[extropy-chat] news in perspective

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:

> spike:
> >ps The news on in the background as I write.  Damn that
> >flood in New Orleans is bad.  {8-[
> 
> Yes, it is bad.
> 
> And so is the ~1000 people in Baghdad who died on a pilgrimage
> during the time of New Orleans' terrible misfortune. (was that
> reported?)
> 
> And so is 200,000 people who died in the tsunami.
> 
> Death is bad. And I wish the American media would learn to put
> news in perspective. Even Boing-boing has gone over the top (I
> don't remember them reporting this much after the tsunami for
> example).

The mayor of New Orleans expects deaths in the thousands, IN NEW
ORLEANS alone. There are hundreds of miles of gulf coast impacted. Some
communities simply do not exist anymore, in the Biloxi area
specifically (100 dead already in Biloxi, count still going up).
Authorities have no idea what the death toll is simply because they are
not counting yet in the hardest flooded areas. They aren't even picking
up the dead, they are still focused on rescuing the living. They have
no idea how many people are dead in their submerged homes, or
suffocated in their attics.

For millions of people in that area, they are not merely without power
or water and living with soggy houses. Most are finding their homes
either gone, or still under 3-20 feet of sewage filled water. Their
places of work are destroyed. There are 60,000 people stranded in the
Superdome stadium in downtown New Orleans without power and are running
out of bottled water. There are now 3 million refugees evacuated from
New Orleans alone, and the mayor is saying the city will need to remain
evacuated for at least another month.

Here are some before and after satellite pictures:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/new-orleans-imagery.htm

Meanwhile, 8 of the nations major refineries are in that area and are
shut down. The two largest pipelines up the east coast are idle. Gas
prices went up $0.50 overnight in many areas, even 30 cents here in NH.
Experts say gas prices will go over $4.00/gallon. This is going to
trigger a national recession, which will have its own slow impact on
thousands of lives in deaths, poverty, and family destruction.

At the same time, I hear German newspaper Der Spiegel is quoting
Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin as saying, in an essay published
in the center-left daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the US deserved this
for its opposition to the Kyoto treaty.
http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/

Fuck Germany. Or at least fuck Trittin. Turns out such comments are to
be expected from his ilk. He was apparently a leader of the Central
Committee of the Kommunister Bund (a Maoist group) prior to his
entryist migration to the Green Party in
1982.http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:ksWYVxrRZU0J:www.mail-archive.com/marxism%40lists.panix.com/msg48585.html+trittin+kbw&hl=de&lr=lang_en

But Trittin isn't alone. Suddeutsche Zeitung and Die Tageszeitung, two
large-circulation left leaning papers, have echoed the accusations in
their own editorials.

If the rest of the world were as generous as the US has always been,
this: http://www.etherzone.com/2005/sent082905.shtml would be a
reality, instead of a sad satire on todays world.

To be fair, Canada has stepped up:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/08/31/Canadian_relief_Katrina20050831.html
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050831_katrina_template_050831/?hub=CTVNewsAt11

Russia has also offered aid:
http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2367160&PageNum=0

But according to Blogs of War, there are no other known offers of
assistance from other nations:
http://www.blogsofwar.com/world_rushes_to_aid_katrinas_victims

Other notables: The BP Foundation (founded by British Petroleum) has
donated $1 million to the Red Cross for Katrina relief.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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