Somedays I just want to live on a far away island

What a busy day today. I'm gearing up for a major migration of servers to Europe from our Montreal location. I was in touch all morning with my colleagues in the Netherlands trying to organize the physical transfer of the equipment. My fear is local users are not taking this seriously and people are going to be stuck with lost or missing data. You know who will face their wrath even if they've already been for warned. I need thicker walls around my office LOL.

Anyways, I find it interesting that neither Fed Ex nor UPS has delivery service in Europe on the weekends. This left me scrambling for an alternative solution. Meanwhile a major customer bombarded me all day with finicky alterations to their buying program. I gave them notice I would be wrapped up with the IT project for three weeks and it was as if they took that as a signal to bombard me with even more than the usual number of changes and alterations to their program. I kept getting e-mails that started with "I know you are busy especially in the mornings but if you can get to this I'd appreciate it... it's not pressing..." then they'd say at the end send it Fed Ex overnight... meaning it's critical.. Oyiee... Customers... well they are the centre of our universe so I guess I can't blame them. However between the two things I spent all day going in circles and somehow it will worked out.

A couple of things in the news caught my attention. Our Premier Jean Charest said we wouldn't get the tax cuts they promised us during the election. In fact taxes have actually gone up. We are the most heavily taxed people in North America. Just great. I wouldn't mind if I felt I could see the benefits of handing over a larger share of my income to the government but honestly I look at other Provinces and States and think they have more perks and programs and better roads and highways than we have. I mean it's not all bad here, far from it. I love Montreal and Quebec and feel it's a great place to live but I don't sense they government spends its money wisely. I'd like our taxes to come down to average tax levels and see some tangible benefits once in a while.

Mike Brown the former head of FEMA went before a Republican Congressional committee yesterday and put all the blame on the State and local New Orleans City governments for the delays in getting rescue aid to the people of the Gulf Coast during the first days of Katrina. The Mayor blames FEMA. The Governor said the Buck stopped at her desk but so far I haven't heard her admit to any fault other than not asking for the army to come in sooner. President Bush never suggested it to her either and yet he too hasn't offered up any real admission of blame but at least admitted it all was badly run which is more then the rest of them have done. It's become the political blame game. These are just bad politicans.

One point in Brown's hearing that I thought was interesting was revealed on ABC News last night. They said there was a secret government report that was available to FEMA and specifically Brown that stated the local New Orleans city government and the Louisiana State government were not well organized, did not communicate well and were not capable of handling a large scale disaster. It suggested to FEMA to be prepared to act on its own and make decisions on action before being asked by the local or state governments specifically because those very same governments would not be capable of reacting fast. Well that says a lot about how the US Federal government thought about the State of Louisiana and New Orleans. It also says Mike Brown should have taken control from the start and should have been leading the way for aid to get to the victims. However at the hearing he kept saying he wasn't asked to act and seemed totally ignorant of this report. He put the entire onus on the other two levels of government and denied he did anything wrong. I think he's not living in reality and still doesn't get it. The other two levels surely lived up to the Federal government's assessment of them and the US Federal government certainly didn't push much harder to go above and beyond all this to get aid to the people at all costs. Maybe Bush or his aids should have pushed Brown.

I'd still like to know if Canada would be any better... I seriously doubt it but thankfully we don't get serious hurricanes. Well maybe Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on occasion but very rarely. It's earthquakes and tornados that worry me here.

There's a weird development in the Mayoral race for Montreal's City Hall. Mayor Tremblay is using the slogan "Go Montreal". Well, someone has complained to the l'Office de la Langue Française" that it is not French and should be banned. It turns out Bill 101, our language law, allows for unilingual religious and political signs and this slogan is not breaking the law at all. Honestly some people have too much time on their hands. Even Francophones interviewed on TV had no problem with it. The use "go" in their daily speak all the time. No one at work even mentioned it. My guess is the person who complained was an Anglo trying to make a silly point about the language laws... but it back fired for whoever launched it. LOL... Go Montreal! I'd like to just go away on my own private island for a few weeks and escape all this. ahhhh....

Rita hovers over Montreal

It's pouring rain outside this morning. Rita has finally made it up to Canada and is approaching Montreal. This means nothing more than a lot of rain for us thankfully.... and that's exactly what it's doing outside. The drive in to work was slower than usual.

