Consider me boggled.
Sep. 2nd, 2005 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deathpixieOkay, watching the SBS international news, and the Katrina aftermath footage. Particularly the stuff about people dying of dehydration and heatstroke in the streets. Can I just say one thing?
What the fuck is the government doing in terms of disaster relief? Bloody hell, after the tsunamis in December there was relief on its way within 24 hours. It's been three bloody days!
And just why aren't they evacuating people from the place and getting them to places they can get help? Oh, there's buses going out, but when you have thousands of people to move, you need more than 70 Greyhounds, people.
You see this stuff in Third World countries. You certainly don't expect it in the jewel of developed nations.
Disclaimer: I'm not aiming this at the American people as a whole, or even the various aid relief organisations like the Red Cross, although I didn't see much in the way of footage there. It's pretty much aimed at thhe government, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing. Ye gods, Bush doesn't have the slightest clue, does he?
What the fuck is the government doing in terms of disaster relief? Bloody hell, after the tsunamis in December there was relief on its way within 24 hours. It's been three bloody days!
And just why aren't they evacuating people from the place and getting them to places they can get help? Oh, there's buses going out, but when you have thousands of people to move, you need more than 70 Greyhounds, people.
You see this stuff in Third World countries. You certainly don't expect it in the jewel of developed nations.
Disclaimer: I'm not aiming this at the American people as a whole, or even the various aid relief organisations like the Red Cross, although I didn't see much in the way of footage there. It's pretty much aimed at thhe government, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing. Ye gods, Bush doesn't have the slightest clue, does he?
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 05:09 pm (UTC)Oh hell yes, it is.
From the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, emphasis mine:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This means that the things provisioned for in the Constitution, like the three branches of the federal government, were established and ordained to respond to national emergencies like war between countries and natural disasters that cripple significant parts of the country or the people under the government. If hundreds of bloated bodies in stagnant water and armed rioters and looters aren't impinging on "domestic tranquility," I don't know what is.
New Orleans is an international port. The gulf refineries there provide for the entire nation. At last census count, 1,337,726 people lived in the New Orleans metro area. Who knows how many tourists were there when it happened.
When the meteorologists were sure that it was a Cat 5 hurricane that was going to make landfall here in the U.S., where was our President? He was on vacation, doing whatever it is he does on those numerous vacations he's been on. I doubt that either he or his people or the assistants or interns of his people were starting to look at the established plans for these kinds of emergencies and disasters and updating them, because he's already admitted that the governmental response was ill-conceived.