As the 9th Street Levee was gushing forth a torrent of water, water that was filling up New Orleans like a soup bowl, our president was doing this:

Now, remember, this was after Katrina had hit, after we knew that, at best, there was serious devastation in the Gulf region. Katrina was a particularly awful hurricane, but even minor hurricanes do tens of millions of dollars in damage, and a hurricane of Katrina’s size is likely to cost lives, at least a few.

Bush could be forgiven for not knowing just how bad Katrina was in the day after it hit — there was cautious optimism at the time that levees had held, and that the damage might not be catastrophic. But it was cautious optimism, optimism that would ultimately fade as we got news, not just from New Orleans, but from Gulfport and points east as well.

George W. Bush chose to deal with this serious situation by goofing around, getting a free guitar, and giving John McCain a birthday cake — actions no man who actually cared about the people he led could have taken.

Of course, Bush never really gave a damn about the people he led. And no day more perfectly illustrated the contempt in which he holds you, me, and 1800 dead Louisianans than August 30, 2005. Thank God that in 24 hours’ time, he won’t have to deal with the rabble anymore.

I actually have some sympathy for Mike Brown. By all accounts, he meant well. He simply wasn’t qualified to serve as the director of FEMA. He was an attorney and a judge of horse shows; he had no experience running an organization whose job was to help Americans in our most desperate times.

No, I don’t blame Mike Brown for failing after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast; he couldn’t possibly have been expected to do otherwise. But the man who appointed him to the position — George W. Bush — he, I blame.

Bush not only selected an unqualified fool to serve in a critical position — one that, lest we forget, would be responsible for cleaning up a dirty bomb attack in New York, or a ricin attack in Chicago — but after the scale of human suffering became apparent, Bush praised him, as only Bush could:

Now, this was days after Katrina hit. This was at a time when we knew damn well that our government had failed to adequately prepare for the disaster, at a time when the newsmedia appeared to be able to get into New Orleans, but FEMA was stymied. And Bush praised that failing effort, because…well, what else would he do? Bush doesn’t admit defeat, and he doesn’t admit failure. Not finding WMDs in Iraq? That’s a “disappointment,” not a “failure.”

Ultimately, the anger at FEMA’s failure got loud enough that Bush did fire Brown — from a direct role supervising the Katrina recovery effort. But Brown stayed on in Washington for several weeks more as head of FEMA, as if nobody would notice. And while Brown would ultimately be defenestrated, his boss, Michael Chertoff, stayed on. And of course, Chertoff’s boss stayed on, too. Heckuva job, guys. Heckuva job.

Happy 72nd birthday, Johnny Mac! Here, just for fun I found some pictures from your 69th birthday, which was three years ago, August 29, 2005.

Huh. August 29, 2005. Something else happened that day, I think. But what could it be? What could have been happening right at the same time as this fun event with your pal Dubya?

Oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t anything that would have caused you and George to turn down a chance to party.

Have fun naming your veep today, John. Good symbolism, picking your vice president on the third anniversary of your 69th birthday, and whatever else happened three years ago today. Nice sensitivity. Stay classy.

Fuck you, Karl Rove:

 “The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Yeah, Karl, Hurricane Katrina was so fucking bad for you and the idiot king. Boo fucking hoo. If you would have done something for the people of New Orleans, rather than dither and share cakes with John McCain, that might not have been bad. But that would have required a competent, caring, capable president, which we don’t have, thanks to you.

Not to mention, of course, that global warming is playing its role in this, something you’ve been foursquare against working to solve.

If August weather is bad for the GOP, it’s on your own head. If you don’t feel good about the memories of Katrina — you shouldn’t, you fucking asshole. You failed your fellow Americans. If you didn’t want to feel bad about it, maybe you should have cared for the poor, black people drowning in New Orleans. But you didn’t care then, and you don’t care now — because no matter how bad August weather is for you, Karl, it’s far, far worse for the people of the Gulf Coast, who’ve lost their homes, family members, even their lives. Those people, I feel bad for. You can go to hell.

Here’s a mini-sociology lesson. I found this article today, which includes the following quote:

Dr. Raoult Ratard took a unique approach to studying the suicide rate because there have been no reliable estimates of how many people have returned since the storm. Various sources have put the number at anywhere from fewer than 200,000 to around 250,000 out of a pre-Katrina population of just under 455,000.

