website at http://resist.ca/~kirstena/pagehatemail.html.

Katrina has exposed the racism and classism so prevalent in America today and it has shown it is intentional, is my take on it. Those who defend the racism and classism, or try to deny it aggressively, seem to WANT genocide of people of color and the poor. That is my serious take on it. ONLY WHITES are saying Katrina's response was not racist. That should say it all. (And I am not saying all whites are denying this racism, I am saying that the only people who do deny it, are white, from my experience so far.) Seeing who is angry when you try to fight racism, often tells you where to begin. Go make some racists mad today!

Subject: RE: BS: ONLY Whites Deny Katrina Response Racism
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 01:58 AM

You know, Kirsten, you're going to have to learn a little finesse or you're going to end up dead. Dialogue, not confrontation, might work better, if it is mind changing that you are after.

I am white. I am a woman.

Subject: RE: BS: ONLY Whites Deny Katrina Response Racism
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 02:15 AM

Again, post the fist paragraph or two, then provide a link for those who want to read the whole enchilada.

Subject: RE: BS: ONLY Whites Deny Katrina Response Racism
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 02:24 AM

The elected and appointed black officials, civil servants and black police officers of New Orleans would, I am sure, strongly condemn the charges. Jessee Jackson tryed to play the race card, but seems to have backed away.

The slow relief start-up affected both white and black in Orleans Parish (67% black) and Jefferson Parish (70% white). Many dead whites, as well as blacks, are being found and collected at the temporary morgue at St. Gabriel.

The problem is that Americans are poor at disaster planning. Days passed before effective actions began. Stupidity, diversion of money for levee construction, unqualified leaders, a tortuous chain of command, but not racism.

The individual who started this thread spouts sewage as virulent as the waters being pumped out of New Orleans.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Wolfgang
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 03:53 AM

Little Hawk,

I like your observations in this thread.

Kirsten's way of talking reminds me of religious preachers. They KNOW they are right, so there's no need for them to listen to others, only for others to listen to them. That has the effect to close my ears and my mind, even if they have something basically valuable to say.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Death Sentence For Stealing Damaged TV
From: mooman
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 04:27 AM

This was posted to the "One Woman's Protest" thread which got deleted so I'm posting it instead to this thread which is still active.

Peace,

moo
__________________

Dear Kirsten,

I am a white male, but resident in Belgium rather than the US. I for one at least admire your stand on some on this particular issue and on some of the other issues you've posted about on this forum.

"Below the line" is open territory on this site, so long as there is no personal abuse. Sadly, this part of the site is often awash with completely mindless drivel by people who should know better so there is no reason why you should post your reasoned point of view. I happen to agree with a lot of what you say. Others might not, that is their right, but let them debate it intelligently and without abusiveness (the refuge of the weak and scared).

On the Katrina disaster, my nearly 18-year old (white, philosophy student) has been in tears and rages many times in the last week about things she can clearly see are patently unfair, inhumane, biased or just plain racist. The actions, or rather lack of them at a crucial stage, of the US administration at various levels in this disaster has been shameful. At the same time I can only feel admiration for the local police chief (who was interviewed on the BBC last night) and his staff who have had to deal with the emergency from the first moment and under the same conditions of hardship, lack of communications and confusion as the rest of the NO residents. Notably, he criticised the early FEMA response.

I am probably opening myself to disagreement with one or two people I would class as friends here, but so be it.

Peace

moo

---

The "One Woman's Protest" thread was a duplicate of Kirsten's "Only Whites Claim" message, which appears above.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: GENOCIDE!
From: GUEST,Napalm
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 05:55 AM

I'm not sure the Webster's definition is the interpetation you would want to be pushing. I'm sure you already know this (but others may not),by Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and the provisions of Articles 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998, it is debateable that Bush may be complicit in violation of Article II (c): Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; further defined:

"includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group's physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts."

Let's define victims of New Orleans as a racial group.

However, "The crime of genocide has two elements: intent and action. "Intentional" means purposeful. Intent can be proven directly from statements or orders. But more often, it must be inferred from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts.

Intent is different from motive. Whatever may be the motive for the crime (land expropriation, national security, territorrial integrity, etc.), if the perpetrators commit acts intended to destroy a group, even part of a group, it is genocide.

The phrase "in whole or in part" is important. Perpetrators need not intend to destroy the entire group. Destruction of only part of a group (such as its educated members, or members living in one region) is also genocide. Most authorities require intent to destroy a substantial number of group members – mass murder. But an individual criminal may be guilty of genocide even if he kills only one person, so long as he knew he was participating in a larger plan to destroy the group."

