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| castles in the sky...,.. |

desperate daughters....


"I Live
For The Day"
I've got time to watch you spin around in circles Falling through the cracks inside your mind That's
fine I've been through the darkest hour made it to the other side of you I can't live without you I live for the
day I live for the night That you will be desperate and dying inside I live for
the tears to fall down your face I live for the words you finnaly say I live for the day
You are high, thinking
your invincable so busy building castles in the sky Your done, and you don't even know it but your eyes have started showing
that it's true Trying to live without love
I live for the day, I live for the night That you will be desperate and dying inside I live for the tears to fall down your face I live for the words you finnaly
say I live for the day [2x]
I can't live without you
I live for the day, I live for the night That
you will be desperate and dying inside I live for the tears to fall down your face I
live for the words you finnaly say I live for the day [2x]
Wanna see you crying [3x]
I live
for the day
lindsay lohan


by Matthew Thomas Harwood
read the article by clicking the above underlined link title...
"We are a culture desperately
searching for meaning in this materialistic culture."

Desperation in Darfur
Can the United Nations now succeed where African peacekeepers have failed?
By By Dan Morrison - 2/20/06
NYALA, SUDAN - The murderous
Janjaweed militia are camped in a dusty swirl 6 miles outside the South Darfur town of Gereida, where the 60,000 residents
fear an attack could come at any moment.
With armed horsemen
practically on their doorstep, the women of Gereida took an unusual step - they wrote a letter swearing to rampage with knives
& machetes unless a group of outsiders leaves within 72 hours.
Their angry letter is delivered not to the Janjaweed but to 100 African Union troops stationed nearby. It turns out to be not a threat but rather a desperate ploy for attention & protection.
"It's a siege situation; they're
scared,'' says Nigerian Army Col. Raji Raina, the local African Union sector commander. The AU later joined tribal leaders to mediate
the conflict & most of the horsemen moved on. Sighs Raina, "It's thought that we should deploy to villages & camps & ward off attackers - it's not really so. In fact, all that people want
us to do, it's laughable."
His choice of words - laughable
- is brutally honest. More than 2 years after African Union military observers first landed in Darfur to monitor an often-violated cease-fire
between Sudan's government & 2 rebel groups, their mission is plagued by shortages of equipment, fuel & some say,
nerve.
But the mission's greatest
shortfall may be due to the oversize expectations that accompanied its 7,000 soldiers & civilian police to Darfur.
Limited aims.
It might seem that the forces sent by the African Union - a grouping of 53 African nations - would intervene to stop attacks
on civilians.
In fact, the African
Mission in Sudan, or AMIS as it's known, is primarily charged with monitoring Darfur's frayed cease-fire while sluggish peace talks are underway in Nigeria. Its 5,000 "protection force" soldiers, most of them from Rwanda, Nigeria & Senegal, are officially in Darfur to guard the 2,000 African military
observers & civilian police as they go about their rounds.
"Of course,
they're providing protection, but you can't be everywhere,'' Said Djinnit, the African Union's peace & security commissioner, tells U.S News. "You're talking about 7,000 people having to cover an area the size of
France."
It's hard to find a humanitarian
worker in Darfur who doesn't tell a distressing story about the African Union forces. There's the Sudanese Army attack on an internal refugee camp that African Union
soldiers caught on videotape but didn't prevent.
There are the people they couldn't protect last month when Janjaweed raids drove 55,000 civilians from the city of Mershing.
There are the government curfews
imposed on Darfur residents that AU unit commanders also obey, giving government-aligned militias free rein at night.
For their part, Colonel Raina
& other African Union commanders stress the need for conciliation. They note how overstretched their forces are. They offer stories, verified by aid workers, of attacks
that didn't happen & food aid that was delivered across dangerous territory thanks to the diplomacy of a handful of colonels
& majors from across the continent.
Still, Darfur becomes more
insecure by the day. In West Darfur, the United Nations has pulled all but 60 foreign staffers because of fears that border tensions could spill over from nearby Chad.
Elsewhere, rebel attacks &
increasing cases of hijacking have stopped many food convoys from reaching hungry civilians.



