Guest guest Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Received this from a friend. Another side for those who are interested. Delete if you aren't interested. An Unnatural Disaster More and more the truth of this situation is getting out in spite of the"media" and even Fox has it all wrong. An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State It has taken four long days for state and federal officialsto figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blamethem, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what isgoing on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if youthink that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for publicofficials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you sendtransportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you sendengineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. Forjournalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism ofordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication ofdoctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up andrebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing theywould have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, asif they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myselfincluded--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, andflooding, 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 incompetentresponse by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused byHurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and televisionchannel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleansdid not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past fourdecades. 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 NewOrleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect themto behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they havebehaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: theyhave been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, itis not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to theoccasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and theyspontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especiallytrue in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our owninitiative 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 maintraffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of theircars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) And large ones : The spontaneous response of New Yorkers to 9 /11. So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on,here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt withflying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter thestreets; 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, carjacking's and the 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 inthe streets," she said. "They have M-16's, 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 accompaniesthis article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests,riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as anexcuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Homes,one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's televisioncoverage 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 the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city'spublic housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan forevacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails-- so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these twopopulations--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 theincompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparentincompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a totalevacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary.But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials isto 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 Orleanshad drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrablepiece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blamesthe 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 theresponsibility 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 thegovernment hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moralugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting. by TracinskiSource: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Received this from an active friend today! For some of you that voiced discontent with the situation in New Orleans...mainly the govt response. For others please just delete if you are not interested. Kathleen D. Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 1:14 PM Subject: Take Action > The President and his administration failed at their most important job: > keeping America safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and the > cost of their delay will be paid for in human lives. Now, they are seeking > political cover by blaming state and local officials, despite the fact > that they had begged the administration for help early on. Its really > outrageous that the President would blame the victims at a time like this. > Will you help me tell him he needs to stop blaming the victims and get to > work helping them? >> >> http://political.moveon.org/helpvictims > > > > ___________________________________ > Sent via EvenLink's webmail system > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 please stay tuned. we are working on a care package setup where families, support groups, classes etc can gather stuff in care packages for other familes, classrooms or shelters that are autism-specific. should have more info by the end of the week and be up and running next week. Our biggest issue right now is FINDING families to help!! if you know anyone, please send them or their info to www.unlockingautism.org or www.autismcares.org Take Action > > >> The President and his administration failed at their most important job: >> keeping America safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and the >> cost of their delay will be paid for in human lives. Now, they are >> seeking >> political cover by blaming state and local officials, despite the fact >> that they had begged the administration for help early on. Its really >> outrageous that the President would blame the victims at a time like >> this. >> Will you help me tell him he needs to stop blaming the victims and get to >> work helping them? >>> >>> http://political.moveon.org/helpvictims >> >> >> >> ___________________________________ >> Sent via EvenLink's webmail system >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 25, 2009 Report Share Posted November 25, 2009 I thought you'd be interested in supporting the fight against misguided food "safety" legislation like S. 510. Copy and paste this entire link in your browser's address bar: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/750/t/9828/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28095. Send a letter to your Representative and Senators now! Bing brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 25, 2009 Report Share Posted November 25, 2009 Hi, , May I please cross-post this to the no-genetically-modified-foods forum? Thanks, ~~Ruth From: no-forced-vaccination [mailto:no-forced-vaccination ] On Behalf Of diana bush Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 9:31 AM Me Me Subject: Take Action I thought you'd be interested in supporting the fight against misguided food " safety " legislation like S. 510. Copy and paste this entire link in your browser's address bar: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/750/t/9828/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28095. Send a letter to your Representative and Senators now! Bing brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 25, 2009 Report Share Posted November 25, 2009 Hi, , May I please cross-post this to the no-genetically-modified-foods forum? Thanks, ~~Ruth From: no-forced-vaccination [mailto:no-forced-vaccination ] On Behalf Of diana bush Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 9:31 AM Me Me Subject: Take Action I thought you'd be interested in supporting the fight against misguided food " safety " legislation like S. 510. Copy and paste this entire link in your browser's address bar: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/750/t/9828/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=28095. Send a letter to your Representative and Senators now! Bing brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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