The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'new orleans'
2005/9/1
Things are getting really bad in New Orleans: more than 80% of the city is underwater, thousands are believed dead, and reports now say that New Orleans is to be abandoned. Armed looters are roaming the streets, and if these reports are anything to go by, a lot of them are New Orleans police gone rogue. Meanwhile, attempts to evacuate stranded refugees have been disrupted when shots were fired at rescue helicopters, presumably by post-apocalyptic warlords defending their turf.
And it emerges that money intended for raising New Orleans' flood defences was diverted to the Iraq war.
2005/8/31
Reportage of Hurricane Katrina cast a disturbing light on race relations in Louisiana: in news reports, black people "loot", while white people "find".
A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005.
Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...An alternative explanation could be that the reports, though, came from two different press agencies (AP and AFP, respectively), and could reflect one having more explicitly nonjudgmental style policies than the other, as opposed to racism, subconscious or otherwise. One wonders whether, if they picked up any random reports of black and white people salvaging food, they would show such a racial bias of judgment, or whether these two reports were juxtaposed by coincidence or deliberate selection.
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