So, Ratard looked at the number of deaths from October 2005 (when the city was reopened after the storm) through March 2006, and compared that total to the number of deaths of all kinds during the same period the year before.

The pre-storm death total was 2,507; post-storm, 1,024. That means the number of deaths was down by about three-fifths.

Then Ratard looked at suicides. The number of pre-storm suicides was 16; post-storm, 11. That means the number of suicides was down by only about one-third.

So, the suicide rate appears to have gone up. But the totals are too small to conclude that Katrina caused the increase, Ratard said. “They are not big enough so that you can say with certainty that it would not be due to chance,” he said.

There are a few important sociological issues that this brought up for me. First, I think, while innovative, the methodology is fairly weak. One of the problems is that we may also need to count Katrina evacuees in this as well. Of course, this is going to be damn near impossible to do, since the Katrina Diaspora is so dispersed across the US. Now we could argue that only people in the city limits over the entire year should be counted, but I think if a researcher wanted look at suicides that could be directly or indirectly related to Katrina, he or she needs to think well outside the city boundaries. The other methodological weakness is the small numbers. I think it is irresponsible to report findings that are not statistically significant as if they are. I certainly don’t blame the authors of the study for this, but I do worry that people are going to get the wrong impression of strength o the findings. The other issue that I’d like to bring up, is the distinction between correlation and causation. This data only shows a correlation between suicide and Katrina, and one that may not even be significant. One funny example commonly used in sociology to demonstrate the distinction between causation and correlation is the strong correlation between the amount of ice cream sold in stores and the murder rate. In the US the murder rate goes up when people buy more ice cream, and when they buy less ice cream the murder rate goes down. Now anybody with a lick of sense knows that ice cream doesn’t drive people into murderous rages. There is a correlation, but we know ice cream doesn’t cause murder or for that matter higher murder rates don’t cause people to eat more ice cream. So why is this? Well, the murder rates (especially in temperate climates) tend to be higher in the summer, and the warmer weather is also correlated with people eating more ice cream. In the study above, they probably could do case studies of the suicides and try to determine if Katrina played a role. The researcher does note this problem, but I worry that the average reader may not realize why this important.

On another note, I do think there is a reasonable argument to be made as to why the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina could be related to an increase in suicides. This argument goes way back to one of the founder’s of sociology: Emile Durkheim. Durkheim is best know for his study on suicide. Durkheim identified various types of suicide, including anomie/anomic suicide. This type of suicide is related to conditions where social norms break down. The Durkheim website cited above describes the various types of anomic suicide as follows:

• Acute economic anomie: sporadic decreases in the ability of traditional institutions (such as religion, guilds, pre-industrial social systems, etc.) to regulate and fulfill social needs.
• Chronic economic anomie: long term dimunition of social regulation. Durkheim identified this type with the ongoing industrial revolution, which eroded traditional social regulators and often failed to replace them. Industrial goals of wealth and property were insufficient in providing happiness, as was demonstrated by higher suicide rates among the wealthy than among the poor.
• Acute domestic anomie: sudden changes on the microsocial level resulted in an inability to adapt and therefore higher suicide rates. Widowhood is a prime example of this type of anomie.
• Chronic domestic anomie: referred to the way marriage as an institution regulated the sexual and behavioral means-needs balance among men and women. Marriage provided different regulations for each, however. Bachelors tended to commit suicide at higher rates than married men because of a lack of regulation and established goals and expectations. On the other hand, marriage has traditionally served to overregulate the lives of women by further restricting their already limited opportunities and goals. Unmarried women, therefore, do not experience chronic domestic anomie nearly as often as do unmarried men.

I suspect this is the sort of theory that is guiding the study mentioned above. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know whether or not the suicide rate in New Orleans has truly increased. In spite of the sound theoretically argument that can be made about why the suicide rate should increase under such conditions, it is going to take a little more time and a little better methodology for us to determine whether or not Katrina cause a surge in suicides.

