Tales of Woe Shame a Nation

[iverglas]

The Toronto Star can generally be counted on for at least decency. (And Rosie DiManno can be counted on for bluntness and stridency, and in this case she's chosen the right target.) Spazito posted this in another thread, and I think it deserves broader notice.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1125611421566&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

That — and not rampant greed — is why there has been so much looting in recent days, to the extent that police and troops have been taken away from critical rescue operations and assigned to watch the inmates, or outcasts, who are being treated like vagrants.

And that's all they do: Watch. Patrolling up and down the main arteries, in their armoured personnel carriers — as if this were Baghdad — automatic weapons hoisted on their shoulders, never stopping to assist fragile citizens in wheelchairs and walkers or mothers with ailing, wailing infants.

I've seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo. Even the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are surely being cared for better than this.

Could it be because the overwhelming majority of these dispossessed are poor and black that their very lives are apparently of less worth than business properties in the French Quarter, deluxe hotels on Canal St., chi-chi mansions in the Garden District, and tourist casinos on the riverfront?

Harrahs Casino, one of the largest and sturdiest buildings near the Riverwalk Palisade, barely damaged, has bolted its front doors, while scores of homeless families that might have taken temporary refuge therein are left to huddle on the torn-up grass, in the dripping humidity — and, yesterday afternoon, the deluge of another thunderstorm — waiting forlornly for promised evacuation buses that have yet to appear.

And it goes on.
I don't have a US Senator or Representative to write to, to express my overwhelming rage and grief at what has been done to these people, and demand that whatever it takes -- be that energecy equipment and personnel from Canada or Russia or just the efforts that the US could obviously muster for itself if the people in charge gave a damn -- be done, and be done now. I'm hoping that I can count on the people at DU to be doing that on behalf of us outsiders as well as yourselves.

I just get the feeling that the US media aren't producing images of the reality like DiManno has painted in this article. It's a must read.

[opihimoimoi]

1. The Pubs are in DENIAL

[JoFerret]

3. Bushbotic

.

[ElectroPrincess]

4. Why has Bush referred to these hurricane ravished areas

"THIS PART OF THE WORLD"? They are part of our country. He's said "this part of the world" THREE TIMES to refer to the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. :wtf:

[txaslftist]

2. Aw Jeez. It hurts so bad to read that.

[JoFerret]

5. Yes this is beyond

the stories of the catastrophe and into a land beyond belief. In Iraq there is the reason/ excuse that the suffering invalid in the wheelchair might be a suicifde bomber. What is the thinking here?
to match every tale of heroism and scarifice we must keep record of the individual and collective acts of indifference, neglect and cruelty. Attention must be paid.

[iverglas]

6. Rosie's report from yesterday

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1125526233438&call_pageid=968332188854&col=Columnist969907621263

The hungry, those who stayed and those still trying to get out, forage for food. Some have turned feral, smashing grocery store windows and ransacking the shelves for food.

This isn't looting. It's survival, and, more often than not, it's every man for himself, for his family.

Most take what they need, some take what they want.

"Gotta look after yourself, child," advises one middle-aged woman as she fills plastic garbage bags with confections and juice bottles. "Ain't nobody else gonna do it for you. You see the government out there bringing us food?"

But when her little boy asks if he can take some strands of Mardi Gras beads and cheap bottles, she tells him no, put that back.

[tom_paine]

7. NOTHING can shame Imperial Amerika

At least not it's rulers.

[kath]

8. Wow, those two columns are very powerful to read.

Kick.