And Rock: I am SURE, somewhere down the line, there will be a fictional Katrina film, probably involving some white hero/heroine who "bravely" "helps" all the poor, colored people get rescued, showing the "true" "heart" of "humanity" and "compassion" in a time of need.
And Rock: I am SURE, somewhere down the line, there will be a fictional Katrina film, probably involving some white hero/heroine who "bravely" "helps" all the poor, colored people get rescued, showing the "true" "heart" of "humanity" and "compassion" in a time of need.
the last 5 minutes damn near had me in tears. and the whole thing was heart wrenching.
Same here. Everyone should really check this out if you can. It's an eye opeing piece to say the least.
I can't get over what the administration was doing in the wake of everything. Gnat brought up Rice shopping and playing tennis with Monica Seles while Cheney was fly fishing. It just infuriates me to no end.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Dyson points out that this nation's willful ignorance and malevolent naivety concerning its poorer and disproportionately darker citizens should not be obfuscated by our collective post-Katrina "Oh My God!" moment or ephemeral acts of charity.
What I got from the segments dealing with what Nagin was doing is that the fault part of it all is pointless. It don't really matter who didn't do what. what did matter is what was done by those involved. It seemed like Nagin and the Police cheif were doing the best they could considering the stretching of supplies, lack of information, and general conditions.
I loved the more human aspect and information this provided me. Watching the CNN reports is one thing but hearing a woman who was stuck in an airport terminal for days on end and a man who literally watched his mother die while waiting for a bus was just so real that it left me emotional.
I'm hoping tonights 2 acts cover the aftermath months down the road. This is the news story that is never reported. Outside of an article I read in newsweek several months back I haven't heard a peep about the progress or the living condiitons for those affected.
Wake up calls shouldn't be neccasary with a tragedy like this, but if the news wants to try to keep us sleeping I'm more than glad that Spike wants to serve as the alarm.
I thought it was pretty interesting that the radio talk show host mentioned that the hurricane actually missed New Orleans in terms of the actual "eye" of the storm and therefore the levees broke under category 1, possibly 2, conditions, but not under the category 3 conditions that they were supposed to maintain their integrity under. Can anybody fact check this, that the category 5 "eye" never hit New Orleans?
Not a secret at all.
The levees were not built to spec and the Corps of Engineers has consistently obstructed efforts to get to the bottom of it.
Faux - did you also read "The Great Deluge"? Just wondering how that astacked up next to Horne's book. But it's funny - I just put Horne's book on library request this morning before reading your co-sign. Definitely looking forward to reading it.
Eddie Compass going off at the Convention Center =
Eddie Compass is a clown
I do think he got a pass on his actions for the most part, but I also consider the stress of the event and think about how one would act and he wasn't too bad in his actions.
His message may have been off but his heart was most definitely in the right place
A clown who was about the only person of authority at the Convention Center with the balls to go on record with a powerful and vital emotional appeal.
yeah.....just like Jesse wiped Dr.King's blood on his shirt
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Film helps N.O. grieve Erania M. of Houston, TX, 77077, writes:
Someone else said, Spike Lee really gets us people from New Orleans ... he really does. This documentary makes you cry, think, laugh, wonder, pray and fume. But most of all, it helps you grieve, because how do you really grieve the loss of your own life? When you lose a loved one there is a funeral, a wake, people send you cards and flowers and there is a ceremony. How can we grieve the loss of New Orleans? Spike has helped us on the road to grieving. Thank you and bless you, Spike Lee. You did the right thing. Sho Nuff!
Still living the untold story Courtney Guastella of New Orleans, LA, 70118, writes:
I am tired. I am homesick. I am frustrated. My electricity goes out if it even looks like it's going to rain. My former home was leveled yesterday, finalizing the life that was literally washed away one year ago. I fear there are things that I will forget since all of my 26 years of memories prior to Aug. 29, 2005 are just that now. I can't remember the last day I enjoyed before "the storm." Had I known Aug. 28 was the last day that I would wake up unwary and not hearing the words "Katrina," "storm," "recovery," "FEMA," and the list goes on. I did not know that the very next day would begin a cycle of loss that really has resulted in more numbness than sadness at this point. It was the storm that just keeps taking. I lost family members, but it took months for Katrina to finally kill them. I've lost sleep. No one here sleeps anymore, we close our eyes but there's no rest. I lost my favorite pair of shoes, the kind that makes you feel like you can take on the world one step at a time. Now that thought seems ridiculous to me -- they were just shoes. God knows I've lost patience along with every other citizen in a 200 mile radius. But more than anything, I have lost myself. I lost the images of who I thought I was and where I thought I lived, the place I thought was my home.
I watched CNN in the days after the storm from a hotel room. I saw the 17th Street Canal breach. No one said that is what it was, but I recognized it and my neighborhood under water. I spent countless hours on the Internet trying to find my family who lived in Biloxi, Miss., because cell phones were null and void at that point. I looked at satellite images of my rooftop in Lakeview and tried to think of all of the things I moved to the top of my closet in a vain belief that that had saved them. I held my uncle Henry's hand as he watch 80 years being washed away from his home on General Diaz to the lake.
