New Orleans situation...PHOTO'S...
Main web site:
Acadian Ambulance Service
PO Box 98000 Lafayette, LA 70509-8000
http://www.acadian.com/
Photos:
http://www.acadian.com/images/Katrina%20Images/index.htm
Their service area:
http://www.acadian.com/aboutus-servicearea.html
===============
US won't let Canada provide help to Katrina victims
A specialized urban search and rescue team from Vancouver will be
joining the rescue efforts in Louisiana in
the wake of hurricane Katrina.
B.C. Solicitor General John Les said the province decided
to send Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue
(USAR) after officials in Louisiana asked for help.
"We're the first non-U.S.-based team to be requested," said
Les. "They're going to be helping as many
people as they can."
CTV Vancouver has learned that the team will board a plane
Wednesday night heading to Lafayette,
Louisiana, where local authorities will direct them to
devastated areas.
Sounds great! Except for one problem -- this team wasn't
allowed to fly into the US, blocked by Homeland
Security from entering. A Canadian reader sends this
report:
On tonight's news, CTV (Canadian TV) said that support was
offered from Canada. Planes are ready to load
with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART"
which can provide fresh water and medical
supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as
well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by
the Canadian government requesting permission to provide
help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been
allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by
Katrina. So, everything here is grounded. Prime
Minister Paul Martin is reportedly trying to speak to
President Bush tonight or tomorrow to ask him why the
U.S. federal government will not allow aid from Canada into
Louisiana and Mississippi. That said, the
Canadian Red Cross is reportedly allowed into the area.
Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably
not being permitted into Louisiana and
Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal
level in the wake of the storm.
Once the hard-hit region is back on its feet, there better
be a full accounting of the preparation and response
to this catastrophe.
===============
Who Lost New Orleans? by Patrick J. Buchanan
Who Lost New Orleans?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Even the disasters and tragedies that at first unite us in grief or
anger - Pearl Harbor, 9-11 - end up dividing us. New Orleans will be no
exception.
Books are yet being written on how Kimmel and Short, the commanders
at Pearl, were scapegoated. Had we not broken the Japanese code? Did not FDR
know by decoded intercepts the night of Dec. 6 that Tokyo had terminated talks
and this meant war? Why was Gen. Marshall horseback riding the morning of Dec.
7, as aides frantically searched for him to alert Pearl?
Despite the 9-11 commission report, questions remain about the
warnings received and advance knowledge President Bush had or should have had
about what was coming.
With the Katrina disaster, however, we are not going to have to wait
months for the accusations and recriminations. They have already begun, and will
poison our politics for years. Even as the hurricane was coming ashore, Robert
Kennedy Jr. was attacking Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for his role "in
derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign
promise to regulate CO2."
Because of "Barbour and his cronies," wrote Kennedy, "we are all
learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence. ...
Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East
and - now - Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are
bequeathing our children."
Kennedy was seconded by Germany's environmental minister, Jurgen
Tritten, who mounted his hobby horse - the hurricane was the result of the
global warming Bush has ignored - and rode, rode, rode.
Columnist James Glassman tore into these twin distortions of reality
and exploitations of disaster. But the RFK-Tritten attack was ineffectual. No
rational American is going to believe that, had Bush signed Kyoto, New Orleans
would not be underwater. It is on the more serious matters that rancorous
argument is about to begin, and deep divisions are about to be driven into our
society.
First, it seems self-evident that those in the path of the storm who
had the least suffered the most. Those who had no way out were left behind, and
hundreds, perhaps thousands, perished. From TV pictures of the 20,000 crammed
into the Superdome and the hundreds hauled off rooftops, most of them, it
appears, were African-American.
Conversely, TV footage of looters happily at work - taking not just
food and water, but jewelry, guns, electronics and booze - reveals them, too,
to be disproportionately African-American.
