British Expatriate Network

We liberated an entire country in less than 3 weeks....................

Well, 9/11 is a prime example. It didn't take 24 hours to get their act together. Even though this is a lot different to what has just happened. It was in a much more concentrated area but there was no warning and nothing in place just in case.

I hope this is a wake up call to some real issues that are in this country.

Could you imagine this in areas like missisauga and brampton ( bramladesh ), God forbid, areas full of Indians, Pakistanis, and other ethnic groups, and then Ottawa dragging it's feet to get something done?

You have my 100 percent support on your political votes post Manc.Now is a good time to point out who these states favoured.

thanks John.
seems to me that everyone all of a sudden wants to live in a socialist country and that the government should bail them out.

Don't they remember voting to not have government interference in their lives?

Didn't Reagan get in under the premis of smaller government?

the whole country needs to look at themselves in the mirror and ask some serious questions.

If I retired with nothing but social security the right wing would be the first to tell me that it is my fault I ended up like this.

Well I as a left winger am telling America, it's your fault you ended up like this.

Actually it was the moons gravitational pull that really got them there, they just need enough thrust to get halfway...what too picky, sorry!!

Agreed, those vote against their best interests because for some warped and confused ideology get what they deserve.

That said, I doubt many blacks in New Orleans voted Republican.

You know what? I think the US would have been better off with partitioned country after the Civil War.

I'm not going to say blacks, but I will say poor.

How many of them voted at all?

This is an email sent to Andrew Sullivan. It's alot more restrained than my wife and I feel.

"I've considered myself a socially libertarian, fiscally conservative Republican for a very long time. I got along with the idea that I wasn't going to get a whole lot of help. College wouldn't be free. Job training would cost money and time. And I'm probably a decent example of up-from-not-much.

But after watching what's happening in New Orleans-an American city that I've loved, visited and have always wanted to return to - I can't ever vote for these people again.

Being a Republican means that you expect the government to do just a couple things for you and nothing else. Build a road. Defend us from enemies, foreign and domestic. Stuff that would be a lot less organized if we all had to do it ourselves. Everything else is just gravy.

And as we poured money into Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, I thought, "Right on," because some of that money's bound to fall on my head.

Well, something else would fall on my head first.

I work for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And that means that if something really catastrophic happens in MY city, and they ask me to stick around, that's the job. We have A and B teams and I'm a disaster recovery specialist on Team A. I've drawn up plans with names like Drawbridge and Smoldering Crater.

Here's what these people would do for me.

They would leave me there to die.

Look at the facts. There's no coordination on the ground right now. The city has no fresh water, no electricity, no services. The floodwater has so much oil and toxins in it that it's flammable.

In psychology they have what is called a fight-or-flight response. When faced with danger, do you subdue it or do you flee? Some of it has to do with risk assessment, but in this case, there is no flight. There is nowhere to run. So flight means die. If my choice was to pull a pistol on a truck driver or Nat, Jarren, Jayson, or any of you dies, that's no choice at all.

I'm not talking about the looters grabbing big-screen televisions and basketball hoops. I'm talking about the ones that are chest-deep in water carrying bottled water and diapers. You can't tell me for three days to be patient, the bus is coming, and they're piling up bodies in the street median.

We have known that this sort of disaster could occur for a century. Hell, the tour bus driver told me about it on the plantation tour. This means that we have been able to envision the stark reality of this occurring for a week-the newspapers all said the storm would hit New Orleans last Thursday.

A week to get buses? A week to get fishing boats? Trucks? This is the United States! I read someone who said, "All the people who weren't bedridden, or had money, or had cars left. The people that are left had none of those things."

There are people tonight who are going to sleep on overpasses for the fourth straight night. There are prisoners who will do the same. There are people dying at a convention center because no one will tell them that no one is coming for them, and the National Guard is protecting the kitchens. There are police officers who are turning in their badges because they've lost everything, have no guidance, and don't want to be shot by a looter.

There are people tonight inside a concrete domed stadium with holes in the roof and no air conditioning who were told the buses are coming today, and they might, or they might not. There is no food. There is no water. There are bodies floating through the neighborhoods.

In the UNITED STATES.

Some people say that you can't hold the President responsible for this. Oh, yes you can. Because when he looked over at John Ashcroft after the jets hit the towers and said, "I want you to make sure this never happens again," it was not meant to be specific to "no more planes hitting large buildings on the East Coast, right, boss." It was meant that no American should have to run for his life through an American city. While Americans may perish in a senseless, unforeseen disaster, we'd save the ones we could.

And the Cabinet appointees were mushwits and he could barely speak a complete sentence and we're sending people overseas for God knows how long to help people who are indifferent at worst and hostile at best, but they were going to protect us. In 2004, that's all a lot of us needed. Well right now, it's obvious that they can't.