"Systematic pattern of coordinated acts" is debateable. As you have seen yourself, it all depends on who and where you ask.

Also, since it seems to be the soup du'jour to announce one's race here, it may comfort many to know that I am not white nor black.

"When they started sending people in, they kept sending me assessment teams. Assessment teams! 'Listen, I don't need a goddamn assessment team. I need food, medical supplies, water for 2 million people, and I've got to feed them twice a day. Get the shit in here. We'll sort out the distribution.' "

General Romeo Dallaire, commenting on the genocide in Rwanda.

"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water,they wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana.

Creepy!

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 07:48 AM

Only Whites Claim Katrina's Poor Response is NOT Racist

Not that I have any time for or trusr of the woman, I saw C Rice on TV saying it was not racist and I don't believe she is white.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 07:58 AM

I have also on BBC news interviews seen black victims who have not felt the matter racist.

My own opinion (and I am white) is that the reasons for the delay were incompetence, stupidity, negligence, etc. but I don't (at least as yet) believe racism was the reason for the delay. That is not to say that I don't believe there are issues in all this that do involve racism. The underlying social conditions should raise very serious questions, and I suspect questions not just confined to NO.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 08:16 AM

I suppose the most serious question of all is "How real is the American Dream"? Is it a dream only some can take part in?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 08:47 AM

I heard the Mayor of New Orleans (who appears to be African American) say what I interpreted as: poor people in this city are mostly black. If they were mostly white, they'd be being ignored too, but nobody would ask if it was because they were white.

I still think it's a class issue. I think trying to make it out as a race issue is devisive and pretty much tells poor white people "You don't have to get involved; you don't have to be concerned. This would never happen to YOU."

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 09:12 AM

"Blanco ask for Federal aid back on August 27, 2005."

She did not order the National Guard in -- a responsibility that is hers alone. The president, by law, cannot order the National Guard in without a Governor's order -- unless it is an insurrection. This was not an insurrection. Even the mayor of NO acknowledges her hesitation to do so at the critical point.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 09:44 AM

The Mayor and Governor were grossly incompetent and should be held responsible by the votes of Louisiana.   To say they did not have the resources to evacuate the city is simply not true.

The evacuation plan clearly called for the use of busses and public transportation to evacuate the poor and homeless from the city.   The mayor never used these buses nor did he order overtime for the drivers of these buses.   He clearly failed the city.

You can see pictures of 200 public buses under water as they were left in low lying grounds and never used.   How many thousands of people could have bene saved with those buses. The mayor chose to let people walk to the silverdome where he did not provide water, food, or security.   Resources were available, but never used.

The governor refused to let the national guard into the city before the hurricane.   This was her decision to make and she blew it. After the flooding, the national guard couldn't get into the city.   They could have been there before the flooding and saved thousands of lives.    Another horrible decision by Blanco.

Nevertheless, mudcatters will blame Bush for these deaths.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,G
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 09:54 AM

John Hardly and Larry K - well put and truthful but it wont play here.
I don't understand the hatred for GWB. I am not a 100% supporter of his, Immigration, and spending have no control.

I have had, maybe, 10 converstions with several friends in the South, 2 from NOLA, and they mirror what you two are saying.

When so many here get their info from the Daily Kos, Moveon.org, Buzzflash, etc., what do we expect. While I am a semi conservative, two of the 4 newspapers I scan early in the morning are the NY Yimes and the Washington Post. Wall St. Journal and Nation review also. I have heard it referred to as 'Balance'. When people only quote the "daily kos", what are we to expect?

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Peace
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 10:15 AM

Race has nowt to do with the abandonment/lack of intervention in the south. It has to do with MONEY. Always has; always will.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 11:40 AM

That is correct. Money is at the heart of the issue. For O.J. Simpson, it was a big advantage to be black! Why? He was rich and famous and could afford to hire the best lawyers and play legal games with phony "race" issues, that's why.

Money calls the shot as to who lives, who dies, and who gets away with murder in this World. The only reason blacks and hispanics are discriminated against, ultimately, is that they are (on average)quite a bit poorer than the middle class people in North America. Poor white people are also discriminated against. Poverty is not popular. It does not command respect in high places. If you ARE poor, and it's obvious, you have several strikes against you right from the getgo.

Try it, and see. Give away all your money and your nice clothes and possessions. Wear some old castoff rags. Go and live on the street. See what happens. The people who used to say, "Hi, how's it going?" will mostly now either find you invisible...or they will cross the street to avoid you. (with a few exceptions)

You know why? They're scared of you. (whether or not they are conscious of that) Rich people have always been scared of poor people. Guess why. Poverty is unjust, that's why. People don't react well to gross inequality of opportunity at the point of birth into this World and thereafter. Some get angry. Some get desperate. Some get dangerous. Some just make you feel guilty that you have more than them, because you don't know what to do about it.

