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Politicizing hurricane Katrina

E.J.Armstrong said:
The arch anti-sceptic Mycroft whispers in your ear after you are asked a simple question and you debate putting people on your ignore list?

Sort of says it all or perhaps Oscar Wilde said it better
'Bad artists always admire each other's work; they call it being broadminded and free from prejudice.'
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Rhetorical. Thanks for sharing.
 
E.J.Armstrong said:
I didn't make the claim. You did. Is one enough for you?

You also claimed that
'The focus of the left seems clearly only on Bush.'

As you have seen fit to give me only one example of this so-called left let me quote you something else Sidney Blumenthall says about Condaleeza Rice in http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805M.shtml
'During the early days of the hurricane and flood, she had been vacationing in New York, taking in Monty Python's "Spamalot" and spending thousands on shoes at Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue. In the store, a fellow shopper reportedly confronted her, saying, "How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!" - prompting security men to bodily remove the woman. ' Clearly your allegation that the left, insomuch as you have so far only defined it as Sidney Blumenthal, did not only focus on Bush as you claimed so your claim is false.
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Ok, the focus is on Bush et al. Bush and his administration. Bush and his advisors. Bush and those who work with him. Come on. Get off of the propaganda and spin. This is a distinction with little or no difference and is completly beside the point. And that point is, that it is demonstrable that Blumenthal does not care about ALL of the facts. Only those that fit with his world view. True or not true?
 
ShowMe said:
So, after one trip for evacuees you take the busses and throw them away?

Even assuming one trip I wouldn't call 13,000 people "irrelevant".

As for the "take them to where?" question, isn't disaster prep the responsibility of, I don't know...local officials?

Seems to me the "desperate-to-blame-Ray-Nagin" aren't so much desperate as, well, correct.
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13,000 mostly blanck poor people? I read that the county just next door was shooting at them, forcing them to turn back to NO when they tried to simply walk out of the place after Katrina.
 
a_unique_person said:
13,000 mostly blanck poor people? I read that the county just next door was shooting at them, forcing them to turn back to NO when they tried to simply walk out of the place after Katrina.
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"The county"? As in...an official government-sanctioned action? (Counties in the US do have governments, with their own police forces.) Care to post some evidence of this?

Oh, by the way, I read that somebody got raped and beaten in Australia last month. :rolleyes: (See how irrelevant and stupid that sounds?)
 
a_unique_person said:
13,000 mostly blanck poor people? I read that the county just next door was shooting at them, forcing them to turn back to NO when they tried to simply walk out of the place after Katrina.
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Could you post the source? Aren't rumors great? I read lots of things but I don't believe them all.
 
Freakshow said:
Oh, by the way, I read that somebody got raped and beaten in Australia last month. :rolleyes: (See how irrelevant and stupid that sounds?)
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HEY! Stop making points before I do. :p
 
a_unique_person said:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...ing-new-orleans/2005/09/02/1125302726757.html

they tried to walk out, and were forcibly turned back by police.
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Here's another coverage of the same story.
Peter Ambros, general manager of the Astor Crowne Plaza in the French Quarter, said, "Guests who bring business to the hotels are treated 10 times worse than the people at the Superdome."

He helped arrange the hiring of 10 buses to evacuate 500 guests from his and a nearby hotel -- at a cost of $25,000.

Then the Federal Emergency Management Agency commandeered the buses and police told the guests to go to the nearby convention center, where a crowd left without food, water or security was growing angry.

Instead, the tourists -- dragging their rolling luggage through broken glass, smashed bricks and trash -- tried to cross a huge bridge blocks away.

They were turned back when another group trying to cross began to threaten the officers, said Whit Herndon, 32, of Jonesboro, Ark.

As night approached, the tourists stuck close together on a corner of the downtown waterfront and within sight of a police gathering point.

Officers brought them food and water and promised buses would come for them. Most prepared to sleep, sheltered by a concrete overhang.
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http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/12552932.htm
 
RandFan said:
Could you post the source? Aren't rumors great? I read lots of things but I don't believe them all.
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Hadn't you heard? Once a rumor is repeated in the media, it becomes a source. After a few spins around the block, it becomes 'evidence'.

After that it becomes a fact, and any questions abouts it's veracity are called 'assertions' and proof is demanded.
:p
 
The FEMA director has something to say, which is in-line with the topic of this thread:
FEMA director says media made him a scapegoat

FEMA was also criticized after Andrew (for comparison):
After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, however, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was criticized for waiting too long to act and for making inaccurate damage assessments. FEMA waited for local and state officials to assess damage and identify needs for federal response assistance. Studies of disaster response efforts during the hurricane by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), and FEMA's Inspector General found that the immediate needs of victims, as well as the need of the general public for a competent presence in the midst of the destruction, went largely unmet.[1]
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http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/reports/FEMA2.html
 
peptoabysmal said:
FEMA was also criticized after Andrew (for comparison):
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Good point, Problems happened in 1992, it's sheer folly that we expect improvements in 13 years. That's what my mother always taught me, if you ever screw up, just look around and see if anyone else has screwed up, if so, then it's okay, especially if it was when a Democrat was president. :D
 
DavidJames said:
Good point, Problems happened in 1992, it's sheer folly that we expect improvements in 13 years. That's what my mother always taught me, if you ever screw up, just look around and see if anyone else has screwed up, if so, then it's okay, especially if it was when a Democrat was president. :D
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Nice attempt at pinning "two wrongs make a right" on me. Could you show me where I made that point?

