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#21
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"Matt Whiting" wrote
I've not blamed the victims of this disaster. I do blame the local and state governments Many of the victims are to blame. Doesn't it give you pause when you learn the extent to which the people left there are behaving in a way *opposite* to what you would do or expect others to do? Using a natural disaster as an opportunity to plunder and rape and attack those that are trying to help is *exactly* what you should expect from people who have socially evolved over decades to live off the efforts of others. It isn't politically correct to say this but most of the people carting off alcohol and TV sets instead of essential supplies have lived as wards of the welfare state, and quite happily so, for their entire lives. http://www.intellectualactivist.com/...le.php?id=1026 moo |
#22
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Dan Luke wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote: Do you really suppose the media is suppressing the photos of white people on rooftops? It wouldn't surprise me at all. That's downright paranoid. Get a grip, Matt. CNN/Fox/NBC would *love* some white folks on a rooftop. Most of their audience is white, and people love to watch stories about people like themselves; it's money in the bank for tv news. To get some indication of the truth of this issue, one needs to start with answers to the following questions (in my opinion): 1) What is the ratio of white to non whote in the parish you are discussing? 2) What is the ratio of poor white to poor non-white in the same areas? 3) Is it reasonable to expect that the number of whites vs non-whites shown on TV should reflect those ratios? -- Saville Replicas of 15th-19th century nautical navigational instruments: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/backstaffhome.html Restoration of my 82 year old Herreshoff S-Boat sailboat: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/SBOATrestore.htm Steambending FAQ with photos: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/Steambend.htm |
#23
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Dan Luke wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote: Do you really suppose the media is suppressing the photos of white people on rooftops? It wouldn't surprise me at all. That's downright paranoid. Get a grip, Matt. CNN/Fox/NBC would *love* some white folks on a rooftop. Most of their audience is white, and people love to watch stories about people like themselves; it's money in the bank for tv news. Actually I think you are wrong. What the media want is the biggest viewership. They'll do anything to get that. Fomenting a notion of racism is a great way to get an audience. -- Saville Replicas of 15th-19th century nautical navigational instruments: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/backstaffhome.html Restoration of my 82 year old Herreshoff S-Boat sailboat: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/SBOATrestore.htm Steambending FAQ with photos: http://home.comcast.net/~saville/Steambend.htm |
#24
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Happy Dog wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote I've not blamed the victims of this disaster. I do blame the local and state governments Many of the victims are to blame. Doesn't it give you pause when you learn the extent to which the people left there are behaving in a way *opposite* to what you would do or expect others to do? Using a natural disaster as an opportunity to plunder and rape and attack those that are trying to help is *exactly* what you should expect from people who have socially evolved over decades to live off the efforts of others. It isn't politically correct to say this but most of the people carting off alcohol and TV sets instead of essential supplies have lived as wards of the welfare state, and quite happily so, for their entire lives. From this mornings newspaper... (Read the parts about 20% saying they would stay in their homes during any storm.) Warning ignored Eerily accurate, 2004 exercise predicted fate of New Orleans Sunday, September 04, 2005 Alan Judd COX NEWS SERVICE Hurricane Pam was the big one. With 120-mph winds and 20 inches of rain, it breached New Orleans’ aged levees, flooded half a million buildings and stranded thousands of residents in a ruined city below sea level. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, though, Pam wasn’t real. It was a computer-generated exercise in July 2004 that provided the latest confirmation of what researchers, disaster planners and engineers have contended for decades: New Orleans needed a better response plan for a catastrophic hurricane. Years of conferences, computer models, animated simulations and disaster drills had made it clear what could happen if a major storm struck southeastern Louisiana. Still, when Katrina hit last week, disaster authorities were, by all appearances, horribly illprepared. Officials couldn’t get tens of thousands of residents to leave vulnerable coastal regions before the storm, despite mandatory evacuation orders. In New Orleans, many people were sent to a shelter of last resort, the Superdome. Conditions there quickly became untenable: no food, no water, no electricity, no medical care, no working restrooms. With hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people dead, and with relief slow in coming, the city descended into what the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, called ‘‘mayhem and madness." Such chaos, hurricane experts said, was both predictable and preventable. ‘‘We pretty much knew this would happen somewhere along the line," said Gregory W. Stone, director of the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University. He is among the scientists who have issued dire warnings for years. ‘‘A lot of that has not been taken seriously" by the federal government, Stone said. ‘‘That’s a regrettable thing to say." Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, concurred. The government has shown ‘‘not much of a commitment to this issue," Thompson said. Congress will investigate whether the suffering caused by Katrina could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, he said. ‘‘Why aren’t we prepared for that kind of occurrence?" When the University of New Orleans surveyed the city’s residents about their personal hurricane evacuation plans last year, it found that many people had none. More than one in five of those surveyed said they would stay at home, even during a major storm. Researchers estimated that at least 100,000 New Orleans residents had no means to evacuate: no car, not enough money for airfare or a bus ticket, no friends or family to help them leave town. ‘‘They knew they were going to have a large number of people who weren’t going to be able to get out on their own," said Jay Baker, a geography professor who studies hurricanes at Florida State University. But authorities apparently never put plans in place to evacuate them before a storm. Instead, a day before Katrina hit, the city opened its massive stadium, the Superdome, as a shelter of last resort — nothing more, Baker said, than ‘‘a place for people to have a better chance to survive than if they stayed in their homes." It quickly became obvious that the Superdome was far from an ideal shelter. ‘‘Putting 20,000 to 30,000 people into a facility that will surely lose power and therefore lose air conditioning and lights, not to mention begin to get flooded, is not something that’s very appropriate," LSU’s Stone said. ‘‘These people are trapped like rats." No one, he said, seemed to consider how quickly conditions at the stadium would deteriorate. Even as evacuations got under way, reports from the Superdome and another nearby shelter depicted virtual anarchy: fighting, filth and bodies of the dead left untended. ‘‘We need to be able to streamline how we move from the occurrence of the disaster to relief," said Thompson, the Mississippi congressman. ‘‘We probably could have moved more people in faster. That probably means more military people." Hurricane experts say shelters should have been opened outside New Orleans, both for the storm and the duration of the recovery. Officials say New Orleans could be uninhabitable for six months. After the Hurricane Pam exercise, authorities said the New Orleans area would need shelters for just 100 days after a catastrophic storm. Once the drill was complete, the Federal Emergency Management Agency hired a consulting firm to develop recommendations. Well into the second hurricane season since the drill, no final report from the firm has been publicly released. On ABC-TV Thursday, President Bush acknowledged the ‘‘frustration" of New Orleans residents, but said, ‘‘I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." In fact, such a failure has been forecast for years. Since 2000, the Army Corps of Engineers has been studying the idea of reinforcing the levees to withstand a Category 5 storm, the strongest on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The 300 miles of existing levees, at 17 feet, were designed to protect New Orleans — parts of which are as much as 10 feet below sea level — from no more than a Category 3 hurricane. ‘‘We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane," Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the corps’ chief of engineers, told reporters Thursday in a telephone briefing. Last spring, the Army engineers’ New Orleans office complained that budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration and approved by Congress ‘‘will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs." Thompson said the corps’ arguments contain ‘‘significant merit." ‘‘What concerns me is the fact that for the last several budgets, the president has pretty much zeroed out a lot of the corps’ work," Thompson said. ‘‘We (in Congress) always had to go back in and try to help. I have not seen flood control as a real priority in this president’s budgets." The levee construction is one of two massive public-works projects that hurricane experts say could have protected New Orleans from Katrina. Since 1990, Louisiana’s congressional delegation has sought funding — a total of $14 billion — to restore the state’s coastal marshes and barrier islands. Scientists say the marshes and islands act as a first line of defense for New Orleans and the region’s other populated areas by absorbing much of a storm’s force. Built to prevent incessant flooding, the New Orleans levees also interrupted the natural flow of water to the marshes south of the city. Before the levees were built, that flow carried sediment that could restore the wetlands, which are under constant barrage from waves and wind. According to LSU’s Hurricane Center, which has studied the matter extensively, more than 1 million acres of wetlands have disappeared since 1930. LSU scientists estimate that the area is losing 28,000 acres a year — the equivalent of a football field every half-hour. ‘‘At the start of every new hurricane season on June 1," Stone said, ‘‘Louisiana has become more vulnerable to storm surge inundation and surge damage than it was the previous hurricane season." Yet, 15 years after the restoration began, Congress has appropriated just $540 million of the $14 billion needed to complete the project. ‘‘This is a regrettable demonstration of ignoring the magnitude of the problem," Stone said. ‘‘That could well have retarded some of the water finding its way" into the city. ‘‘What’s been missing is a sense of urgency," said Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La., a longtime proponent of coastal restoration. After Katrina, he said, ‘‘hopefully, it will help us convince people who weren’t convinced before." Some scientists, along with public officials, have questioned whether the project’s benefits would be worth its cost. Stone, referring to some of the worst casualty estimates, put it in starker terms: ‘‘How do you weigh the economic value against four or five or six thousand deaths?" |
#25
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"john smith" wrote in message
