Has anyone looked at the situation in the Big Easy and thought about the parallels it has to SR Chicago's bug infestation? People are dying in the streets. There is no authority. Looting is rampant. No food, no water. No way out. They created two major shelters that they told people to go to. The SuperDome and the Convention Center. They have left the people at the Convention Center to die. They have no resources to give them. They can't even get buses there to move them somewhere else.

This shit is so crazy.

All we need to learn now is that some organization within New Orleans is really terrorist, the government said nothing, and the flooding problems resulted from cleanup failures.

I just found this while surfing the Intertron. It's the online journal of a guy still inside New Orleans. Some of the stuff in there is amazing: for example, one police officer didn't even know they were under martial law until he was told by the author. They had to commandeer moving trucks for transport because their entire precinct is under water.

And yes, it is very reminiscent of Bug City.

They aren't under martial law. They are under a state of emergency, which is fairly powerful in and of itself. It is possible to send in both Guard and other branches of the armed forces outside of martial law, and the state and federal governments are carefully avoiding declaring it.

Martial law was reported by New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV on Tuesday, 11:52 AM (ET), and the rumour spread quickly and was even picked up by the mayor of New Orleans. Since then, several authorities have been trying to counter the rumour, such as the Secretary of Homeland Security and Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum ("This is not martial law").

Of course, given Louisiana state law, the distinction may be mostly a semantic one.

It sounds like they need martial law though. If the reports of violence are true then they need to get in there.

Watching the tv tonight showing scenes of people converging on the Superdome in an attempt to board far to few buses bound for the outside reminded me of scenes from the SR novel Burning Bright.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/hurricane_katri...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

It's worse. From that, I gather people have a very good reason to take it upon themselves. By all appearances, the people supposed to help are the last people you should rely on in most cases.

Sabosect:

Quoth the Server, "404!"

Meh, the big thing about New Orleans is that there were a lot of urban poor and desperate people *before* the disaster. When authority and social structure breaks down, people who are really desperate and who feel like society's been out to get them start acting out by shooting at aid workers and whatnot.

I studied public health for 1 year in New Orleans, and I actually just got out a few weeks before Katrina. That's my perspective on the situation there.

Actually, going by what I have read, all of the shooting at relief workers has been a case of people desperate to get relief after being passed up several times. You can only watch so many choppers fly by while you are stuck on the roof of your house before you go a little nuts. Add in a lack of food, water, and sanitation to that.

Oh, and from the blog, I gather that mostly these people going hostile are reacting to hostile attitudes towards them from cops first, then the relief workers, and finally the military. All in all, right now I would say the most qualified people to deal with this are not the ones dealing with it. In other words, I think it's time we got the Americans out and asked another nation or the International Red Cross for help. I normally prefer not to speak ill of our relief efforts, but in this case I can find examples of third world dictators that look better in comparison.

As for the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/hurricanes_...tropical_storms

It's the New Orleans story titled New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

I wish I was there, to form the Neo-@'s.

This is what would be generously called a high-threat area. The military is not your friend. The police are not your friend. The relief teams are not your friend. They are there to keep order and do what they can for the populace at large. If you're hiding out on a rooftop and there are three of you, whereas there are thousands in X location--guess what? You're getting passed over. It's the tragedy of statistics, folks.

If you start shooting at them, you are no longer a "trapped civilian." You are a lawbreaker and an enemy. Is that harsh? Yeah, it is. Is it unreasonable? No, I don't think so.

Thousands trapped in the city center? (I think) waiting for buses that never came? Dying of dehydration and starvation...

I love how we are helping everyone. IMHO I think they should just let everyone out of the city, atleast. Construct a tent-camp or something, but my blood froths when I hear about people being locked in that hell-hole by their helpers. It completely shatters my illusion that the government, while not idyllic, is not out to get me/us/them/they.

There's nowhere to put all of them, Supercilious. Right now the safest thing for the maximum number of people is to lock the city down. Yeah, it really and truly sucks for the people who are in there. But where are they going to go outside the city? How many are going to sit in a tent camp where there's still not going to be enough supplies? How many are going to leave said tent camp and try to "find things" outside?

We'll move looters from inside to outside.

Greater good or not, there is something terribly wrong about locking people in where many of them have or will die.

We use medical triage, don't we?

You can't make an "organized refugee exodus" for numbers in the five- and six-digit range, Arethusa. Not easily, not effectively, and not in such a way as to complete the objective.

They stay in and they prey on the unfortunates inside the city. They get out and they prey on everyone around.

It's happened in other countries before, and we can do it now for less than what Iraq is costing us. More than the monetary and logistical demands— which are great, but mot definitely not insurmountable— I find most are simply unwilling to accept the concept of an American refugee.

Moreover, I don't think you understand that you cannot draw a clear line between 'them' and 'us'. The people looting and killing eachother aren't much different from the people being looted and killed. But if you really want to draw lines, be more accurate about it: poor people are attacking rich people.

Rapists are poor people attacking rich people?

And I'm generalizing with "them" and "us." Of course I am. I realize that. But in a situation like this it's rather hard to cogently discuss a topic without some degree of labeling, if for convenience's sake alone.

And don't try to bring up Iraq, please. Let's not start a real flamewar here.

"Straw man"? Not seeing one around, kthx.