When
it comes to saving Darfur's people from the predations of Arab militias & rebel factions, the mission's limp official
mandate is "to protect civilians encountered who are under imminent threat & in the immediate vicinity, within the
limits of mission capability, it being understood that civilian protection is the [Sudan] government's responsibility.''
It's a twisting
clause that, as the private International Crisis Group noted in a report last year, renders the idea of protection "almost meaningless.''Colonel Raina, a veteran of peacekeeping missions in Liberia & Angola, concurs:
"We need a much stronger mandate & that mandate should be very specific that you can disarm people."
Whose
problem? So why, after all the international outrage, after 180,000 dead &
2 million displaced into camps & countless women raped,
are African Union soldiers still playing nice amid the growing chaos of Darfur?
World
leaders expressed outrage in 2004 at widespread images & testimony depicting burning villages, murdered families &
mutilated women. The United States, burdened with war in Iraq & the aftermath of war in Afghanistan, never considered
sending its own forces to Darfur, even after then Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the Darfur crisis a "genocide.''
It
was the same with NATO, many of whose members had to be dragged into quelling the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999.
In that context, the mood was, "Let Africans police Africa."
That
handed the matter off to the African Union. For 3 decades, it was known as the Organization of African Unity, a body largely
dedicated to coddling the continent's dictators & kleptocrats.
In 2002,
pushed by a younger generation of leaders, the OAU restyled itself the African Union, loosely modeled on the European Union.
2 years later, as Darfur's atrocities grabbed headlines, the AU created a peace & security council to prevent & mediate conflicts on the continent.
A small
contingent of military observers sent to Darfur was later joined by civilian police officers & additional brass from across
Africa.
In Nigeria,
the African Union led peace talks between Sudan's government & the rebels. For once, leaders said, Africa would be solving its own problems.
Obstacles.
On the ground, however, the effort was plagued by poor communication & intelligence, equipment shortages & constant
flak from Sudan's government. Sudan has restricted the AU's airport access to daytime hours.
It
blocked, for months, customs clearance for 100 Canadian-donated armored personnel carriers, even after 4 Nigerian soldiers
were killed by bandits in an October ambush. Sudan has even painted some of its aircraft white, including attack helicopters,
so they're indistinguishable from AU aircraft. "We're at the mercy of their cooperation,'' said a Rwandan officer.
Almost
all of the officers & enlisted men who spoke to U.S. News said they wished they could do more to quell the violence
in Darfur, which now includes attacks by rebel splinter groups, banditry & continued attacks by the Janjaweed & allied
government forces on villages & displaced person camps.
Last week,
the U.N. Security Council released a report accusing both Sudan's government & the rebels of violating a U.N. arms embargo.
"I came here thinking that I could help this place live in peace,'' said a South African Army major nearing the end of his tour.
"I did my level best, but
we were tangled up from the start, from within & without."

What can you do about Darfur? Good Question.... Part
of your recovery process needs to include reaching out to help others. Each of us has our own strengths & weaknesses, unique talents, special gifts
& personal resources to work with. Click here to visit a page that will offer many options for you to pick from as different ways to help with the problem in Darfur.
send me an e-mail if you do reach out to help & let me know how it made your feel, if you received any interesting info from the charity
that you donated to, from the person you may have written or if you know of other resources available where the public can
reach out to help this particular problem!


Now, the United
Nations has begun the months-long process of taking over the African Union mission.
At the U.N. Security Council,
the Bush administration is using its February presidency to push for a stronger peacekeeping operation under a U.N. mandate,
which some say could take as many as 20,000 peacekeepers (as well as Sudan's agreement to cooperate).
U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan said he will ask President Bush this week for American troops & equipment to help "stop the carnage."
A better funded &
equipped U.N. force, Annan said, needs to include robust elements like tactical air support to be able to respond quickly & stop attacks rather than arrive
"after the harm has been done."
Still, it's clear
here that greater efforts are needed to bring about a political settlement that includes Darfur's nomadic Arab tribes & local leaders as well as the rebels
& Sudan's government. Without a viable political deal, says South Darfur's police commander Maj. Gen. Abden Altaher, "no one will give up his weapon."

