More BBC perspective. Which is useful to capture the racial divide between the police and the refugees:
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The Governor is attributing the worst of the violence in the city to drug addicts who have looted gun shops and are now prowling the city to get a fix any way they can.
There's a very aggressive police presence. They don't stop and talk to the refugees at all and they don't communicate with them. They just speed by in their pick up trucks and their cars pointing shotguns out of the window as they go. It's quite extraordinary behaviour. And these desperate people are waiting for evacuation. The police behaviour makes them all feel like suspects.
Every now and again a military helicopter comes in, it hovers over a car park and soldiers throw out big boxes of bottled water and food ration packs and then a great tide of young men come running in and start fighting for the food. This means that the most vulnerable people, the sick and elderly, many families don't get a shot of the food coming down. There are five corpses there, at least from what we've seen today, it could be a serious development.
eta:
I went to the superdome and there are about 15,000-20,000 people. The pace of evacuation there is unbeliveably slow. We seem to see columns of buses going in but the number of people going out does not seem to change. There are helicopters which throw food and water out and men fight over the relief aid. So the elderly and mums and pregnant women don't get anything. It's an extraordinary situation.
At either end of the centre are armed troops and police but nobody is walking up and down the crowd that are outside. They are not trying to figure out who to give water to, baby formula, or antibiotics. We discovered this morning that a number of children are starting to go down with diarrhoea which I think may be the most serious development overnight.
Elsewhere at the Convention Centre, there isn't a bus in sight. The only thing you see out of 2,000-3,000 people is police cars going through pointing shotguns. These are unbelievable conditions. Words begin to fail me.
Wouldn't it be great if we were living in a parliamentary system about now so the opposition could call for a vote of no confidence, like, now?
Seriously. I reached my Bush-hatred saturation point yesterday and I really can't hate him anymore than I already do. I just want him gone and I don't know if our country can wait until 2008.
I reached my Bush-hatred saturation point yesterday and I really can't hate him anymore than I already do.
Ditto. I was okay with the knowledge that future historians would class him among the worst presidents ever, but now I just want him zapped from orbit or somesuch.
This weekend I'm finally going to get around to assembling a Go bag.
Just when I thought it could reach the saturation point, I found a special reserve of hate:
1:25 P.M. - Pres. Bush, after touring the damage in Biloxi, MS: "I don't think anybody can be prepared for the vastness of this destruction." The President said he "completely disagreed" with those who said the war in Iraq was diverting vital, much needed resources away from the storm-ravaged area.
"We'll do both (help the Gulf Coast and those in Iraq), we've got plenty of resources to do both," Bush said.
Bush is on TV. He. keeps. calling. reufgees. 'folks'.
Heather's head explodes
He walked through the debris with the woman and a girl, his arms around their shoulders, and told them to "hang in there."
The itty bitty pieces of 'sploded Heather head explode
"We'll do both (help the Gulf Coast and those in Iraq), we've got plenty of resources to do both," Bush said.
And at the same time, pass yet another tax cut that will only help the wealthy.
There are still students stranded/trapped at Xavier University.
There are guests who are stranded/trapped at the NO downtown Marriott.
All sorts catching up.
Sorry, -t.
You know, it occurred to me that the last time there was a refugee situation this big in the US, it was the Dust Bowl. And we all know how well the Okies fared -- you may remember a little book called The Grapes of Wrath (which if anything, understated the problem).
As an Okie... yeah, it's similar, but there are differences. The biggest one is that they lost their homes due to economics and not disaster, and it took two years of drought before the exodus began. NOLA people lost their homes and have to go somewhere now. Also, NOLA people are being welcomed or at least tolerated by neighboring states, where Okies... you've all heard Woody Guthrie's "Do-Re-Mi," right? And, of course, the exodus size is larger: 500K from Oklahoma/Texas/Kansas, as many as 1M from NOLA and Mississippi.
But, you know, they are similar in this sense: After the Dust Bowl, only about 50% of the people who went west returned to Oklahoma. Most remained in/around Bakersfield, many others moved to LA. Some kept going up the coast until they arrived at the Boeing plants in Seattle. After Katrina, we may be looking at a similar rate of diaspora in NOLA and the surrounding regions. 1.2M people live in the metro area; I wouldn't be surprised if by 2010 it were only 800K.
After the Dust Bowl, the Soil Conservation Corps did a lot to try to prevent the disaster from ever happening again. They planted immense tree breaks of cottonwood across western Oklahoma to stop the winds. They advocated contour farming. Unfortunately, most of these lessons have been forgotten. Tree breaks are rare nowadays, chopped down for more crop land.
My grandmother told me that when she was a teenager in SE Oklahoma in the late 30s, she'd leave the house for school and there'd be a layer of dust coating everything outside. The color would change depending on where the black blizzard was; some days red, some days brown.
BTW, this is one of those times when I wish the US had a parliementary system, because I don't think Dubya could win a no confidence vote right now with a lot of horse-trading.
If I were president, I would have Chertoff's and Brown's resignation letters by now. They need to go RIGHT NOW. It can only help the situation.
This never would have been this bad under Clinton. He probably would have driven an 18-wheeler full of supplies and Jesse Jackson in himself.
Hell, I think Reagan could have done a better job.
