← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 20170 | Posts: 22 | Started: 2005-09-12
2005-09-12 17:52 | User Profile
It was only a matter of time......
[QUOTE][url]http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/09/11/up_for_grabs/?page=1[/url]
[SIZE=4]Up for grabs[/SIZE]
[I]Sociologists question how much looting and mayhem [U]really[/U] took place in New Orleans[/I]
By Christopher Shea | September 11, 2005
BY NOW THE IMAGES and stories of looting and mayhem in New Orleans--the residents ''shopping" for nonessentials in an abandoned Wal-Mart, alleged rapes in the Superdome, a shot fired at a rescue helicopter--have been burned into the brain of every television watcher and newspaper reader in America. But do they give us an accurate picture of the aftermath of the flood?
In fact, if criminal violence were indeed rampant in New Orleans after Katrina hit (setting aside the taking of food, water, bandages, and other necessities of survival), that would contradict much of what sociologists have learned in a half century of research about such situations. ''The evidence is overwhelming," says Enrico Quarantelli, an emeritus professor of sociology and the founding director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, ''that in the standard natural disaster or technological disaster"--like a chemical spill--''you're not going to get looting."
Many observers have found the footage of looting and reports of crime to be, in the words of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, ''one of the most dispiriting" aspect of the tragedy. Slate's William Saletan went so far as to call it ''a second-wave destructive force" that must be anticipated in future disaster planning. Yet Quarantelli and a half-dozen other experts on disaster aftermaths and crowd behavior contacted last week insisted that follow-up investigations will reveal that the impression of Hobbesian violence in New Orleans over the past two weeks was created in large part by rumor and amplified by sometimes credulous reporters. The scholars' suspicions are fueled by what they say is a well-documented history of misinformation during disasters--and a general human tendency to misread crowds, even violent ones, as more malevolent than they really are.
''As a researcher, I base what I say on evidence and there was no evidence for a lot of what was being reported," says Kathleen Tierney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center there. ''I don't think I've ever seen such an egregious example of victim blaming as I have in this disaster."
Are these scholars the equivalent of Donald Rumsfeld when he said television created the appearance of looting in post-invasion Baghdad by running and re-running the same footage of one man stealing an urn? It's possible, but already, as journalists like Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune and Matt Welch of Reason magazine, have pointed out, many widely reported rumors have proved false or are at least unconfirmed.
''We don't have any substantiated rapes," the New Orleans Police superintendent Edwin Compass told the British newspaper The Guardian, speaking of the situation at the Superdome. Nor have any bodies of victims of foul play turned up there. The Federal Aviation Administration and military officials have cast doubt on the story of the rescue helicopter that came under fire outside Kenner Memorial Hospital on Aug. 31.
And television reporters' tales of refugees from New Orleans hijacking cars at gunpoint in Baton Rouge or rioting in shelters there, Witt wrote, turned out to be groundless too. The Baton Rouge police told The Washington Post that crime levels had not risen noticeably in that city. There were clearly armed thugs on the street in New Orleans--and there are five murders there a week in ''normal" times, among the highest per capita rates in the country--but something not unlike the fog of war has so far kept us from determining just how many.
Quarantelli, who co-founded the disaster research center at Ohio State University in 1963 and then moved it to Delaware in 1985, grounds his skepticism about the looting reports in several hundred sociological studies of disaster he and his staff members have conducted over the past 40 years. Unlike in some urban riots, looting in the wake of natural disasters, when it occurs, remains furtive and taboo.
True, not all disasters have nonviolent aftermaths. After Hurricane Hugo swept through St. Croix in 1989, leveling the place, residents cleaned out local stores and malls, even going so far as to remove the lighting fixtures. What made St. Croix different from Kobe, Japan following the 1995 earthquake or San Francisco after the quake of 1989? Quarantelli argues that it was the radical inequality of a society where yacht-owners live beside subsistence-level workers, the sheer desperation of the situation (citizens were stranded with no food and no expectation of rescue), and a corrupt police force.
