Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Praise the Lord; Pass the Ammo. posted by Richard Seymour
So, let's get this straight: the stories about rape, murder, carjackings, baby-killings, stabbings, guns, knives, and generalised mayhem and anarchy etc coming from New Orleans are bullshit and bigotry. News viewers have been had, hoodwinked, conned and bamboozled.There has been a run on guns and tear-gas by residents of Baton-Rouge, where many 'refugees' are fleeing to (interesting to see the lexicon of the Third World imported into this topic). They got guns, we got guns, all God's chillun got guns. And all because of false rumours that crime is rising. I watched two people in Baton-Rouge tell news reporters that the sherrif had told them to shoot looters on sight - anyone entering their property, or leaving it bearing any possessions, pop a cap in their asses.
The mayor has heaped on the hysteria too:
Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden, himself an African-American, blamed the state for sending "New Orleans thugs" to be sheltered in Baton Rouge and promptly slapped a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the main River Center shelter, which held 5,000 refugees from the storm.
"We do not want to inherit the looting and all the other foolishness that went on in New Orleans," Holden was quoted as telling the Baton Rouge Advocate in Thursday's edition. "We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other people."
It was left to the Baton Rouge police chief to go on TV later in the day to try to cool the growing hysteria and point out that a single knife had been seized in the shelter. The mayor later said he had been misquoted by the newspaper. (Quoted here)
From his cold, dead hands.
No wonder, with such hysteria whipping around, that troops sent into quosh the New Orleans 'insurgency' were surprised to find despair, not violence. The evacuees are being viciously demonised as looters who swamp any city they go to. They bring "tensions" wherever they go. Point of fact, the only guys from New Orleans who don't appear to be causing any "tensions" when they get sent to another city are the 1,500 Po Po who are being sent on a vacation to Las Vegas.
This is pointedly a failure in media reporting. If there is to be any balance, US news channels should send reporters out to 'embed' themselves with the 'gangs' they keep talking about: "This is Tom Brokaw for CNN, reporting from New Orleans where we have just popped a cap in the ass of a pig motherfucker...." Wouldn't that be newsworthy?