New Orleans After Katrina

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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"perfect Storm".....implications

September 1, 2005

All the ironies and all the contradictions brought to the United States by the Bush Administration have come together in the perfect storm of Katrina:



Katrina is a storm caused by global warming (though the wingnuts have a spin for that too), an issue which Bush refuses to face. Of course, any actions taken by Bush would not have prevented Katrina, but might help ameliorate some storms in the future, and the symbolism is perfectly clear. Flooding along the coast is going to get worse, and the Bush Administration's response is to pretend that everything is just ducky. The failure to pay any attention to science is the consistent approach of the current American government, and includes such things as support for intelligent design, failure to take account of ecological warnings, and opposition to stem cell research.

The war in Iraq meant that the state National Guards, who would normally bear much of the burden of disaster relief, were in Iraq.

At about the same time as the disaster on the Gulf Coast, a panic caused by a rumor of a bomb killed 600 to 1000 people in Iraq at the Aaimmah bridge, all of whom would not have died if the Americans hadn't attacked and occupied that country. When all the deaths are added up, you have to wonder whether Iraq or the United States had the worse day.

FEMA has now officially been revealed to have been completely transformed into a Homeland Security monitor. FEMA's new job as Big Brother means it is incompetent at its old job of handling disaster management, and seems incapable of even arranging for the sand-bagging of a crucial dyke (see also here and here and here). The new Orwellian security state has left Americans unprotected by any branch of government. More symbolism: Canada offered to send help, but was turned away, not for any principled reason, but because the Homeland Security anti-terrorism provisions made it impossible for the over-burdened American bureaucracy to process the Canadians into the country. People are now going to start dying as a direct result of the shift in priorities caused by the war on terror.

Bush's tax cuts coupled with the cost of the war in Iraq and the cost of Homeland Security directly led (or here or here) to an inability to fund repair and heightening of levees required by the rapid sinking of New Orleans ("New Orleans is sinking man and I don't wanna swim"). Like the people on the Aaimmah bridge, New Orleans is a casualty of the war in Iraq.

Bush cut off his five week vacation by two days, so he could be seen to be leading the recovery effort. Of course, if he'd seen his way fit to spare five days, he might have been able to do something helpful. While people were drowning, he was strumming (Nero fiddling while Rome burned). Did Bush play Led Zeppelin?: "If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay." Or maybe Bob Dylan: "Crash on the levee, mama, Water's gonna overflow, Swamp's gonna rise, No boat's gonna row"?

It is difficult not to notice that this was damage done to states which most strongly supported Bush. It's good to know that he doesn't play favorites: the people who support him are just as screwed as everybody else. They'll never blame him for their plight, as he's a 'God-fearin' man'.

While parts of the city are under 20 feet of water, and other cites in even worse shape, the press covers for Bush by looking at the issue as a problem of looting! They never stop spinning . . .


The Battle of New Orleans in 1815 was a brilliant victory for the fairly recently-born country of the United States of America, its coming out party as a major world player (the subject of yet another song). The Sinking of New Orleans one hundred and ninety years later represents the beginning of the end of American dominance, caused by an amazingly symbolic collection of Bush Administration stupidities and mistakes.
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mrmom2

mrmom2

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September 1, 2005 -- Hurricane Katrina brings out blatant racism from the loonie White Right. No sooner than the television images flashed across the national screens of desperate New Orleans residents carrying non-perishable food items, dry clothing, and medicines out of flood ravaged stores did the white "evangelical" right begin to make noise about shooting looters and that "people that dumb" not to get out of New Orleans when they could deserved what they got. Of course, every looter was likened to the one or two people seen carrying television sets from broken store windows, not those carrying cases of bottled water or canned goods.

