Bush Is Guilty of Negligent Genocide in New Orleans

[Stephanie]

I don't know how he dares to show his face there.

[Kool Kitty]

1. Fuck this bastard.

Why didn't he go to the gathering that Honore and Nagin and the others went to? Becuase it was not a hand-picked audience and he might have heard a discouraging word. He spoke at a school with his usual hand-picked audience and gave a nearly incoherent little speech. I hope he rots in hell, and I don't even believe in hell.

[porphyrian]

2. At least, the fucking traitor. - n/t

[indepat]

21. Everyone in government who undermine the Constitution by unconstitutional means, be it by executive,

legislative, or judicial fiat, are fuc*ing traitors imnsho.

[porphyrian]

22. Ab-so-lutely. -n/t

[jobycom]

3. Negligent, Hell.

He withheld resources before, during, and after, all to punish Blanco and Barbour for refusing to turn their states over to his control. That wasn't negligent, that was first degree murder.

[Stephanie]

5. I stand corrected.

You're right.

[nofurylike]

28. yes!!! eom

[Sapphire Blue]

4. A more appropriate photo, courtesy of Swamp Rat:

[Terran]

6. Negligent? yes. Genocide?

No. Please don't misuse that word.

[Stephanie]

7. 1800 dead

What is the threshold?

[Marrah_G]

13. 1800 of many different backgrounds

Go read up on Rwanda- THAT was genocide.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. A disproportionate number of them were African American.

They're both genocide.

[Recursion]

25. Genocide isn't simply picking victims based on race

It's the eradication or near-eradication of an entire gens. Not even close to what happened, and I don't like seeing "genocide" overused.

[nofurylike]

27. it was continuation of ongoing, systematic genocide, and was,

absolutely, intentional.


i am sickened by apologists who constantly understate the crimes against humanity by that ruling white-supremacist mob.

[Recursion]

29. It's not apologetics to insist on not cheapening the word "genocide" nt

[nofurylike]

30. that, or defensiveness. defending systematic genocide by

denying it's occurence is what cheapens the word.

this was one more facet of genocide, without question.


peace

[Hippo_Tron]

32. You're welcome to your opinion but I think that's a bit harsh for those who don't agree

Bush is guilty of criminal negligence in my view. I don't believe that we are dealing with the type of person who lets New Orleans flood so that he can intentionally murder poor black people. I do believe that we are dealing with the type of person who lets New Orleans flood because he is indifferent as to whether poor black people live or die.

You have your opinion, I have mine.

[nofurylike]

34. it is not about not agreeing. it was retort to the rude self-righteous

arrogance of the poster to whom i replied.
ask those who suffer the genocide, not those of the genociding society. it behooves them to humbly and gratefully be informed.

"Not even close to what happened, and I don't like seeing 'genocide' overused."
yeah, right. ask almost any of those whose culture is committing it.

i'm off this thread now, anyway.
i will not argue this one. i feel too sad there are still white-supremacy-apologists/deniers among progressives.

good night.

[NOLALady]

18. Most of them were from (similar) poor backgrounds.

They didn't have cars, and/or hotel money, or plane tickets to get the hell out.
We are retired. It was the end of the month. We could have gassed up the car, but we knew we didn't have hotel money for a long haul. We stayed and hunkered down.

Previously, each time family and friends evacuated, it cost them at least $1000. We always joked about the unplanned vacations. Most of those who left had money and/or relatives and friends out of town. Those who stayed were from similar backgrounds. I guess they (we) are called the have-nots.

[Patchuli]

26. NOLALady

:cry: :hug: I don't know what else to say...I am so sorry our government failed you like it did. They failed U.S. all when they did.

We sent what we could to the Red Cross and the ASPCA. I hope it actually reached those who needed the most.

[Marrah_G]

33. But poor doesn't make it a genocide

It was a mass negligent homicide brought about with a combination of shitty government construction, bad weather and an arrogant administration who couldn't care less about a poor section of a city filled with people who don't support him anyway. It is truly an embarrassment to our country as a whole. There should be rows and rows of cute new little houses (perhaps raised up a bit)and not mile after square mile of rotting houses and trash making it practically unbearable for those who DID go back to rebuild.

