Heya,

I've been looking around and I'm surprised not to find many topics on this yet (or was I just not looking hard enough?) anyway I think it raises a lot of interesting issues.

I live in Britain and there have been a lot of comments in the newspapers to the effect that the relief effort was the biggest mess imaginable, that the Bush administration displayed a lack of care and urgency, and that due to this and growing opposition to the Iraq War, he is losing the support of the American people.

The disaster has also been seen to illustrate racism and class divide as social problems in America.

Do you think that these criticisms reflect the reality?

-Pen

Don't forget the IRS and Federal Reserve there amp.

Though...

quote:

Perhaps because people just like to have someone else to blame for their problems.

enter God and the Federal Goverment

I've seen a lot of people say it, but I'm just going to reiterate it.

It was the state and local government's job to take care of their people. Nagin failed them by protecting the business districts before he worried about the people that make those business districts run.

He also failed them by furthering the remote possibility of racial division with his "chocolate city" comment. If you want to help your city, you don't section them off by race, socio-economic situations, or location.

The governor, Blanco, was just slow to get the help the city needed from the National Guard. By the way, she commanded the Lousiana National Guard. But she was "praying."

And before the hurricane even hit, she ignored the experts when they said it would take 48 hours to evacuate the city, and issued a mandatory evacuation TWENTY hours before Hurricane Katrina hit the shore.

Leaving people on an interstate for a week without food, evacuating them to unnamed states, and sitting around with your thumb up your butt isn't an effective way to manage a disaster. It was unorganized and chaotic. And after the fact, everyone was too busy pointing fingers to try to actually help.

quote:

Here's a question: why do people still care about who let who down?

Perhaps because people just like to have someone else to blame for their problems.

Here's a question: why do people still care about who let who down?

It's done. It's over with. C'est la vie.

The way I see it the people of New Orleans had ample opportunity to evacuate beforehand. Bush is just being used as a scapegoat. People need to be more responsible for their own actions. But thats just my stupid opinion.

Absolutely not. Bush never let the people down. You wanna know who did?

The city let the people down.

A good friend of mine, who came here with his family from New Orleans about two months before Katrina said that in his part of town, killings were so numerous, that he sometimes had to walk over dead, covered but dead, bodies while shopping or even walking around.

I don't know what was going on in that city but it certainly wasn't going in a good direction under Nagen.

And don't blame FEMA. After all, the $2000 gift cards that went to the New Orleans residents went not to health and food, but beer and strippers. It might not have been widespread but it was insulting to every person who willfully gave to them.

quote:

First of all, I wish yall would stop refering to us 'blacks' as if we were one person or as if we were animals. Personally, i prefer the term 'colored' because no one is 'black', we're all shades of brown. Hence, different COLORS.

Actually, I've seen a few people whose skin really is dark enough to be called black...

Anyways, would you rather be called "browns"? That really doesn't sound very appealing. And wouldn't the term "colored" apply to everyone? I mean, I'm white, which is a color. I know a guy whose skin color is rather reddish, so he's colored, too, I suppose.

Of course, if you don't want to be called black, I don't want to be called white, either. I'm more pinkish than anything.

All right, sorry to be sarcastic. I'm just in one of those moods. I do agree that the government failed on many levels, though.

yes i do.. WHETHER your a repo or dem.. or undecided or whatever people in america are sick of our troops being in iraq.its been our 5 years and what have we accomplished.. NOTHING this has to be the worst administration ever to have put us in a war..Our troops have no stratagy,no proper armor and involuntarly increasing theirs tours by 12 months.This administration are so desperat that they are seeking troops that they have dropped the requirments to be in the military.before you had to be 18 a school graduate with out a criminal record..Now exconvicts can join as well as the old and stupid.This is REALITY not crazy libreal ideas..
this administration has failed us as a country not only with the iraq crisis but with relief efforts and basic needs as health coverage.. and BUSH is still undecided on EVOLUTION..
It was sad watching the situation of hurricane katrina.THere no doubt that their is racism in america..WHY IS THAT SO SURPRISING?and the feeble attempted that the FEMA orginazation did was terible.. today there are still people on a wiating list for fema trailers.And it doesnt matter what black people calleach other you know its that fact that the government are no better than us.I mean what kind of texas ranger,incompetent,halliburton,war mongering REPUBLICAN governor did we elected.. those who did electe him(both terms) this is your fault..

we could have had a choice and a intelligent administration represnting america with science and moral values at thier side..,but instead we have BUSH.. thats the reality

Who is saying you're not Americans? Forgive me, I have not followed this conversation. And as for refering to you as black people, I think we'll stop doing that as soon as the vast majority of you stop referring to yourselves as "nigga."

