Kanye West causes controversy on NBC

[bigted]

Chuck D was on MSNBC on Thursday and he defended what Kanye West said, check the transcript to the show:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9365706/

[MaxFly]

It must be remembered that my original posts here were mostly C&Ps from other forums. Many of the people there were in fact alleging these very things, and ALL of them are white. As for the government's slow reaction being a result of racism, while that cannot be proven either true or false, it can be perceived as such and has been implied as such. I don't believe that the government was "thinking" along the lines of those statements either, but very often when poor black people are involved the Government doesn't "think" much at all. There seems to be plenty of evidence that this was the case in this tragedy, and that in and of itself is indeed racist.

I think the whole issue boils down to whether people truly think racism was the primary cause of the slow response, whether they believe that the government simply failed in doing what they were supposed to do, or whether it is a mixture of both.

No, the Government often doesn't "think" when it comes to poor blacks, yet at the same time, all the "evidence" that you say points to this being the case here is again based on how someone chooses to perceive the situation. Is racism the enemy, or is it bureaucracy. Is it that the govenment neglected poor blacks, whether consciously or subconsciously, or was their slow response due to disorder and miscommunicaton. Or was it both. The problem is that we have evidence of govenment errors and we have evidence that these led to the neglect we saw in the first few days after the hurricane and the flooding. However, we see the neglect, we see black people suffering, and we say it must be racism. The situation isn't that black and white.

[Cozmo D]

It must be remembered that my original posts here were mostly C&Ps from other forums. Many of the people there were in fact alleging these very things, and ALL of them are white. As for the government's slow reaction being a result of racism, while that cannot be proven either true or false, it can be perceived as such and has been implied as such. I don't believe that the government was "thinking" along the lines of those statements either, but very often when poor black people are involved the Government doesn't "think" much at all. There seems to be plenty of evidence that this was the case in this tragedy, and that in and of itself is indeed racist.

I think the whole issue boils down to whether people truly think racism was the primary cause of the slow response, whether they believe that the government simply failed in doing what they were supposed to do, or whether it is a mixture of both.

No, the Government often doesn't "think" when it comes to poor blacks, yet at the same time, all the "evidence" that you say points to this being the case here is again based on how someone chooses to perceive the situation. Is racism the enemy, or is it bureaucracy. Is it that the govenment neglected poor blacks, whether consciously or subconsciously, or was their slow response due to disorder and miscommunicaton. Or was it both. The problem is that we have evidence of govenment errors and we have evidence that these led to the neglect we saw in the first few days after the hurricane and the flooding. However, we see the neglect, we see black people suffering, and we say it must be racism. The situation isn't that black and white.

I absolutely agree that bureaucracy played a major factor in the ordeal. I also agree that it isn't black & white, these kinds of things rarely are. That saying though, going from "black & white" to "shades of gray" does not exclude race, but rather definitely includes it, which has been my point from the beginning. Yes, what we are talking about for the most part here are perceptions, which is what I have also said from the very beginning. But, also as I said before, racism is imbedded in our psyches in this country, and thus, in our perceptions. This is now plain and evident to ALL (even our president) who have objectively observed this tragedy.

I don't believe that racism was the primary cause of the slow response, though I know many do. As far as I'm concerned the main culprit here was good old fashioned American Incompetence, from the mayor to the President and all sorts of fools in-between. However, when you throw-in things like how the coverage was handled by the media, or rescue workers and bus drivers refusing to render aid, or the absolute avalanche of UNSUBSTANTIATED rumors of wide-spread violence and atrocities, it's plain to see that race and racism impacted the perceptions of many others besides blacks and Kanye West.

[MaxFly]

I think you're right, it is mainly perception, and that's understandable. At the same time, when blacks and whites are involved, and blacks are negatively affected, the perception will usually have something to do with racism, even if there is none involved. As a result, I'm not surprised that many would charge the government with such given how things have gone in NO. Does it seem that racism could have played a part in the slow response? Yes. If you look at the end result, black people were suffering and the government was slow to help. Unfortunately, people stopped there and almost refused to acknowledge the reasons for the slow response. I'm glad the issue of race is involved in this discussion. It is clear that it definitely had something to do with the poverty in NO before the disaster, and resulted in many people not being able to evacuate. Hopefully, this will be addressed. As for the government response, it's something that will be left to perception as you've said, based on how individuals and groups see it.

I've posted how I think the media has handled this, but this really drew my attention...

the absolute avalanche of UNSUBSTANTIATED rumors of wide-spread violence and atrocities

Atrocities may be a strong word... but...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.impact/

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katr...iper/index.html

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900S...CZ?OpenDocument

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?...3466&n=10063508

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/02092005/325/troo...t-violence.html

[Cozmo D]

I've posted how I think the media has handled this, but this really drew my attention...

the absolute avalanche of UNSUBSTANTIATED rumors of wide-spread violence and atrocities

Atrocities may be a strong word... but...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.impact/

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katr...iper/index.html

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900S...CZ?OpenDocument

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?...3466&n=10063508

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/02092005/325/troo...t-violence.html

Exactly. Check every one of those stories. Not ONE is substantiated, not ONE is first person, not ONE points to any evidence. If ALL of them were true it would not be nearly enough reason to leave those people in desperate need of aid to suffer. In fact, if those people had been WHITE Americans, history tells us that any ONE of those things, even as rumors, would be reason for a desperate, all-out national effort to IMMEDIATELY RESCUE those people from their ordeal.

BUT, these people were overwhelmingly black. So, it is easy to believe all of these horrible rumors about what was going on, despite the fact that even though there were plenty of cameras and recorders and reporters there throughout...NOT ONE STORY has been substantiated. Even the story about the killing of the "5 or 6" snipers who were firing on engineers on a bridge was downgraded to one man killed, and to my knowledge the fact that this man was a sniper has yet to be evidenced.

