Bush wore the same blue photo-op shirt of a year ago, with sleeves rolled up to show he meant business. With his trademark nod and wink, he said he accepted full responsibility for the government's breakdown in responding to the devastation -- a breakdown which cost many additional lives. After adding that he'd learned his lesson, Bush then launched into his incoherent, all-too-familiar babble that help is on the way.

As I listened to Bush articulate (sic) his "vision" of a "bright dawn" emerging over New Orleans -- watched him peer off in the distance at the brigades of Saints that only he could see "marching home," I wondered if he gave any thought to the bodies of the lost still lying trapped in the debris so close to where he was standing. I wondered if the desperate families who remain broken and scattered throughout the country could see his lofty vision through their tears as they received notices from FEMA that their housing benefits are terminated, their utilities assistance cut off, their insurance claims denied.

In the last five years, George Bush and the greedy corporate mobsters who surround him have taught people throughout the world a lot about prosperity, character, justice -- and about racism. Those innocents who have a right to expect justice in their lives and character in their leaders hit free-market's blind-eyed and cold-shouldered wall in New Orleans. Too late, too many learned that, in George Bush's world, prosperity is for those who can afford it. In George Bush's world there is no safe haven for the poverty stricken or the dispossessed if they are Black -- especially if they are Black.

When Bush speaks, I never know if I'm laughing or crying. I keep hearing strange hyena-like barks of laughter, yet tears stream down my cheeks. Bush is big on role-playing wherever he goes, and -- disregarding the anguished cries of American citizens still pleading for help -- he said his role in New Orleans is "to encourage entrepreneurship." He's excited about his Go Zone legislation, which will give corporations and small businesses tax incentives to invest in the area. Bush said, "the people of this region are looking to corporate America to see if they're here for the long haul...New Orleans is going to rise again," he told business leaders, "and by planting your corporate flag here now and contributing to this city's rebirth, you'll gain some loyal customers when times get better..."

Yep. Plant them corporate flags, boys, 'cause the south's gonna rise again. In all its racist glory.

Strange that the general consensus seems to be FEMA stumbled and fell into the pit of its own incompetence. I hate to be a party pooper, but there's no way any government agency could be so woefully inept on every front. When you consider that martial law was declared immediately; that police, miltary, and armed contractor troops were immediately on site -- not to retrieve bodies floating in the water nor to bury those who lay dead in the streets, but to keep the hungry and thirsty victims from stealing food and water -- when you consider that from 8,000 to 10,000 residents of the St. Bernard Housing Project were immediately locked out of their homes, and FEMA immediately built a formidable iron fence around the project and padlocked it so they could not return; that all national, even worldwide, efforts to help were seamlessly blocked -- it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that FEMA's response was immediate, and thorough as well.

For example, in the Sept. 5, 2005 Daily Kos, diarist DavidNYC posted just a few of what he said were FEMA's "rank failures." Could be, but after turning away experienced firefighters, turning back WalMart supply trucks, preventing the Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel, blocking the Red Cross from delivering food to starving refugees, barring morticians from assisting with the dead, turning back a five-mile-long, 500-boat citizen flotilla which arrived to take the stranded, the injured, the ill and the frail to safety, refusing to use a Navy ship in the area with a 600-bed hospital and medical staff on board, infuriating Chicago's mayor by refusing massive aid while accepting just one truck, and ordering first responders "not to respond," I'd have to say it's possible to conclude that FEMA was up and running and Michael "Brownie" Brown did, indeed, do a heckuva job.

This is America. We don't withhold food and water from starving citizens. We don't turn our backs on human beings in this country who are pleading for help, drowning -- crying out for mercy... Or so we thought. However, if the onslaught and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina taught us nothing else, it is that the middle and lower segments of our society are little more than collateral damage when the destruction of their lives and property serves a political agenda...

The glee with which pundits, media propagandists and politicians pounced on the opportunity offered by the Katrina disaster to rid the city of its poverty population, especially those who owned homes on valuable real estate, is sickening. Baton Rouge Republican Rep. Richard Baker chortled to lobbyists about the more than 1,700 people killed and hundreds of thousands of others displaced, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert agreed. With breathtaking indifference to the plight of property owners and displaced families, Hastert said, "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed."

It is obvious that the "bright dawn" Bush sees rising over the Big Easy is, in reality, a "white dawn" -- a smaller, whiter city with fewer poor folks. In their brilliant synopsis of the sheer opportunistic evil permeating New Orleans reconstruction, Adolph Reed and Stephen Steinberg write in the Black Commentator, "...the Housing Authority of New Orleans has shut down its public-housing operations, and informed landlords of people assisted by federal rent vouchers that government rent subsidies for impacted units have been suspended indefinitely."

The authors point out the obvious -- "If public housing and affordable housing in New Orleans are not rebuilt, if rent subsidies are withheld, then what 'choice' do people have but to relocate elsewhere? The certain result will be 'a smaller and stronger New Orleans,' depleted of its poverty population."

