WSWS: Europe reacts to US hurricane disaster

[julianer]

(snip)
Germany’s Die Welt was one of a number of papers that compared the events in Louisiana with social relations in third-world countries. It wrote, “America looks alarmingly like a third-world country within its own borders, divided and violent...20,000 people are vegetating in what looks like a camp for war refugees.”

The Austrian Der Standard led with the headline, “Third-World USA,” and stated that hurricane Katrina had revealed the enormous gulf between the appearance of technological superiority and the third-world conditions that exist in the US heartland. It went on to comment on the “ideological climate of the Bush government, which looks upon the poor black population with a mixture of distress and disinterest.”

Belgium’s Le Soir condemned the “richest country on the planet for deserting the deprived, the poor, the sick and the aged in the face of a cataclysm that had been predicted and could have been prevented.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/euro-s03.shtml

[rodeodance]

1. saying instead of providing food/water--they saw us protecting property!

Shock, disbelief and anger
Europe reacts to US hurricane disaster
By Stefan Steinberg
3 September 2005


Extensive TV reports and news photos over the last three days have brought home to the European public the appalling extent of the flood catastrophe in the southern states of the US.

The scenes of destruction, desperation and poverty, as well as overwhelming evidence of official negligence, inevitably recalled the scenes of the tsunami disaster that devastated large parts of southern Asia last December, as well as a number of floods that have recently hit impoverished countries such as Bangladesh and India.

The television footage and commentary have shown ramshackle housing swept away by the hurricane surge and the plight of dishevelled, starving and bewildered Americans demanding that they receive some sort of assistance. Alongside images of devastation and misery usually associated with third-world countries, European media reports have drawn attention to the complete lack of organised aid for the victims.

Instead of temporary food and shelter, along with medical care, viewers have seen the martial intervention of American state forces and the National Guard, whose first concern is the preservation of property and the suppression of unrest. Britain’s state-run BBC included an on-the-spot report Friday by a journalist who compared downtown New Orleans, patrolled by US armoured vehicles and National Guard troops, to war-torn Baghdad.......

[rodeodance]

2. kick

[rodeodance]

7. good question:

....The Spanish daily paper La Vanguardia drew attention to the lack of any sort of organised assistance for the victims of the hurricane and the “hands-off” approach of the American authorities: “Not even the richest world power was able to prevent the costly trail of death and destruction of the hurricane.... But as well as the many dead, the enormous damage, and the costs of rebuilding, the tragedy also raises a moral question: To what extent can a government force its own citizens to save their own lives?”

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Something very weird has happened,

here in the UK. The Daily Mail today has a banner headlines across a two-page spread inside it, above an article on the criminal delay in assisting the stranded people in New Orleans, dying of thirst.

Though all the British press knows that they sometimes have to run with the hare, as well as hunt with the hounds, bear in mind that this is still a far-right-wing paper, normally and preponderantly pro-Bush. It was also part and parcel of the British press's shameful collusion in the persecution of Bill Clinton.

The headline reads: "THE PRESIDENT IS PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1".

[rodeodance]

4. whow--"THE PRESIDENT IS PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1". from the UK

[rodeodance]

6. and the Brits are saying that the Repugs are in trouble (06)

....This theme was also taken up by the British Independent newspaper, which entitled its September 2 editorial “A Disaster that Will Test Mr. Bush and All US Society” and speculated that the Republican Party as a whole could suffer from public anger over the social disintegration currently taking place in America’s south.

The editorial declared: “The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina also poses searching questions about the nature of US society and about the priorities the current administration has set. What happens to the many uninsured in a country where people rely on private insurance for medical treatment? And what happens to the bereaved families of breadwinners who have no life insurance, or to those with homes or businesses that were not insured.... Mr. Bush, for whom this 9/11 of a natural disaster has come just in time to distract attention from the growing mayhem in Iraq, does not have to face the electorate. The Republican party, to the extent that it espouses Bush, risks reaping the political whirlwind in his place.”

[northerdar]

12. Will Americans NOW realize the W is Public Enemy No. 1

I think they'll be plenty who will defend him. My relatives will. and my fiancee's rich republicans will. I get so angry at their ignorance.

[pippin]

5. Looks like a third world country?

"America looks alarmingly like a third-world country . . " hell, some days I think we are already a third world country especially when I come home from travels abroad and witness how much better things are in some actual so-called emerging nations.

[fujiyama]

8. Humiliating

It's like the tootsie roll ad from the 60s.

How long does it take to destroy a nation?

5 years apparently.

[rodeodance]

9. the world is watching us and they do not like what they see.

[Mutley]

10. All of this administrations secrets are hanging in the wind

for all the world to see. This will be the end of Bush and his buddies. I suspect that next year and in 2008 the Democrats will once again take over the government.

It's just a fucking shame that so many had to die to wake people up.

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. That long, eh? 2008?

[Mutley]

13. I'm not going to hold my breath for an impeachment...

There are still enough zombie douche-bag cokehead supporters in Congress to block any attempt to do so. But the people will speak for themselves when we are given the chance (IF we're given the chance :scared: )

[Hubert Flottz]

14. The damage is done and Bush's silly trip yesterday was a ...

waste of time and money. Money that could have been spent helping the helpless, was wasted on Bush's ego.

The entire country is a prisoner of Bush's ego. The world sees it and if there really is a God, then God sees it all too.

The Crooks on the US Supreme Court who played politics in the case of Bush vs Gore are the traitors! All the blood and all the tears are on their hands.