Lying about National Disaster Fatalities.

Great Debates
1

I know our American News Media – news weasels – who thrive on digging up the slightest bit of trash and throwing it onto millions of television screens for all to see. I also know their tendency to over-blow issues and incidents (the Clinton scandal was a prime example). With thousands of members of the lunatic fringe lurking on the Internet determined to find out anything about everything concerning government and then posting it for public view.

A hurricane swept through a major city in Florida and devastated it a couple of years ago. It was declared a national disaster area and help flooded in from all areas. The death toll eventually came out as only being about 300 people.

Then I ran into a carpenter, a year or so later, who worked down there and he laughed over the death toll, stating that it was in the thousands. He said the National Guard was watching over warehouses where bodies were being stacked like cordwood. Further discussions over this with people I know who are politically smarter than I pointed out that such things have happened before.

As for the current one, since the city is in the natural path of hurricanes, and gets much of its income from tourists, the local government decided to ‘fudge’ the death tolls so as not to ruin the tourist trade. When I asked why, it was pointed out to me that hurricanes arrived in the middle of the tourist season and it was felt that if people knew the true extent of the people killed that they would start avoiding the city during hurricane season, which would cost them millions in lost revenue.

Being somewhat naive, I asked if the city fathers would prefer the massive loss of tourist lives if another massive storm hit rather than loosing some bucks by allowing the people to be aware of the dangers. The answer was yes.

I was appalled. I was also wondering how the major news networks, so fond of dirt digging, missed the actual figures.

Then I watched, over the years, some similar reports show up on the history channel. Like a major city in California – I can’t recall the name – when it was founded and thriving, an Earthquake almost leveled it through fire. The businessmen and local governments decided not to tell anyone about the actual cause of the fire – the earthquake – because they stood to loose millions if people found out that they built along a fault line. So, they did not and by the time it dawned on everyone else, the city had become a major metropolis – and the earthquakes more frequent. Each time one hits, someone dies and the amount of property damage is high.

All for greed.

Apparently, even today, local city governments have lied about death totals from major disasters and the news media seems to go right along with it. I would think that such a happening would be a juicy scandal for the news, so, why does it go on and why does the New Media not jump all over it?

2

Okay, and mind you that this is a WAG, perhaps second- or third-hand reports of massive deaths are nothing more than paranoid delusions. The most parsimonious reason for “The Media”'s ignoring the “real numbers” could be that the “real numbers” don’t exist.

A government conspiracy to keep citizens going to certain death for vacation would be a lead story on any information source.

Anyone who gives credence to such a story seriously overestimates the general public. After a major disaster in a tourist area, the first question manny ask is when the hotels will be re-opened.

‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’
-C. Dickens

3

<font size=4> Sentinel is right, Dr. Fidelus. The city that was destroyed by earthquake & fire was SAN FRANCISCO. This information comes from a recent ‘history binge’ I was on. The history of catastrophies. Casualities were downplayed, as was the link between the fire & quake. This disinformation campaign was started by the real estate developement community of the time, however. (Note–the rubble from the quake/fire was dumped into the bay to create reclaimed land. This land is unstable, & currently being used for housing. San Francisco’s city hall denies that the land is unsafe. Civil Engineers point out that the water-soaked fill will flow like jelly in a major quake. )

As for the possibility that the Florida figures were diddled—maybe. The area was off limits for almost 4 days after the storm. Coral Gables, right?

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This has been a message from the Illuminated Committee To Save The Jackalope. Fnord.

4

daniel;

First, thank you for the format of your post. Us old folks usually need the large-type edition.

Now, the Great San Francisco Earthquake was in, when, 1906? A little before the modern media weasel paradigm (or the national disaster relief programs) that Sentinel was referencing. Not at all surprising that the cover-up was successful.

I doubt that there is any fudging of casuality figures in any recent disasters. Mostly because the general public feels that they are immortal, and cannot bring themselves to believe that they could be killed on vacation. How was the airline industry affected by the recent big crashes? Last I checked, people are still flying. People still go to the Carribbean for vacations despite a couple of the islands being almost wiped off the map during the past few hurricane seasons.

The effort needed to enact such a coverup as Sentinel proposes is not justified due to the indifference of the American public.

‘This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.’
-C. Dickens

5

Agreein’ with Dr F, as usual. Actually, one of the problems with the media (since Woodward-Bernstein) is that reporters are all salivating at the thought of being the one to uncover a cover-up. It’s fame, it’s fortune, it’s appearances on Leno!

Hard to imagine that any serious cover-up would go undiscovered… especially of something that already has lots of news coverage, hence lots of reporters snooping around looking for a scoop. It’d be more credible if the coverup were around an event that no one had heard of.