Nothing too special happenened this weekend. The leaves are starting to change colours finally. I have a nice sugar Maple tree in my backyard and I can see some reds and oranges starting. Besides that I helped Sheila set up her new PC. It's a beauty and a huge improvement over her old Pentium 2 133MgHz with the 13" screen. That was starting to look like a deliberate antique. Gee I wonder if in 50 years people will display old computers from the 20th century like antiques in their home... if any are left?

I bought two new books on Sunday. One is called "Cross Bones" by Kathy Reichs. She's an American living in Montreal and centered her CSI type thriller around Montreal which is kinda cool. It's very rare Montreal ever is the real centre of any book or movie. Film companies often use the city to portray US or European cities but rarely do they actually make in the centre of the story. I'm looking forward to this if only for the novelty of it. The second book is "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom which I've already started. It's about an 80 year old guy who dies and goes to Heaven and meets five people who explain the reason for his life to him. So far it's quite interesting. There has been a lot of good commentary on the book so it should be a nice read especially after finishing the fascinating but dark book on Africa.

Anyways... gotta get to work.. stay dry if you live somewhere near me.

Update: Here we go again... people seem to be taking an interest in this shot I uploaded to myaviation.net... again another cabin entrance shot and again peculiar interest in it... weird..



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull

They Poured Fire on us from the Sky

I've just finished reading the book "They Poured Fire on us from the Sky". It was written by three of the "Lost Boys" from Sudan. They were three of the thousands of very young children who were forced to walk to Kenya from their villages after being forced out by Arab Muslims and the government during their country's civil war.

They walked for five years and over 1000km to get to the UN Refugee camp at Kakuma Kenya. One of the three started the trip two years after the first two. All encountered the horrific effects of the war including bombings, death, beatings, mutilation, starvation, rape and any other sort of human suffering you can imagine. On top of it wild animals attacked and ate many of the children. Hundreds if not thousands died along the way. Adults were occasionally sympathetic to them but more often than not were untrustworthy and dangerous. Thirst and hunger were their biggest threat but somehow they stayed focused and survived. It took over 5 years and the three at the beginning ranged in age from 5 to 7 years old.

This has got to be one of the most amazing books I have ever read. It is a tribute to the human spirit and man's (boy's) determination to survive. At times I had to put the book down finding it difficult to read what they went through. It was heartbreaking at times. I had to keep reminding myself they were all less than 10 years old facing death and devastation that would have destroyed a grown adult let along a child. I suppose their youth helped them through it to some extent. They didn't comprehend the political events and perhaps feared things less for the sake of their innocence. However that innocence didn't last long as they kicked into survival mode. They clung on to the things that mattered to them namely their kinship and their desperate hope to reunite.

It was probably written as a means to cleanse oneself of the anger and bitterness all three of them must feel as adults now living in California. Yes they actually managed to survive and get to the USA. Two of them went from one of those stereotypical "Bi-African children with sticks for limbs and a big ball belly and head" to healthy 25-year-old men living in San Diego. The manner in which they wrote the book was both raw and from their hearts. Each one told their story individually linking all the tales together as one long arduous journey. Two were seperated brothers who longed to reunite. In fact the family tie between them all is so powerful it is overwhelming throughout the book.

Too often we hear of horror stories from Africa. We see images on TV of these very same types of nameless children clinging to life in a disease infected area with no food or water. This is the first time I've ever heard the story from their perspective. It was the first time one of the children had a name, a face and a tale. It was amazing to see it from such a young perspective. I've read General Dallaire's book on Rwanda (Shake Hands with the Devil) which in itself is a powerhouse of a book and one everyone should read... but so is this one. At one point one of the boys was starving, quite sick, emaciated, weak and frail and all alone and seperated from the other two. He had a badly infected leg, owned only a pair of shorts and a blanket and nothing else.. he was beaten and tired and felt lonley and so very alone. Even at that low point someone wanted to steal his blanket from him. He sat down, fought and pleaded with the thief to the point where he had to struggled to produce enough energy for tears and through sheer determination managed to save his one possession.

