Hi,

Has anyone seen the Trouble the Water documentary about hurricane katrina?

I watched it yesterday as it was on More4 here.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. A country like America just leaving their people to die and fend for themselves. The government should be ashamed of themselves.

It may as well have been filmed in some third world country! It was shocking, people being left with no food or water for days, people died in hospital as all the staff fled and just left the patients there. The list goes on.......

I just can't understand why people want to live there. I was disgusted by what I saw.

Was that the spike lee one? That was on TVO recently. It was astonishing how badly the authorities responded. Quite an eye opener, although Im sure there are other alternate view points too.

No I don't think so. I think that was called 'When the levees broke'

This is it http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1149405/

It won an oscar this year too! So tragic though

Well I guess nobody saw it. Look out for it though. It really is an insight!

There is no doubt it was a tragic, totally mishandled situation and it afterwards it seemed to go from bad to worse. It must, however, be kept in perspective. In some respects it can be compared to the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. "They" knew it could happen but no amount of preparation prepared them for what actually did happen. The USA, for the most part, thought its defenses against the hurricane were sufficient but the strength of the storm was unprecedented. The aftermath was the real tragedy. Despite the USA's immense resources it went from one fiasco to another in quick time. The only good things, perhaps, to come out of the situation was the recognition that it had to make great improvements to its response time, improve physical deterrents to the flooding and better train the people responsible for such defenses.

That's Merca for you. You can either believe the image (spin) or dig deeper and you'll find all kinds of similar situations.

Be carefull though cos you'll be labelled as anti-american just like Michael Moore.

There is plenty of blame to go around with regards Katrina in Louisiana (not sure about local government in Mississippi). You can start with the Mayor of New Orleans, then the Governor of Louisiana and take it from there. (And you have to start with those two offices by law I believe before any federal government request for aid with evacuation etc. etc. is made) They were both useless and didn't even use the resources they already had, for example, the hundreds of school buses that could have been used to evacuate people. If that had been done then maybe it wouldn't have been quite the disaster it ended up being. We'll never know. Then there is the welfare mentality of quite a few of its citizens. I am sorry to say they just waited for someone to come and get them instead of trying to help themselves and get the hell out of there while there was still time. Obviously that was not possible for many people. There were mistakes made by all from the bottom up and once the ball started rolling it was too late to catch it and in the end it was total chaos. It was a sad, disgusting, tragic disaster and hopefully it will never happen again.

Having said that, the USA, government and people, is one of the most generous nations in the world and will help anyone in similar situations in their time of need. It is a good place to live.

I personally don't think America is a great place to live.

Billions of dollars have still not been released which were meant to help the people of LA and the levees have only been half heartedly repaired.

People waited for 4 days with no food or water and no one came by. At least when we have had floods here the coast gaurds are out on their boats rescuing people from their homes.

Another good example is 9-11. The government had intellegence that something was going to happen but failed to do anything about it.

I think America is a good place to live if you are wealthy but if you are living on the poverty line it's a different story.

I think America is a good place to live if you are wealthy but if you are living on the poverty line it's a different story.

I apologise for telling you that you know not of what you speak. Have you ever been to the USA? You could have made the same statement about UK, Canada, Oz, NZ etc, etc, etc. The USA probably has a larger percentage of middle-class population than anywhere else. There is a huge gap between poverty and wealthy.

I have been to the USA over 12 times in the last 8 years. I have seen some really rough places a lot worse than the UK.

In the UK people are paid to sit on their arses all day and not work. I know people who do this and they are living very comfortable lives. It makes me sick. In the US there is not so much help from the government which is good in some respects but not when you are close to losing your life.

Living on the poverty line anywhere is dreadful but you do not have to be wealthy to have a good life in the US.

What I am saying is that there shouldn't even be a poverty line in America!! Anyway, I am entitled to my opinion and you are entitled to yours.

Naturally I agree as to your opinion but I do believe saying there should be no poverty in the US is unrealistic. That would be ideal of course but we do not live in an ideal world and there will always be poverty unfortunately, today more than ever. Its a sad fact of life.

Just dont get ill.