Again...the immediate perception that the objective mind springs to is one of racism, and the viable evidence (or absence thereof) within the situation supports that perception.

[MaxFly]

Exactly. Check every one of those stories. Not ONE is substantiated, not ONE is first person, not ONE points to any evidence.

That's exactly what I expected you to say, except for the "not ONE is first person" point you made. You may want to edit out the "not ONE is first person" statement.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

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

"Please don't send the National Guard," Raymond Cooper told CNN by telephone. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first."

He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

"They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

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

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard [troops], wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy...

We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,' " Curiel said. "We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

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

A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.

"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.

I'm not sure whether you're simply playing devil's advocate, or whether you're genuinely trying to intimate that the violence and disorder in New Orleans wasn't really that bad; that the media was just sensationalizing the stories and people who were in the area suffering were making a lot of these things up... the few police officers who were left were simply spreading rumors... Are you saying that these numerous accounts from different sources can't be trusted? Seems like the govenor of Louisiana believed them enough to send in troops. Seems like the mayor of New Orleans believed them enough to remove police officers from search and rescue operations to focus on curtailing crime.

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...htm?POE=NEWISVA

Unsubstantiated... rumors... They certainly seemed real to the people involved, not just the media.

If ALL of them were true it would not be nearly enough reason to leave those people in desperate need of aid to suffer. In fact, if those people had been WHITE Americans, history tells us that any ONE of those things, even as rumors, would be reason for a desperate, all-out national effort to IMMEDIATELY RESCUE those people from their ordeal.

I don't believe that I've ever said on this forum or any other that because of the crimes, these people should have been left to suffer. Anyone who says something like this is nothing short of prejudice and lacks compassion.

Also, we've already established that the govenment was excruciatingly slow in their response to this disaster. I don't think this is in question. There was so much disorder, it's appalling. We have not established that racism or the race of the people of New Orleans had anything to do with the slow response however. For the numerous "if these were white people assertions," no one knows how the response to this disaster would have unfolded. The mass incompetence demonstarted throughout this disaster goes far beyond race.

Following the same "what if" logic, what if the mayor of New Orleans were white but his actions were exactly the same. Honestly, how would blacks respond to him. Would they think that race had something to do with his poor decision making prior to the storm? What if the majority of police officers in New Orleans had been white? Would the decision for them to put off search and rescue efforts to restore order have been questioned by civil rights leaders? Wouldn't race come into play? Lets be honest, as I said before, when blacks and whites are involved and blacks are affected negatively, race will always come into question, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. The cry will always be "well if whites were the ones affected." It's not just perception. It's perception fueled by bias, and it goes both ways.

BUT, these people were overwhelmingly black. So, it is easy to believe all of these horrible rumors about what was going on, despite the fact that even though there were plenty of cameras and recorders and reporters there throughout...NOT ONE STORY has been substantiated. Even the story about the killing of the "5 or 6" snipers who were firing on engineers on a bridge was downgraded to one man killed, and to my knowledge the fact that this man was a sniper has yet to be evidenced.

It's also easy to not want to believe that crimes are being committed. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the situation there. It doesn't change what the police officers have said, what those who are suffering have said and what the media has reported that they have said. It doesn't change the mayor's actions, nor the govenor's in putting some focus on reestablishing order. Now are all these people lying to you or do you just choose to ignore them?

Here's an excerpt of the "Army Corps of Engineers" incident. Something tells me that if you could say that it didn't happen at all, you would.

According to New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W. J. Riley, on September 4 police shot and killed five or six people walking on the Danziger Bridge. Initial reports said that the victims were Army Corps of Engineers contractors on their way to launch barges involved in the 17th Street Canal repair. Shortly afterwards, the initial report was retracted, and it was reported that the men shot by police were gunmen who had opened fire on the contractors. The Army Corps of Engineers also confirmed that its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed. Original reports claim five killed, but later police confirm only two killed, two wounded and two arrested.

Again...the immediate perception that the objective mind springs to is one of racism, and the viable evidence (or absence thereof) within the situation supports that perception.

And the conclusion that the objective mind should come to when all the facts and viable evidence is investigated is that racism didn't have anything to do with the disaster response and that the govenment is simply but severely incompetent.

Incidentally, the "viable evidence within the situation" is that whites and blacks are involved and blacks were affected negatively, so racism must be somewhere in the equation.

[Guest Guest]

Exactly. Check every one of those stories. Not ONE is substantiated, not ONE is first person, not ONE points to any evidence.

That's exactly what I expected you to say, except for the "not ONE is first person" point you made. You may want to edit out the "not ONE is first person" statement.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

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

"Please don't send the National Guard," Raymond Cooper told CNN by telephone. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first."

He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

"They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

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

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard [troops], wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy...

We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,' " Curiel said. "We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

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

A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.

"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.

I'm not sure whether you're simply playing devil's advocate, or whether you're genuinely trying to intimate that the violence and disorder in New Orleans wasn't really that bad; that the media was just sensationalizing the stories and people who were in the area suffering were making a lot of these things up... the few police officers who were left were simply spreading rumors... Are you saying that these numerous accounts from different sources can't be trusted? Seems like the govenor of Louisiana believed them enough to send in troops. Seems like the mayor of New Orleans believed them enough to remove police officers from search and rescue operations to focus on curtailing crime.

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...htm?POE=NEWISVA

Unsubstantiated... rumors... They certainly seemed real to the people involved, not just the media.

If ALL of them were true it would not be nearly enough reason to leave those people in desperate need of aid to suffer. In fact, if those people had been WHITE Americans, history tells us that any ONE of those things, even as rumors, would be reason for a desperate, all-out national effort to IMMEDIATELY RESCUE those people from their ordeal.

