Why Katrina matters

[Aurelius]

I got in my Inbox yesterday an article about why Hurricane Katrina matters, and the importance of New Orleans, and why there is a city in such a dodgy place anyway.

If you felt like reading it, it's here (http://gojira.homedns.org/webs/files/new-orleans-report.html) .

[Aardvark]

What did your mother tell you about reading spam?

[Directed]

I thought it was an interesting read

[Timformation]

"Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can Forksake the dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim"

Tragically Hip - New Orleans is Sinking

[and3w]

Look on the bright side..Louisiana has always been a major weed growing area..now they have the largest hydroponics unit in the fuckin' world..Louisiana loulou is the up & coming weed! And it will be DIRT cheap..they have fuck all else to sell (well, except for the 7,000 52" Plasma screen tv's and the 120,000 pairs of assorted trainers..but they won't last long.....)

[and3w]

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Where is Fats?
Now, that IS important! Would be tragic if he lived through all the dangers and hazards of his life and he died like this....I WANT MY JELLYROLL!


:boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo:

[johny_roberts]

i'm watching tv on one now and smoking a bowl............

***I wish working***

[FireHart]

I for one don't give a flying fuck about this event :)

[fastfood]

Floods are supposed to be fun!
Why arn't these people frolicing about in the water and spalshing each other and so on?

[Aurelius]

Floods are supposed to be fun!
Why arn't these people frolicing about in the water and spalshing each other and so on?

I dunno about the ones you watching fastfood, but the ones I see on TV seem to be having a thuper time!

[King_Crud]

i thought New Orleand was about chicks flashing their tits, yet i've not seen one tit in the news reports!!!!

[and3w]

Very good article on the www.bbc.co.uk/news site

"Hurricane prompts awkward questions
By Elinor Shields
BBC News

Many of those stranded did not have the resources to flee
Images from the stricken city of New Orleans show that many of those suffering in its streets and shelters are mainly black and poor.
The plight of those stranded amid the filth and the dead has highlighted a side of the city most tourists did not see - one in which two-thirds of its residents are black and more than a quarter live in poverty.

Anger is mounting among African-American leaders that this section was left behind when others fled.
Some say the chaos in Katrina's aftermath has exposed deep divisions in both the city and US society.
"We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between those who lived and... died... was nothing more than poverty, age or skin colour," Congressman Elijah Cummings said.

Correspondents say New Orleans' glamorous reputation has always concealed a high level of deprivation.

NEW ORLEANS
485,000 residents
10 times national murder rate
21% of households without access to a car

The city famous for its jazz clubs and horse-drawn carriage rides was also a place in which about one in three children lived in poverty, in one of the poorest states in the country.
Observers say this group was particularly vulnerable in the face of a hurricane.
Many of those trapped by Katrina's floodwaters lived in dilapidated neighbourhoods that were long known to be exposed to disaster if the levees failed.
And a large number would have had no means to flee the region as the storm loomed - a recent US census found that one-fifth of the city's residents had no access to a car.
"We don't have transportation," one resident told WHBF-TV. "We're living paycheck to paycheck, it's not like we're just able to get up and leave."

A former leader of the black caucus in the House of Representatives agrees.
"It is one thing to receive a warning to get out - it's something else to have the ability to get out," US Congressman James Clyburn said.

Uneasy questions

Black members of Congress have also criticised the pace of relief efforts.
Some say the response was slow because those most affected are poor.

"I'm ashamed of America. I'm ashamed of our government," Congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick said.
"George Bush doesn't care about black people," rapper Kanye West told viewers of an NBC benefit concert for hurricane victims.

Other commentators object to the media's handling of the crisis.
"Television is creating a sympathetic image of white people fleeing, and black people caught up in a shoplifting orgy," Lawrence Aaron wrote in New Jersey's Record.
But some hope that the aftermath of the hurricane will force people to confront the issue of inequality.
"Most cities have a hidden, or not always talked about, poor population, black and white, and most of the time we look past them," Spencer Crew , the chief of a Cincinnati civil rights centre, told the New York Times.
"This is a moment in time when we can't look past them. Their plight is coming to the forefront now," he said."

Gives a bit of a view of the 'dirty lazy niggers who couldn't be bothered to "walk out of there" (Copyright Noddy, the fucking moron, try walking ANYWHERE when you are within 1 day of a hurricane..I know tornados looked all pretty & cool in The Wizard of Oz, Nodster, but in reality, seeing your kids swept away and then impaled by a 400 ton boat, whilst yoour aged mother has to be dumped because she is slowing you down after being de-capitated by a piece of flying debri, and this before the hurricane proper hits would rather put me off walking out. Oh, and the Wicked Witch of the West scared me in the film!

