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AC9breaker View Member Profile	Sep 7 2005, 07:11 PM Post #31
Soul Hunter Group: Magister Posts: 2207 Joined: 10-April 03 From: NJ Member No.: 23	Its so frustarting to see all the political antics that go on as well. I'm glad to hear you and all your loved ones are okay. My thoughts and prayers go out to you guys. -------------------- "Brotherhood asked for no friendship, only loyalty. They stood back to back as the galaxy burned - always brothers, never friends; traitors together unto the last." --an Excerpt from a Night Lords Novel Void Stalkers Chapter X: Revenge

DivA

Sep 9 2005, 01:05 PM

Post #32

Deus-Ex MachinA

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i received this via e-mail this morning..
figured it would be something of relevance for ~athq.. to read..

QUOTE

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
An Objectivist Review

by Robert Tracinski
The Intellectual Activist

It has taken 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 has also taken me four long days to figure out what is 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 the past four days. 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 Washington Times story:

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 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 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 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 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 demolished.)

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 the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: 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. 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 apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation 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 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 Toronto Globe and Mail, 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. 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 moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

..it does seem really odd how this whole situation is being handled, more along the lines of militant & chaotic judgements......but i'm a 'lil unclear as to who is speaking truly ~ the news tells me one thing, then i read this & it paints a very different outlook ~ of which wouldn't surprise me if the latter turned out to be true - given the past track-record of mainstream news.. >.> if mainstream is purposefully ignoring the issue (or is ignorant of it..), then thank goodness for the power of the internet, yes? ;}

so my question is ~ what's actually happening down there? =/

AC9breaker View Member Profile	Sep 9 2005, 04:54 PM Post #33
Soul Hunter Group: Magister Posts: 2207 Joined: 10-April 03 From: NJ Member No.: 23	I dunno, but I felt a hint of conservative right wing inspired things from that e-mail. Actually, that e-mail kinda bothers me. The way I understood it, that e-mail is saying that becuase of social stratification, becuase you are a minority, becuase you come from an impoverished area, because your poor, becuase of so many factors that can not be controlled by one single person its your fault that all the bad things that have occured in the wake of hurricane Katrina have happened. I'm sorry but I can't seem to find a way to say this in a much more eloquent manner. I think thats a bunch of bullshit. It seems pretty obvious that the author of the e-mail hasn't lived in poverty stricken area so therefore I don't think he can understand the plight of the people who come from the ghetto and projects. The racism and Jim Crow laws of the past have been replaced by prejudice and social pitfalls. He goes to say to say that becuase these people have lived off of welfare that they don't understand the value of ownership. More bullshit. He is already assuming that everyone who came from these projects didn't have jobs and weren't getting paid 6 dollars an hour for some 12 hour a day job in hopes that they would someday be able to move out of the projects or the ghetto. While I do agree with some points from the e-mail though. It would be wrong to solely blaim the president becuase it is our fault as a society as well. We ourselves let these type of things happen. But since the president is the one who is in a position to change these things we blame him for not doing anything. In fact, If I recall correctly our beloved president was on vacation the day Katrina hit and didn't get "back to work" till 4 days later. Fucking Dick. The problems of Katrina stem from a much more dynamic reason then becuase "people from the hood have no respect." Katrina was a man made disaster, but not from the people who lived in the projects, but everyone. -------------------- "Brotherhood asked for no friendship, only loyalty. They stood back to back as the galaxy burned - always brothers, never friends; traitors together unto the last." --an Excerpt from a Night Lords Novel Void Stalkers Chapter X: Revenge

DivA

Sep 10 2005, 12:46 AM

Post #34

Deus-Ex MachinA

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QUOTE (AC9breaker @ Sep 9 2005, 04:54 PM)

I dunno, but I felt a hint of conservative right wing inspired things from that e-mail.

interesting, to this day ~ i haven't a clue as to what the definition of "right-wing" means; i was just curious as to what is transpiring in New Orleans.. it may be BS, perhaps ~ but i think the issue here has to do with the welfare system specifically, not a racial blaming...after all, the way this is being handled is rather odd (to me, anyways..), but then again ~ i don't live there, nor do i have any access to the place other than what is posted on the news, which tends to be suspect now & then..

