” Nations Offer Help to Katrina Victims
By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 39 minutes ago

LONDON – Impoverished Bangladesh, where millions live on a monsoon- and flood-prone delta, pledged $1 million and offered rescuers. Thailand, recalling U.S. aid after last year’s tsunami, offered to send 60 doctors and nurses as well as rice as a “gesture from the heart.”

They are among more than 90 countries, rich and poor, proposing assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates contributing “very large cash” donations, the State Department said Tuesday…”

About donating to other causes, well there is still an argument to be made to still donating to New Orleans even though other countries may have it worse off, and it’s the same argument related to foreign aid; since many of those countries governments are so damn corrupt, they will never see the money anyway, or all the money will go to the government instead of the people, thereby increasing the corruption and power of an already corrupt government.

In other words, you still get more bang for your buck in New Orleans than some of these other third world countries.

People are dying, people are hungry, people are poor, people are uneducated and it’s not just in New Orleans but all over the world. I think what is occuring right now is that the United States is being forced to look at itself in the mirror and let me tell you, she doesn’t like what she sees. She looks haggard, tired, old, and somehow still quite vain.

However, with that said, we shouldn’t forget how incredibly unprepared we were for mother nature. It took Her to show us the have and have nots of this country and whether that’s black, white, hispanic, yellow, green, or blue–people died because they underestimated the a hurricane.

Yes, these people–majority are black–are poor and lived in poor conditions. It makes me worry about all the colonias that span throughout the entire Southwest. I brought this up to HP when we met up and he said, “Huh? What’s that?”

“Uh, people that live in third world conditions in our own country,” I said.

But I think HP’s reaction was much like many American’s reactions–they just don’t know. Maybe it’s time we do know. We gotta start from within to help outward. Perhaps this hurricane, forcing our country to look at it’s blemishes will start a landslide in our Her ego.

i thought i would share with you the following quote by james balwin, “i love america more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, i insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”