And all the while, I believed that the portrayal of my city was just a misguided effort by the national media to create the worst possible picture, and that once people went home and started picking up the pieces, that our whole story would come out. The New Orleans I knew was a city like no other in the world. The streets that I came home to two years early from college in New York for, just because I wasn't me without them.
I believed that our soul was so much more than the misery. I believed we would mourn together, that we would all respect each other's loss. I believed that the media would wake up and show the whole picture, that my story, Uncle Henry's story, the story of the countless others on the Mississippi coast and areas outside of the Ninth Ward would join in the whole picture for the world to see. I thought that we would all be shown, that we would all matter. But one year later in a requiem of four parts, I am not there. We all are not there. Who is going to write, to show, to tell the whole history of Katrina? Maybe it will just exist in our own minds and hearts like our lives before Katrina does.
Local documentary better David Campbell of Langston, AL, 35755, writes:
"Hexing a Hurricane" is a much better documentary, done by locals for locals with no national, Spike Lee political agenda.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
His message may have been off but his heart was most definitely in the right place
His message was a crock of shit.....and his heart should be heavy with guilt
Where are you coming from with this? I can speculate in a few different directions, but I'd really like for you to please explain why you're being so harsh.
I thought it was pretty interesting that the radio talk show host mentioned that the hurricane actually missed New Orleans in terms of the actual "eye" of the storm and therefore the levees broke under category 1, possibly 2, conditions, but not under the category 3 conditions that they were supposed to maintain their integrity under. Can anybody fact check this, that the category 5 "eye" never hit New Orleans?
Not a secret at all.
The levees were not built to spec and the Corps of Engineers has consistently obstructed efforts to get to the bottom of it.
Faux - did you also read "The Great Deluge"? Just wondering how that astacked up next to Horne's book. But it's funny - I just put Horne's book on library request this morning before reading your co-sign. Definitely looking forward to reading it.
Just started it--I'm only maybe 50 pages in so far.
The entirety of Brinkley's book unfolds over the course of the first week, right? I think Horne's book would be a good complementary piece, because it uses the flooding as a starting point, taking the reader up to about April of this year, through the Corps' obstructionist efforts, its attempts to refortify the levies in time for the '06 hurricane season, the fates of some of the displaced, and the poltical wrangling over dollars.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
This has to be as good a time as any to re-up these:
The only "acceptable" excuse offered by those who were able to provide aid and shelter in a timely manner has been fear
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
I don't know that it was intentional, but it was definitely irresponsible and not something that should be praised.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
The only "acceptable" excuse offered by those who were able to provide aid and shelter in a timely manner has been fear
The environment of fear exagerrated by homeboy lead to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
That's not an "acceptable" excuse AT ALL.
And even if it was, it was something blatantly present loong before anyone heard a peep out of Eddie Compass.
Apparently tonight's third installment of the doc is going to provide some historical context in regard to the cultivation of that "fear". Cyril Neville does a good job of it as well, as linked above.
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
I don't know that it was intentional, but it was definitely irresponsible and not something that should be praised.
No joke, both you and J*rm*l have me second guessing my initial feeling about him now.
I think its time I do a little more research into his character and actions.
Does anyone have any online articles they can link me to?
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
I don't know that it was intentional, but it was definitely irresponsible and not something that should be praised.
Did you even see the segment that I was referring to in Spike Lee's doc?
Fuck if someone pouring their heart out at the most crucial moment as a way to instigate action shouldn't be praised.
No one at that time was doing a damned thing but being scared. Even soldiers in all of their gear were "too scared" to get close enough to drop off water at the Convention Center. Instead they dropped supplies down from a nearby overpass which of course broke up a good portion of the water containers.
Imagine that...you wait for days in festering misery, only to have help show up and destroy most of the rations meant for you...just because they are supposedly scared of what you might do to them with all of those weapons you obviously carried on your back, along with your disabled grandmother, through chest-deep water.
C'mon now, Eddie Compass's misleading statements couldn't possibly be responsible for all of that monumental racism at work.
Heres a torrent file for a BBC2 Documentry people may find interesting about the prison in New Orleans. The last part of it is about Eddie Compass. I've never heard of the man before so have no real opinion of him either way, but from this documentry he came over as a dodgy fuck.
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
I don't know that it was intentional, but it was definitely irresponsible and not something that should be praised.
Did you even see the segment that I was referring to in Spike Lee's doc?
Haven't seen Spike's movie yet, but that's hardly the only source of information on Katrina and Eddie Compass.
Can't really comment to that extent as I flew out from the UK to Canada, the day before it hit and was doing the family thing / touring around when all the major coverage of it was happening, but from what I saw. While the storm was coming everything was all chilled. bit of news that a big storm was going to maybe hit, this was all that it was for a couple of days, then at some point it all tipped over and people were incredulous that this shit was happening when it became obvious how ill prepared NO was. Incompetence on a MASSIVE scale, that went over the edge into what I see as wilful incompetence. This was happening to the supposed only super power in the world. the fact that the levees weren't built to withstand stuff that was well within the bounds of what nature could bring beggars belief and suggest corners were cut in a big way. It was a big, unlikely storm, but not thatunlikely for christ sakes. The bits I caught of Nagin, he came off as a stand up fella, who was obviously emotionally effected by events around him where as others came off as they weren't. I've since heard the critiscisms of him but never really looked too much into it.
