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2005/8/30-31 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:39356 Activity:kinda low 52%like:39448 |
8/30 Police join in looting Wal-Mart in New Orleans http://csua.org/u/d73 \_ That's nice you get to sit and get fat hacking away at your "job" so you can criticize someone who would take a bullet for your fat-ass. \_ Mmm.. kneejerk. do you like police corruption? granted, this \_ Mmm.. kneejerk. do you like corrupt police? granted, this is not the same as swiping drugs/money from evidence lockup, but still.. Or have we all been trolled? \- Where is a photojournalist/sobody with a cell phone camera when you need one: Another man rolled a mechanized pallet, stacked six feet high with cases of vodka and whiskey. Perched atop the stack was a bewildered toddler. \_ You don't know much about New Orleans' cops. \_ "At least one officer tried futilely to control a looter through shame. 'When they say take what you need, that doesnt mean an f-ing' TV'" \_ I thought this kind of things only happens in a third world country. \_ What do you think New Orleans is right now? \_ Black people loot, white people borrow: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/44689 \_ "It fell off a truck" \_ And Asians... ? |
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csua.org/u/d73 -> www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#075195 Tulane football update Tuesday, 5:55 pm Tulane's football team is expected to arrive at Southern Methodist betwee n 6 and 7 am on Wednesday. The Green Wave will stay at the DoubleTree Campbell Center and practice at either SMU's Pettus Practice Fields or a t Ford Stadium. The Tulane women's soccer team, which was scheduled to play in the UAB Ni ke Tournament this weekend, will bus to Birmingham later today from Jack son, Miss. UAB administrators will assist in providing practice faciliti es and lodging during their stay. Corps working to fix levee breaches Tuesday, 5:57 pm The Army Corps of Engineers was focused Tuesday on finding a way to close the levee breaches in the Industrial Canal and 17th Street Canal that have let waters pour into New Orleans, state officials said. Jeff Smith with the Louisiana National Guard said the Corps has informed the state that they are beginning to plan how exactly to fill the holes in the levee, which observers described as several hundred feet long. Smith said the Corps might fill large cargo containers with a heavy substance, such as sand, which would then be plugged into the gaps. "It would be better than just sandbags," he said, adding that Corps officials haven't figured out exactly what they will do. He expected that work could begin later this afternoon or in the morning. David Vitter said that he could see three breaches in the levees, including a 200 feet hole in the 17th Street Canal, as well as two separate gaps encompassing a total of about 500 feet in the Industrial Canal on the St. Twin-span damage surveyed Also Tuesday, an aerial examination of the 8-mile long I-10 Twin Span Bri dge over Lake Pontchartrain, which links Orleans and St. Tammany parishe s, showed about 40 percent of the structure has been damaged, with secti ons missing or knocked askew, officials said. Mark Lambert, chief spokes man for the Department of Transportation and Development, said the bridg e sustained more damage to its eastbound lanes than the west-bound ones. He said a structural examination will to be done in the next few days, bu t one possibility is to repair the least-damaged westbound lanes first - - possibly by using some of the more structurally-sound segments from th e east-bound ones. Lambert said that while getting the bridge fixed is a high priority, it is not its top priority. Plugging breaches in the levee system in New Orleans -- along the 17th St reet Canal and the Industrial Canal -- come first. Even if the bridge is repaired, he said, "there is no where to go" since streets and neighborhoods on both sides of the span are flooded. Twin spans, levee breaches the priority Tuesday, 5:55 pm The I-10 Twin Span Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, which links Orleans and St. An aerial view indicates about 40 percent of the structure is damaged, wi th sections missing or knocked askew, officials said. Mark Lambert, chief spokesman for the Department of Transportation and De velopment, said the bridge sustained more damage to its east-bound lanes than the west-bound ones. He said a structural examination will to be d one in the next few days. One option under consideration is to repair the least-damaged westbound l anes first -- possibly by using some of the more structurally-sound segm ents from the east-bound ones. Lambert said that while getting the bridg e fixed is a high priority, it is not the states top priority. Plugging breaches in the levee system in New Orleans -- along the 17th St reet Canal and the Industrial Canal -- come first, he said. Even if the bridge is repaired, he said, "there is nowhere to go'' since streets and neighborhoods on both sides of the span are flooded. "We just have horrible conditions to deal with," Vitter said. "For instan ce, every and route into the city except one is flooded and obviously we are using air assets, but it is tough. They are moving things into the city, diesel fuel, water, ice food etc as fast as they can." Vitter said taking an aerial view of Metro New Orleans was "heart-breakin g" "Wendy and I grew up in New Orleans, and every place we know and have so many wonderful memories of, is almost all under water," Vitter said. By happenstance, he said, the helicopter took him over his Metairie