YEHA: HELP!! South African paper wants to follow up Bassier sister Story!

[HamdenRice]

The editor of the South African Mail & Guardian wants to follow up on Bush comforting two black women, Bronwyn and Kim Bassier, who turn out to be South African.

M&G is covering whether SAns in the area are safe.

I desperately need the help of all the posters who found solid evidence of this. I need the audio so that the editors can identify the accent.

Can you imagine if they walk over to the Coloured township in Durban and interview the parents? We will have irrefutable proof to give the MSM that bush could not find a native African American to talk to in Mississippi.

Here's the email I received and the one I sent

Hi Hamden,



You posted about the 2 woman George Bush was comforting and said they were South African. Do you know this for sure? Where did you find that out? If they are I want to try and track them down to do an interview with them. If you’ve got any info please send it to me asap.



Thanks


Here's the email I sent:

Dear Sirs:

I am sure you have followed the terrible story of hurricane Katrina in the American states of Louisiana and Mississippi.

On Friday as President Bush toured the devastated areas, a photograph was taken which has been distributed around the world of Bush comforting two women, Bronwynn and Kim Bassier (attached).

Interestingly, it turns out that these women are South Africans. I am sure that it would make a great human interest story to interview their relatives in Durban (we believe), who may only have found out that their loved ones were safe by seeing them on television or in the newspaper, being personally comforted by none other than the president of the United States of America!

I might add, that American bloggers and independent journalists have latched onto the story, first because in the few video clips in which the women were heard talking, their accents seemed completely unfamiliar to American ears, and some finally identified the women as South African.

Another angle on this story from the American perspective is that there is immense anger at the president's slow, inadequate response to the crisis in Louisiana and Mississippi. There is speculation that his advance men could scarcely find a locally born black American who would talk to the president without giving him an earful. Many people are questioning the authenticity of this photo opportunity of a president who stringently avoids criticism and exposure to negative information.

For more, you might look at these links on a progressive American website, DemocraticUnderground:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4623494

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4597216

HamdenRice (sometime blogger

[Ruby Romaine]

1. Laura & twins in SA, twins volunteering? perhaps they are

friends of twins?
July news story-
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1735890,00.html

[Ruby Romaine]

2. you gotta see this!!!!-Mitch Besser= Bassier????

Posted Date: August 26, 2002
Empowering HIV-Infected Mothers-To-Be in South Africa


Last year, Mitch Besser, an obstetrician and volunteer with Interaction member International Relief Teams, initiated the “Mothers to Mothers to Be” (M2M2B) program at a prenatal clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. M2M2B is a program of counseling, education and support for HIV/AIDS-infected women in pregnancy. Pregnant HIV-infected women receiving prenatal care are paired with HIV-infected women who recently completed prenatal care and delivered their babies. These new mothers act as mentors for the pregnant women for the duration of the pregnancy, educating and counseling them during prenatal visits.

http://www.interaction.org/library/detail.php?id=852

could these sisters be the daughters of this guy?

[elehhhhna]

4. their name is Bassier

[Ruby Romaine]

8. &the media never gets anything wrong-is there any way to find out if this

these girls are this MD's daughters?
Media could have spelled the names wrong.

[Ruby Romaine]

3. i'll bet this Dr knows the sisters & they met the Bushes in SA

http://www.paarlpost.com/archive/220704/lifestyle.html

[frictionlessO]

5. Kicked and nommed, Im short on time today otherwise I'd be all over

trying to help you background this up.

I hope more DU'ers join in.

Maybe get a Kossack to post over there as well?

[hlthe2b]

6. Wow... excellent work...

This could really blow the roof off!

[mzteris]

7. found this

search isn't working on DU - so I went to see what I could google...

don't know if this is a relation of not but - it's a place to start.

Three South African families are OK
Tom Wilemon found three native South African families who wanted folks back there to know that they were safe in Biloxi. The families of Malcomb Smith, Shawn Abraham and Lynne Bassier wanted him to pass that along.

http://eyesonkatrina.blogspot.com/2005/09/three-south-african-families-are-ok.html

[oasis]

9. Bush's pictoral legacy: A collection of phony photo ops. Next stop,

Renquist funeral.

