http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1562518,00.html
This Bush fella had the 'greatest military' in the world backed by the world's 'greatest system of government' and 'biggest economy' supported by the 'wonders of the free market', and he could not even keep his own 'most free' people happy with the way the entire system he brags about responds to a natural disaster at home!?
As to claims that the slow response was due to the fact that the majority of affected people are blacks, I wonder what else these blacks need to do to be treated as 'equal' beings. Except for their skin, they had already changed everything they could to follow the 'white man' including name change and religion.
One earlier report had '30 airplanes working round the clock to ferry affected Americans to safety'. Compare that to the hundreds our fella deployed to bomb the hell out of Iraq, that must be instructive in giving a sense of what is 'more important' to this fella.
Of course, all such reports of anger at the way my favorite 21st Century Idiot had responded to this problem in his own backyard could well be a tonne of hogwash by a bunch of unreasonable fellow Americans.
If these views are not entirely false, it makes us wonder how on earth some fools could have believed that Bush was really out to save the Iraqis (people Bush would have called 'coloreds' if they are Americans) and do the whole world some good.
Just another hour of the idiots....
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{Following article received in response to this writing}
As I feared the first day the levees broke in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina will turn out to be the worst environmental catastrophe in modern American history, far dwarfing Hurricane's Andrew and Camilla and equaling, if not surpassing, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 in its destructive impact. The flooding, and physical destruction of a historic American city, coupled with the complete destruction of homes, stores, businesses, roads and bridges along 80 miles of Mississippi coastline presents a humanitarian challenge of unprecedented proportions, with consequences that will be felt for years by those who lost loved ones, homes, businesses, jobs, and any sense of comfort or security.
But this catastrophe also reveals, far more than September 11, how deeply divided our nation is and how far our social fabric has been strained, not only by the war in Iraq, but by policies which have widened the gap between rich and poor and left many poor people in American feeling marginalized and alienated.
When the full tally of the dead from this storm and its aftermath, which includes those who will die from diseases contracted due to heat, starvation and contaminated water as well as the storm itself, we will see what TV photos of rescue operations are revealing--that the greatest loss of life, and the greatest suffering, was occurring among Louisiana and Mississippi's black poor. Look who we see wading through the floodwaters in New Orleans streets, look who we see lining up to get into the Superdome, look who we see being taken off roofs. And look who we see being arrested for "looting." Unlike September 11, which revealed a city united in pain, and grief, and determination to rebuild; this crisis reveals communities which are profoundly divided by race and class, and in which the black poor in particular, bear levels of hardship which far exceed those of any other group.
Not since the great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 have the economic and racial isolation of the black poor been revealed in such stark relief by an environmental catastrophe. What the images Americans on the evening news reveal about who is dying, who is trapped, who is without food, who is drinking contaminated water and yes, who is looting, should give all of us pause. Is this what the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws.
One other thought comes to mind. If the American armed forces, including the national guard and army corps of engineers, were not bogged down in a needless, unprovoked war in Iraq, would the response to this catastrophe have been quicker? Would the levee repair have taken place more quickly and effectively, more food and medicine delivered, more troops sent to preserve order? When all is said and done, many Americans will question whether the response to this catastrophe was hampered by the strain the Iraq war has exerted on our military's rapid response ability in the United States.
I make these observations not in any way to detract by the heroism of tens of thousands of rescue personnel and ordinary people who have saved, and continue to save lives through their actions. Every one of us needs to give them, and the people of the affected states our complete support, economically, politically, spiritually, and by any act of personal generosity that can ease someone's suffering.
But we also cannot shrink from what this tragedy reveals about us as a nation at this stage in history. If September 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack; Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region, and a nation, rent by profound social divisions.
Regards,
Christopher Leong
Chris-Allen Search
Black fury at Bush over rescue delay
Richard Luscombe in Miami
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Observer
Civil rights leaders, church officials and rap stars have united in ferocious criticism of President George Bush's attitude towards the tens of thousands of black people still trying to escape the hell of New Orleans.
An overwhelming majority of the refugees are African-Americans, who make up 67 per cent of the city's half-million population, and some are questioning whether the government's response would have been quicker had the catastrophe struck a white community. The Reverend Calvin Butts, president of New York City's Council of Churches, writes in today's Observer: 'If this hurricane had struck a white middle-class neighbourhood in the north-east or the south-west, his response would have been a lot stronger.'
In an extraordinary outburst during a live television fundraising concert broadcast on America's NBC network, the rapper Kanye West said: 'Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days [waiting for help] because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. We already realised a lot of the people that could help are at war right now.'
The episode was further proof of growing anger within the black community and a belief that race was a factor in the days of delay before troops and emergency supplies began to arrive.
Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, said he saw 'a historical indifference to the pain of poor people and black people' in the US and said it was poignant that blacks were suffering in New Orleans, for many years the south's biggest slave-trade port.
'Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on Highway 10, desperate, perishing, dehydrating, babies crying - it looked like the hold of a slave ship. It's so ugly and obvious. The issue of race as a factor will not go away.'
It was always likely that a controversy would emerge over the racial make-up of the survivors. Almost a third of blacks in New Orleans live below the poverty line and many simply did not have the means to heed mayor Ray Nagin's mandatory evacuation order before the storm hit, while most in the more affluent white community were able to escape.
Nagin, who is black, was criticised for not mobilising buses for those who lacked transport, but Jackson said the blame lay elsewhere. 'The mayor of New Orleans did not cut the budget on building a stronger levee to protect the city from a flood in the event of a storm,' he said.
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