I'm trying to see how "we" took away "what little stability and future we had given them." It's a motherfucking hurricane, Arethusa. They were given the opportunity to evacuate. Yeah, the government most certainly should have been more on-the-ball and should have moved their asses to get supplies down there in time. We had time. But we can blame and go "what-if," or we can fix the problem we have now.

An "explanation of injustice" sounds nice and poetic. Does it really change the fact that they're committing crimes?

Hard to have statistics when the infrastructure's fuckered. I'm starting to search, but I don't expect to see much.

This is not the first anecdotal evidence I've heard, though--how much anecdotal evidence becomes enough to stop your disingenuity?

Before this turns into a flame war, I'd like to add two bits of information I read today:

1) Katrina hit at the end of the month. Poor people depending on Social Security had no money to buy fuel or a bus/train ticket, so they could not evacuate.

2) While many looters are just people desperate for supplies (or criminals hoarding them), violent incidents have been reported involving drug addicts suffering from abstinence. You *don't* want to meet the latter ones.

Yeah, the uncensored interview with N.O.'s mayor is worth listening to. I'd say he's at his wits end, and is really on the side of turning the whole city over to the general that has flown in.

And seriously, I'd hope you fools can find something better to do with your time than argue about this, of all things. It's just damn sad.

CNN has a transcript of most of it. But, really, the audio has much more impact. You can hear the frustration in the mayor's voice, and when they all break down at the end of the interview it carries some real weight.

Thanks, DE.

And reading it over, I fully empathize with the guy. He obvious disagrees with me politically with the Iraq comments and all, but fuck that, it doesn't matter. He didn't get what he needed, he still hasn't (though I'm seeing reports and such that suggest that this interview is doing the trick now). Is the Bush administration blameless? Shit no, but the people who are blaming Bush himself seem to be uninformed.

And Nagin is entirely right. Stop the fucking press conferences, and I'd say that the 24/7 newscasts from FOX and CNN and MSNBC should have been yanked a long time ago.

I almost respect CNN right now, though. Crazy.

According to a few articles I've read, the majority of the looters (or, at least, the larger bandit-king style roving packs of them, rather than the individuals) have been linked to three of New Orlean's pre-existing and powerful gang organizations, with their numbers recently bolstered by the released/escaped prisoners due to Katrina.

When you take people who are already violent and antagonistic towards authority, toss them in a situation too dire for them to truly undertand, and then completely remove all visible and obvious signs of that authority they hate? Yeah. They're gonna fuckin' run rampant. Because they can.

Yes. What people have to understand was that there was a *lot* of urban poverty in New Orleans. You didn't need a hurricane to have people acting up in antisocial ways; while I was living there, one night a young man locked himself in a daycare center across the street from where I was living and the cops were scurrying around all night trying to get him out. Walking down Canal street, I've interacted at least twice with women who were stoned out of their minds on crack, and I've also had two incidents of people trying to intimidate/shake me down.

So, the point is, I think that the pre-existing social problems in the city have a lot to do with the volume of destructive behavior we're seeing now.

I believe its time to be the bigited racest bastered here. SOMEONE has to do it.
I remember rather vididly a bit by Chris Rock, explaining the differance between "Black people" & "N*^^$#s" (but even I wont go THAT far bigited). What we have here are a lot of the latter just being stupid. Breaking into a store to steal trackable diamonds, when there is no water, just confuses me.

This is NOT to say there havent been momumental screw ups. Oh goddess there have been, but this is doing nothing but compounding the problem. Why we havent air dropped a few tons of food and water is beyond me.

Never mind that there are 28 countries offering US help, and we havent said 'Yes' to them yet.

Don't jump too quickly. Crime pretty much always rises due to a breakdown in established order and force; do you really think escaped prisoners are responsible for nearly all of the problems? Pretty unlikely.

I think the point he was trying to make is that escaped cons could be responsible for more of the more serious crimes than most people consider.

I wonder how this discussion has changed in the last couple hours, with the national guard coming in force, and the convoys of supplies coming in that had to be marshalled from as far away as California.

I'd also like to point out that while the authorities prepared supplies, they more likely than not prepared them OUTSIDE of the hurricane's sphere of influence. Realize it flared up to a Cat. 5 in less than a day.. If I were staring down a Cat-5, I'd get the hell out of the way, and then rush in as fast as I could.

The reports were the first night of the SuperDome were decent, things were going well. Indeed, most of NO seemed in the clear. Then the flood hit... And lines of rescue were cut off.

Not only that, but it is my guess that A) They never expected to need to do a complete exodus of NO, especially after the hurricane but before the levee broke. They were expecting it to be like after a typical hurricane, where they could set up at-site, not set up a few hundred miles away... and B) After the Hurricane, the supplies probably went to Alabama and points East, thinking NO had survived fine...

So.. yeah. What happened is that people were hoping the levees would stand up, and such. Then they didn't, and the problem got about 10x worse.

FEMA could've done a better job.. I won't deny that. But there are a -lot- of factors, and hopefully things are on the upswing.

In fact, I'm sure they are. Since the Nat. Guard have moved into downtown NO and started securing city blocks 1 by 1, a ton of new fires have broken out in the city. That is more likely than not the criminal element trying to lure the national guard off to other places, perhaps as a sign of desperation.... But what do I know.