I don't believe that I've ever said on this forum or any other that because of the crimes, these people should have been left to suffer. Anyone who says something like this is nothing short of prejudice and lacks compassion.

Also, we've already established that the govenment was excruciatingly slow in their response to this disaster. I don't think this is in question. There was so much disorder, it's appalling. We have not established that racism or the race of the people of New Orleans had anything to do with the slow response however. For the numerous "if these were white people assertions," no one knows how the response to this disaster would have unfolded. The mass incompetence demonstarted throughout this disaster goes far beyond race.

Following the same "what if" logic, what if the mayor of New Orleans were white but his actions were exactly the same. Honestly, how would blacks respond to him. Would they think that race had something to do with his poor decision making prior to the storm? What if the majority of police officers in New Orleans had been white? Would the decision for them to put off search and rescue efforts to restore order have been questioned by civil rights leaders? Wouldn't race come into play? Lets be honest, as I said before, when blacks and whites are involved and blacks are affected negatively, race will always come into question, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. The cry will always be "well if whites were the ones affected." It's not just perception. It's perception fueled by bias, and it goes both ways.

BUT, these people were overwhelmingly black. So, it is easy to believe all of these horrible rumors about what was going on, despite the fact that even though there were plenty of cameras and recorders and reporters there throughout...NOT ONE STORY has been substantiated. Even the story about the killing of the "5 or 6" snipers who were firing on engineers on a bridge was downgraded to one man killed, and to my knowledge the fact that this man was a sniper has yet to be evidenced.

It's also easy to not want to believe that crimes are being committed. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the situation there. It doesn't change what the police officers have said, what those who are suffering have said and what the media has reported that they have said. It doesn't change the mayor's actions, nor the govenor's in putting some focus on reestablishing order. Now are all these people lying to you or do you just choose to ignore them?

Here's an excerpt of the "Army Corps of Engineers" incident. Something tells me that if you could say that it didn't happen at all, you would.

According to New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W. J. Riley, on September 4 police shot and killed five or six people walking on the Danziger Bridge. Initial reports said that the victims were Army Corps of Engineers contractors on their way to launch barges involved in the 17th Street Canal repair. Shortly afterwards, the initial report was retracted, and it was reported that the men shot by police were gunmen who had opened fire on the contractors. The Army Corps of Engineers also confirmed that its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed. Original reports claim five killed, but later police confirm only two killed, two wounded and two arrested.

Again...the immediate perception that the objective mind springs to is one of racism, and the viable evidence (or absence thereof) within the situation supports that perception.

And the conclusion that the objective mind should come to when all the facts and viable evidence is investigated is that racism didn't have anything to do with the disaster response and that the govenment is simply but severely incompetent.

Incidentally, the "viable evidence within the situation" is that whites and blacks are involved and blacks were affected negatively, so racism must be somewhere in the equation.

[sigh]

Even before evacuees could get comfy in Houston's Astrodome, rumors were flying that the refugees had already raped their first victim, just like that 7-year-old in the Superdome, or the babies in the Convention Center who got their throats slit. Not only was the Astrodome rape invented out of whole cloth, so, perhaps was the case reported 'round the globe of at least one prepubescent being raped and murdered in New Orleans' iconic sports arena.

"We don't have any substantiated rapes," New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass said Monday, according to the Guardian. "We will investigate if the individuals come forward." The British paper further pointed out that, "While many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention center toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses."

Many observers have found the footage of looting and reports of crime to be, in the words of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, ''one of the most dispiriting" aspect of the tragedy. Slate's William Saletan went so far as to call it ''a second-wave destructive force" that must be anticipated in future disaster planning. Yet Quarantelli and a half-dozen other experts on disaster aftermaths and crowd behavior contacted last week insisted that follow-up investigations will reveal that the impression of Hobbesian violence in New Orleans over the past two weeks was created in large part by rumor and amplified by sometimes credulous reporters. The scholars' suspicions are fueled by what they say is a well-documented history of misinformation during disasters--and a general human tendency to misread crowds, even violent ones, as more malevolent than they really are.

''As a researcher, I base what I say on evidence and there was no evidence for a lot of what was being reported," says Kathleen Tierney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center there. ''I don't think I've ever seen such an egregious example of victim blaming as I have in this disaster."

TruthOrFiction.com has checked with New Orleans police.

They say they've not been able to confirm the story of the babies with the throats cut or even any rapes from among those who took refuge in the Superdome.

If those events did happen, nobody has come forward to report them or substantiate them.

One rumor that spread through the refugees was that a 7-year-old-girl had been raped and killed, but there has not been any evidence found so far of that murder.

[Cozmo D]

Exactly. Check every one of those stories. Not ONE is substantiated, not ONE is first person, not ONE points to any evidence.

That's exactly what I expected you to say, except for the "not ONE is first person" point you made. You may want to edit out the "not ONE is first person" statement.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

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

"Please don't send the National Guard," Raymond Cooper told CNN by telephone. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first."

He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

"They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

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

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard [troops], wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy...

We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,' " Curiel said. "We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

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

A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.

"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.

I'm not sure whether you're simply playing devil's advocate, or whether you're genuinely trying to intimate that the violence and disorder in New Orleans wasn't really that bad; that the media was just sensationalizing the stories and people who were in the area suffering were making a lot of these things up... the few police officers who were left were simply spreading rumors... Are you saying that these numerous accounts from different sources can't be trusted? Seems like the govenor of Louisiana believed them enough to send in troops. Seems like the mayor of New Orleans believed them enough to remove police officers from search and rescue operations to focus on curtailing crime.

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-0...htm?POE=NEWISVA

Unsubstantiated... rumors... They certainly seemed real to the people involved, not just the media.

