It's a way of exerting control over a situation out of control for lots of people. Far from everyone who COULD loot IS looting. There are always people with sense and resolve not to go there, but like I said before, it's a symptom of chaos and not knowing what the next step is, hour by hour. I hope my ealier points were not seen as condoning lawlessness, I was just irked by what I percieved to be a pointed lack of empathy for the situation.
There's some lack of empathy round here, but also some out and out prejudices that people are only too willing to have confirmed by CNN coverage (sort of like the Brasilian "terrorist" in London).
CNN's video footage of looting is in fact 3 clips of looting, the first clip is looped 3 times, and the other ones twice, to give the effect of this being a worthwhile (ie > 1 minute) movie clip. Why is that?
This event is going to have a massive knock-on effect throughout the country. IMO, this country is literally falling apart at the seams, and is now incapable of handling domestic catastrophes.
In a race to the bottom, everyone loses. Except me, coz I have an EU passport and am moving to Mexico. Don't come whining to me to send you Levi's and CD players, you American peegs. Hey, I'll still talk to you... the rest of the world fucking HATES you!
Insanity is the only explanation, I know I am sitting high and dry here and my observations arent being made from the war zone, but fuck, why would you expell SO much energy draggin electronics through the water when you could be dragging food and fresh water instead...I dont get it, I am sorry I am looking at this like a privileged person...do some people think the water is going to recede soon and that food and clean water will be available soon enough? I am not getting this lack of survival instinct, really I dont understand...are these people stocked up with food and clean water, so now multiple copies of grand theft auto is what they want/need? Sorry, I just dont understand it. Do they not know they could very well die in the next few days from lack of water and food...they have to know the situation is that dire, dont they? Yes Insanity has to be the only explanation.
I don't think it's insanity, I think it's escapism. And I think there's a difference. BECAUSE it's that dire, some people will do whatever they can to NOT focus on that, no matter how senseless. And I in no way believe that the senseless escapists are the majority, they are the loud minority. You won't see a lot of footage of well behaved families sitting quietly in their dirty drawers waiting for FEMA. Not good TV. So I think that folks need to stop jumping to conclusions.
i have talked to more relatives that i havent seen in 20 years than i can count on both hands. the good news is all my family is safe, and all their houses are standing. my aunts house which is half a block from the beach in long beach somehow made it with only 1 foot of water in the house. i totally expected it to just be a slab of concrete. the problem now is everyone has to leave the area while they clean everything up, should be 6-8 weeks from what i've heard. nobody has enough gas to leave. 3 of my family wont leave i dont imagine, one is a firefighter and the other 2 work at the local hospital. my parents that evaced to mobile are gonna try and go scoop my 80 year old grandparents and take them to middle alabama with them. cell phones are still not working for the most part, but i have gotten a few text messages from my cousin. i feel truly blessed at the moment. i plan on donating money to the strut drive, donating tons of clothes i dont wear, spinning a benefit show or two and volunteering my time at the astrodome.
Thousands dead. Unreal. When this is over, NoLa is gonna be a tourboat stop off in the French Quarter, that'll be it. The govt have yet again made a bad thing 10x worse. Europe's papers are asking why the fuck this is happening in a First World Nation. Race to the bottom folks.
The future is now: Post-Industrial Radical Dystopia
Before NBC, MTV or anyone else puts on a telethon to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, they might want to explore some ancillary issues. To wit: New Orleans is a city famous for its famous musicians, but many of them are missing. Missing with a capital M.
To begin with, one of the city???s most important legends, Antoine "Fats" Domino, has not been heard from since Monday afternoon. Domino???s rollicking boogie-woogie piano and deep soul voice are not only part of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame but responsible for dozens of hits like ???Blue Monday,??? ???Ain???t That a Shame,??? ???Blueberry Hill??? and ???I???m Walking (Yes, Indeed, I???m Talking).???
Domino, 76, lives with his wife Rosemary and daughter in a three-story pink-roofed house in New Orleans??? 9th ward, which is now under water.
On Monday afternoon, Domino told his manager, Al Embry of Nashville, that he would ???ride out the storm??? at home. Embry is now frantic.
Calls have been made to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco???s office and to various police officials, and though there???s lots of sympathetic response, the whereabouts of Domino and his family remain a mystery.
In the meantime, another important Louisiana musician who probably hasn???t been asked to be in any telethons is the also legendary Allen Toussaint.
Another Rock Hall member, Toussaint wrote Patti LaBelle???s hit ???Lady Marmalade??? and Dr. John???s ???Right Place, Wrong Time.???
His arrangements and orchestrations for hundreds of hit records, including his own instrumentals ???Whipped Cream??? and ???Java??? are American staples. (He also arranged Paul Simon???s hit, ???Kodachrome.???)
Last night, Toussaint was one of the 25,000 people holed up at the New Orleans Superdome hoping to get on a bus for Houston???s Astrodome. I know this because he got a message out to his daughter, who relayed to it through friends.
Also not heard from by friends through last night: New Orleans???s ???Queen of Soul??? Irma Thomas, who was the original singer of what became the Rolling Stones??? hit, ???Time is On My Side.???
