Ted Maul

OK, I think you summed it up by starting your reply with 'ignoring the tragic loss of life', secondly I don't see any septics banging on about 9/11 repeatedly and I work with lots of Americans, and thirdly I find the glee in condemning / **** taking of the US as they try to get through a tragedy really a summation of the generally poor attitude of this forum..

kammy

A three minute silence for 9/11........... **** THAT. What about a silence for the millions of live reunied through-out the Eastern world from blanket bombing as an attempt to kill one so called person who is yet to be found/killed.

Bollox I say, if I drank I would get hammered in those free mins during my day at work.

Kam

jzr

i do feel very sorry for the people of new orleans as they have lost everything they have worked for all there live's. If the money went straight to them then i would give to the fund. Its not there fault bush is a t w a t we have blair who is nothing but a lick *** to bush. The way i see it is if bush spent $$$$$$$$$$ on war his dad failed to finish he can spend it on his own country

Ted Maul

you could spend the 3 minutes thinking about the people you just mentioned...

Markus

Are you talking about Katrina or 9/11 when you mention the getting through a tragedy?

If it's 9/11, then it's a fair while ago now and I think they should buck up and get on with life instead of still moping around about it.

If it's Katrina, then you misread what I said, the cheer is for the 9/11 thing not for Katrina.

turboman786

America would have o hold a lifetimes silence for all the people IT has kileld throughout the world...worlds gretest country....humbled a little.

kammy

"you could spend the 3 minutes thinking about the people you just mentioned..."

You should think about the millions of lives ALSO interupted in the Western world who sent troops to Iraq etc.

I must emphasise I am not anti-American, far from it. I really feel for the lives lost in 9/11 etc but what followed was just out-right sickening. Then to ask for world donations (back on topic) is taking the pi$$. If the war never happened; the UK with London in particular would be a far more peaceful and equal place to visit.

Finally bringing the 9/11 situation directly into the medias' eye albeit it will never leave, is letting the bastarts who did it win.

All the best,
kam

hotsam

Those are the jobs Mexicans do...not blacks. If you're going to stereotype, at least do some research first.

rr_ww

[QUOTE=kammy If the war never happened; the UK with London in particular would be a far more peaceful and equal place to visit.
[/QUOTE]

Ah of course, thats why we had a terrorist attack. Nothing to do with Muslim extremists perverting the Koran for their own ends.

Dont fall into the trap of believing the rhetoric. They've always hated the West. And until all the ME's are Dead nothing we do will change their view. After the Tsunami there were thousands of dead Muslims, but the extremists never acknowledged the Western worlds help in those cases. Just ignored it.

Brendan Hughes

Guardian view (paste as link is dodgy):

To give or not to give

After the tsunami, the only dilemma most Britons faced about their response was how much they should give. After Hurricane Katrina, many are asking whether they should give anything at all.

It's not hard to see why. "Charity is cold in the multitude of possessions," wrote the poet Christopher Smart; words that are even more true when that multitude belongs to those pleading for help. Charity is about the better off helping the worst off, not vice versa, and America is surely rich enough to look after itself.

But the problem is that the biggest victim of Katrina is not an abstract entity called the USA, but a generally poor, uninsured, marginalised sector of its population. Their country is rich, but they are not. "The greater the wealth, the thicker will be the dirt," said the economist JK Galbraith, and New Orleans is one of the dirtiest corners of the American economic machine. To deny the need of its people is like saying that because the lord of the manor's estate is thriving, his underpaid labourers must be doing all right too.

Some will protest that the US created its underclass and so should take responsibility for sorting out the mess that results when it suffers a catastrophe. You could equally say that many African famines have been caused by incompetent and corrupt governments, so we shouldn't clear up after them either. Most people who read this newspaper would find that line of reasoning abhorrent, yet when it's applied to poor black Americans, it suddenly seems far more seductive.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that there's a little bit of schadenfraude in all of this. We don't want to plug the gaping hole created by inegalitarian American social policy because we want to expose it for what it is, and shatter America's self-image as the most fair and free country in the world. All those years of Yankee sneering at the European social model have given us a point to prove.

If an appeal were launched that was targeted specifically at rebuilding the lives of poor Americans let down by their government, we might be quicker to open our wallets. Giving to that would not only help those who really don't have the resources to help themselves, it would also shame the US government by showing an American underclass relying on foreign charity. I'd kick-start such an appeal with my fee for this piece. Any takers?
Julian Baggini

davegtt

What rubbish, so because its the USAs council estate (so to speak) we should all chip in, but if it was the posh end of town, i.e. New York or LA we'd leave the US too it? its still part of the US and THEY (the country as a whole) can easily afford to get everything back ontrack, just a shame they dont have the brains too do it.