American Views Abroad

 
The newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt in conjunction with a well-known German charity organization, the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), and the support of the Hamburg government has started up a fund drive to help the poorest of the poor hit hardest by the devastating hurricane and flooding. Hilfe fuer Freunde --- Help for Friends is asking for contributions to be transferred to HSH Nordbank, BLZ: 200 500 00, Konto: 505 040 000, Stichwort: Hilfe fuer Freunde. Hamburg knows only too well the catastrophe ragging flooding can bring on a city. www.abendblatt.de/daten/2005/09/03/478031.html.

The blogger at http://www.aliberaldose.blogspot.com/ reports on German TV describing Bush's 'Relief Visit' as a photo-op. Just before he visited Mississippi the journalist on the spot where he was to land reported several times on how suddenly machinery appeared and cleared up the damage. We later saw his helicopter, the Marine in full dress uniform attending it, and the place where he was roped off. On Friday evening there was a thirty-five minute special on the crisis at prime time on the other German public TV station. The headline ran Anarchy and Chaos in New Orleans. The reporter at the site tried to give an all-round picture of what was going on. He told of knowing of some small areas of New Orleans that were getting food, water and ice and where the situation was calm. He stood at a bridge where hundreds of private citizens from all over the US were trying to cross, many with boats hitched on their private cars, and reported how these people were coming on their own to help. He also showed the absolute horror of what was going on downtown, in the stadium and the convention center. In the end the conclusion he came to was as heart rendering and admirable it was to see private help, only authority and major help could provide the dire relief needed. German public TV and radio is supported by monthly fees every resident who own a radio, TV or even a car radio has to pay.

US newspapers today indicate a general sense of outrage that more was not done sooner. One German Sunday newspaper discussed the change in tone on CNN and on morning shows in the US when interviewing Washington officials last week.

The final word goes to Frank Rich in his column in today's New York Times:

But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene
in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and material of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.

www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090405D.shtml

- posted by Gloria @ 4:31 PM