Bloggledygook

Katrina Relief Ramps Up.

The Red Cross is reporting that donations from individuals and institutions are flowing in. Here is a page from FEMA with tips and guidelines for donations.

I'll save my bleg for tomorrow and won't duplicate the fine job being done by Michelle, Glenn, Hugh, Charles and others. Here are some other groups that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Adventist Development & Relief Agency (ADRA) has set up a hurricane relief fund here.

NVOAD has a Disaster News Network page with links and news.

Church World Service has a donation page up.

For you misplaced Anglicans, there is Episcopal Relief & Development.

WritersCafe.net (for the Buddhist poets in the audience)has a donation page for monies to be sent to Americares Domestic Relief Fund.

America's Second Harvest also has a donation page.

Lutheran World Relief is here.

United Jewish Charities has their page here.

Islamic Circle of North America is here.

For us Godless heathens, I suppose there's Morgan Freeman's charity auction at Charity Folks, especially since they're listing some big ticket items. Maybe the auction winners will donate the prizes, too.

More as I find them.

This Ain't No Mardi Gras.

In looking deeper into the story of looting going on in New Orleans, I ran across this excellent post from Rick Moran about the social compact and the breakdown of order. I also found, much to my dismay, that just about the only post taking sort of the same line as mine was, ugh, this one. I am not in good company. Especially in the comments. There is even one comment drawing a parallel between looters and Halliburton. Really.

Allow me to briefly elaborate on my thinking.

If one is pulling food, medicine or other necessities, there is little that can be done. Shooting a food-picker just doesn't make anything better. The rampant theft of non-essentials should be dealt with immediately and under martial orders.

In a comment to my earlier post, Vavoom rightly points out that looting is discouraged to quell the specter of mob violence. But is looting a cause or a symptom? This isn't the LA riots. Maybe there are some trying to take advantage of the situation, but we don't know that they are the majority. I think that Rick is correct when he says that no modern city has experienced what has happened to New Orleans. I also agree that order must be restored as quickly as possible.

The city is literally drowning. Those with dozens of shoes or CD players will be anchored by their own booty. The devastation is so widespread that priorities--rescuing the living, for instance--must be established.

But the looters are not the only problem. The situation in the Superdome is deteriorating  even as a plan to move the refugees to the Astrodome is underway. The people in there are literally living in a cesspool in which there has been growing unrest and violence.

It seems from some of the posts I have read that the frustration and horror attached to this disaster is coming out in the only way that we here, safe in our offices and living rooms can allow it: we witness lawlessness and say that that must be the problem. If it wasn't for looting, things would be so much easier. Maybe it would relieve some pressure, but this is much bigger than just looters. I honestly don't know what percentage the looter comprise. I don't think anybody knows. And I don't understand the fixation.

This isn't a party. It is evidence of a population under extreme stress of such magnitude that we cannot appreciate it. Intellectually, I abhor looting. Pragmatically, I try to put myself in the predicament and try to figure out how I would react. I wouldn't be stealing televisions. I would be trying to find water and food that wasn't poison. If that makes me naive, I'll take the criticism.

MORE: Many of the same people who rightly criticize the media of pushing negative stories (if it bleeds, it leads) are now taking as gospel the reports of rampant anarchy. If we are skeptical of the media's intentions in, say, Baghdad, wouldn't it be a good idea to have some healthy skepticism for New Orleans?

STILL MORE: From Hugh Hewitt:

At the time of the Los Angeles riots, I wrote a piece for the May 3, 1992 Los Angeles Times titled "When Television Throws a Riot." It isn't available in the online archives, but the thrust of it was that televsion coverage can and does communicate invitations to lawlessness which are acted on by people who realize that there is no threat of police arriving and arrest.

This same dynamic seems to be taking over in New Orleans right now, and even though very few folks are watching television with the power out, news still travels instantly, and television producers have got to discipline themselves to refuse to broadcast pictures of and locations of looting, especially in the areas outside of New Orleans. The government cannot enforce such a ban, but it is very much in the interest of the people in the devastated region these media outlets purport to serve to downplay civil unrest. The national shows also need to avoid throwing fuel on the fire. If you want more civil unrest, broadcast pictures of civil unrest and the cell phones and blackberries will do the rest.

Yes. Tell me how broadcasting every instance of degradation contributes to anything but further panic. The news of this can wait for calmer days.

 

The Big Easy On Better Days.

For some beautiful photos of New Orleans the way it was before Katrina, visit Sobek, who has posted an Elegy.

h/t Charles.

Hurricane Relief Blog Day.

Thursday, September 1, 2005 has been designated as a day of blogging about and for hurricane relief. The Truth Laid Bear has picked up the charge and will be setting up a registration page. If you're a blogger who wants to participate, check out the Bear for particulars. If you're a reader and want to contribute, check out the many sites for suggested charities.

You can see the many blogs jumping into the fray here.