Thus, if the government has anything to do with it, those airlifted and taken by bus from the area, families split, parents separated from their children, will relocate elsewhere -- permanently. They are no longer welcome in a city where not Saints, but private corporations, developers and Bush's beloved "entrepreneurs" are marching in...

At least one person was a bit uneasy about the prospect of so many evacuees relocating in her state, even if they were better off. Former first lady Barbara Bush, the current president's mother, looked at the black sea of humanity packed into the relentless heat of the Houston Astrodome, and commented, "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) - this is working very well for them."

Yes. Being crammed into an arena in unfamiliar surroundings with no food, water or possessions is just another ho-hum day in the life of the poor, and always good for a chuckle, isn't it? Is there anything about the demons and trolls who run this country that is not totally incomprehensible, raging mad -- desperately absurd? Not a single one appears to possess the character -- the ethical "gravity" it would take to bring them down to reality from their fantastical delusions.

Which brings us back to FEMA. Bush said FEMA had learned its lesson and would be "ready" for the next disaster. No doubt. The next time Bush declares martial law, Halliburton's KBR should have the detention facilities, for which it received a $385 million contract in January, ready and waiting. According to a KBR release, the camps call for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a national disaster." Under emergency plans already in existence, the power exists to suspend the Constitution and turn over the reins of government to FEMA. State and local governments will be under military control.

Is there hope for American citizens like those in New Orleans whose lives have been, continue to be, destroyed by cruel indifference? Yes, of course, but it will take citizens like you and me to stand up for what we know is right, to repair our shredded Constitution, and breathe new life into our comatose Bill of Rights.

We were warned every step of the way. We have been insulted and deceived, our courts dismantled, our Congress neutered, our children murdered in an illegal, genocidal war, our elections stolen, our tax dollars wasted. Today, we are stranded on our own rooftops, pleading for a November 2006 rescue.

Well, help is not on the way. It is up to us. We must check the voting records of every single Congressperson and of every single Senator -- Republican and Democrat. Those who violated their oath to protect the U.S. Constitution from enemies within must be shown no mercy. They are devoid of character and of virtue. In concert with the man in the blue photo-op shirt with the sleeves rolled up, they maliciously turn the other way while sending American citizens to their deaths. They are disloyal -- treasonous. Together, they have disgraced this great nation. They must go.

Only then will the wounds inflicted from New York to New Orleans to Iraq begin to heal.

Worse, the gaps in lifespan have persisted over 20 years, despite efforts to tackle them, concluded Dr. Christopher Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health.

"That's pretty devastating," said Murray, who published the exhaustive analysis in the online science journal PLoS Medicine. "Whatever it is that we're doing isn't working. That's a wakeup call."

Leading the nation in longevity are Asian-American women who live in Bergen County, New Jersey, outside New York City, and typically reach their 91st birthdays, concluded Murray's county-by-county analysis.

On the opposite extreme are American Indian men in swaths of South Dakota, who die around 58.

Millions of the worst-off Americans have life expectancies typical of developing countries, lamented Murray. The Asian-American women can expect to live 13 years longer than low-income black women in the rural South. That is like comparing women in wealthy Japan to those in poverty-ridden Nicaragua.

Compare those longest-living women to inner-city black men, and the life-expectancy gap is 21 years. That is similar to the life-expectancy gap between Iceland and Uzbekistan.

Health disparities are widely considered an issue of minorities and the poor being unable to find or afford good medical care. But Murray's government-funded study shows the problem is far more complex, and that geography plays a crucial role.

"Although we share in the U.S. a reasonably common culture ... there's still a lot of variation in how people live their lives," he explained.

The longest-living whites were not the relatively wealthy, which Murray calls "Middle America." They are edged out, by a year, by low-income residents of the rural Northern Plains states in the Midwest, where the men tend to reach age 76 and the women 82.

Yet low-income whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley in the South die four years sooner than their Northern neighbors.

"If it's your family involved, these are not small differences in lifespan," Murray said. "Yet that sense of alarm isn't there in the public."

"If I were living in parts of the country with those sorts of life expectancies, I would want ... to be asking my local officials or state officials or my congressman, 'Why is this?'"

This more precise measure of health disparities will enable federal officials to better target efforts to battle inequalities, said Dr. Wayne Giles of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which helped fund Murray's work.

The CDC has some county-targeted programs - like one that has cut in half diabetes-caused amputations among black men in Charleston, South Carolina, since 1999, largely by encouraging physical activity - and the new study argues for more, Giles said.

"It's not just telling people to be active or not to smoke," he said. "We need to create the environment which assists people in achieving a healthy lifestyle."

Murray analyzed mortality data between 1982 and 2001 by county, race, gender and income. He found some distinct groupings that he named the "eight Americas:"

_Asian-Americans, average per capita income of $21,566 (€16,964), have a life expectancy of 84.9 years.

_Northland low-income rural whites, $17,758 (€13,968), 79 years.

_Middle America (mostly white), $24,640 (€19,382), 77.9 years.

_Low-income whites in Appalachia, Mississippi Valley, $16,390 (€12,892), 75 years.

