Can't believe what's happening in America!!!!!

[Forgetmenot]

Have just watched the news and I'm so upset seeing all those people who just seemed to have been abandoned by the authorities, their government and the rest of their country!!!
They have no food or water and the police are only concerned with looters!!
Why isn't the whole country rallying round to help for gods sake!!!

/splutter

Ameriscot - I suspect it would happen almost anywhere!

I think some people on this thread have already said that.

I think that the reason why no leaders have emerged is that despondancy probably sets in very quickly. I imagine if you were there, in the thick of it you would have expected help to come very quickly. In the absense of effective communications then I suspect you start to feel very vunerable when it doesn't arrive!

Resourceful people had left in the mandatory evacuation, so perhaps that took care of the natural leaders Then the problems were only expected to last a couple of days.

Even so...I am surprised, but can also rationalise about the way things have panned out in reality. We also need to constantly remind ourselves of the small window we are looking through, courtesy of CNN etc.

No, I'll leave the melodrama to you. You're much better at it b/c you actually give it some thought. I can't be arsed and it never suited me.

As for a thick skin, there's another larf! That's two in one night for ya.

Tears of laughter all around! You have no idea how amusing this is to me - I don't get out much these days.

It's good to see such passion in the world these days, however. Renews my faith in people.

Somewhat.

Just had this email from a friend in America, and thought it provided some interesting information/perspective:

Of course what happened in New Orleans is Bush's fault. Bush destroyed a Federal Emergency Management Agency that was set up as a crack professional disaster relief and management agency and put his Texas fixer Joe Allbaugh in charge, then staffed it with GOP hacks, then flushed the whole thing into the Homeland Security Agency. Somewhere along the line, the budget disappeared, and FEMA was repurposed to be a bulwark against "terrorism," instead of an organization set up precisely to go to work in the wake of a disaster like the one that just destroyed New Orleans.

Or how about the Army Corps of Engineers? You know, the agency charged with maintaining and repairing the levees? Ever since the Supreme Court installed Bush, the ACoE's budget has been slashed. Those levees that failed were scheduled for repair, until Bush took the money away and diverted it into his war in Iraq.

Or how about that war in Iraq? Do you know who's picking up the slack, because Rumsfeld and Bush and the rest underestimated the number of troops it would take to invade a country the size of Iraq, then sustain the attack with supply lines? It was the reserves and the National Guard. Do you know who usually is called to step in whenever there's a natural disaster and keep the peace and set up relief efforts? Yes, the very same National Guard, whose troops and helicopters and vehicles were half a world away fighting a war for oil.

And why did the National Guard finally make a big show of moving in yesterday, on the fifth day of this disaster? Could it be that Bush was flying in too, for a big orchestrated photo op so that the media can say that the commander in chief looks very commandeering and chieflike and masterful in the way he's taking charge?

and remember that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.....

email doesn't seem to be saying much different from what we are musing on here to me.

Must all be true then, EB

I never made any claims at wit - I know better than that. I suggest you do the same with regards to irony.

Leave that to the masters - I suggest Mark Twain - and enjoy the ride instead.

It certainly makes for more laughter than grief.

alux, you're right. Just thought it summarised things succinctly.

Here's more info, and apologies in advance for my inability to do links:

WASHINGTON - Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck ? a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out.

In fact, when New Orleans' levees gave way to deadly flooding on Tuesday, Louisiana's National Guard had received help from troops in only three other states: Ohio, which had nine people in Louisiana then; Oklahoma, 89; and Texas, 625, figures provided by the National Guard show.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Cutler, who leads the Michigan National Guard, said he anticipated a call for police units and started preparing them, but couldn't go until states in the hurricane zone asked them to come.

"We could have had people on the road Tuesday," Cutler said. "We have to wait and respond to their need."

The Michigan National Guard was asked for military police by Mississippi late Tuesday and by Louisiana officials late Wednesday. The state sent 182 MPs to Mississippi on Friday and had 242 headed to Louisiana on Saturday.

With many states' Guard units depleted by deployments to Iraq, Katrina's aftermath was almost certain from the beginning to require help from faraway states.

Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress are just beginning to ask why one of the National Guard's most trusted roles ? disaster relief ? was so uneven, delayed and chaotic this time around.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said the situation has shown major breakdowns in the nation's emergency response capabilities. "There must be some accountability in this process after the crisis is addressed," he said.

Democrat Ben Nelson, Nebraska's other senator, said he now questions National Guard leaders' earlier assertions that they had enough resources to respond to natural disasters even with the Iraq war.

"I'm going to ask that question again," Nelson said. "Do we have enough (troops), and if we do, why were they not deployed sooner?"

President Bush was asked that question Friday as he toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast area and said he disagrees with criticism the military is stretched too thin.

"We've got a job to defend this country in the war on terror, and we've got a job to bring aid and comfort to the people of the Gulf Coast, and we'll do both," he said.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., plans to make oversight of the Defense Department, the National Guard and their assistance his top priority when he returns to Washington next week from an overseas trips, spokesman John Ullyot said Friday.

Bush had the legal authority to order the National Guard to the disaster area himself, as he did after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks . But the troops four years ago were deployed for national security protection, and presidents of both parties traditionally defer to governors to deploy their own National Guardsmen and request help from other states when it comes to natural disasters.

Though slow at the beginning, out-of-state Guard help was markedly increasing by the start of the weekend. As of Friday, nearly half the states had Guard members in Louisiana, boosting the total to at least 5,600 from out of state. Hundreds more were on the way.

Michigan, which was ready to help before the storm began, was sending 500 National Guard troops Friday and Saturday to help with water purification in Mississippi and police duty in New Orleans.

