[R-G] Tales of rape and murder by New Orleans "degenerates" -- are they fiction or fact?

[Fred Feldman]

Liberal NYT columnists Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd are among the many
who have participated in the propaganda portraying the Black community
in New Orleans --  those Left Behind (to use the Last Days lingo)-- as
about equally divided between raping and murdering "degenerates" on one
side and their victims on the other.  These claims -- probably almost
all mythical and definitely vastly exaggerated -- are part of the
developing campaign to make sure that the "degenerate" poor Blacks who
were abandoned when the flood hit will have no place in the
"revitalized" New Orleans that will rise from the watery ruins.
Fred Feldman

Murder and rape - fact or fiction?

Gary Younge in Baton Rouge
Tuesday September 6, 2005

Guardian

There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old
girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid
out amid the excrement in the convention centre.
In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New
Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out.

But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be
apocryphal.

New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped
child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and
convention centre.

New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass said last night: "We don't have
any substantiated rapes. We will investigate if the individuals come
forward."

And while many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or
survivors' relatives have come forward.

Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their
bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention centre toilets
were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses.

During a week when communications were difficult, rumours have acquired
a particular currency. They acquired through repetition the status of
established facts.

One French journalist from the daily newspaper Libération was given
precise information that 1,200 people had drowned at Marion Abramson
school on 5552 Read Boulevard. Nobody at the Federal Emergency
Management Agency or the New Orleans police force has been able to
verify that.

But then Fema could not confirm there were thousands of people at the
convention centre until they were told by the press for the simple
reason that they did not know.

"Katrina's winds have left behind an information vacuum. And that vacuum
has been filled by rumour.

"There is nothing to correct wild reports that armed gangs have taken
over the convention centre," wrote Associated Press writer, Allen Breed.

"You can report them but you at least have to say they are
unsubstantiated and not pass them off as fact," said one Baltimore-based
journalist.

"But nobody is doing that."

Either way these rumours have had an effect.

Reports of the complete degradation and violent criminals running
rampant in the Superdome suggested a crisis that both hastened the
relief effort and demonised those who were stranded.

By the end of last week the media in Baton Rouge reported that evacuees
from New Orleans were carjacking and that guns and knives were being
seized in local shelters where riots were erupting.

The local mayor responded accordingly.

"We do not want to inherit the looting and all the other foolishness
that went on in New Orleans," Kip Holden was told the Baton Rouge
Advocate.

"We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other
people."

The trouble, wrote Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune is that "scarcely
any of it was true - the police confiscated a single knife from a
refugee in one Baton Rouge shelter".

"There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes."

Similarly when the first convoy of national guardsmen went into New
Orleans approached the convention centre they were ordered to "lock and
load".

But when they arrived they were confronted not by armed mobs but a nurse
wearing a T-shirt that read "I love New Orleans".

"She ran down a broken escalator, then held her hands in the air when
she saw the guns," wrote the LA Times.

"We have sick kids up here!" she shouted.

"We have dehydrated kids! One kid with sickle cell!"