Spin Dry

UPDATE 1: Greetings to the members of the 1st Signal Bridage in Southeast Asia, who I've seen have been to visit here. Remember, just 'cause I'm a liberal doesn't mean that I don't support our men in uniform 100%. (My dad was a vet and I've got a nephew in the armed forces). Hate the war, love the warrior. After all, unlike a lot of the Yellow Elephants state side, you guys are getting your asses shot at for us, "noble" cause or not.

UPDATE 2: The AFP reporter has tried to spin this story by claiming he didn't actually see the white people loot. While that may be true, I really take issue with the AP reporter, who did go right for the "l" word. And, given what we've learned about the non-existent state of Federal help in New Orleans on the fifth day after the storm, can you blame anyone for helping themselves to anything? These people have truly been dispossessed and disenfranchised. If they're stuck in this same mess tomorrow, expect a full-on revolution.

UPDATE 3: Apparently, these were the photos that had Kanye West so upset at the MTV music awards -- and kudos and applause to him for speaking his mind on live TV. We need more of that, and more people like him.

'Cause, you know -- you're just part of the problem when you demonstrate how people who are not a certain color (white) get treated badly by people who are a certain color (white). The following is from Atrios at Eschaton. I'm going to link to the photos and reprint the text here, because he doesn't have a permalink to the post; but if you go over there (please do, it's a great blog), look for the headline "Captions Are Fun".

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin) Email Photo Print Photo

Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store, after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana.(AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

(Emphasis added).

Of course, I doubt that any reporters actually waded over to the people and said, "Excuse me -- did you find that or steal it?" Just guessing, but these look like helicopter shots. And, in the big picture, if people are "stealing" or "finding" necessities of life in ruined stores in the Big Easy, more power to them. It really is a matter of survival and, honestly, if they're wading through that kind of flood water, whatever store owners were relieved of a bit of stock aren't going to care, because they're probably going to go to their insurance company with a total write-off anyway.

And if anyone is "finding" or "stealing" less survival-oriented items, like TVs or computers -- well, again, so what? It isn't really going to make any difference to the big picture, and as I've mentioned here before, the big picture is the one not being mentioned in the main stream media. Katrina hitting New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen, one that could have been prevented if the current administration had done two things. One, admitted that global warming is going to give us more hellacious storms in the near term. Two, realized that repairing the levees around New Orleans should have been a big priority, a task more important to Homeland Security than many other things.

But, oh, that's right -- the people who couldn't get out of town were all poor, and mostly black not white. But I can't point that out, because, as one tiny-minded commentor to this blog pointed out, pointing out such things is, well, you know. Racist.

Even when such (in)actions by the white pigmentally challenged cause direct harm to... well, you know...