Sky News Gets It Right
- Thread starter BrianH
- Start date
Bar the Bull
At the Start
Absolutely brilliant!
Diminuendo
At the Start
I had not noticed his Vulcan ears before.
S
solerina
Guest
Fantastic Brian :lol: :lol: :lol:
Ted
At the Start
That's a funny picture Brian, but you wouldn't be using FF to host your pictures would you? 
Shadow Leader
At the Start
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2003
- Messages
- 9,884
Very good - & oh so true!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Brian
Very good photo
You were very quiet recently about your favorite american president of all time. :lol:
Bush is the responsible of all what happened there and it contrasts with the well doing of the mayor of the city and the governor of the state, they are both the democrats and dont have any responsability of the catastrophe. :lol:
Very good photo
You were very quiet recently about your favorite american president of all time. :lol:
Bush is the responsible of all what happened there and it contrasts with the well doing of the mayor of the city and the governor of the state, they are both the democrats and dont have any responsability of the catastrophe. :lol:
BrianH
At the Start
I have posted quite a bit on the subject but I did not feel the need to post much about the Washington government's culpability and lies over Katrina as all our media has reported it, which is different from the way in which they took sides over Iraq.
I tend to forget sometimes that there may not quite be the same reports outside of Britain and Ireland, so suggest if you want to read condemnatuion of Bush and his cronies for total incompetence tinged with corruption you search the web for most serious newspapers, British and American, including those US papers that have supported Bush's presidency until now.
Just one example of the way in which Karl Rove, Bush's devious spin doctor, who is himself under investigation for possible criminal activity, has tried to deflect responsibility away from the White House is the information given to a press conference that the governor of Louisiana did not declare a state of emergency.
In fact, on Friday, Aug. 26 (three days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana coast), Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana.
But this time they aren't fooling the American people.
I tend to forget sometimes that there may not quite be the same reports outside of Britain and Ireland, so suggest if you want to read condemnatuion of Bush and his cronies for total incompetence tinged with corruption you search the web for most serious newspapers, British and American, including those US papers that have supported Bush's presidency until now.
Just one example of the way in which Karl Rove, Bush's devious spin doctor, who is himself under investigation for possible criminal activity, has tried to deflect responsibility away from the White House is the information given to a press conference that the governor of Louisiana did not declare a state of emergency.
In fact, on Friday, Aug. 26 (three days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana coast), Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana.
But this time they aren't fooling the American people.
Brian
Here in Spain
Our newspapers and the people hate USA and especially Bush,it is very funny to read all these thing about the incompetence of the yankees and how clever ands dilligent we(europeans) are.
Also is very funny to see the comments how stupid Bush is, how bad boys are the yankees with their wars,etc.....
It reminds a lot to the film Brians Life when the National front of Judea talk about what they owe to the romans...... :lol:
It is simply pathetic how europeans think we are superior to the yankees.
I am sure of one thing:
If something similar to Katrina happens in Europe ,we would handle the situation even worse that they have done.
BrianH
At the Start
suny, I don't think that any race is superior to any other. I have nothing against the USA where I have spent quite a bit of time.
I have a lot against George W Bush and his corrupt, self-serving, incompetent, uncaring, greedy administration as I believe that almost their every action is harmful to the citizens of their own country and the world at large.
And I have ample evidence with which to back up those opinions but, as you may have gathered, I am bored with writing about my views as I'm either preaching to the converted or whatever I say will not convince die-hard supporters.
I have a lot against George W Bush and his corrupt, self-serving, incompetent, uncaring, greedy administration as I believe that almost their every action is harmful to the citizens of their own country and the world at large.
And I have ample evidence with which to back up those opinions but, as you may have gathered, I am bored with writing about my views as I'm either preaching to the converted or whatever I say will not convince die-hard supporters.
I doubt it, suny. One reason is that we have some highly-organized relief charities who are capable of sending in water, blankets, tents, food, and medicine almost immediately. Another is that we just have a better chain-of-command system where everyone knows what to do in a crisis - you surely must have been impressed by our emergency services early response following the bombs in London? I know that this country was. We don't sit around waiting for this, that, or the other person to make an announcement or decide whether something is a crisis or not before taking positive action.
The Americans are now playing catch-the-ball as they throw blame from one to another for not taking the proactive measures necessary to have prevented this hurricane from causing the terrible damage it has done. With the catalogue of deleted or ignored recommendations from everyone from the Governor, the Mayor, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environment Agency and other bodies all coming to light, showing that Bush or his henchmen had deliberately shunted these aside for years, the man should be held responsible for the deaths and destruction resulting from his wilful waiving of dozens of expert opinions on the precarious condition of the levees and pump stations. The bastard should be tied to two cow ponies and let rip. "Yee-haw" indeed.
The Americans are now playing catch-the-ball as they throw blame from one to another for not taking the proactive measures necessary to have prevented this hurricane from causing the terrible damage it has done. With the catalogue of deleted or ignored recommendations from everyone from the Governor, the Mayor, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environment Agency and other bodies all coming to light, showing that Bush or his henchmen had deliberately shunted these aside for years, the man should be held responsible for the deaths and destruction resulting from his wilful waiving of dozens of expert opinions on the precarious condition of the levees and pump stations. The bastard should be tied to two cow ponies and let rip. "Yee-haw" indeed.
Yeehaw indeed! I agree that Bush has handled this disaster very badly indeed, but at the same time I don't think the mayor and governor should be let off the hook too easily.
