Blog of Q's

From Gerald L. Campbell: Racism, class, indifference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The talk about
looting is a deliberate distraction. For God’s sake, look: The city has been destroyed!
All this talk is only a cover to hide what is really going on. Let people loot.
It simply doesn’t matter. Let’s focus on what does matter — the need to engage
the tragedy directly.
_____________________________________________________________________
By Bill Van Auken, 2 September 2005, Various sources, New orleans, courtesy
AP

New Orleans descended into abject social misery and chaos Thursday as
survivors of Hurricane Katrina, left abandoned to their fate for four days,
literally began dying in the city’s sewage- and trash-filled
streets.
…
Many of those waiting to
be evacuated have no water and have not eaten for days. Crowds chanted as
television cameras filmed the scene, “We want, we want help,” while others
begged, “Don’t leave us here to die.” Many cursed local, state and federal
officials for what has emerged as criminal neglect and incompetence from the
White House on down. CNN reporter Chris Lawrence reported seeing “many,
many bodies” both inside and outside the convention center, where the elderly
and the sick have dropped dead in the intense heat.
…
There were reports of deaths inside the crowded stadium,
including the suicide of one man who hurled himself from a balcony after
learning that his home had been destroyed. Those who went into the
stadium were not allowed to leave. Many complained that they were being “treated
like animals” and that the facility was “worse than a prison.” Little or no
information was provided to these storm refugees.

Gordon Russell of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune noted pointedly that these hellish conditions “stood
in stark contrast to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New Orleans
Centre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could get in lounged in relative
comfort.” A line of state police armed with assault rifles drove the crowds of
homeless refugees back from the entrance to the facility.

Russell continued, “A few blocks farther
away, guests were being fed ‘foie gras and rack of lamb’ for dinner, according
to a photographer who stayed there, while the masses, most of them poor, huddled
in the Dome.”
…