Comments
Man, I was just thinking the exact same thing!
PS thanks faux for the book rec.
Same here. Everyone should really check this out if you can. It's an eye opeing piece to say the least.
I can't get over what the administration was doing in the wake of everything. Gnat brought up Rice shopping and playing tennis with Monica Seles while Cheney was fly fishing. It just infuriates me to no end.
Here you go Noz http://www.3030media.net/hbo.torrent
What I got from the segments dealing with what Nagin was doing is that the fault part of it all is pointless. It don't really matter who didn't do what. what did matter is what was done by those involved. It seemed like Nagin and the Police cheif were doing the best they could considering the stretching of supplies, lack of information, and general conditions.
I loved the more human aspect and information this provided me. Watching the CNN reports is one thing but hearing a woman who was stuck in an airport terminal for days on end and a man who literally watched his mother die while waiting for a bus was just so real that it left me emotional.
I'm hoping tonights 2 acts cover the aftermath months down the road. This is the news story that is never reported. Outside of an article I read in newsweek several months back I haven't heard a peep about the progress or the living condiitons for those affected.
Wake up calls shouldn't be neccasary with a tragedy like this, but if the news wants to try to keep us sleeping I'm more than glad that Spike wants to serve as the alarm.
Faux - did you also read "The Great Deluge"? Just wondering how that astacked up next to Horne's book. But it's funny - I just put Horne's book on library request this morning before reading your co-sign. Definitely looking forward to reading it.
Eddie Compass is a clown
I do think he got a pass on his actions for the most part, but I also consider the stress of the event and think about how one would act and he wasn't too bad in his actions.
His message may have been off but his heart was most definitely in the right place
The White Man for the job
I want to watch this tonight.
A clown who was about the only person of authority at the Convention Center with the balls to go on record with a powerful and vital emotional appeal.
Of course to hell with a corrupt cop, but thank you Eddie for at least showing some signs of humanity during trying times.
We could criticize Ray Nagin until the cows come home as well. But his own vital emotionally-charged tirade may be what I most remember him for.
It's these cracks in the emporer's armour that at times offer up our only hope.
His message was a crock of shit.....and his heart should be heavy with guilt
yeah.....just like Jesse wiped Dr.King's blood on his shirt
Where are you coming from with this? I can speculate in a few different directions, but I'd really like for you to please explain why you're being so harsh.
Just started it--I'm only maybe 50 pages in so far.
The entirety of Brinkley's book unfolds over the course of the first week, right? I think Horne's book would be a good complementary piece, because it uses the flooding as a starting point, taking the reader up to about April of this year, through the Corps' obstructionist efforts, its attempts to refortify the levies in time for the '06 hurricane season, the fates of some of the displaced, and the poltical wrangling over dollars.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A361663
http://houstonsoreal.blogspot.com/2006/04/robert-gabriel-interview-with-cyril.html
The environment of fear exaggerated by homeboy led to innocent people being left for dead...misdemeanor crime being punished by death...aid being delayed ...and people seeking help being treated like criminals and/or slaves
and i believe his actions were intentional
I don't know that it was intentional, but it was definitely irresponsible and not something that should be praised.
That's not an "acceptable" excuse AT ALL.
And even if it was, it was something blatantly present loong before anyone heard a peep out of Eddie Compass.
Apparently tonight's third installment of the doc is going to provide some historical context in regard to the cultivation of that "fear". Cyril Neville does a good job of it as well, as linked above.
No joke, both you and J*rm*l have me second guessing my initial feeling about him now.
I think its time I do a little more research into his character and actions.
Does anyone have any online articles they can link me to?
Did you even see the segment that I was referring to in Spike Lee's doc?
Fuck if someone pouring their heart out at the most crucial moment as a way to instigate action shouldn't be praised.
No one at that time was doing a damned thing but being scared. Even soldiers in all of their gear were "too scared" to get close enough to drop off water at the Convention Center. Instead they dropped supplies down from a nearby overpass which of course broke up a good portion of the water containers.
Imagine that...you wait for days in festering misery, only to have help show up and destroy most of the rations meant for you...just because they are supposedly scared of what you might do to them with all of those weapons you obviously carried on your back, along with your disabled grandmother, through chest-deep water.
C'mon now, Eddie Compass's misleading statements couldn't possibly be responsible for all of that monumental racism at work.
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=459276734B5501B2
Heres a torrent file for a BBC2 Documentry people may find interesting about the prison in New Orleans. The last part of it is about Eddie Compass. I've never heard of the man before so have no real opinion of him either way, but from this documentry he came over as a dodgy fuck.
Info on the doc here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/5237540.stm
Haven't seen Spike's movie yet, but that's hardly the only source of information on Katrina and Eddie Compass.
THANKS!