[Sin]

Originally Posted by Carrie

I wasn't comparing homes to buildings... I was thinking more on the scale of "disaster to disaster". Hopefully this one won't come close to the 3,000 or so we lost back on 9/11, but you never know.

And yeah, I'm generalizing a bit, but it's more than just "a few". Gangs in the streets, gangs in the Dome, hell even the police are looting. It's some major differential shift in thinking. You didn't see this kind of thing on 9/11, and if you want "like kind" disaster, you didn't see it after the tsunami either. (I did hear of some people trying to lure away kids to sell them though, that's the only bad thing I heard.)

I'm not sure how "slut" plays into this thread, the term seems somewhat out of place, for both the subject at hand, and that this is an adult board... we're all sluts!

Anyways, here's my response to this subject, (my first reply at least)

----With 9-11 the people were not stranded and stuck there. I watched the news, hundreds of thousands of people ran, and then walked, for their lives. They did so because they could. With Katrina, (And I'm not talking about prior the hurricane hit, I'll get to that in a minute) once the hurricane had hit, the disaster was not over... in fact, the hurricane itself has been probably the least damaging aspect of this whole thing. The two are incomparable, so I think it is silly to even try. With 9/11, there was still a hierarchy, people still had someone in charge, NYPD, the Fire Dept, Search & Rescue workers, the Gov't was on the issue & the president made a statement within a matter of hours. With Katrina, it took about 2 days before Bush decided to so much as acknowledge what was going on, and by that point it was too late.

Lets ignore the news for a minute, ignore the color of these people's skin, ignore their location, lets take just a couple minutes & acknowledge them as fellow human beings. Sit and think for a minute, if that were you down there. Don't give me the "coulda woulda shoulda evacuated" either... I'll use Osiris & WT as an example. They didn't have much choice about staying down there, their car was in the shop. Or maybe you are an employee in a hospital, whatever scenario suits your fancy. Meanwhile, basically everybody else has evacuated... including the officials who usually keep things in order. Hurricane hits, hopes lift.. "Yay I survived!" and the survivors prepare for the process of rebuilding their lives to start... Then all of a sudden they get told they're not allowed to leave the Superdome, it isn't safe. Levees have broken, and suddenly their hopes are drowned under flooding waters. Fine, they have to stay, they're disappointed & now there's 2 disasters to contend with when they finally get out of there. Picture's looking pretty bleak. Word starts up that evacuation is underway though, but the people in the Superdome however, are safe for the time being & rescue is being performed on those who are still in imminent danger of drowning from the flooding which is still occurring in this timeline. Meanwhile, amongst the hordes of innocents (and yes I believe at this point there were hordes of innocents) there is looting going on. Two types of looters in my opinion, the sensible ones & the stupid ones... the sensible looters are the ones who go for things like food & water, not drugs alcohol & guns. (those are the stupid looters) Chances are, a good chunk of the stupid looters were law abiding citizens until they figured there were no laws to abide because anybody who would've enforced any laws, had already left the city. Like kids in a candy store when the store clerk's back is turned.

Now you're an innocent amongst the many, people are getting hungrier, food is increasingly scarcer, water is all around you but nearly none of it is drinkable. Better grab a gun to protect yourself from that other crazy over there with his gun, with no food...by now all you're doing is trying to survive. When will they be able to evacuate you & all of your family? Right now they're still too busy rescuing people off rooftops. Its going to be a while. If you scarf down your food & water, then the risk of being shot or mugged or beaten for it is decreased because its no longer visibly in your hands. But who knows how long it'll be before you get any more food or more importantly, water... while you're waiting to be rescued? There's still no supplies coming in, everybody's still preoccupied with getting the hundreds of people off rooftops etc.