Let???s hope and pray it is, because while the Stones roll through the U.S. on their $450-a-ticket tour, Thomas is missing in action. Her club, The Lion???s Den, is under water, as are all the famous music hot spots of the city.
Similarly, friends are looking for Antoinette K-Doe, widow of New Orleans wild performer Ernie K-Doe. The Does have a famous nightspot of their own on N. Claiborne Avenue, called the Mother-in-Law Lounge, in honor of Ernie???s immortal hit, ???The Mother-in-Law Song.???
Ernie K-Doe, who received a 1998 Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, died in 2001 at age 65.
Dry and safe, but in not much better shape, is the famous Neville family of New Orleans. Aaron Neville and many members of the family evacuated on Monday to Memphis, where they are now staying in a hotel.
But most of the Nevilles??? homes are destroyed, reports their niece and my colleague at ???A Current Affair,??? Arthel Neville. She went down to her hometown yesterday and called me from a boat that was trying to get near town.
???This isn???t like having two feet of water in your basement,??? she said, holding back tears. ???Everything is destroyed. I am just so lucky to have been born here and to have had the experience of New Orleans."
She confirmed that there had been rumors of dead bodies floating around her Uncle Aaron???s house yesterday. So far, the Nevilles are unannounced to participate in Friday???s TV telethon.
And still there are plenty of other famous musicians associated with New Orleans who would probably like to be on TV if they???re high and dry.
The Marsalis family comes from the city, and they???ve played at most of the well known clubs like Tipitina???s, The Maple Leaf, Preservation Hall and Muddy Waters.
New Orleans is also one of the few cities with a House of Blues. And Jimmy Buffet???s Margharitaville Caf?? chain has a local franchise that is still an attraction.
New Orleans??? trademark sounds are Cajun and Zydeco. So far none of the listed benefits have named an act that plays that kind of music.
Talk Host Helps Out
Meantime, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres??? spokeswoman tells me she will address the hurricane on her first new show of the season. The show tapes this afternoon in Los Angeles and will air on Tuesday.
DeGeneres is a New Orleans native, although it???s unclear whether or not she still has family there. But city residents will no doubt be looking to her as a strong public voice and advocate.
Her publicist, Melissa Gross, says she???s received many calls from people all over the country asking what DeGeneres would do to help victims of Katrina. Gross says a plan will be in place by Tuesday.
CBGB's: Landlord Over the Edge
Since we???re on the topic of music (and imperiled music at that), the great New York club CBGB???s held a concert vigil in New York???s Washington Square Park yesterday afternoon.
Despite pleas from Mayor Bloomberg, and a show put on by Blondie and other groups, CGBG???s lease expired this morning and the landlord says it won't be renewed.
The landlord, Bowery Residents Committee, refuses to negotiate a new lease with them even though CBGB???s recently won a court case against them.
The villain in this piece is Lawrence "Muzzy" Rosenblatt, director of the homeless shelter and hospital that took over CBGB???s lease a couple of years ago.
To Rosenblatt, the efforts of the mayor, as well as other club supporters like "Little" Steve van Zandt (of "The Sopranos" and Springsteen fame), are not enough. He wants the club out and a higher-paying tenant like Old Navy or Starbucks in.
The only recourse for CBGB???s is to shame the better directors of the BRC board into doing the right thing.
They include New York Times writer Julie Salamon ??? who covers the arts, of all things ??? as well as Genevieve Chow of JP Morgan Chase; attorney Jeffrey B. Rosen of the law firm Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin, & Kahn; Marcy E. Wilkov of American Express; and attorney Simon Miller of the law firm Greenberg Traurig ??? a firm that specializes in making money off the music industry.
Do these people really want their firms to be remembered as the people who shut down CBGB?
Of course, as I reported a couple of weeks ago, the board has a serious conflict of interest on its hands. The Bowery Residents Committee, which with a $25 million war chest is no small-time operation, has listed the property to be shown by Cushman and Wakefield.
Alex Cohen, of C&W, is, coincidentally, on the board. And none of this explains the position of Seedco, the group that helped BRC raise their initial money and remains an important tax-free contributor.
One of Seedco???s missions, according to its Web site, is to further small arts organizations in downtown New York.
September 1, 2005 Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:50 a.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.
''We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help,'' the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing.
An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were ordered into the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief operations in Katrina's wake as looting, shootings, gunfire, carjackings and other lawlessness spread.
That brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the biggest military response to a natural disaster in U.S. history.
''The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people,'' said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.''
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.
Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door -- a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.
Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.
Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.
At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.
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. ''I buried my dog.'' He added: ''You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here.''
Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. 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.
People chanted, ''Help, help!'' as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.
John Murray, 52, said: ''It's like they're punishing us.''
The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home -- another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away.
But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it had become too dangerous for his pilots.
The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military helicopter was fired on.
In Texas, the governor's office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though exactly where has not been determined.
In Washington, the White House said President 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.''
On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said: ''Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.'' The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.
If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.
Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.
The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
''We need an effort of 9-11 proportions,'' former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there.''
''A great American city is fighting for its life,'' he added. ''We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism.''