I'll never forget this book. It has that sort of impact. It makes one look at our own lives and realize we take so much for granted. I'll have to remember it the next time I complain about something because believe me I have so much and such a good life in comparison to these boys back then and many Africans today. The same brutal attacks still goes on in Darfur to this day. The refugee camps still exist. Meanwhile North America is pretty much selectively blind to it all and eats itself into oblivion. We put more effort into seeking ways to diet and lose weight than to make sure everyone on the planet has something to eat. The book kinda put things into perspective for me even though after reading about Rwanda and Liberia and seeing documentaries on Ethiopia and Sierra Leone I was well aware of it. It's just so much more powerful when it comes from someone who lived it and survived.

Breaking News Night

Wow... lots of exciting news coming from the Depression Channel (CNN) this evening.. For starters they have been tracking Hurricane Rita which is now a Category 5 hurricane. At this moment is the third strongest storm ever recorded. It picked up speed before passing by Cuba and entered the main open area of the Gulf of Mexico at Category 2. It then quickly hit Category 5. Computer tracking modules have it hitting shore somewhere near Galvaston Texas by late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Evacuees from Katrina in Houston are being evacuated again as is most everyone from the Texas Gulf Coast right through to western Louisianna. New Orleans is bracing for residual rain and potential flooding that could break the broken levees. Galveston itself is almost completely evacuated and like New Orleans is also partly below sea level and risks being flooded if not wiped out by this massive storm.

Ok if all that wasn't enough a Jet Blue A320 took off from Long Beach heading for New York at around 4pm EST and ran into mechanical problems right after lifting off the ground. The front nose gear somehow turned 90 degrees to one side leaving the front wheel section facing sideways. The pilots were unable to straighten it out. I sat with CNN and watched them follow the plane circle for an hour or so (it had been circling already for an hour before I joined in... Clem called and told me to turn on the TV to see what was happening). They had pilots and other experts discussing options and potential outcomes. All in all they handled it quite well. It was just an incident with no real threat to anyone's life. There was the risk of a nose gear collapse on landing and the threat of injuries from people jumping down the escape chutes if they needed to be deployed... and another risk of fire or injury should the plane have had a genuine belly landing with all the landing gear retracted...

Some pics from airliners.net & my aviation.net (best one is the last one on the list)

http://myaviation.net/?pid=00453678

http://myaviation.net/?pid=00452851

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/926275/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/926274/L/

Ok a Category 5 hurricane is barreling towards Texas meanwhile a Jet Blue A320 was circling with bad landing gear setting the viewers up for a spectacular smoke and sparks landing when..... suddenly a tornado touched down in Minneapolis. People on the ground there confirmed seeing a tornado heading towards the downtown area.. Paula Zahn said in 30 years she's never seen anything like this... one breaking story after another.

Well all is good with two of the stories. The tornado so far hasn't turned into anything serious. At least they haven't shown any evidence of destruction or any video of damage. The tornado warning was lifted and they more or less sidelined the story. The Jet Blue Airbus came to a pretty spectacular landing. The pilots skillfully came in keeping the nose high and only setting it down late as it touched down the runway. The nose gear now completely sideways started smoking and slowly shredding then catching fire leaving a blaze of fire that ran right back underneith the fuselage. Eventually the tires ripped off but the nose gear held strong and the plane came to a complete and safe stop. There was no need for an emergency evacuation. Congrats to the flight crew for that. They did an excellent job and everyone now has a pretty good story to tell. I have to admit my heart was pumping when the plane touched down at LAX. It was quite spectacular I must admit!

As for Rita...yikes! It looks like the type of storm that might just create a Category 6 level for hurricanes. It has a very tight eye and is massive in size. 266 kph winds have been recorded. There's a high pressure that's keeping it south in the Gulf which may help New Orleans but poor Texas looks like it will be hit very hard. At least this time around they are learning from Katrina's mistakes and if anything good comes out of this the three levels of Government have a chance to redeem themselves for the mess in Louisianna, Mississippi and Alabama. People were bussed out. Pets went with them and names were recorded who went on what bus and where. Priority was put on hospitals and nursing homes and in Galveston it was a mandatory evacuation. There are emergency vehicules with relief already lined up ready to be sent in and the Federal Government has issued a state of emergency for the region already in preparation for massive destruction. So 100% better than last time at this stage of the storm.