Of course, these conditions were all present to some degree in New Orleans. Yet Quarantelli, Tierney, and other scholars give the benefit of the doubt to the Louisianans, discounting, until they have proof, much of the reporting of a social breakdown.
Scholars who study the after-effects of disaster draw from the work of--and, in fact, overlap with--sociologists who study crowds and collective behavior. Crowds were a defining feature of the New Orleans tragedy. And crowds, the experts say, are very hard to read.
Clark McPhail, author of ''The Myth of the Madding Crowd" (1991) and an emeritus sociologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that people interpreting the footage of looters last week often fell prey to common misconceptions about collective behavior. Two of them: that everyone in a crowd shares the same goal, and that a collective frenzy overwhelms rational thought. For example, he says, that crowd you thought was ransacking Wal-Mart for consumer goods no doubt included people who indeed were ransacking Wal-Mart for consumer goods. But there were also mothers getting diapers, thrill seekers checking out the action, people trying to persuade their friends not to loot, and others just milling about.
''I have looked at probably more film footage of protest events than anyone else," says McPhail. And in contrast to what many people think they see in such situations, almost invariably ''it's just amazing how little violence proportionally took place."
Tierney says that it would be extraordinarily counterproductive if officials, inspired by what they think of as the New Orleans example, militarized disaster operations--focusing more on restoring ''order" via the National Guard than on getting food and water to needy residents and organizing residents, who know the area, into rescue parties. The dawn-to-dusk curfew imposed in New Orleans, she said, was exactly the wrong idea. ''By putting them in lockdown, [federal officials] are preventing the people in New Orleans from helping each other," she says.
Of course, it's not just TV watchers and pundits who are worried about looters: Many residents said they were reluctant to leave the city lest they return to find all their belongings stolen. As a clearer picture emerges of what happened to the social fabric of New Orleans after the levees broke, we'll get a sense of whether they, or the sociologists, were right.[/QUOTE]
2005-09-12 18:18 | User Profile
''The evidence is overwhelming," says Enrico Quarantelli, an emeritus professor of sociology and the founding director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, ''that in the standard natural disaster or technological disaster"--like a chemical spill--''you're not going to get looting." Truly, there are some things so obviously ridiculous, that only an academic could believe them. So, despite hundreds of photos, eyewitness accounts, dead bodies, and hours of video, we can rest assured that there was no looting because Dr Quarantelli's research proves that there wouldn't have been any. Who are you gonna believe? Me, or your lying eyes? :rolleyes:
2005-09-12 18:27 | User Profile
If Whites were the ones looting en masse and caught on video as the blacks so obviously were, this same college emeritus would be saying that 'Whites, arguably, are the most violent race and in times of social breakdown will easily turn into rabid animals and engage in the most destructive violence.'
2005-09-12 18:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]It was only a matter of time......[/QUOTE]How droll.
The British and Australian news services got personal, eye witness testimonials from British and Australian citizens who lived through a horrid time, yet these self congratulating sociolgists doubt that anyone reverted to baser instincts during a chaotic period? Is this sociologist familiar with the New York Blackout and the looting that went on then?
I find hard to credit the objectivity of any sociolgist, they are all operating under an agenda, but I find particularly hard to swallow someone who ignores considerable evidence.
I agree with the caution about "first reports being notoriously loose with the truth" in natural disasters, just like in combat. I also understand the reservations about taking the razor thin slices of reality's bread the media serves us and trying to make a loaf of truth out of it.
Maybe this group of smug Granolas from Colorado need to embark on an effective method of inquiry:
Oral History.
Find some people who were there and dig deeply into their recollections.
AE
2005-09-13 02:05 | User Profile
She should look toward the LA riots for comparison. I'm told the looting that happened there was later determined by spaced-out academics who live in gated housing to be "unlikely."
[url]http://www.nazi.org/community/forum/YaBB.cgi?board=News;action=display;num=1126576353[/url]
2005-09-13 02:24 | User Profile
Are we sure there are actually black folks in NOLA? I suspect that the folks seen in news reports were actually a bunch of drunk cracker rednecks wearing Sasquatch costumes.
