Hurricane Katrina

Hi, guys, this is a transcript from torrentspy.com news section. You know I am not from the USA and I am not fond of it's politics or behaviours at all, but I've been reading these stories for too much to know that internet is a good thing in these cases to spread the voice of common sense and helpfull hands. I don't know what happened in Louisiana and I don't know why in a country that is said to have so much "freedom of speach" nobody in the big channels cover the news properly but the following transcription talks for itself. I saw the videos and really they reached into my heart as I am sure they will reach into yours. Anybody can say whatever they want but something is not right in the most powerfull country of the world, something the rest of us, citizens of the free world recognize as dangerous when you let your own people to the mercy of the elements and send soldiers to die for money. But enough politics, if you live in the usa maybe you can contribute with the red cross or by learning as much as you can about this "strange" situation.

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What the Hell is Going on? - [Help us out]
Submitted by RaiseR RoofeR on 9/9/2005 2:04:12 PM 135 Comments

First of all, I'm aware that this is a "technology news” site, but I am also aware of the sheer number of people that are unaware of what’s going down in Louisiana. Many of you only come here for your news, so that’s why I’m posting this.

I got an e-mail from an IRCSpy/TorrentSpy reader who said the same thing. Why hasn’t anyone been acting on this natural disaster? Why are people still barely getting any help out there? FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) turned away three truckloads of water from Wal-Mart on the second day – well before they even got there! Were they trying to prove something? Not only, they tell coast guards not to give the Jefferson Parish any diesel, and they cut their emergency communication lines. Included in the e-mail were some links to depressing audio and video files. I’ve heard all of these before, but it still manages to shock (and demand answers).

The interview with New Orleans’ mayor Ray Nagin on an AM radio station depicts his struggles and frustration with the lack of anybody doing anything, especially the government.

A Fox News video has reporters Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera asking these same questions. Geraldo is inside the convention centre along with all of the survivors, while Shepard is just outside. With a lack of any food and medication to the survivors, both reporters question their country’s methods. Both the Quicktime and the WMV video can be seen on this site (see "Horror Show"), alongside the Kanye West clips

This is probably the most emotional video, which is a CNN interview with the president of Jefferson Parish. (Wait for loading times) The emergency management individual who runs and is responsible for everything at Jefferson Parish received a phone call from his own mother on Tuesday from a nursing home telling him that there was water all over the place. He replies that he would send people on the way. The day after, she says the same thing, except the water is getting higher. He says the same thing: “Someone is coming to get you”. Thursday: Same call, the water even higher, same answer. Friday his own mother was killed. Drowned to death.

What I ask of you is this: please donate to any kind of a relief fund to help out with this disaster. If you can’t, ask someone (your parents, anyone) if they can pitch in some cash. If you don’t have an organization that you donate to, start here: red cross.

RR

Update: I got a great e-mail from an IRCSpy/TorrentSpy reader, thought I'd give you a snippet:

"I'm stationed at an AF base in NW Louisana. 3-4 days after the hurricane hit, FEMA trucks started rolling in. They still have exclusive use of one gate on and off base. Anyway, they parked probably over 100 18-wheelers in a secure section of our base...but I have yet to see any productivity from it. They are just parked there...not really going in or out. Not transporting anything to or from New Orleans."

Things are seriously disorganized right now, and if anyone is going to point the finger at someone for the disasterous response times, it should be someone within FEMA. Thanks for the e-mail.

torrentspy.com

This is an interesting blog to check http://www.thewashin...ves/000935.html

Check the last message.

This is another article to be read: http://www.editorand...t_id=1001054570

and this one
http://www.audiograp...gd/s1090605.htm

Sorry guys but I cannot believe that so many political correct sites says everything is great over there when you see a video like the one in the first message. It disgusts me enough to post this alternate posibilities. I know we are artists and so here is what other artists are doing:

http://www.threadles...growth:_Katrina

By the way this is not the only catastrophe in the world, much worst things happen every day but maybe if people start to notice what is wrong on this one they will start searching for the "truth" in the other news than the cnn or bbc. "Take control of your channel of information before it takes control of You"

This is too another interesting source http://www.michaelmoore.com/ (but if you are too sensitive avoid 1 photography that shocked me too much, read only the news).

This is an article that I consider of relevant importance. I have some friends in usa that are african american and they feel many times like this article describes "neglected, forgotten". Maybe what is "strange" about katrina is that the actual usa government doesn't care to look in the face of those that aren't at their level of arrogance and intolerance.

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September 8th, 2005 5:53 pm
Katrina, aftermath galvanize black America

By Jesse Washington / Associated Press

NEW YORK - To African-Americans, Hurricane Katrina has become a generation-defining catastrophe - a disaster with a predominantly black toll, tinged with racism. They've rallied to the cause with an unprecedented outpouring of activism and generosity.