Read more articles about the problem in Darfur!
education is the key to understanding...
understanding is the first link in solving problems!
Background Briefing, February 2006
Report, December 2005
Background Briefing, April 2005
Background Briefing, Januray 24, 2005
Background Briefing, November 2004
Background Briefing, August 2004


Since early 2003, the crisis
in Sudan’s western Darfur region has become one of the world’s worst human rights crises.1
In coordination with ethnic
militias known as the “Janjaweed,” the Sudanese government has systematically
targeted civilians sharing the ethnicity of Darfur’s main rebel movements. Almost 2 million people have been forcibly
displaced by the attacks & lost their property, livestock & other assets. Tens of thousands of civilians have been
killed, raped, or arbitrarily detained by the Sudanese government forces & their militias.
The African Union Mission in Sudan
(AMIS) entered Darfur in July 2004 to monitor an African Union (A.U.) - brokered ceasefire agreement between the 2 rebel groups
& the Sudanese government.
In the face of continuing
attacks on civilians, the African Union mission’s mandate expanded to limited civilian protection in October 2004 & in April 2005 the A.U. Peace & Security Council authorized an increase of personnel to 7,731.2
As of March 2006, the 6,898-strong AMIS includes:
- 4,760 protection forces (military)
- 1,385 unarmed civilian police
- 715 unarmed military observers & additional personnel
The force has succeeded
in bringing limited stability to some areas where it's deployed, but it lacks sufficient numbers, equipment & funding to tamp down the increasing
violence against civilians in Darfur.
The majority of Darfur’s
population continues to suffer from ongoing attacks by government & rebel forces & bandits, or indirectly from insecurity & the collapse of the local economy.
A resurgence of fighting since
late 2005, continuing attacks on civilians & the spillover of fighting into neighboring Chad highlight the gap between
AMIS’ capacity to protect civilians & the massive protection needs on the ground.
The U.N. Secretary-General
said in his April 2006 report to the Security Council on Darfur that the recent escalation of fighting between the parties,
together with deliberate attacks on towns, villages & displaced persons’ settlements & acts of banditry, has
forced thousands more civilians to flee their homes & exposed them to a wide range of abuses.3
A proposal to replace or “blue
hat” AMIS with a U.N. force gathered momentum in January 2006 as AMIS funding problems increased. The proposal for a
U.N. force has met stiff resistance from the Sudanese government.
It consistently tries
to prevent any initiatives that could protect civilians in Darfur. It has refused to investigate or prosecute war crimes, including murders & rapes, by government
& military personnel & by its Janjaweed militias.
The African Union mediators of Darfur
peace talks between the Sudanese government & the Darfur rebels in Abuja, Nigeria, have imposed a deadline on the parties
to sign a peace agreement & an “enhanced” ceasefire agreement by April 30.
A peace agreement or a new
ceasefire agreement will not guarantee an end to attacks on civilians, however. The April 2004 ceasefire agreement has scarcely
been respected:
- armed groups have multiplied
- arms & ammunition are readily available
- ethnic polarization is greatly increased
- those engaged in banditry know they enjoy total immunity from
prosecution by the Sudanese authorities as long as they participate in the Sudan government’s counterinsurgency campaign.
Finally, as discussed below,
the African Union force has lost credibility as a deterrent to attacks on civilians & humanitarian convoys & as a
result hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons have been cut off from the humanitarian assistance they need.
The recent events in
Chad, where Khartoum-backed Chadian rebels based in Darfur almost captured the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, on
April 13, provide new & added urgency to the need to protect civilians in the region.
In addition to a serious risk
of conflict engulfing Chad, the safety of some 208,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad is also threatened.



Despite AMIS’s efforts to proactively interpret its mandate
for protection of civilians “whom it encounters under imminent threat and in the immediate vicinity, within resources
and capability,”4 it has been severely hampered in these efforts. Internal constraints
include a lack of institutional expertise and technical capacity in deploying multi-sectoral field missions. External constraints
include the continuing obstruction of the Sudanese government, inadequate funding from international donor governments and
insufficient military equipment and logistics.