John McGrath makes an offhand remark citing Hurricane Katrina as evidence that Bush’s climate change policies have led to disaster (analogous to the way his WMD policy led to the disaster in Iraq). I agree that Bush’s policies on climate change are deplorable, and that Bush’s deplorable policies bear a fair bit of responsibility for the Katrina disaster. But the share of the Bush-blame that can be attributed specifically to his action on climate change is very small. Climatologists remain divided on the question of how much climate change will alter the frequency of severe weather events, and how much of that alteration is already visible.

Blaming Katrina on Bush’s climate change policies may be politically convenient as a way of generating pressure to change those policies. But it’s politically inconvenient in a broader sense, because it reinforces the “natural disaster” frame for understanding what went wrong with Katrina (and what continues to go wrong in many other hazard events).

The “natural disaster” frame envisions society as moving along innocently, minding its own business, when wham! it gets hit by an extreme geophysical event that causes destruction and death. Causal responsibility, and hence blame, lie on the side of the geophysical event. So therefore interventions to prevent or mitigate disasters focus on controlling the event, a “hazard-side” strategy.

Over half a century ago Gilbert White — the father of natural hazards research, and hardly a political radical — pointed out that “natural disasters” are actually the result of the intersection of natural and social conditions. Whether there is a disaster, and what kind of damage it does, depends on how social practices and individual choices put human values at risk of being undercut by changes in the natural environment. Later more radical thinkers elaborated the idea of “vulnerability,” with the slogan “there’s no such thing as a [purely] natural disaster.” We have to focus on the reasons why humans become vulnerable to extreme geophysical events.

Framing Bush’s responsibility for Katrina as a matter of his climate change policy places our focus on the hazard event. The problem becomes the fact that there was a Category 5 hurricane, and the change we need is to control greenhouse gas emissions so as not to increase the frequency of Category 5 hurricanes. This focus ignores the central role in the disaster played by New Orleanians’ (and our whole economy’s) vulnerability to hurricanes. This vulnerability is the product of an economic system dependent on oil and the creation of economic inequalities, a system of racial oppression, and a hubristic attitude to the environment. Across a broad range of issues, Bush’s policies have served to maintain this system (though he is of course far from the sole creator or sustainer of it).

The “blame climate change” redirection of attention is especially unfortunate given that the sources of vulnerability in the case of Katrina are so fundamental to what’s wrong in so many other facets of modern America. Big events like natural disasters are powerful political-rhetorical resources. They need to be used wisely, to cut at the most fundamental problems.

Cross-posted at debitage

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My desktop is getting cluttered with links that I won’t have time to blog about….

Heidi at Letters of Marque on What Women Want: “In short, what this particular woman wants is a wife. And I resent (in a vague sort of way) the fact that socially and actually, it’s harder for me to get a wife than it is for a man to do so.”

Hilzoy does a terrific job refuting claims that the Violence Against Women Act is pork spending. (Sheesh!)

And also at Obsidian Wings, Edward points out that the US - in its immigration law - does expect married couples to actually share romance and affection. This conflicts with the claims of anti-same-sex-marriage folks who, ridiculously, have claimed that there is no connection between romantic love and marriage at all.

Kieran at Crooked Timber presents some data on wives and/or mothers in the workforce

From an essay on gender and Katrina in the Chicago Tribune: “And yet there is another equally important and starkly apparent social dimension to the hurricane disaster that media coverage has put in front of our eyes but that has yet to be “noticed”: This disaster fell hard on one side of the gender line too. Most of the survivors are women. Women with children, women on their own, elderly women in wheelchairs, women everywhere–by a proportion of what looks to be again somewhere around 75 or 80 percent.” I’d like to see more on this; I’m not sure if this writer is working from solid data or subjective impressions.

Some more ignored victims of Katrina, via Professor Kim: Latino immigrants, American Indians, and prisoners.

Anti-Feminist watch: Cathy Young, in my opinion the most intelligent anti-feminist journalist out there, has a blog.

Lucinda Marshall says it wasn’t just hysteria; women probably were were raped in Katrina disaster areas. Read her article, and her interview with Judy Benitez of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault. “Some have suggested that since there are not yet official reports of rapes in the Superdome or elsewhere during the hurricane aftermath, then clearly it is just so much histrionic rumor. The idea that because something cannot be measured, it does not exist is ridiculous.”