Just a couple more interesting points I picked up this evening. The USA's worst natural disaster was a hurricane that hit Galveston in 1900. 8-9000 people died. The city was totally destroyed. Film images from back then showed awful death and devestation. It was then the second wealthiest city in the USA after New York but never recovered that title from that storm onwards. Also the worse year for hurricanes was 1933 if I recall correctly. 21 major hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean that year. This year there have been 17 and it's only half way through. They are expecting to match 1933 or become the worse year ever for hurricanes in the Caribbean. Global warming I guess is starting to take it's toll. I'm curious to see what type of winter we are going to have.

So quite the night for news and excitement...

Back to the Future

NASA announced today it wants to return to the moon in 2018 and then onwards to Mars. The sad thing is the replacement for the Space Shuttle will be a conventional rocket that looks at behaves like the Apollo rocket that sent Neil Armstrong to the moon. So much for the future.

I understand the logic here. Standard rockets are simple, cheap and known technology. In short it's not rocket science....Ahem.. well... Even the landing module they unveiled in a computer generated image is a slightly bulked up version of the original lunar Lander from 1969. The plan is to send astronauts to the moon, stay there for several months and then blast off on a trip to Mars from there.

It seems our futuristic fantasies have been grounded by economics. Mass supersonic transport turned into the technologically limited Concorde flying only the most wealthy of us across the Atlantic in 3-4 hours....today the same trip is 7-8 hours in a conventional plane. That flying car I was suppose to have by 2000 turned into a 4 wheeled Honda that is praised for it's ergonomics and gas mileage not a futuristic power source and ultra violet bubble cockpit. The magnetic trains of the future are only on limited test tracks of today. Ships go no faster these days than they did 50 years ago. In fact the Titanic was probably more luxurious than today's high capacity cruise liners. The video-telephone we were assured to have became the camera cell phone. Even the vision of space travel itself pretty much sputtered out once the Russians abandonned their competitive missions. Only computers, digital camera, Plasma TVs, instant bank machines and faxes kinda fit where futurists were predicting we'd be heading. Blah.... I guess the world of Star Wars and Minority Report, minus all the bad stuff, if still a long way off..

A Tropical storm that will become hurricane Rita is about to hit the Florida Keays this evening. It's predicted that when it moves on to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico it will turn into a powerful hurricane that could hit land anywhere from Mexico and Texas to Louisianna... Right now there's a 10% chance New Orleans could be hit again so they are preparing to evacuate in case it does. The weakened levees could fail again reflooding the city. Everyone is watching this storm closely.

I uploaded more pics on MyAviation.net... here's some for anyone interested... still uploading my trip through Zurich;



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull

Blink!

I just finished the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It's premise is that out first initial impressions of people and things often give us greater insight than does weeks of examination. To some degree I think this is true. A quick glimps of a face or a "feeling" you get when meeting or seeing someone for the first time can really quite accurately sum up what they are really like. It is clean and pure and not cluttered with all sorts of things that can throw you off once you take your time to better get to know them.

Was it a great book? No, but it was entertaining and I like reading things about human insight which this is all about. I think deep down I'd like to be able to see through people and have that edge over them. I don't know why but I do. I find the world very phoney at times. Many people walk around with different "hats" and present different faces to the world. Some are straight forward and honest about it all. I would just like to see people for who they really are.... at least in most cases. :)

Art Show for handicapped

WHat a beautiful weekend so far. The weather has been just perfect.. around 20-21 degrees and pure sunshine. I think this time and Spring are THE best times of the summer in the Montreal area. I wish I could take my vacation now.

Anyways after days of watching the horrors of the Gulf Coast unfold and still unfolding I took a break from it all and went with Sheila to an art exhibit way out on the West Island in Pointe-Claire. It's an annual event where local artists display and sell their work in a pretty setting along the waterfront of the St Lawrence. Half the proceeds will go to handicapped charities so a good worthwhile event. The prices of the work though are out of my league but I still like to go look around and enjoy the paintings and watch the people. It's really relaxing and today was just perfect for it. Here's some pics of the event including Lac St-Louis (a large lake that's part of the St Lawrence on the southern part of the island of Montreal) and some of the paintings we liked.

First off though I planted some sunflower seeds this spring and this near 3 meter monster has popped up! LOL








The setting itself is very pretty. It's in a park like area along the water front of Lac St-Louis. There's an old mansion that is the centre of activity. A local singer serenaded everyone with some Caribbean sounding songs. Made for an interesting mix of sights and sounds.




















