When Katrina was forecasted along the Gulfcoast of America, the world was routinely  prepared to receive yet another natural calamity of unknown proportions. The world has just seen the worst ever Psunami that devastated the Asian region and the magnitude of the loss in terms of life and property actually benumbed the entire world.

 

Inspite of the recent experience the Katrina has not received that much of attention and anxiety as these types of hurricanes are quite common in the gulfcoast and the country which is going to face the one was none other than the USA, the world’s only Superpower  which can boast of any number of wars on any number of countries at any cost of price at their will. The President is such a capable and courageous  man who could successfully defend the ongoing war in Iraq and Afgan in a fierce electoral battle and won another term of presidency quite recently with a thumping mejority.

 

The world therfore, expected the katrina to be another trivial happening and even if it was of  any bigger size as to cause huge loss of life and property , The USA, the economic and political giant will face it quite easily and adequately with its own resources of manpower, modern machinery and technical skill.

 

But what happened after Katrina showed its fury over the four gulf states was totally a different- agonising  and unbelievabe story. What the world saw was not only the devasted New orleans but the broken face of the pride of America.

 

The President and  the Vice prsident , on long vacations and the defence secretary was busy in ManHattan Shoe mart bargaining for a pair for US dollars 7000/ , when Neworleans with its people drowing in the floodwaters,  the entire official machinery meant for rescue  and rehabilitation was caught knapping and the hitherto unseen face of the invincible superpower was blatantly exposed to the entire world by the ever vigilant media persons and their lenses.

 

The possible ‘Racial discrimination’ is up again with a bang!

 

The initial efforts to cover up and defend the debacle have failed and atlast The President has come out openly to accept the failure and own responsibility for the same.

 

Out of curiosity I was collecting and compiling the various clippings on Katrina and its aftremath and at the end of the confession by the president I felt it is time to close down the effort and decided to place the grossly edited version of the  file to my readers for a quick ‘gothrough’.

KATRINA UNFOLDS THE OTHER SIDE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY

 

 1.Electricity was out for more than 2.3 million people in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. "The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse yesterday with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organised society," says the New York Times

The Los Angeles Times raises questions about the lack of preparation.

"This disaster was all but scripted; why wasn't the response?" it asks.

"Why did it take so long to evacuate the poor, the elderly and the tourists unlucky enough to be caught with no way out of town? Where was the food and water? Why were the police left to choose between rescuing people from the floods and saving them from predators?"

The Washington Post also blames local and federal government for mishandling the situation.

"The sluggish, initial response... has embittered and inflamed tens of thousands of people awaiting relief, most of them poor and black and many of them old and sick," it said in an editorial.

In Houston to the west, where thousands of refugees have been taken, the Houston Chronicle puts the blame for the disintegration of civilisation in New Orleans on inadequate protection by the government.

"Looting and violence are unconscionable but were invited by the failure of federal, state and local authorities to reassert order or even provide basic sustenance for storm survivors," it says.

"Hurricane Katrina will be remembered less for its rampaging winds and tides than for the inadequate disaster preparations it exposed."

There has also been criticism from opposition politicians and members of the public that spending on the war on Iraq diverted money away from flood-control projects.

2.People were "being forced to live like animals," Lawrence said, surrounded by piles of trash and feces.

3.He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners.

4."They have quite a few people running around here with guns," he said. "You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls."

5.But city officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response to the catastrophe.

6."They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.

7.Families slept amid the filth and the dead. The muddy floodwaters are now toxic with fuel, battery acid, rubbish and raw sewage. "Call it biblical. Call it apocalyptic. Whatever you want to call it, take your pick," one survivor said. "There were bodies floating past my front door. I've never seen anything like that," Robert Lewis said, near tears.

8.In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it was obvious that the disaster would be as big a test for the US as the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.Now, amid scenes of chaos in New Orleans and with an SOS cry from the mayor, one has to conclude that the first test - that of bringing aid to the distressed - has not been passed.