First of all, I wish yall would stop refering to us 'blacks' as if we were one person or as if we were animals. Personally, i prefer the term 'colored' because no one is 'black', we're all shades of brown. Hence, different COLORS.

Second, some of yall need to get your facts straight. No one shot at emergency vehicles. That's one of the biggest rumors out there about Katrina. And only 6 people died in the Superdome. Yall need to check yall info.

However, I think Bush did fail us in New Orleans. Did you see what our mayor had to do in order just to get help? The president should have been handled his business and been down here because no matter how yall spin it, we're still Americans. We elected him and he should have been here helping.

In case anyone ever returns to this board, I have something to say:
Yall can point fingers and argue over details for the rest of your lives, but the fact of the matter is that tomorrow it will be 2007, nearly 16 months after Katrina, and there is little progress being made in New Orleans. This is partially because of people in power who spend their time blaming others, defending themselves, and avoiding the truth. Call it racism, call it classism, call it republicanism, whatever, but that is not helping us here in NOLA. And just so you know, not everyone here is poor, black, old, uneducated, or whatever other stereotypes have been thrown out there. My neighborhood, Lakeview, was nearly 100% white and relatively wealthy, yet we got 6-10 feet of water. I did not deserve what happened to my home, neither did the poor, handicapped, or blacks. And yes, Mississippi was hit hard by Katrina, but the results were entirely different. In Mississippi, houses were completely wiped off their foundations, leaving only concrete slabs, steps leading to nothing. No one in Mississippi had to see mold growing on their childhood toys, or smell the sickening smell of a house that sat underwater for weeks. I feel for those in Mississippi, but you cannot equate them with New Orleans. I apoligize if I have offended anyone, but I'm sure you will understand that I have been hurt by some of your comments as well.

quote:

Originally posted by clpo13:
Walking is all well and nice...if you have full use of your legs. Duh.

And where exactly would they walk to? Other parts of Louisiana? Alabama? Mississipi? Texas? The whole Gulf Coast was hit by Katrina and other hurricanes. It's not as if there was anywhere safe to walk.

Please like every single person was in a wheelchair and had no possible way to get to safty every single person had more than enough time to leave but no they chose to stay and they have to live w/ their bad choice and they cant blame it on other people.

Walking is all well and nice...if you have full use of your legs. Duh.

And where exactly would they walk to? Other parts of Louisiana? Alabama? Mississipi? Texas? The whole Gulf Coast was hit by Katrina and other hurricanes. It's not as if there was anywhere safe to walk.

If you have 2 weeks notice you can so dont act like it crept up on them anyone who was there got what was coming to them because they had more than enough time to leave and quit preaching to me about the impoverished like there were armed guards making them stay.

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Then you do this *Walks off*

You can't walk out of a city before a hurricaine. That's ridiculous. And many of the poor people had no where to go even if they could have evacuated.

HURRICANE EXPERT THREATENED FOR PRE-KATRINA WARNINGS

A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!


Monday, August 28. From New Orleans.

DON'T blame the Lady. Katrina killed no one in this town. In fact, Katrina missed the city completely, going wide to the east.

It wasn't the hurricane that drowned, suffocated, de-hydrated and starved 1,500 people that week. The killing was done by a deadly duo: a failed emergency evacuation plan combined with faulty levees. Behind these twin failures lies a tale of cronyism, profiteering and willful incompetence that takes us right to the steps of the White House.

Here's the story you haven't been told. And the man who revealed it to me, Dr. Ivor van Heerden, is putting his job on the line to tell it.

Van Heerden isn't the typical whistleblower I usually deal with. This is no minor player. He's the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. He's the top banana in the field -- no one knew more about how to save New Orleans from a hurricane's devastation. And no one was a bigger target of an official and corporate campaign to bury the information.

Here's what happened. Right after Katrina swamped the city, I called Washington to get a copy of the evacuation plan.

Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: no one can find it. That's right. It's missing. Maybe it got wet and sank in the flood. Whatever: no one can find it.

That's real bad. Here's the key thing about a successful emergency evacuation plan: you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies -- in fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first responder. Secret evacuation plans don't work.