Arizona didn't get a request for military police until Thursday, when it received an urgent message sent to all state National Guards by the National Guard Bureau at the request of Louisiana, said Capt. Paul Aguirre. He said the unit cannot leave Phoenix until Sunday because arriving units must arrive at a pace the receiving end can handle.

Among those headed in were several hundred from Wisconsin, where the governor took the unusual step of declaring a disaster outside his state to activate his Guard.

"This was the first time a governor ever declared a natural disaster in another state and activated to that other state," said Gov. Jim Doyle, who issued his order Wednesday. "We were ready to be deployed within 24 hours of that order."

In addition to Guard help, the federal government could have activated, but did not, a major air support plan under a pre-existing contract with airlines. The program, called Civilian Reserve Air Fleet, lets the government quickly put private cargo and passenger planes into service.

The CRAF provision has been activated twice, once for the Persian Gulf War and again for the Iraq war.

@ @ @ @ @

Yes, must be, Ameriscot .

Good old Ohio, standing by. Of course, they have a healthy respect for levees.

expat honestly i dont' understand this: no one is attacking americans, lots of people seem to me to be pointing a justifiable finger at george bush who you say you didn't vote for and abhor.

why are you so defensive? what is happening in NO is awful epic and horrific. there but for the grace etc go we. but the US does have the greater disparity between rich and poor and about the biggest racial hatred problem ever (i'll never forget my cousin from houston being gobsmacked and so delighted that I, a white teenager, had a black best friend when she came to visit us in London).

of course we feel for the people on the ground. of course we want to help.

but questioning what is happening in america on a federal level is neither irrelevant nor attacking amercia per se.

Defensive? I'm laughing at this thread, sophable, b/c it's turned into a farce IMO. MY opinion, which of course is mine and has nothing in common with 99.9% of the world.

I am American. I lived there most of my life till about 4 years ago, close to NO. I was born and brought up in Houston, TX. Actually lived in a suburb of NO called Metairie for a couple of years. My immediate family still lives in Houston and a small town called League City down in Galveston County. The rest of the bulk of my family live in San Antonio, TX, excepting a few aunts.

I'm not white. I don't know what that's like and never will. I'm married to a working-class Scotsman and my child is bi-racial.

As for as having the biggest gap between rich and poor, well, we can argue about that till the cows come home and it won't make any difference to those who feel it most and tbh having lived on that side of the coin a lot of my adult life most of 'em couldn't care less about white rich people compiling statistics.

I'm laughing b/c well, it'd be offensive to you all if I said why so I won't. Suffice it to say I learned long ago that I don't have a clue, and it was one of the most important lessons I ever learned.

expat, sincerely i won't be offended....fire away, i'm genuinely interested as to why you feel so affronted by this thread.....i also believe that there is something rotten in the western world which is epitomised by the state of the US at the moment with us here in the UK not far behind.

i'm not born here. i am bi-racial too (but look whiteish to most). i have trouble with any kind of nationalistic fervour and i guess that might be why i'm questioning you....

See, sophable, that's why it's best to leave it. Nationlistic fervour. I'm an expat, for a variety of reasons.

I'm not young anymore, and I've made many mistakes.

But fortunately I tried to learn from them.

And one those lessons was when to leave it, when things are necessary and when they're not. Often, they're not.

Certainly so in this case.

So I'll sit back, sip a glass of wine, have a laugh, but read and learn.

ahhhh...you are laughing at the irony of this???? i think....

Anyone catch this yesterday?

didn't say you made claims to wit. you just got all sarcastic when you ran out of arguements.

I wonder what Jonothon Swift would have made of the disaster of New Orleans.

He would have a Modest Proposal for Bush et al....

or hogarth..

Thanks for those stats, Alux.

Sorry Expat, it wasn?t a generalisation but a fact. Statistics are vital, and can?t be dismissed by anecdote. Policies are made one the basis of statistics so we should never underestimate what they can tell us about the wider world we live in. The biggest lie is the phrase, there are dam lies and then there are statistics. Statistics are hard to understand a lot of the time, but it?s because of their complexity that people who don?t understand them attempt to dismiss them. I?m not a statistician either but I?d rather play the odds with stats than with myths.

I?m sorry if I?m missing something here too, but I don?t know why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this. No one is displaying a lack of compassion for the people caught up in this, just the response of the authorities. It has massive political consequences, for us in the UK and the rest of the world. Especially if The Rep?s finally start taking climate change seriously.

I understand if you think this is some opportunity to take a cheap shot at your mother country but it isn?t. I have a healthy dose of cynicism and condescension for many UK policies too. I know almost half of the country didn?t vote for Bush. I know all American?s aren?t careless, heartless, Bush-supporting, warmongering gits.

It?s ironic how this argument has descended into ad hominem tactics, a true favourite of the Bush administration..

Okay, just caught up up with all your posts too. I know very little about anything too. In fact the more I learn about something, the bigger the void of my own ignorance opens up behind it. That's the nature of knowledge for anyone I imagine, even Chompsky

sorry for the ad hominem MT. I enjoy being base like all the rest of them.

back to my normal self now that I have had some sleep

And even if there is an element of schadenfreude about this, it?s hardly underserved after all the pious rhetoric coming out of Washington in the past few years. But it?s directed at the administration, not the populace. They?re all unwitting lambs to the slaughter like the rest of us plebs.

In the bigger picture Kama, I?d agree it probably isn?t about race but poverty. It?s just another fact that there are more poor black people than poor white. The bigger picture can?t be tackled though. It?s an amoral beamoth. It has to be chipped away.