You know, I can forgive Yahoo and Google and Microsoft cooperating with China’s censorship program - I’d rather folks in China have censored access than no access. Plus, these folks would have faced censorship regardless of what US corporations do. But now Yahoo has cooperated with China police to throw a journalist in jail for ten years. There are some compromises that no one should be willing to make for money or access; Yahoo has now made it clear that had they existed in Nazi Germany, they would have been eagerly leading the SS to hidden Jews if there was a buck for them in it. They’ve moved far beyond disgusting. Hat tip to Tennessee Guerrilla Women, who links to a WaPo editorial on the subject.

Also at Guerrilla Women, Congressman Stacey Campfield - who is white - wants to join the Black Congressional Caucus. “The East Tennessee Republican says that when he was told that he could not join the Black Caucus because he is white, he thought, ‘What? Whoa!’” There are also quotes from some of Campfield’s semi-literate emails; he sounds like a generic right-wing troll, but he’s really a GOP congressman!

And once again at Tennessee Guerrilla Women, a new British study suggests that men die sooner in more patriarchal societies than in more egalitarian societies.

Las Vegas Weekly has a story about the UFCW union hiring underpaid, no-benefit workers to picket Wal-Mart. The story writer obviously has an anti-Union bias, but unless she’s outright lying then she has a point. Unions of all people have no excuse for mistreating workers.

You know, I somehow missed linking to the genuinely ridiculous Focus on the Family “Is Your Child Becoming Homosexual?” piece last month, which many bloggers made fun of, including Balloon Juice. If you want a good laugh combined with an undercurrent of dread about how genuinely warped by hate these so-called “Christians” are, give it a look. (Focus on the Family, perhaps in response to the widespread mocking, has seemingly taken the original page down).

Bush has given the Saudis a pass on their participation in international sex slave trading. Ecuador and Kuwait were given free passes, too. As Mark Kleiman comments, what’s a little slave trading among friends?

Scott at Lawyers Guns and Money has a good post pointing out the obvious: despite their claims that they’re concerned with “activist judges” and the like, when it comes to opposing queer couple’s interests, anti-SSM folks are concerned with substance rather than process.

Ann Althouse has an excellent post defending the use of foreign court opinions by American judges.

“The incidence of teen gonorrhea in the United States is 70 times that in the Netherlands and France.” Well, thank goodness for abstinence-only education! (Via Majikthise).

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This post was removed by request of the author.

• Spread the URL of If You Want To Help, a new blog which is gathering addresses for folks who want to send supplies to Katrina victims.
• From The Light of Reason, an excellent post discussing why people had a hard time leaving New Orleans.
• Jody Wheeler and Constructive Interference both have long, infuriating lists of links to articles about the various ways FEMA has not merely failed to be helpful, but has actively prevented help from reaching people who need it. Choice reading if you’d like to go blind with rage.
• Political Animal quotes a Knight Ridder report which partly explains why FEMA is so incompetent: “In 2000, 40 percent of the top FEMA jobs were held by career workers who rose through the ranks of the agency, including chief of staff. By 2004, that figure was down to less than 19 percent, and the deputy director/chief of staff job is held by a former TV anchor turned political operative.”
• Another “How FEMA was destroyed” article, from alt.weeklies, concisely describes the major ways the Bush administration undercut FEMA and made sure it was incapable of operating efficiently. I think the record supports my belief that the problem isn’t malice; rather, it’s deep, deep idealogical blindness combined with genuine incompetence.
• The Dallas News has a video about pet dogs left behind. Some army folks are trying to save the dogs; but at least one Sheriff’s office is shooting them in the street. Via Bean, who emailed me this link at Kos.
• Also at Political Animal, a horrifying - and well-documented - story of cops using guns to prevent people from escaping New Orleans.
• This very famous libertarian is too stupid to realize that not all thirsty people have $20 to spend on water, no matter how genuine their need. Via Echidne.

A Katrina refugee shelter in Alabama needs plus-sized clothing to be donated. I just spoke to a worker (their number is 251 626-2646), and she says that although they can use all kinds of plus-sized clothing, they currently have particularly pressing needs for extra-large “female undergarments” and plus-sized male clothing in general.

If you send new clothing, send it with labels and packaging intact - clothing that is obviously new will reach refugees quicker.

