Georgie Through The Looking Glass
I must admit that "North American refugees" is a phrase I never expected to read or hear in my lifetime; in fact, it's taken a week for commentators to get there, graduating through "survivors" to "victims", or "victims" to "survivors", depending on who you listen to - at this very moment the Mayor of New Orleans is speaking to a BBC reporter, ramming home the point that these "refugees" are in fact US citizens, not Boat People or Displaced Persons in Chad or Darfur. From over here, on the other side of the water, the race issue is not being overly emphasised because it doesn't need to be: we can all see for ourselves that 9/10 of the people there inside and outside the Superbowl, or paddling though the LaFitte Projects, or in three cases bobbing face-down in the filthy water, are black. The dead lady rotting in the wheelchair had a black (and bloodstained) foot. The seven-week-old baby with dysentery lying naked in his father's arms was black. Mary Landry cried on air (after, let's not forget, endorsing the "shoot to kill" policy for "looters", even those "looting" food or water) for help from GWB, as though a US Governor needs to beg for help from her President.
As I said in my last post, it's been a bad year for humanity. My daughter (4 and a half) and I have watched most of it on TV, the Asian Tsunami, the misery of Darfur and Niger, and now Katrina. We send money; I talk to her about it, explaining as well as I can, and we decide what we'll give up; maybe it's Teletubbies magazines for her and cigarettes for me, maybe chocolate for her and no hash for me. I've given up almost all my vices this year, except maybe weltschmertz. This is the first time, however, that she's asked me to write to someone; "You should write to them, Mama, you should tell them about us." She said, with big earnest eyes. I said "I will, if you like, but who to, sweetheart?" And she hesitated - "The black people, the dead people - and the bad people!"
I can't write to the dead, and I imagine that the living, the survivors, the refugees have better things to do than to read my blog. As for the bad people - Lennie, my daughter, seems convinced that there must be some bad people, or this couldn't possibly happen, right? The world is very simple when you're 4. Then again, the BBC news correspondants who are covering Katrina are openly incredulous at the length of time it took for aid to get through. At the moment I'm listening to BBC News 24, and GWB is making an appeal for money, asking us to give to the Red Cross. We already did, as it happens, but it does seem bizarre that the world's richest nation should be so slow off the mark, so niggardly in its response, so slipshod. The UK Government is donating half a million military ration-packs - why? We're a small country, you know; less indeed than the total area destroyed by Katrina. We don't even have half a million in the military!
Donald Rumsfeldt (long may he live and line his pockets) is now pontificating that this is a "natural disaster of unprecedented proportions in US History (sic)". Well, there was the Great Fire of Chigaco and the California Earthquake, and maybe the only reason they didn't claim as many lives (or maybe they did, and I just don't know it) is because they weren't so well-documented or the populations were smaller and less dense. Who am I to dispute with Mr. Rumsfeldt? The point still is, I feel, that a great deal more could have been done to prevent the loss of life (I've read, for instance, that the Army Engineers reports on the condition of the Levees were 40 years out of date), and surely what we here in the UK call Rapid Response Units could have been on hand (not six days away, or in Iraq) to move in as soon as Katrina moved out?
I saw a photo of GWB on day 2 of Katrina playing the Gee-tar at some kind of barbecue fundraising event. You have to wonder what he's paying his aids for:
"Er - Mr. Bush, Sir - "
"Whaddya want, son, I'm on a riff here!"(KerTwaaaang)
"Er - Hurricane Katrina has hit the Gulf Coast, Sir!"
"Well whaddya wait'n' for? Get aholt of the Ambassador to Kyooowait!"
Like I said, I'm not that savvy on how to get rid of an incompetent President; Impeachment (on the grounds of fiddling while New Orleans downs?) might be one, and of course there's always the tried and true Lincoln Remedy. But I feel that making a martyr of an idiot would be too much; he doesn't deserve it. Is there any mechanism by which an election can be called early? Is there no such thing (or equivalent) of the British "vote of no confidence", in which Parliament does what it says on the can, and votes that it has no confidence in the PM?
If not, maybe the American constitution needs updating. All constitutions do from time to time (women vote now, don't they?), and in this "unprecedented natural disaster" the US is burdened, crippled even, with an unnaturally incomptetent president. Get rid, get real, and get on with rebuilding the country.
