Keep on shooting at those 'copters

[BlueJ1]

About now, Im feeling more sorry for the animals down there then I am the "people" that remain and continue to loot,kill, and shoot at eachother, including the hand that feeds them.

[Charon]

So what do most Atheists do? They trade on borrowed capital. Most generally agree to follow a system of ethics, but when their preferences differ from the prevailing system...

As a pastor, I hope you know more about life than you do about athiests. Arrogant, ignorant and insulting of people who differ from your beliefs. Good day and good by.

Charon

[takeda]

off to the other thread with my post

[StarOfAfrica2]

Here's one story.

Police and Owners Begin to Challenge Looters

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By FELICITY BARRINGER and JERE LONGMAN
Published: September 1, 2005
NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - In a city shut down for business, the Rite Aid at Oak and South Carrollton was wide open on Wednesday. Someone had stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks, peeled up the security gate and smashed through the front door.

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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Paul Cosma and Jennifer Schmidt stood, armed, at the entrance to Mr. Cosma's auto repair shop in New Orleans, on the lookout for looters.
 
The young and the old walked in empty-handed and walked out with armfuls of candy, sunglasses, notebooks, soda and whatever else they could need or find. No one tried to stop them.

Across New Orleans, the rule of law, like the city's levees, could not hold out after Hurricane Katrina. The desperate and the opportunistic took advantage of an overwhelmed police force and helped themselves to anything that could be carried, wheeled or floated away, including food, water, shoes, television sets, sporting goods and firearms.

Many people with property brought out their own shotguns and sidearms. Many without brought out shopping carts. The two groups have moved warily in and out of each other's paths for the last three days, and the rising danger has kept even some rescue efforts from proceeding.

Because the New Orleans police were preoccupied with search and rescue missions, sheriff's deputies and state police from around Louisiana began to patrol the city, some holding rifles as they rolled through the streets in an armored vehicle.

But on Wednesday night, the mayor ordered about 1,500 city police officers, nearly the entire force, back to their traditional roles.

The looters "are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas," Mayor C. Ray Nagin told The Associated Press, "hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now."

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said she was "furious" about the looting.

"What angers me the most is disasters tend to bring out the best in everybody, and that's what we expected to see," Ms. Blanco said at a news conference. "Instead, it brought out the worst."

All sizes and types of stores, from Wal-Mart to the Rite Aid to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, turned into bazaars of free merchandise.

Some frightened homeowners took security into their own hands.

John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.

One said, "We want that generator," he recalled.

"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered."

He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."

Though no one excused the stealing, many officials were careful not to depict every looter as a petty thief.

"Had New York been closed off on 9/11, who can say what they would have done?" said Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, vice president of the New Orleans City Council. "When there's no food, no water, no sanitation, who can say what you'd do? People were trying to protect their children. I don't condone lawlessness, but this doesn't represent the generous people of New Orleans."

One woman outside a Sav-a-Center on Tchoupitoulas Street was loading food, soda, water, bread, peanut butter and canned food into the trunk of a gray Oldsmobile.

"Yes, in a sense it's wrong, but survival is the name of the game," said the woman, who would not identify herself. "I've got six grandchildren. We didn't know this was going to happen. The water is off. We're trying to get supplies we need."

Jimmy Field, one of the state's five public service commissioners, said supply and repair trucks were being slowed down by people looking for food and water. Some would not go on without police escorts.

"Right now we're hoping for more federal assistance to get the level of civil disturbance down," Mr. Field said.

One police officer was shot Tuesday trying to stop looting, but he was expected to survive.

An emergency medical vehicle that was taking a Baton Rouge police officer who had been shot last month from a hospital back to his hometown was shot at on the way out of New Orleans on Tuesday.

East Baton Rouge Parish officials agreed to send 20 buses with special weapons and tactics officers to help evacuate New Orleanians, but only if a state trooper was also placed on each bus. The plan was scuttled.

"I told them I don't mind committing drivers and vehicles, but I wasn't going to put our people in harm's way," said Walter Monsour, the chief administrative officer of the parish.

Besides the strain of having to rescue survivors, the police are bereft of much of their equipment, buildings and essential communications. The Police Department was scheduled to receive new radios on Wednesday night to coordinate its activities, said Lt. Col. Mark S. Oxley, a spokesman for the state police.

Charles C. Foti Jr., the Louisiana attorney general, said a temporary detention center and courthouse would be established somewhere outside New Orleans. "We will be ready to accept you in our system, and teach you about rules and order," Mr. Foti warned looters.

On Tuesday, the state police sent in 200 troopers trained in riot control, said Lt. Lawrence J. McLeary, a spokesman for the state police.

He said that the "nervous energy" in New Orleans reminded him of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "I've never seen anything like that in Louisiana," Lieutenant McLeary said.

With no officers in sight, people carried empty bags, shopping carts and backpacks through the door of the Rite Aid on Wednesday and left with them full. The forklift was still in the doorway. As they came and went, the looters nodded companionably to one another.

