Los bloggers y la devastación
del ciclón Katrina
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U.S. embarrassment?
September 4th, 2005 :: by Steve


Frankly, nothing can really top my previous post. For that I apologize, especially to Zohreh. However we must someday return to normal blogging activity, so…
I’m still astounded by the crisis on the US Gulf Coast. What I find most amazing about it is how rather than uniting the people of New Orleans with their neighbours, the general sentiment among of the survivors seems to be frustration and disappointment. The relief effort seems ridiculously slow, if the media can be trusted. Apparently it took four days for survivors to be evacuated from the stadium they had taken shelter in, and during this time there was no food, water or working plumbing.
The damage is almost fathomable (not the same scale as last year’s tsunami, for example), but the slowness of the response is not; not for a country like the United States.
But fear not, this is not a rant against the US government. Instead, I would like to make the following claim so that I might someday say “I-told-you-so”: Within the next four years we will see a feature-length documentary - possibly directed by Michael Moore - on the subject of the administration’s slow reaction to the New Orleans disaster. This documentary will allege that had this happened to New York or some other higher-income, whiter part of the country, everyone would have been saved.
It’s only a matter of time, really.


New Orleans / Katrina : Who's to blame -- and
Terrorists Jumping With Glee
Rescue worker:

"One of the teams came in today after having been out for hours at a time. One particular rescuer went straight to a corner and collapsed into tears. I went directly to him and just held his hand. What else could I do? I said nothing. He said it all. They lowered him 26 times and he pulled 26 people to safety. He wants to be back out there but there are mandatory rest periods. His tears are tears of frustration."

There are two disasters going on here, a natural disaster with what appears to be an almost incomprehensible lack of planning on the part of the localities, compounded by an equally incomprehensible lack of response by the Federal Government.

And the second disaster is the National Disaster, and it's an equally big problem for us all:

We're the richest country in the world, we have some of the smartest, best-educated people in the world. And we knew, and our government knew that New Orleans was essentially a huge bathtub just waiting for the water to come in. And yet, strategically, what did we have? We had an inordinately large percentage of our national oil reserves and refining capacity sitting right in the middle of the fyookin' bathtub! Is that a national security issue, or am I talking Greek?


I can't blame anybody for Mother Nature sending Katrina over New Orleans. But I sure as hell can blame the U.S. Government for being so incredibly stupid as to allow our country to exist in such an indefensible energy position for so many years without anybody doing a damn thing about it.

I sent some money to the Red Cross, that's all I can do to help right now. Those people in Congress, the President and his Cabinet and all their predecessors who didn't have the foresight to do anything about our energy situation all this time ought to be paying double. We're all going to be paying for our incredible stupidity for the next 20 years, in higher gas prices because it takes that long to bring on refining capacity, while the terrorists in the Middle East are jumping with glee. And we will still be dependent on foreign oil! Are we EVER gonna get the message here.
Leer más en la prensa digital --->Katrina : le gouvernement Bush tente de faire taire les critiques
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