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A Perfect Storm of Lawlessness: New Orleans’ vicious looters aren’t the real face of the city’s poor
City Journal ^ | September 1, 2005 | Nichole Gelinas

Posted on 09/03/2005 7:59:24 AM PDT by billorites

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To: Alberta's Child
I think it may be appropriate at this point to put Mr. Sharpton's FULL quote in context. From the transcript: "A lot of people are just down downright larcenists and there should be no excuse for that. Some people are just traumatized. You know, you are in an environment where people are watching people die, where people have had to urinate on themselves for two or three days. The stench, I‘m told, is something that you can‘t even describe. So, people in that kind of environment are responding in all kinds of insane ways. It doesn‘t justify TVs being stolen, but clearly to get water and to get food and to get milk for babies, even though it is not refrigerated, certainly, you could call that looting. The ones that are looting are people there that work paycheck to paycheck, paid their taxes for an infrastructure that collapsed on them while pharaoh diddled in his suburban Rome in Crawford, Texas." (Emphasis mine)
21 posted on 09/03/2005 8:30:30 AM PDT by dpear
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To: billorites
Now, those uncoordinated police officers are themselves victims—according to multiple accounts, dead officers, their bodies marked with gunshot wounds, litter the city.

I have not heard this reported yet, except for an officer getting shot.

22 posted on 09/03/2005 8:33:45 AM PDT by Popman (In politics, ideas are more important than individuals.)
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To: billorites

I was hoping the Guard would shoot and kill all the rapist looters er.... I mean "liberation fighters". Scuse me Al.


23 posted on 09/03/2005 8:36:26 AM PDT by Eternal_Bear
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To: dpear

I should have been replying to bilorites. My bad.


24 posted on 09/03/2005 8:41:56 AM PDT by dpear
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To: Last Dakotan

I agree. Excellent article, and now that we have the National Guard on the streets, order will be restored!


25 posted on 09/03/2005 8:43:50 AM PDT by Frank_2001
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To: Brilliant
This goes beyond revolving-door sentencing. The people out there shooting at rescuers, burning buildings and raping babies needed to be SHOT a long time ago. The NO police clearly are not going to do that. Now there is a dangerous urban combat mess left for the US Military to clean up, all the time victims suffer and die, and race baiters and drama queens litter the airways, hoping for the suffering and death to continue as long as possible for the TV cameras.

Soon all the true victims will be either evacuated or dead, then the punisher can do his grim job and disinfect this city.

26 posted on 09/03/2005 8:48:26 AM PDT by Sender (Team Infidel USA)
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To: Voltage
There was no looting, no one fired on those trying to help, no arson, no deaths.

I lived through that, and have many stories to tell. Oh yes, there where gangs of people roaming around, just looking for something to do to help.

We saved my brother's house by intensively sandbagging using an army of volunteers that just showed up.

I pulled "pump watch" in the middle of the night and heard on the radio at 3 AM that volunteers were urgently needed in a certain area of town. I had just moved from a major urban area so I thought "no way". An hour later they put out the call for no more as they had too many people there.

The National Guard showed up to provide security, but usually carried no weapons during the day.

27 posted on 09/03/2005 9:01:54 AM PDT by Last Dakotan
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To: billorites
To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man, it's an opportunity to get back at society

Yes, New Orleans has a lot of criminals and has done a poor job of controlling them, but the truth is that crime flourishes amongst blacks in part because they tolerate it, and they tolerate it because they see it as a revolt against white America. Here is a dirty little secret that most Americans don't know: the majority of reported black violence over the last few decades has been directed at whites. Articles like this, whose message is just "it's the criminals" are politically correct averting of the eyes from the deeper issues. What you're seeing in New Orleans is the real face of multiculturalism when authority breaks down.

A few month's ago I posted the following reply on a thread here:

Exactly. There has been a lot of loose talk about America being an empire, it is an empire, but an internal one, a culture-less collection of disparate peoples held together by force and money, and when the money gives out, people will be stunned by how quickly it all falls apart.