& you are right, our o'fearless president's behavior is equally out there......dunno, i have no more to say than the fact that our country is definitely in need of a re-evaluation ~ beyond that, no comment..

AC9breaker View Member Profile	Sep 10 2005, 05:04 AM Post #35
Soul Hunter Group: Magister Posts: 2207 Joined: 10-April 03 From: NJ Member No.: 23	Right-wing is a reference to the voting ballot in that you are given two choices, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican. So its mearly a way of describing where people tend to stand on issues. I think the following link articulates a point I wanted to make in my previous post a pretty insightful read, me thinks. http://www.alternet.org/story/25149/ -------------------- "Brotherhood asked for no friendship, only loyalty. They stood back to back as the galaxy burned - always brothers, never friends; traitors together unto the last." --an Excerpt from a Night Lords Novel Void Stalkers Chapter X: Revenge

Ellianna

Sep 10 2005, 08:36 AM

Post #36

Solid Frame

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QUOTE (AC9breaker @ Sep 9 2005, 04:54 PM)

Actually, that e-mail kinda bothers me. The way I understood it, that e-mail is saying that becuase of social stratification, becuase you are a minority, becuase you come from an impoverished area, because your poor, becuase of so many factors that can not be controlled by one single person its your fault that all the bad things that have occured in the wake of hurricane Katrina have happened.

i know this isnt exactly the same but there's some christian group out there...now i'm not saying all christians i'm saying a certain group of them... are trying to blame katrina on the fact that new orleans had 10 abortion clinics and this was god's way of getting rid of them. and along with his post he compaired a picture of katrina to a picture of a 6 week old fetus, the idiots really crawl out from no where when something devistating happens

How the hell do people think like this...god's wrath is not only to destroy those buildings but to destroy the lives of innocent people..i'm pro-choice..to a degree... so i'm not even going to go into the rest of my feelings about the idiot who did this.

--------------------

Henge View Member Profile	Sep 10 2005, 01:40 PM Post #37
OpSec Group: Dark Templar Posts: 1324 Joined: 13-December 02 From: Roseburg, OR Member No.: 2	I have alot of mixed feelings on whats happening in New Orleans. On one hand, i feel FEMA and the Government's response in general could be alot better.Katrina more or less, released the destructive force of a nuclear bomb on the gulf coast, but since this is the "wrath of god" i don't think it has been reacted to in the same fassion. everyone effected by this is a human being, and an american, and deserve relief, regardless of where they live or how poor they are. I guarantee you katrina heald no prejeduce, neither should any of our fellow americans. On the other hand... I am fucking disgusted by the people stealing shit like TV's and VCRs (stealing food and drinks from a destroyed store is different), shooting at those trying to help, raping women, stealing what little those who they can prey on have left just to satisfy their own needs. these people contirubiting to the problems instead of helping, IMO, need a bullet between the eyes, and i applaud anyone who would administer it. i mean, come on, fucking help the dying and injured.put down the guns, knives and TV's, quit attacking WOMEN AND THE ELDERLY and help ANY WAY YOU CAN, the fact that a fellow tribesman and friend had to carry guns just to be safe in his own city, is equally disheartening, this kind of shit is just WRONG. sorry if my words are harsh, this kind of nonsense stirs up very strong feelings.

tanshin View Member Profile	Sep 10 2005, 04:15 PM Post #38
Drunken Ninja Master Thug Group: Paragon Caste Posts: 536 Joined: 31-October 03 From: Kyoto, Japan Member No.: 80	This is very interesting. This goes to show that if something devistating happened to the world, and all our comforts of regular lives are taken away, we will all resort back to behaving like the animals that we all really are deep down. As a nihilist, this kind of behavior doesn't surprise me a bit. The less intelligent of our species can't control their primal urges. I'd like to go down there and take over the city, Kenshiro style. Stupid people. -------------------- dueling, remade for modern audiences

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