The unlikely alliance touched by the disaster is not only donating money but gathering supplies, taking in friends and relatives, even heading south to help shoulder the burden of their people.

"You'd have to go back to slavery, or the burning of black towns, to find a comparable event that has affected black people this way," said Darnell M. Hunt, a sociologist and head of the African American studies department at UCLA.

If the rescue effort had not been so mishandled, and if those who suffered so needlessly had not been so black and so poor, perhaps Hurricane Katrina would have been just another destructive storm, alongside the likes of Charley and Andrew and Hugo. (There is no Keisha or Kwame.)

But Katrina's searing images - linking nature's wrath and the nation's wrongs - have fanned the smoldering resentments of the civil rights, Reaganomic and hip-hop eras all at once.

"Something about this is making people remember their own personal injustices," said author damali ayo, whose book "How to Rent a Negro" takes a satirical look at race relations.

"You don't look at Rodney King and say, 'I remember when I got beat up.' But people remember being neglected, unimportant, overlooked, thought of as 'less than.' That's a very common experience for black people."

Some 71 percent of blacks say the disaster shows that racial inequality remains a major problem in America, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 6-7 among 1,000 Americans; 56 percent of whites feel this was not a particularly important lesson.

And while 66 percent of blacks think the government's response would have been faster if most of the victims had been white, 77 percent of whites disagreed.

Many events have transfixed African-Americans: the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson cases, the killings of icons from Martin Luther King Jr. to Tupac Shakur, the crack cocaine epidemic, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

But Katrina is different. It has opened people's eyes - "The face, the cover has been pulled off the invisible poor," said Rev. Ronald E. Braxton of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. - and it has created a rare opportunity for people of all backgrounds to make a tangible, immediate difference.

Braxton spoke as his congregation loaded a 50-foot tractor-trailer with antacid, diapers, food, water and other supplies destined for AME churches in Jackson, Miss. and Baton Rouge, La.

Before Independence Air volunteered to fly the supplies to the hurricane zone, Braxton turned away volunteers willing to drive 22 hours to Baton Rouge. In addition, he said, his church raised $20,000 last Sunday alone to send to the national AME relief effort.

Individuals have also stepped up. Kimberly Lowe of Philadelphia signed up on that city's Web site to host an evacuee in a spare bedroom.

"They just probably want to talk to regular folks and be in a real home," Lowe said. "There's nothing like being home."

Katrina has spurred other blacks to take crucial roles in relief efforts - and they're in a better position to help than they were even a decade ago, when rap still scared people and being paid $30 million per year to play basketball was beyond imagination.

Now billionaire Mississippi native Oprah Winfrey is bringing her top-rated show to the Katrina zone, famed defense attorney Willie Gary is planning to transport victims in his 737 jet, and rapper Kanye West can excoriate President Bush's response to the hurricane in front of a nationwide audience.

Tavis Smiley has devoted much of his television talk show to Katrina.

"I've seen black folk come together around any number of issues. It's usually either a head or a heart issue," he said. "For example, we came together after the election of 2000, when Bush essentially stole the election. That was a head issue. People were mad. Other issues hit our hearts; O.J. Simpson comes to mind."

With Katrina, "our head is saying we know that what happened here is wrong ... and our hearts at the same time go out to these people because we know, we feel their pain."

Many want to share it.

Hip-hop hitmaker Timbaland said that he is renting trucks, buying clothes and toys and heading "to the trenches" - first stop, the Houston Astrodome. He challenged peers who splurge on jewelry and cars to do the same, because "these people in the dome listen to our music."

"Don't give to no Red Cross, that's the easy way. Not to say anything bad about the Red Cross, but who knows where that money's going," the producer said. "Take your money and do your own thing."

Timbaland estimated he was spending several hundred thousand dollars, up there with Diddy and Jay-Z's half-million each. The donation of time, money and free performances by hip-hoppers is a watershed for what had become a largely apolitical genre.

"This is the most devastating thing to their community they've seen in their lifetime," said the original hip-hop mogul, Russell Simmons. "I've never seen a bigger outpouring of love and giving. I've never seen anything like it."

There is another reason Katrina resonates. Most blacks have family from "down South," a sort of symbolic womb from which black America slowly went its separate ways.

"We are a population in this country of black people, but do we feel like a community?" said ayo, the author. "What really makes a community?"

Shared experiences, perhaps?

"I think this is one," ayo said. Katrina "is at the central core of black culture and American culture ... I hope this is a turning point of some kind, a turning point for creating a larger community."

Another 2 articles:

http://www.boingboin...my_times_c.html

The following one is very stressfull in the comments but a must read:

http://jamie.com/archives/20

This is the link from NOLA.com (Everything New Orleans) with some open letters to Bush and that speaks of the situation New Orleans has to face.

http://www.nola.com/..._04.html#076771