As I said in my last post, it's been a bad year for humanity. My daughter (4 and a half) and I have watched most of it on TV, the Asian Tsunami, the misery of Darfur and Niger, and now Katrina. We send money; I talk to her about it, explaining as well as I can, and we decide what we'll give up; maybe it's Teletubbies magazines for her and cigarettes for me, maybe chocolate for her and no hash for me. I've given up almost all my vices this year, except maybe weltschmertz. This is the first time, however, that she's asked me to write to someone; "You should write to them, Mama, you should tell them about us." She said, with big earnest eyes. I said "I will, if you like, but who to, sweetheart?" And she hesitated - "The black people, the dead people - and the bad people!"
I can't write to the dead, and I imagine that the living, the survivors, the refugees have better things to do than to read my blog. As for the bad people - Lennie, my daughter, seems convinced that there must be some bad people, or this couldn't possibly happen, right? The world is very simple when you're 4. Then again, the BBC news correspondants who are covering Katrina are openly incredulous at the length of time it took for aid to get through. At the moment I'm listening to BBC News 24, and GWB is making an appeal for money, asking us to give to the Red Cross. We already did, as it happens, but it does seem bizarre that the world's richest nation should be so slow off the mark, so niggardly in its response, so slipshod. The UK Government is donating half a million military ration-packs - why? We're a small country, you know; less indeed than the total area destroyed by Katrina. We don't even have half a million in the military!
Donald Rumsfeldt (long may he live and line his pockets) is now pontificating that this is a "natural disaster of unprecedented proportions in US History (sic)". Well, there was the Great Fire of Chigaco and the California Earthquake, and maybe the only reason they didn't claim as many lives (or maybe they did, and I just don't know it) is because they weren't so well-documented or the populations were smaller and less dense. Who am I to dispute with Mr. Rumsfeldt? The point still is, I feel, that a great deal more could have been done to prevent the loss of life (I've read, for instance, that the Army Engineers reports on the condition of the Levees were 40 years out of date), and surely what we here in the UK call Rapid Response Units could have been on hand (not six days away, or in Iraq) to move in as soon as Katrina moved out?
I saw a photo of GWB on day 2 of Katrina playing the Gee-tar at some kind of barbecue fundraising event. You have to wonder what he's paying his aids for:
"Er - Mr. Bush, Sir - "
"Whaddya want, son, I'm on a riff here!"(KerTwaaaang)
"Er - Hurricane Katrina has hit the Gulf Coast, Sir!"
"Well whaddya wait'n' for? Get aholt of the Ambassador to Kyooowait!"
Like I said, I'm not that savvy on how to get rid of an incompetent President; Impeachment (on the grounds of fiddling while New Orleans downs?) might be one, and of course there's always the tried and true Lincoln Remedy. But I feel that making a martyr of an idiot would be too much; he doesn't deserve it. Is there any mechanism by which an election can be called early? Is there no such thing (or equivalent) of the British "vote of no confidence", in which Parliament does what it says on the can, and votes that it has no confidence in the PM?
If not, maybe the American constitution needs updating. All constitutions do from time to time (women vote now, don't they?), and in this "unprecedented natural disaster" the US is burdened, crippled even, with an unnaturally incomptetent president. Get rid, get real, and get on with rebuilding the country.
posted by holojojo at 10:55 AM
2 Comments:
Hey Holojojo, thanks for your witty commentary. I am glad there are intelligent folks in the world. Thank God.
We got kids the same age. My daughter turns 5 on October 1. I read to her about hurricanes and flags last night. She is a handful...
She is playing with her 8 year old girlfriend right now. All her friends are older. What a crazy time to raise children!
Hi Olympiada, thanks for reading. Yeah, this is a strange time to be bringing up kids (mine was 4 on April 5th), and the hardest thing is teaching them right from wrong, when it seems that nobody can agree on what "right" is.
I tell her, because I believe it, that kindness if the most human emotion, and that if we had a bit more of it, there would be less war and destruction in the world. But then, I'm an old hippy, what would I know?
Keep caring
holojojo
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