Many of the victims are to blame. Doesn't it give you pause when you learn the extent to which the people left there are behaving in a way *opposite* to what you would do or expect others to do? Using a natural disaster as an opportunity to plunder and rape and attack those that are trying to help is *exactly* what you should expect from people who have socially evolved over decades to live off the efforts of others. It isn't politically correct to say this but most of the people carting off alcohol and TV sets instead of essential supplies have lived as wards of the welfare state, and quite happily so, for their entire lives. From this mornings newspaper... (Read the parts about 20% saying they would stay in their homes during any storm.) Sure. I might have been one of them. Although probably not in New Orleans. Maybe you too. But I would wouldn't be looting stores or whining about the government's failure to protect me from my own stupidity. I'd be responding the way I would expect myself to in an emergency. To the best of my abilities. And, assuming I survived, rethinking my strategy for next time. A sizable percentage of the people who remained look forward to capitalizing on this sort of thing. The government is not my nanny. moo |
#26
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"Happy Dog" wrote in message
... Many of the victims are to blame. Doesn't it give you pause when you learn the extent to which the people left there are behaving in a way *opposite* to what you would do or expect others to do? Using a natural disaster as an opportunity to plunder and rape and attack those that are trying to help is *exactly* what you should expect from people who have socially evolved over decades to live off the efforts of others. "Many" of the victims are to blame? *How* many have engaged in the predatory violence you refer to? Even one in a hundred? If so, what is your evidence? If you have none, then how *dare* you characterize the behavior of a tiny minority as though it were typical of the larger group? That is the *essence* of pernicious sterotyping. It isn't politically correct to say this but most of the people carting off alcohol and TV sets instead of essential supplies have lived as wards of the welfare state, and quite happily so, for their entire lives. What is incorrect--not just politically, but also morally, logically, and intellectually--is to make accusatory claims that are founded on nothing but derogatory stereotypes, feeling no obligation to find or present supporting evidence, and yet to misrepresent those assertions as established fact, both in your own mind and in your rhetoric. What is, in fact, morally and intellectually *bankrupt* is for a "personal responsibility" advocate to hide under a hood of anonymity to avoid taking any personal responsibility for his unfounded public accusations against his favorite scapegoats. --Gary |
#27
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What on earth leads you to assume that the vast majority did not in fact
help one another rather than committing crimes? What's kind of interesting, in this whole thing, is that CNN (the supposed "liberal" news outlet ) has been showing endless video of blacks looting and shouting gibberish at the cameras, essentially since "Day One." It's hard to imagine black people being presented in a worse light. Fox News, on the other hand (the supposed "conservative" news outlet) has been showing the same footage, but also spending many more hours covering the *positive* aspects of the disaster recovery, showing all of the good people who have pulled together in the face of adversity. (This coverage tactic, by the way, mirrors Fox's coverage of the war in Iraq -- the same coverage that has infuriated the Left as being "namby pamby" war coverage. It seems that they always try to show one good thing for each bad thing they cover -- although I have no idea if that's a conscious decision, or just my impression. ) Sadly, I know all of this because I just spent the last 3 days dealing with my mother-in-law's death, which meant endless hours sitting in hotel rooms and FBOs, watching wall-to-wall Katrina coverage... Regardless, I find it fascinating that the "Conservative Channel" has been much more positive about the way Louisiana and Mississippi residents have been handling their disaster. -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
#28
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Matt Whiting wrote:
Majority, yes, 100%, no. I've not seen a white or Hispanic person yet shown on a roof waiting. I haven't watched TV in years. I've been getting my visual input from the AP feed. That seems to be more balanced than what you describe. George Patterson Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks. |
#29
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Bob Noel wrote:
Would that water be contaminated if the shutoff to the water heater had been closed (assuming it exists)? Standard plumbing practice is to install a shutoff valve on the inlet to the water heater to allow it to be drained. There is usually none on the outlet line; security there would depend on the integrity of the various faucets in the house. George Patterson Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks. |
#30
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"Dave Stadt" wrote:
'They' as in residents of NO. Instead of pulling together and helping each other many of 'them' decided to act like animals preventing the rest of 'them' from receiving the help 'they' needed. Why is it 'they' didn't go out and help their fellow citizens instead of looting and committing other crimes? You are obviously unable to distinguish the lawless actions of a few hundred people from the lawful actions of 50+ thousand people. In that, you are not unlike a number of other misguided talking heads in this newsgroup. In truth, the vast majority of the 50+ thousand who remained in the city after the storm did exactly as they were told and in a lawful manner over several days of unspeakable hardship. And yes, they did help each other as was evidenced each day in the news coverage. That you choose to pretend otherwise makes it no less so. You spend way too much time listening to Jesse and Al. I seriously doubt that Mr. Drescher spends much time listing to either of those people but I expect he listens to them on occasion because enlightened people seek all views. Mr. Drescher seems quite enlightened. |
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