_Western American Indians, $10,029 (€7,889), 72.7 years.

_Black Middle America, $15,412 (€12,123), 72.9 years.

_Southern low-income rural blacks, $10,463 (€8,230), 71.2 years.

_High-risk urban blacks, $14,800 (€11,642), 71.1 years.

Longevity disparities were most pronounced in young and middle-aged adults. A 15-year-old urban black young man was 3.8 times as likely to die before the age of 60 as an Asian-American, for example.

That is key, Murray said, because this age group is left out of many government health programs that focus largely on children and the elderly.

Moreover, the longevity gaps have stayed about the same for 20 years despite increasing national efforts to eliminate obvious racial and ethnic health disparities, he found.

Murray was surprised to find that lack of health insurance explained only a small portion of those gaps. Instead, differences in alcohol and tobacco use, blood pressure, cholesterol and obesity seemed to drive death rates.

Most important, he said, will be pinpointing geographically defined factors - such as shared ancestry, dietary customs, local industry, what regions are more or less prone to physical activity - that in turn influence those health risks.

For example, scientists have long thought that the Asian longevity advantage would disappear once immigrant families adopted higher-fat Western diets. Murray's study is the first to closely examine second-generation Asian-Americans, and found their advantage persists.

Bolton made the remarks in response to a question after addressing a symposium on the future of the United Nations sponsored by the Hudson Institute.

"Is good management and lack of corruption too much to ask for?" he asked, saying the world body was "severely challenged from a management and accountability point of view."

Washington, which now pays about a quarter of the UN budget, had set a goal of "complete concentration on the reform process" through the end of 2006, said the ambassador.

"So I think what we need to do is wait until we reach the end of the year and then make an evaluation. And I think our determination and our objectives are very clear to all of the other UN members, and I think they can calculate the stakes if reform does not succeed," he added.

In naming Bolton as his UN ambassador last year, U.S. President George W. Bush asked him to lead a major overhaul of the United Nations following findings of widespread mismanagement and corruption in the oil-for-food program for Iraq.

The oil-for-food operation, which began in December 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of UN sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, imposed after Saddam Hussein's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The Czech Republic's new right wing Civic Democrat government, which finally took office on September 4 after three months of political wrangling in the wake of June elections, wholeheartedly backs the US scheme. Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has already declared in a television interview that he is "absolutely in favour" of Czech participation.

His foreign minister Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech ambassador to Washington, has made similarly upbeat noises. Almost immediately after taking office he said the missile shield would "reinforce Euro-Atlantic links" and boost his country's security at a time when "certain threats from Iran cannot be underestimated."

But the country's second biggest party, the Social Democrats, along with the Communists are resolutely opposed to the plan.

And if the latest opinion polls are to be believed, most Czech citizens seem to back the left. A recent poll by the Stem organisation showed that 51 percent of the population found the project "unacceptable" and 61 percent thought it should be put to a referendum.

The missile issue has become the country's hottest post-election talking point, with politicians of all colours making daily comments on the question.

Outgoing Social Democrat premier, Jiri Paroubek, has voice his opposition to the project in line with an internal poll of party members.

The Communist Party, which called for an exit from NATO's military structures ahead of the elections, has launched a petition against the US plan, with the party claiming more than 15,000 signatures. The Communists this week also presented a constitutional proposal for a national referendum on the issue.

But despite the findings of the opinion polls, few Czechs have actively taken part in the small number of pacifist or anti-American demonstrations that have been organised in opposition to the missile scheme.

Nevertheless, many people here see any type of US installation as a form of foreign military occupation, sparking painful memories of the seven-year German occupation of the country before and during World War II and the later Soviet presence, according to the local press.

Supporters of the project have, for their part, called into question the validity of the latest opinion polls and complain that people have been misinformed about the missile shield. They point to one Internet site, for example, which claimed the system would disturb television reception and air traffic control. In a bid to scotch such rumours, the Czech foreign ministry this week attempted to stimulate a public discussion about the plans by holding a conference entitled "Why the Czech Republic should take part in the MD (missile defence) project."

On the same day, the US embassy in Prague launched an Internet site aimed at educating Czechs about the project. The site points out that the missile shield "can integrate with emerging NATO concepts for a missile defence system," aimed at protecting Europe and not threatening Russia, which has attacked the plans.

Washington says it is waiting for a "positive signal" from Prague before making a formal request, but it is still carrying on parallel negotiations with Poland.

Unfortunately for the Americans, public opinion in Poland does not seem any more keen on the scheme.

The United States is likely to take a final decision about the location of the missile shield before the end of the year, perhaps after a NATO summit in Riga scheduled for November 28 and 29, according to US diplomatic sources here.

But even if it does choose the Czech option, the final signing of an agreement would require clearance from the lower house of parliament. That is something which in the current political context, with left and right wing factions each having 100 seats, looks unlikely.

With opinions so deeply divided over the issue, Topolanek's Civic Democrat government could just find itself remembered as one of the most short-lived administrations in the Czech Republic's short history.