With New Orleans sinking deeper into desperation, Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts Wednesday and stop the increasingly brazen thieves.
''They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas -- hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now,'' Nagin said.
In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.
The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook h
elicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.
But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said said rescued people begged him to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.
When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a woman whose father had been rescued and told her: ''Your daddy's alive, and he said to tell you he loves you.''
''She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,''' he said.
A lot of you sound kind of funny trying to justify it like, "they're poor - let them be happy with some new Nikes before the reality sets in".... Surely there is something better they could be stealing - let alone doing - with their time.
I guess we have diverging senses of humor. I think it sound kinda funny calling folks 'savages' while sitting behind powerbooks in an air coditioned apt. / record store when never ever having been in such a down and out situation to begin with.
You can always tell who's the leftie and who's the capitalist when the question of looting and/or rioting comes up.
A guy at lunch yesterday brought up the question of why would you steal a TV set, why not food or beer. He kept saying how silly it was to steal a TV set. He was from privilage and did not understand. My answer, which I tried to explain to him, was insanity. That way beyond desperation, hopelessness, shock, and anger lies pure fear filled insanity. An insanity that focuses and brings to light the truth that in this society, property and wealth are what makes the difference. Even if it's ridiculous property like TV sets and Nikes in a flooded, powerless city, at least it's something. I'm going to take some shit for this but I believe most of these people were probably on the brink of insanity and a breakdown BEFORE the hurricane due to the stress and mental illness that capitalism brings for the poor and have nots. This shit's just the straw that broke the back.
SONIC
So on point... Add to that the fact that people are shooting at search and rescue worker and natioanl guard. I think this should be a wake up call (though it probably won't be) that everything back home is not all good in the hood so to speak...
Also how come every news story I see its only minorities looting? I have not seen the cameras turn onto any white folks "finding" anything outside of the one AP story...
We're only on day 4 and already it's like Escape from New York in New Orleans.
Fema has suspended rescue efforts because it's too dangerous.
People shooting at rescue helicopters and rescue teams.
My pops told me some guy shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice.
A BAG OF ICE.
The fact that there's 10's of thousands of people on their own in a city that's gone crazy with widespread devastation, dead bodies and poisonous water covering everything for miles upon miles, are we looking at Armegeddon time?
This isn't going to get better for weeks if not longer and God only knows what that will bring.
Got home and the only thing that mattered to me was my dog. He was fine. He shit on the newspaper everytime. Best damn dog in the world. When the elderly couple next door came home a week after we did they were shocked to learn that their home had been pilliaged for (scripts) drugs, medical equipment (thats a big deal in Florida, you can get alot of money reselling Resperators, Dyalisis Machines and stuff like that...) and pretty much anything that hadn't been nailed down. Point is, the Hurricane didn't break their windows and steal their shit, and it didn't make me want to do it. I think the only reason we didn't get jacked is because of my dog. Best damn dog ever.
what did he eat? Did you just like leave his food bag open?
oh yeah and whoever said that European papers are asking "why is this happening in a 1st world nation?" Are they asking why the looting or why the slow relief efforts? Have any Euro countrys ever had a natural disaster of this magnatude? I mean from the pictures I'm seeing it looks real hard to access these areas.
Big Spliff, you are really moving to Mex, and why does having an EU passport make that easier (just wondering, cause I got one too and have been wonder what good it can do me)
nah, we are probably looking a a city that will be left to it's own devices for 2 months. That will kill of most of the violent insurgents along w/ the good people still left in there. Then riot police will go in and take care of the rest. Not a pretty picture but I don't see another future for the city. The assholes shooting at relief personel aren't just gonna stop.
oh yeah and whoever said that European papers are asking "why is this happening in a 1st world nation?" Are they asking why the looting or why the slow relief efforts? Have any Euro countrys ever had a natural disaster of this magnatude? I mean from the pictures I'm seeing it looks real hard to access these areas.
Big Spliff, you are really moving to Mex, and why does having an EU passport make that easier (just wondering, cause I got one too and have been wonder what good it can do me)
That would be me. The absolute tragedy happening right now was caused by the flood, not the hurricane. A cost-benefit analysis was done in 2004 that decided a Cat 3 Hurricane would be the yardstick, and thus the levees were fine as they were. Big Fuckup. Holland probably wouldn't put the population of Amsterdam at risk like that. Hamburg (larger pop) was majorly flooded after a hurricane in the 60s. They spent many years building sea defences for 40 miles down river to the sea.
I'll move to Mexico (My girl has land rights) and still have an EU passport. Options. I would really like to hang around here long enough to save some real cash, but who knows... more and more people I talk to in NYC are making plans to get out. And these aren't the same types who moved to the burbs after 9/11, they are business owners, city folk, who just want the fuck out of this system.
oh yeah and whoever said that European papers are asking "why is this happening in a 1st world nation?" Are they asking why the looting or why the slow relief efforts? Have any Euro countrys ever had a natural disaster of this magnatude? I mean from the pictures I'm seeing it looks real hard to access these areas.
