New Orleans - An Unnatural Disaster

[telos2000]

I am surprised that a free and objective press would not be looking at all the angles to the story of New Orleans and Katrina instead of camping on one that gives them the political fodder they seek--at the expense of reason. Here is one individual who is not afraid to question what the main stream press is writing about and point out the obvious. It is the White Elephant in the room.




The Intellectual Activist An Objectivist Review
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski


by Robert Tracinski

It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

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

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

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

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

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency—indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

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

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

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

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

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

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

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"—the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels—gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails—so they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now] and [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now].]

There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

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

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

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now], by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

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

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

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

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

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005 ------------------------- Try TIA Daily for FREE; simply enter your e-mail address in the box at the top-left corner of this page.


Copyright© 2002 The Intellectual Activist

I am ponder on this article and it makes me wonder why we choose to blame everyone but those who are responsible.

(this in not meant to represent the opinions of Deal of Day and or it employess.)

[justme59]

Now that it is 9 days later, and we know so much more, do you still feel this way?

[telos2000]

Actually, these were not my feelings. It was an article and my opinions on it have not changed nine days later. In fact, we see that some of those screaming the loudest were responsible in large part for leaving people behind and not sending the guard in to stop the violence. Those would be the mayor and the governor, respectively. The Feds had their share of screw ups too.

[justme59]

Originally Posted by telos2000

Actually, these were not my feelings. It was an article and my opinions on it have not changed nine days later. In fact, we see that some of those screaming the loudest were responsible in large part for leaving people behind and not sending the guard in to stop the violence. Those would be the mayor and the governor, respectively. The Feds had their share of screw ups too.

I work in the regular corporate world. In that world, if the underlings screw up, it is the fault of management. Doesn't that apply here?

[telos2000]

Originally Posted by justme59

I work in the regular corporate world. In that world, if the underlings screw up, it is the fault of management. Doesn't that apply here?

So who do you consider management to be in this case? Just that alone will bring out many arguments from Libertarians, states' rights advocates, Federalist, and so on. If you are refering to Bush, he has done that. He came out and said he takes responsibility. Do you feel that he hasn't? However, if you are refering to the governor of LA or the mayor of NO, I have not seen them do anything but point fingers at each other and everyone else. Do you feel that they have?

Now, concerning the corporate world. I have yet to see corporate management fess up to anything (WorldComm, Eron, etc, etc.) I have worked in the Big 8 (now Big 4) as a Certified Public Accountant and private industry as a Certified Fraud Exmaniner and Internal Auditor. Give me some names of executives that have come forward and taken the blame for screw ups by underlings, let alone their own. I would like to admire them with you.

I guess I am having a hard time trying to figure out just what you are trying to say otherwise. Why don't you spell it out for those of us who may be more naive than you?

[telos2000]

Well, well. Just did some research and it turns out justme59 is actually the banned member 1stgradeteacher. Bye bye.

[bobbcat]

Great article. It drives home very nicely just how destructive to the fabric of humankind socialist policies can be. When people do not have any kind of sense of ownership, they lose their sense of value, not only of things, but of other people. Bahavioral patterns among these sorts of people proves this fact over and over and over again.

[CagedTroll]

Originally Posted by telos2000

Well, well. Just did some research and it turns out justme59 is actually the banned member 1stgradeteacher. Bye bye.

Did a little research..., before or after you got in the "last" word?

I'm sure you'll be banning me after reading this and then providing commentary (and then probably deleting the thread), so "Religion and Politics" is all yours, Telos. Enjoy.

[telos2000]

Actually, you are wrong on both accounts. Unless of course that is what you want. You always have the choice to never return even without being banned.

When you are banned and you return, your new persona will be banned immediately upon discovery, as was done in this case. Doesn't matter in what sequence you lasted posted nor will you be given the chance to reply. That is plain and simple.

The problem is that you drive by and make a post without ever knowing what has gone on behind the scene. You make your assumptions based on limited knowledge of the case. You only care to make accussations that are totally unfounded by fact. Actually, you don't really care one way or the other as long as you get noticed.

Now, if you don't care to post on the topic and want to continue in this manner, yes you will get your wish.

[chippers21]

It is sad to see everyone playing the blame game, in politics and even here at DOD.
I just want to say that the immense proportions of this disaster make it like no other in recent history. And that the Mayor of NYC sure did a much better job than the Mayor of New Orleans, in handling his disaster.

[Rainmaker]

[Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM By John Leo
Mon Oct 10, 7:21 PM ET



Thanks to a long report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, we now know that most of the incredible tales of savagery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina were simply made up by panicky residents and passed along by the media. On Sept. 2, a CNN report cited an unidentified police officer who said he saw bodies riddled with bullet holes and one man with the top of his head completely shot off. Another unnamed officer, a sergeant, said he had to pass by the bodies of other police officers who had drowned doing their job. So far as we know, none of this was true.

One of two Times-Picayune staffers who wrote the article was guilty of some dubious reporting himself. His Sept. 5 article began, "Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies." Unlike the CNN report, this piece named an actual person as the source, but it was written as if the reporter was authenticating all that Brooks claimed. Brooks says, "Don't step in that blood -- it's contaminated." Pointing out bodies, Brooks says: "That's a kid. There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

Under great pressure, reporters sometimes forget to ask pertinent questions, such as how did Brooks know the blood was contaminated, or that the dead girl -- one of the most mentioned phantom figures in all the Katrina reporting -- was exactly 7 years old? In fact, the reporter saw four bodies, not the 30 to 40 that was reported, and no dead girl.