[mzteris]

10. don't you love these pictures

Look how nice and clean they are - including their shoes.......

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Okay, that makes sense!

I knew when I heard them being interviewed on CNN that they were NOT African-Americans. The accent was all wrong, with British overtones, and I assumed that they must be from the Caribbean. I didn't even consider South Africa!

But between the way they look, their French surname, and their British-tinged accent, it's quite possible that they are Coloureds (mixed race) from South Africa.

[xxqqqzme]

31. When I first saw this

(online) the first thing I noticed were their T-shirts & hair. I thought it remarkable that both of them were clean & combed (especially after seeing the people in NO) after 4 days. Now that I see the shoes and the cleans jeans - again I can only visually compare this w/ the people in NO - I don't believe it 4 a second. One of my initial questions after finding out they were not local was how did they get 2 this photo op?

[HamdenRice]

12. More correspondence to MG editor and publisher -- just sent

I just sent off emails to the news editor and publisher of M&G. I stayed away from any speculative material, because their main interest is to publish a story about South Africans who survived the storm and relieved relatives back home. Once they confirm the sisters' identities, and this is published in a very credible foreign news source, we can pursue the phony photo op aspect separately. I did not want to scare these guys off with any potential tin foil hat material.

Thanks to posters here (to rushed to name them) who provided a downloadable source for the audio and video.

Also I take back anything I said about them not being victims of the storm. The first time I saw the video was this morning and I have to take at face value that these women were in the storm in water up to their necks.


Dear Matthew and Seamus,

A number of American posters and bloggers became interested in this because they simply had never heard the Bassier sisters' accent before and were puzzled about where these ladies, whom president Bush was comforting, were from. Clearly, they were not typical residents of Mississippi, which has its own very distinctive accent.

A number of people who heard the video concluded that they were South African, because the accent is quite unmistakable. I attach a media file which someone apparently "captured" from CNN, and although she sounds like she has lived in the US for a bit, she clearly has a SA accent.

Also, A DU member did some kind of yahoo search and found that apparently Ms. Bassier (or another South African in the region with her exact name) had posted from Florida in 2001 that she had just arrived in the US and was homesick for Durban (just search "Bassier" on this website, which appears to be a "guestbook").

http://us.geocities.yahoo.com/gb/view?member=3stolley&.start=31

Name : Bronwynne Bassier
Website : Durban Resoures
Email : [e-mail]
City where you live : Highsprings,Florida
Country : U.S.A
Comments : A TRUE DURBAN HEIGHT ,BORN IN S.A ...WHO HAS JUST MOVED TO THE U.S MISS HOME VERY MUCH THOUGHT THAT THE SITE REALLY DID S.A PROUD WELL DONE....

Finally, her name comes up as a recent graduate of a community college in the storm stricken area, Mississippi Gulf Port Community College, and a resident of Gautier, one of the affected towns.

I hope this doesn't sound like the members of DemocraticUnderground were stalking these unfortunate victims of hurricane Katrina, but there is a great deal of understandable skepticism of the president's ability to relate to the typically poor, native-born African Americans of Louisiana and Mississippi, and especially New Orlean, who were largely left to fend for themselves for days after the storm.

As for the picture that was attached to my prior email, it was simply downloaded from some news site; the picture or ones like it, have been used hundreds of times across the web. The SABC website has a similar picture here:

http://www.sabcnews.com/world/north_america/0,2172,111659,00.html

Hope this helps and I also hope to read about the Bassier sisters' relieved families learning that they are safe and sound.

Hamden

>From: "Matthew Buckland" <[e-mail]>
>To: "Roland Tomasi" <[e-mail]>
>Subject: RE: Story suggestion: Bush comforts South Africans in Biloxi after Hurrican Katrina
>Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 08:49:36 +0200
>
>
>Dear Hamden
>
>Thanks for your email
>
>We are very keen to use this picture, but who took it and how can we
>verify that it is indeed two South Africans with George Bush
>
>Cheers
>Matt
>_________________________________________
>Matthew Buckland
>Publisher: Mail & Guardian Online
>http://www.mg.co.za
>http://www.earthyear.co.za
>http://www.teacher.co.za
>http://www.themedia.co.za
>[e-mail]
>[e-mail]
>[phone]
>
>Read my columns
>The Media: http://www.mg.co.za/netsavvy
>My blog: http://blogmark.mg.co.za/matthewbuckland
>Poynter Online: http://www.poynter.org/profile/profile.asp?user=60133
>
>
>TAKE NOTE: New M&G address on Grosvenor Corner -- CNR of Jan Smuts and
>Seventh avenues Rosebank
>

[Ruby Romaine]

13. good job!

