I figure that this is a stand-alone topic and discussing it in 'The Weather' on the Chat forum might be limiting.

Looks like Bush has finally made arrangements to visit the hurricane-ravaged areas. He'll be there Friday. Looking forward to what he has to say.

"Making progress."

"Hard work."

"Pray for strength."

"God Bless You."

you forgot : "the evil-doers will be punished!"

Meanwhile I heard on the news the US don't want an international campaign of support, just a US one.
The burden of being the richest country in the world eh...

I'm not sure how the US can win on that one....

What if you had just heard on the news that the US had asked for international support?

I read this morning that the international community has assumed the US does not want support - within hours of the tsunami, US websites had assistance links up, there are virtually none around the world for the victims of this tragedy.

From Salon:

The world's reaction, though, has been noticeably different from what it was to the tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean rim last December. Part of the reason is obvious -- whereas the Indian Ocean tsunami struck many countries that simply had no way of dealing with a disaster of such scope, the U.S., it's assumed, has the means and resources to deal with the catastrophe on its own. And for the most part, the calls for donations that appeared after the Indian tsunami have not appeared. As Der Spiegel points out, the European Web sites for organizations like the Red Cross haven't put up calls for donations, though they are carrying news items about the relief effort. A worker for Caritas, one of Germany's major aid groups, told the magazine it had received only one donation by midday Tuesday. "America has a strong army and are well equipped for disaster relief," she said. "It makes no sense for us to go in and try to help. What really would we do? They have enough personnel to handle the crisis alone."

Some reactions, though, have had less to do with U.S. disaster preparedness than with U.S. environmental policy. As some scientists have pointed out, there is the possibility of a link between storms like Katrina and the trend of global warming. In Germany, minister of the environment Jürgen Trittin drew the line directly to Bush's stance on the Kyoto Protocol in an editorial in the Frankfurter Rundschau: "The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina -- in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures -- can visit on his country."

Der Spiegel's original article on German reactions got picked up by the Drudge Report on Tuesday night, leading to a firestorm of correspondence, which the magazine has since begun posting.

In an article blasting Trittin, Der Spiegel writes, "The worst of it is that Trittin isn't alone with his cold, malicious tenor. The coverage from much of the German media tends in the same direction: If Bush had only listened to Uncle Trittin and signed the Kyoto Protocol, then this never would have happened."

"It's not the American people's fault that the storm hit and they couldn't have stopped it," the magazine writes. "The Germans, on the other hand, could have done a lot to prevent World War II. And yet, care packages still rained down from US troops. Trittin's know-it-all stance is therefore not only tasteless, it is also historically blind."

Personally I think a calamity on this scale requires all the international support it can get.
When holland was threatened with freak floods 10 years ago (dikes held up and now have been improved...) we even got support from countries like Kenia and i thought that was heartwarming.

But you're right, some people might think the US should just shut up and handle it themselves...

That would be incredibly cruel.

Hey, I agree.
But many people think that EVERYBODY in the US is rich. And rich people usually take good care of themselves.

I'm still very unsure how this all has to get back to 'normal' again.
The devastation is enormous, so many people have lost all their posessions and have no insurance. The amount of money necessary to put that right again is overwhelming...

And allthough I find Bushes stance on Kyoto infuriating, blaming this on that is just plain old nonsense.

I would like to think that individuals around the world would want to help, just as with any major disaster.

But, realistically, there will not be much that other governments can offer that the US cannot manage better itself.

It will be interesting to see how things develop compared to the aftermath of 9/11. In that case, the US government tacitly took responsibility, by managing the compensation of victims. I doubt they will want to take the same approach here.

Fear not, Leontien, Bush ensures us that "America will be a stronger place for it.". If you think about it, he's right. This is a perfect time for some states to get struck by one of the worst natural disasters in US history. Thousands dead and tens of thousands displaced. I can’t think of a better way to strengthen America that doesn’t involve war.

Not just some states, Zippy. Two of the poorest states in the US. With the lowest average wage, lowest standard of living.

Several co-workers, as of last night, still hadn't heard from their relatives in New Orleans and in Gulfport, MS. One woman broke down several times through the evening. I kept hearing her quietly sob.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4204066.stm

Emergency appeals have been launched by US aid agencies in the wake of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

surely help will arrive for the people stuck without food water and sanitation very soon? I know we aren't geting the full picture. In fact we keep getting the same pictures. What is the weather like there now?? Is it just because they haven't got the kit together that people are still stranded ??? Surely the US has the resources to effect a better rescue operation ??