A lot more of this circulated though the media. The Ottawa Sun reported that "a man seeking help was gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and a man was "run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer." Editor & Publisher interviewed a reporter, back from Iraq, who said New Orleans was almost as dangerous as the Middle East. The New York Times reported: "Like passengers on a doomed ship, they (Superdome evacuees) were desperate to get out of the noxious, violence-ridden stadium." Noxious it was, but the "violence-ridden" condition is harder to pin down. The Superdome "just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Maj. Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard told the Los Angeles Times. "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people."

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore told The Washington Post that reporters got bogged down trying to tell people how bad things were rather than "gathering facts and corroborating that information."

Post-hysteria reporting has not been kind to the general media coverage of the crisis. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered. (The city averages five or six homicides a week even without hurricanes.) Police Superintendent Eddie Compass, who did so much to inflame the panic, said on Sept. 28 that there is "not one official report of rape or sexual assault." Though rape is notoriously underreported, his sex-crimes unit investigated every rumor of rape or atrocity in the Superdome, made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that the other attacks had not happened.

So why was so much of the reporting so wrong? Obviously, reporters were working under terrible conditions, with telephones out and much of the city underwater. New Orleans' only important reachable authorities, Mayor Ray Nagin and Superintendent Compass, issued hysterical statements that reinforced some of the worst rumors. Nagin decried "animalistic" behavior with "drug-starving crazy people ... degraded into these devils." Compass went on "Oprah," saying, "Little babies (are) getting raped."

Another factor is the debate within the news media about whether reporters should stick to dry facts or report with heart and emotion. New Orleans was a grand opportunity for emotional reporting. The nation was indeed outraged, though we now know that much of that outrage was the result of wild rumors and bad reporting. The New York Times did at least two pieces praising emotionalism. One hailed CNN's Anderson Cooper under the headline "An Anchor Who Reports Disaster News With a Heart on His Sleeve." Another praised the crisis reportage for being "buoyed by a rare sense of righteous indignation by a news media that is usually on the defensive." Personally, I don't need reporters to supply righteous indignation. I can handle that on my own. What I need is reporters who separate rumor from fact and just tell me what they know for sure actually happened.

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by bobbcat

When people do not have any kind of sense of ownership, they lose their sense of value, not only of things, but of other people. Bahavioral patterns among these sorts of people proves this fact over and over and over again.

Many of these people do have ownership. Don't you believe that it was a very small minority of people that did destructive things during the aftermath? To lump all these people into a group is very unfair. Can you
expand on your thoughts of what you meant by " these sorts of people" ?

[mrbowler]

Originally Posted by chippers21

I just want to say that the immense proportions of this disaster make it like no other in recent history. And that the Mayor of NYC sure did a much better job than the Mayor of New Orleans, in handling his disaster.

I agree that this disaster was like no other in recent history..that is why comparing the two do not make sense....My 2 cents is that all parties did a horrible job, and all are to blame(not that does anygood).

[whitequeen96]

I think the phrase "those kind of people" says it all. It is that attitude that lead to much of the fear that kept help from getting to the people of N.O. during Katrina.

I understand why many think that the poor *are* "those kind of people." If you refuse to follow rules, insist on doing drugs, and focus your efforts on being destructive, you will most probably be poor (or ... maybe a rock star, or even a politician!).

However, MOST poor people are innocent of that kind of behavior. Many (probably most) are extremely hard-working but have little education, poor health, and/or mental and physical disabilities. I live in the Los Angeles area, and know a perfectly lovely family, living in a rented decent little home, with 2 children who are good students. The father is a janitor and the mother is a cafeteria worker. But their neighborhood has been taken over by crack-dealers. They can't afford to move. I know them through their neighbor, Consuela (sp?). Her husband left her with 2 children; one is a severely disabled 3 yr. old with cerebal palsy and numerous health problems. She can't leave her child to work, so she takes in sewing and small upholstery projects. These "working poor" are tarred with the same brush as the criminals and n'er-do-wells in the neighborhood. They would not have been able to leave N.O. during Katrina.

I heard an interview on the radio with a little old lady (around 85 yrs. old) who stood in water up to her waist in N.O. during the flood for nearly a day. She and a neighbor woman finally waded out of their homes together and made it to the Convention Center. When asked about the lack of food and water, and the all the danger from the looters and "those kind of people," she said, "Well, it was pretty bad! I was awfully hungry and getting really, really thirsty, but some people finally started giving us food and bottles of water." When asked who provided this aid, she said, "Well, it was . . . why, it was the looters! They went out and got the stuff and brought it back to us! I don't know what I would have done without their help."

So I detest the phrase "those kind of people." It's like talking about how you live in an "exclusive neighborhood." It's just arrogant, small-minded twaddle that means nothing, yet somehow conveys volumes about the speaker.

[MrPyro321]

One of the above statements was a lie. It reads that the M-16s (sorry honey they use m-4 carbines) were locked and loaded. This statement is wrong b/c the soldiers who had the guns were not allowed amunition for those guns. Why you ask. Blanco is the answer. She forbade them to carry amunition b/c she viewed it as Martial Law(which is what we needed) and political suicide (which she did by screwing up durring this disaster). I guess she said to them hey soldiers hope intimidation works for you!