As a result, AMIS’ deterrent effect has diminished as
its own forces have succumbed to deadly attacks. Attacks on humanitarian aid convoys by rebel groups, Janjaweed forces and
bandits and continuing Janjaweed and government attacks on civilians, including those living in camps, have become widespread
in the past several months. The primary responsibility for the deterioration in the security situation belongs to the warring
parties, who continue to attack civilians and civilian objects in violation of international humanitarian law, and the government,
which has created a climate of lawlessness by permitting Janjaweed forces to commit crimes with impunity. But it is also clear
that AMIS’ ability to counter such attacks is limited by its low numbers and other constraints.
The African Union Peace and Security Council on March 10 extended
the mandate of AMIS in Darfur through September 30, 2006. U.N. plans call for AMIS troops to be a mainstay of the future U.N.
force in Darfur by retraining the AMIS soldiers and then “re-hatting” them and incorporating them into a larger
U.N. force with improved logistical support and arms. This would expedite the introduction of the U.N. force and ensure that
vital institutional knowledge and experience is retained within the future U.N. mission. The introduction of a U.N.
force will also provide an opportunity to strengthen AMIS regarding size, funding, mandate, and capacity — and, in particular,
mobility.



Any U.N. operation in Darfur must have a clear mandate to proactively
protect civilians whether or not a peace agreement is in place. Given the scale and gravity of the abuses that have taken
place and continue to occur in the region, protection of civilians remains the highest priority. Past experience in
Darfur and lessons learned from U.N. operations in other countries have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of providing
international forces with unambiguous guidance on this task. The Security Council must immediately secure the consent of the
Sudanese government to the prompt and robust intervention of a U.N. force in Darfur no later than October 1, 2006 (when the
A.U. mandate ends). The following elements should be included in any U.N. mandate:
- The U.N. force should be authorized under Chapter
VII of the U.N. Charter and permitted to use “all necessary means to protect civilians, including humanitarian personnel.”
This formulation will allow U.N. forces to use deadly force to protect civilians under attack or threat of violence. It would
provide U.N. forces with flexibility to use a range of approaches to deter attacks. For instance, forces must have the
mandate to quickly deploy forces in volatile areas to prevent attacks against civilians. The use of force to protect
civilians must also be clearly articulated within the rules of engagement.
- The U.N. mandate must include the promotion
and protection of human rights, cooperation with efforts to end impunity, including the International Criminal Court, and
public reporting on human rights developments. The U.N. operation in Darfur should have adequate numbers of human rights
monitors and resources to allow them to widely monitor the situation in Darfur, including abuses by all the warring parties.
Human rights specialists should be routinely included in military and police patrols, and forensics experts and others should
be included in the mission to assist in securing evidence (including mass grave sites) and in protecting witnesses. Given
the prevalence of rape and sexual violence in Darfur and the scale of attacks in and around displaced persons camps, the U.N.
mission should include sufficient numbers of civilian police. Female police and civilian personnel with expertise in the investigation
of sexual and gender based crimes and child protection should be recruited.
- The U.N. mandate should include monitoring of
the arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council on Darfur under Resolution 1556 and elaborated upon under Resolution
1591. As described in the report of the U.N. Panel of Experts,5 the warring parties and probably neighboring countries continue
to violate the arms embargo imposed on Darfur by the U.N. Security Council in July 2004 and March 2005. In addition,
the Sudanese government continues to use aircraft in offensive military operations, despite promising in January 2005 to refrain
from doing so. U.N. forces should be authorized to inspect, as they deem necessary and without notice, all aircraft and vehicles
anywhere in Darfur, including those in the airports, airfields, military bases and border crossings. U.N forces should be
authorized to seize or collect arms and related material which violates the arms embargo and dispose of such material as appropriate.
- The U.N. mandate should support efforts to demobilize
and disarm abusive militia forces and to reform the security sector, including screening of military, militia, police, and
internal security forces. Given the pervasive involvement of members of the Sudanese military, political, police,
internal security services and government-backed militias in war crimes, crimes against humanity and other abuses, concrete
steps must be taken to screen all personnel, identify such individuals and remove them from participation, formal or informal,
in government institutions.