If there was one thing that truly made me feel shame about my country it was watching the Katrina footage and seeing that even those rushing to help were being kept from saving their fellow Americans. I am so sorry we failed your city and I hope the next administration, dem or rep, do some real work to restore it.

There is a special place in hell for monsters like Bush and Co.

[BlooInBloo]

24. I don't know where the threshold is, but it's not 1800.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Would you prefer ethnic cleansing?

That's exactly what it was.

[onenote]

10. international law definition of genocide

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.



Discuss and debate.

[Terran]

19. This broader than I thought it would be

My post was made with the definition in mind of a deliberate attempt to exterminate by violent means a specific group of people.

It might be possible to see what happened to African-Americans in New Orleans as a sort of genocide, but that would not take into account that (most likely) lots of African-Americans living in New Orleans at the time were able to escape and then return to their homes more less unscated compared to what happened to the 9th Ward. I have no figures to cite, just assuming not every African-American in new Orleans was poor prior to Katrina.

Call it a genocide against the poor of New Orleans? I might go for that. Popular (as opposed to legal) use of the word genocide evokes only events on the scale of the Holocaust or Rwanda, though, so I still think it's extremely problematic in this case. Merely saying that 1800 people died is hardly an argument. 3000 people died on 9/11/01, but several hundred of them were not US citizens, another commonly made error.

[PDJane]

9. Moreover, 1,500 people drowned

because the ACE and FEMA did not tell the folks on the ground that the levees were cracking, and they KNEW. They knew on MONDAY AFTERNOON.

from Greg Palast:

Here's what happened two years ago -- and what's happening now. This is what an inside source told me. And it makes me sick:

"By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistleblower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA, and the Army Corps hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe -- and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated."

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi River levees to withstand known dangers -- or pay the price when they fail.

snip..........

And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from Hurricane George.

[paparush]

12. Fantastic Post. Thanks for the summary.

[rudy23]

11. Investigate the Katrina response--Impeachment would be unquestionable after that

Remember the "embarassing emails" Brownie spoke of? Slam dunk impeachment material, I'm sure.

Why else would they need to hustle Leiberman over to their side (well there are a few reasons), to go against his word and refuse to investigate?

Remember, this is the anniversary of when the largest natural disaster to ever hit the US was completely ignored by our PRESIDENT. Negligence is being too kind. Nobody's that oblivious. He can handle us being livid over his negligence---the truth is something that's much harder to handle.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

15. See this thread a posted earlier today.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1688823

[Ian David]

16. "One Nation, Under Water"

New Katrina Fliers and Posters-- watch this thread for updates as I upload
Edited on Sun Sep-18-05 09:32 PM by IanDB1
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x23716


Bush 2 "take responsibility." Let's coordinate with a leafletting campaign
Topic started by IanDB1 on Sep-13-05 08:31 PM (10 replies)
Last modified by IanDB1 on Sep-14-05 08:32 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2088197

[Skidmore]

17. * is the Destroyer of Cities, the Nation Killer, and

the Decimator of Worlds. Never has this planet seen such an individual. Even in the days of great empires, the kings and caesars sought to preserve their own people and state. Not this entity.

[Virginia Dare]

20. Multiple crimes against humanity...n/t

[DarkTirade]

23. He's guilty of purposeful homocide

in our armed forces and abroad.

[sanskritwarrior]

31. When was the trial, I missed it........

Did Cspan carry this monumental trial where a sitting President was convicted of a crime........

I have no love for der chimpenfuhrer, but cmon man, PROOF, everything in the world requires PROOF, the reason the war is still ongoing? There is no proof that the war is illegal, thus why I and 99.99999999% of all soldiers continue to obey our LEGAL ORDERS to fight there. Proof my good man, with no proof, you are just pissing in the wind............