America's Baghdad - New Orleans

[Kiwon]

A protester holds a sign that reads, "America's Baghdad." 27 people have been killed in New Orleans so far this year. Still, that's well off the pace of the record of 425 in 1994.

Reuter's reports: "Several thousand people marched on city hall last month to demand that Mayor Ray Nagin and other officials take action.

(break)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune found that 3,000 arrested suspects were released in 2006 because prosecutors failed to indict them within the required 60 days. In January 2007, 580 were released for the same reason, the newspaper said.

(break)

Police blame inept prosecutors for the revolving door; prosecutors say their hands are bound by poor police work. Both say a big problem is that Katrina destroyed New Orleans' police lab, forcing them to borrow facilities to process evidence.

Even before Katrina, a local study found that in 2003-2004 only 12 percent of those arrested for murder went to prison.

(break)

The larger problem is that New Orleans has too many social problems - drugs, poverty, broken families, poor education - all present before Katrina.

A recent murder encapsulated the difficulties. After a 17-year-old was beaten up, his mother gave him a gun and told him to get revenge, and he killed the boy he fought with.

When police went to his home to investigate, they found the mother with cocaine and a family photo on display of the son with a gun in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.

"For us to correct this, we have to look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is our education system," Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in an interview."
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America spends more money on educating one child than any other country. Yet, the cure for social ills is always more money for education. That's always the big hook to get states into legalized gambling. So what's the payoff in New Orleans? Never ending welfare and corruption to high heaven.

I don't want to offend, but New Orleans is a cesspool and has been for decades. Why spend billions more of taxpayer dollars on levees? Why not be true environmentalists and let the Mississippi River naturally reclaim its share of the land?

Former New Orleans residents, get out and stay out. Discover what it's like to live in a real functioning community where the state and local governments actually work. Leave America's Baghdad for good! :x

(Sorry for the rant)

[SkinBasket]

When police went to his home to investigate, they found the mother with cocaine and a family photo on display of the son with a gun in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.

"For us to correct this, we have to look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is our education system," Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in an interview."

I think this quote demonstrates real the root of the problem. Everyone down there wants to blame someone else for everything that's wrong. From the environmental impact of the city's very existence to the the social and racial issues, the rebuilding, piss poor government, hurricane preparedness, crime, education, yadda yadda yadda.

It's always someone else's fault and nothing gets done. It started in the hours after the storm hit and continues now, a year and a half later. How the hell does the policeman get off blaming the education system for a drug-whore mother who has raised her child to be a gang banger? Was a teacher supposed to somehow magically fix the abysmal extent to which this kid's life was fucked up by his lazy ignorant mother? Hell, the kid probably hasn't seen the inside of a school in years.

The root of the "problem" is the people, from the crackwhore moms to the corrupt, inept government employees, not any "system." They had a chance to change direction, to at least try to create something different - which would almost by default be better - and they chose to stay the course with both their rebuilding plans and their government.

From the getgo New Orleans was the City of Victims, even before Katrina. Now, they're still more interested in continuing to play the victim than doing anything about it. If I see one more "Katrina survivor" on TV crying about how no one cares and it's still a disaster down there, I'm going to find that person, drive them down there, hand them a hammer, and tell them to get to work because the magic elves they expect to magically rebuild an entire region don't seem to exist.

[Kiwon]

Director Spike Lee was named Tuesday as a winner of the annual George Polk Awards for his documentary on life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Lee, the director of "Malcolm X" and "Do the Right Thing," was honored for "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," along with its producer, Sam Pollard. They won the award for documentary television for illustrating evidence of the government's poor performance in the aftermath of the August 2005 storm.
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Yes, we have to reinforce the message of the system's injustice and bias as if New Orleans was singled out for a natural disaster. It's irrelevant that the whole Gulf Coast was affected or that the state and local governments were dysfunctional. The only thing that matters is that the federal government was unprepared to care for people in the way that they expected.

I wonder if Spike has evidence that the levees were blown up or that there were sharks swimming in the streets or that there were 10,000 dead bodies in the Superdome. American journalism hit rock bottom by blindly reporting such garbage.

The Koreans around me began to ask, "Why does the American government mistreat Black people? Why aren't they helping the people of New Orleans?"

[mraynrand]

there were 10,000 dead bodies in the Superdome.

I think this was in reference to Jim Mora's final season as coach.

[SkinBasket]

Ha! Very nicely played!

[Jimx29]

oh don't worry fat Tuesday is still going off without a hitch :roll:

[KYPack]

NO has long been a scum pit of violence and corruption.

Then, the hurricane hit, and shone a light on NO.

The town was pretty miserable before the disaster, now more people are aware of all that places problems.


Spike Lee is a miserable little turd, I wouldn't listen to anything he's got to say. It's all racist bullshit.

[SkinBasket]

Spike Lee is a miserable little turd, I wouldn't listen to anything he's got to say. It's all racist bullshit.

You mean Dick Cheney didn't drive that barge into the levee? I don't know man, Spike's got the first-hand accounts of racist uneducated homeless crackheads to back him up. What you got?

[Kiwon]

Ah, Skin, you're missing the point. The root of the problem is the educational system.

If the government would only spend more money then the racist homeless crackheads wouldn't be uneducated.

[mraynrand]

From Suzanne Fields:

"Hurricane Katrina need not have been the tragedy it was. In 1977, the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to build large steel and concrete "sea gates" below sea level to prevent hurricane force winds driving storm surges into Lake Pontchartrain, overflowing into low-lying New Orleans. Such gates have been enormously successful in the Netherlands. But the Environmental Defense Fund, which had been a party to the lawsuit leading to the banning of DDT, persuaded a judge that the sea gates would discourage the mating of a certain fish species. Fishy romance trumped the lives of 3,100 Orleanians. "If we had built the barriers, New Orleans would not be flooded," says Joe Towers, who was counsel for the New Orleans District of the Corps."

[Zool]

Great, so now we have educated homeless crackheads?

[SkinBasket]

Great, so now we have educated homeless crackheads?

Not yet, but they're working on it.

[Zool]

You mother f'ers only gave me 1/3245ths of your monthly salary in change? You cheap bastards.