2005-09-13 02:39 | User Profile
Sociology is a pseudo-science.
2005-09-13 08:12 | User Profile
Yet Quarantelli, Tierney, and other scholars give the benefit of the doubt to the Louisianans, discounting, until they have proof, much of the reporting of a social breakdown. Empty stores aren't proof? What, did all those shoe and gun stores just suddenly sell out prior to the hurricane? LOL
[QUOTE=madrussian]Sociology is a pseudo-science.[/QUOTE]Agreed.
2005-09-13 09:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]Sociology is a pseudo-science.[/QUOTE] And "social studies" too.
2005-09-13 09:30 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "Sociology is a pseudo-science."[/I][/B][/FONT] [/COLOR]
I disagree. Sociology [B]can[/B] be perfectly legitimate way of observing how human societies work. IMHO Kevin MacDonald's works are more concerned with sociology than biology.
Petr
2005-09-13 10:12 | User Profile
Sociology is a pseudo-science Oh yeah? How about sociobiology? :D
2005-09-13 15:01 | User Profile
Academics are educated idiots. I remember reading an article wherein a biologist declared that cats and dogs did not have facial expressions--their owners were simply projecting. He reached this conclusion based on his study of cats' and dogs' musculature and bone structure. The article didn't mention the biologist actually looking at a live cat or dog to see if they had facial expressions.
2005-09-13 18:39 | User Profile
From [url]http://www.cofcc.org[/url]
Boston Globe prints fantasy version of Katrina aftermath.
According to the Boston Globe, blacks did not riot, loot, rape, shoot at rescue workers, and murder in New Orleans. Their proof? They claim that since Europeans and Asians do not do these things when natural disasters hit in Europe and Asian, blacks in New Orleans "would contradict much of what sociologists have learned in a half century of research about such situations [in Europe and Asia]." So the view of the Boston Globe is, since Caucasians and Asians don't do it, let's cover our eyes and pretend Negroes don't do it either.
Meanwhile, New Orleans police [including NOPD Head Eddie Compass], National Guardsmen, members of the US Military, firefighters, coast guard, volunteer rescue workers, and hundreds of eyewitness accounts all claim mass looting, rampant gang rapes, violent murders, and violence towards rescue workers did happen. I guess they are all biased racists!
"Blood stains several walls [inside the superdome]" says Times-Picayune.
Sgt. Tony Small spent four days in the Superdome as part of the unit assigned to the Superdome.
Sgt. Tony Small, a major crimes cold-case investigator for the New Orleans Police Department, says that rapes and murders did occur. Tells Times-Picayune that one of the rape victims is only two years old. ââ¬ÅThatââ¬â¢s not rumors,ââ¬Â Small said. ââ¬ÅIt was horrendous.ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬â¢
Officials said at least 10 to 12 people died in the Dome, including a man who jumped or was pushed 50 feet to his death from one of the pedestrian walkways. A military police officer also was shot in the leg during an assault.
Superdome laid waste by those it sheltered. From Time-Picayune.
Another Superdome picture of beating victim surfaces.
A professional photographer is selling his photographs of the Katrina aftermath online. One of them is a bruised and battered white man attacked inside the Superdome. Earlier the New York Daily News printed a picture of a different white man, bruised and bloody, being carried out of the superdome.
6 or 7 murders in two days inside Superdome
A doctor who's been tending to the sick and wounded inside the New Orleans Superdome for the last two days described a horrific scene Thursday night.
Asked about the level of violence among the 20,000 displaced residents who sought shelter inside the giant stadium, Dr. Charles Burnell told Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren:
"We had three murders last night. We had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before, I think, there were three or four murders. There were half-a-dozen rapes that night. We had one suicide last night. We had one military policeman shot." Dr. Burnell described the Superdome situation as "very unstable, very high tension, a very dangerous environment."
Murders reported on Fox News
The British and Australian media are reporting that among those murdered are a 14 year old girl who was gang raped to death over a four hour period. A seven year old boy was raped and murdered. A seven year old girl was raped. Several witnessness reported teenage girls being raped in the bathrooms.
