The idea that Bush bears the majority of blame for New Orleans’ flood control assumes a) it’s largely a federal issue, and b) the problem appeared magically during this administration

a) It is. Look at the FEMA website, for starters.
b) Utter, pathetic non sequitur. Read about the diversion of funding, the emasculation of FEMA under Bush, and the federal response to Louisiana’s exercises and Projections.

I’m talking about FLOOD CONTROL, not DISASTER RELIEF. I wasn’t aware that FEMA or any Fed agency owned the levees.

I guess. And also a hundred and one other stories, to which immediate credence has been given here, and any scepticism about which has been greeted with a chorus of brickbats (pardon the metaphor).

(btw, I was most amused on an earlier thread when an e-mail from a specially smug Dutch person was passed on, recounting the brilliant way Holland had dealt with recent floods—unlike the richest country in the civilised world in the 21st century etc etc etc. No shit! The Dutch do floods! How long have they been practicing – 500 years? Certainly especially hard since 1953. P-lease, gimme a break.)

Räumarbeiten nur für Bush?
Wo der US-Präsident das Katastrophengebiet besuchte, räumten Hilfstrupps vorher ordentlich auf – aber nur dort. Aus Biloxi zitierte ZDF-Korrespondentin Claudia Rüggeberg verzweifelte Einwohner, Bush solle in seinen Limousinen statt lauter Bodyguards und Assistenten lieber Hilfsgüter herbeischaffen.

Entlang seiner Route hätte Räumtrupps vor Bushs Besuch Schutt weggeräumt und Leichen geborgen. Dann sei Bush wieder abgereist “und mit ihm”, so Rüggeberg, “die ganzen Hilfstrupps”. An der Lage in Biloxi habe sich sonst nichts verändert, es fehle an allem.

I’ve got around a gig of the radio traffic as MP3. I wonder if I can find anywhere to host it and share it with the world.

Maybe you should spend less time “listening to the scanner”.

I did not venture an opinion on how such violence affected relief efforts, and I do not do so now. There are, however, important questions to be asked about the size and origin of the criminal segment that terrorised respectable residents. It is time to revisit the whole issue of the criminal culture that destroys the efforts and blights the existences of so many poor/minority Americans, and to break the influence of the deeply counter-productive cry that to do so is racist.

Black Americans in general are most certainly not the originators of extreme black criminality – they are its victims. If criminals are capable of turning with the unparalleled viciousness against defenceless, suffering, trapped fellow humans seen in New Orleans, the “culpability of the larger society” is simply an abstract irrelevance.

Obviously the societal situation in New Orleans contributes to the speed at which things broke down there. In what way do you fantasize that this has nothing to do with human nature? Are you being intentionally obtuse, or did you really think my `in a situation such as…’ somehow ignored that? It seems you wanted to provide support for my statement that this development was at least somewhat predictable. Thanks, but keeping track of the larger context would have improved your post manyfold.

I note that you have no comment about the vast majority of those left in the city, who have clearly at least attempted to make the best of a bad situation. Why was that?

As for your `cancer afflicting urban black america’, this is quite a revealing comment! One might be tempted to conclude that you are externalizing a fantasy world where the drug and violence problems of the endemic urban poor are some how self-created, with no culpability of the larger society. It actually sound like you believe the laughable idea that going in and rounding up the bad guys with this extraordinary opportunity would solve something in the long term. This sort of talk isn’t just race/classist, but also quite stupid.

jet, we will see how how widespread the attacks on relief personnel were when the dust settles, or the water drains. But I’m willing to bet that much of what you heard was rumor.

And the gays attracted the hurricane in, of course. You left that out.

And where are they now? How and where will they seek to restore their criminal existences, with what consequences for refugees and hosts alike? is there a major obligation, responsibility, on the state to take this extraordinary opportunity to root out a significant segment of the cancer that afflicts black urban America? Or will the political attack on the President and the lop-sided analysis of events in New Orleans make that in effect impossible.

At #22: “Although I doubt anyone (and certainly not I) would condone the behaviour of some of the stranded, it is understandable and completely predictable. Let me reiterate… While condeming these actions, and being certain that things would have been better off all around without them, any study of human nature would lead you to predict that this was indeed quite likely to happen in a situation such as the one that developed this last week.”

I do not think “human nature” responsible for the terror. It was the outcome of the society that was New Orleans before the flooding. In Jan to Dec 2004 (2003 in brackets) reported crime rates for the city were:
Murders 265 (274)
Rapes 189 (213)
Armed robbery 1381 (1583)
All violent crimes 4468 (4589)

The trend in 2005 has been upward. As recently as July 24, 2005 ABC-TV ran a report entitled “Weekend of Violence in New Orleans”.

This violence is a central element of New Orleans’ place as a drug capital – a trans-shipment point from South America, and a mecca for domestic supply and on-the-spot consumption.

In Feb 2005 an article in BizNew Orleans analysing the relationships in the latest phase of drug wars in Colombia quoted the US Attorney: “the violence in New Orleans is inextricably tied to drug consumption and the drug trade… Virtually every individual out there who is engaged in firearms violence in New Orleans is doing so because they’re involved in the drug trade” and commented: “If you take drugs out of the equation here in New Orleans, I think you’re talking about another city entirely.”

Then there is the New Orleans of prostitution and pimping, its culture of public drunkenness, its self-promotion as a loose excursion into escape from social control.

None of these disappeared when the middle class population (also heavily black) left the city, but were concentrated, and their pernicious qualities heightened. Yet nobody I have read spouting on New Orleans thinks either about this social reality, or, going deeper, how the respectable poor and sick of New Orleans were obliged to live with it year in year out.