Bush et al have been doing a pretty good job of punishing Mother Nature for some time, maybe it's she who is doing the punishing.

I'm still overwhelmed with all the stories coming out of the misery in New Orleans as well as in Alabama and Mississippi. I've barely slept since the storm hit.

I guess what I can't understand is the lack of organization still in the rescue and transport efforts. Where is the cooperation and coordination between agencies and those in charge of them? Perhaps it's there but just ineffective? I realize there is no electricity or phone service for communications, but there are two way radios being used. Is there even a central command post?

From what I'm hearing, officials are not very interested in getting food and water to the people because they want them to evacuate. The plan is to have everyone out of the Superdome and in the Houston Astrodome win about 24 hours. How long it will take to move the thousands of others in other parts of the city, I have no idea. In the mean time, I read in a news article there are about 7 bodies outside the Superdome of people who have died waiting for the help. They include an elderly man in a chair and an elderly woman wrapped in a sheet on the sidewalk. No effort is being made to move them to a morgue area.

Rescue flights are being cancelled because of shots being fired at the helicopters. People are getting desperate and demanding they and their families be rescued, firing guns trying to force the pilots to come help them. But it's instead working against them and many others as the helicopter pilots refuse to fly.

There are people doing their best to help each other and themselves. I've seen acts of selflessness -- people giving their own food and water, cash, and gasoline to a stranded family of 5 -- but most of the news is reporting on the darker events as people become more desperate in the 95 degree heat with 100% humidity. On those dark roofs, I'd imagine the heat is more like 120 degrees or even higher.

The Mayor of New Orleans has ordered most of the city's police to abandon rescue efforts to focus on quelling the widespread looting and violence.

is the rescuing of the stranded people in the hands of the police

are there any boats ??

i thought the americans sent in the marines for everything.

i know i am an old cynic but i am really mystefied.

I listened to a bloke on a Radio 2 phone-in this afternoon berating the media in the UK for not calling for aid to be collected for the people of the US in their hour of need.
He compared the world response to the Tsunami with the current deathly silence from the world in response to Katrina's destruction.

I couldn't get my hat on.

Is the United States of America not the richest and most powerful nation on earth?

The misery and pain inflicted on some of the least privelidged people of the US is unimagineable. From what I can see the rich and the well to do got out leaving the poor to struggle as best they could. Which is not very well as it turns out.

Your last paragraph Pam. I was thinking just that too.
But the cynic in me looks at it thus: They're the least important segment of US society and the administration will do just enough to avoid accusations of negligence or apathy.

Perhaps if the US wasn't killing tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan men, women and children, they might have the man power and wherewithall to cope with a tragedy of this magnitude at home.

This isn't the time to have a pop at the US for being the worlds biggest bully but it's just too hard to avoid sticking the boot in to the shrub and his evil fucking scum sucking shyster pals that call themselves the US administration. The place should be absolutely crawling with troops, national guard, domestic relief agencies and foreign rescue teams. All the pictures I've seen have shown deserted flooded steets and nutters with guns looting and shooting at helicopters.

I hope to buggery that they're getting it together because if the seeming lack of movement continues the loss of life due to lack of clean water, food and disease will be completely inexcusable.

That makes two of us Beryl.

Well, there are politicians who would disagree about the manpower available. They recite statistics that show that there are far more guard troops in the US than in Iraq and that they are not yet being utilized. </sarcasm>

Unfortunately, in sticking the boot where the light don't shine in Bush and his cronies, we would be ignoring the trapped survivors who quite rightly are becoming more frustrated and hopeless with each passing hour. Work to save them and sort out the politics after.

In fairness, part of the problem is the sheer scale of this calamity -- we are talking about a huge area. The trade towers were a few acres, this is measured in miles. There were few left after the towers collapsed, in New Orleans there are tens of thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- sweltering in the heat, often sick and weak, with no relief in immediate sight.

http://www.ncrste.msstate.edu/new/ncrste/K...INA_IMAGES.html

Here are some images for Mississippi - looks a lot like the tsunami aftermath. Click on the black boxes - New Orleans is (was) not up yet.

i seem to think the waters receded after the tsunami, so people could get on the move more quickly whereas here the water is going to be there for a long time. A lot of people can't get out unless help arrives.

there was an audio report this evening from an english woman stuck in a hotel in the main street, with no food, very little water and the emergency electricity about to run out. Apparantly there were half a dozen doctors stuck in there who had been at a conference. She was very calm but very scared.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N01475103.htm

Convoys of police and state trooper cars raced down Interstate 10 toward New Orleans with lights flashing.

