I know this is quite OT, but given the amount of Katrina talk going on in the group, I thought you'd all be interested.
If somehow you had not yet heard of Katrina, and read the first three paragraphs of this article, would it even cross your mind that they may be talking about the USA?
From
Friends and foes - even tsunami victims - pitch in with offers of help.
A powerful hurricane hits a low-lying sub-tropical city, killing thousands of its poverty-stricken inhabitants left behind when the better-off fled. The survivors struggle for food, water and medicine as anarchy descends.
In the capital, the President dawdles for several days. Finally, the country's military arrives, but with guns out instead of aid, treating the dark-skinned underclbutt with suspicion.
Meanwhile, governments half way around the world rally to the humanitarian crisis, offering millions of dollars in aid, medical teams, helicopters and amphibious vehicles for the rescue and clean-up.
Eight months after the tsunami disaster struck countries around the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe along the Gulf of Mexico coast of the United States is looking like the same scenario in reverse.
Asian countries, many still recovering from the tsunami, are offering money and aid teams to the world's richest nation almost as fast as President George Bush's Administration seems to have woken up to the human needs in New Orleans, Biloxi and other stricken cities.
China, which lost 56 people when Typhoon Talim swept across its east coast on Thursday, has offered $US5 million ($6.5 million) plus other supplies. "The Chinese Government will also send rescue workers to help in medical treatment and epidemic prevention in the disaster-stricken areas, if needed," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, in Beijing.
President Hu Jintao spoke to Mr Bush by phone on Saturday and the two leaders agreed to postpone Mr Hu's visit to the US, planned for this week. They will meet on the sidelines of a special United Nations session in New York next week.
Singapore said it was sending three Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, while Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka - all hit by the tsunami - are among dozens of countries offering cash and other forms of aid.
Non OPEC countries should organize. 2447Matthew Russotto Well, if you had read these articles, you would would have planned for the future with roughly 10 years in advance? Maybe you wouldn't be so upset today. What good will that do...
Two of Washington's least favourite Latin American countries are also offering help. President Fidel Castro of Cuba offered to fly 1100 doctors to Houston with 26 tonnes of medicine to treat disaster victims. President Hugo Ch‡vez of Venezuela, a vocal critic of the US, offered cheap fuel, humanitarian aid and relief workers.
A US State Department official said an buttessment would be made to determine which offers of help would be accepted.
-- SL
"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it"
Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Minister of Propaganda, 1933 - 1945