house. Vitter said that the horrific damage demonstrates in "dramatic fashion" t hat the state needs more money for flood protection, and to curb the ero sion of its coast and wetlands so critical to reducing flooding vulnerab ilities. President Bush cuts vacation short to deal with disaster Tuesday, 5:50 pm WASHINGTON President Bush is cutting short his vacation to return to Wash ington Wednesday to chair a meeting of a White House task force coordina ting federal relief for hurricane ravaged communities across the Gulf Co ast. We have a lot of work to do,'' the president said of the storm FEMA dir ector Michael Brown has termed catastrophic. Bush aides said that participants in the meeting will include representat ives of the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, Labor, Small Business, Agriculture, Environmental Protection, Commerce and Justice. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said that Bush decided to return to Washin gton early because of the scope of the hurricane rescue efforts. This is one of the most devastating storms in our nation's history. Our focus remains -- as the President indicated in his remarks, our focus remains on savi ng lives and making sure that we're prioritizing the relief efforts to g et assistance to those who are most in need right now. The White House released a list of the response through Tuesday afternoon by federal agencies and the American Red Cross: FEMA FEMA deployed 23 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from all across the U S to staging areas in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana and is n ow moving them into impacted areas. Three more Urban Search and Rescue teams a re in the process of deployment. FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quick ly as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generato rs, tents, and tarps. US Coast Guard More than 40 Coast Guard aircraft from units along the entire eastern sea board, with more than 30 small boats, patrol boats, and cutters are posi tioned in staging areas around the impact areas, from Jacksonville, Fla. Department of Transportation The US Department of Transportation (DOT) dispatched more than 390 truc ks that are beginning to deliver millions of meals ready to eat, million s of liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, ge nerators, containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damage d areas. DOT has helicopters and a plane assisting delivery of essential supplies. National Guard The National Guard of the four most heavily impacted states are providing support to civil authorities as well as generator, medical and shelter with approximately 7,500 troops on State Active Duty. The National Guard is augmenting civilian law enforcement capacity; Department of Agriculture The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) State Emergency Boards are coor dinating agricultural-related responses at the county, state, and nation al levels in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and elsewhere. USDA is als o coordinating damage assessments to area crops, livestock, and other ag riculture-related operations. Farmers are encouraged to contact their lo cal USDA Service Center for additional information on assistance availab le. In addi tion, HHS has 217 US Public Health Service Officers on standby for dep loyment to support medical response in Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Gulf states. Department of Defense The United State Northern Command (NORTHCOM) continues to assist FEMA aft er disaster declarations were issued for Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, an d Mississippi following the devastation caused in parts of each state by Hurricane Katrina. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is contacting major power companies to the areas affected to provide safety briefings to emp loyees at power restoration staging areas in affected communities. OSHA is also releasing... |
www.metafilter.com/mefi/44689 If they were all three from the AP or you could show me the same pers on made the comments from all three photos, fine. Finding should also say looting, that's the only problem I see. Much like some news organizations use the word "terrorist", while some pr efer to use other less loaded phrases. If AP also had a picture of a white person and failed to use the word "lo oting", or if the other agency had shown blacks and listed "looting" the n this might be compelling, but as it stands I don't buy it. Unless, of course, a lot of the freaked-out mentions of "looting" are rea lly just crytpic versions of "look at how those savage black people beha ve in an emergency". Oh yeah, if Yahoo does the captions themselves, then I rescind my whole a rgument, and concur that it is pure bullshit to label them like that. But if the wire services also write the captions then my objection stands . As long as you're not like g rabbing food off someone's table, I'd say some slack is in order for eve ryone down there. The guy getting beer could be accused of having weird priorities, but shit, after a storm like that I'd crave a cold one mysel f, maybe. When I lived in Florida, the first things I'd stock up on duri ng a hurricane warning were beer and cigarrettes. This is two di fferent news services, so maybe there's no racism. If the AP uses different terminology for white people wading through the muck after the storm then there's something. "Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slippe d into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday with some police officers and firefighters joining looters in picking stores