Whites in the superdome report being verbally abused with racial slurs, threatened with murder for being white, and beaten by black mobs.
Much like the 30 British students who banded together, Australians report banding together to protect the women among them from being raped.
From Herald Sun Mr Hopes, 32, said: "That was the worst place in the universe. Ninety-eight per cent of the people around the world are good. In that place, 98 per cent of the people were bad.
"Everyone brought their drugs, they brought guns, they brought knives. Soldiers were shot.
Realising that foreigners were a target, Mr Hopes and the other Aussies gathered tourists from Europe, South America and elsewhere into one part of the building.
"There were 65 of us, so we were able to look after each other -- especially the girls who were being grabbed and threatened." Mr Hopes said.
He said they had organised escorts for the women when they had gone for food or to the toilet, and rosters to keep guard while others slept.
"We sat through the night just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning."
Mr Hopes said the Australians owed their lives to a National Guard Staff Sgt Garland Ogden, who had broken the rules to get the tourists out of the dome, with 60 people being evacuated to a medical centre.
Mr McNeil said he could see a change in his son. "They've been traumatised," he said. "I think they've witnessed several atrocities."
Herald Sun, Australians banded together.
"All this is being flushed down the media memory hole. In the coming weeks, these events will be hushed up for political correctness." says CofCC CEO Gordon Baum, Esq.
2005-09-13 19:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=SteamshipTime]Academics are educated idiots.[/QUOTE]I certainly wouldn't say that. A large proportion, and maybe a majority, of the research that leads to technological innovation in a variety of fields occurs in academia. Most of the rest occurs in government and industrial labs, which really aren't any different from academic labs and often collaborate with them.
The quality of research does depend a lot on the school where it takes place. For example, probably every single professor in the physics department at a place like MIT is brilliant and extremely productive in his field. At Joe Blow University you're likely to have at least a few goofballs.
I remember reading an article wherein a biologist declared that cats and dogs did not have facial expressions--their owners were simply projecting. He reached this conclusion based on his study of cats' and dogs' musculature and bone structure. The article didn't mention the biologist actually looking at a live cat or dog to see if they had facial expressions. Sounds like frivolous research, but quite frankly, I don't see anything wrong with his methods based on what you've said here! :) If cat and dog anatomy is constructed in such a way that facial expressions are impossible (say, nothing beyond eye blinks and jaw motion), then that's enough to draw the conclusion he did without having to try to coax animals into making faces at him. (Much one can look at the anatomy of an elbow and conclude that it can't bend backwards.)
[quote=Petr]I disagree. Sociology can be perfectly legitimate way of observing how human societies work. Actually, you're right, and I take back what I said earlier -- sociology doesn't necessarily have to be pseudo-science. It's just that human societies are so complex that they don't readily lend themselves to analysis based on physical or chemical laws, and that makes it a lot easier for sociologists to come up with BS explanations (if they choose that route) without being debunked.
IMHO Kevin MacDonald's works are more concerned with sociology than biology. That's probably true.
2005-09-13 19:40 | User Profile
When blacks are doing something bad, there's nothing bad being done. Get with the program, people.
2005-09-13 20:39 | User Profile
2,000 refugees going to Massachusetts from Katrina--many violent criminals were culled from the herd at the Otis base...
But the Globe also ran this story: [url]http://www.boston.com/news/weather/articles/2005/09/12/with_aid_from_afar_a_precinct_resists_attacks/[/url]
THE POLICE BEAT With aid from afar, a precinct resists attacks 'Fort Apache' fights back By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | September 12, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, Captain Jimmy Scott of the New Orleans police steered his cruiser slowly through Mid-City and a dirt-poor housing project in Treme, just beyond the French Quarter.
''It was just dead calm. Quiet. You wouldn't think the worst storm in the history of the country was about to hit," Scott said. ''People were sitting on stoops. Thousands of them. They weren't going anywhere. They couldn't go anywhere."