As demands arise that the National Guard and Army shoot looters to
end the anarchy, the race demagogues will go to work. For if that orgy of
rioting, looting, shooting and racial assaults on Korean and white Americans
that was the Los Angeles riot of '92 can be excused by apologists as a
justified reaction to the Simi Valley jury's refusal to convict the cops who
whaled on Rodney King, assuredly raucous voices will be raised in defense of
the New Orleans looters.
But ultimately, the attacks will come around to a single target,
President Bush, and they will run along these lines:
First, he was out of touch in Crawford, not alert to what was coming
- and, indeed, photographed fooling with a guitar the day the storm hit. Second,
despite the investment of scores of billions, the Gulf Coast, on his watch, was
unprepared for a Category 4 hurricane.
Third, when the need arose for the Louisiana and Mississippi
National Guard to save the poor of those states, and defend lives and property
after the storm, 7,000 Guardsmen were not on the Gulf of Mexico, but in the
Persian Gulf.
Bush's priorities are about to be challenged, and Katrina will turn
America's eyes inward, even as the crisis on the Mexican border is turning
America's attention away from the Syrian border.
The antiwar movement has a new argument: What in Iraq is more
important than Mississippi and Louisiana?
As the cost of the disaster mounts, the questions will tumble, one
upon the other: Can we afford both Iraq and resurrecting New Orleans and the
Gulf? Which comes first? As the Gulf poor have lost most, ought not taxes be
raised on the rich to pay for both?
Finally and critically, there is the question of why the levees
broke and New Orleans was inundated, lost for years if not forever. As of
Monday, the city had been spared. The French Quarter was dry. Then came the
deluge. And there are print and TV allegations that funds allocated to
strengthen the levees were diverted or cut by the Bush administration.
Soon, we will be hearing and reading of recommendations by some
officials that the levees be strengthened, and of decisions by other officials
that the money be used on something else.
The scapegoating has begun. It will be deadly serious. The stakes
are the highest. The ultimate objective will be to break the Bush presidency.
Katrina and "Who Lost New Orleans?" will be as pivotal to Bush's second term as
9-11 was to his first.
September 2, 2005
Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where
the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire.
Copyright © 2005 Creators Syndicate
Main web site:
Acadian Ambulance Service
PO Box 98000 Lafayette, LA 70509-8000
http://www.acadian.com/
Photos:
http://www.acadian.com/images/Katrina%20Images/index.htm
Their service area:
http://www.acadian.com/aboutus-servicearea.html
===============
US won't let Canada provide help to Katrina victims
A specialized urban search and rescue team from Vancouver will be
joining the rescue efforts in Louisiana in
the wake of hurricane Katrina.
B.C. Solicitor General John Les said the province decided
to send Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue
(USAR) after officials in Louisiana asked for help.
"We're the first non-U.S.-based team to be requested," said
Les. "They're going to be helping as many
people as they can."
CTV Vancouver has learned that the team will board a plane
Wednesday night heading to Lafayette,
Louisiana, where local authorities will direct them to
devastated areas.
Sounds great! Except for one problem -- this team wasn't
allowed to fly into the US, blocked by Homeland
Security from entering. A Canadian reader sends this
report:
On tonight's news, CTV (Canadian TV) said that support was
offered from Canada. Planes are ready to load
with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART"
which can provide fresh water and medical
supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as
well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by
the Canadian government requesting permission to provide
help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been
allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by
Katrina. So, everything here is grounded. Prime
Minister Paul Martin is reportedly trying to speak to
President Bush tonight or tomorrow to ask him why the
U.S. federal government will not allow aid from Canada into
Louisiana and Mississippi. That said, the
Canadian Red Cross is reportedly allowed into the area.
Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably
not being permitted into Louisiana and
Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal
level in the wake of the storm.
Once the hard-hit region is back on its feet, there better
be a full accounting of the preparation and response
to this catastrophe.
===============
Who Lost New Orleans? by Patrick J. Buchanan
Who Lost New Orleans?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Even the disasters and tragedies that at first unite us in grief or
anger - Pearl Harbor, 9-11 - end up dividing us. New Orleans will be no
exception.
