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yahoo spins that american hurricane thing
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Summer Wine

Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:56 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Black, white, I don't care, in the current situation I can see nothing wrong with taking the necessities of life from abandoned stores which are already going to be filing massive insurance claims.

I agree with that statement. There will be a few days of lack of assistance. The stores will probably dump most stuff anyway. So long storage food items will be important. The stealing of other items (tv's, dozens of clothes etc) is just pure stupidity.

jinglejangle

Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 7:04 pm Post subject:

fidel wrote:

Reports are that victims are being raped and beaten inside the Orleans Convention Center! Shocked

Raped in a crowd of tens of thousands of people.
That's disgusting.
People can be quite mind-blowingly sick.

The thing that bothers me about this though, is that prior to the storm hitting,
when people were filing into the superdome, which is where I'm given to believe a lot of these people at the center came from, the NG was taking eveyone's guns away from them and throwing them in the trash.
Now to me, that begs the question, would people be able to come up and rape people willy-nilly if this crowd hadn't been disarmed? That and, what happened to all the guns in the trash? What do you want to bet they aren't there anymore?

**Edit** Sorry, I should clarify. I mean of course, "The thing that bothers me other than people being gang raped and such."

kermo

Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Location: Eating eggs, with a comb, out of a shoe.

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 7:11 pm Post subject:

From what I'm reading (in Salon.com again) the death toll continues to rise due to starvation and dehydration, particularly among the elderly and infants. National Guardsmen are around, but they don't seem to be able to help with distributing food. Police are overwhelmed by the crowds, and can't properly investigate reports of assault. One woman told a journalist that a policeman told her: "'Go to hell -- it's every man for himself.'"

Here's the AP article. It's a heartbreaker.

Quote:

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By ALLEN G. BREED Associated Press Writer

September 01,2005 | NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken.

"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive," said Canadian tourist Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. "I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire."

Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.

New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.

"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses."

At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.

"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."

The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up."

Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.

At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ..."

"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.

"We've got people dying out here -- two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell -- it's every man for himself.'"

"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."

At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.

After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.

One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.

Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.

"If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be worse than what we've been through."

By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.

As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out.

Displaced residents also expressed anger at government officials.

"All I want to say to Mayor Ray Nagin is thank you for helping us," Yolanda McZeal, 43, said calmly, sarcastically and bitterly. "Governor Blanco, thank you for helping us. President Bush, thank you for helping us."

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings -- and not all the crimes were driven by greed.

When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"

Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.

"I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there," he said.

Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."

While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.

Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. He said contractors had completed building a rock road to let heavy equipment roll to the area by midnight.

The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.

In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.

The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this -- whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."

Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.

"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"

--_--_

Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this report.

dogbert

Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 9:41 pm Post subject:

jinglejangle wrote:

fidel wrote:

Reports are that victims are being raped and beaten inside the Orleans Convention Center! Shocked

It's quite likely had more of the crowd been armed, more victims would have been raped. Look at the consitution of the majority of the crowd.

When you have people shooting at rescue workers and the like, that's not an armed society one can count on to keep order.

Kuros

Joined: 27 Apr 2004

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 10:03 pm Post subject:

bigverne wrote:

Quote:

After looking at this video, I believe the only way to do that is to admit something is wrong and deal with it through education, and so on.

However, it is in the interests of the race relations industry, and people like Jesse Jackson to constantly perpetuate the idea that racism, and racism alone is responsible for all the woes of black people. If they did not do this, many of them would be out of a job.

Jesse Jackson agreed with Bill Cosby's controversial remarks.

Quote:

An emotional Jesse Jackson told the crowd on Thursday that many in the media have tried to exploit Cosby's words and divide the black community, but Jackson said it would not work.

"Bill is saying, 'Let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson explained. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that," he added.

Earlier in the week, Jackson said, "Our people agree with Bill...Bill took it to another level. His point was to lift up and not tear down," he added.

Jesse Jackson acknowledges that there are problems within the black community as well as racism from outside.

dogbert

Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 10:30 pm Post subject:

Racism is neither the cause of nor an excuse for raping, looting, and trying to kill rescue workers.

flakfizer

Joined: 12 Nov 2004
Location: scaling the Cliffs of Insanity with a frayed rope.

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:22 pm Post subject:

BigBlackEquus wrote:

I guess this it can be said that some people assume.

Others investigate.

When we see a photo, we rely on the person who writes the caption to tell us the story. When the captions are short, they often don't tell us much. I'm going to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, based on the fact that he/she was there, and I wasn't.

To those of you who think, "it couldn't be more plain [racism] than that," I would, as a black man, say that life can be a whole lot more enjoyable if you don't look for racism under every rock, or see the world through racism glasses.

People go overboard with the "R" word. It dillutes the power of it, and quite frankly, people get sick of hearing it thrown around at every opportunity. It's my theory that this makes even the non-racist white man so sick of it that he/she gets to the point where they think black people are whining and don't deserve any help.

How can that be good?

You may be considered far too reasonable to use this forum. Your good sense could have well-served this forum a few months back. Nice tag-line too. But why Equus? What about Opirus or the SM series? Frankly, I can't tell them apart anyway.

The Great Wall of Whiner

Joined: 24 Jan 2003
Location: Middle Land

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:46 pm Post subject:

jinglejangle wrote:

Black, white, I don't care, in the current situation I can see nothing wrong with taking the necessities of life from abandoned stores which are already going to be filing massive insurance claims.

Food, guns, clothes. (And yes, the way things are going in the Big Easy I think arming yourself is necessary.)

