Making sewerage out of New Orleans

The BBC's Justin Webb has sounded gleeful and unusually energetic this week reporting on people misfortunes.

To boot, there was the Bush Snr./Clinton press conference where 20 seconds of Clinton's words which were an unremarkable press conference type of reply evolved from over-repetition on the BBC, to being augmented, to being interpreted into a 2 hour policy speech saying that Clinton entering into areas that he never did. In effect the BBC generated not just their own news, but had broadcasted outright lies.

The BBC's reporting of this was shocking in its' hatefulness. Almost as bad was that they for two hours had repeated the misreported story of 6 construction workers being shot by the New Orleans police. The real story was the that a gang of killers well educated in the trope of the almighty, holy 'hood rat thUgZ©™® tried to mug the contractors, and NOPD shot at and apprehended the rats. Instead of running AP's correction, the simply dropped the story from their top of the hour news reports.

The only act of decency or competence that they saw fit to report was of a retired royal marine, one Darryl Hill who as a hotel manager stuck around to protect the property in the Vieux Carré against the orders of City Hall to clear the city. Mr. Hall's interview was the only occasion where the BBC reported anyone saying that the Police and first responders who number more than 40 000 did anything well, decent, or right.

Pete, a commenter on the excellent Biased BBC blog also had this to say:

«Re. Bush and Trent Lott's home. I saw the piece on Sky News a couple of days ago and I'm 100% certain that Bush said he's looking forward to sitting on his porch when his home is rebuilt. Justin Webb, speaking on BBC R5's 6.00pm news broadcast did clearly state that Bush told his 'rich' friend that he's looking forward to sitting on his porch when 'we' (i.e. federal government) rebuild it. If I'm recalling Bush's words correctly then Justin Webb has lied on air about the President's words, he deliberately misquoted him to cast him in a bad light. If they weren't such a malevolent bunch it would be laughable.»

Here is the “rich friend” that he said that to:



so while the Beeb is running around looking for misery as long as it's got black skin, it failed to even report that there are another 110 000 people in cities and towns other than New Orleans who also had to be extricated from the floodwaters by authorities to reach safety.

The conclusion I've come to is that beyond spin, the BBC can't even be trusted to report basic news events. They, like a handful of America’s hateful, reactionary left simply can’t put this issue in context. The Mayor of New Orleans had access to 400 busses on standby – the very busses that took people to the Convention Center and Superdome, but did not take the 8000 people who could be transported in each run them to higher ground. The other willfully blind analysis by the European press omitted the matter of magnitude. The area impacted left 1.1 million people outside of N.O. with the same problem. The area of impact of the storm and the floods is equal to that of half of France with three citied the size of Marseilles in their way.

Would they have been able to get upwards of a million people evacuated in 16 hours were they to have the same problem? I doubt it. Comparisons are being made to the wildfires in France, Spain, and Portugal that are predictable, isolated, and can be planned for. Comparisons are being made to the floods in Germany which didn’t match the scale of anything like this hurricane, and yet they gloat.

This came by way of a friend. It illustrated very well what sort of reaction comes from the media transmitting not a variety of views and complete information, but a steady drumbeat of talk whose only purpose is political and amounts to tossing red meat to the European public. Untimately they are trained into taking actual joy in it:

«Et le pire fut KOLOSSAL! Depuis 4 jours on ne parle plus que de cela dans les journaux tant télévisés que radiophoniques et la presse. Tous ces pauvres gens qui se retrouvent sans rien, même pas un vêtement, pas d'eau ni de nourriture, pas de médicaments non plus ni de lait pour les bébés, c'est terrible. Mais au delà de l'événement en lui-même, c'est la mise en oeuvre de moyens que nous percevons comme dérisoires face à l'ampleur du phénomène.

Comment la 1ère puissance économiqque du monde n'est-elle pas capable de venir au secours de ses populations avec des moyens dignes de ce nom ? Nous pensons que ce n'est pourtant pas ce qui doit manquer ches vous tant en hommes qu'en matériels.On aurait cru vivre un autre tsunami avec les mêmes conséquenses sauf que les U.S.A ne sont ni le Sri-Lanka ni l'Indonésie ou la Thailande. La France (comme d'autres pays) a proposé son aide et nous en sommes bien heureux. Si cela peut aider (mais je pense que ça aidera) surtout dans une région ou la culture française doit être restée un peut présente. Je pense que Mister Bush, au lieu d'envoyer l'armée pour tirer sur les pilleurs devrait plutôt l'utiliser pour apporter aide et réconfort à toute cette population gravement sinistrée. Et de continuer tranquillement ses vacances ça a choqué ici. A un journaliste qui lui posait cette question: "Alors Mr le président, vous ne croyez toujours pas au réchauffement climatique ?", il aurait répondu : "Si nous parlions de la guerre en Irak" L'avenir jugera peut-être. Et chez vous, comment cela est-il perçu ? Bisous à toutes et à tous des euro-alsaciens.»

C’est percu like a sever hurricane, asshole. Low and behold, in managed fashion this typical Gutmensch get to experience actual emotions for once in their lives – empathy with Tsunami victims and hatred for Americans in similar circumstances – often in the same breath.

They also get the chance to show the universality of their affection for man by only helping people that in their minds they imagine are French in some way.

More disturbing is the idea that Federal help took 3 days to arrive in significant force, with an admiring look by the BBC’s Lise Doucette at the UN, “feeding lines” to Kofi Annan, as one Biased-BBC commenter put it. Insisting that they could have done a better job, it needs to be remembered that they could barely manage a thimbleful of aid in 10 days, but were more than willing to ride the coat-tails of those that didn’t wait for their “command and control”, while they shamefully seem to be riding the coat-tails of the finger waggers.

The height of this vulgarity, though, is coming from within America. In a press conference given by G.H.W. Bush and Clinton, as it was ending and the former presidents were walking away, one person in the back of the room asked:

«Mr. Clinton, what do you think of the opinion someone had that the levees were opened on purpose?»

He turned his head away and refused to answer. Quite suddenly it seemed as though he was fighting back his anger that anyone would suggest such a thing.

What a vulgar question. What a vulgar thought. Somebody out there in the press had that as her first thought when the waters rose. To end at the news conference where we began, imagine for a moment that this cretin suggesting that authorities willfully flooded the city at the initiation of a step to rebuild shattered lives.