Big Spliff, you are really moving to Mex, and why does having an EU passport make that easier (just wondering, cause I got one too and have been wonder what good it can do me)
That would be me. The absolute tragedy happening right now was caused by the flood, not the hurricane. A cost-benefit analysis was done in 2004 that decided a Cat 3 Hurricane would be the yardstick, and thus the levees were fine as they were. Big Fuckup. Holland probably wouldn't put the population of Amsterdam at risk like that. Hamburg (larger pop) was majorly flooded after a hurricane in the 60s. They spent many years building sea defences for 40 miles down river to the sea.
I'll move to Mexico (My girl has land rights) and still have an EU passport. Options. I would really like to hang around here long enough to save some real cash, but who knows... more and more people I talk to in NYC are making plans to get out. And these aren't the same types who moved to the burbs after 9/11, they are business owners, city folk, who just want the fuck out of this system.
Man but the thing is, you get to the rural areas of the US and it is a 3rd world nation within the US... Hel you go into the ghettos of major cities and the shit rivals 3rd world nations just with big ass buildings. you still have 6 people living in 1 room in a government subsidized project. just because the news and most people don't want to talk about it doesn't mean the shit doesn't exist. The pverty is just as bad here as anywhere else in the world and its only getting worse. This is just a snapshot.
Holland probably wouldn't put the population of Amsterdam at risk like that.
true but they don't have hurricanes either, plus they have plenty of fat little dutch boys on call to stick their fingers in the dikes? And I agree w/ the 3rd world w/ in the US. Europe doesn't have the poverty we do because they have socilist political systems and a capitalist economic system, the perfect combination.
nah, we are probably looking a a city that will be left to it's own devices for 2 months. That will kill of most of the violent insurgents along w/ the good people still left in there. Then riot police will go in and take care of the rest. Not a pretty picture but I don't see another future for the city. The assholes shooting at relief personel aren't just gonna stop.
I'd say this is close to an apocalypse. People are being left to die. I don't think it's a viable city anymore.
Billions and billions of dollars are being looted from this country by Bushco and the private elements of the war on terror. What happens when there is nothing left? Stuff like this.
I'd say this is close to an apocalypse. People are being left to die. I don't think it's a viable city anymore.
Billions and billions of dollars are being looted from this country by Bushco and the private elements of the war on terror. What happens when there is nothing left? Stuff like this.
True, but it's not the end of the country or the world just one city decending into mayhem. Not quite Armageedon you know. I guess you could call it a localized apocalypse.
A lot of you sound kind of funny trying to justify it like, "they're poor - let them be happy with some new Nikes before the reality sets in".... Surely there is something better they could be stealing - let alone doing - with their time.
I guess we have diverging senses of humor. I think it sound kinda funny calling folks 'savages' while sitting behind powerbooks in an air coditioned apt. / record store when never ever having been in such a down and out situation to begin with.
You can always tell who's the leftie and who's the capitalist when the question of looting and/or rioting comes up.
A guy at lunch yesterday brought up the question of why would you steal a TV set, why not food or beer. He kept saying how silly it was to steal a TV set. He was from privilage and did not understand. My answer, which I tried to explain to him, was insanity. That way beyond desperation, hopelessness, shock, and anger lies pure fear filled insanity. An insanity that focuses and brings to light the truth that in this society, property and wealth are what makes the difference. Even if it's ridiculous property like TV sets and Nikes in a flooded, powerless city, at least it's something. I'm going to take some shit for this but I believe most of these people were probably on the brink of insanity and a breakdown BEFORE the hurricane due to the stress and mental illness that capitalism brings for the poor and have nots. This shit's just the straw that broke the back.
SONIC
100%. I've given up even trying to discuss this w/ people.
i just dont get it. im watching tv and i just saw the cops pull over a dude that stole a car, picked up his neighbors and his family and was trying to get the fuck out of new orleans.
i mean, is the law that important? especially right now? so now dude's in jail and his family and neighbors are sent back into the city. to starve. at what point can we abandon these laws? i saw a cop force a kid to drop a bunch of shit he had looted. the kid dropped the shit right there in the water. so now instead of having kid take that shit and quite possibly use it or sell it to feed someone, its now garbage. so is it better to just write all that shit off than have someone else take it? i mean, either way its not gonna turn a profit for the person who actually owned it. this is what disgusts me. that these stupid man made laws and property rights are still valued over actual survival. in these cases anarchy should be the absolute. fuck the law, shit is way past that at this point.
I hear what everybody is saying, trying to understand their economical and social conditioning, their outlook in life etc. I can grasp it to a certain extent, but just like the rest of you, we're all relatively well off financially compared to these people. Hence how well can you really relate in the grand scheme of things?
My main concern w/ the looting is not the moral divide or right/left political leanings. The focus is opportunity costs........Sure, a pair of nikes overall is a drop in the ocean, but it's the consequences of these actions that I'm annoyed with. People inherently are selfish, especially during times of duress, it's basic survival instincts. They do not think about the consequences of their actions. As I've aforementioned, adversity brings out the best/worst of people, but the good doesn't sell newspapers.
