James Lileks, as quoted by Instapundit:

Last time I checked the French weren’t helping much, either — odd. The one place in the country where their guys could read the signs, and they don’t bother to pitch in.

The Associated Press, this morning:

French humanitarian aid officials met on Thursday to examine ways of providing support for victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said. France is considering ways of mobilizing relief teams from the French Antilles in the Caribbean, ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said at a news conference.

“France expresses its readiness to bring this aid based on the needs American authorities express,” he said. French authorities were following Katrina’s aftermath “with particular attention,” he added.

Authorities set up a telephone hotline in France for people to obtain information about relatives or friends who may be missing in the hurricane-ravaged region, Simonneau said.

It was not immediately clear how many French citizens might have been in the region when the hurricane hit.

A day earlier, French President Jacques Chirac sent a message of solidarity to U.S. President George W. Bush, saying France was standing by the victims of the hurricane.

I typed “France” and “hurricane” into Google News. The AP article came up first.

A city enormously influenced by the French has just been devastated. People are still dying. Lovely that Lileks’ first reaction is to bash the French. And without checking his facts first.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 at 9:08 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.