British Expatriate Network

Glaswegian @ Thu 01 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

Hmmmmm...it was only a matter of time before race came into it. Most of the pics have seen of looting, have been of black people, does that mean that white people aren't taking advantage of this as well?

ive no doubt whites did some looting to but the area in which this looting took place(where the cameras where set up) was a predominatly black area that was flooded up to the second floor and ive no doubt that some of the places that where looted where owed by afican amercans as well , its easy to bring race into it and it solves nothing .....

Did you see the number of white recue workers involved risking thier lives to save these poeple ?. A little positive is needed here heroism like racism transends race ..

Keith @ Thu 01 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

Just finished watching CNN.

It was followed by the usual lineup of military and FEMA people saying what they propose to do. By the time they get over the talking many more will be dead. The US should be ashamed of how badly prepared they were for this or any other disaster.

!

YES america is and should be ashamed .
The problem is they thought for years the levees would hold and no lousianna governor or federal aiuthority for 30 years ever doubted it or took measures to increase the strength of them .

FEMA has never had a situation as bad as this as as you say they where unprepared for it i suspect held up by a lot of red tape which as much a part of everday political life here in the us as the pledge or allegence is .

kinross lady @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

[quote="manc @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005"]I keep posting theelection results

T

:roll: What the hell manc.... politics shouldn't really come in to it.

Some folks do that KINROSS LADY they have tunnel vison and everything has to be turned int a negative bash the president situation .and then bring in race .... niether of those scenarios help thethousands suffering cus of this natural disaster

IT SO happens the govt of loiusianna and the mayor of new orleans are BOTH democrats and noboby giving intelligent opinions in these posts as to what should be done to solve the situation have mentioned that

There is no point .

there was a lot of human failure in the initiial handling of this tragic situation and im sure nobody black or white used is as a race issue .

kinross lady @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

manc @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

[quote="Moi @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005"]I totally agree, enough with the election results. There are old people and babies dying this minute and reports of a 7 year old raped..the world is looking on with shock and disgrace. Who cares right now about friggin election results. They need help NOW and well overdue.

and the government they voted for has left them wanting

And previous governments let them down as well.[/quote

EXACTLY RIGHT A FAIR COMMENT

Now Manc if you MUST bring in politics here are some thoughts for you to consider ..

No help was there from the folks who pledged to help the poor in their election manifesto . the lousianna administration in the past years have bought boats , built expensive new governor mansions and generally spent state money on things other then ..

increasing the strengh of the levees .. creating jobs for the poor and building them housing.

lets get back to how we can help and not allocating blame

mrbungle2103 @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

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."

But as ive said before in thses posts Bungle the meens to initially supply these poeple with transport .food . and shelter STARTS at the ground level (loiusianna politicans ) they where the first ones who shouild have supplied help followed by the federal govt who admitidly was slow even for such a large complicated operation .they did nothing

.Those in charge at the loiusiana state and city level issued a *GET OT OF TOWN* declaration AND THEN did NOTHING except save there own skin.

Read about the mayor of NEW ORLEANS holed up in the cities best hotel with all he could wish for in greature comforts .
i agree its a bad situation all round and even though i voted for bush last time im one of the first to critize some of his *god and country antics * but this time you can hardly put all l the blame on him and his party others where negligient to and earlier when it was mor eof a critica.
l nobody has clean hands .

mrbungle2103 @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 Wrote:

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 ."

:grin: :grin: :grin:

manc @ Fri 02 Sep, 2005 9:32 am Wrote:

Why isn't Howard Dean (he is a doctor FFS) down there being seen to help. Would look great right now for the DNC

At last, some humor in amongst the tragedy. :lol:

mrbungle2103 @ Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:40 pm Wrote:

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."