If ALL of them were true it would not be nearly enough reason to leave those people in desperate need of aid to suffer. In fact, if those people had been WHITE Americans, history tells us that any ONE of those things, even as rumors, would be reason for a desperate, all-out national effort to IMMEDIATELY RESCUE those people from their ordeal.

I don't believe that I've ever said on this forum or any other that because of the crimes, these people should have been left to suffer. Anyone who says something like this is nothing short of prejudice and lacks compassion.

Also, we've already established that the govenment was excruciatingly slow in their response to this disaster. I don't think this is in question. There was so much disorder, it's appalling. We have not established that racism or the race of the people of New Orleans had anything to do with the slow response however. For the numerous "if these were white people assertions," no one knows how the response to this disaster would have unfolded. The mass incompetence demonstarted throughout this disaster goes far beyond race.

Following the same "what if" logic, what if the mayor of New Orleans were white but his actions were exactly the same. Honestly, how would blacks respond to him. Would they think that race had something to do with his poor decision making prior to the storm? What if the majority of police officers in New Orleans had been white? Would the decision for them to put off search and rescue efforts to restore order have been questioned by civil rights leaders? Wouldn't race come into play? Lets be honest, as I said before, when blacks and whites are involved and blacks are affected negatively, race will always come into question, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. The cry will always be "well if whites were the ones affected." It's not just perception. It's perception fueled by bias, and it goes both ways.

BUT, these people were overwhelmingly black. So, it is easy to believe all of these horrible rumors about what was going on, despite the fact that even though there were plenty of cameras and recorders and reporters there throughout...NOT ONE STORY has been substantiated. Even the story about the killing of the "5 or 6" snipers who were firing on engineers on a bridge was downgraded to one man killed, and to my knowledge the fact that this man was a sniper has yet to be evidenced.

It's also easy to not want to believe that crimes are being committed. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the situation there. It doesn't change what the police officers have said, what those who are suffering have said and what the media has reported that they have said. It doesn't change the mayor's actions, nor the govenor's in putting some focus on reestablishing order. Now are all these people lying to you or do you just choose to ignore them?

Here's an excerpt of the "Army Corps of Engineers" incident. Something tells me that if you could say that it didn't happen at all, you would.

According to New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W. J. Riley, on September 4 police shot and killed five or six people walking on the Danziger Bridge. Initial reports said that the victims were Army Corps of Engineers contractors on their way to launch barges involved in the 17th Street Canal repair. Shortly afterwards, the initial report was retracted, and it was reported that the men shot by police were gunmen who had opened fire on the contractors. The Army Corps of Engineers also confirmed that its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed. Original reports claim five killed, but later police confirm only two killed, two wounded and two arrested.

Again...the immediate perception that the objective mind springs to is one of racism, and the viable evidence (or absence thereof) within the situation supports that perception.

And the conclusion that the objective mind should come to when all the facts and viable evidence is investigated is that racism didn't have anything to do with the disaster response and that the govenment is simply but severely incompetent.

Incidentally, the "viable evidence within the situation" is that whites and blacks are involved and blacks were affected negatively, so racism must be somewhere in the equation.

[sigh]

"We don't have any substantiated rapes," New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass said Monday, according to the Guardian. "We will investigate if the individuals come forward." The British paper further pointed out that, "While many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention center toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses."

Many observers have found the footage of looting and reports of crime to be, in the words of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, ''one of the most dispiriting" aspect of the tragedy. Slate's William Saletan went so far as to call it ''a second-wave destructive force" that must be anticipated in future disaster planning. Yet Quarantelli and a half-dozen other experts on disaster aftermaths and crowd behavior contacted last week insisted that follow-up investigations will reveal that the impression of Hobbesian violence in New Orleans over the past two weeks was created in large part by rumor and amplified by sometimes credulous reporters. The scholars' suspicions are fueled by what they say is a well-documented history of misinformation during disasters--and a general human tendency to misread crowds, even violent ones, as more malevolent than they really are.

TruthOrFiction.com has checked with New Orleans police. They say they've not been able to confirm the story of the babies with the throats cut or even any rapes from among those who took refuge in the Superdome. If those events did happen, nobody has come forward to report them or substantiate them. One rumor that spread through the refugees was that a 7-year-old-girl had been raped and killed, but there has not been any evidence found so far of that murder.

Major news outlets also disseminated stories of widespread violence, including one of a child being raped, babies being killed and bodies piled on the floor of the New Orleans Superdome. As of last Tuesday, "The Guardian" newspaper reported that New Orleans police had been unable to confirm any such reports of violence in the Superdome. The preponderance of stories of violence and "looting" attributed to the predominantly black New Orleans residents makes me question not just the journalistic integrity of our major news outlets, but the racial consciousness of a nation that would allow such falsity to be projected by the news media.

It turns out that the Convention Center was NOT overrun by armed gangs. It turns out that a 7 year old child was NOT raped and had her throat cut. Turns out that most of the rumor and innuendo about the Superdome and Convention Center descending into savagery was just that -- rumor and innuendo, apparently intended to demonize the victims of this national disaster, who were poor and black and you know that those big buck negros just wanna rape and kill 7 year old children, right?

Give it a while, and bit by bit you'll see the national news organizations, who helped to perpetrate the rumors, start to admit their folly.

Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.

"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."

Of course people were angry, you would have been too if you were in that situation. You will note that the same police chief later said that his own statements here were unsubstantiated. Perhaps, he had bad information?

"Please don't send the National Guard," Raymond Cooper told CNN by telephone. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first."

He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

"They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

Hmmm... could be the scenes he was describing were more of desperation than lawlessness? What happened to all of the raped girls and gunshot victims? Where did all of the guns go? Rumors maybe?

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard [troops], wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy...

