Imagine this…

The President stands by the front door of the White House. He pats his pockets. Makes sure he’s got the front door keys. Puts the cat out. Sets the video for Sesame Street. He’s got his new shiny shoes with special sticky stuff on so he doesn’t fall down any stairs. He pauses at the door and looks thoughtful for a moment.

The aide says, ‘well there is that flood that wiped out New Orleans , Mister President?’

Condaleesa Rice wasn’t much better, actually. She was seen, shopping for shoes. Life goes on as they say. Especially if you’re not standing on the roof of what was your house, in the crippling heat, surrounded by effluent and debris from the place where you once lived. It also helps if some of your friends and neighbours and loved ones haven’t been washed away.

Maybe I’m being harsh. Maybe the footwear was a set of flippers with a matching snorkel so she could go to New Orleans and he’p some of them ‘po’ black folks’ (see note below)

Or maybe she was getting a pair of hobnailed boots so she could kick the President’s arse, good style, while she asked him why he cut the funding for FEMA. As you no doubt know, FEMA stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA predicted that the most likely catastrophic disaster they faced was a hurricane strike on New Orleans . They recommended the upgrading of the levees and other preventative measures to avoid the tragic events over the last few days. So naturally Bush directed funds away from FEMA and their recommendations. Apparently, he didn’t recognise it as a threat.

Hurricanes don’t have beards and don’t speak Arabic.

Ironically enough, one of the organisations that benefited from the funds which FEMA didn’t get, was the one dedicated (yeah, right) to Homeland Security. This is the organisation Bush set up to protect the Freedom of the American Pie. It does this by taking slices out of it and devouring them late at night in Congress when nobody is looking. Well, at least nobody who gives a shit. Homeland Security dances back and forth over the line of Fascism with Lady Democracy. This waltz, however, if Homeland Security had its way, would end up with her sitting in a darkened room, tied to a chair, with a light shining in her eyes, as her teeth are removed with a pair of pliers. Government issue; torture; for the use of; Mark IV.

The cuts Bush approved of also included funds for the Corp of Engineers. They maintain the levees which were holding back the floodwaters after the hurricane. Perhaps, with the belief Bush has in God, he assumed Moses was a Compassionate Conservative and would hold back the floodwaters while he was looking for free plastic toys in his Shreddies box that morning. Maybe that’s why he didn’t seem too concerned about the plight of people in the area.

To be fair, he might have thought, well, the people there had warning of the hurricane. They’ve all left. They’ve taken themselves off to the high ground. Not the moral high ground of course, because that belongs to him and there is no room on it for all the refugees and the third of the population that is below the poverty line. They would have gone to some other high ground. Perhaps it didn’t cross his mind that people too poor to run a car, and living in a slum may have nowhere else to go. They can’t afford hotels. They can’t afford insurance either, so they stay with the few possessions they have. If the police can’t keep the area safe when they are there, who the hell is going to do it when they go? No, best to stay put and ride it out, and where the hell can you go anyway without a lot of dollars?

And I guess it didn’t help that the public transport system that the poor rely on, was shut down from the moment the hurricane warning sounded; no buses; no trains; no taxis; no money; no wonder people feel let down by the authorities. People were left to fend for themselves and the Law was nowhere in sight.

Bush may have thought the National Guard will keep order in the ensuing chaos… but, wait a minute. A third of the National Guard, the best trained and with the best equipment is looking after the oil in Iraq. He might have just got confused, because they also shoot looters in Iraq. He might have just ticked off his mental things to do list and thought (1) have a bunch of guys with weapons shooting at people; check.

I’d imagine it’s not too hard for him to confuse the two areas; they both have the word Gulf in them, for a start. They both have a lot of people in desperate poverty with rudimentary health care or none at all. They are both full of Americans with guns. Neither of them have many people who voted for the present incumbent fuckwit. Both are mainly occupied by people who live from day to day with no security other than family.

Mind you, only one of them has a problem with drug users, but thanks to the Taliban being back up and running in Afganistan, New Orleans could still get its supply of heroin. Interestingly enough, and contrary to popular opinion, drug use is five times higher for white people than black people; but the blacks are thirteen times more likely to be prosecuted.