I couldn't agree more!!!!! When my wife told me about this thread I was anxious to respond because of my pent up frustration. FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT DON"T KNOW FEMA COULDN'T GIVE A SH*T ABOUT YOU. I've read about a critically wounded woman ask a FEMA worker for help he more less told her to get f*cked heres a marker write your name on your arm and after you die we'll notify your next of kin. That was after Andrew and in Miami so it is my opinion it is not a question of socio-economic standard but one of suffering. You see FEMA was developed for one thing AND only one thing it has nothing to do with helping people. On June 20th 1979 Jimmy Carter signed into effect Executive orders 10995-11005,88. These orders are 95-takeover of communications (to BS us to believe whatever they wish to broadcast) like in N.O.....97 is takeover of electric power petro fuels minerals (where you going now?) like in N.O.....88 is takeover of food resources and farms(you'll eat or starve) we control that like in N.O.....000 is mobilization of all civilians into work brigades under government supervision execuse me this isn't in N.O. we have to look in HOUSTON for the mind set on this one....001 takeover of health educ. welfare distrubition of the food/medical help we (FEMA) now have...0002 is registration of all people (is this the S.S. of today or what) probably everyone in Houston is registered...003 takeover of aircraft and airports they closed the airports Sun MORNING. Katrina didn't hit till Mon morning they could of flown alot of people out but they couldn't have had a practice run of their plan and a chance to condition the minds of the Am. people. These are all law and not some BS all that has to happen is for the president to declare a national state of emergency and FEMA takes over. A terrorist attack is a great example. Their gross incompetence with all the hurricanes they respond to is because they are not here for that. Go to Thailand, India and Sri Lanka - those people are still living in squalour I bet even after all the money raised. I HATE to see people suffering whether here or abroad. There is absolutely no point in it. ALL the "REFUGEE HELPERS" should have been off their fat asses alot sooner, too many people have died already. And I'm going to go back on something I said and grill me if you want but yeah more poor people dead means alot less headaches for the neo cons. A few of you may think I'm crazy but do your own home work you shall see for yourself. What is happening in N.O. will be nationwide one day.They are even separating the children from the parents. I am not an anarchist. I am sane and practice kindness and love in all my affairs.Not trying to scare just inform.

mango @ Sat Sep 03, 2005 10:20 pm Wrote:

mrbungle2103 @ Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:40 pm Wrote:

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."

I couldn't agree more!!!!! When my wife told me about this thread I was anxious to respond because of my pent up frustration. FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT DON"T KNOW FEMA COULDN'T GIVE A SH*T ABOUT YOU. I've read about a critically wounded woman ask a FEMA worker for help he more less told her to get f*cked heres a marker write your name on your arm and after you die we'll notify your next of kin. That was after Andrew and in Miami so it is my opinion it is not a question of socio-economic standard but one of suffering. You see FEMA was developed for one thing AND only one thing it has nothing to do with helping people. On June 20th 1979 Jimmy Carter signed into effect Executive orders 10995-11005,88. These orders are 95-takeover of communications (to BS us to believe whatever they wish to broadcast) like in N.O.....97 is takeover of electric power petro fuels minerals (where you going now?) like in N.O.....88 is takeover of food resources and farms(you'll eat or starve) we control that like in N.O.....000 is mobilization of all civilians into work brigades under government supervision execuse me this isn't in N.O. we have to look in HOUSTON for the mind set on this one....001 takeover of health educ. welfare distrubition of the food/medical help we (FEMA) now have...0002 is registration of all people (is this the S.S. of today or what) probably everyone in Houston is registered...003 takeover of aircraft and airports they closed the airports Sun MORNING. Katrina didn't hit till Mon morning they could of flown alot of people out but they couldn't have had a practice run of their plan and a chance to condition the minds of the Am. people. These are all law and not some BS all that has to happen is for the president to declare a national state of emergency and FEMA takes over. A terrorist attack is a great example. Their gross incompetence with all the hurricanes they respond to is because they are not here for that. Go to Thailand, India and Sri Lanka - those people are still living in squalour I bet even after all the money raised. I HATE to see people suffering whether here or abroad. There is absolutely no point in it. ALL the "REFUGEE HELPERS" should have been off their fat asses alot sooner, too many people have died already. And I'm going to go back on something I said and grill me if you want but yeah more poor people dead means alot less headaches for the neo cons. A few of you may think I'm crazy but do your own home work you shall see for yourself. What is happening in N.O. will be nationwide one day.They are even separating the children from the parents. I am not an anarchist. I am sane and practice kindness and love in all my affairs.Not trying to scare just inform.

This is mangos yank husband writing and not her.

roll Hate to be think about this. But this is only the beginning. No one has really thought about lost jobs, revenue and taxes, those that have nothing and therefore have no money to rebuild and the sad thing about it all, when the next storm hits or something else happens, all these people will be forgotten. They won't be making the news our attention span would have moved on to the next batch of bad news.

Look at the news, other than the BBC, what have you seen other than this? nothing,
you telling me every other bad thing has stopped. We are a self indulgent society.

Better in a couple of years time, big corp's will move in rebuild the place and build expensive housing etc that none of the original folks could afford. Some CEO is now rubbing his hands thinking how he can take advantage of the situation and where will all this help be for these poor folks be then. At a guess nowhere, we won't care by then.

At the moment, people and tv is recording every minute of this farce, 2 years down the line, with a family on the side of the road, with no cloths, no home and chances, I bet there will be no camera crew there showing their plight, No FEMA no good will being shown.

This doesn't look good....at first -

http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

"Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said."

The WaPo reports the administration here as really scathing regards Govenor Blanco. Of course, two minutes on Google pulls up this - "In anticipation of a possible landfall, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared states of emergency Friday."---http//www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/26/tropical.weather/.