[and3w]

i thought New Orleand was about chicks flashing their tits, yet i've not seen one tit in the news reports!!!!

I've seen loads of them, but they all seem to be black males with trousers round their knees!

Boom boom tish!

[mea culpa]

Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if steel doesn't come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies if U.S. corn and soybeans don't get to the markets.
All I see is opportunity. For Australia.

[and3w]

Yup, who wouldn't swop a dunnydore for a T-Bird?

[mea culpa]

Yup, who wouldn't swop a dunnydore for a T-Bird?
I was actually thinking more about the grain we can export.

[and3w]

I was actually thinking more about the grain we can export.

Surely it doean't corner very well??

Mind you, from what I hear on here, neither does the Holden?!?!!!!

[Tintin]

Yep... we definitely need to send loads of Australian contractors to rebuild the devastated infrastructure. I heard lots of oil platforms were damaged, we should take control of them first.

Also, black people disadvantaged in the USA's deep south? No way mang!

[and3w]

Nice work Kleph, as usual.
I just posted some interesting takes on this (IMHO) which you may find interesting. from the BBC. Just quick takes on what the forign pree are saying and a piece (not as detailed in most ways as your link, but still interesting) on the drainage program which will be needed.
All here (http://forums.zgeek.com/showpost.php?p=673879&postcount=112)

[kleph]

and, if nothing else Katrina is expected to bring one horrible state nightmare (http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/4833066) to an end.

[and3w]

Nah, massive insurance payouts + the ability to end contracts to all your crap players, with a good excuse, so they can't sue you = A much better tem & stadium in a couple of years :-)

[Arcane1]

my take (http://www.kleph.com/blog/)
Excellent piece. I listened to an interview with him about how the sharecroppers were confined to living on the levy, at its widest point being only 8 feet. He also commented that supplies and food was delivered far faster and better without the assistance of helicopters.

[fastfood]

my take (http://www.kleph.com/blog/)

My thoughts exactly!* Nice one.


*If my thoughts were in any way coherent, or not about midget trampolinests, which they are not.

[Sodapop]

Im So Hungover

[lostreality]

i think somebody should sue the american government on behalf of africa for being greedy with the water.

[beowulf437]

I have begun seeing some of the effects of the hurricane where I am. I cross the Mississippi river several times at different points in the course of a day and last night I saw something that I hadn't seen since 1992. It is not unusual to see 4 or 5 tow boats and their barges portaged along the river front but yesterday there were some 30 tow boats portaged and I would venture a guess a mile of barges. This tends to tell me that the ports in New Orleans are not working.

The economy of my little area of the world is depended on metals, oil, and agriculture. It's is also depended on the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans to ship out steel and brass, petrochemicals, and agricultural goods. A single tow boat can move as much as 42 thousand tons so shipping these goods by other methods would prove impraticle.

[and3w]

Looks as if the side effects of this are going to be felt for a long way around, never mind just high petrol prices! I hope your job / area is safe mate.
As I have been trying to do throughout this, I am now going to post some GOOD news from the stricken area...at least I think it is good!

"Throughout the horrors of the past couple of weeks in New Orleans, a number of bars in the French Quarter were determined to stay open and give their regulars a slice of normality.
One Eyed Jack's was another bar determined to remain open
Slumped at the bar, bourbon and Coke in a plastic pint glass, he could have been any drinker.
But my new friend was one of the famous four who hung on to the shutters and fought the storm as Hurricane Katrina tried to close Johnny White's bar for the first time in 17 years.
Why are they still here? Because they have got a job to do.
You cannot really make it out by candlelight, but the torch beam reveals the quest that keeps them all going: a small, cardboard sign behind the bar which simply reads "We never close". So far so good.
They had a hurricane party on the night of the storm and have been working in shifts, around the clock, since then.
Johnny White's has always been an institution on the corner of Bourbon Street and Orleans Street in the French Quarter and, despite it all, they somehow manage to keep cold beer on ice.
Run by alcoholics for alcoholics was how it was described to me, and that is not far off the mark."

More for us alkys here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4224020.stm
(some of the rest of it isn't so good, so it will have to be looked for in this good-news post!)