Don’t believe anything you hear from the “Main Stream Media,” they lie, they lie, they lie.

Don’t believe anything you hear from the Bush Administration, they lie, they lie, they lie.

Don’t believe anything you hear from the Republican Congress they lie, they lie, they lie.

Don’t believe anything you hear from corporations, they lie, they lie, they lie.

They lie for their own self-interest.

An excerpt taken from an article by William Anderson. 

“The huge outpouring of private aid, from donation of money, food, clothing, time, and housing (many people simply have taken in refugees — white and black — in their own homes) stands in contrast to [Anne] Rice’s “America is hopelessly racist and hates the poor” [as Rice claimed in the New York Times] and demonstrates that the will to sacrifice for those truly in need certainly exists in this country. While it is not surprising that the elitist New York Times would take this as its standard view, it also is a shame when the country’s “newspaper of record” can’t even record the right things.

Yet, for all of the public angst over the federal government’s — and especially FEMA’s — post-disaster response, most observers have missed what is painfully obvious: the government’s response was perfectly in character to how people in government act in such situations. To say this in an alternative way, government was being government the same way that a dog is a dog.

As anyone knows, dogs are territorial animals, and governments are territorial entities. The first rule that a government agent follows when confronted with an “emergency” is to “secure the area.” For example, when two young men were merrily going on a murder and mayhem spree at Columbine High School in 1999, the vaunted police “SWAT” team stayed outside and encircled the complex because someone said that the area had to be “secured” before police actually could try to save anyone. (Of course, we found out later that not only did police fail to save people, but at least one person bled to death because police refused to get help until the man had died. This was not incompetence; it was the normal workings of the “I am in charge and don’t you forget it” mentality that permeates government at all levels.)

Immediately after the hurricane had stopped in New Orleans, for example, a Wal-Mart had brought a truckload of bottled water; FEMA officials turned the truck away, declaring that it was “not needed.” Before we dismiss this incident as yet another example of incompetent government, we should realize that the official’s actions were completely within the character of government.

When governments act to provide services to individuals, they are done within a very different context than what occurs when private organizations provide services. The post-Katrina services performed by the Red Cross and other organizations such as civil groups and churches did not come with the threat of force attached to them. Church volunteers cannot arrest or even kill someone in those circumstances, but a representative of the government can perform such things without recrimination (and on more than one occasion did just that post-Katrina).

Moreover, government services are performed in as visible a manner as possible. Anyone who has watched some of the post-hurricane coverage has seen press conference after press conference after photo-opportunity of government officials from President George W. Bush to mayors, governors, FEMA and military personnel and the like, people whose job is to be seen doing “good” for political constituents. These things are done with the podium and the TV camera in mind.

The FEMA official who waved off the Wal-Mart truck was correct; FEMA did not “need” Wal-Mart to help. In fact, people from FEMA did not want Wal-Mart to help, as the company would have been able to steal some of the thunder that “rightfully” should belong to FEMA and other government agencies.”

For more check out : http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/freedomcontent.cfm?fuseaction=FEMA_Katrina&refpage=issues

Because of our centuries long love/hate relationship with water many Dutch engineers are now in the US helping out rebuilding the levees. Seeing how most of our country is below sealevel, we learned a lesson when in 1953 an amount of 1835 people died when a combination of spring tide and a crushing northwesterly storm hit. In one night, 1,750 km² of country changed into a dead plain of water. The list of ‘drowned’ villages dating back to the dark ages is a hefty one.

After that, the Delta Works came to effect, look it up on Wikipedia, as well as the Maeslantkering (a storm surge barrier near the port of Rotterdam, one of the largest ports in the world), one that came years later. It’s pretty impressive stuff, I guess you could say we know what we’re talking about. If you look at the length of the measures we’ve taken against floods, the total lenght of barriers and such exceed the length of the Chinese Wall. Not bad for a country of 16,033 square miles, less than one third the size of Louisiana.

A few examples, for those interested into reading more about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering

With that as an intro, I saw an item on the news here about the Dutch engineers in Louisiana, they were especially surprised that while in the Netherlands barriers are built to hold off even an ‘once in a 10.000 years’ storm, the US government only feels that they have to prepare for an ‘once in a 100 years’ storm.
Said the local ‘expert’:“It’s not as bad as in the Netherlands. If a 100 year storm hits here, not the whole economy would collaps.”

Not an exact quote, but the gist of it hit me. It’s just some people losing their lives, their homes, their livelyhood, right? To me, this would seem like the perfect place to spend some more billions for a ‘just in case’ cause.

Climates have changed throughout the whole history of this planet, so it might be hard enough to predict what the next 100 years will bring (but I’m no expert I’ll admit). Even if it’s another 100 years away, why try to save a buck or two over the backs of the people living there?

Maybe I’m way off base here, Bush said he cares, so it must be true, right?