Being from the Amexpat site, I only occasionally pop over to read, but was wondering about your news coverage aside from CNN International which I get via cable. I have to admire the British TV reporters who were getting comments etc from the local politicians, officials. I forget one item, but it went something like a woman official answered his question about the delay in help coming (on Friday) by saying.... "I'd like to thank, so and so, so and..." He cut her right off and restated his question and she started again. They he got really annoyed at her dodging the issue and she just didn't know how to respond. I'd like to say that many years ago American mainstream reporters would have done the same, but certainly not in this age of conservative-dominated media.

Goose3 @ 04 Sep 2005 11:46 Wrote:

Look at the news, other than the BBC, what have you seen other than this? nothing,
you telling me every other bad thing has stopped. We are a self indulgent society.

Did you see this story from the Manchester Evening News on line? I saw the kids being interviewed at Gatwick (I think) this morning on TV news.The British press is incredulous that they are able to get in and out and broadcast, but no information for the people stranded is getting in, eg via a leaflet drop. I know you have a subscription only area, so I apologise if it's already been discussed. :oops:

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/men/ne...leans.html

Up to 30 British students huddled among the thousands in the Superdome were forced to set up a makeshift security cordon to fend off abusive locals.

Jamie Trout, 22, an economics student from Sunderland, kept a record of his terrifying ordeal. He wrote: "It was like something out of Lord of the Flies - one minute everything is calm and civil, the next it descends into chaos. A man has been arrested for raping a seven-year-old in the toilet, this place is hell. The smell is horrendous, there are toilets overflowing and people everywhere."

Jamie, who had been coaching football to disabled children as part of the Camp America scheme, said people were shouting racial abuse at the Britons because they were white.

and....

Where I used to live near a Nuke Power Plant the school buses are a major part of the evacuation plans.

This was an interesting article published in 2002 about NO in a worst storm scenario

:-/Lew

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/m...i_95845370

A major flood could submerge much of central New Orleans beneath 20 feet of water, leaving many of the metropolitan area's 1.3 million residents clinging to rooftops--a prospect that has engineers and city planners scrambling for defensive strategies. "It's the luck of the draw," says hurricane expect Hugh Willoughby at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NDAA). He thinks it's a matter of when--not if--the Big One will pound New Orleans During some annual hurricane season between June and November.

and

http://www.nola.com/washingaway/thebigone_1.html

Thousands will drown while trapped in homes or cars by rising water. Others will be washed away or crushed by debris. Survivors will end up trapped on roofs, in buildings or on high ground surrounded by water, with no means of escape and little food or fresh water, perhaps for several days.

Goose3 @ 04 Sep 2005 11:46 Wrote:

Better in a couple of years time, big corp's will move in rebuild the place and build expensive housing etc that none of the original folks could afford. Some CEO is now rubbing his hands thinking how he can take advantage of the situation and where will all this help be for these poor folks be then. At a guess nowhere, we won't care by then.

Yes, they called them Carpetbaggers following the Civil War. :evil:

I hope any of your expat friends, family and colleagues who are in the hurricane disaster area are safe and are in touch.

Hugz,
Lew

PASSING THE BUCK .......

One more articule of authorities blaming each other. it will be MONTHS before we know the real truth of who dropped the ball if ever .

New Orleans collects dead as officials dodge blame
Sunday September 4, 0607 PM

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans began the gruesome task of collecting its thousands of dead on Sunday as the Bush administration tried to save face after its botched rescue plans left the city at the mercy of Hurricane Katrina.

Except for rescue workers and scattered groups of people, streets in the once-vibrant capital of jazz and good times were all but abandoned after a mass exodus of hundreds
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of thousands of refugees into neighbouring Texas and other states.

Battered and sickened survivors made no attempt to disguise their anger "We have been abandoned by our own country, " Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, just south of New Orleans, told NBC's Meet the Press.

"It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans," Broussard said. "Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now."

After a nightmare confluence of natural disaster and political ineptitude that al Qaeda-linked Web sites called evidence of the "wrath of God" striking America, National Guard troops and U.S. marshals patrolled the city, stricken in the days after the hurricane by anarchic violence and looting.

Local and federal officials said they expected to find thousands of corpses still floating in flood waters or locked inside homes and buildings destroyed by the devastating storm that struck the U.S. Gulf coast last Monday.

"When we remove the water from New Orleans, we're going to uncover people who died hiding in houses, who got caught by the flood. People whose remains will be found in the street," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Fox Ne

"There'll be pollution. It is going to be about as ugly a scene as you can imagine."

Later, Chertoff flew into New Orleans and said the search for storm victims would be arduous. "Let me be clear we're going to have to go house to house in this city," he said. "This is not going to happen overnight."

