But I wanted to post a bit about the hurricane and it's aftermath.
First, special thanks to all who have called or emailed your concerns about S.
She is safely in Maryland, staying at her mother's house. She is frantic about friends from NO, and whether or not she has a home or job to return to, but otherwise she is fine.
Times like these test faith, even the faith in Atheism. I sometimes wonder if these sorts of things happen to allow humanity to redeem itself by reaching out to their fellow mankind with compassion.
The fucking morons who are shooting at ambulances attempting to evacuate hospitals in New Orleans, are failing this test miserably.
The National Gaurd is on it's way (and would have been there before now had most of them not been on active duty in Iraq!), and an already tragic situation is about to turn bloody.
Please donate what you can to the American Red cross, and designate the money for hurricane relief. This situation is going to strain relief agencies to degrees we cannot imagine.
Peace
8 comments:
Sometimes your lack of compassion astounds me.
I'll agree that on the surface it looks like people are being lawless for the sake of being lawless, and there may be a handful of people doing that, but I don't think it's even close to that simple.
You're talking about people who have been without food, water, and medical attention for days. Aside from irrational behavior brought about by stress and third-world conditions, these people are very likely extremely dyhdrated, a condition which can bring on heat stroke. Heat stroke is characterized by not only physical symptoms but by neurological ones as well, namely: confusion, agitation, disorientation, strange behavior, and hallucination. So before you go condemning these people as 'fucking morons', you should think about what the results of those symptoms might look like. Might look a lot like the insanity of shooting a gun at a rescue helicopter, don't you think?
-Biker Chick
I have to agree with Biker Chick regarding the physical and mental stress of those still trapped in New Orleans. I cannot blame them for being angry-they haven't eatten in several days, have been walking around in fouled water and sadly have witnessed people dying in horriffic circumstances and can do nothing to help themselves. I know if I hadn't eatten, showered, and consumed water in 5 days and watched dead bodies float down the street I'd be a bit nutty. They're cut off from the world and don't know that help is on the way.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'll probably get flamed but, I think your anger stems from the helplessness that we all feel. I know that deep down you are a compassionate person. I have seen your caring for fellow human beings. It's like watching a train wreck and not being able to do a damned thing about it except help pick up the pieces after it happens. I am stunned that the Salvation Army got down there, set up over 180 cantinas and got the ball rolling while the U S Govt is still trying to figure out what to do. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the immediate needs are. This is one massive lesson in frustration for this country. I mean is it all that hard to load a slew of helicopters with food and water and lower the stuff down to those suffering people? If they had food and drinking water I doubt there would be this kind of behaviour. I've never seen a family get rowdy after a filling Thanksgiving dinner, generally everybody collapses and falls asleep. Hunger, heat and thirst will do strange things to people.
I have donated to Charity Hospital in NO, Feed the Children and the Humane Society. I'm not tooting my own horn, merely explaining that I wish I could do more.
"The National Gaurd is on it's way (and would have been there before now had most of them not been on active duty in Iraq!), and an already tragic situation is about to turn bloody."
I hate to hate, but this just isn't accurate. One, There is a limit to the number of NG members who can be on called up from any given state. Two, This has been widely misrepresented in the media for political purposes. Three, and now I will sound like I am lacking in compassion, but one reason people were told to leave the city (ordered actually) is that the logistical ability to provide and transport relief supplies was-predictably-destroyed in the strom. Yes, I understand not everyone had the means. For those I feel the most. The relief agencies, including the US Gov, are doing their best. Is it enough? No. But sometimes that's how it is. And it sucks. But attempts to argue that more could should or would have happened miss the point a bit.
"misrepresented for political purposes"... where are you writing from Thorough Reader, a compound at the end of a dirt road in the hinterlands?
You can't possibly believe that all the images of suffering coming out of the Gulf states don't speak for themselves. They need no interpretation, no representation for any purpose, they are as clear as day.
If people gave a shit about the poor involved in this they'd have supplied free mass transit out of the city. These people had nowhere to go and no way to get there, and now they're being blamed for their misery, for emergency agencies not being properly prepared. This was not an unforeseen scenario, it has been predicted for years by scientists, by the Army Corps of Engineers (who, btw, recieved less than a third of the funding they requested to shore up Louisiana levees last year). Blaming the victims is coldblooded and just plain wrong.
-Biker Chick
Biker Chick, that quote was taken out the of context to which I applied it. The claim that all of the National Guard that should be in Louisiana are in Iraq is being mispresented for political purposes, as the NYTimes editorial of today only exacerbated. I totally stand by that. I am Not, however, without compassion for the situation. It sucks. I am not blaming the victims, and wonder if you stopped reading after the offending quote. I know that they gamed this scenario, and gaming is useful, we in the military do it all the time. It's called training, as you may know. However, when the gaming ends and the reality happens, it is not always a direct translation. That is the mystery of life. I have boundless sympathy for those who have lost, quite literally, everything. I am sick just thinking of how you start over from that. I can't think about it long without tears, and I have a bit of guilt that my former colleagues in the TxARNG are there helping and I am not. But I am not, so I will help in other ways. Have a nice weekend.
Whoa!
A few thoughts here.
I am sorry if my condemming those who are taking advantage of a bad situation, and willfully endangering the lives of hundreds of sick men, women and children by shooting at the ambulance drivers as they attempt to evacuate Charity Hospital (and I believe there was more than one shooter), comes across as lacking compassion. I don't see it that way.
I feel confident in asserting that the people breaking into stores on Tuesday (the first day after the hurricane hit) to steal firearms were not suffering from dimentia brought about by dehydration.
The fact that a friend could not leave the city the day after because people were shooting at each other on her block, I believe has little to do with dehydration or hunger.
And that someone else I know had to have her street guarded by men with shotguns because there were gangs of armed people roaming about, leads me to believe that there are more than a "handful" of people being lawless for the sake of being lawless.
Looting and violence are frequent after effects of natural disasters, but we generally get a faster response from the national guard and other agencies.
While I don't have numbers for National Guard members in Iraq/ Afghanastan, you are going to be hard pressed to convince people that the federal response to this disaster has not been hampered by the fact that we have so many resources tied up in conflicts in two seperate countries.
I feel deeply for those who have suffered the aftermath of this hurricane. These people are suffering conditions few of us can comprehend. And I continue to condemn those who are choosing to make the situation worse by behaving as they wish because there is little chance they will face any consequences. Ethical/ Moral behaviour is what we choose to do in the face of no consequences.
Thorough Reader -
Sorry, your "This" in point two was a little ambiguous and I thought you were referring to the overall media coverage, not just the Natl Guard stuff. Still, though, I have not heard mention in the media of the Guard being slow to respond because of duties elsewhere, 98% of the coverage I've seen hadn't even dealt with the Guard, it was focused on events unfolding and FEMA. That's the only thing I wanted to clarify, I don't agree on the 'means to transport relief supplies' being destroyed in the storm, or that agencies are/were "doing their best" - I mean, even the president doesn't think that, and that's *really* saying something.
-Biker Chick
Biker Chick
Believe me when I say I am not one to parse words. However. What the President actually said was that he was happy with the response but not with the results. If you read this in the paper they missed (?) it. If you watch the words coming out of his mouth as he was getting on the helicopter, that is what he said. I started to write this yesterday and when I went to look for the quote I couldn't find it anywhere that it hadn't been chopped up to read they way you stated it. I find that fascinating. In case I have been ambiguous again (sorry about that) I do think it's different, and I do think it matters.
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