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I dont give a Fuck who is charge. That is for your own citizens to debate after you have sorted out your currrent crisis.
I give a donation to any disaster wherever in the world regardless of the ideology of the goverment.
My own adivse is to give to the International Organisations who are experts in these disasters like the :-
Red Cross
Medecins de frontiers
Caritas
Red Crescent
I'm not saying we should quit giving aid to countries in need. I am saying stop fighting wars for countries that will not fight for themselves. I think it would do everyone in this world a lot more good if we tried to be more peaceful and sort of set an example for everyone to see.Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_gyptian
http://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-2907C-180.jpghttp://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-2907C-784.jpghttp://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-1851B-003.jpg
http://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-1851B-018.jpghttp://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-1851B-027.jpg
http://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-1851B-007.jpghttp://www.af.mil/media/photodb/web/...-2907C-470.jpg
Are you like one of them loadmaster recruiter guys or something?
That would be awesome if you could train in real world missions man. Keesler was my tech school and it seems surreal when I see pictures of the Mississippi Coast since I spent all my weekends for half a year going up and down the coast. It was a different world, but the people were nice and it was really fun and I wish there was a way to get out of my squadron to go help, but with our deployment tempo, there is no way. I really hope that place can rebound from all of this shit.
everything but going to war is the equivalent of isolationism? gyptian - how limited you are..Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_gyptian
mr g, just because it was an good idea to go to war in 1940 doesn't mean that it is always an good idea... sadly it's not as simple as that.
A Can't-Do Government
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By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 2, 2005
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.
First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.
There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.
Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"
Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.
Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."
I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.
So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation.
Exactly. Just listening to NPR talking to their White House correspondent, and he reiterated the claim that no one could know the levees wouldn't hold! Bull fucking shit. Shaking my head in disbelief that they actually think people will buy into that. Lazy slackers, don't look ahead more than five minutes.
thats the scary part. there are people out there (many in this forum) who don't question the Bush administration. you people are drones who drank the cool aid and attempt to rationalize the absurd. The bottom line is the buck stops with the president. W's snail like response to this disaster and his complete lack accountability for the consequences to his pathetic response is pathological.Quote:
Originally Posted by yentna
Pathetic is the lack of understanding of the magnitude and scope of this tragic natural catastrophe and everyone's glee in engaging in the blame game.
I'm sure your "super hero" would have evacuated and rebuilt and relocated millions within the first hour after the storm was over not even counting curing AIDS,poverty,cancer and obtaining world peace.
It's hasn't even been a week and thousands of people have been rescued and relocated with many more to come.
Get a grip.
Hooowee!
:rolleyes:
Krugman's article is oustanding. Good find!
It is truly sad to see FEMA in it's current state... a bastard stepchild of the DHS... this is what happens when you add another layer of beurocracy and turn the EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT agency in to a TERRORIST MANAGMENET agency.
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Dr. Gaper, WTF? Are you not paying attention? Please to explain why we are capable of carpet nuking almost anyone on the globe over the next 24 hours with no notice with our bombers flying from CONUS but it takes 120 hours with 72 of warning to airdrop food and water inside the US?
This isn't about whether you like the president's politics so he must be doin a good job. This is a failure at all levels, pure and simple. Absolutely there is chaos in disaster, but this goes beyond the chaos factor. You need to understand that this is such an obvious outrage and failure that you have most of the professionals at all levels of emergency response and emergency mangement going "WTF is this bullshit?" It isn't just John Q public. *glancing over at the DHS/FEMA IS-EM certs on my desk*
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I had the chance to listen to the radio scanner streaming audio over the internet for four days before they shut down the feed. It was so sad to hear the National Guard and local FF/EMS/PD and Coast Guard trying so hard to help and being stymied constantly by lack of resources, lack of organization, and incompetent mangement by the LFA. I listened to the NG send generals to plead with FEMA not to shut down their water and fuel supply field. I listened to a soldier bein told that there were no more medical personal available for hours and he would have to help a woman give birth on his own. That was the state of their situation. When I saw footage of injured people being pushed around on rafts and in buckets, listened to EMS crews bein shot at and overwhelmed, I wished with all my heart that I could snap my fingers and be there with a rescue boat or ambulance to help any way I could.
how about heli dropping enough MRE's, food and water the 1st day after the storm to stop thousands from dying of dehydration.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Gaper
You have a link for those statistics? Thousands dying from dehydration?Quote:
Originally Posted by powder11
How would dropping MRE's save people from drowning in their attics?
Stop nitpickin to backpeddle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Gaper
Are you actually saying that those stuck in NOLA without sufficient potable water for 5 days in 90deg humid heat didn't have anything to fear from dehydration?
Were they begging for water just because they were bored?
Did people break and take soda out of flooded stores just because they love to Do the Dew?
Holy shit I thought you were one of the smart ones.