President George W. Bush, who in a rare admission of error, conceded on Friday that the results of his administration's relief efforts were unacceptable, said on Saturday he would send 7,200 more active-duty troops over three days.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld toured a medical facility at New Orleans' international airport on Sunday. He spoke and shook hands with military and rescue officials but walked right by a dozen refugees lying on stretchers just feet away from him, most of them extremely sick or handicapped.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was touring the Mobile, Alabama, area, in her native state.

A further 10,000 National Guard troops were being sent to storm-hit Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total to 40,000. A total of 54,000 military personnel are now committed to relief efforts.

Lawmakers promised to allocate more relief money in coming weeks after Bush signed a $10.5 billion aid package for Gulf Coast areas hit by Katrina.

Towns along the Gulf Coast ripped apart by Katrina were beginning the enormous task of reconstruction and accounting for the dead. In hard-hit Biloxi, Mississippi, homes and cars still lay piled up on each other or under trees, and power lines dangled everywhere.

Well over 100 deaths had been confirmed in Mississippi and "we are finding new casualties in the debris," Biloxi town spokesman Vincent Creel said on Saturday.

The living told tales of horror in stricken New Orleans.

"There were bodies floating everywhere. Lots of them. Some had bullets in them," said Michael Davis, 18, as he described his escape from a neighbourhood immersed in more than 10 feet (3 metres) of water last week. He ultimately found refuge at a domed arena in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Mississippi largely escaped the turmoil in New Orleans but officials warned of a serious risk of dysentery and other diseases from contaminated water.

"It's not a disaster, it's a catastrophe," Harrison County's health director, Bob Trabnicek, said in Biloxi.

"Why they don't try to get us out of here, I don't know," said Ella Robertson, 51, as she paced back and forth on a debris-lined Biloxi street. "Waiting, that's all we can do."

The storm's impact was felt across the United States as gas prices rose to well over $3 a gallon after Katrina's 140-mph (225-kph) winds shut eight oil refineries and crippled others

Defending the administration's response and disaster planning, Chertoff said the hurricane and flood in New Orleans were "two catastrophes" that presented an unprecedented challenge.

"That perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners and maybe anybody's foresight," the homeland security chief said.

Critics have said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has lost its effectiveness since it became part of the Homeland Security Department in a post-September 11 reorganisation.

Rice was slammed by critics on the Internet after she attended a New York performance of the Monty Python musical "Spamalot" on Wednesday, a day after New Orleans flooded.

After returning to Washington, she defended the administration against charges the slow government response and prolonged suffering of New Orleans' predominantly black storm victims were signs of racial neglect.

"That Americans would somehow in a colour-affected way decide who to help and who not to help, I just don't believe it," said Rice, the administration's highest-ranking black official.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Bush administration officials were blaming state and local authorities for the disaster response problems. The newspaper said the administration was rebuffed in an effort to take control of police and National Guard units reporting to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat.

JohnA @ Sun 04 Sep, 2005 3:42 pm Wrote:

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Bush administration officials were blaming state and local authorities for the disaster response problems. The newspaper said the administration was rebuffed in an effort to take control of police and National Guard units reporting to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat.

This is absolutely correct. And when all the dim-witted Bush bashing has settled down, investigations will show where the failures were.

I had the misfortune to live in New Orleans for a year. It's a fine city to visit as a tourist but as a resident it's shortcomings are painfully obvious.

There is corruption & incompetence at all levels of local & state government. That's one of the reasons the basic infrastructure of the city is crumbling - you see people on TV saying the situation looks like a thrid world country, well basically a lot of New Orleans is.

The big failure here was at the local & state level - absoutely no preparedness, no control, no plans except for "everyone get the **** out of here". Except for the mayor of New Orleans, who of course made sure he & his wealthy mates were OK. The mayor & governor should have got their act together before they decided to blame FEMA or the govt.

The New Orleans & state officals failed to organize an effective evacuation, didn't even keep track of the places they had told people to go to for shelter and then watched as their own polices officers looted stores. The mayor said every bus in the country should be sent to New Orleans & yet he had allowed hundreds of buses to sit empty in his own city and become flooded. The people to be angry at are the mayor & the governor - who held responsibility for planning, evacuating, deciding when & what assistance is required.

People's blind hatred of George Bush means they blame the federal govt. But just like every other natural disaster the federal govt's role is to support & assist & step in when requested. And now finally they are able to and we are seeing the results.

Local Democrats f*****d up big time here.

ANyone see the Kayne West Mike Myers bit? West broke from the canned script and said,

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food." And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...00165.html

And of course that's what they are doing, shooting them. Its total chaos and the relief effort is being led by white racists, what a fine recipe. Well done America you've done yourself proud again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4214232.stm

JohnA

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