clean... "Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New O rleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27- inch flat screen television. "Officers claimed there was nothing they could do to contain the anarchy , saying their radio communications have broken down and they had no di rection from commanders. "'We dont have enough cops to stop it,' an officer said. Something like this on its own wouldn't cause us to become subconciously racist. Rather, it just subconciously confirms and adds to all the other little forms of racism we're faced with from birth. As Avenue Q put it, "Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes." There's a subtle rumbling among journalism critics that calls for a set o f standards for journalists, much like the standards that airline pilots or doctors must adhere to. Standards among editors would call it looting no matter who had the bread . below that one, billysumday: "WWL-TV was reporting that a law enforcement officer was shot in the bac k of the head Tuesday afternoon on the west bank. The officer reportedl y approached the looter near the intersection of Wall Boulevard and Gen . DeGaulle and, while talking to suspect, was shot in the back of the h ead by a second looter." Or any grocery store anywhere in New Orleans, for that matter. I just assumed "looting" but I can't see that word just ified for any taking of food from a most likely destroyed store during s uch a disaster. Without knowing what the photographer saw, and pres umably reported / attached to the photo as he sent it back to HQ (yeah, I have no idea how this works), could these captions not, theoretically, be accurate? I mean, could the photographer not have witnessed some peo ple breaking into a store and looting vs others coming across stuff just floating around? How, exactly, is this a "dramatic failure of journalism"? There is NO RACISM here, just two different people writing about two different s tories. Do you want all the journalists in one room, writing the same th ing? Actually, the pictures captioned "looting" by AP are pictures 388 and 352 of the "Hurricanes and Tropical Storms" section of Yahoo, while the pic ture captioned "finding" by AFP/Getty is an unnumbered (within the page) photo from the "Yahoo News" section of Yahoo. Or, even more accurately, links to the photos were arranged side-by-side by bairey, and, by clicking on those links, tabs containing the pages co ntaining the photos were arranged side-by-side by myself. But, more seriously: yeah, it pissed me off until I realized that they we re captioned by different companies. Now I'm just annoyed at the low lev el that happens when newscasters mispronounce words and the like. Both A P and AFP/Getty should probably use the word "take", instead of either " find" or "loot". That said, if AP uses the word "find" for a white person taking stuff, or AFP/Getty uses the word "loot" for a black person getting stuff, then t oday's gonna find me all full of indignation, but until then this seems a near-miss to me. This caption is just a brilliantly non-judgemental: As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps thro ugh a broken window, while leaving a convenience store on the I-10 serv ice road south, in Metairie, La. I'm seeing so much moral condemnation of "looting" that as far as I'm con cerned, the press had damn well better be calling anyand I mean anytheft in New Orleans "looting". Dial zipping just now, I see eff-tarded Faux going on and on about that. But what really angered me was that both NBC and CB S (I think) spent minutes of their 30-minute evening news showing the lo oting (aka black people finding stuff). But OTOH part of the reason the networks were showing it is just because that's what they happened to have pics of. Some of these n etworks don't seem to be getting out to the real stories very well. Off topic, but does anyone know why television sets stolen during looting are so often called "color tv's"? I can't think of any other situation aside from that Dire Straits song where the word "color" is still used t o decribe TV's. Is the implication that the looters are replacing their black and white T V's? Anyway, I don't really think taking food from an abandoned grocery store after an (locally) apocalyptic disaster while waiting to be rescued real ly counts as 'looting'. It's not like oportunistic people driving into an abandoned town and brea king into homes and bussness and then driving out. We're talking about p eople stuck there, who could very well starve to death while waiting for rescue. Shooting looters on sight is an old gulf coast hurricane tradition. as for why the polic e are actually helping loot ,I have been led to believe that New Orleans has one of the most corrupt police departments in the country. I'm not surprised to hear that they are "helping themselves" I wonder if, when the Louisiana National Guard gets back from Iraq in 4-6 weeks, they can retroactively help with this nightmare. posted by delmoi Actually, as soon as they disobeyed the legal order to evacuate they were criminals and have no conceivable right to steal from the business owne rs who obeyed the evacuation order and left the area. bairy, great post, and I agree with this comment to an extent; it's not n early as bad as if both captions came from the same agency, but it still says something about the press. It's interesting to see the word choice s of the other captions posted in this thread. I especially enjoyed: As one person looks through their shopping bag, left, another jumps thro ugh a broken window, while leaving a convenience store on the I-10 serv ice road south, in Metairie, La. |