OT: New Orleans (VERY long!)

The following was written on our local newsgroup by a journalist from America . I was curious as to whether people on here agreed with him or otherwise. V ery well written - and thought provoking. It could explain the accounts reported by lots of our own people who have just returned home after their ordeal - particularly in the Dome.

>> It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure >>> out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, >>> because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going >>> on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think >>> that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural >>> disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in >>> food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees >>> to temporary shelters; you sendengineers to stop the flooding and >>> rebuild the city's infrastructure.

For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies.

That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us.

I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" `These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the nformational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects.

Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan.

The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state.

What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

Reply to
Pat P
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"Pat P" wrote in news:3iTTe.8033$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe2-win.ntli.net:

Perhaps because it is so incredibly one-sided. There were countless stories of people helping other people in New Orleans and other areas devastated by the storm. Much of the "looting" that was being reported was people looking for food and water. Many of the stories of gunshots were later discredited. And yes, there were too many rapes and beatings -- since even one is too many. In a city of 500,000 people, it is inevitable, welfare state or not, that there will be some people who will act very badly. But the vast, vast majority of people, people who were herded like cattle into cramped, hot, spaces with no food or water for days, behaved like human beings, and helped each other.

I'm curious, Pat. The area of the United States that was affected -- in some parts, wiped out -- by Katrina was roughly the size of Great Britain. Do you think that if your entire country were ravaged by a natural disaster,everyone would behave like proper English ladies and gents, holding their pinkies out while drinking tea..of course, made with chemical and sewage contaminated water?

K
Reply to
K

Pat P quoted:

I, too, had read this article and I agree with it 100%. I would have to agree that the **majority of** people who were left in New Orleans and staying at the Super Dome and Convention Center were either poor (and likely on Welfare) or thugs & criminals who were released from the prisons & jails in the area. As the author says in the article, they are lambs and wolves. All of the people *could* have left. Olwyn Mary and her DH ,managed to get out of town AFTER the surrounding areas flooded. The poor folks who didn't have a car could have walked out but instead they chose to stay and wait for the government to take care of them. We are starting to see stories now of people who stayed but did not go to one of the centers and they are managing. Unfortunately IMNSHO, what the author says about the "Welfare State" is true. If you give generations of people what they need to survive (you notice I say **survive** and not prosper) they forget to do for themselves. The old "fishing" adage is true -- if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; if you teach a man to fish he will feed himself forever -- and be able to feed his family too!! I'm not saying that these people don't need help. I'm saying that they should have to earn the help by getting an education or learning some sort of skill. so that they and their offspring are not on welfare for generations. We can berate the Federal Authorities all we want -- and berated they should be for their abysmal performance in getting aid to the area. I'm unbelievably angry with the Governor of LA and the mayor of New Orleans. They **apparently** had NO existing plan of evacuation for the criminals held in area facilities so they were (in essence) just let go! THOSE are the societal horrors who were trying to shoot down rescue helicopters and boats, not your everyday people or even the "average" criminal. Whether you "like" Americans or not, I think most will agree that the behavior displayed in New Orleans was not what you usually see from my countrymen (or ANY people) in a time of disaster. Looting, yes but trying to harm the people there to help you -- that's just plain crazy!! CiaoMeow >^;;^<

Reply to
Tia Mary

Hear, hear!! Frances

Reply to
'Nez

Hear, hear!! Frances

Reply to
'Nez

Pat isn't the one who said any of that. She quoted an article and asked what we thought about the premise of the article. Let's remember that the article Pat COPIED in her post is about the *reasons* for so many of the people behaving so badly. CiaoMeow >^;;^<

Reply to
Tia Mary

Pat P wrote:

I think the author makes some significant missteps. Poverty criminal behavior. Yes, there were criminals left behind, and they caused a lot of havoc. However, there were also many poor people who were in no way inclined towards criminal behavior and who were victims, pure and simple. Use of the term "Welfare State" implies that somehow, if the government would just stop coddling these folks, it would all be better. That's a load of crap and demonstrably untrue. Poverty, on the other hand, is a vicious destroyer of lives. You saw third world-like situations in NO because in many ways, it *was* a third world situation, with the attendant lack of resources. Not only does NO have a high level of poverty (leaving NO with limited resources), but Louisiana is also a very poor state. As far as it being somehow unpredictable that resources would be required to keep the peace, that's also ridiculous. Anyone with even the least experience in such situations is familiar with that need, and previous simulations of such a disaster in NO clearly demonstrated the need for such (not to mention previous experiences with other disasters). I can't imagine why anyone would have suspected this situation would somehow be free of that need. I think much remains to be seen in terms of local, state, and federal government culpability for what was obviously abysmal planning and/or execution. I have heard various reports in those areas, some indicating that there weren't plans, some saying that there were plans that weren't executed, some saying that there were plans and attempts to execute but not enough resources. At this point, it's unclear to me precisely where the failures were. I suspect there will be plenty of blame to go around. I do, however, think the notion that somehow the local government's administration of welfare aid had anything to do with preventing adequate planning.

Best wishes, Ericka

Reply to
Ericka Kammerer

Another sad truth that was somehow omitted from the article Pat quoted was that the armed mob contained many drug addicts who desperately needed a fix. That is why hospitals and drug stores were targeted. Paranoia and other mental problems are common among those who have to quit cold turkey so distrust of those who were there to help is also to be expected. Yes, it is crazy.