We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us, let's move on,' " Curiel said. "We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

Hmmm... guy with a white shirt. Must have been the only white shirt in New Orleans, considering everybody there had been wading in filth for days. Strange that he could make out the guy in the white shirt but the National Guard couldn't get a bead on the guy. I wonder if this guy actually saw all of this himself, or if he's basically repeating something that was told to him by his colleagues.

A member of that family, Africa Brumfield, 32, confirmed the incident but declined to be quoted about it, saying her family did not wish to discuss it. But she spoke of general conditions here.

"There is rapes going on here. Women cannot go to the bathroom without men. They are raping them and slitting their throats. They keep telling us the buses are coming but they never leave," she said through tears.

Hmmm... She didn't want to be quoted? I wonder why? What happened to all of the raped women with the slit throats? Maybe the thugs ate them?

A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.

Damm... gotta be gunshot victims all over the place. Wonder what happened to them? Amazing all of the cars that were driving around the city at that point, just waiting to be carjacked.

According to New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W. J. Riley, on September 4 police shot and killed five or six people walking on the Danziger Bridge. Initial reports said that the victims were Army Corps of Engineers contractors on their way to launch barges involved in the 17th Street Canal repair. Shortly afterwards, the initial report was retracted, and it was reported that the men shot by police were gunmen who had opened fire on the contractors. The Army Corps of Engineers also confirmed that its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed.

Yeah, well judging by the rather limited amount of information that has become available about this incident, I would not be at all surprised if the circumstances turn out to be quite different from what was reported. We'll see...

And the conclusion that the objective mind should come to when all the facts and viable evidence is investigated is that racism didn't have anything to do with the disaster response and that the govenment is simply but severely incompetent.

OK, I see that you find it impossible to wrap your head around the concept that racism can exist without racists. I won't beat that dead horse with you any further.

edit: I don't know what's the matter with the quote feature here. :shrug:

Edited September 19, 2005 by Cozmo D

[MaxFly]

Even before evacuees could get comfy in Houston's Astrodome, rumors were flying that the refugees had already raped their first victim, just like that 7-year-old in the Superdome, or the babies in the Convention Center who got their throats slit. Not only was the Astrodome rape invented out of whole cloth, so, perhaps was the case reported 'round the globe of at least one prepubescent being raped and murdered in New Orleans' iconic sports arena.

"We don't have any substantiated rapes," New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass said Monday, according to the Guardian. "We will investigate if the individuals come forward." The British paper further pointed out that, "While many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention center toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses."

Cool, a post off... here's another excerpt from this very article.

The truth, whatever it may be, is clearly horrific enough, with just about every eyewitness account from New Orleans mentioning the palpable menace from crazed gangs of looters and ne'er-do-wells, especially after nightfall. Compass himself told reporters on Thursday that 88 of his cops were beaten back into a retreat by angry Convention Center refugees, forcing Mayor Ray Nagin to suspend rescue operations in favor of restoring a semblance of order.

Another account.

"We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before, I think, there were three or four murders. There were half-a-dozen rapes that night. We had one suicide last night. We had one military policeman shot."

Dr. Burnell described the Superdome situation as "very unstable, very high tension, a very dangerous environment."

While National Guardsmen were on hand for protection, he said that "every time there was an incident that broke out, they had to tend to that, which left us uncovered."

Burnell said the task of treating people inside the stadium became impossible after they ran out of supplies. "We did not have oxygen, we did not have any medications to speak of," he said.

[Cozmo D]

Even before evacuees could get comfy in Houston's Astrodome, rumors were flying that the refugees had already raped their first victim, just like that 7-year-old in the Superdome, or the babies in the Convention Center who got their throats slit. Not only was the Astrodome rape invented out of whole cloth, so, perhaps was the case reported 'round the globe of at least one prepubescent being raped and murdered in New Orleans' iconic sports arena.

"We don't have any substantiated rapes," New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass said Monday, according to the Guardian. "We will investigate if the individuals come forward." The British paper further pointed out that, "While many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention center toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses."

Cool, a post off... here's another excerpt from this very article.

The truth, whatever it may be, is clearly horrific enough, with just about every eyewitness account from New Orleans mentioning the palpable menace from crazed gangs of looters and ne'er-do-wells, especially after nightfall. Compass himself told reporters on Thursday that 88 of his cops were beaten back into a retreat by angry Convention Center refugees, forcing Mayor Ray Nagin to suspend rescue operations in favor of restoring a semblance of order.

Another account.

"We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before, I think, there were three or four murders. There were half-a-dozen rapes that night. We had one suicide last night. We had one military policeman shot."

Dr. Burnell described the Superdome situation as "very unstable, very high tension, a very dangerous environment."

While National Guardsmen were on hand for protection, he said that "every time there was an incident that broke out, they had to tend to that, which left us uncovered."

Burnell said the task of treating people inside the stadium became impossible after they ran out of supplies. "We did not have oxygen, we did not have any medications to speak of," he said.

OK, I think I see how the quote thing works now.

I see that you insist on using accounts from early on. Where are all the rape and murder victims? Where are all of the weapons? Of the 88 cops that were "beaten" back by an angry mob, how many were shot? How many wounded? Or was this a verbal "beating" that they received?

Of course the evacuees will come out reporting all of these horrific stories. When you are in the midst of that kind of turmoil, rumors like this are bound to be rampant, and all who are subject to this hell are just as bound to believe it, and to pass it on as gospel. They will even go as far as to claim to have witnessed these things themselves, or to interpret the horrors that they do see as something even more horrible. They have a name for it you know, it's called MASS HYSTERIA.

I'm not saying that there were no crimes or violence, only that they were GROSSLY exaggerated. And to my knowledge, outside of some very sketchy, mostly second-hand witness accounts, NONE of these stories of rampant rape, murder and violence have been substantiated. NONE!