Bush couldn't find any Americans willing to pose w/him. It makes sense.
Bush voters have blood on their hands.

[berni_mccoy]

14. Great Job! Kick!

:kick:

[donsu]

15. thank you for your good works - more power to you

nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. This is too interesting to drop off the page

:kick:

[renate]

17. Well done, Hamden!

:yourock: :bounce: :yourock: :bounce: :yourock: :bounce:

[Catherine Vincent]

18. Hamden Rice on the case!

Is that why Shrubnuts high tailed it back to NOLA on Monday to pose with more victims?

[MADem]

19. He didn't go to NOLA, too afraid--he went to Baton Rouge!!!

There's scary folks in NOLA, they haven't eaten or had clean water in a week or more--much safer in a secure, far away shelter, surrounded by his SS guards.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. I saw a clip of Bush visiting one of the shelters, and I noticed that

the people in the background seemed to be ignoring him.

Nobody was crowding around, whether hostile or friendly. You'd think that there'd be a lot of hostile people and some die-hard fans eager to communicate with him.

That was odd, and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps he never visited the shelter at all and that some advanced blue screen technology to superimpose him on stock footage of a shelter. :shrug:

[dooner]

20. Very smart way to work with the media Hamden

Lesson to all of us:

News outlets like to have a timely human interest story for their readers.

Bringing a credible local angle to them (South Africans in NO), particularly for a big story (Disaster), is almost guaranteed to get their attention.

And for us, it will hopefully result in some new facts coming out, or at the very least some new exposure on the fact.

Great job.

[skids]

21. Also great tact.

Sometimes the media won't report all the angles, but you can still get them to become a "reliable source" for details.

Perhaps this is a bad example, but when KO put Babs's quote up, he didn't comment on any intonations, however it did give people the ability to say the quote was "reported by MSNBC."

So if you can't get them to cover the angles, at least get them to become a source for facts/details needed to support the angles.

[Mabus]

22. Bronwynne Bassier lives in Gautier, MS -- Bush comforted looters

About 17 -18 miles from Biloxi, MS. This address was found using Excite.com's White Pages. (http://kevdb.infospace.com/info.xcite/wp/results/kevdb?OTMPL=%2Fwp%2Fresults.htm&QFM=N&QK=5&QN=bassier&QS=ms&KCFG=US&top=internal&ran=8765&from=index)

Bronwynne Bassier
1829 Westgate Pkwy
Gautier, MS 395534539

So, were Brownynne and her sister Kim nothing more than looters that Bush was comforting.

BTW, does anyone know how Gautier, MS was affected by Katrina?

update: Bronwynne graduated this year from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/living/community/11691655.htm

on edit (again): confirmation she is from Durban, South Africa: http://us.geocities.yahoo.com/gb/view?member=3stolley&.start=31

Text from link:
Name : Bronwynne Bassier
Website : Durban Resoures
Email : [e-mail]
City where you live : Highsprings,Florida
Country : U.S.A
Comments : A TRUE DURBAN HEIGHT ,BORN IN S.A ...WHO HAS JUST MOVED TO THE U.S MISS HOME VERY MUCH THOUGHT THAT THE SITE REALLY DID S.A PROUD WELL DONE....

[goclark]

23. keep kicked for more answers

[kitkat65]

27. I seriously doubt if they were looters.

They said they were in the area for clothes, which could have meant they were hoping to get clothing handouts from the Red Cross or other charity.

Let's be careful of making the accusation of looting because it would be nearly impossible to prove it - it would be shameful to smear someone's character before the facts were present. That's a typical Rove move, and I would hope DU folks would rise above something like that.

I know you just raised the question, not the accusation. I'm just pleading caution.

