And boy, are they surprised at the world's superpower's response to the disaster in New Orleans.
Newspapers around the globe have commented on the government's response, some saying that the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.
Of course, lots of us here knew about those deep divisions for a long time. Now I'd like to provide an example:
I was listening to WGN radio Friday afternoon (9/1/05), and they were speaking with a physician that was previously stranded in New Orleans. They had spoken with this doctor throughout the week, using him to report on conditions in New Orleans. He is an infectious disease specialist, and he and other doctors were holed up in the Ritz Carlton. (Remember that: the Ritz Carlton.)
I'm sure the conditions at the Ritz Carlton weren't all that ritzy. They had no water, the toilets weren't working, etc. However, this doc and other doctors in the hotel were able to create a makeshift emergency medical center, and were treating people that needed medical attention. Lucky Ritz Carlton guests.
When the host of the WGN radio program spoke to this doctor on Friday afternoon, he asked the doc where he was calling from. Strangely enough, he was at O'Hare International Airport. It turns out that armed troops came to rescue the unfortunates stuck in the Ritz Carlton very early Friday morning. SUV's were commandeered from the hotel's parking structure, and armed troops evacuated the hotel guests to a staging area to wait for buses. From what I remember, they were loaded onto the buses around 4 or 5 a.m., and the good doctor was able to get a flight home to Chicago.
In the meantime, while the Ritz Carlton hotel guests (who had physicians and medical supplies) were being evacuated, thousands of people were still at the convention center living under appalling conditions. Mind you, at this time the convention center crowd still had no food or water, were living amongst corpses and human waste, and had no idea if or when they would get any relief.
But the Ritz Carlton guests were evacuated by armed troops in commandeered SUV's and taken to buses.
Many people, especially those on the right, are lambasting the people that were stranded by Katrina. They say things like these people didn't want to leave, or even the poor have cars so they should have gotten out. What about this doctor from Chicago? Is he just some "dumb scum" that should have been left for dead? Why didn't he leave? Why were hotel guests at the Ritz Carlton provided relief and a way out before the people at the convention center?
I guess I'd like the people of the world to understand something. It's not so much a racial disparity (although that's definitely part of it). It's a division between the classes -- the haves vs. the have nots. While the Ritz Carlton guests were receiving food and water and being evacuated, the people at the convention center were dehydrated, starving, and some of them were literally dropping dead.
The world is watching. And if they didn't suspect it before, now they are beginning to realize that the good ol' U.S. of A. isn't quite the land of equality our leaders would have them believe.
Mixter Television coverage of New Orleans is heavy with tales of absolute lawlessness, including a widely reported sniper shot at a rescue helicopter.
I don't doubt that looting has occurred, nor that some of it is for "luxury" goods not just necessities. But I do have a lot of skepticism about the type and degree of lawlessness being portrayed.
Now it turns out that Laura Brown, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman in Washington, has cast doubt on the report of the firing on the helicopter. She said she had no such report.
"We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of them reported being fired on," she said, adding that the FAA was in contact with the military as well as civilian aircraft.
from http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1087205]
It's probably good to keep in mind that the last two major disasters of this scale, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 (some 6,000 dead) and the late 1800s Johnstown, PA flood (2,200 fatalities), both involved false reports of "minority" savagery, Blacks and Eastern Europeans supposedly rampaging and cutting off the fingers of the dead to get their rings. All or most of these stories, many reported in the respectable press of the time, are now believed to have been completely untrue or wildly exaggerated.
In fact, an unpublished paper presented at a conference states that social scientists investigating claims of looting at & after national disasters inevitably find little evidence to back up the claims. See "LOOTING IN DISASTER: A GENERAL PROFILE OF VICTIMIZATION," Jane Gray and Elizabeth Wilson of the Disaster Research Center of The Ohio State University
(August, 1984).
http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/bitstream/19716/1295/1/WP71.pdf
Also posted at Mixter's Mix: Hat tip to RebelleNation, who asked me to send out a plea for help. She's in Northern Louisiana, with eyes on the ground.
