SG Fairy

I knew my evil twin had hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (I've always wanted to go to New Orleans), I knew she had claimed a large number of lives, smashed a zillion homes and well, made life a living hell for a whole lot of people.

But I never really understood how bad it was til I saw the pictures in the papers today, read the articles, and watched CNN.

As a human being, my heart goes out to all the people there now. Being the loser that I am, I couldn't stop the tears from coming to my eyes as I watched the clips on CNN. I saw sadness in the eyes of the Thai people after the tsunami; I saw complete 100% helplessness in the eyes of the American people - their faces were all blank... they could be breathing and sitting down somewhere fully clothed, but when you observe their facial expression... they were the living dead.

The anti-racist in me wondered why the only clips/pictures of white people on CNN were the news folks and some ladies George Bush hugged when he went on a walkabout. All other pictures, were of black people, desperate people.
Jesse Jackson said that 'racial injustice and indifference to black suffering was at the root of the disaster response' (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_and_race_hk4).
Then of course the White House sends Condoleezza Rice up to deny all of that.

Racist? This wonderful country that is free America??? Bullshit!!

By the way, that is the term New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin used when he complained about the extremely slow response of the govt.. don't believe me, look at the ST. Apparrently he said that even after talking to everyone under the sun, all he got was bullshit.

I must admit, I giggled when I read that.

Sigh.

I dun want to sound silly or anything... but you really cannot blame me for thinking that George Bush is a bloody racist... not when every lost face that you see is is a black one. Perhaps it is really nothing racist, since majority of the population is black.. but still... oh I dun know...

The political scientist person in me has still not been able to fully absorb all the news... I cannot understand how an American city could end up look like some poor African country; I cannot understand why people are starving and dying of thrist because the govt is handicaped - they took ages to send troops down; I cannot understand how George Bush could have remained on holiday at his Texas ranch for TWO DAYS after Katrina hit his country, before getting his presidental butt back to work.

As much as I never really liked the way people referred to America as the 'Superpower', I have acknowledged that yes, they are the world leader etc.

Hence, it's hard to understand how they could have taken ages to send troops down to help their OWN people, a really long long time. And you then have George saying that there is no need to pull back resources from Iraq because "we've got plenty of resources to do both (hurricane and Iraq)" (http://www.todayonline.com/articles/70251.asp).... rriiigggghhhtttt...

It also feels weird to be reading/listening to news about how countries are pledging aid... I've always seen America as (I hate to say it) No. 1 in the world etc, and yet now they're taking in aid???

When asked if they were requesting for foreign aid when White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the US is open to all offers of assistance from other nations, he sharply replied, "No."

It's interesting to see how countries are now all trying to outdo one another... So far Australia is in the lead, pledging US$10 million. And of course Singapore just had to send our Chinooks... hey, dun play-play hor.. the CNN keeps mentioning us leh!

Forgive me if it appears as though I've just been ranting on...

Just still kinda overwhelmed by it all...

You'll have to bear with me... coz I think this topic is going to appear very often in my blog posts.. for a while..