 

And before that, for whatever reason - whether lack of transport or lack of will to leave among the poorest - tens of thousands were not evacuated. Mayor Ray Nagin himself, who made a good call by ordering the evacuation, has questions to answer as to why it was not more effective. It was not as if New Orleans did not know the potential. It has lived with and suffered from hurricanes throughout its existence

9."Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling newspaper The Sun.

10."Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany's Handelsblatt daily.

11.The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of crises in the world's poorest nations such as last year's tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or missing.

12.But some view the response to those disasters more favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people, even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka."Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is.

13."A female employee at a multinational firm in said “Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster," said the woman, who did not want to be named as she has an American manager."A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke about it just the other day," she said.

14.One army veteran, sick with diabetes, with no medications, asked me why if the United States is capable of invading a country half a world away, wasn't it capable of driving him 10 miles across the river.

15. There was a Walmart looted just a couple of days ago and every single gun in the gun section of the shop had gone. There is so much looting going on people are very scared. I think people here would tear Bush apart if he came here, verbally if not physically. But Bush has to show his face, be visible and show leadership. I am beginning to feel this could be a very serious political moment for him. –ADAM BROOKES 0F BBC

16.President Bush has failed to reflect the mood of the country. He has failed to provide the kind of response that Americans expect. There is a lot of anger directed at the President in the country at the moment.-JONATHAN BEALE BBC

17. STAR NEWS ABOUT GENERAL RUSSELL HANORE –THE ONLY CONSOLATION: A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,' Honore's daughter and other relatives live in New Orleans, but he has not seen them since he arrived in town."The priority is on this mission, getting these people out of here," he said.The general came to rescue of one young mother trying to carry her twin babies down the street in the terrible heat and humidity of New Orleans, Starr reported. The mother was so exhausted the children were almost falling out of her arms.The general went up to the woman and took both of her babies, handing them off to soldiers to carry, as he promised the mother that they were going to get her some help. The troops helped the three hurricane victims to a Coast Guard ship, where they were treated for exhaustion and dehydration.

18.One man, George Turner asked "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans." "Why is it that the most powerful country on the face of the Earth takes so long to help so many sick and so many elderly people?" he asked. Why? That's all I want to ask President Bush."

19. And John Rhinehart, the administrator of a New Orleans hospital without power and water, said: "I'm beginning to wonder if the government is more concerned about the looting than people who are dying in these hospitals."

20.There is widespread agreement among commentators that somewhere there has been a breakdown in the system. The Biloxi Sun Herald in Mississippi asked: "Why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in south Mississippi been pressed into service?" And on Friday the Washington Post wrote: "Though experts had long predicted that the city, which sits below sea level and is surrounded by water, would face unprecedented devastation after an immense hurricane, they said problems were worsened by a late evacuation order and insufficient emergency shelter for as many as 100,000 people."

21. 'Cowboy' Bush failed in Katrina evacuation – Chavez: CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vocal critic of the U.S. government, on Wednesday called President Bush  a "cowboy" who had failed to manage the Hurricane Katrina disaster and evacuate victims. That government had no evacuation plan, it is incredible, the first power in the world that is so involved in Iraq and elsewhere are lame duck in their own country; and left its own population adrift," Chavez said in a cabinet meeting broadcast live on television."That man, the king of vacations ... the king of vacations in his ranch said nothing but, you have to flee, and didn't say how ... that cowboy, the cowboy mentality," said Chavez, chuckling in a reference to Bush without naming him directly.

22."It's downtown Baghdad," said tourist Denise Bollinger, who snapped pictures of looting in the French Quarter. "It's insane."

23."It's like being in a Third World country," said Mitch Handrich, a registered nurse manager at Charity Hospital, where nurses were ventilating patients by hand after the power and then the backup generator failed. "We're just trying to stay alive," Handrich said.

24.Jeanette Brase, a 76-year-old retiree from the midwestern state of Iowa who was visiting New Orleans with her husband, said the looting was the only frightening part of her ordeal. She never thought she would witness such behavior first-hand, Brase said after seeing looters stream in and out of a local pharmacy: "It's something you hear about and see on TV." "It's actually kind of sickening. I don't know if they (the police) can stop them or if they just have too much to do."

