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Stories from New Orleans...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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Never would it have been like that down the white middle-class eastern-seaboard.
Lets not kid ourselves that it's just backward racist Yanks. We have a police force that kills 96 people in a football ground and covers it up to escape censure. We have a police force that murders a man in a tube train and then attampts to fling mud at his name in order to justify themselves. We have a police force that allows a woman to die because they were too scared to confront a gunman known to be dead, and then takes that woman's family to court and attempts to have their house confiscated.
All police forces are the same, and if a disaster of this magnitude was to happen in the UK the response would be exactly the same. Don't try and convince yourself otherwise.
And people still trust the police to "look after us".
I'm not talking about the police, I'm talking about the society.
The society over there was, as the article explained, nothing short of warm, welcoming and friendly beyond anything a person should feel morally obliged to do. Look at what the author said about the people of Texas, when they finally got there.
The author was attacking the police services and the army- the people with power. It is the peope with power that define any society, not the people who try and help. The people with power dictate what happens, and the people with power in this country are just as self-centred, egotistical and uncaring of the poor as the elite in the United States are.
We are just as bad, because our Government and our police give just as little amount of toss. That's why we have a Prime Minister who ignores a march of one million people, and then bans them from lobbying Parliament unless the police (i.e. the elite who are being protested against) approve of it.
Don't point at the US and say they are uncaring and selfish. They are no more uncaring and no more selfish than the elite of this country.
She wrote an account of the storm and its affects in LJ (with pictures) the first part of which is here, and there are three more covering the first few days. It makes for some interesting reading, particularly later on when she is describing the behaviour of patients and their relatives.
“This is neither America's tsunami nor a "Third World." The tsunami came without a warning, Katrina came with scientific precision. In the tsunami areas, we saw people mend and help each other. In Katrina areas, specifically New Orleans, we saw looting, rapes, and other forms of lawlessness. What we saw was the stark differences in values between the Third World tsunami areas and the First World USA.”
“It seems bizarre to me that some US citizens would prefer to complain about other countries reactions to the disaster rather than their own governments. I heard the Chief of Police say that Vancouver's urban search and rescue team was the first emergency service on the scene.”
“Hopefully the US will learn that in order to get compassion, you should show compassion. Patronising the less fortunate is not the same thing. I am afraid though the partially harsh reactions will be seen by a majority of Americans as further US bashing, and they will continue to retreat in the direction that has earned them the apparent lack of sympathy they are now getting. I doubt they will start asking themselves why people feel about them this way, and become even more rigid in their "if you are not with us you are against us" stance.”
“Americans will still harp on about how the rest of the world hates them and how no one in the world tried to help them, when in fact many countries offered aid even before Bush did.”
And whilst Bush should get his fair share of the blame, too much is going to the Federal and too little to City/State Authorities - who seem to have acted like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
The only thing that those quotes have in common is that lack of compassion isn't a uniquely American trait.
Erm.. surely the scope of the tsunami, covering a wider area should be considered. Also the complete lack of any warning giving no chance to prepare means that, if anything, it was harder to respond to in a timely manner.
Agreed.
Where is the lack of compassion? Every criticism is aimed at US authorities, not the victims.
Its not like the US had a months to prepare and I'm not criticising the Tsumani authorities, but rather suggesting that whilst there was less time for the Tsumani it only hit the coastline - in the US 90,000 square miles was flooded. This wasn't the minor flooding many people seem to suggest,
are you sure?
Every single one of those quotes seems to be about Americans rather than the US Government and as someone who's married to an American I'd have to say they are a) completely untrue b) borderline racism
FOOKIN WASTED THATS THE WAy!!!