From Mid-City to the French Quarter, the First District that Scott commands is the poorest, biggest, and most violent of nine police districts in the city. He said his district records an average of four or five homicides a week.
When the storm passed, and the water rose, the shooting began. It was open season on the cops from the First District.
After they started taking incoming fire from Treme, Scott, Lieutenant Thomas Savage, Sergeant Justin Crespo, and others from the First District sloshed around their flooded police station and started firing back.
As the gun battles raged, one of Scott's officers grabbed a sheet and painted ''Fort Apache" on it, hanging the sheet from a second-floor window of the drab, squat, three-story First District police station on North Rampart Street.
The officers were surrounded by flooded streets, downed power lines, abandoned cars, and a determined enemy.
And these police, on the front lines of the First District, saw more than a few parallels between their apocalyptic environs and the fictional South Bronx police station that became a fortress taking fire from criminals in the 1981 movie starring Paul Newman as a beleaguered police officer trying to retain his honor while surrounded by anarchy.
Still, 52-year-old Jimmy Scott, short, wiry, and bespectacled, acknowledged that he is no Paul Newman.
''Fort Apache sounds about right, though," he said. ''We're surrounded."
The deputy chief, Lonnie Swain, said Scott is reserved and humble, but he is also a force to be reckoned with, a commander who leads by example and who is calm under fire.
''One of our officers called from his house. He was stuck in the attic. The water was rising. He said he wasn't going to make it. Jimmy took the phone and just calmed him down.
''He walked him through it. He got him out of the house. Over the phone," Swain said, shaking his head in amazement.
''I think a lot of officers lost their lives, and we won't know how many until the water goes down," Swain said. ''Jimmy Scott saved a lot of lives in those first few days after the storm."
Told what Swain had said, Scott shrugged.
''My officers did a lot more than I did," Scott said.
Scott usually has about 130 officers. He has 90 now. Some of them deserted, he says. Others are probably dead. The rest stood in 2 feet of water in the station, took their orders, then went out.
They confronted armed criminals who, Scott said, relished the chance to exploit police vulnerability after the storm.
By Scott's count, officers from the First District shot and killed about 20 armed individuals in the week that followed the storm. ''In one confrontation, we had six guys, all of them armed. We dropped five of them -- a couple died. One of them just put his hands up, so we didn't shoot him," he said.
One officer was shot in the head as he took four looters from a store. Scott would not identify the officer, but said he would recover. Deputy Chief Warren Riley said one of those looters was shot by police, and all four arrested.
Scott made no apologies for the deadly force employed by his officers, saying it saved far more lives than it took.
''This is the most violent district in the city," he said. ''It was before Katrina, it was after Katrina."
Although Scott said his officers were the last line of defense for the French Quarter, some residents there seemed less than appreciative. At Johnny White's, a bar on Bourbon Street, bartender Larry Hirst has refused to obey police orders to shut down, and his clients are furious at Scott's officers for allegedly threatening them unless they leave the city. A physical confrontation seems inevitable.
''Screw the cops. Let them go after the criminals. Not us," said Hirst, 60, as he served warm beer and hard drinks to his convivial customers. ''We have a right to be here. The people who are staying here want to keep the French Quarter alive. We're staying here to protect this community because we are the community."
John Hyman, 66, a London native who has lived in New Orleans for 30 years, said the French Quarter diehards will not leave.
''We are going to resist," Hyman said, standing with a dozen people outside Johnny White's at Bourbon and Orleans streets. ''To what extent, we'll all have to decide individually."
Reinforcements have arrived at Fort Apache, including 60 New York Police Department officers who are now under Scott's command. The NYPD officers say the Fort Apache sign makes them feel at home. There have been some surreal moments.
''Some Texas Rangers showed up on horses," Scott said. ''They just rode up through the water. I put them out on patrol."
Walking around in contaminated water, the officers at Fort Apache began having foot problems.
''We have some officers who are Vietnam vets, and they knew it was jungle rot," Scott said. ''We introduced a regimen, washing our feet, our boots. We used bacterial gel for our hands. Everybody's aware. Some doctors from Tulane came in here and were surprised we knew what to do."