25. Four days after Katrina killed hundreds if not thousands, Republicans joined Democrats in shaking their heads.

"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.

Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts called the government's response "an embarrassment."

26. "Certainly I think the issue of race as a factor will not go away from this equation," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told CNN on Friday.

"We have great tolerance for black suffering and black marginalization," he added. "And today those who are suffering the most, in fact, in New Orleans certainly are black people."

Jackson, who was in New Orleans helping with the relief effort, described appalling conditions: "Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on the I-10 causeway desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies dying," he said. "It looked like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. It was so ugly and so obvious."

27. You want to know why all those black people are stuck down there dying?" asked Yvette Brown, an African-American evacuee from New Orleans. "If they were white, they'd be gone. They'd be sending in an army of helicopters, jets and boats."

Brown saw potential racial bias in the fact that thousands of people were trapped at the convention center for days, crying out for help. Some were elderly and sick, some were children in need of baby formula.

In New Orleans, the city's mostly black, mostly poor 7th Ward was mired in hip-deep water and its residents tired, thirsty, hungry and angry. Race played a role, some said, and so did economics. "Every time there's a flood here, it always goes through the poor people," said Richard Boissiere, 60.

28.MATT WELLS, BBC, LOSANGELS: The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

29. Press dismay at Katrina chaos

Newspapers around the world see Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath as a defining moment for the presidency of George W Bush.

While there is clear sympathy for the disaster's victims, many commentators place the blame for the delayed rescue effort squarely on Mr Bush's administration.

Mexico's El Universal

“The slowness with which the USA's federal emergency services have joined the rescue operation has already generated great political tension... There is no doubt that the lack of well-timed responses to assist the population will have political costs for President Bush's Republican Party in the next federal elections. “

Colombia's El Colombiano

It is now urgent that the world's leaders take heed of nature's warning, look at the evidence and realise that the climate, on a global scale, is changing. This is already known from scientific reports, but they continue to ignore it, to play it down, or not to care about it.  

Argentina's Clarin

Katrina had more than the power of the wind and water, because, now, when they have subsided, it can still reveal the emptiness of an era, one that is represented by President George W Bush more than anyone.

Spain's El Pais

Up until Monday, Bush was the president of the war in Iraq and 9/11. Today there are few doubts that he will also pass into history as the president who didn't know how to prevent the destruction of New Orleans and who abandoned its inhabitants to their fate for days. And the worst is yet to come.

Spain's La Razon

Proving that even the gods are mortal, it is clear that the USA's international image is being damaged in a way that it has never known before. The country will probably be able to recuperate from the destruction, but its pride has already been profoundly wounded.

France's Liberation

Bush had already been slow to react when the World Trade Center collapsed. Four years later, he was no quicker to get the measure of Katrina - a cruel lack of leadership at a time when this second major shock for 21st century America is adding to the crisis of confidence for the world's leading power and to international disorder. As happened with 9/11, the country is displaying its vulnerability to the eyes of the world.

France's Le Progres

Katrina has shown that the emperor has no clothes. The world's superpower is powerless when confronted with nature's fury.

Switzerland's Le Temps

The sea walls would not have burst in New Orleans if the funds meant for strengthening them had not been cut to help the war effort in Iraq and the war on terror... And rescue work would have been more effective if a section of National Guard from the areas affected had not been sent to Baghdad and Kabul... And would George Bush have left his holiday ranch more quickly if the disaster had not first struck the most disadvantaged populations of the black south?

Ireland's The Irish Times

This is a defining moment for Mr Bush, just as much as 9/11 was. So far his reputation for prompt and firm crisis management has fallen far short of what is required.

Saudi Arabia's Saudi Gazette

The episode illustrates that when the normal day-to-day activity of society disintegrates, the collapse of civilisation is only a few paces behind. We all walk on the edge of the abyss.

Musib Na'imi in Iran's Al-Vefagh

About 10,000 US National Guard troops were deployed [in New Orleans] and were granted the authority to fire at and kill whom they wanted, upon the pretext of restoring order. This decision is an indication of the US administration's militarist mentality, which regards killing as the only way to control even its own citizens.