And got the following resonse:

A bit harsh don't you think. America does have a distinctive culture and national identity forged through its institutions, laws, people, history, and the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I don't buy your premise that America is held together by force and money.

28 posted on 09/03/2005 9:18:05 AM PDT by jordan8
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To: jordan8

"Here is a dirty little secret that most Americans don't know: the majority of reported black violence over the last few decades has been directed at whites."

I had not heard that. Any source for your statement?


29 posted on 09/03/2005 9:24:10 AM PDT by Archidamus (We are wise because we are not so highly educated as to look down on our laws and customs)
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To: Brilliant
Louisiana has some of the harshest sentencing guidelines in the nation, if not THE harshest. The automatic sentence for 1st degree rape, the sort that covers most rapes on the street, is life without parole. For 2cnd degree rape, the minimum is 40 years, I'm not sure about parole. Most of the prisoners in the state's chief prison, Angola, will die there.
30 posted on 09/03/2005 9:24:28 AM PDT by jordan8
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To: Archidamus

Google "The Color of Crime".


31 posted on 09/03/2005 9:26:23 AM PDT by jordan8
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To: Sender
"needed to be SHOT a long time ago"

Our society (thanks soccer moms) is far to tolerant of it's degenerate gangsta sub-culture. We make it's more talented members wealthy heros and role models, via rap music, movies and sports. In many ways the gangsta sub-culture was brought to us by Hollywood and the NBA, bleeding heart soccer moms tolerate it at the voting booth. Maybe now that we can see exactly what is in store for all of us, soccer moms get raped first, maybe we as a society will become far less tolerant. One can only hope.

32 posted on 09/03/2005 9:26:46 AM PDT by jpsb
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To: billorites
Excellent analysis! Especially this:

In truth, the looters, rapists, and murderers who have terrorized New Orleans since Monday began their post-Katrina reign of terror a full day before the situation grew truly desperate—and it was their increasingly lawless behavior that kept willing but unarmed professional and volunteer rescue workers away from the city and from the poor people who needed saving

We need to keep repeating that truth over and over and over again -- because the MSM in their total orgasm of blame-Bush frenzy is trying to obscure that fact.

We're hearing --unconfirmed reports-- that bus convoys coming to rescue people from the Super Dome had to be stopped because of threats by thugs that they would murder people inside if the buses arrived.

How in God's name are you supposed to effect a fast, efficient rescue of these people when thugs are shooting at the rescuers?

And can you imagine the media's uproar if helicopters had tried to land earlier, without the area being secured first --and then people had run headlong into the chopper blades in their rush to get there first?

33 posted on 09/03/2005 9:29:30 AM PDT by shhrubbery! (The 'right to choose' = The right to choose death --for somebody else.)
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To: Alberta's Child
...and I'd be shocked if more than 20% of them have ever filed a tax return.

Is there the slimest of possibilities that these figures are anywhere in the public domain ?

Nam Vet

34 posted on 09/03/2005 9:29:55 AM PDT by Nam Vet (There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.)
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To: billorites
Thursday night, when we had seen the magnitude of the breakdown in civil order in New Orleans, I told my wife that, if the citizens left in New Orleans were really interested in restoring civil order so that rescue efforts could proceed, when the sun comes up Friday morning, we would see some terrorizers hanging from lampposts, trees, and bridge abuttments. It didn't happen. I guess that says something. Instead, able bodied people sat on their duffs and complained about delays in relief efforts.
35 posted on 09/03/2005 9:32:42 AM PDT by Daveinyork
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To: billorites
Katrina didn’t turn innocent citizens into desperate criminals. THIS is the most important point of the article!

This week’s looters (not those who took small supplies of food and water for sustenance, but those who have trashed, burned, and shot their way through the city since Monday) are the same depraved individuals who have pushed New Orleans’ murder rate to several multiples above the national average in normal times.

Excellent article!

36 posted on 09/03/2005 9:32:43 AM PDT by Citizen Soldier
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To: billorites

This is a good time to re-read the account of the over-throw of Sodom and Gomorrah - - - since it makes clear that the sexual depravity usually attached to these city names was only one facet of a much larger problem. People tend to forget the other elements of the story.