The ripple effect of looting spreads like an infection, as you can see the scale grew evidently during the last few days. What started off innocently as kids getting some sneakers has turned into a lawless society. The chain reaction is set in motion, and there's little to do now except to watch the ugly consequences. You give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it, basically they want to have their cake and eat it too. Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads.
Again keep in mind this is a small minority, there are a lot of good folks risking their lives helping each other.
Also how come every news story I see its only minorities looting? I have not seen the cameras turn onto any white folks "finding" anything outside of the one AP story...
Have you noticed there are hardly any white people their at all besides cops and military? Seems all the white people got out fine. The few white people you see are really old, most likely liked alone and couldn't get out. Just the fact that all the video you see is nothing but black people should tell you a lot about this fucked up country we live in.
I can't even get started on this.............
Knew it was comming and didn't get people out in time........ Most of the people left behind are black........... The President is playing a guitar when he should be getting massive recovery on this problem........ We can ship an entire fighting force plus supplies half way around the world for months and months, but we can't get help to a massive flood in our own country. Everyone is talking about the looters and loss of businesses, but not the people that are left to fend for themselves surrounded by dead bodies and distruction.........
my main concern is the cost of human life involved in looting, not the monetary value of the goods itself. That's the bottom line, LIFE............not your personal political agenda, or liberal guilt.
sorry if I was a bit harsh earlier, but I can't sugarcoat a grim situation.
The ripple effect of looting spreads like an infection, as you can see the scale grew evidently during the last few days. What started off innocently as kids getting some sneakers has turned into a lawless society. The chain reaction is set in motion, and there's little to do now except to watch the ugly consequences. You give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it, basically they want to have their cake and eat it too. Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads.
Again keep in mind this is a small minority, there are a lot of good folks risking their lives helping each other.
You're worrying about lawlessness when people are dying in the street? Looting isn't a disease. It's a symptom of a breakdown. Lawlessness means there is no law because civil society got the fuck out of there.
WTF are you talking about when you say "give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it" ??
"Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads." This is also baselessly misinformed opinion on your part. People HAVE died because they were too poor to get out and the government did nothing to help them. They left it to market forces.
People are in trouble because there is no one there to help. Police are commandeering SUVs, getting their own supplies from WalMart (not looting though).
Where are the National Guard again?? Why have no active duty troops in the US been mobilized? Oh yeah, the overextended war machine in the Middle East, and federal tax cuts that forced the states into emergency budget measures (since most can't legally run a deficit)
WTF are you talking about when you say "give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it" ??
He's saying that shit spreads like wildfire. You've never seen how a riot gets set off before?
Where are the National Guard again?? Why have no active duty troops in the US been mobilized? Oh yeah, the overextended war machine in the Middle East, and federal tax cuts that forced the states into emergency budget measures (since most can't legally run a deficit)
From what I read, there are thousands of troops in the surrounding area.
"Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads." This is also baselessly misinformed opinion on your part. People HAVE died because they were too poor to get out and the government did nothing to help them. They left it to market forces.
The equivilent of an entire police force did in fact have to cease search and rescue efforts to try and maintain order while armed bands of people roamed the streets hijacking cars (as well as a van from an old folks home)and people and shooting at the people trying to help them.
You're worrying about lawlessness when people are dying in the street? Looting isn't a disease. It's a symptom of a breakdown. Lawlessness means there is no law because civil society got the fuck out of there.
WTF are you talking about when you say "give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it" ??
ok first of all tone down, no need to get all aggressive.
there is a direct correlation between lawlessness and people dying. People that could potentailly be treated are not receiving due care. When rescue/relief missions are called off due to danger in the city.....I don't know how much more clearly I can spell that out.
anarchy: mob mentality. People doing things they would never do in a normal environment. They get a rise out of this new found power and get caught up in the rush.
"Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads." This is also baselessly misinformed opinion on your part. People HAVE died because they were too poor to get out and the government did nothing to help them. They left it to market forces.
It's not baseless misinformed opinion.......you see people still stranded on rooftops and we're into day 4.
again, this is getting into political leanings that you have. What's done is done, let's deal w/ the current situation first before we all get into the blame game. How can we solve this crisis?
i just dont get it. im watching tv and i just saw the cops pull over a dude that stole a car, picked up his neighbors and his family and was trying to get the fuck out of new orleans.
i mean, is the law that important? especially right now? so now dude's in jail and his family and neighbors are sent back into the city. to starve. at what point can we abandon these laws? i saw a cop force a kid to drop a bunch of shit he had looted. the kid dropped the shit right there in the water. so now instead of having kid take that shit and quite possibly use it or sell it to feed someone, its now garbage. so is it better to just write all that shit off than have someone else take it? i mean, either way its not gonna turn a profit for the person who actually owned it. this is what disgusts me. that these stupid man made laws and property rights are still valued over actual survival. in these cases anarchy should be the absolute. fuck the law, shit is way past that at this point.
Unless it is your car or merch people are looting right? Food is one thing, twenty pairs of sneakers is entirely something different. By your rational, it is OK to jack people in their own houses and go through the pockets of floating corpses.