"We will do what it takes to bring law and order to our area," an angry Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told reporters. "I'm just furious. It's intolerable,"

..and the sick and weak are dieing...there was a thing on the news of a dead body in a wheelchair, with a blanket as a shroud, outside the superdome.

This is like some bad sci-fi disaster movie.

And we don't know how many are dead. If people couldnt break through into an attic or where trying to as the water rose, they could have drowned in their houses, and we wont find the bodies until the water is pumped out....

Incidentally one of the missing is the old R&B star Fats Domino.

I think this has just overwhelmed everyone..there is the direct hit disaster on the Mississippi gulf coast, and then there is the flood disaster in New Orleans.

Yes, can you Dutch loan us some engineers who know how to design a competent flood control system that can protect against storm surges?

Becuase its pretty durn clear we can't figure it out!

From what I can see, the people doing most of the suffering are poor black folks.Same as it ever was.
Just because "rich America" can and should be able to help, doesn't mean that it will.
Are we to abandon these people because their own government has decided to abandon them?

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/drowning_new_orleans/

Duh-Bya can shove his "temporary setback" up his arse. Why is it taking so long to get to these desperate, angry, dehydrated, starving, hot, and often dying people to safety?

There are unconfirmed reports that some police have abandoned their jobs, and others that the "sniper" scares are hoaxes.

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper broke down crying on air and blasted the politicians for congratulating themselves on the relief efforts that are mostly YET TO BE SEEN and the very same officials for saying that they "understood the frustration" in the region. Do something, damn it.

it is so fuckin' awful. and nowhere for the people to go when they get out. so much sickening stuff. We usually see some good news bits. Remember the baby born in a tree in africa. This seems to be all bad.

i had to stop watching the news when i saw troops, kneeling, on guard with bloddy machine guns in that typical pose that symbolises war. It is what they know how to do i suppose . It wasn't clear what they were guarding.

i heard a white texan governor (?) say they would look after their relatives ..........

ETA: People are fucked down there. All we can do is send money. Cash money. So send it.

Isn't this another example of property being put before people? Surely the priority should be to provide relief or evacuate those that are stranded.



I've seen those pictures as well and can understand why there are some very frightened people on the ground but last night the BBC also showed footage of 'looters' redistributing the water and food they obtained to those who needed it.

There's a huge difference between cleaning out the jewellers and 'looting' the means to survive but to a copper or a National Guardsman it's the same 'crime'.

Absolutely, Dickey, I've no idea what's what. This made me sick:

"We will do what it takes to bring law and order to our area," an angry Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told reporters. "I'm just furious. It's intolerable,"

Is she more concerned with the merchandise?!? What about the lives? Mother fucker…

It is fuckin' awful, and I can't believe that they aren't better organised. I appreciate the difficulties but, honestly...

There have been some good bits though Beryl, though they tend to get missed in all the awful stuff. There were a load of stories I was listening to on the radio last night about people in other towns and cities opening their homes to those affected or working round the clock in shelters to help. Easy to say, but not so easy to do.

The images I saw last night were just so awful they left me speechless.
This old woman being so disappointed with her fellow men ("they won't cue they just fight"), the people in the hospital beds in the open air, it looks so bad.

YOU'VE GOT TO FUCKING BE KIDDING ME!!!!

FROM WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING WE HAVEN'T BEEN MANAGING AT ALL!!!

I HOPE WHEN THAT ASSHOLE PRESIDENT OF OURS FLYS OVER IN HIS CHOPPER TODAY THEY ALL POINT THEIR WALMART GUNS AND SHOOT THAT BASTARD DOWN!

Thank you Keri, I was just thinking that exact same thing...

And what's bugging me is that apparently the budget cuts on the flood protection were necessary to protect the country from terrorists.
The hurricane did a better job then the terrorists I think.

Too bad your president is already in his 2nd term, he's got nothing to lose.

From yesterday's New York Times editorial section:

September 1, 2005
Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. 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?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

And the stupid asshole had the nerve to tell Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America that "we had no idea the levees would break" despite forecasters warning of such a catastrope for years and as recently as Saturday, when they said that the levees could withstand a Category-3 storm while they knew Katrina was packing a Category-5 whallop.

I can't believe that Louisiana's governor encouraged law enforcement to abandon search and rescue efforts to quell the looting and lawlessness.

Fuck you, George W.

Might actually be the right decision though - apparently S&R was increasingly just turning up dead bodies anyway so why not stop living people shooting eachother over looting rights?

uh.. rescue, i would think includes getting the remaining 100,000 people out of new orleans and to some place where there is food, water and shelter.