It is possible that FEMA gets more than it's fair share of criticism because hurricanes are horrible disasters and afterward there are a lot of angry people. That anger gets directed at someone.

That being said, it is a government agency. Since when has a government agency been efficient? If you are in a disaster and you just wait around for the federal government to bring you water, food and transportation, you are risking your life.
 
a_unique_person said:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...ing-new-orleans/2005/09/02/1125302726757.html

they tried to walk out, and were forcibly turned back by police.
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And previously you said:

a_unique_person said:
13,000 mostly blanck poor people? I read that the county just next door was shooting at them, forcing them to turn back to NO when they tried to simply walk out of the place after Katrina.
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Do you realize the article you quoted doesn't confirm anything from what you first said?

13,000? No, it was about 200.

Black poor people? No, they were out of town tourists.

Was it the county next door? No, if the account is correct, it was the New Orleans PD.

Were they prevented from leaving the city? No, they were turned away from an overpass where they expected to get picked up by a bus.

The only detail your article has in common with what you first said is someone fired some shots to warn some people away. You missed completely on every other item.
 
Freakshow said:
Gotta be quick around here, man! :)
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http://washtimes.com/upi/20050908-112433-4907r.htm

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.
"The only way people can leave the city of New Orleans is to get on (the) Crescent City Connection ... authorities said," reads a Tuesday morning posting on the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, which kept reporting through the storm and the ruinous flooding that followed.
Similar announcements appeared on the Web site of local radio station WDSU and other local news sources.
"Evidently, someone on the ground (in New Orleans) was telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter," said Lawson. "There wasn't."
"We were not contacted by anyone" about the instructions being given to survivors to use the bridge to get out of town, he said.
The two paramedics, who were trapped in the city while attending a convention, joined a group of people who had been turned out by the hotels that they were staying in on Wednesday. When the group attempted to get to the Superdome -- designated by city authorities as a shelter for those unable to evacuate -- they were turned away by the National Guard.
"Quite naturally, we asked ... 'What was our alternative?' The guards told us that that was our problem, and no, they did not have extra water to give to us.
"This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile law enforcement."
As they made their way to the bridge in order to leave the city "armed Gretna sheriffs (sic) formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads."
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a_unique_person said:
http://washtimes.com/upi/20050908-112433-4907r.htm
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This story is pointing toward local authorities being the ones most at fault for causing unnecessary suffering. In this case, New Orleans was not communicating with Gretna and Gretna was refusing to allow passage to the survivors on the grounds that they did not have the resources to deal with them.

(from the same link):
He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.
"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.
"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
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What if they did open the bridge and Gretna ended up looking like the Super Dome? Then you have created a new dangerous situation involving even more people (now the residents of Gretna as well as New Orleans), not eliminated the existing one.
 
a_unique_person said:
You didn't respond to the points in the article. Police outside NO barring people from walking out of the city. Who is this mycroft of which you talk?
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Hey, if this ONE jurisdiction did that, then there should be hell to pay, no question about it. The fact that they would do that infuriates me. But it doesn't exactly match the implication of your original post, does it? I want more evidence about exactly what happened (as in...were shots really fired?) other than just a posting on an Internet forum (talking about the posting referred to in the story, not your posting.)

But would you see the actions of this one city (which has a population of less than 18,000) to be representative of the US reaction as a whole? Or are you just data-mining to enforce your hatred of the United States? Would it help if I was to post a bunch of links of the positive things that US citizens have been doing to help? Is that news not making it to Australia? Or do you just choose to ignore it?
 
Freakshow said:
Hey, if this ONE jurisdiction did that, then there should be hell to pay, no question about it. The fact that they would do that infuriates me. But it doesn't exactly match the implication of your original post, does it? I want more evidence about exactly what happened (as in...were shots really fired?) other than just a posting on an Internet forum (talking about the posting referred to in the story, not your posting.)

But would you see the actions of this one city (which has a population of less than 18,000) to be representative of the US reaction as a whole? Or are you just data-mining to enforce your hatred of the United States? Would it help if I was to post a bunch of links of the positive things that US citizens have been doing to help? Is that news not making it to Australia? Or do you just choose to ignore it?
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I was claiming no more than what I did. To extrapolate this event to be representative of the whole of the US was never my intent. A local article stated that Katrina has forced the US as a whole to once again face up to the racism and poverty. Much of the country has moved on, much of it is still stuck in the past.

I don't believe, for example, that any of the forum members would endorse these actions. That they can still happen says something, though.
 
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