I didn't like the way the article made it sound as if every pers> THOSE are the societal horrors who were trying to shoot down rescue

Reply to
Brenda Lewis

I agree with a lot of the article - to a point. Most of the people left in New Orleans were *unable* to leave the city due to severe poverty. The fact that ~1/3 of New Orleans lives (or should that be

*lived*) below the poverty level is a very sad commentary on this country. No, I don't think welfare is the answer, but I don't know what is.

However, I don't think for a minute that *any person* left without food and water for 4 days, watching family members starve to death, wouldn't do just about anything to get food and water. I don't think that the riotous behavior we've seen is something that ONLY those who lived in abject poverty would do. It's just that the more well-off folks were able to leave before they were faced with the situation. I can't even fathom what the people at the convention center or the Superdome went through, and that doesn't excuse killing, raping, etc. But those of us who haven't been in the situation don't really know what we would do. The desperate are just that, and will commit desperate acts to get what they need.

Just my two cents. Thanks for posting, Pat.

With best regards,

--Mickey Mansfield, MA

to reply: mickey18385 at yahoo dot com

Reply to
Mickey

Reply to
Pat P

Reply to
Pat P

Reply to
Dianne Lewandowski

Could they? I don't know NO's geography, but it is very hard for someone on foot to get out of *our* downtown. Most of the river crossings in this town are freeway bridges on which pedestrians are absolutely forbidden.

Same thing in San Diego, there are places where the only way across a canyon is on a freeway bridge where pedestrians and bicycles are absolutely forbidden.

Besides, Tia, look at the reality. A human on foot -- especially one piggy-backing a feeble granny who can't walk that far -- is not going to outrun a hurricane. Let's assume they are somehow able to get out of the city on foot. Now they are in a strange place, with no clue where to go to find a shelter to ride out the storm. This is the South, girl. Poor urban blacks know that they are not welcome in the lily white suburbs; they've been raised on having the cops interrogate them when they leave their own neighborhoods, because the cops "know" there's only two reasons they'd be in a white neighborhood, and if you're not in a maid's uniform, that means you're there to steal.

Reply to
Karen C - California

The article might be from a right-wing publication but the main premise of the article -- that the criminal wolves preyed upon the "welfare parasites" as if they were sheep is undeniably true. There are those unfortunates in our society who need Welfare Assistance to help them get their lives back together -- THAT is what I feel is the proper use of the system. Unfortunately, there are those who think living on welfare IS a way a life and they ARE parasites. The author called them "...wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness..." I am assuming by "selected" he meant something akin to natural selection, in this case people who would rather collect welfare than try to work. It's not the collecting of welfare that is to blame, it's allowing the welfare recipients to slowly morph into sheep that is the problem. Because they don't *have* to work to get welfare money, they seem to lose the interest to work or better themselves. I would be willing to bet that *in general* the welfare recipients who were the sheep in this case are the ones whose families have been on welfare for years. They grew up on welfare and were never taught by example that you need to work to put food on the table. The author says that the criminals and "welfare parasites" have no values which is likely true or they wouldn't be criminals OR be welfare *parasites* I didn't see the article as being critical of welfare recipients, just critical of "welfare parasites" and the system that has allowed the recipients to turn into parasites. To me, that is a BIG difference. I realize that it wouldn't take much for most of us to go from being a middle-class family to being a welfare family. The difference between recipients and parasites is the length of time it takes before you start to work to get out from under the welfare rock. ciaoMeow >^;;^<

Reply to
Tia Mary

Yes, it is one-sided. So are the stories you mention. So aren't most news stories if we truly look at them: they only show one side, the side the sews agency allows us to see. And if they do show two or more sides, there is often a slant. Nobody ever tells the whole truth, it just doesn't happen. That's one of our jobs as responsible democratic citizens is to realize that there is bias and alwyay will be bias and to decide for ourselves what we really believe to be a version of "truth." Not everyone does, but I think we ought to make more effort to see more than one side of the story through checking out other sources and thinking for ourselves. Sara L.

Reply to
Sara L.

Reply to
Pat P

Ummm...are we forgetting the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996? There is a 60 month limit on assistance, and recipients are required to do at least some work by the 24th month (currently 30 hours/month minimum, not including educational programs, and more if it's a two parent family). Hardly the long term dependence you describe. They may have had that issue in the past, but those folk are now either working or not getting benefits, barring small numbers of serious hardship cases that the states have to be willing to fund on their own.

Best wishes, Ericka

Reply to
Ericka Kammerer

The ages of children enter into this equation, as well. And each state has differing rules. But in essence, you are correct.

There is another issue that many refuse to address: literacy and IQ. It is very hard to counteract.

Dianne

Reply to
Dianne Lewandowski

Tia Mary wrote: >Unfortunately, there are those who think living on

Unfortunately, that's a common misconception, with it's own vocabulary, most notably "Welfare Queen".

Of course those exist in a few pockets of society. But you're painting a very broad brush here. In fact, there is no assistance - in many states - for people without children who happen upon hard times. Zero. So, I don't know, in these states, how anyone can simply choose not to work and live off taxpayers. In most states currently, that is not an option.

The article was not timely at all, and painted the citizens left behind in New Orleans with a pretty mean pen. In the midst of this crisis, it is not helping to blame the poor for their current situation. There are many working poor in this country. Approximately 30% of New Orleans residents are below the poverty level. That, in itself, is a crime of huge proportion. How can our country have neglected for so long the minimum wage so that families could earn a decent living if they worked a decent day?

Dianne

Reply to
Dianne Lewandowski

Well, if your persistent unemployed are anything like ours, they make darned sure that are found to be "unsuitable" by their employers - in which case, since it is considered to be no fault of theor own, they are back on the assistance!

Pat P

Reply to
Pat P

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