FEMA Sorry for Faking News Briefing 403
theodp writes "The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters. All the while, real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions. In the briefing, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005."
While they're at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry isn't gonna cut it... try mass resignations!
A government organization went on national TV and intentionally tried to fool millions of Americans into believing a lie so that they didn't look bad.
Oh wait... never mind... I forgot, this is the USA. And we are talking about the government after all. The idiot who thought this up should run for President!
Flying Spaghetti Monster I cant wait until our government acts with our best interests in mind... hell I'd be happy to see it happen just once before I die.
Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all... your the director of external affairs... Yep you should have stopped it... SO WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU.
Second, your working very hard to establish credibility and integrity... by trying to trick us into thinking your credible and trustworthy... that's exactly what you DON'T do to establish credibility and integrity.
Finally... I would say that doing exactly the wrong thing hasn't undermine your credibility and integrity, you didn't have any to begin with... this simply ensures that you never will until the current >20% has been eliminated, everyone in that conference resigns, and your agency actually handles a disaster like it knows what it is doing.
It is kind of ironic that FEMA, the agency that is supposed to clean up disasters, actually turns every disaster it is involved in into a bigger disaster through it's absolute incompetence and piss poor public image.
HEY! Back Off! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Three Stooges were firemen, and in the army, and plumbers, football players...
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Devistating, but no Katrina (Score:5, Insightful)
Juxtaposition.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In essence, FEMA is not there to simply help out with expected situations, though that may be part of it. No matter the nobility or necessity, however, it is there, primarily, for unexpected emergencies, and it is simply not doing that job at the moment. Consider the juxtaposition between the rich socialites who have lived in the wildfire-prone region of California for so many years, and the disgustingly poor, predominately black population of New Orleans, who have lived there because their parents lived there, and because they cannot afford to move or live anywhere else. It all boils down to wealth disparity, and who benefits from it. I would encourage everyone to consider that.
Re:I love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Which of my rights online is this about? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just asking.
This is a tech site you know, not Zonk's personal playground.
Why we love the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is why, faults and all, the USA is loved around the world. It's like watching your goofy cousin make a fool of himself at the wedding reception.
Well
Re:While they're at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
They still don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
But regardless of whether they are truly sorry for this fiasco, they STILL don't get the problem. It's not that they staged a news conference, it's why they staged the conference that is the issue. They don't care about "emergency management", they only care about *public relations*. And while they claim that things are so much better than Katrina, this mock press conference only proves that nothing has changed.
On the positive side, Kanye West might be heartened to learn that it isn't just black people [boingboing.net] -- George Bush doesn't care about *anybody*.
Re:I love this quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Because he thought he'd get away with it?
Halle-frickin-lujah, Brother (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Which of my rights online is this about? (Score:1, Insightful)
This story qualifies as being "news for nerds", and it's certainly "stuff that matters". There are undoubtedly many Slashdot readers and comment submitters who are glad that Slashdot topics have expanded beyond technology (computers, machines, chemicals, algorithms, etc) to include social forces that are likely to affect how technology is used, abused, controlled, taxed, limited, promoted, misrepresented, etc. So, articles about the RIAA and MPAA, patents, proposed laws, court cases, business deals, etc, appear on Slashdot.
If Slashdot expanded to include links to videos, and allowed users to submit images, etc,
and expanded its range of topics to be even wider, then the interest and impact of the site
would be increased. Digg has benefited from not strictly adhering to a strict "technology
site" theme, but then again Digg suffers somewhat from editorial control in article selection.
Meanwhile, Slashdot can benefit from some expansion of topic range.
This FEMA article helps nerds update their informed mental models of the US government.
The US government affects nerds. Nerds can affect the US government. It matters.
Re:Sorry... (Score:1, Insightful)
My wife (Score:3, Insightful)
She's in Shanghai right now giving company training, getting disrespect from her students because she's 5'4", blond, and female (most of all); and there's nothing she can do about it because the double standard nowadays is that we as Americans MUST respect everyone else's culture but they are allowed to do fuck all to us in their homeland and in ours and we must respect that lest they perceive insult... When our own government makes a mockery of itself in full view of it's constituents then how are we any different from any hard-line, third-world, dictator state?
Wow that went south in a hurry. Sorry for that. Fema sucks.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"What the hell did they manage to do before, so that they thought
they'd could also get this through?"
You are not going from zero to full speed when starting playing dirty.
You start small, next time you get a little bit more couragous,
and each time more. You either stop increasing the risk at
one point, or you'll get caught eventually.
The question is, what kind of ploys have been done by the jokers
responsible for this before, and didn't get noticed???
Re:I love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, for the foreseeable future these lard suckers will continue to do what they are told and our politicians will continue to be a bunch of corrupt and hypocritical bastards whose only goal is to grab all the money they can for themselves. I'm hoping to be comfortably dead by the time this state of affairs changes, since it will probably end in a global environmental disaster, riots after all the oil runs out or economic collapse along the lines of what happened with Russia in the 90's.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a really transparent and poorly executed scam, based probably on some sort of hubris-laden supposition that the American people will buy just about anything. Not too far from the truth, but apparently just far enough.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well said. This is exactly the problem with warmongers: thinking that their ability to endure hardship and fight to the death is any greater than those they would fight. Just as we would would a grudge for generations if our lands were occupied, so will Iraqis.
Re:I love this quote (Score:3, Insightful)
And you folks once again miss the big picture! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, sireee, you had to get pissed because they got busted lying. This was an attempt to see how hijacking the press would work, is my guess. I don't recall if "commandeering" the press is yet among the executive orders, but the rest is in place.
Somehow, "I told you so" just does not seem to tell it.