The venomous bile about "dumb people" and looters comes from the very same people who follow the dictates of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson (none of whom have been at the forefront of any relief efforts except to say that New Orleans was punished by God because it was going to host a gay festival this month). This editor is a strong believer in the First Amendment, but this kind of speech is incendiary, hateful, and downright un-American. And the people who engage in it should be banned from the airwaves and jailed if necessary. Fox News must be taken off the air until it can be trusted to properly serve the public interest. Hopefully, a future Democratic-controlled FCC will have that as one of its first priorities.
Case in point. A bartender in a local bar in a "trendy" and "yuppie" neighborhood in the Washington, DC area commented that the people who stayed behind in New Orleans did so just so they could loot the city after the hurricane struck. When I said that a number of the people left behind were poor, infirmed, elderly and not able to evacuate because they had no cars or immediate families in the area, the bartender said that was crap. He also did not see the difference between wanton looting and obtaining necessities for survival from damaged stores. It seems that some people commit Rush Limbaugh's and Fox News' talking points to memory and then just repeat them like human tape recorders. I also pointed out what WMR reported on Aug. 31: that a number of people who tried to evacuate were forced to turn back after being caught in traffic jams as the hurricane's effects first began to be felt in the city and suburbs. Then the bartender's final words, which sums up the mindset of these disgusting right wingers: "If cops from Philly were down in New Orleans, they'd take care of the looters. They'd shoot the boogs." Unfortunately, this is the same sort of mentality that permeates the Bush administration -- the disaster that can be called "Hurricane Dubya."

***

The following comes from Mobile and is further indication of the racist attitudes rising in the Gulf disaster: Daphne, AL local residents initiated a local "call the Mayor" campaign to get him to close a shelter in their community because there were too many local affluent people complaining about having "scummy" people present at the shelter. The mayor closed it! The name of the shelter is reported to be Robertson, according to a local source. The shelter was emptied, presumably waiting for white clean cut refugees.

Please stop this racism in the midst of a disaster.

***

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in New York shopping for expensive shoes at tres chic Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue. (Is she the lost love child of Imelda Marcos?) A shopper confronted Rice shouting at her about shopping for shoes while thousands were dead and homeless on the Gulf Coast. Rice, showing the compassion of a shark on a feeding frenzy, had store security remove the woman. Of course, Rice does not have much to do. Its U.S. policy not to accept foreign aid in a natural disaster (always has been, even under Democratic administrations). Its considered beneath the dignity for a "super power" to accept foreign aid. Other nations have offered aid in the past only to be given the back of Uncle Sam's hand. If this ridiculous policy were to change (along with the Secretary of State who most world leaders think is a joke), France would be the first to offer assistance to its cousins in Acadiana and southern Mississippi. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has offered gasoline and food. Fidel Castro would offer doctors (they are top notch). Ditto aid from Russia (they've already offered helicopters but were told they could only be used to rescue Russian nationals trapped in New Orleans (3 on the upper floors of a hotel, at last count). We could count on Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan, Britain, Spain, Italy, China, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Jamaica, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Portugal, and a number of other nations.

And in a most disgusting example of chutzpah, the so-called "President" Dubya strummed a guitar at the Coronado Naval Base in San Diego while thousands drowned in New Orleans. One day, Bush's name will replace Emperor Nero's as a synonym for a lackadaisical tyrant who fiddled while his nation was in need: "Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned." Maybe Bush could play the guitar while someone sings that refrain.



"Nero" Bush -- Fiddles in San Diego while New Orleans drowned. Will someone in Congress please introduce an impeachment resolution? This asshole raced back to DC from his eyesore of a "ranch" to sign a bill to keep a woman in a persistent vegetative state on her feeding tube. But he plays the guitar as thousands of healthy human beings perish
 
Jo Canadian

Jo Canadian

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Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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World stunned as U.S. struggles with Katrina

By Andrew Gray

09/02/05 -- --LONDON-- -- (Reuters) - The world has watched amazed as the planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society. World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.

But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid.

"Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling newspaper The Sun.

"Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany's Handelsblatt daily.

The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of crises in the world's poorest nations such as last year's tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.

But some view the response to those disasters more favourably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilised part of the world's population is."