The lake itself was so pretty. I'm always amazed this is only 20 minutes from home and a city of 3.5 million people. Nice to sit down by the shoreline and listen to the waves and watch the ducks... 3 of them sleeping each on one leg.. kinda cute.














Now some of the paintings we liked. I really would have liked to purchase the Autumn scene with all the colours in it, or the Montreal Grey Stone water colour done of a home on rue St-Denis or St-Hubert.. both really pretty. Lots of talent here.






















Some other shots... this dog was so beautiful and enormous! When sitting it was as tall as it's master. Also it was so calm and quiet and had big beautiful eyes. If I could own a dog in a perfect environment this would be it. Someone remarked it stood like an Afghan which it did but it was not. I don't know which breed it was. Quite nice though.







Even the trees themselves were so old and had a lot of character. I Love tall trees like this. Also my second giant sunflower finally opened... quite spectacular up close.








So a nice event and something to take all the horrible of images coming from the television away for a little while.

Disaster Exhaustion

I guess the link says it all on a somewhat small scale. Reporters and aid from Canada got to New Orleans residents faster than FEMA and the US Military. ABC News also reported that the local New Orleans city government and I believe FEMA practiced a mock disaster evacuation of the city based on an imaginary Category 5 hurricane wrecking the city and the levees breaking. In their plan several hundred school buses were planned to be used to evacuate those people without transportation or unable to get out. Then they showed an image of those very same school buses in the disater plan sitting in a huge parking lot with water up to their roof level. None were even moved.... I'm starting to get disaster weiriness like most everyone. I just wish we could back time up and change everything and save all those lives..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050908/wl_canada_nm/canada_canadians_neworelans_col

What draws people to this picture?

Ok this one has me scratching my head. When you post pictures on airliners.net or myaviation.net they record the number if hits your photos take. Well airliner.net is a huge site and you practically have to be a perfect photographer to get your photos accepted on their site but if you are so lucky or skillful to do so you get enormous amounts of hits as people view and download them. It's a bit of an ego busting experience however because you normally get 10 rejections before getting a picture accepted so I've uploaded my most recent pictures on myaviation.net instead. It's the sister site of airliners.net that acts as a personal storage space for anyone with aviation photos. There are no rejections and they still count and have many of the same features you find on airliners.net.... so I uploaded my pictures of my flight on Swiss airlines last June... or at least so far the part that covers the trip over there and there's been a strange phenomena with the last batch...

For some reason this photo (see below, click image for larger version) has got a lot of hits (for MyAviation.net) and I really don't understand why. There's absolutely nothing special about it. It doesn't even show much of the aircraft. There are no exceptionally good looking women or men in the photo, just average people doing a very ordinary thing... queuing up to board an airliner. It's about as mundane as it gets... It should logically be ignored. Is there anyone out there with any clue why someone would be attracted to this particular image especially when there are others I think at least are far prettier and more interesting from an aviation stand point? If you saw it what would draw you to click it open and look closer ?



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull


Meanwhile Photos like these sit next to it and have hardly been viewed yet I think they are far more interesting?



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull



MyAviation.net:




Photographer © Doug Bull


Anyways.. more stuff coming later. Sheila & I checked out some townhouses on the west island and Clem, Pascal and I went out for a drink last night and got a plan laid out for an emergency survival pack for 7 days if the city was ever hit with a crisis that debilitated it like New Orleans.

New Orleans finally gets relief but what a disgrace

It took more than enough time but it seems finally someone has a grip on the situation in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Army has rolled in with flat bed trucks filled with emergency aid. People with authority are actually giving the survivors direction. Victims are now deemed refugees and are being bused out to cities like Houston and Dallas and to other neighbouring regions. The situation seems to have improved but still there are trapped people and dead bodies left untouched since last weekend.

I think the USA is embarrassed and ashamed at what has happened. A city of around 2 million people has been devastated as well as a surrounding region the size of England with little or no help sent to them for over 5 days. It is shameful actually. I know Canada had emergency aid including a mobile water purification plant ready to ship out early in the week but we never received the ok to send it from the US government. It sat waiting for days up here in Ottawa. I sense that once the immediate crisis is over there will be a huge re-examination of everything that took place to make sure it will never unfold like this again. I for one thought the USA of all nations was the one country on the planet best able cope with such a disaster but in the end it turned out to be no better than what has happened to third world countries with the added feature that locals got access to weapons which added to the overall dangerous mess. It's unreal and I honestly expected more from a country of such great wealth and means. A country who's people boasts about its greatness when ever and where ever.