I have to say that if there were more than 1,100 police and national guard in the city they could both rescue and stop the violence. The fact that there are not is the reason this conundrum exists. This is a city of half a million people in the midst of the biggest crisis since the 18th century fires destroyed the city under French occupation -- and that was so catastrophic that it caused the French to essentially give it to Spain because they couldn't afford to fix the damage.

They need more than 1,000 troops. If there even ARE 1,000 troops, since no members of the media believe that there were actually more than a few hundred there yesterday, if even THAT many. The Red Cross has completely melted down, FEMA seems not to know what to do after a hurricane (in both New Orleans and poor Mississippi, where people are also dying of dehydration and exposure).

What is happening, it seems, is that federal emergency management has been put into the hands of political appointees who are out of their depth. This is sheer incompetence. They keep saying it's too disaterous for them to help -- that, at least, seems to be the gist of their excuses. They're the FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, for Christ's sake. This is what they're supposed to do. Way I see it, this is the first real emergency they've had to manage since 9/11, and they're failing miserably.

What we are seeing is a bad situation turned into a tragedy by pure incompetence.

Dennis Hastert's comments that the city wasn't work saving makes me wonder on a conspiracy theory level if there isn't malice as well. New Orleans has never elected a republican to anything in its existence. It's filled with poor people and black people. It doesn't matter to republicans. Mississippi is another story of course, and it's governor is Haley Barbour, head of the RNC under Reagan and a spectacularly stupid and evil individual, and they're not helping him either. So given that, I suppose it's not malice. Just ignorance and incompetence.

I'm not sure which is worse.

You all know that I have never been a big Bill Clinton fan. But I'm having a hard time imagining the Clinton White House being so completely wrong about the mood of the people. I am very far from New Orleans, but every american I see is in a blind rage over this. Everybody is furious over what we all see as sheer indifference from our government.

I can't believe Anderson Cooper cried. I'm glad I didn't see it -- it would have made me cry.

Things that have made me lose it so far:

Jeanne Meserve (cool, calm reporter on CNN) weeping as she talked about hearing people screaming for help on Tuesday night in the dark, as the rescue workers stopped for the day because it was too dangerous to stay any longer.

The young reporter interviewing the man whose wife had washed away in the night and drowned. She was wiping away tears and he kept saying, 'she was all I had...she was all I had...'

God, makes me cry to write it.

Those old people in the hot baking sun on the sidewalk with nobody to help them. No soldiers to help them. Nobody to get them out of that sun -- give them some water. Nobody paying any attention to them.

Old people wading through water up to their chests -- alone.

A boat pulling up to a terrified little stupid poodle on top of a car surrounded by five feet of water. Soaking wet it looked like a drowned rat, it's little face somehow desperate, but it wagged its tail a little as the boat pulled up to save it. Who knows where it ended up? There's no place for people to go, much less dogs.

Last night, a tough, black New Orleans policeman, the kind I always liked to turn up when something bad happened. Hardened but in it for the right reasons, sobbing his heart out on CNN. Sobbing in his police car and saying 'I can't help nobody. I can't help. I don't even know where my own family is. I don't know what's happened to my city. I can't help nobody.'

I cannot stand this.

And, I genuinely believe this, it was all avoidable. It is all George Bush's fault. This is on his soul. Mayor Nagin said today he thinks Bush -- and his entire government -- are going to hell for this.

I think he's going to hell for a lot of things.

Four days, my friends. Our soldiers have fought shorter wars. Four days those people have been suffering and dying in the United States of America with nobody to save them.

http://edition.cnn.com/US/

go to

Mayor fed up with slow response video.

well done detroit!

am much cheered and tearful, listening to speeches by Congressional Black Caucus (i think that is who it is.)

John Conyers is my president.

Oh Mata that is heartbraking. I heard the mayor swear on CNN.
I still can't believe things are so bad.

The New Orleans' newspaper's website today is so sad.

http://www.nola.com/

Resources for help:

http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/anima...ce=AOL&cmpgn=NS

It's the weakest that suffer most. So sad.

Apparently we're sending a boat with stuff from the curacao, should be there in 4 days...

I think it was jessie jackson jnr who said in his speech that the airlines, who were helped after 9/11, should be helping the people now.

any company bottling water and any company making baby milk hould be shipping it down south.




is rescue really waiting for someone to decide who pays!!?? I don't say we shouldn't send money. People will need help long term and the world at large should be prepared to contribute but the immediate emergency can't surely rely on fucking donations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


apparantly wallmart wont accept salvation army vouchers handed out by fema.
if i got my hands on those wall mart guns i would be bloddy lawless!!*!

sister, the cue starts behind me...