I know, I worked on the hurricane evacuation plan for Long Island New York, an elaborate multi-volume dossier.

Specifically, I'm talking about the plan that was written, or supposed to have been written two years ago by a company called, "Innovative Emergency Management."

Weird thing about IEM, their founder Madhu Beriwal, had no known experience in hurricane evacuations. She did, however, have a lot of experience in donating to Republicans.

IEM and FEMA did begin a draft of a plan. The plan was that, when a hurricane hit, everyone in the Crescent City would simply get the hell out in their cars. Apparently, the IEM/FEMA crew didn't know that 127,000 people in the city didn't have cars. But Dr. van Heerden knew that. It was his calculation. LSU knew where these no-car people were -- they mapped it -- and how to get them out.

Dr. van Heerden offered this life-saving info to FEMA. They wouldn't touch it. Then, a state official told him to shut up, back off or there would be consequences for van Heerden's position. This official now works for IEM.

So I asked him what happened as a result of making no plans for those without wheels, a lot of them elderly and most of them poor.

"Fifteen-hundred of them drowned. That's the bottom line." The professor, who'd been talking to me in technicalities, changed to a somber tone. "They're still finding corpses."

Van Heerden is supposed to keep his mouth shut. He won't. The deaths weigh on him. "I wasn't going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down."

Van Heerden had other disturbing news. The Hurricane Center's computer models showed the federal government had built the levees around the city a foot-and-a-half too short.

After Katrina, the Hurricane Center analyzed the flooding and found that, had the levees had just that extra 18 inches, they would have been "overtopped" for only an hour and a half, not four hours. In that case, the levees would have held, and the city would have been saved.

He had taken the warning about the levees all the way to George Bush's doorstep. "I myself briefed senior officials including somebody from the White House." The response: the university's trustees threatened his job.

While in Baton Rouge, I dropped in on the headquarters of IEM, the evacuation contractors. The assistant to the CEO insisted they had "a lot of experience with evacuation" -- but couldn't name a single city they'd planned for when they got the Big Easy contract. And still, they couldn't produce the plan.

An IEM press release in June 2004 boasted legendary expert James Lee Witt as a member of their team. That was impressive. It was also a lie. In fact, Witt had nothing to do with it. When I asked IEM point blank if Witt's name was used as a fraudulent hook to get the contract, their spokeswoman said, weirdly, "We'll get back to you on that."

Back at LSU, van Heerden astonished me with the most serious charge of all. While showing me huge maps of the flooding, he told me the White House had withheld the information that, in fact, the levees were about to burst and by Tuesday at dawn the city, and more than a thousand people, would drown.

Van Heerden said, "FEMA knew on Monday at 11 o'clock that the levees had breached… They took video. By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew ...I was at the State Emergency Operations Center." Because the hurricane had missed the city that Monday night, evacuation effectively stopped, assuming the city had survived.

It's been a full year now, and 73,000 New Orleanians remain in FEMA trailers and another 200,000, more than half the city's former residents, remain in temporary refuges. "The City That Care Forgot" -- that's their official slogan -- lost a higher percentage of homes than Berlin lost in World War II. It would be more accurate to call it, "The City That Bush Forgot."

Should they come home? Rebuild? Is it safe? Team Bush assures them there's nothing to worry about: FEMA won't respond to van Heerden's revelations. However, the Bush Administration has hired a consulting firm to fix the failed evacuation plan. The contractor? A Baton Rouge company named "Innovative Emergency Management." IEM.

******
Watch this special investigative report about Katrina on Democracy Now! this morning or hear it on your local Pacifica or NPR station. You can also download it at DemocracyNow.org.

And catch the one-hour special report, "Who Drowned New Orleans?" on LinkTV, with Greg Palast in New Orleans plus an exclusive interview with Amy Goodman. (Get it on Direct TV channel 375 and Dish TV channel 9410. Or check your cable listing at LinkTV.com.)

And for more on IEM and Katrina, read Greg Palast's new NYT bestseller, "Armed Madhouse" (Penguin 2006).


A Jacquie Soohen BigNoise Films Production, produced by Matt Pascarella.

And very, very, special thanks to our Associate Producers on this particular story -- without their generosity and financial support this report would not have been possible.

Then you do this *Walks off*

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If you are stupid enough to stay somewhere that you know is about to be destroyed by a huricane i mean you get what you deserve

In New Orleans, a lot of people couldn't leave. They didn't own cars because it's a city and there wasn't organized transportation out of the city.