Books are yet being written on how Kimmel and Short, the commanders
at Pearl, were scapegoated. Had we not broken the Japanese code? Did not FDR
know by decoded intercepts the night of Dec. 6 that Tokyo had terminated talks
and this meant war? Why was Gen. Marshall horseback riding the morning of Dec.
7, as aides frantically searched for him to alert Pearl?
Despite the 9-11 commission report, questions remain about the
warnings received and advance knowledge President Bush had or should have had
about what was coming.
With the Katrina disaster, however, we are not going to have to wait
months for the accusations and recriminations. They have already begun, and will
poison our politics for years. Even as the hurricane was coming ashore, Robert
Kennedy Jr. was attacking Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for his role "in
derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush's iron-clad campaign
promise to regulate CO2."
Because of "Barbour and his cronies," wrote Kennedy, "we are all
learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence. ...
Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East
and - now - Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are
bequeathing our children."
Kennedy was seconded by Germany's environmental minister, Jurgen
Tritten, who mounted his hobby horse - the hurricane was the result of the
global warming Bush has ignored - and rode, rode, rode.
Columnist James Glassman tore into these twin distortions of reality
and exploitations of disaster. But the RFK-Tritten attack was ineffectual. No
rational American is going to believe that, had Bush signed Kyoto, New Orleans
would not be underwater. It is on the more serious matters that rancorous
argument is about to begin, and deep divisions are about to be driven into our
society.
First, it seems self-evident that those in the path of the storm who
had the least suffered the most. Those who had no way out were left behind, and
hundreds, perhaps thousands, perished. From TV pictures of the 20,000 crammed
into the Superdome and the hundreds hauled off rooftops, most of them, it
appears, were African-American.
Conversely, TV footage of looters happily at work - taking not just
food and water, but jewelry, guns, electronics and booze - reveals them, too,
to be disproportionately African-American.
As demands arise that the National Guard and Army shoot looters to
end the anarchy, the race demagogues will go to work. For if that orgy of
rioting, looting, shooting and racial assaults on Korean and white Americans
that was the Los Angeles riot of '92 can be excused by apologists as a
justified reaction to the Simi Valley jury's refusal to convict the cops who
whaled on Rodney King, assuredly raucous voices will be raised in defense of
the New Orleans looters.
But ultimately, the attacks will come around to a single target,
President Bush, and they will run along these lines:
First, he was out of touch in Crawford, not alert to what was coming
- and, indeed, photographed fooling with a guitar the day the storm hit. Second,
despite the investment of scores of billions, the Gulf Coast, on his watch, was
unprepared for a Category 4 hurricane.
Third, when the need arose for the Louisiana and Mississippi
National Guard to save the poor of those states, and defend lives and property
after the storm, 7,000 Guardsmen were not on the Gulf of Mexico, but in the
Persian Gulf.
Bush's priorities are about to be challenged, and Katrina will turn
America's eyes inward, even as the crisis on the Mexican border is turning
America's attention away from the Syrian border.
The antiwar movement has a new argument: What in Iraq is more
important than Mississippi and Louisiana?
As the cost of the disaster mounts, the questions will tumble, one
upon the other: Can we afford both Iraq and resurrecting New Orleans and the
Gulf? Which comes first? As the Gulf poor have lost most, ought not taxes be
raised on the rich to pay for both?
Finally and critically, there is the question of why the levees
broke and New Orleans was inundated, lost for years if not forever. As of
Monday, the city had been spared. The French Quarter was dry. Then came the
deluge. And there are print and TV allegations that funds allocated to
strengthen the levees were diverted or cut by the Bush administration.
Soon, we will be hearing and reading of recommendations by some
officials that the levees be strengthened, and of decisions by other officials
that the money be used on something else.
The scapegoating has begun. It will be deadly serious. The stakes
are the highest. The ultimate objective will be to break the Bush presidency.
Katrina and "Who Lost New Orleans?" will be as pivotal to Bush's second term as
9-11 was to his first.
September 2, 2005
Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where
the Right Went Wrong, and A Republic Not An Empire.
Copyright © 2005 Creators Syndicate
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