Where are the refugees going?

[sigma7]

I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp - Above Top Secret Conspiracy Community

I'm extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week. Two car loads of us headed over to Falls Creek, a youth camp for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma that agreed to have its facilities used to house Louisiana refugees. I'm afraid the camp is not going to be used as the kind people of the churches who own the cabins believe it was going to be used.

Jesse Jackson was right when he said "refugees" was not the appropriate word for the poor souls dislocated due to Katrina. But he was wrong about why it is not appropriate. It's not appropriate because they are detainees, not refugees....

...He [not Jesse Jackson, different "he" -- s7] then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.

My son looks at me and mumbles "Welcome to Krakow."

Comments

[opheliasclone.livejournal.com]

I dunno. You've got a conspiracy theory web site hosting a post by someone who's apparently raised alarm bells unnecessarily before. It's possible that this person walked into the area with a sense of entitlement and an argumentative attitude, and officials responded by trying to get him to leave.

While I'm sure the photos are real, the writer may have made up or exaggerated his accounts of what the people there said. I notice that while someone was apparently able to take pictures unnoticed, I don't see any photos of the many rude or angry people he claimed to speak to while in or near his car. I also don't see picures of cell phones or barbed wire.

While he seems to find it very scary that he didn't see any refugees, it seems to me based on the photos of clothes and toys that the refugees have likely not arrived yet. Similarly, he assumes that numbered buildings are a sign of concentration camp conditions when it's just as plausible that they are simply there to help people find their new homes, allow for mail delivery, etc.

Since he didn't seem particularly interested in finding explanations when he could draw his own self-satisfying conclusions, I can't take this one seriously.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Oh, you could be right. My objectivity -- if it ever really raged inside me -- is currently defeated and in full retreat. I'm just too jaded after the last week and change for even the wigged-out tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories to faze me anymore. There were days when I could believe and hope for the best and right now I'm just too disillusioned and mildly furious about the obvious spin that I can't be bothered to disbelieve some of it anymore.

It also helps that my brain's mildly toasted to the point where my second fantasy football team will have a blank spot in its roster because I've managed to go 15 rounds without drafting a defensive lineman. There was a time I'd have to have a couple of Percocet before I achieved this level of cognitive disconnect. Of course, I don't think I'd mind as much.