And when something was mentioned about looters helping themselves to the assets of other people he may have just put his fingers in his ears and said ‘la la la la lah’ until the talk ceased. He may have presumed they were talking about Halliburton and Bechtel and some of the other businesses who are sucking the marrow out of the bones of Iraq.

I hope at this point, Bush doesn’t turn over the battered and overwhelmed hospitals to the survivors. That’s what happened in Baghdad . The financially crippled and hopelessly under resourced Health Service was put under full control of the Iraqis. The US Health and Human Resources Secretary Tommy Thompson was kind enough to offer some humanitarian advice. It consisted of ‘wash your hands’ and ‘wipe the crap off the walls’.

The oil ministry was retained of course; it was another case of getting one’s priorities right.

Speaking of oil and its companion ‘products’ the President was kind enough to offer some advice himself, regarding the talk of a fuel crisis. He said people shouldn’t refuel if they don’t have to. I wonder if he thought up that one as he flew over the devastation in Airforce One. What does he think that runs on; pixie dust? Hot air? Bullshit?

How about parking up one of the aircraft carriers? If one of them were to refuel at a gas station like you and I, it would take seven years of continuous pumping; a bit like Tom Jones in the early years.

What Bush was looking at, as he flew over New Orleans, was the chasm between the rich and the poor. It was the arch representative of the First World, looking down upon the Third World within the borders of the one Great Nation. I wonder if he flew over the stadium where people were told to take shelter from the hurricane. Did he ask himself why  they could 'take' a country of 25,000,000 people in three weeks, but could not rescue its own people, in one stadium, after five terrible days?

Why is it that the Land of the Free is apparently better at taking life than preserving it?

With 150,000 below the poverty line (in New Orleans) before the flood, American has a huge task ahead of it. Just to rescue even this section of the populace is an immense task. How long will it take to get them back up to the level of dire and desperate poverty they were used to? Of this group of people, 50,000 of them were past retirement age. The scale of this tragic event, which has consumed an area roughly the size of the UK, is almost beyond belief.

Hurricane Katrina has torn away the veil form the seething mass of poverty that the American Dream rests its ample buttocks upon. It is called the richest nation in the world, but the truth is, it is not a rich nation. Some of its people are wealthy beyond imagination. It is they who live in the richest nation upon earth. The majority fall way below that. They are, for want of a better expression, the servants of the relatively few who actually own America. And the rest, like the refugees, who were waiting in the stadium for something or someone to come to their aid, are still waiting…

NOTE
Oh, and while I’m having a rant, I’d just like to say this is not a question of colour here, despite how it may seem on the face of it. Racism as well as sexism and nationalism and sectarianism and all the other ‘isms’ are just a way for the 'have mores’ to divide up the ‘have nots’ and make them easier to manipulate and ultimately, control.

NOW USE THE RED CROSS LINK AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE IF YOU WISH TO MAKE A DONATION TO THE VICTIMS OF THE HURRICANE/FLOOD.

Some interesting facts:

In 1982 and 1983 the United States, the Richest of all Nations, the one that keeps telling the rest of the world how it is the defender of all that is good in the world, was alone in voting against a declaration that education, work, healthcare, proper nourishment were human rights. In 1986 at a UN sponsored World Food Summit, the US took issue with an affirmation by the summit of the ‘right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food’.

The US insisted that it does not recognise that human beings do have a ‘right to food’.

Now I always thought that US stood for the UNITED STATES, but it would seem that US actually stands for ''us', as in 'us' and 'them', as in the rich and the poor. The ordinary man and women and child on the streets of America would surely be in favour of these basic Human Rights. According to the beliefs of their own government, the victims of this catastrophic event do not have the right, as human beings, to such a basic thing as food. The only reason the administration is sending aid, is because the ordinary, decent American would not stand for anything less.

This is the difference between the America of the people and the America of the administration.

These quotes are taken from a book called ‘Why Do People Hate America’ by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies. Perhaps someone should write a book called 'Why Does America Hate People?'.

By this, I mean the America of the super rich who regard their fellow citizens and the country itself as just another asset tucked away in their portfolio of wealth generation; wealth generation for themselves. It will be interesting to see if, in the light (or darkness) of recent events, can Bush implement the new round of tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cutbacks in health spending and welfare for the poor, some of whom are to be found, awaiting burial in New Orleans, because they were too poor to get out of town.