[JumpinJack AJ]

Back on topic, VH-1's Best Week Ever keeps airing Kanye's comments. He's so stupid that i can't even listen 2 his album within 48 hours of seeing this footage. He comes across as a 10 year old who thinks he's got something deep 2 say, but he sounds so immature that i think most intellegent people are left making the face that Chris Tucker waz making right after the comment waz made.

[MaxFly]

Before I address your post... earlier, you noted that in the news reports, among other things, "not ONE is first person." I went on to supply you with a number of quotes from people on the ground in New Orleans. You may either want to clarify the "not ONE is first person" statement or retract it. You've seemed to side step that and have gone on to attack the credibility of those who were quoted, such as you did with the "guy with a white shirt" incident or citing "mass hystyeria". Unfortunately, you can't attack the individual's credibility and at the same time maintain that the statement isn't made in "first person."

Moving along...

These are from the Times Picayune... the New Orleans Newspaper...

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."

Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.

"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

I just want to point out what the "dailykos" website said...

It turns out that the Convention Center was NOT overrun by armed gangs. It turns out that a 7 year old child was NOT raped and had her throat cut. Turns out that most of the rumor and innuendo about the Superdome and Convention Center descending into savagery was just that apparently intended to demonize the victims of this national disaster, who were poor and black and you know that those big buck negros just wanna rape and kill 7 year old children, right?

Now, they haven't said that these things are unproven or are still under investigation as your other quotes have. They said, very clearly, and repeatedly, that they did NOT happen. Now it's one thing to say that something hasn't been substantiated, but it's certainly something entirely different to say that these things have NOT happened at all. Seems like an attempy to demonize the media more than anything else... This site seems about as fair and balanced as Fox News.

Here's another

Federal officials make first arrest

By Gwen Filosa

Staff writer

Federal agents arrested a young Algiers man in the early Tuesday morning after agents said he shot at a military helicopter designed for rescue missions, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said.

The arrest Tuesday marked the first federal action against the lawlessness that preyed upon New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Wendell L. Bailey, 20, was arrested outside the building in which he had earlier taken aim with a .22-caliber handgun and fired at the helicopter that was flying in the darkness, federal prosecutors said.

A criminal complaint filed against Bailey Tuesday accuses him of the federal crime of trying to "damage and destroy any aircraft and with being a felon in possession of a handgun. If convicted on both charges, Bailey could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Letten held Bailey's case up as the first federal arrest and promised more would come.

"He will be prosecuted very aggressively, federally," Letten said at the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge, flanked by U.S. Attorney David Dugas of Baton Rouge and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives officials.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance, of the eastern district, signed the arrest warrant. Bailey was booked at the temporary detention center set up by state officials in the storm-torn downtown of New Orleans, and is due in federal court located in Baton Rouge federal court later today.

Special ATF agents were patrolling Algiers when they observed gunfire coming from an apartment window.

Two young men then walked out of the building and were heard chatting about shooting at a helicopter. "They won't be back now," one of them said, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.

Inside the apartment, ATF special agents found a .22-caliber Rhomn revolver and a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver both hidden beneath a mattress – along with a box of 9-mm ammunition.

Letten said that under federal law, Bailey's home address cannot be released. He said he did not have the specific address at which ATF nabbed Bailey. The second young man who was with Bailey was not arrested after ATF agents interviewed the unidentified man.

Bailey has prior convictions for dealing marijuana and cocaine, Letten said. He admitted to ATF agents at the scene that he was a felon on probation and he told them were the firearms were, Letten's office said.

At the time of the shooting, Letten said a number of civil and military aircraft were in the air helping with evacuation, search and rescue and delivering supplies.

State Attorney General Charles Foti Jr., the former criminal sheriff in Orleans Parish, plans to open up a second detention center in New Orleans, likely using an existing facility that was built to be a jail, Letten said.

And another....

Reuters' Denver-based photographer Rick Wilking arrived in New Orleans two days before Hurricane Katrina hit and stayed in the greater New Orleans area for six days. The following is his personal account of the storm and its violent aftermath.

By Rick Wilking

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - It was dawn when he showed up out of nowhere. "Hey man, there's a ton of media up here and they have a lot of stuff. I don't see any cops. There's no security."

The man in ragged clothes summoned his friends to attempt a "hit" on a convoy of a dozen media cars parked on the highway overpass near the New Orleans Superdome, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Fortunately for us the conversation was overheard. As soon as we saw a mob making its way toward us and just as a network anchor was about to go live for a morning show, the word went down the line.

Before you knew it, the lights were struck, the wires tossed into trucks, the satellite dishes stowed, and photographers and reporters were speeding the wrong way down the interstate to the relative safety of a police checkpoint.

When we got there the police told us there had been nearly 80 carjackings in the last few days, many of them media vehicles surrounded by mobs and stripped clean or stolen outright, sometimes at gunpoint. They also told us a policeman had been shot in the head (he lived) and so they had a new "shoot to kill" policy in place.

I've covered dozens of natural disasters around the globe, from mudslides and floods in Europe to hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States. I always considered the assignments somewhat dangerous but not extremely so, because if you know what you are doing you can easily minimize the danger -- actually control your situation.

Not so in New Orleans, where after one day of covering a storm and its aftermath I found myself covering a human tragedy of enormous proportions, compounded by a blatant criminal element bent on taking advantage of a very bad situation.

Looting is almost always found in the initial hours after a storm -- particularly if the area hit is a poorer neighborhood. But armed gangs riding in pick-up trucks, shots being fired from the ground at military rescue helicopters overhead and media vehicles being hijacked are not things you expect.

