Posted on 09/02/2005 8:04:20 AM PDT by finnman69
LONDON (Reuters) - The world has watched amazed as the planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws and deep divisions in American society.
World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy with the people of the southern United States whose lives were devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.
But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid.
"Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling newspaper The Sun.
"Apocalypse Now" headlined Germany's Handelsblatt daily.
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.
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."
SINKING INTO ANARCHY
Many newspapers highlighted criticism of local and state authorities and of President Bush. Some compared the sputtering relief effort with the massive amounts of money and resources poured into the war in Iraq.
"A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy -- it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like Bush," France's left-leaning Liberation newspaper said.
"(Al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, nice and dry in his hideaway, must be killing himself laughing."
A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit.
"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.
Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors.
New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of African American population and 67 percent of the city's residents are black.
"In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension," said a report in Britain's Guardian daily.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed the need for a strong state that could help poor people.
"You see in this example that even in the 21st century you need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do their best," he told reporters at a European Union meeting in Newport, Wales.
David Fordham, 33, a hospital anesthetist speaking at a London underground rail station, said he had spent time in America and was not surprised the country had struggled to cope.
"Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and everything would be okay," he said.
"It's unbelievable though -- the TV images -- and your heart goes out to them."
Since you have the solutions you should get down there and help those people. WE have no idea of the obstacles faced there and should not be criticizing those who are actually doing the work
Our MOST FRENCH CITY we should note is falling into chaos.
The death toll, we should note, of an entire city flooded out, is far less than the death toll from a mere heat wave in France a few years back.
This did NOT happen in the hurricanes last year in Florida.
We've managed some disasters well and some disasters poorly. So far, this is not being managed well.
The brew is a mix that includes insufficient aid, people who are not taking enough responsibility for themselves and others,
an incompetent local government, and a tragedy that is simply overwhelming.
the incompetence of local leadership played a role: NO Police helped themselves to loot rather than stop the looters, and then LA's AG dismissed the concerns raised; then it got out of hand. Meanwhile, aid efforts are being overwhelmed.
The President needs to step in and bring the military and their equipment and men to bear on rescue, moving and housing people, and getting order back in the streets.
If he doesn't the global Left will blame him for the incompetence of the state and local governments on this.
That's the plan....shhhh.
I see no one is mentioning the fact that this large city is politically 'BLUE' whereas the other parts of the coast are not. I wonder how many other 'blue' cities would react the same way?
"It seems to me, they should have known this city would turn into this nightmare. Martial law should have been declared the day the hurricane hit. Incompetent NO mayor and LA governor, IMO."
Dittos on this .... and which part of MANDATORY EVACUATION allows thousands of people to hang out in the "new venice" of Louisiana, without water, power or sanitation?
This is what happens when a class of people are sucking off the Government teat since the 1960's. Lyndon B. Johnson had to be a closet Klansman to come up with the "GREAT" Society as it has destroyed the family for poor blacks.
What you see in NO would be happening in any major American city.
AL just isn't that bad - there are still services, a functioning society there, even in the affected areas. So that situation just isn't comparable.
Good point. NO is packed with recent African and Haitian immigrants---virtually all the cab drivers are. Unfortunately, it's also packed with a violence-prone underclass of black Americans. I've been there a number of times and have almost always had some disturbing experienced.
"Man I am so tired of hearing this crap."
Why didn't these people leave when they were told to leave? If they didn't have the money to buy a ticket, then the LOCAL government should have provided bus transportation.
I don't think that this crisis is overblown. But I do think we've been treated to a far too sceptical and gloating media bias towards it. Even Fox. I also think that this is going to hurt our national security down the line by exposing weaknesses that we ourselves were not aware that we had. The proper response is to throw inept local and state officials out of office, but how many calls do you see in the media for local and state responsibility? I've seen virtually none, only hand-wringing at what the Feds are not doing. There's a lot for us to learn from Katrina, but I fear that we are learning the wrong lesson. I'm concerned about a federal bureaucracy that continues to grow in power, breaking the restraints of federalism that our wise founding fathers put into place.
What the Euroweenies do not realize is this..the people doing this is are a product of liberalism/socialsim...ie ON THE GOVERNMENT TIT. The kind the Weenies like. Not the hardworking Americans...
As a non-American who admires America, I must say that it has been, and is, deeply shocking to watch the unfolding catastrophe in NO.
For at least 48 hours, governmental authorities have revealed themselves to be incompetent and utterly without leadership capacity.
As I said - shocking!
"A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit.
"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"
If its divine punishment, it has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with the millions of dead babies and the banishment of God from American public life.
I wonder who we are supposed to pray to in a crisis like this??
Justice Souter???
I knew I wouldn't remember them all.
At least in NYC we have had competent mayors and police chiefs for the last 11 years. It makes a BIIIIIG difference for emergencies and crime conttrol.
NO has no such leadership.
Sad and highly embarrassing.
But have you heard how many of these patients have been airlifted out? Thousands. And about the hospital personnel who at great danger to themselves have come in and manually pumped the systems people are hooked up to while awaiting transport--without adequate food and water? This is the primary story in all this, yet we are not hearing it.
That's one problem: people in most other countries may not have a real understanding of the size of the USA. When you can drive across your country in a few hours, you can only have a few cities in that country; driving across the USA takes nearly a week, and as such we can insert a lot more cities in our country. Bad as the imagery is in NO right now, it's only a tiny fraction of the whole ~3,000,000 square miles and 300,000,000 population.
Those pointing fingers at "how bad Americans are" weren't pointing fingers at how well Americans behaved on 9/11 or during the multi-state northeastern blackout.
Take a chill pill. The French always deserve to be bashed.
As an American who doesn't admire all of Europe, I must say that I was deeply shocked to watch elderly people in France dieing from the heat wave while their family members were on vacation.
Don't kick us while we are down please. It serves no purpose what so ever.
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