Ask yourself this What if Al-Qaeda blew up the levees instead of the hurricane? Would the response have been any different?

No. It wouldn't. That city flooded in a day. And if it were Las Vegas, I would have been in some operations center watching people try to decide who gets to starve to death and who gets to get on a bus to Los Angeles or Phoenix. And there would be no certainty that I'd be on that bus in time to protect my wife and kids.

But one thing sure would have been different.

They wouldn't have had a whole week to sort it out and know what's coming. They were supposed to KNOW this already. It will have been FOUR YEARS next weekend since someone probably said, "Hey, what if..."

And for that, the whole stack of them should be fired.

I've had it. I'm done. And if the other bunch of assholes can't figure out that what's important is that babies don't starve to death here (and I'm not talking some metaphorical goo-goo thing with school lunches and welfare, but real, actual starving) and we get people out of harm's way, we'll get rid of them too. And so on.

Because this is about leadership, not about bitching on CNN how no one's in charge, or listening to Peggy Noonan furrow her brow at the Governor's performance, or bragging that we've sent in one National Guardsman for every 200 people, or actually having the audacity to say that "we had no idea the levees would break."

Today, I saw my country favorably compared to Indonesia and Thailand, (always our traditional benchmarks of infrastructural success) while the elderly die of thirst in the street. We sneered at France when this happened during a heat wave.

No more."

roll I am tired of the finger pointing, that all can been done latter. It's a F*cked up mess, so lets just try and get the job done.

What it does show. All the money for homeland security means Jack. What if this a terrorist act, from what I see at the moment the out come would be the same.

This is First a local Government problem, then state and then Federal.

Whats worse is that we have not even reached the peak of the season yet. Can You now imagine another big storm hitting the same area or Houston?

Come on, Goose, these people work for us and they are screwing up. If i ever got slack at work, the boss gave me a verbal kick in the ass, I did the same with people working for me. To know whom to kick, you must know who is screwing up. When the Director of FEMA is totally surprised to hear, from a reporter, that there are hungry, thirsty, dying people in the Convention Center, you need to point the finger.

It is not a local problem, the local infrastructure is wiped out, the State is struggling. A state of emergency was declared by the President a day before the storm hit. Big deal, nobody did diddly to prepare.

I overheard some women in a bar tonight saying that it was wrong that New Orleans children were being bused to other schools in the state because they might spread diseases like typhoid and hepititus.

You couldn't make it up could you.

The company I work for are planning to send some lorry loads of drinking water down to try and help as best we can, but we've found there is no way in at all. I don't know the geography of the area but apparently all road access is completely shut down so there is little we can do.

The Red Cross only accept cash donations.

What are the chances of the head of FEMA getting the presidential Medal of Freedom? Have you seen this guy answer questions? Awful. No doubt he'll get his medal on the porch of Trent Lott's new house.

One thing that struck me as odd was this -:
http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682....html#4524

" * Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

* The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

* The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents."


I wondered why people didn't just walk out. That was until I saw Shephard Smith on Fox (the guy who is clearly a demon) telling Hannity and O'Reilly to go fuck it for trying to spin even this. He's been sat with stranded people at an underpass for days with no aid of any kind. Finally when they tried to walk out of New Orleans they were stopped at a roadblock and told to go back. Smith, like many reporters, has had enough of decorum and want's answers. Kudos to him.

And kudos to CNN for their scathing comparison of what has been said and what is actually being done.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina...index.html

londonsquare When we look at stuff we tend to compare with back home.That we would expect there to be police etc they all work together, same equipment, same rules no matter what Force you go to, its all standard, same with the army etc


. From what I understand the first line of defence here, is the City. They have to ask the state and then the State has to ask for federal help. Its a case of, if you don't ask you wont get. Due to States rights etc. Declaring a state of emergancy, does not get troops involved(by that I mean the army etc, not national guard). Again you have to ask. Plus you have the logistical problems of having all these agencies and troops all have different procedures, radio equipment and command and control functionality.

As for local police what did you expect? they have family as well. I would think they would be more worried about their own family, plus there are no radio's therefore no backup. If something happened like that in your town (HOPE IT NEVER DOES), are you going to be worried about your work (being a key person) or are you going to say to hell with it and look after the wife and kids. Especially when you know there are pond scum around carrying guns and just killing and rapping people.

I agree this thing did not just appear and bite us on the arse, they saw it coming for days. My question would be "why was there no marshaling points, tents etc" someone said on the radio that things get done better in a third world country. I believe that to be true. It all comes down to complacency, that it won't happen here.
and that we are so much better.
Well it just did and I will say it again if this shows our readiness for a national emergancy after all this homeland security BS. God help us all. We saw this one coming and still could not get our shit together

Thank you for those comments Moo we fell better nowthat you have made you contribution to lessen the plight of these poor homeless people.