6

Dex:

You mean like how no one knows about how Swine Flu wiped out half the population of New Jersey in the 1970s? Or about the Communist Chinese occupation force in North Dakota?

Now, those are good cover-ups.

7

I feel the need to agree! Did the media go all hush-hush when Florida tourists, identified by the ad stickers on their rental cars, were being targeted by thugs? No, the media screamed loud and long, costing FL millions in tourist dollars. The end result was that rental cars were made to be less conspicuous and the tourists returned. To believe in this day and age that the government, or the real estate developers, or the Illuminati could pull off a coverup as mentioned in the OP is simply ludicrous. No doubt the local powers that be would try to minimize or “spin” the damage, but the national press has nothing to lose and everything to gain by busting any such coverup.

No charge for the consultation DrF, consider it professional courtesy.

The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik

8

DrF:

So, now you’re going to claim that there really is a North Dakota?

“Bodies stacked up like cordwood” and no insurance company noticed that they were paying out far more death benefits than the news claimed had died? Every member of the National Guard who participated was sworn to secrecy and not one thought to blow the whistle on something like this? Most of the neighborhoods that were destroyed were rebuilt in one fashion or another and nobody in southern Florida has noticed that most of the houses were never re-occupied because the original inhabitants had died? Any word on how “bodies stacked up like cordwood” were disposed without anyone noticing (and with no plagues breaking out from wind-born pathogens from the carnage)?

I don’t mind a good conspiracy theory. (I don’t believe them, but I don’t mind them.)

Stupid conspiracy theories make me want to institute a stupidity tax.

Tom~

9

Appropos of the main idea behind the OP, if not the actual topic used to present it:

In today’s USA Today, I read that the NAACP (see recent thread regarding that name) was asking the Justice Department to officially investigate an allegation made by author Carroll Case (The Slaughter: An American Atrocity) that, in 1943, 1,200 members of the 364th Infantry Regiment, a black regiment, were shot by white troops and buried in a trench, with the incident covered-up. Mind you, the Army investigated the allegations, and determined they were incorrect. Mind you also, according to Mr. Mfume of the NAACP, the organization is not saying the Army is lying now. The NAACP simply doesn’t trust the Army to tell the truth, a mistrust that has some foundation, based on the official reaction to the first reports recently of the No Gun Ri massacre.

There is a tendency on the part of many today to disbelieve in government and its ability to tell the truth. I find it ironic that, in a country so devoted to trying to allow any and all opinions about the ‘truth’ to flourish, we have less faith in our government and its ability to be truthful than it seems many did in Russia in the period when there was only ONE ‘pravda.’

As I say to anyone who propounds government conspiracy ideas that don’t involve the military, How the hell do you expect them to hide it from the Press and the opposition??

10

I always find it amusing that the people who propose huge government conspiracies are often the same ones who point out how often the government screws up.

Just seems to me that the two don’t really go hand in hand…

11

‘Pravda’ is Russian for ‘truth,’ an ironic title for the official organ of the Communist Party. ‘Isvestia’ (sp?) means ‘news,’ and was what they called the daily TV news broadcast.

A Russian friend tells me that they used to say (during the good old Soviet days):

“There is no Isvestia in Pravda, and no Pravda in Isvestia.”

Launcher may train without warning.

12

Not being omniscient, I can’t say for certain that there wasn’t a coverup, but any time you hear one of these stories, you should ask yourself “Why was I able to find out about this, but the media wasn’t?” If some carpenter is blabbing to everyone he meets about this, just hoe secret can it be?

13

Try this one. I have been to Washington D.C. to participate in the “March for Life” many times since the 80’s sometime. Everytime I go I see how the media fudges the numbers of the people that participate. The first time I saw it I was shocked, I couldn’t believe the media would lie like that. Since that day I no longer believe ANYTHING they say and in 1987 got rid of my television and haven’t had reception since.

I was an eyewitness to facts that contradicted the “reported” figures.

For those that think, well, he doesn’t know how to do crowd estimates, yeah, you’re right. That’s why I took my camera, I can count. And btw, the numbers given out by the media also contradict the number of people that show up for events put on by “Right for Life” in the hotels where they serve breakfast, etc. they have a count taken by number of meals eaten in the conference rooms in which the meals are served individually by waiters and NO second helpings! :wink:

2 cents, no need to make change :wink:

14

Further, I was amused to see the media on several occasions do “tight shots” of pro-abortion people in a crowd of thirty or less (that’s all that were there) near the Washington Monument and then try to make it look like there were “hordes” of protesters rallying against us. Sheesh maneesh, what a scam.

I have had friends that are/were in journalism since 1974 and they have never contradicted my claims, the “news” media knows EXACTLY what they are doing.