Cheeseburgers and circuses and... Blackwater. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it. They'll put up with enormous shit otherwise. So if you keep up the flow of cheeseburgers and TV, the dictators will rule forever. --Or until such a time as the rest of the world decides to invade or the whole system is so totally sucked dry that it collapses with a dry wheeze like Russia did at the end of the cold war. Yep, it's a grim situation. But it gets worse. . .
I'm not convinced that this is all about just simple control. Has anybody noticed there seem to be a lot more rocks falling out of the sky recently? I sure have. There's bigger stuff at stake here. All those miles of barbed wire enclosures don't get built for nothing. The next ten months are going to be interesting, to say the least. I hope for one of two things; that people wake the hell up and throw Bush and Cheney and crew in prison forever and reinstate a real government, or that we have a really, really good TV season in 2008 and that McDonnald's has a two for one special, because it's not just FEMA, --this Blackwater thing operating on American soil is totally freaky.
Excellent Youtube video [youtube.com] [youtube.com] dealing with this stuff. . .
-FL
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what you would prefer, it matters what the Iraqis would prefer.
Re:Sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to talk to an Iraqi about that. I don't think most of them regard a country with no jobs, no power, no fuel, no medical care, infested with trigger happy foreigners, and run by gangs who are fanatical and/or corrupt, as an vast improvement over a brutal dictatorship. And after I year or two, I imagine that you'd grab a Kalashnikov and start plinking at the gringos yourself.
Par for the course... (Score:4, Insightful)
Goofy cousin with ICBMs, indeed. Not just goofy, but aggressive, arrogant and loud-mouthed as well.
Fortunately, your fascism will be a capitalist one, so it's OK!
Re:Sorry... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your implying that with Saddam they had jobs, power, fuel, medical care and without trigger happy gangs?
You'd be mistaken. UN sanctions + dictator = A rather bad situation.
At least with the US it will get better over time. In 10 to 20 years it'll be far better.
Re:Sorrier... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the first few decades of the last century, labor unions were founded and became dominant in the US; by 1950 more than half of American workers were union, and, having won, the leaders turned to the next social problem, equal rights. Beginning in the mid-fifties, the same personalities, by and large, and methods were used to bring about legal racial equality, culminating in the Civil Rights and Voting Acts of 1964. In that year, the focus turned from unions and racial equality to (VietNam) war resistance.
Although both the Union and the Civil Rights movements survived many, many casualties in their struggle, they persisted until the goal was reached. Not so the the war resisters: the National Guard shootings of demonstrators at Kent State University, Ohio, stopped the "Peace" movement in its tracks.
Had the union or civil rights movements been abandoned because two people were killed in the resulting violence, nothing would have been accomplished.
Now, of course, no outrage is enough even to get our (US) citizens up in arms (pun intended).
The framers of our Constitution understood it was simply an *experiment* and once the government learned to game the people (as FEMA has apologized for) the people would replace it, having learned from the current experiment what pitfalls to avoid next time.
T. Jefferson reckoned the consititution ought to be replace every thirty years or so. We're WAAAYY overdue.
Liberty is fed with the blood of tyrants.
Re:Sorry... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember Waco? Lying under oath? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorrier... (Score:2, Insightful)
The quote is actually, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Jefferson knew exactly what it took to overthrow a government, and did not ignore the costs to the rebelling side. People today like to ignore those words when they talk about revolution, because they don't like to think that they will actually have to pay the price themselves, and seem to think they will lose support by mentioning it.
J.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=341413&cid=21136749 [slashdot.org]
Our government has repeatedly passed legislation, or denied legislation based upon business interests over individual interests for quite some time now. It's not surprising, considering that the risks are low that they will face consequences, and the rewards are spectacular. The worst bit is that they can screw their constituents and look good doing it through deceptive naming and phrasing of bills/laws, by including commercial interest pork in a bill whose intent is completely unrelated, etc.
I am not suggesting that our government's problems are not the product of our own indifference (on a whole), because if the people exercised due diligence to research, elect, and monitor their representatives things would likely be much better. Unfortunately, American Idol is far more entertaining than following politics (I suppose that's debatable at this point too), so the people care more about who gets the $1 Million dollar recording contract than who's adding $300 Million in spending for an unneeded bridge to nowhere.
It's sad!
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Armed revolutions have never been a pleasant thing. And usually they're a last resort solution when things become really unbearable, where death doesn't sound more horrible than enduring it any longer. The US are far from anything like it.
And generally they're also not something the whole population supports. Don't think that everyone in the 13 colonies was an all-out supporter for a separation from England. What you call those people is secondary. Call them freedom fighters if you want to give them good PR, or terrorists if you need them to be boogymen, in general, they both want the same thing: To rule instead of the current ruler.
Whether that's better or worse for the local population is debatable.
Believe none of what you read . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
This is nothing new in the "News" biz. Remember Bush's phony Iraq videoconference with the troops where the "questions" were rehearsed beforehand?
Lest we think only government officials do this, or only Republicans, remember:
. . . NBC's "expose" of exploding gas tanks on pickup trucks using footage supplied by an advocacy group (funded by trial lawyers, btw) where incendiary devices were used to create explosions on cue?
. . . Dan Rather's phony National Guard memos?
Ask yourself how an author gets interviewed on 60 Minutes. Is it because CBS' parent company also owns the publisher? Why do so many "investigative journalism" pieces about corporate malfeasance get broadcast just before jury selection begins in the civil case? Why do so many trade magazine articles read like press releases (because they are)?
There is no objective standard for what "news" is. It's up to us to pay attention to the source and timing of the information we are being fed, and decide its value.
Re:Sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)