In addition to a clear and robust mandate to protect civilians,
the U.N. force in Darfur must have adequate resources to implement its mandate. This means not only sufficient quantity and
quality of military and civilian personnel — 20,000 has been suggested by U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General
Jan Pronk as the minimum necessary to be effective — but the requisite technical and military capacity to deploy rapidly
and in far greater numbers not only in key urban areas but also in Darfur’s violent rural zones.
Much of the AMIS force of 6,898 personnel has been concentrated
in the larger towns and around the sprawling camps for internally displaced persons. The dearth of international presence
and security in the rural areas has had several negative results. One is that abusive militia and bandit groups continue to
attack civilians scattered in rural areas, causing them to flee into towns and camps. As a result they are cut off from farming
and economic independence and become dependent on international humanitarian relief.
A second consequence of minimal AMIS presence in rural areas
is that travel between towns or to rural areas remains highly insecure, not only for civilians, but also for international
humanitarian agencies. Civilians, aid workers, humanitarian convoys, and commercial vehicles have come under increasing attack
in the past year, not only by the warring parties but also by armed bandits.
Securing Darfur’s main roads for civilian and humanitarian
traffic and proactively patrolling the rural areas is therefore an important task for the U.N. force, and one which will require
substantial human, logistical and technical capacity. Mobility and the ability to rapidly react to ambushes and reports of
impending attacks are key to such protection.
Instead of continuing to place Sudanese government interests
above the survival of more than 1.7 million displaced Sudanese, U.N. Security Council members and regional institutions must
prioritize the well-being of Sudanese citizens and fully support the urgent deployment of a robust, adequately equipped U.N.
force to protect the civilians of Darfur.

desperate drivers seek relief .... in
desperate times of high gas prices... seek ways out of the desperate
conflict of personal need vs. protection of our world....
while they seek ways to fix a desperate situation
with fossil fuels & global warming...
....everywhere is desperation....


Ethanol explained
By Richard J. Newman - Posted 4/25/06
Most people know that it comes from crops and that it's been
around for a while. But advertisements touting ethanol, sponsored by General Motors and others, leave out a lot of the basics.
Here's what you need to know:
What is ethanol?
Ethanol is a fuel that comes
from agricultural crops such as corn, barley, and wheat—and even from trees and grasses. Unlike fossil fuels, such as
petroleum, these are renewable resources. And such crops can be grown in the United States and many other countries. If more
cars ran on ethanol, that would, theoretically, reduce American dependence on oil from the Middle East and other unstable
regions.
Are there environmental benefits?
Yes. Ethanol produced from corn reduces the emissions
that contribute to global warming by as much as 20 percent, compared with gasoline. Ethanol made from trees and grasses can
cut those emissions by as much as 80 percent.
How does it work in cars?
Just like gasoline. In fact,
ethanol is usually blended with gasoline in various proportions. The form
that's now being promoted by General Motors and other automakers is called E85, which is 85 percent ethanol
and 15 percent gasoline.
Can any car run on ethanol?
Any car can run on blends of up to 10 percent ethanol, but cars that run on higher blends require a few modifications.
Automakers have built about 5 million "flex-fuel" vehicles that can run on E85. Most of them are SUVs and pickups produced
by GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The U.S. Department of Energy maintains a list of flex-fuel vehicles. (Select ethanol on the drop-down menu.)
Do flex-fuel vehicles cost more?
Not usually. Automakers have
to install a sensor and a few additional components to produce a car that can run on both ethanol and gasoline, which adds
about $100 to the cost. But typically they don't pass the cost on to consumers.
Why not?
Automakers get
credits from the government for producing flex-fuel vehicles, which helps reduce fines they would otherwise have to pay if
they don't meet overall fuel-efficiency standards. Building flex-fuel vehicles saves them money, even if nobody uses ethanol.
Is ethanol cheaper than gasoline?
Sometimes, although
prices vary, just as they do with gas. Right now, ethanol is about $2.40 per gallon, while gas is about $2.80 per gallon.
So I'll save money if I use ethanol?
