[Shotimes] OT: Katrina-Part 1

[Kevin & Cheryl Airth]

Sorry for the OT post! For people who don't understand the far reaching
problems of New Orleans before the storm and why that lead to the problems
during the storm. I have only lived in this area for 11 years and was born
and raised on the west coast, so I know how completely foreign this type of
thinking and behavior is to most "normal" people!!!






http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

check out this article.  the link above takes you to the source.


 An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the
Welfare State

by Robert Tracinski
Sep 02, 2005 by Robert Tracinski
      Robert Tracinski is the editor of TIADaily.com and The Intellectual
Activist.

      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 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.