Posted on 09/12/2005 6:13:03 PM PDT by steve-b
By now the images and stories of looting and mayhem in New Orleans--the residents "shopping" for nonessentials in an abandoned Wal-Mart, alleged rapes in the Superdome, a shot fired at a rescue helicopter -- have been burned into the brain of every television watcher and newspaper reader in America. But do they give us an accurate picture of the aftermath of the flood?
In fact, if criminal violence were indeed rampant in New Orleans after Katrina hit (setting aside the taking of food, water, bandages, and other necessities of survival), that would contradict much of what sociologists have learned in a half century of research about such situations. "The evidence is overwhelming," says Enrico Quarantelli, an emeritus professor of sociology and the founding director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, "that in the standard natural disaster or technological disaster"--like a chemical spill -- "you're not going to get looting."...
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
This is just denial. Check the crime stats for NO. Also, realize that the rest of the people in LA were so aware and self protective that people in the Superdome had to be evacuated by air 300 miles to Houston. That is a really odd part of this story. Noone came from the hundreds of LA towns to rescue thior own neighbors. That must have been because of their crime rep.
You sir or madam have written an excellent treatise, pithy and accurate!
Nice job, right in the bull's eye. It illustrates in just a few short lines exactly why I hate repeat HATE clintonian liberals!!!
Who are you gonna believe, a socialist sociologist or your own lyin' eyes?
We have the same argument here
Lying eyes versus good thoughts.
the age old struggle
Heineken, it's all about the beer.
Heineken, it's all about the beer.
Last week's explosion of violence in New Orleans ripped the cover off that fiction. We therefore see the leftists claiming, with straight faces, that it didn't really happen.
that would contradict much of what sociologists have learned in a half century of research about such situations.
Half century is about how long sociology has ceased to even pretend to be an impartial social "science". Indeed since even earlier it has been nothing but an academic branch of outright Marxism and leftism. We could shut down every sociology department in the world, without hurting the overall quality of academia at all. Sociology has become not merely an "infiltrated" academic discipline, it has actually ceased to be an academic discipline altogether.
I was an eyewitness to the "looting party" that went on for several days in Los Angeles.
What would you know? You merely "saw" what was going on; you don't have the benefit of half a century of sociological "theory" to explain what you were seeing!
There's also a popular leftist conspiracy theory right now that says that the snipers and armed attacks on policemen and rescuers in New Orleans are nothing but "rumors" designed to excuse the slow response of the rescuers, and that most of the crime and rape was "exaggerated" or "rumor". You can't trust the media! They are all in cahoots to make Bush look good by lying about "black crime" in New Orleans. It's all so obvious!
Yikes.
Statistics from the lootees should tell us plenty.
Bingo!
If you can't show the math, it's faith, not science.
To even suggest that looting occured is RACISM. It would be
OK to report looting by whites in Jeff Parish, but history has
shown (LA, Detroit, etc) that blacks never loot.
Well, when you have multiple videos of looting from different sources it's hard to ignore...
Actually, the gentlemen is carrying hermetically sealed, not easily contaminated beverages to Our Mother of Perpetual Freeloader's Orphanage to distribute equally among the dehydrated children...
For all we know that could be true. In any case, if your beverage bottle comes into contact with the contaminated water you must wash it carefully with bleach.
He is taking that beer back to the store because the " born on date " had expired.
I was in New Orleans over the Labor Day Weekend doing a security assessment. I can only report on what I saw. There was evidence of looting and stories of rapes. It was damned hard to find a body, but there were some to be found. As for shots fired, everyone had reports, but they had all happened to "some other guy or aircraft"
The one thing I learned for sure was that the media cannot be trusted. Their reports were completely at variance with what I saw. The city was flooded, but not as badly as I had imagined from press reports. I saw no danger in travelling during the daytime. I had concerns about doing the same during darkness, but I doubt any reporters were out there to discover the truth. Rumors were running rampant, and the press was all reporting it as fact. Ever wonder what happened to those 10,000 bodies? Guess the dogs ate them.
The rumors were akin to what I heard when I first arrived at Long Binh. Things were pretty calm there, but boy is it bad up there at Tuy Hoa. When I got to Tuy Hoa they told me that all was quiet, but wait till you get to Pleiku. Once at Pleiku, everyone was relaxed but they sure felt sorry for those poor souls up at Kontum. When I got to Kontum ... well, you get the picture.
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