I have no doubt that the American people will rise to this challenge in much the same way we have always done: with solidarity, strength and humanity.

It seems as if disaster and darkness has been coming almost non-stop. There are appropriate times for ideology and politics. This isn't one of them. Many, many people are dead or homeless, one of America's jewels may be gone from us forever, and a vital and rich part of our country has met with wholesale catastrophe.

Remember that this is not just a disaster for New Orleans, but for Mississippi and Alabama also. We are likely to see repercussions from this for a long time to come.

Katrina Looting. Who Cares?

Does anybody really think that breaking into a Winn Dixie to get some stale bread or sour milk in the midst of a catastrophe is a capital crime?

I know that looting is a serious thing in disasters. I have heard some fairly bad stories around September 11 as well as from just about every crisis in human history.

Take a look at just about every bloody disaster movie ever made. Doesn't somebody starting burning things to stay warm, raiding grocery stores to stay alive or lifting clothes to battle exposure? I've seen some photos, and obviously there are some who are taking some kind of advantage, but really, who's going to fence a TV they dragged through three feet of sewage?

Katrina Blame Starts.

Sooner or later, some type of self-proclaimed expert crusader was going to try and levy some blame for Hurricane Katrina, which is a lot like trying to assess blame for the sun setting every night.

It was nip and tuck for a while there, but the environmentally superstitious narrowly won out over the religiously stunted in getting out the very first instance of shameful exploitation of a natural disaster.

So Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. beat out his pathological cousins in the radical Islamic or right-wing Christian camps who see God's hand in every instance of earthly damage. If you can believe Baby Bobby, Katrina was caused by Haley Barbour and the scuttling of the Kyoto protocols. Not kidding:

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.

So the tsunami was evidence of Allah's wrath for the entertainment of infidel tourists and Katrina is Gaia's revenge for the election of George W. Bush. Mother Nature is a Democrat, I guess. 

It's not worth arguing with the likes of Kennedy, because as his own type of zealot, he has made up his mind and is frankly too stupid to allow for the possibility that any explanation might not fit into his cherished dogma. It's no use to point out that estimates of damage are much greater today because of the concentration of people and developed properties near coastal areas, or to point out that there is no concrete evidence that there is increased hurricane activity (in fact William Gray points out that hurricane and cyclone activity has actually decreased slightly). Hurricane activity comes in decades-long cycles between more active and passive periods.

It is worth pointing out that the likes of RFK Jr. smack cosily next to the stupid Imams and stupid Pat Robertson in trying to turn a natural disaster into a political gain.

RFK Jr. You're no Jack Kennedy.

Jude Wanniski, RIP.

Jude Wanniski, supply-side pioneer and polemicist has died of a heart attack. As an adviser to Ronald Reagan, Wanniski designed the tax cuts that would make Reagan the darling of the right and ensure a long, historic economic boom.

A man gifted with a sharp intellect and prone to strong, controversial positions, Wanniski joined the anti-war front and published numerous "memos" attacking pundits and neocons for fomenting war.

I read him regularly back before September 11, 2001, but honestly, lost my taste for him as he seemed reflexively against any sort of US reprisal for the attacks. In particular, I found myself mystified with his swallowing of the sanctions canard and his romance with Louis Farrakhan. Also mystifying was his contention that, "If you get right down to it, the only reason U.S. troops are in Saudi Arabia is to protect Israel." No matter that the US was in Saudi Arabia to protect, uhm, Saudi Arabia. Further, he considered Yasser Arafat "a true peacemaker."

Wanniski was 69.

Mother Sheehan Hangs Up On NPR

Yesterday on "Talk of the Nation," a quite fair and worthwhile talk-in show on NPR, Cindy Sheehan was the marquee guest along with other parents of fallen soldiers. When host Neal Conan pressed her as to her son's choice in enlisting, she became agitated and belligerent. She the started to feign connection problems and, after what seemed to be prodding from someone with her, hung up.

You can listen to her segment here. I'm interested in hearing any opinions about this. For my part, I found the segment interesting, in that Sheehan's performance was both disjointed and coached. She's being handled, and not very well.

Conan continued with three other parents, Gary Qualls, Christine Dybevik and Sharon Westbrook. Their children's names were:

Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Qualls, who died in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 16, 2004

Marine Lance Cpl. Gary Van Leuven, who died in Husaybah, Iraq, on April 17, 2004

Marine Pfc. Jason Poindexter, who died in Ramadi, Iraq, on Sept. 12, 2004

This is minor news--if at all--except to reinforce, for me at least, that Ms Sheehan is a not-so-articulate front of a thin and bankrupt movement.

Carnival Of The Liberated.

Dave Schuler continues his weekly roundup of bloggers from Iraq and Afghanistan at Dean's World. As usual, it makes for fascinating reading.

Good News From Iraq #34.

Arthur Chrenkoff has his latest round up of a lot of positives in Iraq you may not be reading about. Damn, I'm gonna miss him.