For drowning in the attic, how about providing public busses for evac PTA Katrina? ;)
I think this is pretty cool
It is a "Google Maps Wiki" that is helping organize NOLA information for specific locations. Having briefly looked at some of the online message boards for this disaster, I can see how useful this would be. Of course, at this stage of the Internet, it doesn't do poor families without the needed access or knowledge much good.
Im not going to argue symantics with you. If you want to think Bush did all he could to help people, feel free. I and many of Bushs' republican colleagues don't see it that way. I like what Bill Frist has to say about things: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090301388.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Gaper
Who the crap are YOU to question what I saw? I don't give a rat's what you "call." I don't take very well to being called a liar. Look them up yourself. Each of those points can be verified if someone has the the time to look for them. I don't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Will
And to another poster; I never said I had a personal responsibility gripe with the few people who absolutely could not leave or had the duty to stay! Read what I said. I was only focusing on the people who turned down chances to evacuate to "safer" areas last week BEFORE THE STORM (including by bus). You know, the same kinds of people who are still turning away help a week later. I see more and more video on the news every day of people turning away helicopter rides, boat rides, even door-to-door attempts to get them out. EVEN NOW!
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this situation wouldn't have had a better, more orderly, outcome if everyone who COULD HAVE evacuated HAD evacuated; and those who could not had taken the offers of free public transportation to the superdome, or to the other dozen designated "structures of last resort." They just had to get out of their houses and/or call for assistance. It is appalling how many didn’t. That was the main point of my original post. That's all. How loud would have been the howl if the city, particularly the “projects,” had been cleared by force prior to the storm!
Before anyone starts yapping on about what happened to the people who "evacuated" to these last-ditch structures after the actual evacuation; there were only 10-20,000 people IN the dome when the storm hit. ANYONE who arrived before the storm was allowed in. If there had only been a few thousand truly needy people inside these structures, bringing their own provisions of food and water, as instructed, and everyone else had split like they were told, there would not have been the terrifying mob scene OUTSIDE those buildings that effectively stymied initial attempts to rescue those inside. There's no arguing that fact. What is unfortunate is that officials completely miscalculated how many people would disobey a direct evacuation order. I have no idea how communities will deal with that sobering reality in the future.
The whole thing is very disturbing, disheartening, and frankly, petrifying. But I guess that's why they're called disasters and we don't want to be around when they hit. You can question the fairness of this or that, you can question policy, motives, what have you. But, I can guarantee you this; the next category 3-5 that comes around, even the bum under the park bench will find a way to get a few bucks together and find a bench in another town.
Endless: were they told to bring food and water for 5 days?!??!?
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Friday is when the fucking cavalry rolled in with food and water. That is pathetic and anybody that tries to tell you otherwise is just spinning.
Even FOXNews was shocked (shocked I tell you) that there was no response on thursday night. Then, while there are maybe 100 reporters over by the convention center, Michael Brown has the nerve to say "Convention cnenter? Oh, I wasn't told there were people at the convention center."
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
One more -- this is what Brown told reporters Friday:
"I was here on Saturday and Sunday, it was my belief, I’m trying to think of a better word than typical — that minimizes, any hurricane is bad — but we had the standard hurricane coming in here"
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/...2351709831.txt
NWS -- Sunday:
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005...
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA... DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS... PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL... LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE... INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY... A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD... AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS... PETS... AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS... AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING... BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.
George W. Bush: "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
That was to the "refuge", known as the superdome mind you.... :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by shamrockpow
Not to mention the other people....
Yes. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStoriesQuote:
Originally Posted by shamrockpow
And here's a link I found about the buses: http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/W....b7724856.html
Again, remember, these structures of last resort were discouraged. They were only to possibly save people's lives if they hadn't gotten out. There was no assurance of survival nor of provisions; just the offer of a structure deemed "safer" than others in the danger zone.
I don't have the time to google any more stuff. You can do it as well as I. I've got work to get back to.
Well, it appears that Bush can actually screw things up just by showing up:
Bush visit to levee repair a staged photo-op
Bush visit halts food deliveryQuote:
“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
Bush food distribution stagedQuote:
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
Open letter to the President from the Times-Picayune newspaperQuote:
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
Quote:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oosik
I'm surprised he didn't arrive by military helicopter in his trusty flightsuit. :biggrin:
At least they were smart enough not to hang a gigantic "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him this time.Quote:
Originally Posted by str8line
I was thinking they could quickly summarize Bush's presidency with three photos. The first would be him reading to the kids on the morning of 9/11. The second is the one I mentioned already (mission accomplished), and the third is him playing the guitar the day after Katrina hit.
Must see TV:
The interview with Aaron Broussard by Tim Russert
the extended version (dial up version is 6Mb, windows media file; also audio & Quicktime options)
shorter version, better quality of video (5.7Mb, windows media file)
Quote:
“I’m sick of the press conferences, for Gods sakes, shut up and send us somebody.”
-Aaron Broussard, President, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, September 4th, 2005