Samih Sa'ab in Lebanon's Al-Nahar

The destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina... has proved that even the No 1 superpower in the world is helpless in facing nature's 'terrorism'.

Pakistan's The Nation

To augment the tragedy, the government of the world's richest nation defied the general expectation that at the first sign of the storm it would muster an armada of ships, boats and helicopters for the rescue operation. For nearly three days it sat smugly apathetic to the people's plight, their need for food, medicine and other basic necessities.

Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po

This disaster is a heavy blow to the United States, and a lesson which deserves deep thought... [It] is a warning to the Bush administration that the United States must clear its head and truly assume its responsibility to protect nature and the environment in which humankind lives.  

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post

Even if our money may not be needed, at the least we should be offering moral support. Our skills in dealing with storms may be useful to help Americans prevent other such tragedies. We should be offering this help rather than shrugging off what should be our humanitarian duty.

Ambrose Murunga in Kenya's Daily Nation

My first reaction when television images of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans came through the channels was that the producers must be showing the wrong clip. The images, and even the disproportionately high number of visibly impoverished blacks among the refugees, could easily have been a re-enactment of a scene from the pigeonholed African continent.  

30. Hip-hop star Kanye West criticised President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina at a televised benefit concert in New York on Friday.

The show, which raised funds for relief efforts, featured Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Harry Connick Jr and Wynton Marsalis. But West told the audience: "George Bush doesn't care about black people." The comment went out live on the US east coast, but was cut from a taped version seen on the west coast. West also claimed the US was set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible". But to Myers' surprise, West departed from his script and said: "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

31. NEW DELHI: Disaster is a great leveller. In a reversal of usual roles following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, India has offered a comprehensive assistance package to the US, the world’s largest relief donor.

The offer was formally communicated to the White House by Indian ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, on Saturday.

Tapping into its experience in combating large scale disasters, India’s threepronged package attempts to export a combination of materials and expertise. Apart from a $5 million contribution to the American Red Cross, India has offered to fly across Army medical teams to New Orleans. Army, rather than civilian, relief teams are being offered keeping in view the worsening law and order situation in the city.

India reckons water purification will be urgently required in a city where contamination would be rife, causing water-borne diseases. As a leading producer of bulk drugs, India is sending across a large consignment of medicines.

After attending to numerous large-scale disasters, including last December’s tsunami and last month’s Mumbai flooding, India now has acquired considerable expertise in combating such large-scale disasters.

 

32. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."
If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a terrorist attack of similar dimensions. "This is what the department was supposed to be all about," said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS's former inspector general. "Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11."
"We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably," said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress." With Katrina, he noted that "we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack," there will be no warning.

33. It took the President two days to curtail his holiday and make a flight over New Orleans in his official jet, and when he did make a ground visit he kept well away from the worst-hit areas. In his public statements, he has shown none of the spontaneity he showed when he — again after some days — appeared at the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001.

As to other senior federal officials, Vice-President Dick Cheney is still on holiday in Wyoming, and as the disaster took place Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was publicly seen in Manhattan shopping for shoes at $7,000 a pair. –ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN, UK

34. “ In the absence of any concerted state initiative to evacuate people from vulnerable areas, thousands of poor people, predominantly blacks, were trapped in hell-like conditions. Those who stayed behind did so not out of choice: they had nowhere to go and absolutely no means to get away. Both the State and federal governments failed shamefully to recognise the seriousness of the crisis until it was too late for effective intervention. The superpower was reduced to seeking international help for blankets, food, medicines, and trucks. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is now on the defensive, fending off charges that the delayed response was on account of the colour of the skin of the trapped people. Katrina has reopened the old wounds of racial discrimination — and brought home to Americans the ugly truth that the disparity between the privileged and the underprivileged could also be the line separating those on safe ground from those in a watery grave.”- THE HINDU, EDIT.9/9/05

35. Internet sites purporting to be charities related to Hurricane Katrina have been popping up faster than the FBI can look at them, and many appear to be fraudulent, the head of the FBI's cyber division said Thursday.There were roughly 2,300 Katrina-related sites by midday Thursday, FBI assistant director Louis M. Reigel said. The number had more than doubled just since Tuesday, Reigel said.