If you’re sending FedEx or UPS, send to:

Community Action
26440 North Pollard Rd.
Daphne, Alabama 36526

If you’re sending via the Post Office, send to:

Community Action
P.O. Box 250
Daphne, Alabama 36526

If I’m reading it correctly - and I’m not sure I am, the format is very confusing - the “if you want to help” website says that this shelter in Texas is also looking for plus-sized clothing:

Helping Hands for Texas
c/o Alamo Premier Mortgage Group
10223 281 Freeway, Suite 200
San Antonio 78216

An eyewitness says that some big women are wearing trash bags, so that might be a good address to send plus-sized women’s clothing.

If you’re fat, now might be a good time to pack up and donate clothing you don’t wear anymore. Being fat always means trouble finding clothing that fits, and I’m sure that for refugees the problem is multiplied a thousandfold.

A must-read post by some nice folks who decided to donate food and supplies to Katrina victims.

He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and “a sum of money” and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.

I’d like to live in a world where I could dismiss such a story as too unbelievable to be true, but unfortunately I think it probably is true. Read the whole thing. Hat-tip to Bean and to Media Girl.

From Bean’s blog:

The Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence is accepting donations that are specifically earmarked to assist battered survivors and their children who have been directly affected/displaced by the hurricane. The donations will be used to assist battered victims from the following parishes in Louisiana: Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines.

The donations will be used for the following purposes:

1. Relocation of domestic violence victims.
2. Purchasing of basic needs, i.e. baby formula, diapers, food, clothing, etc. that could not be met elsewhere.
3. Deposits on houses, electric bills,
4. Car repair, gas, public transportation
5. Medical/prescription needs,
6. Other basic, life sustaining needs

All donations go directly to victims of domestic violence affected by this hurricane and will not be used for any administrative or other purposes.

“If you would like to make a donation using MasterCard or Visa, you may contact the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence office at 225-752-1296 with your credit card information.” Go visit Bean’s place for more details and more donation options.

(This is a comment that Radfem left in an earlier thread).

Racism, or classism have both been evident in many aspects of this tragedy. In fact, I think this will be the second great tragedy that we will remember aside from the human loss … that the whole world has seen the underpinnings of our under the table racist ways exposed. The use of the word “refugee” though has nothing to do with it.

My mom and I were discussing this yesterday, and she brought it up, in that way, which shouldn’t surprise me because she’s tutored kids, pregnant teens, young mothers(through a program that offers these services to young unwed mothers) and she’s seen the neglect of communities exacts a price every day that’s just a less extreme example of some of what happened in New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans faced that for years before the hurricane that took it off the map.

I don’t know about the use of refugee, evacuee, survivor, etc. All of those terms are loaded in varying ways, and they may all impact people positively, or negatively based on life experiences, cultures, belief systems, personal Katrina experiences and those should be respected, which makes coming up with one acceptable label, more difficult.

With all the racism and classism seen so far, it puts everything under the microscope and maybe for good reason. Racism with “loot” vs “find”, racism with criminalizing large groups of Black people. Racism, ableism, and classism with the access to evacuating safely. The conditions in NO, that have been there for years, which contributed to what happened after Katrina. What was past becomes prologue.

Anyone who has to walk miles to refuge in their bare feet is a refugee. Anyone who has to take a shit in a once public sports arena, on the floor, next to dead bodies, is a refugee.

This is one vivid description of a refugee that has been given, but it also applies to many people in our nation who aren’t directly impacted by Hurricane Katrina, including those who lived in NO and in the South before the disaster.

Anyone who walks for miles in bare feet could be a homeless person, or family doing that, day after day, after day till there’s no break between where the calluses begin and the softer skin ends. We’ve all seen them, and smelled them, especially when they’ve been unable to bathe for a long time. Anyone urinating or defecating on what is, or once was a vibrant business, or a family’s house, goes on every day in many cities. At least where I live. Just last week, I walked down one of our streets and there was a flow of liquid coming towards my shoes and it was from a homeless guy lying in a doorway, who was going to the bathroom.

In downtown L.A., you have to hold your breath for about a minute each time you walk past an alley or a fire escape, because that’s where the “public” bathrooms are. Then people get arrested for urinating in public by police.

