22/12/2008

The Grinning Skull: The Homicides You Didn't Hear About in Hurricane Katrina

http://www.truthout.org/122208A
Rebecca Solnit, TomDispatch.com: "What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river. Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story."

VIDEO |
http://www.truthout.org/122208A
A.C. Thompson, a reporter for The Nation and ProPublica, interviews the gunmen responsible for a slew of post-Katrina vigilante shootings.

Man Is a Cruel Animal
http://www.truthout.org/122208S
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "It was Joseph Conrad I thought of when I read an article in The Nation magazine this month about white vigilante groups that rose up out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to terrorize and murder blacks. It was Conrad I thought of when I saw the ominous statements by authorities, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warning of potential civil unrest in the United States as we funnel staggering sums of public funds upward to our bankrupt elites and leave our poor and working class destitute, hungry, without health care and locked out of their foreclosed homes. We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes."

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