Some African American leaders, aid workers and local politicians are now claiming there was a racist motive behind why aid was so slow in coming to those most severely affected. Although I understand logistically it was difficult I still have to wonder the same thing. The levees were built to protect the city from a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was category 5 then 4. Why did they not raise the levees knowing this could be the worst case scenario? Why was funding to the levees and pumps cut back earlier in the year knowing the hurricane season was approaching and meteorologists were predicting a warmer than average gulf water temperature and warning of more potentially powerful hurricanes this season? Why was there not a mandatory evacuation with transportation provided for every living soul without means in the New Orleans area knowing full well for days in advance such a storm more powerful than the levees could hold back was coming towards the city? Why was there no organized emergency rescue plan to go right into the city immediately after the storm hit and not 5 -6 days later? Why was the army so late in getting to New Orleans? Why was there no replacement for the US National Guard knowing most local members are in Iraq? Why did it take so long for the US government to sign out emergency aid funding to get things rolling and into place on day one and not day 4? Why didn't the US immediately call for international aid from the very start of the hurricanes onslaught and not days later? Why was it decided to protect property and not humans once the outbreak of lawlessness led to shootings and street madness? Why was there no plan to get up and running emergency generators and a basic electric grid and water supply that could supply hospitals and essential services right after the storm? Lastly, why were homes in New Orleans not all built to the city codes and people were permitted to live in regions below sea level in the first place knowing full well the levees could be breached?

Ok I don't suppose many other nations of that size would do a heck of a lot better given the shock of what happened but the difference is that in the US there are people and organizations that are paid to plan for exactly these sorts of disasters. Instead of thanking every government official on television for basically doing their jobs they should have been helping ship off water, food, tents and clothing to the stricken region as well as creating and organized plan of action based on the immediate circumstances and all the proactive drills they were suppose to go through to make it all happen right away. I sensed they were spending more time praising each other for basically nothing than actually doing their work.

Now, the question is why all this unfolded like it has? Is it about the logistics of it all? Is it about poverty and wealth and the priorities of wealthy politicians? Would the same thing happen if it was Beacon Hill or Lower Manhatten that was flooded? Would it be different if the stricken area was populated by historically strong Republican voters in the oil, gas, coal or auto industry states, those who helped put Bush in power in the first place? How about if everyone left in New Orleans were white and not black? I suspect it's about all these things... poor black people who hold no power and influence... who don't run giant corporations that make giant donations to political causes, who basically cost the government money and don't generate new money. They are people who don't have the resources or power to fight back in the courts. They are Democratic voters who weakened the South's Republican voter percentages. They are people who don't fit into the Republican platform of increasing the wealth of the wealthy to make the entire population better off. They are seen more as a hindrance than a benefit. They don't hold wealth or power and offer little the rich can gain from. In short they are disposable.

Since African Americans in the South are largely poor they represent all this in the mindset of many Republican politicians making the decisions to move aid into the region. No I seriously doubt anyone sat down in Washington DC and said "they're black and no one cares" but I do think there was a subconscious feeling that this was not going to be anyone's priority unless it unfolded in an ugly way where they could be hurt politically. The effort before hand just wasn’t there as it might have been for people and a social class deemed important. Image after all is everything in Washington. They basically gambled and lost. I seriously doubt they would have taken that risk had it been a wealthy white Republican region that was threatened.

Thankfully this time the news media, although not perfect, did put pressure on the politicians to react but let's face it that is not something they should have to do unless forced to... those politicians are paid by Americans to react willingly because it's part of their job description not because Anderson Cooper or the Mayor of New Orleans gets on TV and starts screaming at them to get off their asses and do something. It's been a disgrace and I feel for the American people for all of this and especially those hit by the disaster. They all deserve better from their elected officials and levels of government including the President. If I were American I would ask some serious questions about the quality of their politicians. Evidentially substance is more important than image. Gee what a new concept. People must demand that of them in the future.