Comments
There's some lack of empathy round here, but also some out and out prejudices that people are only too willing to have confirmed by CNN coverage (sort of like the Brasilian "terrorist" in London).
CNN's video footage of looting is in fact 3 clips of looting, the first clip is looped 3 times, and the other ones twice, to give the effect of this being a worthwhile (ie > 1 minute) movie clip. Why is that?
This event is going to have a massive knock-on effect throughout the country. IMO, this country is literally falling apart at the seams, and is now incapable of handling domestic catastrophes.
In a race to the bottom, everyone loses. Except me, coz I have an EU passport and am moving to Mexico. Don't come whining to me to send you Levi's and CD players, you American peegs. Hey, I'll still talk to you... the rest of the world fucking HATES you!
I don't think it's insanity, I think it's escapism. And I think there's a difference. BECAUSE it's that dire, some people will do whatever they can to NOT focus on that, no matter how senseless. And I in no way believe that the senseless escapists are the majority, they are the loud minority. You won't see a lot of footage of well behaved families sitting quietly in their dirty drawers waiting for FEMA. Not good TV. So I think that folks need to stop jumping to conclusions.
http://www.slate.com/id/2125352/nav/tap2/
The future is now: Post-Industrial Radical Dystopia
Story Here
Katrina Benefits Should Acknowledge Local Legends
Before NBC, MTV or anyone else puts on a telethon to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, they might want to explore some ancillary issues. To wit: New Orleans is a city famous for its famous musicians, but many of them are missing. Missing with a capital M.
To begin with, one of the city???s most important legends, Antoine "Fats" Domino, has not been heard from since Monday afternoon. Domino???s rollicking boogie-woogie piano and deep soul voice are not only part of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame but responsible for dozens of hits like ???Blue Monday,??? ???Ain???t That a Shame,??? ???Blueberry Hill??? and ???I???m Walking (Yes, Indeed, I???m Talking).???
Domino, 76, lives with his wife Rosemary and daughter in a three-story pink-roofed house in New Orleans??? 9th ward, which is now under water.
On Monday afternoon, Domino told his manager, Al Embry of Nashville, that he would ???ride out the storm??? at home. Embry is now frantic.
Calls have been made to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco???s office and to various police officials, and though there???s lots of sympathetic response, the whereabouts of Domino and his family remain a mystery.
In the meantime, another important Louisiana musician who probably hasn???t been asked to be in any telethons is the also legendary Allen Toussaint.
Another Rock Hall member, Toussaint wrote Patti LaBelle???s hit ???Lady Marmalade??? and Dr. John???s ???Right Place, Wrong Time.???
His arrangements and orchestrations for hundreds of hit records, including his own instrumentals ???Whipped Cream??? and ???Java??? are American staples. (He also arranged Paul Simon???s hit, ???Kodachrome.???)
Last night, Toussaint was one of the 25,000 people holed up at the New Orleans Superdome hoping to get on a bus for Houston???s Astrodome. I know this because he got a message out to his daughter, who relayed to it through friends.
Also not heard from by friends through last night: New Orleans???s ???Queen of Soul??? Irma Thomas, who was the original singer of what became the Rolling Stones??? hit, ???Time is On My Side.???
Let???s hope and pray it is, because while the Stones roll through the U.S. on their $450-a-ticket tour, Thomas is missing in action. Her club, The Lion???s Den, is under water, as are all the famous music hot spots of the city.
Similarly, friends are looking for Antoinette K-Doe, widow of New Orleans wild performer Ernie K-Doe. The Does have a famous nightspot of their own on N. Claiborne Avenue, called the Mother-in-Law Lounge, in honor of Ernie???s immortal hit, ???The Mother-in-Law Song.???
Ernie K-Doe, who received a 1998 Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, died in 2001 at age 65.
Dry and safe, but in not much better shape, is the famous Neville family of New Orleans. Aaron Neville and many members of the family evacuated on Monday to Memphis, where they are now staying in a hotel.
But most of the Nevilles??? homes are destroyed, reports their niece and my colleague at ???A Current Affair,??? Arthel Neville. She went down to her hometown yesterday and called me from a boat that was trying to get near town.
???This isn???t like having two feet of water in your basement,??? she said, holding back tears. ???Everything is destroyed. I am just so lucky to have been born here and to have had the experience of New Orleans."
She confirmed that there had been rumors of dead bodies floating around her Uncle Aaron???s house yesterday. So far, the Nevilles are unannounced to participate in Friday???s TV telethon.
And still there are plenty of other famous musicians associated with New Orleans who would probably like to be on TV if they???re high and dry.
The Marsalis family comes from the city, and they???ve played at most of the well known clubs like Tipitina???s, The Maple Leaf, Preservation Hall and Muddy Waters.
New Orleans is also one of the few cities with a House of Blues. And Jimmy Buffet???s Margharitaville Caf?? chain has a local franchise that is still an attraction.
New Orleans??? trademark sounds are Cajun and Zydeco. So far none of the listed benefits have named an act that plays that kind of music.
Talk Host Helps Out
Meantime, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres??? spokeswoman tells me she will address the hurricane on her first new show of the season. The show tapes this afternoon in Los Angeles and will air on Tuesday.
