Hurricane Katrina Hysteria and Hezbollah: What's the Connection?

"Chocolate Power" Nagin









Taking the Big Lie from the Big Easy to Lebanon. Courtesy of the "News" Media

One year ago Hurricane Katrina roared ashore along the Gulf Coast and devastated an area running from the Texas border to Alabama. In the aftermath of the disaster facts were few and far between as hysteria reigned.

New Orleans Mayor Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin spent more time giving press interviews complaining about the lack of help than he did to implement the cities own disaster plan. Almost comically, he demanded "500 buses" to get people of New Orleans while a few blocks away sat 500 buses underwater because he failed to use them to evacuate the poorest of the cities residents. Amtrak had also offered New Orleans the use of empty trains that were being moved in advance of the storm. Later, when asked why these resources were not used, "Chocolate City" Nagin told NBC's Stone Phillips: "I don't know. That is question for somebody else."

For days, hysterical "news" reports claimed that there were 10,000 dead in New Orleans. We were told that bodies were floating in the streets while survivors were forced to eat the corpses to survive. Hour after hour, reporters camped out at the Superdome asking why help had not arrived.

It was stated openly and repeated often that the reason this human nightmare was happening in New Orleans was because the residents who "Chocolate City" Nagin failed to evacuate were black.

• It was only later that we learned that white people died in greater proportion. The overall death toll from Katrina was a fraction of the initial claim.The howling hysterics who claimed black people were forced to eat corpses later retracted the claim but continue to insist that the entire tragedy was due to white racism.
• Both the Red Cross and Salvation Army had prepositioned supplies ready to assist survivors at the Superdome and Convention Center but were refused permission to take them to those site.
• Louisiana Governor Blanco, who joined "Chocolate City" Nagin in demanding immediate help, also rejected repeated attempts to federalize the state's National Guard disaster relief which would have speed up efforts considerably.
• Louisiana received even more federal money than California for Army Corps projects. But instead of strengthening the levees which eventually failed, spending was directed at pork barrel pet projects of Louisiana's Democrat political leadership. Improving the levees was not a state "priority."

The Big Lie: Once the Genie is Out of the Bottle

While every facet of the hysterics, lies and race-baiting regarding the Katrina disaster have been exposed, the big lie in the Big Easy worked. Few people swept up in the emotion of the mis-reporting that typified this sad episode bothered to reload the outrage rack once the truth got out.

The hysterics and scapegoating worked so well that Mayor "Chocolate City" Nagin continues to use racism, in this case his own racism, to escape accountability for the continuing failures of his government in the year since Katrina blew ashore:

From MSNBC AP Report: In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, Nagin said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class."

"And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response," the mayor said.

Look Back at Katrina Hysteria

The Mike's America archive for September, 2005 is like a look back in time as we tacked against the winds of one-way fingerpointing, race-baiting and scapegoating. And speaking of race-baiters, it's important to remind readers that the leader of that franchise, the Rev. Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson was in Caracas, Venezuela as the storm raged. He rushed home in time to gin up the race-bait operation.

What's This Got to Do with Hezbollah

Racist scapegoating Democrats provided Hezbollah the best example of how to stage manage hysteria and manipulate the willfully misinformed. Nearly the entire war between Hezbollah and Israel was played like a propaganda fiddle using a "news" media that put aside the skepticism they reserve for questioning Republicans or Israelis.

It started with the report that Israelis were targeting ambulances as they evacuated the injured from Israeli bombings. Never mind that Islamic Fascists are known to use ambulances and vehicles with UN markings to ferry their fighters into or out of battle (see here and video here).

Zombietime digs deeper into this "news" story with some interesting questions about the attacks on those "ambulances."

Phony attacks on "ambulances" didn't capture the outrage that the manufacturers of this "news" intended so it was off to the next lie. And UN Secretary General provided the plot line for that bit of fakery by claiming that Israel "deliberately" targeted UN personnel in an attack which killed four "peacekeepers." Only later did we learn that the UN position was being used by Hezbollah to attack the Israelis. Never mind, the Genie was aleady out of the bottle.

But the Hezboos should be nominated for an Oscar of Outrage with their next stunt. They used a civilian residence in Qana, Lebanon to shield rockets fired at Israel. When it was attacked, all traces of fighters and weaponry were removed in the hours before reporters were brought to the scene. Just as with Katrina, the death toll at Qana was hyper-inflated. Few people bothered to lower their outrage meter when we learned the truth.

But not even race-baiting, scapegoating Democrats would sink (yet) to using the images of dead children for propaganda. The following video shot by German television shows the body of a dead child removed from the ambulance, laid again on the ground so that the photographer could get a better shot. The photographer was directed to reshoot the scene by the so-called "

In each of the cases above, whether in New Orleans or Lebanon, those who perpetrated these frauds against the conscience of mankind have escaped accountability. The "news" media refuses to even acknowledge the problem (ChickenHawk and EU Referendum are keeping us updated on that issue). One thing is sure: "news" media failure to acknowledge the extent to which they and the willfully misinformed are manipulated means we can expect MORE of these falsehoods, not fewer.