.:.adaeon.net

Why Bush should be ashamed to beg for help
It is a humiliating admission that the world’s richest nation cannot cope with a natural disaster.
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America has already spent a staggering $186billion on the Iraq conflict, yet is now unashamedly turning to Europe and the UN with requests for anything from nappies and baby milk to forklifts and veterinarian supplies.
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Taking aid from the poor

But it is a disgrace that the US should accept offers of help from the poorest nations who are barely able to cope with their own disasters.

Heartbreakingly, tsunami-battered Sri Lanka and Thailand have been generous in coming forward with donations despite struggling to feed and house their own people.
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Mr Bush put his summer holiday first, and stayed at his Texas ranch as hundreds of thousands of his people were plunged into the most inhumane conditions.

BBC NEWS | UK | Briton slams US rescue ‘shambles’
“I could not describe how bad the authorities were – taking photographs of us as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own personal photo albums, little snapshot photographs.”
He said at one point a group of girls was standing on the roof of the hotel lobby and called to passing rescuers for help.

I could see bodies floating in the water

Ged Scott

“They [the authorities] said to them ‘well show us what you’ve got’ – doing signs for them to lift their t-shirts up. The girls said no, and they said ‘well fine’, and motored off down the road in their motorboat.
“That’s the sort of help we had from the authorities,” he said.

Looks like a friend got interviewed by Investors Business Daily which was picked up on Yahoo! News …

Katrina’s Proving To Be A Tough Test For Technology – Yahoo! News:
As Katrina approached, evacuees relied on technology to coordinate travel. Some turned Web sites into emergency message boards. Blogger Mark Kraft, in Santa Clara, Calif., kept in touch with many members of the LiveJournal online community that stayed in New Orleans.

“One (member) I was trying to persuade to evacuate basically couldn’t,” he said. That person “actually got invited by another LiveJournaler to go to a secure apartment on the fourth floor of a building. They rode out the storm there.”

LiveJournal has thousands of members from the New Orleans area, Kraft says. One posted updates from a data center in a tall building in town. Evacuees on the move also scrambled to communicate.

“A lot have been doing what’s called a phone post,” Kraft said. “You call a phone number, and it sort of acts like a voice-mail box. It records the conversation and posts it straight to your journal.”