Hmmm... I see. So, stealing, er, 'finding' 16 pairs of shoes and 13 t-shirts is necessary?

I've been looking at the pictures. I have yet to see ONE picture of a white person with a great big bag of shoes or beer or whatever.

jinglejangle

Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:03 am Post subject:

The Great Wall of Whiner wrote:

jinglejangle wrote:

Umm..Very deep, very insightful.
And yet....somehow you seem to have missed the next sentance of what I said, allow me to remind you:

Quote:

Now those we see in the pictures taking massive amounts of resale items like beer...well, that's messed up.

And good job on the race thing too. You have keenly grasped the fact that the people living in violent, gang ridden ghettos are a majority black and hispanic, and that our country suffers high violent crime rates among the black and hispanic communities.

What of it? First it was the Jews, and they ran the streets with horrificly violent gangs. Then they started to move up and take higher and higher positions in society. Then it was the Irish, and they have done the same. Then it was the Italians/Sicilians, and they too have moved up in the world. No it's blacks, hispanics and Russians. The question which I have been pondering for awhile, is why are the blacks in this country failing to rise through society As A Whole like all the other minorities?

I can only attribute it to the massive numbers of blacks who were all released into the bottom rung of our society at once during the 1860s and the prevailing culture of mutual racism which has prevented these two sides of our society from interacting with full efficiancy. But it cannot be attributed to black inferiority, as blacks who are given a decent upbringing tend to be valuable, contributing, personally and socially successful citizens, as do a number of blacks who are raised in bad situations.

And thank you for choosing my words to twist to make your derogatory insinuations. It gives me such pleasure to see my self quoted in such a moronic way by an evident racist.

jinglejangle

Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:10 am Post subject:

dogbert wrote:

jinglejangle wrote:

fidel wrote:

Reports are that victims are being raped and beaten inside the Orleans Convention Center! Shocked

I can't say that that wouldn't have been the case, nor that it would. The only counter I can offer is that, having spent a good deal of my life in one ghetto or another, I can assure you that a good many good-hearted people travel heavily armed there.

I did. But I'm a little (lot) on the paranoid side, so I don't neccesarily count.

When you say too look at the constituency of the people at the superdome and convention center, I think back on the videos I saw, and I recall seeing a lot of old folks, and a lot of parents with children, but not any young men who looked like thugs. I suspect that for the most part the problems are coming from gangbangers moving in from elsewhere.

Of course I could be wrong. Those would also be the ones most likely to have left in search of food or plunder.

krats1976

Joined: 14 May 2003

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 2:10 am Post subject:

Gee, aren't we just a hyper-sensitive bunch? Did anyone read this from Yahoo (a link provided instead of the "white" photo)?

Quote:

To Yahoo! News readers:

News photos are an especially popular section of Yahoo! News. In part, this is because we present thousands of news photos from some of the leading news services, including The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France Press. To make this volume of photos available in a timely manner, we present the photos and their captions as written, edited and distributed by the news services with no additional editing at Yahoo! News.

In recent days, a number of readers of Yahoo! News have commented on differences in the language in two Hurricane Katrina-related photo captions (from two news services). Since the controversy began, the supplier of one of the photos – AFP – has asked all its clients to remove the photo from their databases. Yahoo! News has complied with the AFP request.

guangho

Joined: 19 Jan 2005
Location: a spot full of deception, stupidity, and public micturation and thus unfit for longterm residency

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 8:53 am Post subject:

Perception matters. If a young black kid in Harlem goes to school at eight in the morning and sees his uncle sitting on the stoop, doing nothing then comes back at three in the afternoon and sees his uncle still sitting there, no better off than in the morning, what is he supposed to think? I used to live in Harlem and my landlord was an elderly black man whose mother used to clean the subways with a mostly Polish and Jewish crew of cleaning women, many of them camp survivors. The point is, all these people-his mother included- went through hell, be it in Poland or Alabama and made something of themselves in spite of it all. I didn't see very much of that during my time in Harlem.

jinglejangle

Joined: 19 Feb 2005
Location: Far far far away.

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:34 pm Post subject:

guangho wrote:

Perception matters. If a young black kid in Harlem goes to school at eight in the morning and sees his uncle sitting on the stoop, doing nothing then comes back at three in the afternoon and sees his uncle still sitting there, no better off than in the morning, what is he supposed to think?

I used to live in Harlem and my landlord was an elderly black man whose mother used to clean the subways with a mostly Polish and Jewish crew of cleaning women, many of them camp survivors. The point is, all these people-his mother included- went through hell, be it in Poland or Alabama and made something of themselves in spite of it all. I didn't see very much of that during my time in Harlem.

You make a valid point, which I think is right on, but then on the other hand, it's kind of hard for most people in NO to do their jobs right now.

The one thing which confuses me about your statement is, are you saying that it might give a kid the wrong message to see his parents sitting there helpless, or to see them looting?

guangho

Joined: 19 Jan 2005
Location: a spot full of deception, stupidity, and public micturation and thus unfit for longterm residency

Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject:

jinglejangle wrote:

guangho wrote:

I was speaking about my own experiences, not N.O. But yeah, I'll go out on a limb and say that if the parents are stealing beer, sneakers and chips that sends the wrong message. Now if they are taking water or some other essentials like food, that doesn't seem all that great either but it is at least understandable.

Tiberious aka Sparkles

Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 5:13 pm Post subject:

Kanye West Rips Bush at Hurricane Aid Show

Quote:

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

Sparkles*_*

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