DeGeneres is a New Orleans native, although it???s unclear whether or not she still has family there. But city residents will no doubt be looking to her as a strong public voice and advocate.
Her publicist, Melissa Gross, says she???s received many calls from people all over the country asking what DeGeneres would do to help victims of Katrina. Gross says a plan will be in place by Tuesday.
CBGB's: Landlord Over the Edge
Since we???re on the topic of music (and imperiled music at that), the great New York club CBGB???s held a concert vigil in New York???s Washington Square Park yesterday afternoon.
Despite pleas from Mayor Bloomberg, and a show put on by Blondie and other groups, CGBG???s lease expired this morning and the landlord says it won't be renewed.
The landlord, Bowery Residents Committee, refuses to negotiate a new lease with them even though CBGB???s recently won a court case against them.
The villain in this piece is Lawrence "Muzzy" Rosenblatt, director of the homeless shelter and hospital that took over CBGB???s lease a couple of years ago.
To Rosenblatt, the efforts of the mayor, as well as other club supporters like "Little" Steve van Zandt (of "The Sopranos" and Springsteen fame), are not enough. He wants the club out and a higher-paying tenant like Old Navy or Starbucks in.
The only recourse for CBGB???s is to shame the better directors of the BRC board into doing the right thing.
They include New York Times writer Julie Salamon ??? who covers the arts, of all things ??? as well as Genevieve Chow of JP Morgan Chase; attorney Jeffrey B. Rosen of the law firm Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin, & Kahn; Marcy E. Wilkov of American Express; and attorney Simon Miller of the law firm Greenberg Traurig ??? a firm that specializes in making money off the music industry.
Do these people really want their firms to be remembered as the people who shut down CBGB?
Of course, as I reported a couple of weeks ago, the board has a serious conflict of interest on its hands. The Bowery Residents Committee, which with a $25 million war chest is no small-time operation, has listed the property to be shown by Cushman and Wakefield.
Alex Cohen, of C&W, is, coincidentally, on the board. And none of this explains the position of Seedco, the group that helped BRC raise their initial money and remains an important tax-free contributor.
One of Seedco???s missions, according to its Web site, is to further small arts organizations in downtown New York.
September 1, 2005
Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:50 a.m. ET
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.
''We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help,'' the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing.
An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were ordered into the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief operations in Katrina's wake as looting, shootings, gunfire, carjackings and other lawlessness spread.
That brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the biggest military response to a natural disaster in U.S. history.
''The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people,'' said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them.''
The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.
Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door -- a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.
Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.
Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.
At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.
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. ''I buried my dog.'' He added: ''You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here.''
Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. 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.
People chanted, ''Help, help!'' as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.
John Murray, 52, said: ''It's like they're punishing us.''
The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home -- another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away.
But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it had become too dangerous for his pilots.
The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military helicopter was fired on.
In Texas, the governor's office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though exactly where has not been determined.
In Washington, the White House said President 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.''
On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said: ''Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.'' The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.
If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.
Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.
The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.
''We need an effort of 9-11 proportions,'' former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's ''Today'' show. ''So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there.''
''A great American city is fighting for its life,'' he added. ''We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism.''
With New Orleans sinking deeper into desperation, Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts Wednesday and stop the increasingly brazen thieves.
''They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas -- hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now,'' Nagin said.
In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.
The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook h elicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.
But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said said rescued people begged him to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.
When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a woman whose father had been rescued and told her: ''Your daddy's alive, and he said to tell you he loves you.''
''She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,''' he said.
So on point... Add to that the fact that people are shooting at search and rescue worker and natioanl guard. I think this should be a wake up call (though it probably won't be) that everything back home is not all good in the hood so to speak...
We're only on day 4 and already it's like Escape from New York in New Orleans.
Fema has suspended rescue efforts because it's too dangerous.
People shooting at rescue helicopters and rescue teams.
My pops told me some guy shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice.
A BAG OF ICE.
The fact that there's 10's of thousands of people on their own in a city that's gone crazy with widespread devastation, dead bodies and poisonous water covering everything for miles upon miles, are we looking at Armegeddon time?
This isn't going to get better for weeks if not longer and God only knows what that will bring.
oh yeah and whoever said that European papers are asking "why is this happening in a 1st world nation?" Are they asking why the looting or why the slow relief efforts? Have any Euro countrys ever had a natural disaster of this magnatude? I mean from the pictures I'm seeing it looks real hard to access these areas.
Big Spliff, you are really moving to Mex, and why does having an EU passport make that easier (just wondering, cause I got one too and have been wonder what good it can do me)
I'm literally sitting here crying.
I can't look at this anymore.
That would be me. The absolute tragedy happening right now was caused by the flood, not the hurricane. A cost-benefit analysis was done in 2004 that decided a Cat 3 Hurricane would be the yardstick, and thus the levees were fine as they were. Big Fuckup. Holland probably wouldn't put the population of Amsterdam at risk like that. Hamburg (larger pop) was majorly flooded after a hurricane in the 60s. They spent many years building sea defences for 40 miles down river to the sea.
