“I’m shocked,” my wife told me many times this week, reflecting on the human calamity in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast states from the fury of Hurricane Katrina. “Where was the disaster planning to help those poor people?”

The Chinese government has decided to offer disaster relief up to 5 million US dollars along with emergency supplies to the people in the the United States victimized by Hurricane Katrina, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said here Saturday

NOBODY could have imagined on September 2, 1945, that that slight-built man with the graying beard, known by various names, among them Ho Chi Minh – that man who remains inseparably linked with the history of the world – would become one of the most exceptional figures of Asia in the 20th century.

The eminent biologisgt J.B.S. Haldane once said, famously, that "the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

EACH time that US President George W Bush opens his mouth on the situation in New Orleans, he displays his ignorance and his inability to rise above narrow-minded politicking.

"I hate the way they portray us," said hip-hop star Kanye West Friday evening on a NBC telethon to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina. "They show a white family and they say they are looking for food. They show a Black family and say we’re looters."

Hurricane Katrina has inflicted an immense and unspeakable tragedy on the people of the Gulf Coast. The situation grows worse by the hour. The Mayor of New Orleans estimates that thousands have died and as many as 100,000 may still be trapped in the flooded city. Without food or drinkable water, time is running out for these men, women and children.

There is nothing "unnatural" about the disaster of New Orleans. When politicians smirk at global warming, when developers look at our wetlands and dream of mini malls, when billions are flushed in the name of war and tax-cuts, when issues of poverty and racism don’t even register in Presidential debates, all it takes is wind, albeit 145 mph wind, to expose a sturdy super power as a house of cards.

The effects of Katrina are tragic, causing death, the disruption of lives, and the loss of property on an unimaginable scale. Although Katrina was a natural catastrophe, its effects were largely avoidable and parallel another tragedy unfolding daily near another Gulf, 7000 miles away.

Why is President Bush more concerned with the state of marriage than the state of Louisiana? That’s what the New Orleans City Business paper asked in early February upon learning that Bush’s budget proposal recommended slashing $34 million from the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The trillion dollar question has long been: How do we get the major media outlets in this country to notice that the White House is run by oil barons who launch illegal wars based on lies, defund everything else, and destroy the environment at every opportunity – and that this is a single, connected story?

The Cuban Parliament expressed on Thursday deep sorrow and solidarity with victims of hurricane Katrina in the United States. The storm severely hit the city of New Orleans, that is in total chaos and lawlessness on Friday, as well as other towns and localities of the states of Louissiana and Mississippi. The dead are counted by the hundreds.

This Labor Day marks yet another year of decline in the living standards of U.S. workers. The downward trend in real wages has continued for so long that workers no longer expect an annual wage increase. And the assault on benefits is now so entrenched that many workers don’t receive or expect to receive basic benefits.

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This immortal statement appeared in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, it means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live and to be happy and free.

TELEVISION coverage of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the southern US states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi has brought home to millions of people the scale of suffering there.

CITGO Petroleum Corporation has pledged a $1 million donation towards Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, the company’s President and CEO Félix Rodríguez announced yesterday through a press release.

When the White House says, "This isn’t a time for politics," it usually means they are trying to deflect negative publicity. And those were White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s exact words after criticism aimed at federally-managed relief services and the failure to round up enough National Guard personnel in the hardest hit states of Louisiana and Mississippi following hurricane Katrina.

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

The single biggest reason that the peace movement is not larger and more aggressive is that people with one foot in it are focused on trying to be respectable in the eyes of the corporate media, for their own sake and – in their misguided view – for the sake of the movement.

Two years ago this month, a Blackout plunged 50 million people in Northeastern U.S. and the Canadian province of Ontario into total darkness for more than a day, wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Now, it’s the devastation in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi wrought by Hurricane Katrina that has killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.