If these people from the hurricane are refugees in our society under some of these definitions, then they are not the only ones, just the most visible ones for the moment, until the media moves elsewhere. And some of them, might join the homeless in our country, because they lack the resources for a variety of reasons, or because they were homeless before.

I’m not trying to downplay the disaster, or make comparisons, but people in this country live in deplorable conditions on a daily basis. And while watching the coverage at New Orleans and other places, I was kind of reminded of that and that was one of many reasons why at the same time I felt compelled to watch the news coverage, it also made me want to turn away. Kind of like when I ran into the guy who was lying under the blanket under the doorway at City Hall, on the way to the office.

This disaster presented what can happen in a split second, to a large group of people all at once, rather than piecemeal and it stuck it in our faces, because while the media has no interest in the plight of the most poor people in our society, it’s always been fascinated by massive tragedy, death and damage. But the reality is, you can lose everything in a hurricane, or you can lose it when you live check to check and get sick, without health insurance. Women who are very poor and/or homeless are very vulnerable to rape as well in their lives as were the women and children in New Orleans.

Save-the-sperm nutcase Dawn Eden is outraged that Planned Parenthood are offering their services in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Let’s pretend they don’t employ anyone with any transferrable medical skills whatsoever. Let’s pretend that they don’t offer a wide range of women’s health services that might be useful to some of the victims. Let’s pretend the only thing Planned Parenthood have to offer these people is abortion and contraception.

Being outraged that they make the offer is still the wrong response.

“These people need food and water; they don’t need contraceptives.” Non-sequitur. Needing food and water doesn’t take away any need you might have for contraceptives, and unless Planned Parenthood are telling the Red Cross, “Hey, no need to bother feeding these people, we’re giving them contraceptives!” the need for food and water is irrelevant to the question of whether Planned Parenthood are doing the right thing.

Planned Parenthood don’t have experience in providing food and water, but they do have experience in providing contraception, and some people do need contraception. The young girl in the shelter who’s just been raped needs emergency contraception so she doesn’t have the fear of pregnancy added to everything else she has to suffer. The couple who’ve lost everything except for each other need contraception so they can have the basic comfort of a good fuck and start feeling like human beings again. The woman who’s reached safety but lost her birth control pills along with the rest of her possessions needs replacements so she can begin putting her life in order. If you sincerely believe that these people’s needs are so wrong that attempting to meet them is worthy of outrage, I have doubts about your humanity.

Amanda Marcotte, outraged at a particularly inhuman response, vented her feelings:

Just to spite your sorry ass, I will worship the Disco Ball, say “goddammit” loud and often, commit a dozen or so acts of sodomy, consume way too many alcoholic beverages and if I was pregnant, I would get an abortion just to spite you.

I would make the same pledge out of solidarity, but I’ve put too much effort into growing my baby to consider having an abortion for anyone’s sake. Instead, I’ve done the next best thing by donating what little I can to Planned Parenthood’s relief efforts. Anyone who’s outraged at the save-the-sperm outrage, I urge you to do the same. I found it extremely therapeutic.

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This truly bothers me.

Imagine it: you live though the most traumatic thing that could happen, you lose your family, your home, your job in one fell swoop. You make your way to someplace that should be where you can be safe, only to find you need to worry about being raped .

I found this:

Charity Hospital, the primary trauma hospital in New Orleans, has been fired upon by snipers. Coast Guard rescue helicopters have also been shot at, as have boats deployed to save the stranded now going on their 5th day without clean water or food. A relief truck was intercepted by armed gunmen on the West Bank. Women have been raped at the New Orleans Convention Center by their fellow evacuees.

And this:

“I walked out of my home because I feared for my child’s life,” said Dartrick Washington, 26, holding his 4-month-old listless baby boy, Jahieem, in the shade of a building near the overpass.

He was also responsible for his sister, his mother, and a female neighbor, and fearful of taking them anywhere near the Superdome because of rumors that women had been raped in the stadium-turned-shelter.

There are other, similar stories.

Refugees are raping fellow survivors. I boggled reading this. How could any person do this? What mind set is there that allows that type of thinking?

It’s bad enough in day to day life, where you can’t tell the predators from the nice guys. But to be in a survival situation, where everyone is suffering the same and still find men preying on women is just beyond me. What is the thinking? I might die but at least I got me a piece first?

How could any person amidst such suffering inflict more?

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