Covering flooded New Orleans was hard enough with many major roads under water, no power and no phones, not even cellular, without having to watch your back at every turn.

All these people are making up things? Reporters are suffering from mass hysteria? Police officers and the National Guard. Really...

Lets not forget, the point of the topic of violence and crimes taking place in New Orleans is to establish that Blanco was right in sending troops in with shoot to kill orders to restore order.

Also, you made this statement...

Hmmm... guy with a white shirt. Must have been the only white shirt in New Orleans, considering everybody there had been wading in filth for days. Strange that he could make out the guy in the white shirt but the National Guard couldn't get a bead on the guy. I wonder if this guy actually saw all of this himself, or if he's basically repeating something that was told to him by his colleagues.

I'm guessing that the person in the white shirt had to be wading in the water with that same shirt for the duration of the disaster huh. I'm guessing that he was in the open in the water with a white shirt shooting at people so that he in turn could be easily shot. On top of all of it, you've alread tried to cast doubt on his story saying maybe he's just repeating what was told to him inspite of the fact that he repeatedly used the pronouns "we" and "us" when speaking about the event signifying that he was involved.

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us."

"We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us."

"We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

Sad atttempt... and the shooter could have been white. Maybe that would have changed your view on the story.

[MaxFly]

Back on topic, VH-1's Best Week Ever keeps airing Kanye's comments. He's so stupid that i can't even listen 2 his album within 48 hours of seeing this footage. He comes across as a 10 year old who thinks he's got something deep 2 say, but he sounds so immature that i think most intellegent people are left making the face that Chris Tucker waz making right after the comment waz made.

That Chris Tucker face was hilarious. Not sure it can quite compare to Mike Meyer's face... I thought he was going to faint.

But yea, on the subject... It wasn't a good look for Kanye in the conscious rapper department. Of course people will agree with him. It's their prerogative, but more than the irresponsible message... the time and place he chose to voice it is most irking.

Edited September 19, 2005 by MaxFly

[Cozmo D]

Before I address your post... earlier, you noted that in the news reports, among other things, "not ONE is first person." I went on to supply you with a number of quotes from people on the ground in New Orleans. You may either want to clarify the "not ONE is first person" statement or retract it. You've seemed to side step that and have gone on to attack the credibility of those who were quoted, such as you did with the "guy with a white shirt" incident or citing "mass hystyeria". Unfortunately, you can't attack the individual's credibility and at the same time maintain that the statement isn't made in "first person."

Moving along...

These are from the Times Picayune... the New Orleans Newspaper...

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."

Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.

"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

I just want to point out what the "dailykos" website said...

It turns out that the Convention Center was NOT overrun by armed gangs. It turns out that a 7 year old child was NOT raped and had her throat cut. Turns out that most of the rumor and innuendo about the Superdome and Convention Center descending into savagery was just that apparently intended to demonize the victims of this national disaster, who were poor and black and you know that those big buck negros just wanna rape and kill 7 year old children, right?

Now, they haven't said that these things are unproven or are still under investigation as your other quotes have. They said, very clearly, and repeatedly, that they did NOT happen. Now it's one thing to say that something hasn't been substantiated, but it's certainly something entirely different to say that these things have NOT happened at all. Seems like an attempy to demonize the media more than anything else... This site seems about as fair and balanced as Fox News.

Here's another

Federal officials make first arrest

By Gwen Filosa

Staff writer

Federal agents arrested a young Algiers man in the early Tuesday morning after agents said he shot at a military helicopter designed for rescue missions, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said.

The arrest Tuesday marked the first federal action against the lawlessness that preyed upon New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Wendell L. Bailey, 20, was arrested outside the building in which he had earlier taken aim with a .22-caliber handgun and fired at the helicopter that was flying in the darkness, federal prosecutors said.

A criminal complaint filed against Bailey Tuesday accuses him of the federal crime of trying to "damage and destroy any aircraft and with being a felon in possession of a handgun. If convicted on both charges, Bailey could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Letten held Bailey's case up as the first federal arrest and promised more would come.

"He will be prosecuted very aggressively, federally," Letten said at the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge, flanked by U.S. Attorney David Dugas of Baton Rouge and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives officials.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance, of the eastern district, signed the arrest warrant. Bailey was booked at the temporary detention center set up by state officials in the storm-torn downtown of New Orleans, and is due in federal court located in Baton Rouge federal court later today.

Special ATF agents were patrolling Algiers when they observed gunfire coming from an apartment window.

Two young men then walked out of the building and were heard chatting about shooting at a helicopter. "They won't be back now," one of them said, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.

Inside the apartment, ATF special agents found a .22-caliber Rhomn revolver and a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver both hidden beneath a mattress – along with a box of 9-mm ammunition.

Letten said that under federal law, Bailey's home address cannot be released. He said he did not have the specific address at which ATF nabbed Bailey. The second young man who was with Bailey was not arrested after ATF agents interviewed the unidentified man.

Bailey has prior convictions for dealing marijuana and cocaine, Letten said. He admitted to ATF agents at the scene that he was a felon on probation and he told them were the firearms were, Letten's office said.

At the time of the shooting, Letten said a number of civil and military aircraft were in the air helping with evacuation, search and rescue and delivering supplies.

State Attorney General Charles Foti Jr., the former criminal sheriff in Orleans Parish, plans to open up a second detention center in New Orleans, likely using an existing facility that was built to be a jail, Letten said.

And another....

Reuters' Denver-based photographer Rick Wilking arrived in New Orleans two days before Hurricane Katrina hit and stayed in the greater New Orleans area for six days. The following is his personal account of the storm and its violent aftermath.

By Rick Wilking

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - It was dawn when he showed up out of nowhere. "Hey man, there's a ton of media up here and they have a lot of stuff. I don't see any cops. There's no security."