It's quite obvious that the city of New Orleans had no detailed emergency plan. Had there been one, the evacuation before the storm might have been organised (I was going to say "better organised", but in fact there seems to have been no organisation).
Once the storm had hit, the city and state administrations should have been telling Washington in precise terms what equipment, personnel and supplies were needed. Instead they issued general calls for help which turned into angry demands on Washington to 'get off its ass' when an efficient response was not forthcoming.
Proper forethought might also have made it easier for the New Orleans and state police to distinguish between looters and those trying to locate esential supplies and thus avoid the chaotic response by the forces of law and order which only made a bad situation worse.
Finally, whose decision was it that the city's flood defences need only be sufficient to withstand a grade three hurricane? It predated Bush's arrival in office.
It's quite obvious that the city of New Orleans had no detailed emergency plan. Had there been one, the evacuation before the storm might have been organised (I was going to say "better organised", but in fact there seems to have been no organisation).
Once the storm had hit, the city and state administrations should have been telling Washington in precise terms what equipment, personnel and supplies were needed. Instead they issued general calls for help which turned into angry demands on Washington to 'get off its ass' when an efficient response was not forthcoming.
Proper forethought might also have made it easier for the New Orleans and state police to distinguish between looters and those trying to locate esential supplies and thus avoid the chaotic response by the forces of law and order which only made a bad situation worse.
Finally, whose decision was it that the city's flood defences need only be sufficient to withstand a grade three hurricane? It predated Bush's arrival in office.
BrianH
At the Start
Sorry Grey, you're wrong on that point. I call Sidney Blumenthal as my first witness:
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.
After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war.
In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.
After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war.
In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."
BrianH
At the Start
An earthquake on the San Andreas fault - probably in San Francisco
Maurice, :lol: :lol:
Brian, I remember reading that article, and while it certainly scores some damaging points against Bush it does not contradict what I said, namely that the original decision to build the levees to a category three specification predates Bush's arrival in office. It is also worth noting that while Bush's actions made a future disaster more likely, even probable, they were too late to be directly responsible for the present disaster.
Bush has plenty to answer for, but the other levels of administration do as well.
Brian, I remember reading that article, and while it certainly scores some damaging points against Bush it does not contradict what I said, namely that the original decision to build the levees to a category three specification predates Bush's arrival in office. It is also worth noting that while Bush's actions made a future disaster more likely, even probable, they were too late to be directly responsible for the present disaster.
Bush has plenty to answer for, but the other levels of administration do as well.
Completely agree.
Also note that human being is an animal that needs to have a problem to solve it next time, there are many fires in Spain in summer and other catastrophes and when it happens everybody talks about the prevention should have been done but previously to it and when the people know the cost of those preventions people prefer to spend the money in other things considering the problem was not going to happen, thats how it works here.
BrianH
At the Start
Grey, yes the "category three protection" goes back as far as the Nixon administration, but it was in 2001 that the federal government began reducing the Corps of Engineers appropriations, as more money was diverted to "homeland security, the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq". Then plans for strengthening the levees were postponed (or abandoned if you believe some reports).
So, New Orleans wasn't wiped off the map by Hurricane Katrina (which it actually survived, thanks to Katrina's last-minute jig to the east) but because of a conscious decision by the federal government - originating with the current administration's budget proposal - not to fully fund the programs that would have improved the levees that held the water back.
Then we had the President saying that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" on national television when FEMA had it as one of the top three worst things that could happen to the USA in reports commissioned by Bush himself going back to 2001.
However, perhaps the Bush administration's lack of action on the defence of New Orleans against nature is better understood after listening to Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and House Speaker Dennis Hastert expressing doubts about the value and utility of rebuilding New Orleans!
So, New Orleans wasn't wiped off the map by Hurricane Katrina (which it actually survived, thanks to Katrina's last-minute jig to the east) but because of a conscious decision by the federal government - originating with the current administration's budget proposal - not to fully fund the programs that would have improved the levees that held the water back.
Then we had the President saying that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" on national television when FEMA had it as one of the top three worst things that could happen to the USA in reports commissioned by Bush himself going back to 2001.
However, perhaps the Bush administration's lack of action on the defence of New Orleans against nature is better understood after listening to Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and House Speaker Dennis Hastert expressing doubts about the value and utility of rebuilding New Orleans!
Brian,
You said in your last post:
and:
I think this conclusion is too strong if you're basing yourself on the Blumenthal article. As I read it, it was in 2001 that FEMA put New Orleans in their top 3 of possible disasters in the US. The Iraq invasion only got under way in 2003, by which time there was a decrease in funding for flood control. Further cuts took place in 2004 and in the same year proposals to strengthen the levees were rejected.
Even if the works to improve the levees had received the go-ahead last year, it was hardly likely that they would have been completed ahead of Katrina, and even if the levees had been strengthened along the lines proposed they still might not have coped.
You said in your last post:
and:
I think this conclusion is too strong if you're basing yourself on the Blumenthal article. As I read it, it was in 2001 that FEMA put New Orleans in their top 3 of possible disasters in the US. The Iraq invasion only got under way in 2003, by which time there was a decrease in funding for flood control. Further cuts took place in 2004 and in the same year proposals to strengthen the levees were rejected.
Even if the works to improve the levees had received the go-ahead last year, it was hardly likely that they would have been completed ahead of Katrina, and even if the levees had been strengthened along the lines proposed they still might not have coped.