SINKING INTO ANARCHY

Many newspapers highlighted criticism of local and state authorities and of U.S. President George W. Bush. Some compared the sputtering relief effort with the massive amounts of money and resources poured into the war in Iraq.

"A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush," France's left-leaning Liberation newspaper said.

"(Al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing."

A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit.

"Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster," said the woman, who did not want to be named as she has an American manager.

"A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke about it just the other day," she said.

Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbours.

New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city's residents are black.

"In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension," said a report in Britain's Guardian daily.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people.

"You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best," he told reporters at a European Union meeting in Newport, Wales.

David Fordham, 33, a hospital anaesthetist speaking at a London underground rail station, said he had spent time in America and was not surprised the country had struggled to cope.

"Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and everything would be okay," he said.

"It's unbelievable though -- the TV images -- and your heart goes out to them."

(With reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world)
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this "natural " disaster is exposing the US underbelly.....to itself and the world around it. No more spin , rhetoric, or verbal cosmetics .......as "we" are seeing what the US&G really is now.

not that surprising. Smoke and mirrors, are time limited at best.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Published on Friday, September 2, 2005 by The Independent
'Casual to the Point of Careless': Bush Under Fire for Slow Reaction
by Andrew Gumbel

President Bush faced not only the fallout of Hurricane Katrina but also an intense political storm yesterday as relief experts, government officials and newspaper editorials criticised everything from his administration's disaster preparedness policies to the manner in which he made his public entry into the growing crisis on the Gulf coast.


Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

The New York Times
The New York Times said of a speech he made on Tuesday: "Nothing about the President's demeanour yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

No less trenchant - and more heartfelt - was the Biloxi Sun Herald in Mississippi which surveyed the disaster around its editorial offices and asked: "Why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in south Mississippi been pressed into service?"

As when the Asian tsunami hit last year, Mr Bush found himself on holiday at his Texas ranch when disaster struck. As with the tsunami, he was soon in the firing line for reacting slowly - he spent Monday on a fundraising tour of the American West - and failing to provide adequate leadership. As survivors complained of a lack of water, food and medical supplies yesterday, fingers from across the political spectrum were pointed at the White House.

Experts on the Mississippi Delta pointed out that a plan to shore up the levees around New Orleans was abandoned last year for lack of government funding. They noted that flood-control spending for south-eastern Louisiana had been chopped every year that Mr Bush has been in office, that hurricane protection funds have also fallen, and that the local army corps of engineers has also had its budget cut. The emergency management chief for Jefferson parish told the Times-Picayune newspaper:"It appears that the money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

The torrent of criticism contrasted sharply to the reaction to the 11 September attacks, when political sniping was put on hold and dissenters were told their complaints were both unwelcome and unpatriotic. The change in tone partly suggests a growing disenchantment with Mr Bush.

The usually restrained New York Times said: "Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?"
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Vanni: the stats of missing and dead have been absent from the media since this started. Nice to hear that someone is keeping some kind of track .......in this chaos. [/url]
 
Vanni Fucci

Vanni Fucci

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Ocean Breeze said:
Vanni: the stats of missing and dead have been absent from the media since this started. Nice to hear that someone is keeping some kind of track .......in this chaos. [/url]
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Yes, and don't think I haven't noticed...

It's reminiscent of how the authorities approach the reporting of the dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan... :?
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Vanni Fucci said:
Ocean Breeze said:
Vanni: the stats of missing and dead have been absent from the media since this started. Nice to hear that someone is keeping some kind of track .......in this chaos. [/url]
Click to expand...

Yes, and don't think I haven't noticed...

It's reminiscent of how the authorities approach the reporting of the dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan... :?
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an apt/accurate analogy !! Well stated ,Vanni.......and how sad..for the US. .......and the world is watching this closely......with more than a little shock...../amazement.
 
Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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N.O....breaking news:

MSNBC Breaking News
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Bus carrying hurricane evacuees overturns; one dead, Louisiana police say -
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