Sabemos realmente o que se passa em Nova Orleães?


[Tradução livre: "Se você fosse rico teria perdido muito mais"]

Michael Moore, já o conhecemos da realização de filmes como "Bowling for Columbine" e "Fahrenheit 9/11", é um crítico assumido da administração do senhor George Bush.

Pois bem, dele circula na internet um e-mail datado de 14 de Setembro e que nos parece importante para ir além daquilo que as televisões mostram dos efeitos do Katrina nas gentes de Nova Orleães e que aqui reproduzimos em versão resumida que vai ao essencial da questão:

Last week I closed my New York production office and sent my staff down to New Orleans to set up our own relief effort. I asked all of you to help me by sending food, materials and cash to the emergency relief center we helped set up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain with the Veterans for Peace. We did this when the government was doing nothing and the Red Cross was still trying to get it together. Every day, every minute was critical. People were dying, poor people, black people, left like so much trash in the street. I wanted to find a way to get aid in there immediately.

I hooked up with the Vietnam veterans and Iraqi war vets (Veterans for Peace) who were organizing a guerilla, grass-roots relief effort. They were the same group that had set up Cindy Sheehan's camp in Crawford and now they had moved Camp Casey to Louisiana.

I have good news and horrible news to report. First, your response to my appeal letter was overwhelming. Within a few days, a half-million dollars was sent in through my website to fund our relief effort. This money was immediately used to buy generators, food, water, a mobile medical van, tents, satellite phones, etc.

(...)

A number of you decided to just get in your cars and drive to our camp to volunteer to help. We now have had 150 volunteers here doing the work that needs to be done. Last night they unloaded twenty tons of food from a tractor trailer in under two hours. Each day more volunteers arrive. Everyone is sleeping on the ground or in tents. It is a remarkable sight. Thank you, all of you, for responding. I will never forget this outpouring of generosity to those forgotten by our own government.

My staff and the vets spend their 18-hour days delivering food and water throughout the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. What they have seen is appalling. I have asked them to post their daily diaries on my website (www.michaelmoore.com) along with accompanying photos and video so you can learn what is really going on. What the media is showing you is NOT the whole story. It is much, much worse and there is still little being done to bring help to those who need it.

Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA [o equivalente à nossa Protecção Civil] haven't visited in over a week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to report the spin [manipulação da informação] and PR [Relações Públicas] put out by the White House, the happy news that often isn't true ("Everyone gets 2,000 dollars!").

The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross. It's been over two weeks since the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point, would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to get real help down there?

(...)

Thanks again for funding and supporting our relief efforts. It has been a bright spot in this otherwise shameful month.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Já agora, não podemos deixar de recomendar o visionamento destas obras de Michael Moore, essenciais para perceber o que são hoje os EUA e o regime de George W. Bush:





É claro que o que os EUA são hoje é o reflexo do que foram no passado, pelo que estes filmes nos permitem igualmente perceber o quão dura foi a batalha travada pelos negros norte-americanos para pôr fim à segregação racial e ganhar direito a um lugar ao Sol na cultura, com o jazz e os blues.

[Fonte da ilustração: Blog Jumento]