Katrina

I have not blogged Hurricane Katrina. There is a part of me that discounts the British news media obsession with the USA, because I think a lot of it is based upon the accessibility of TV footage and the plethora of English-speaking witnesses, rather than news values eg last year's hurricane was all about Florida, and little about the Caribbean islands, even Jamaica.

But this is something quite different. Madmusings readers who know Megan (you know, the American woman who used to drink in the Trinity and was never allowed to join Streatham CLP), who may or may not know that Megan has just got a new job in New Orleans will be pleased to know I received an email on Monday saying

Dear All. shouldn't that be y'all I sent out a group email a few days ago with my new contact details, but I gave the wrong phone number. My landline number in New Orleans is xxxxxxxxxx. not for a while, dear...

For those of you who have expressed concern, I left New Orleans yesterday and am safe and sound at my mother's house in Lubbock. Hopefully classes will resume before too long...

I suddenly remembered that I have been to New Orleans. I looked through my photo collection,and realised I took very few photos actually in the city, more out in Louisiana, on the bayou and at a plantation. I was too busy having way too good a time; it's probably the only US city I would visit for its own sake; when Megan announced she had got a job there, I was "Wow! We are so going to visit you..."

I have just been horrified at what has been unfolding, glued to news bulletins for hours on end. I could go rationalising about it being no worse than natural disasters that hit, say, Bangladesh on a regular basis, but my expectation is that a country like the US with untold wealth, amazing resources, and a relatively corruption-free system of government, and used to massive logistical exercises could cope with such a situation.

On a newsgroup, someone posted an enquiry about how to donate (there were suggestions of Red Cross). Having watched a couple of hours of news coverage I posted

Hey, did you guys have an appeal to pay to send all the poor black people off to die in Iraq? Or do you just have one to have half-hearted belated search and rescue of the poor black people stranded in Louisiana and Mississippi?

Wisely, perhaps, most people didn't respond, but one person replied

If you pay attention to the newscasts, you'll see that it's mainly White people fighting in Iraq. We take lots of young Black men into our army to keep them off the streets of our cities but when real fighting needs to be done, they're useless; we keep them at bases in Okinawa or Berlin so they don't get in the way.

Many of your "poor Black people stranded in Louisiana" are shooting at the relief helicopters when they're not looting liquor stores; too bad the levees didn't break sooner and wash them into the Gulf.

There's so many answers I'm tempted to give, such as 'where did they get the guns from?' or just to highlight that that person other's post suggested that rather giving to the Red Cross they give to the Southern Baptist Appeal. I had to double-check it wasn't signed George W Bush, but I'm not sure that he, for all his bible-bashing Christianity, would ever be quite that callous. I thought it best to just let it sit there and speak for itself. There hasn't exactly been a rush of Americans leaping to shoot it down, though. Hopefully because they detest Off-Topic Threads rather than because they endorse the views. Good Morning, USA.

Mind you, I have just been watching Fox News and I am appalled. Apparently, this is the news channel of choice of the majority of Americans. It is a shameful. I have watched it for half an hour and they have told me nothing, absolutely nothing, except that Dubya's touring the region (from safe helicopter distance, of course), and that some pastor from California is preparing to give spiritual healing to the victims. Just what they need, on top of everything else, bloody Christian do-gooders.

You know, I was thinking, people in that situation have a moral obligation to loot. A police captain from Small Town, La, said as much on Channel 4 news: if someone is looting food, his police are instructed to do nothing; if it's a TV or whiskey, they're going to jail. Not shot on site, by the way, but going to jail. Although, if I was living beneath the poverty line - what, in the richest country on earth, ruled by Christians, they ought to be ashamed - if I believed the system had let me down, if I believed the system had never given a shit about me, sure, I'd be looting everything I could lay my hands on. The stores will all write it off to insurance anyway, and besides what good is a "Flood Clearance Sale". Not going to happen.

What no one has mentioned yet is whether they are sending in relief supplies of heroin and crack. I appreciate it is entirely unmentionable, and who knows how they could ever organise distribution (when they clearly haven't got a vindaloo as even how to distribute water and food) but if you have ever seen one crack-addict needing a fix, let alone a thousand, or ten thousand, you have some insight into what murderous desperation is.

Of course, no one is to blame for a Hurricane, it's just an Act of God. I wonder how the evil bible-bashers, Bush included, will explain that one away: perhaps as righteous retribution by their God on the indolent poor drug users of Decadence City (who don't matter because they don't vote, and sure as hell don't vote Republican).

I mentioned in a comment on someone's blog a few weeks back that I am currently monitoring the beginning of the end of the US Empire, and would write about its Decline and Fall if I wasn't so lazy. I think another chapter, titled "Acceleration", is just unfolding now. The Americans, in general, will remain oblivious as they are fed the Good News by Fox News, Inc.

I will, of course, recant my post if I hear that one million Americans have traded their SUV for a SmartCar/bicycle/walking-boots combination, but guess that the majority of the residents of 45 states are sleeping comfortably in the knowledge that they live in the Greatest Nation on earth - hey, Fox News has told them this is so. I think we can safely assume Dubya can organise a piss-up brewery, but do his talents go any further than that?