[Mabus]

28. agreed

just found it curious that her address (on the web) is listed as Gautier and not Biloxi.

[Mabus]

29. Then again, here's this quote from Aaron Brown's show- She IS a looter

source: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0509/02/asb.01.html

B. BASSIER: And I'm -- that's OK.

But, no, I wasn't angry at the situation, because I knew eventually they will eventually help us in some sort of way. And, like my sister said, he did reassure us that things were going to happen. And I can see that they are happening, because I am in Gautier. And every day, there's people giving us water and giving us ice and telling us that everything is going to be OK.

(CROSSTALK)

B. BASSIER: Like today, Pascagoula and Ocean Springs got electricity. And they said it's just a matter of hours before Gautier gets electricity, too.

BROWN: But -- so, the situation for you in Biloxi isn't comparable, is it, to the situation for the people in New Orleans.

Have you been able to follow that part of the story at all? Are you aware of what it's been like there?

B. BASSIER: Well, today, the actually -- the only reason why I came to Biloxi was because I need to get some clothes for my son and clothes for myself, because I don't have any clothes. And, you know, I just needed to see if I can salvage something down there.

But, walking around, people don't have no water. They still don't have no lights in electr -- in Biloxi. So, it's just complete darkness, you know? No one has anything.

[alfredo]

30. The girls used the term "salvage." That could be

interpreted by some as looting. We used to call stealing, "liberating." I have no idea what the girls intentions were, but in the circumstances i will give them the benefit of the doubt especially if they are caring for children.

[Mabus]

32. Call it what you want, the clothes she looked for belonged to other victim

She's from Gautier, she drove 17 -18 miles to Biloxi to pick up clothes. Call it what you want, she wasn't in her neighborhood, she was taking things that other people might want to reclaim when they got back to their own homes.

How would you feel if you got back to your house and found out that someone else had come and taken your child's clothes, your clothes and maybe other items she was needing. She should've gone to an abandoned Wal-Mart and taken what she needed, not drive nearly 20 miles to go through the remnants of someone else's house.

[HamdenRice]

24. SAn M&G reporting on other SAns in Katrina -- but not Bassiers yet -here:

FYI, maybe we're getting closer because today's electronic M&G has reported on SAns who were in the storm:

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/&articleid=250088

Four from SA still missing after Katrina

Pretoria, South Africa

06 September 2005 07:39

Four South Africans are still missing after Hurricane Katrina struck the United States city of New Orleans last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.

"Over the weekend, a total of 17 South Africans had been put on the emergency management system list," said spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa.

"By today , 13 of these were successfully contacted, or have made contact with their families."

Only four remain on the list, said Mamoepa.

...

[Tatiana]

25. Amazing work, Hamden! n/t

[progressivebydesign]

26. Lynne Bassier lives in Ocean Springs, MS. not Biloxi. n/t

[mzteris]

38. That's funny - Kevin Miller

the other person in that hugging photo op - is ALSO from Ocean Springs, MS...........

Well - ok - I don't KNOW that guy in the photo is the same Kevin Miller that lives in Ocean Springs, MS - but there is *A* Kevin Miller who lives there...... coincidence???

[HamdenRice]

39. It is now being reported by the M&G -- sorry see other thread eom

[GeorgeGist]

33. Evidence that they are South African?

Sounds like you're trying to fix the intelligence :shrug:

[HamdenRice]

34. Look at the email to the M&G editors for a recap ...

basically their accents are unmistakably South African (I lived there for a few years); and Brownwynne appears to have posted to guestbook that she is from Durban, S.A., in 2001.

[ellenfl]

35. kicking . . . this could be fun! eom

[tanyev]

37. Can somebody email this organization with a correction?

Later in Biloxi, Miss., Bush tried to comfort two stunned women wandering their neighborhood clutching Hefty bags, looking in vain for something to salvage from the rubble of their home. He kept insisting they could find help at a Salvation Army center down the street, even after another bystander had informed him it had been destroyed.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_STRUGGLING_WITH_KATRINA?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-09-06-19-21-33

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1759001

The article is pretty good otherwise. I can't figure out if the "contact us" at the article link would go to anyone who could fix it, or if it is just a site hosting AP articles and I do not have time this morning to pursue it any farther.