Consider how easily the description of Lot's fear at the fate of the visitors if they were to remain outside his house lines up with the fear of New Orleans residents for the threatening behavior of their neighbors. It is not much of a stretch of the imagination to translate this sequence of events (vs 1-11) to the Superdome, as described in recent reports!

Then look at the previous chapter, where Abraham bargains for the sparing of the cities (Gen 18:16-32), and the Lord agrees to spare them if even 10 righteous individuals can be found in them.

This was not a community of people merely with bent sexual appetities - - - such were only symptoms of the larger problem of people entirely ruled by their appetites, whether for weird sex, entitlement to a life of plunder-supported idleness, storehouses full of plundered booze, weapons, and other goodies, or the thrill of slaughtering neighbors and raping their children.

Note, too, the sad condition of the "closest approximation to righteousness" available: Lot, who offers his daughters to the mob in the name of hospitality, and has to be dragged reluctantly out of the doomed city, even then begging to be released into another nearby city that, from the angel's response, was not much better than Sodom (but which was spared for the sake of Lot). How familiar all this sounds, after the reports of the past few days!

Finally, in looking back at these events, the prophets identified the wider issues, e.g.,

Ezekiel 16:49
Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

New Orleans is not the only far-gone liberal plantation cruising for a bruisuing; it just got the distinction of being one of the first to have its vulnerabilities exposed by the turn of events.


Genesis 19:1-19
1 Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground. 2 And he said, “Here now, my lords, please turn in to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.”
And they said, “No, but we will spend the night in the open square.”

3 But he insisted strongly; so they turned in to him and entered his house. Then he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. 4 Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.”

6 So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, 7 and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! 8 See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.”

9 And they said, “Stand back!” Then they said, “This one came in to stay here, and he keeps acting as a judge; now we will deal worse with you than with them.” So they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near to break down the door. 10 But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. 11 And they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door.

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed

12 Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Son-in-law, your sons, your daughters, and whomever you have in the city—take them out of this place! 13 For we will destroy this place, because the outcry against them has grown great before the face of the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had married his daughters, and said, “Get up, get out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!” But to his sons-in-law he seemed to be joking.

15 When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, “Arise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city.” 16 And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife’s hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. 17 So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he[a] said, “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed.”

18 Then Lot said to them, “Please, no, my lords! 19 Indeed now, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have increased your mercy which you have shown me by saving my life; but I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die. 20 See now, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.”

21 And he said to him, “See, I have favored you concerning this thing also, in that I will not overthrow this city for which you have spoken. 22 Hurry, escape there. For I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

23 The sun had risen upon the earth when Lot entered Zoar. 24 Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the LORD out of the heavens. 25 So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
26 But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

27 And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD. 28 Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. 29 And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.


37 posted on 09/03/2005 9:36:51 AM PDT by Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek
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To: billorites
I believe what we are seeing is the condensation or compression of what took place on a daily basis in New Orleans.

In otherwords, much of the crime we are seeing - rapes, robberies, arsons, assaults, and murders - would have taken place anyway, just spread out over the city. New Orleans is now being hyper-reported, with each bit of criminal news repeated and magnified. Fires that would have been put out by local resources, now burn out of control. Gunshots that would scarcely draw attention on a normal night in the city now cause rescue efforts to be suspended. Yeah, the looting appears to be bad, but I have seen that same Winn-Dixie shown dozens of times by different news outlets.

Unfortunately for my supposition, all of New Orlean's websites are down, so I can't show statistics. No, I don't think what we are seeing is a reflection of the city's poor, but a magnified version of the worst of it.

38 posted on 09/03/2005 9:38:36 AM PDT by Ol' Sox
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To: liberty71

Great editorial


39 posted on 09/03/2005 9:58:35 AM PDT by beeler ("When you’re running down my country, Hoss you’re walking on the fighting side of me.")
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To: Montfort

Nonsense!


40 posted on 09/03/2005 10:06:46 AM PDT by Mister Da (Nuke 'em til they glow!)
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