For a Saturday (normally not a busy blog day) there are some absolutely amazing stories out in the world! I saw this one last night on the Dead Pelican, but hadn’t written yet because of their hyperbolic attribution to Louis Farrakhan’s stupid, inflammatory remarks about the levees. Their story said,
The resident approached one of the contractor’s laborers and blamed the Corps of Engineers for blowing up the floodwall along the lower 9th ward. The angry resident stated that his mother was killed when the levee failed.
I intended to say something about that today anyway, but looks like WaPo has picked up on some more of the story.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency pulled all its workers out of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward yesterday after threats of violence and planned to request additional police or National Guard support, a FEMA spokeswoman said.
Unbelievable. The stories appear to sustain each other, which may mean that at least some people did believe Farrakhan’s paranoid ravings about the levees. (I really can’t believe what an idiot Farrakhan is.)
However, the Washington Post article contains a further tidbit that really bothers me.
Federal agents have arrested six people in the New Orleans area in recent weeks for making threats against FEMA workers, who have been advised against wearing clothing with the agency logo in public.
I’m appalled that ordinary workers would have to avoid letting people know who they work for – that they are afraid of the public. American oil company executives who travel in South America are told the same thing – but isn’t this the United States?
Yes, FEMA is the latest four-letter-word to hit the American lexicon – and I’ve taken my own “shots” at them here in the blog – but threatening people in there trying to help is a bit counter-productive, don’t ya think?
Thanks to this lovely “cut off nose to spite face” activitiy, I can hardly wait to read what will be said now about New Orleans.