All it takes is one... one guy to fire shot(s) at the helicopter... more than likely a drug addict that was in dire need of a fix, or maybe he'd gotten a fix & the helicopter wasn't really a helicopter in his mind but some giant spaceship filled with aliens, armed aliens, come to wage war on Earth. (You never know with drug addicts) All of a sudden, all rescue efforts are aborted & now the few National Guard and NOPD who are there in the city are told Martial law is in effect. You've survived the hurricane, the flood, only to have guns aimed in your face when all you were doing was trying to survive. Maybe you're in a different part of the city than where the shots were fired at the helicopter, and have no idea what happened... because you have no newspapers, no television, no electricity, no internet... no way of knowing what is happening in the other parts of your own town. Just, out of nowhere rescue is aborted & the guns are on you?

Well, as if that wasn't hard enough of an ordeal to go through, lets toss in the news of another hurricane brewing in the atlantic, and it already has a name, "Leo"

---Now I agree most wholeheartedly that the situation down there is atrocious, but if you think I'm pulling this out of my ass, you're dead wrong. I've monitored this thing from Monday all through this past week. No, my sources are not the news.

http://www.wwltv.com/forums/ --If you go there, you'll see a forum created that's titled "Hurricane Katrina" --It is FULL (and that's an understatement) of friends, family, etc etc of the people who are IN & AROUND the New Orleans area, through most of the week about 80% of it was questions "Help me find this person" and "Any word on this area" ...etc etc. I utilized it myself to find out information about the area where Osiris & WT live, and what kind of damage it had sustained. If it had not been for the people on that forum who kept on trying & trying & trying & trying & trying to reach their loved ones by cell phone, and finally managed to get through, I wouldn't have known what type of shape Hammond was in. The reports in there, are first hand reports on the damages sustained, by people in that area, & other areas.

http://ods.org:8003/fema --If you throw that into your media player, you can listen live to the National Guard communications. In the past week, you all really do not want to know what I have heard. Some of the more mild things I have heard, is listening to Guards quit, say that they can't do this anymore & give up. Another one in Hammond had a homeowner at gunpoint, and was requesting backup. The homeowner had done nothing more than step outside of his own house, past the curfew. As an American, would you tolerate having guns in your face simply for opening your door & stepping onto your front porch? Land of the free babe, land of the free... (listening right now, hearing a lot of tired voices, and it sounds like there's some females on the lines for encouragement, because every so often a woman's voice will come through saying "You guys are doing a great job, keep up the good work" etc.)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/ -- Has links to a live streaming webcam in the core of the New Orleans area, and yes it has been online this past week. That's a journal of the guys over at DirectNic, they chose to stay and keep their servers running. They've been blogging since before the hurricane hit. If you go back to the beginning & read through, it paints a frighteningly detailed picture of the reality of what has been going on down in NOLA that the news won't show you. Just yesterday 2 officers committed suicide. Osiris told me today that word was another officer had done the same, in his area.

And unfortunately, this is just the New Orleans area, not the other areas that were hit by the hurricane... I have another friend that I spoke to last night, she has a 6 month old baby and today is her 1 yr anniversary, she's completely in shock, they have no food, no water, nothing is coming into those areas because the situation in NOLA got so bad, Gas is being siphoned by everybody, she saw a woman shoot a guy dead for trying to siphon gas from her car, unfortunately she's in so much shock that she can't wrap her mind around the concept of doing anything to help herself. They supposedly can't leave the area, and refuse to try, but staying there is basically killing them because they have no food & no gas to go anywhere to get food, because gas is rationed down to $5 a person and $5 gas doesn't get them very far.

This is a fucking huge post,and it doesn't even -begin- to cover what's been going on the past week.

As far as help going to those who deserve it, I'm undecided. I think there's a lot of bad people yes, I think there's a lot of good people who were driven to do bad things, and I also think there's a lot of good people, in those thousands that they finally got out of the city. Unfortunately, it is going to be pretty much impossible to sort them out, unless the crowds of witnesses will point out the 'bad guys' who did the raping & beating. This is unlikely though.... especially if once the lot of them gets out of the city, they all decide it was racially oriented.

The whole overall situation is not even close to being 'over' ...not by a long shot. More post coming after reboot lol