I'll move to Mexico (My girl has land rights) and still have an EU passport. Options. I would really like to hang around here long enough to save some real cash, but who knows... more and more people I talk to in NYC are making plans to get out. And these aren't the same types who moved to the burbs after 9/11, they are business owners, city folk, who just want the fuck out of this system.
Man but the thing is, you get to the rural areas of the US and it is a 3rd world nation within the US... Hel you go into the ghettos of major cities and the shit rivals 3rd world nations just with big ass buildings. you still have 6 people living in 1 room in a government subsidized project. just because the news and most people don't want to talk about it doesn't mean the shit doesn't exist. The pverty is just as bad here as anywhere else in the world and its only getting worse. This is just a snapshot.
I'd say this is close to an apocalypse. People are being left to die. I don't think it's a viable city anymore.
Billions and billions of dollars are being looted from this country by Bushco and the private elements of the war on terror. What happens when there is nothing left? Stuff like this.
stop looking at this
100%. I've given up even trying to discuss this w/ people.
i mean, is the law that important? especially right now? so now dude's in jail and his family and neighbors are sent back into the city. to starve. at what point can we abandon these laws? i saw a cop force a kid to drop a bunch of shit he had looted. the kid dropped the shit right there in the water. so now instead of having kid take that shit and quite possibly use it or sell it to feed someone, its now garbage. so is it better to just write all that shit off than have someone else take it? i mean, either way its not gonna turn a profit for the person who actually owned it. this is what disgusts me. that these stupid man made laws and property rights are still valued over actual survival. in these cases anarchy should be the absolute. fuck the law, shit is way past that at this point.
My main concern w/ the looting is not the moral divide or right/left political leanings. The focus is opportunity costs........Sure, a pair of nikes overall is a drop in the ocean, but it's the consequences of these actions that I'm annoyed with. People inherently are selfish, especially during times of duress, it's basic survival instincts. They do not think about the consequences of their actions. As I've aforementioned, adversity brings out the best/worst of people, but the good doesn't sell newspapers.
The ripple effect of looting spreads like an infection, as you can see the scale grew evidently during the last few days. What started off innocently as kids getting some sneakers has turned into a lawless society. The chain reaction is set in motion, and there's little to do now except to watch the ugly consequences. You give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it, basically they want to have their cake and eat it too. Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads.
Again keep in mind this is a small minority, there are a lot of good folks risking their lives helping each other.
Have you noticed there are hardly any white people their at all besides cops and military? Seems all the white people got out fine. The few white people you see are really old, most likely liked alone and couldn't get out. Just the fact that all the video you see is nothing but black people should tell you a lot about this fucked up country we live in.
I can't even get started on this.............
Knew it was comming and didn't get people out in time........
Most of the people left behind are black...........
The President is playing a guitar when he should be getting massive recovery on this problem........
We can ship an entire fighting force plus supplies half way around the world for months and months, but we can't get help to a massive flood in our own country.
Everyone is talking about the looters and loss of businesses, but not the people that are left to fend for themselves surrounded by dead bodies and distruction.........
It's just sickning.
sorry if I was a bit harsh earlier, but I can't sugarcoat a grim situation.
You're worrying about lawlessness when people are dying in the street? Looting isn't a disease. It's a symptom of a breakdown. Lawlessness means there is no law because civil society got the fuck out of there.
WTF are you talking about when you say "give people a taste of anarchy and they become addicted to it" ??
"Now potential stranded victims could die because rescue manpower have been diverted to contain these knuckleheads." This is also baselessly misinformed opinion on your part. People HAVE died because they were too poor to get out and the government did nothing to help them. They left it to market forces.
People are in trouble because there is no one there to help. Police are commandeering SUVs, getting their own supplies from WalMart (not looting though).
Where are the National Guard again?? Why have no active duty troops in the US been mobilized? Oh yeah, the overextended war machine in the Middle East, and federal tax cuts that forced the states into emergency budget measures (since most can't legally run a deficit)
He's saying that shit spreads like wildfire. You've never seen how a riot gets set off before?
From what I read, there are thousands of troops in the surrounding area.
The equivilent of an entire police force did in fact have to cease search and rescue efforts to try and maintain order while armed bands of people roamed the streets hijacking cars (as well as a van from an old folks home)and people and shooting at the people trying to help them.
ok first of all tone down, no need to get all aggressive.
there is a direct correlation between lawlessness and people dying. People that could potentailly be treated are not receiving due care. When rescue/relief missions are called off due to danger in the city.....I don't know how much more clearly I can spell that out.
anarchy: mob mentality. People doing things they would never do in a normal environment. They get a rise out of this new found power and get caught up in the rush.
It's not baseless misinformed opinion.......you see people still stranded on rooftops and we're into day 4.
again, this is getting into political leanings that you have. What's done is done, let's deal w/ the current situation first before we all get into the blame game. How can we solve this crisis?
Please no finger pointing.
Unless it is your car or merch people are looting right? Food is one thing, twenty pairs of sneakers is entirely something different. By your rational, it is OK to jack people in their own houses and go through the pockets of floating corpses.