Actually, no. Ethanol contains
less energy than gasoline, which means mileage is lower. In city driving, i.e., the base model Chevy Silverado
pickup truck gets 16 miles per gallon of gasoline, but just 12 miles per gallon of ethanol. During one year of typical driving,
it would cost about $250 more to run the truck on ethanol than on gasoline.
So why would I want to use ethanol?
For the greater good of the planet & your conscience. Ethanol produces fewer tailpipe emissions than gasoline.
Some people use ethanol because they feel it may help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil. And if ethanol were to become widely used, prices might fall as energy companies increased production.
Where can I buy ethanol?
Not many places. There are
only 619 ethanol stations in the United States, an average of only about 12 per state. And
many of those are restricted to government or private use. A few states, such as Illinois & Minnesota, have a fair number
of ethanol stations, but in most places they're scarce.



with an expected hurricane season coming up quickly, who is ready to take personal responsibility
for themselves instead of sitting in helpless desperation waiting to be taken care of?
I understand that this is a very
harsh stand to take, but excuse me while I stand up and say it, whether or not I am alone, I say - Americans.... wake up and
smell the coffee! We all have The Weather Channel, we have the American Red Cross website, we have the website from the governments,
"Homeland Security;" who's been there since last year's devastation?
Who has bothered to learn what to do in case of a hurricane? Who has ignored what they can personally do
to take care of themselves, in advance to prepare for another busy upcoming hurricane season?
Who is still sitting in their recliner, in front of their television, shaking a fat little finger at the
news reporters that are reporting how badly FEMA screwed up last hurricane season? Who isn't doing a thing to prepare for
this year's natural disasters? Who has even looked at what they need to do? How about helping yourself by checking out the
guidelines for preparing for another terrorist attack? Anyone out there checking those guidelines out?
Let's see what people have been saying in the past and what people are doing right now to take responsibility
for themselves!
ANARCHY, ANGER, DESPERATION THE
RESPONSE Sharp criticism of U.S. reaction & failure to prevent disaster
Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief / Friday, September
2, 2005
Washington
- Disturbing images of thousands of Americans dehydrated, hungry & unable to escape an uninhabitable city are prompting angry questions about whether the richest nation in the world is doing everything it can to respond to New Orleans' disaster.
The anger is aimed at the failure of the government to fortify levees before Katrina blew in, its inability to move residents out of
the city, the wretched conditions inside the Superdome & the desperation on the streets
that, on television, appears to border on anarchy.
"This is a national emergency.
This is a national disgrace," Terry Ebbert, head of the city's emergency operations, told the Associated Press. "FEMA has
been here 3 days, yet there's no command & control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't
bail out the city of New Orleans."
Critics
say President Bush's preoccupation with Iraq, his administration's focus on terror & bureaucratic incompetence
have contributed to conditions that more closely resemble a Third World disaster area than a favorite American tourist destination.
Federal officials don't dispute
the magnitude of the suffering. Yet they say it is horrific natural conditions, not human blunders, that have hampered their
efforts & that they're doing a Herculean job, under the circumstances, of saving lives.
"I think everyone in the country
needs to take a big collective deep breath & recognize that there are a lot of people in this state ... that have no food,
no water, it's hot, it's sticky, their homes have been destroyed, they don't know where they are going to go next,'' Federal
Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown said, referring to the outbursts of frustration.
"This is an ongoing disaster.
This disaster didn't end the day that Katrina made landfall.''
Brown insisted that enough
food, water, ice and medical supplies were being brought into the city to care for the remaining residents until buses could
drive them to safety.
But pictures on television
and reports from occupants told another story. With basic communications systems still hobbled, the world's view of New Orleans
has been shaped by images, replayed over and over again, of flooded homes, looters, corpses, rotting garbage and increasingly
desperate residents.
After CNN broadcast footage
of hundreds of disheveled residents huddled around the convention center, including a visibly frightened group chanting, "Help,
help, help,'' the mayor of New Orleans made an astonishingly blunt plea.
"This is a
desperate SOS,'' Mayor Ray Nagin said in a statement to CNN. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention
center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we're
running out of supplies.''