Across the region, some police commanders are giving tedious chores to out-of-state police. Not Scott.
''Here's what I learned from the New York guys," Scott said. ''I let them go out and rescue people. They went out and pulled an 82-year-old woman out of her house, and they were all fired up. This is what they're here to do. I've got 22-year-old officers of mine doing the same thing. They can't sleep because they want to keep working and saving people."
Scott has been sleeping a couple of hours a night at the station. He has been too busy to worry about his personal life. His house was destroyed. His mother's house is gone, as are his mother-in-law's and his sister-in-law's.
''Four families wiped out," he said. But no one in his immediate family died, and for that he is thankful.
''Ninety percent of my guys lost their houses, so we've got a lot to deal with besides work."
With the city almost empty, the authorities now are turning most of their attention to counting the dead. In keeping with his reputation as a straight talker, Scott does not agree with some city officials who have called predictions of up to 10,000 dead exaggerated. Scott said he thinks the 25,000 body bags ordered by FEMA will not be enough.
''I had 97,000 people in my district," Jimmy Scott said, as he headed back inside Fort Apache. ''I'd say two-thirds of them were on their stoops or in their houses when the storm came in, and I think a lot of them are dead."
2005-09-13 22:37 | User Profile
Howard, [QUOTE]As the gun battles raged, one of Scott's officers grabbed a sheet and painted ''Fort Apache" on it, hanging the sheet from a second-floor window of the drab, squat, three-story First District police station on North Rampart Street.[/QUOTE] Uh, oh, wait till Russell Means and A.I.M finds out about this.
Other than messing with the folks in the bar, all I can say is good for the cops. Holding their position took balls.
2005-09-14 01:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Howard,
Uh, oh, wait till Russell Means and A.I.M finds out about this.
Other than messing with the folks in the bar, all I can say is good for the cops. Holding their position took balls.[/QUOTE]
It ain't John Ford's world no mo', Mistah Sert... :dry:
[img]http://www.giovannidesio.it/west/immagini/fort%20apache%20.jpg[/img]
2005-09-14 04:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=heritagelost]From [url]http://www.cofcc.org[/url]
Boston Globe prints fantasy version of Katrina aftermath.
According to the Boston Globe, blacks did not riot, loot, rape, shoot at rescue workers, and murder in New Orleans. Their proof? They claim that since Europeans and Asians do not do these things when natural disasters hit in Europe and Asian, blacks in New Orleans "would contradict much of what sociologists have learned in a half century of research about such situations [in Europe and Asia]." So the view of the Boston Globe is, since Caucasians and Asians don't do it, let's cover our eyes and pretend Negroes don't do it either.
[/QUOTE]
That's exactly how politically-correct discourse is constructed: the axioms of equality are never questioned. If you accept those and don't fight, you are doomed to lose in a logical argument. That's precisely why sociology is a pseudo-science: it's not questioning one of the major assumptions that contradicts all of the empirical evidence and it's not able to make predictions because their arguments are built on false assumptions.
2005-09-14 10:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]Sociology is a pseudo-science.[/QUOTE]
Except for Robert Nisbet, who wrote The Quest for Community. Besides him, I've seen nothing but nonsense.
2005-09-14 12:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]Sounds like frivolous research, but quite frankly, I don't see anything wrong with his methods based on what you've said here! :) If cat and dog anatomy is constructed in such a way that facial expressions are impossible (say, nothing beyond eye blinks and jaw motion), then that's enough to draw the conclusion he did without having to try to coax animals into making faces at him. (Much one can look at the anatomy of an elbow and conclude that it can't bend backwards.)[/QUOTE]It's analogous to the apocryphal story about the philosophers arguing at length over whether men had more teeth than women. A bystander figured it out--more or less the same--by going home and counting his wife's teeth, then his.
Academic research is increasingly corrupted by multiculturalism and an anti-human agenda.
2005-09-14 16:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Except for Robert Nisbet, who wrote The Quest for Community....[/QUOTE]That was a great read indeed.