Paul Cosma, 47, who owns a nearby auto shop, stood outside it along with a reporter and photographer he was taking around the neighborhood. He had pistols on both hips.

Suddenly, he stepped forward toward a trio of young men and grabbed a pair of rusty bolt cutters out of the hands of one of them. The young man pulled back, glaring.

Mr. Cosma, never claiming any official status, eventually jerked the bolt cutters away, saying, "You don't need these."

The young man and his friends left, continuing the glare. A few minutes later, they returned and mouthed quiet oaths at Mr. Cosma, and his friend Art DePodesta, an Army veteran, who was carrying a shotgun and a pistol.

Mr. Cosma stared back, saying nothing. Between the two sides, a steady trickle of looters came and went, barely giving any of them a look.

[straffo]

Originally posted by Seagoon

So what do most Atheists do? They trade on borrowed capital. Most generally agree to follow a system of ethics, but when their preferences differ from the prevailing system...

- SEAGOON

I'm atheist and my morale is pretty less elastic than lot of christian I know (including non papist catholics)

Do I paint all the catholics as whole ?
no

so respect my lack of religion please.

[Clifra Jones]

Originally posted by beet1e
Indeed, indeed. And that's because your country has let all kinds of idiots get their hands on guns. Look how it all ends up when that happens.

The only id10t here is the one who completely misunderstands our gun laws in the US.

It is not Easy to get a gun here. You cannot have a felony conviction or a number of other restrictions. I won't go into it because I am not an expert. Others here are and can speak with more knowledge than I can.

FACT IS! Most criminal elements DO NOT get their guns from the gun store. They get them on the black market! No amount of GUN CONTROL will stop that. These thugs got thier guns by looting the local gun shops.

We don't need gun control we need people control.

This who situation prove the adage: An armed populous is a save populous!

[Hangtime]

John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.

One said, "We want that generator," he recalled.

"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered."

He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."

Reality bites. Those that have weapons for self defense stand a far better chance of surviving than those that do not.

Welcome to the future.

[straffo]

Originally posted by Clifra Jones
This who situation prove the adage: An armed populous is a save populous!

Provided this population had not to leave the area (it break the model no ?)

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Clifra Jones
These thugs got thier guns by looting the local gun shops.

Indeed. That's why we choose to have no local gun shops. Well wait, we do, but the only guns they stock are side by side shotguns and limited range air weapons. - makes it difficult for the crims to get guns, which is the way I like it.

[Bronk]

Originally posted by Hangtime
Reality bites. Those that have weapons for self defense stand a far better chance of surviving than those that do not.

Welcome to the future.

Yup and if the anti gun nuts had their way . The out come would have been one man stabbed and hacked with his generator stolen.

Bronk

[eagl]

Seagoon is right.

Without a moral basis for one's actions, a large number of people will act out of pure, unrestricted self-interest when the threat of punishment derived from the rule of law is removed.

While there are a great number of people who have internalized a moral code of ethics that allows the welfare of others to supersede the immediate welfare and desires of the self, there are many times more people who, without religion to plant the seeds of such morality, will degenerate into self absorbed savages when facing any kind of adversity and there is no proximate threat of retribution for violent anti-social acts.

Or in other words, the scumbags will come out when the rule of law breaks down, and a common difference between the scumbags and those who retain their civilized character under duress is an internalized moral code based on a religious foundation.

edit - everyone but Americans seem to know this instinctively.  I don't know why it suprises us, but it does.

[Hangtime]

life is full of choices.

choose wisely.

very, very wisely.

[Suave]

Right the rule of law, not from a fear of a  cosmic santa clause. If antisocial behavior were the norm, human society would've fallen apart before we left the caves.

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."   --Albert Einstein

[eagl]

Suave,

Note that Einstein used the word "should".  He was stating his version of an ideal situation.  Einstein was an exceptional person and I think exceptional people often have unrealistic expectations of how people "should" act and think.

Einstein was a school dropout who went on to formulate some of the most radical and progressive mathematical ideas in history.  I happen to think that in almost ANY given situation, he, as a school dropout, will always behave differently than a school dropout who never learned to read and who's idea of having a good time is taking drugs and finding ways to convince or trick every female in sight to submit to his sexual advances.  And that's the contrast in behavior we're seeing here...

In the blue corner, we have one school dropout who came up with the general theory of relativity and who thinks people should act nice even when not under threat of punishment.

In the red corner, we have 10,000 school dropouts who are drug addicts and spend their days stealing money to feed their drug habits or trying to have sex with anything that submits to them.  And the corner workers for this group are the modern entertainment industry glamorizing gangsta behavior and teach that it's never right to accept responsibility for your own actions.

Now put both corners into a natural disaster, see what happens, and learn what "human nature" really is.

[Rino]

Originally posted by beet1e
Indeed. That's why we choose to have no local gun shops. Well wait, we do, but the only guns they stock are side by side shotguns and limited range air weapons. - makes it difficult for the crims to get guns, which is the way I like it.

     How nice for you.