In a country that spent nearly
$1 billion airlifting supplies to tsunami victims in southern Asia and tens of billions of dollars ferrying military supplies
to Baghdad to wage war, many wondered why the United States could not also supply water, food and medical supplies to the
tens of thousands of its own needy residents.
Federal officials suggested
that the television pictures do not show the entire story and said rescue crews successfully rescued and evacuated thousands
from the most dangerous areas. They said the Superdome, whose tens of thousands of homeless occupants are being bused to Houston,
was likely to be completely empty by the end of the day today. The double force of the hurricane and then the flood had made
it impossible, they said, to respond as swiftly as in past emergencies.
President Bush sat down for
a rare live interview on ABC's "Good Morning America'' to promote what is the most extensive federal response to any natural
disaster in history.
"I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday.
I mean, I understand the anxiety of people on the ground. I can -- I just can't imagine what it's like to be waving a sign
saying 'Come and get me now,' '' Bush said. "But I want people to know there's a lot of help coming.''
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,''
he said.
That point was fiercely contradicted on blogs and talk radio
Thursday.
In 2001, a FEMA report ranked hurricane damage to New Orleans
as one of the three most likely catastrophes facing the country (the other two were a terrorist attack on New York City and
an earthquake in San Francisco).
The New Orleans Times-Picayune published a five-part series
in 2002 that began with the words: "It's only a matter of time before south Louisiana takes a direct hit from a major hurricane.
Billions have been spent to protect us, but we grow more vulnerable every day. ...'' The stories quoted flood experts warning
specifically of the potential damage from rising water levels and broken levees.
Despite the warnings, money was cut from flood control as the
federal government's focus shifted to terrorism. The Bush administration routinely provided less than half the money the Army
Corps of Engineers requested for New Orleans flood prevention. Officials routinely blamed budget restrictions and the war
in Iraq in Times-Picayune articles.
A strategic plan produced by FEMA in 2003 noted that "Since
September 11 (2001) ... the nation's attention has shifted from natural hazards to include its capability to respond to future
terrorist attacks.''
The agency, which was given Cabinet-level status by President
Bill Clinton, was folded into the newly created Department of Homeland Security and reported to its secretary rather than
directly to the president.
It is impossible to know whether a more muscular FEMA, more
money and fortified levees would have spared New Orleans from Katrina's wrath. The 17th Street levee, the first to fail late
Monday night, had recently undergone renovations and was regarded as among the strongest links in the city's 350- mile system
of canals.
Clinton defended the Bush administration in an interview with
CNN, saying it made sense to put people up in the Superdome "because they thought they were saving their lives. And then when
the (flooding) problems showed up, they had a lot of other people to save.''
Federal officials expressed sympathy for those undergoing hardships
during repeated news conferences, but split-screen images of the suffering on the streets undercut the credibility of their
statements.
"We totally understand what it's like to be sitting on top of
a roof or to be sitting in a shelter where it's hot; where you're worried about when you're going to be picked up; where you're
thirsty; where you're hungry; where you're afraid for yourself, you're afraid for members of your family,'' Department of
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters at a Washington news conference. "We have to nevertheless proceed
with our priorities in terms of how we deal with this unprecedented disaster."
Chertoff praised FEMA for positioning 18 medical disaster teams
and food, water and other supplies around New Orleans over the weekend in advance of Katrina's arrival. But he said the flooding
that followed the hurricane "dramatically impeded our ability to actually get these supplies into New Orleans.''
Officials repeatedly denied that the war in Iraq had drained
resources needed to assist in disaster relief.
Asked by Hearst News Service columnist Helen Thomas if the administration
had plans to bring home National Guard troops from Iraq to help, White House press secretary Scott McClellan responded: "I
think you're talking about two separate priorities, and we're addressing both.''
Still, Bush's defensive posture earned him criticism even from
typically friendly allies, like the editorial page of New Hampshire's conservative Manchester Union-Leader.
"The cool, confident, intuitive
leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following 11 September 2001, has vanished,"
read an editorial in Thursday's editions. "In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster & economic uncertainty."