36. Ex-Secretary of State Powell slams US storm effort: WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Colin Powell, the former U.S. secretary of state seen as a potential leader for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, has joined the chorus of Americans criticizing the disaster response at all levels of government. There have been a lot of failures at a lot of levels -- local, state and federal," Powell said in an ABC interview for the "20/20" program to be broadcast on Friday evening.

37. America now looks like some fearsome robotic dinosaur stomping across the landscape, a gigantic Power Ranger toy, all bright gadgets and display but no power and nothing inside. It can't actually do anything useful after all...... The hollow superpower stands exposed, but it may take a little while for the world to readjust its set to this new reality.......... Iraq has shown that smart missiles, heavy-metal techno-tricks, and soldiers whose helmets are electronically controlled from Southern Command in Tampa, are virtually useless....... But it took Hurricane Katrina to expose the real emptiness under the U.S. carapace.......... What the great Louisiana catastrophe has revealed is a country that is not a country at all, but atomised, segmented individuals living parallel lives as far apart as possible, with nothing to unite them beyond the idea of a flag. The 40 million with no health insurance show the social dysfunction corroding U.S. capacity. For the poor at the bottom of the New Orleans mud heap, there never was even the American dream to cling to. They always lived in another country. ......  Katrina lifts the lid on the hidden America invisible in sitcoms, but above all shows how the rich don't acknowledge shared nationhood with the rest.- Polly Toynbee in HINDU /10-09-2005

38. S. Ramachandrasekaran, Chennai IN HINDU:Katrina has exposed the U.S. It was clear from television images that most of the victims were black. Those who could afford to move to safer places (whites) just abandoned their less fortunate brethren. Democracy and economic growth in the U.S. are lopsided. Obviously one section has not benefited from them.

39. Looting from grocery stores can be explained but how can looting of TV sets be justified? How can shooting at a relief helicopter be explained? Not all the survivors were ordinary people. Some were criminals who stayed back in New Orleans by design to exploit the opportunity. -V. Krishnan, San Diego, California

40. "As a nation, we are pretty well stretched," said Barry Allen, a political independent from Reed City, Mich. "I approve of some of the things the president has done, and disapprove of others. Overall, I disapprove."

For Bill Kane of Kingsland, Ga., the government's slow response to the hurricane "was terrifying to see in our own country. It made you mad, because it made you think where's our money going?"

41. Racism, resources blamed for bridge incident:Evacuees say they were turned back by police. NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- As the heart of a hurricane-ravaged New Orleans filled with sewage-tainted floodwaters and corpses, Mayor Ray Nagin urged people to cross a bridge leading to the dry lands of the city's suburban west bank. But some evacuees who tried that route told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" and "News Night with Aaron Brown" that they were met by police with shotguns who refused to allow them into Gretna, a nearby town on the other side.

The evacuees blamed the incident on racism, but Gretna's police chief said his town was in lockdown and was no better equipped to handle evacuees than New Orleans.

"We had no preparations," he said. "You know, we're a small city on the west bank of the river. We had people being told to come over here, that we were going to have buses, we were going to have food, we were going to have water, and we were going to have shelter. And we had none.

"Our people had left. Our city was locked down and secured, for the sake of the citizens that left their valuables here to be protected by us."The chief said he had not spoken with any of the officers involved in the incident. More than 56 percent of Gretna's population is white, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and under 36 percent are black.

42. "The season has come for Americans to look homeward ... instead of continuing to spend billions of dollars in

Iraq," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va.

And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, accused the

Federal Emergency Management Agency of moving too slowly in recovering the bodies. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge.

43. Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders:

President Bush for the first time took responsibility Tuesday for federal government mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and suggested the calamity raised broader questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," said Bush.

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Thanks readers for patiently going through the file

THE END