THERE ARE 1 MILLION HOMELESS WHO NEED HELP
The following local organization has been contacting local churches begging for immediate relief items. They have been 'Overwhelmed' by the crisis and are in desperate need of help.
WHAT THEY NEED..
Diapers
Babyfood
Formula
Canned milk
Cereal
Crackers
Jello
Shortning
ALL canned meats
ALL non-perishable canned food
Baby clothes
Who Needs It..
United Christians Assistance Program (UCAP)
204 Miller Street
Minden La.
71055
For those wishing to donate money, or inquire further about what is needed
Program Director Larry Rhodes
(318) 377-6804
~A!
Hat tip to RebelleNation, who asked me to send out a plea for help. She's in Northern Louisiana, with eyes on the ground.
THERE ARE 1 MILLION HOMELESS WHO NEED HELP
The following local organization has been contacting local churches begging for immediate relief items. They have been 'Overwhelmed' by the crisis and are in desperate need of help.
WHAT THEY NEED..
Diapers
Babyfood
Formula
Canned milk
Cereal
Crackers
Jello
Shortning
ALL canned meats
ALL non-perishable canned food
Baby clothes
Who Needs It..
United Christians Assistance Program (UCAP)
204 Miller Street
Minden La.
71055
For those wishing to donate money, or inquire further about what is needed
Program Director Larry Rhodes
(318) 377-6804
Editor & Publisher has a story indicating that federal funding for hurricane and flood protection in New Orleans has been down recently, with the cut coinciding with the need for funds for Iraq.
In "Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues," by Will Bunch (8/30), says that "after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA [the acronym for the flood control project] dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain."
The local officials are, according to the story, now saying that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be." The spending pattern does appear to back that up, although I don't doubt that local New Orleans officials are also desperate to escape being blamed by a very angry electorate for the current nightmare in that city.
The full story is here E&P
Something I am hearing very little about in regards to Bush's speech that compares WWII and Iraq if the fact that he gave an entirely new (officially, anyway) rationale for being in Iraq.
And it didn't come from some left-wing nut or conspiracy theorist, it came from the President of the United States of America.
The new reason? Oil. Not content to link 9/11 and Iraq, the president has expanded his war of analogies to encompass WWII. Funny how the prez, in the story below, cites his father's own service in WWII while comparing that war to Iraq. Last I looked, there were no Kennebunkport or Crawford Bushes within a continent of Iraq. And unless I missed the breaking news story, we have neither a draft nor rationing. Nor, by the way, do we have the kind of top heavy tax structure needed to pay for a war and prevent the most egregious examples of war profiteering. Apart from those and a few hundred other differences, you could probably compare WWII and Iraq. If you had an agenda to push. And no conscience. And low polling numbers. And a moderate wing of your own party nearing revolt. And several close advisors under investigation. And friends of advisers under investigation. And no contact with reality.
Evil:
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.
2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet.
3. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens.
4. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil reputation.
5. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.
But when arsonists kill a small child by setting the house on fire, evil isn't enough of a word.
A little humor, courtesy of No God Blog
A young woman teacher explains to her class of third graders that she is a born-again Christian. She asks the class if any of them are born-again Christians too.
Not really knowing what it means to be born-again, but wanting to please and impress their teacher, many little hands suddenly shot up into the air. There was, however, one exception. A girl named Sarah had not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asker her why she has decided to be different.
"Because I'm not a Christian."
"Then," asks the teacher, "what are you?"
"I'm an atheist."
The teacher is a little perturbed now, her face slightly red. She asks Sarah why she is an atheist.
"It's just that my family isn't religious. My Mom is atheist, and my Dad is atheist, so I am atheist."
The teacher is now angry. "That's no reason." she says loudly. "What if your Mom was a moron, and your Dad was a moron. What would you be then?"
"Then," says Sarah, "I'd be a born-again Christian." |