The man in ragged clothes summoned his friends to attempt a "hit" on a convoy of a dozen media cars parked on the highway overpass near the New Orleans Superdome, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Fortunately for us the conversation was overheard. As soon as we saw a mob making its way toward us and just as a network anchor was about to go live for a morning show, the word went down the line.

Before you knew it, the lights were struck, the wires tossed into trucks, the satellite dishes stowed, and photographers and reporters were speeding the wrong way down the interstate to the relative safety of a police checkpoint.

When we got there the police told us there had been nearly 80 carjackings in the last few days, many of them media vehicles surrounded by mobs and stripped clean or stolen outright, sometimes at gunpoint. They also told us a policeman had been shot in the head (he lived) and so they had a new "shoot to kill" policy in place.

I've covered dozens of natural disasters around the globe, from mudslides and floods in Europe to hurricanes and tornadoes in the United States. I always considered the assignments somewhat dangerous but not extremely so, because if you know what you are doing you can easily minimize the danger -- actually control your situation.

Not so in New Orleans, where after one day of covering a storm and its aftermath I found myself covering a human tragedy of enormous proportions, compounded by a blatant criminal element bent on taking advantage of a very bad situation.

Looting is almost always found in the initial hours after a storm -- particularly if the area hit is a poorer neighborhood. But armed gangs riding in pick-up trucks, shots being fired from the ground at military rescue helicopters overhead and media vehicles being hijacked are not things you expect.

Covering flooded New Orleans was hard enough with many major roads under water, no power and no phones, not even cellular, without having to watch your back at every turn.

All these people are making up things? Reporters are suffering from mass hysteria? Police officers and the National Guard. Really...

Lets not forget, the point of the topic of violence and crimes taking place in New Orleans is to establish that Blanco was right in sending troops in with shoot to kill orders to restore order.

Also, you made this statement...

Hmmm... guy with a white shirt. Must have been the only white shirt in New Orleans, considering everybody there had been wading in filth for days. Strange that he could make out the guy in the white shirt but the National Guard couldn't get a bead on the guy. I wonder if this guy actually saw all of this himself, or if he's basically repeating something that was told to him by his colleagues.

I'm guessing that the person in the white shirt had to be wading in the water with that same shirt for the duration of the disaster huh. I'm guessing that he was in the open in the water with a white shirt shooting at people so that he in turn could be easily shot. On top of all of it, you've alread tried to cast doubt on his story saying maybe he's just repeating what was told to him inspite of the fact that he repeatedly used the pronouns "we" and "us" when speaking about the event signifying that he was involved.

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us."

"We got back to Charity Hospital with with food from Tulane and we said, 'OK the snipers are behind us."

"We started loading patients [for transport] and 20 minutes later, shots rang out."

Sad atttempt... and the shooter could have been white. Maybe that would have changed your view on the story.

Could you supply some links please? You will notice that I always do. I am not interested in the argument, I am interested in the discussion and the truth.

This is again degenerating into a pissing contest, which I frankly am not interested in at the moment. Also, you seem to be accusing me of some sort of prejudice or bias, which I deem to be insulting.

I would love to see a link on this story about the bodies, as I have yet to find anything like it. As for the "we", when a person is part of a group it is quite common for them to refer to that group's experiences as "we", whether they were there or not. This does not make it necessarily first person.

As for the white shirt, I highly doubt that anybody running around in a filthy city for 4 days without being able to wash would still be wearing a shirt easily definable as white from a distance. My "wading in filth" remark was more figurative than literal.

As for my usage of first person, most of the people on the ground that you quoted were relaying things that they were told. Regardless, it's not my statements that are in question here, but what TRULY happened in New Orleans. You write better than I do, hell, you write better than my lawyers, but this is not a debate. If what you're after is to be voted the smartest person here, you can have my proxy.

Look... if your aim is to win the argument, fine...you win. I'm not interested in it, nor am I interested in your continued attempt to belittle me through your words. If you have PROOF of this rampant, rampaging violence, murder and mayhem, then please post it. If all you wish to do is catch errors in my phrasing or verbiage, go ahead and enjoy yourself, by yourself.

[MaxFly]

Could you supply some links please? You will notice that I always do. I am not interested in the argument, I am interested in the discussion and the truth.

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/in..._06.html#077479

http://www.nola.com/t-p/ - Times-Picayune Archive

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/n..._nm/notebook_dc

I would love to see a link on this story about the bodies, as I have yet to find anything like it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/6/213759/1319.

As for the "we", when a person is part of a group it is quite common for them to refer to that group's experiences as "we", whether they were there or not. This does not make it necessarily first person.

As for the white shirt, I highly doubt that anybody running around in a filthy city for 4 days without being able to wash would still be wearing a shirt easily definable as white from a distance. My "wading in filth" remark was more figurative than literal.

I think I've made my point on these issues. I won't continue.

As for my usage of first person, most of the people on the ground that you quoted were relaying things that they were told. Regardless, it's not my statements that are in question here, but what TRULY happened in New Orleans. You write better than I do, hell, you write better than my lawyers, but this is not a debate. If what you're after is to be voted the smartest person here, you can have my proxy.

I don't wish to get into semantics, so I'll leave it at that.

Look... if your aim is to win the argument, fine...you win. I'm not interested in it, nor am I interested in your continued attempt to belittle me through your words. If you have PROOF of this rampant, rampaging violence, murder and mayhem, then please post it. If all you wish to do is catch errors in my phrasing or verbiage, go ahead and enjoy yourself, by yourself.

My goal is neither to "win an argument" nor to belitte anyone. It is to discuss opinions, come to agreement when agreement is present and to discuss differences where there are differences. If my goal were to simply win an argument, I would have stopped posting on this thread out of exasperation 22 pages ago.