Still as I write there are new stories of murder, hospital or illness related deaths, rape, gunshots, theft and violence coming in from New Orleans. A shoot to kill policy was in effect at least until the army arrived. I still have trouble understanding how the US could criticize China for turning on its own people in Tiananmen Square and accepts a shoot to kill policy aimed at American citizens for stealing electronic goods in a flooded out New Orleans. In effect this puts priority on this over getting people rescued and dead bodies removed. It looks like consumer merchandise was deemed more important than human lives in a sense although I'm sure the genuine aim was to just curb the shootings to protect human lives. Just putting the priority of getting aid to the victims while getting them out seems a much more logical goal than shooting to kill. Who gives a shit about stolen electronic goods at this point in time?! Let them have it they can’t use it anyways.

It's going to be a long six months or more of this I'm afraid. Refugees will become restless. There will be psychological scars. People need a purpose to live and there must be one for everyone who's been displaced. The cities that take them in will find it straining their finances and services. Crime could increase like it already has in Mobile where some victims were taken in already. What will happen to New Orleans itself? The toxic water probably means most of the city will have to me mowed into the ground. It may become uninhabitable in the end. It's all going to trickle down on many levels world wide before the dust finally settles. I can't think of anything, including 9/11, that had been as depressing and sorrowful to watch unfold. I truly hope the world somehow shows its love for these people because up until now there's been everything but.

New Orleans Mayor lashes out

The situation in New Orleans is looking like a disaster movie most moviegoers would dismiss as too far out and unrealistic. According to the news there is lawlessness, chaos, looting, dead bodies floating in the water that itself it toxic and filled with human waste. Mosquitoes are breeding and now they are expecting an outbreak of disease. Police are barricaded up protecting themselves from snipers.

All this continues to deteriorate as still about half a million people are left to fend for themselves with little help coming from the US Federal government. A mandatory evacuation is in place but efforts to get people out seem so little relative to the scale of the disaster. President Bush sits back and states help is on the way but it is now day 5 and people are desperate and getting even more desperate as their lives are being threatened. The Mayor of New Orleans got on the radio this morning and blasted Federal authorities for not doing enough to help the victims of Katrina. He basically told Bush to get off his "God Damned Ass" and make things happened. Although those words were used I don't think he specifically referred to Bush in that way but essentially that was his message. He was so emotional in the manner and way he spoke which came right from the core of his soul. This is a man devastated, exasperated and at the end of his rope. At the end he broke down and had to leave in tears. Nothing so far has brought all this home to the heart than hearing him talk about his city and his people and what they are going through.

You know if this were Beverly Hills or Long Island I can bet help would have been there immediately not five days later. Those most affected are poor African Americans not rich white people. Americans have been asking where is France and Germany. Well where is Saudi Arabia, England and Japan their supposed best friends? Canada has offered help and has things in place ready to go and still no one has told us to ship anyone or anything to the region. I get the sense still that it is deteriorating and no one yet has a grasp on the situation and how to handle it. Meanwhile oil is not being pumped, gas prices hit over $1.50 a litre in some parts of Montreal yesterday and the economy of the continent is poised to take a nose dive if something isn't done to restore some sense of order down there soon. That disaster could translate into a continental or even global disaster if Bush doesn't get a grip on things soon.

In another story two American men, 23 and 20 were found dead in Laval yesterday not far from where I work. In fact I believe saw the helicopter that spotted the bodies in a quarry a few kilometers south of our building. They disappeared Aug 22nd after a night of partying and headed into Laval to go to an after hours nightclub. They were two male strippers and one was a porn star. They were in Montreal after their show had wrapped up its Canadian tour. They stripped for both men and women and were with a show similar to Chipendales. The story has been gripping the city for the past week but this morning they confirmed the two bodies those of the two men. I find it ironic that women are always referred to as strippers in the news when something like this happens but these guys were labeled as "models". Still though very sad... it's not sure how they died but they were located at the bottom of a deep quarry at the back of the nightclub. Perhaps they fell in a drunken or drugged state although people with them in Montreal said they took no drugs and were not drunk when they left. Perhaps they crossed someone in the porn business and were killed and shoved over into the quarry. I guess time will tell. Quite tragic though.


Update: I went and topped up the gas in my car at lunch. I had exactly half a tank left... $41 plus change.... so $82 for a full tank. A yearago $41 would have been a full tank. It was $1.34 a litre. Reports just before lunch had prices going up to $1.47 in the East end of Montreal when I live. *Sigh*