You can sublimate it all, and say, "Well, they were just lazy. Anyone can grow up to be President in this country." Yeah, right! Now there's a fantasy for you...

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: CarolC
Date: 07 Sep 05 - 01:05 PM

The problem with trying to blame everything on Blanco is that it doesn't take into consideration all of the people outside of Louisana who are blaming FEMA for not only not helping, but for actively sabotaging their efforts to save people. You just can't pin this one on the governor of Louisiana, because FEMA behaved criminally outside of Louisana as well.

But the efforts to make Blanco the scapegoat for Bush's failed policies does show the true intent behind the people who do this. The true intent is to get a Democrat governor out of office at the expense of the lives of a hell of a lot of innocent people. That tells you everything you need to know about such people.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Eric
Date: 08 Sep 05 - 12:35 AM

I feel VERY VERY twisted on this issue. I agree that it's not a race issue it is a money issue. People don't take into account that New Orleans was at least 65% black so it's no surprise that you see more blacks on TV that are waiting for help, it's a statistical fact. Then the media makes it sound like groups of black people are going around shooting at cops, which is true, but somehow it has been twisted that "White Cops" are being ordered to shoot "black looters". Poeple are trying so hard to make it a racial issue and it is not because more than half of the New Orleans Police Department is Black including the Chief of Police. What really pissed me off is when I heard of a Police Officer having a full clip put in his face by a looter and when I saw a video of Police Officers on a rooftop ducking down completely scared to death while being fired at for no reason other than the fact that they are cops. Or the groups of Gangsters walking around the Superdome with guns, where several cold blooded murders have been reported from clashing gang members and things of that nature. I am not completely ruling out racism by some people int his disaster but for the most part nobody is purposely going aroudn and helpng white people over black people.

   The bottomline is it's the same issue that has been going on in America for years. STEREOTYPES. It is not "black looters" that are causing problems. It is the "THUGS" that just so happen to mostly be black which is a whole issue in itself that I am not going to elaborate on.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Sep 05 - 08:22 AM

One of the clips I saw had the reporter mentioning that although he had seen both white and black 'helping themselves' the temporary jail for looters only had blacks in it - which was being protested loudly by one guy saying that he had a family to feed.

The last missing Aussie has been found - he was arrested for being in a bar fight the night before Katrina hit, and was 'lost' among the prisoners transferred several times around the place. he was never allowed his 'one call'. And Bush/Howard are trying to convince us that the Aussie in Gitmo will get a fair trial - yeah, right, like just before the hanging...

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 08 Sep 05 - 09:11 AM

People don't take into account that New Orleans was at least 65% black so it's no surprise that you see more blacks on TV that are waiting for help, it's a statistical fact.

Yes, but I seemed to be seeing more like 95% black. This leads me to think that in NO, if you are black, you are rather more likely to be in the poorest bracket than if you are white.

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Sep 05 - 10:39 AM

If that's the case, then New Orleans would be just like most other North American cities, wouldn't it? That is a result of longterm historical/cultural patterns that go back to when blacks were first brought into this continent as slaves. Those patterns have repeated themselves and evolved slowly over time, to the point where blacks are clearly better off now, but still not nearly as well off as whites. The average Native American (Indian) is also "more likely to be in the poorest bracket" than the average white American...for rather similar reasons.

Is that evidence of racism? Or is it evidence that things change slowly in society? Or is it a bit of both? Where a racial group is poor, that racial group WILL be looked down upon...not because of their race, but because they ARE poor.

Women also still have less power, relatively speaking, than men...although they have plenty of legal rights.

All this is so because people change their cultural ideas and behaviours very slowly, and old social patterns hang on long after new ideas have arisen to challenge them. Also...children who are born into conditions of poverty have a hard time breaking free of those conditions and leaving them behind. People have a tendency to repeat what they are accustomed to. (and none of that has anything to do with innate racial or gender tendencies)

Subject: RE: BS: Genocide in New Orleans
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Sep 05 - 02:21 PM

LH, you've been spot on all week until you wrote this, imo: Where a racial group is poor, that racial group WILL be looked down upon...not because of their race, but because they ARE poor.

In my experience, being poor AND racial identity will be looked down upon and if the poor are non-white, even more so. As has been said many times, one cannot change the colour of their skin. If a poor white person elevates themselves somehow, other people will percieve them differently and no longer look down on them. If a poor black, native american, asian, etc. does the same, they can and will be looked down upon no matter their improved financial status. This country still has an innate racism...it is changing very, very slowly.

kat