I have been hearing comments repeatedly in recent days about America coming to everyone elses aid when they have an emergency, but no one coming to our aid in this crisis. Well it appears that other countries want to help, but the incompetent political hacks running our country into the ground won’t let them. This was on Daily Kos

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.

Also see the Hurricane Warning from the national weather service that I posted the day before the storm made landfall . At least one government agency knew what was coming.

This morning on Good Morning America Shrub made the following statement:

I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.

This is just one of countless versions of the same warning over the past several years,

From Gone with the Water, in National Geographic, October 2004:
The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level‹more than eight feet below in places‹so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity happen? It hasn’t — yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

Except for the water coming over rather than through the levees this is an almost exact description of the events of Monday night and Tuesday. Anyone who says this couldn’t have been anticapated, is either a pathalogical liar or far two stupid to ever be left in any position of responsibility. In president shrub’s case I fear that both may be true. This is also precisely why New Orleans should probably not be rebuilt in it’s current location. They should build a new city somewhere that makes more sense.

UPDATE – Here are links to more warnings that describe exactly what happened to New Orleans.

Drowning New Orleans
That Sinking Feeling

Dave Winer makes some good comments on the aftermath of hurricane katrina:

The disaster is continuing. The national response is wholly inappropriate. I think we have to get ready to welcome the refugees into our homes, to absorb the population of New Orleans and the surrounding area into the rest of the country. I think it’s clear that’s where we’re headed

The whole country needs to come together and help the people of the region who really need help. We also need to take a really serious look at whether New Orleans should even be rebuilt in it’s current location, or whether we should build anew somewhere else. We need to stop the political bullshit about rebuilding and look at what is really best for the people and the region. I believe that rebuilding in the heavily contaminated toxic pool that was formerly the Big Easy is a huge mistake. Whatever we do something like this is bound to happen again sooner or later. With hurricanes getting worse every year, this is likely to happen again sooner rather than later.

Over Dave Winer’s Scripting News blog he quotes the following from Daily Kos

Fair question: “How is it that today, nearly four years after 9/11, we have no cohesive plan to deal with the region’s refugees, the potentially one million American citizens without work or a home or basic care?” Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Dave’s response was:

The writer above is absolutely correct that, if we were prepared, the response to the aftermath of Katrina would be further along by now. Responsibility however is not with the administration, it lies with the electorate. We had a chance to make last year’s election a referendum on the politics of terrorism, to seriously evaluate our preparedness, if we really cared. If anything is learned from this, we have to think, we can’t delegate. We need leadership that cares, not in a superficial way. That leadership must come from us. We have some very huge decisions to make right now, and many thousands of lives depend on how well we do. That said, I have few ideas of things we can do other than give money to relief agencies, which of course, we are doing.

I agree and this goes along with the old saying that “People elect the government that they deserve” The fact that so many people in this country are so intellectually lazy that they bought all the bullshit that the republicans have spewed over the years is also a tragedy and those people must take at least some responsibility for the events of the last few years. Unfortunately all the rest of who didn’t buy into the lies also have to pay the price and the cost of democracy. People need to take more responsibility for the information that they receive. They can’t just sit back and soak up all the crap the mainstream corporate media dish out. They need to find their own news from new independant sources.

Long live Dave Winer and Kos and the rest of the Blogosphere and the Podosphere!

Although New Orleans missed the full brunt of Hurrican Katrina on the first pass, it apears that the end result is the same. The levee around New orleans broke allowing the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to inundate the city. All of the worst case predictions of what would happen if New Orleans was hit by a major hurricane. The disgrace is that this might have been avoided where it not for George Bush’s insane illegal invasion of Iraq. Because of the close to half a TRILLION dollars that we have now squandered on Bush’s folly Work on improving the levee’s was canceled.

It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

— Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

Water levels are still rising in the city and the whole thing is one giant toxic soup. The water is full sewage, chemicals and who knows what else. And I just heard on the news that they are going to have to rebuild the entire electrical grid of New Orleans. There is also looting going on and not nearly enough national guard troops to help. Where are they all? In Iraq of course.

The people of New Orleans will not be able to return home for long time. There are also hundreds of thousands of people in Mississippi, and Alabama who have lost everything. Nature started the catastrophe on the Gulf Coast this week. But the policies Bush and co. will have made the human cost far worse than it might have been otherwise.