Okay Gang, again, I'm sticking
my neck out here, and saying "gee whiz!!!!" Aren't
we supposed to be one of the most educated public in the world? "gee whiz!!!" It seems that all of the Americans involved in the New Orleans Hurrican Katrina debacle must have had televisions!
right?
When I lived in West Palm Beach, Florida
- my ex-husband was a sheriff's deputy. He got a part time job from the local cable company to go out west into Okeechobee,
Florida and Belle Glade, as well as other very poor locations to collect cable boxes when folks out there didn't pay their
cable bills. Even in these destitute places where the houses were filthy, poorly constructed box homes that looked as if they
would fall down if a strong wind blew through - all had televisions and cable t.v. There wasn't any grass in their yards.
There was a distinct odor throughout the neighborhoods, I thought it smelled like, "poverty." I thought that this is what
those poor people in Africa must smell where they live in those horrible conditions. But almost all the people had cable and
The Weather Channel.
Why is it the responsibility of the government to tell people who are
already watching the television, sometimes never turning off their sets, day or night; to leave their homes because a hurricane
is coming? Why is it the responsibility of the government to tell the people to get out of dodge, the sky is going to open
up and the wind is going to blow down your houses?! Leave or die!!! The Weather Channel offers days worth of weather reporting
that warns people once the storms develop out in the Atlantic Ocean.
I lived on the east coast, in Florida. We watched television when the
news said a hurricane was coming. We didn't sit around and wait for the government to tell us to board up our windows, our
houses, prepare for no electricity, prepare by having the right foods to eat, have water saved, get batteries, get radioes...
you know... be responsible for yourself. That's just the way it is when you live in an area that gets hurricanes! You have
to be responsible for yourselves!
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a desperate world of educational faux pas?
Professor of Desperation
Bad pay, zero job security, no benefits,
endless commutes. Is this any way to treat PhDs responsible for teaching a generation of college students?
By Eric L. Wee Sunday, July 21, 2002; Page W24
As dreams go, Larissa
Tracy's is simple. She'd get up & head to work at Georgetown University. She'd stroll to her wood-paneled office lined
with her medieval literature books.
Light would stream in through
the windows as she'd wait to teach one of her classes later in the day. But before that she'd have time to chat with colleagues
about work & teaching & life. Maybe she'd get lunch with one of them.
Or maybe she'd work on an
article about the lives of female saints in the Middle Ages, her specialty. In the summers, she'd travel & attend conferences.
Life would be good.
She often thinks about that dream on days like this. On this chilly October morning she's merging onto Interstate 395, near her Shirlington
apartment & heading south on her daily 50-mile trek to Fredericksburg. It's 7 o'clock as her black Mazda Protege slides
into the fast lane at 80 mph.
She pushes hard on the accelerator
& begins eating her toast. She needs to pass her first marker, the Quantico Marine Base, by 7:30 -otherwise, she'll be late for her first English composition
class at Mary Washington College.
The clock doesn't stop ticking
after that: She'll teach 4 classes at 3 different colleges today. And those are just some of the 6 classes she's teaching
this fall term, double the normal load of a college professor. Or what used to be normal.
Tracy's itinerary today
has the precision of a train schedule:
- English 101 at Mary Washington from 8 a.m. till 8:50 a.m.
- Office hours from 9 till 10 a.m.
- Another English class from 10 until 10:50 a.m.
- Back in the car by 11 a.m.
- Up I-95 to George Mason University.
- Another class from 12:30 p.m. till 1:20 p.m.
- Talk to students for a few minutes.
- Back in the car by 1:45 p.m. & race to Georgetown University.
- Grade papers & prepare for class while eating lunch.
- Class on Shakespeare & film from 3:15 p.m. to 4:05 p.m.
- Back in the car before the meter expires & head home.
- Then she grades more papers until midnight.
- Six hours later it all begins again.
It's not
what she hoped her life would be like, but it's what she's gotten used to since finishing her PhD in medieval literature two years ago at
Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Since then she's become an academic nomad. Unable to find a full-time job in one place, she needs to do this if she wants to teach
& pay her bills. She tells herself that it's temporary. But in the new academic job world, she's running out of time. If she doesn't find that increasingly elusive full-time
job soon, she could live
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