9-02-05, 9:06 am
From Morning Star
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.
The estimation that the death toll may rise to thousands emphasises yet again the power of the natural elements to destroy.
And yet there remains a lingering suspicion that Washington's preoccupations and obsessions have played a part in both creating the unstable weather conditions and ensuring that the evacuation and rescue operations were tardy and inadequate.
Despite constant warnings from meteorologists and other scientists about the potentially catastrophic effects on weather conditions of global warming brought on by greenhouse gases, the Bush administration refuses to take the matter seriously. George W Bush's grinning and almost light-hearted response to the disaster that hit the Gulf of Mexico coast was described by the New York Times as 'one of the worst speeches of his life.'
This wasn't by dint of any perceived lack of eloquence but because he appeared utterly detached from the scale of devastation visited upon some of his country's poorest and most remote communities.
The region's poorest people were effectively abandoned to their fate in the face of a category four hurricane that unleashed 30-foot-high waves on unprotected communities.
Before Katrina hit land, federal and state officials ordered citizens to flee, but how were they supposed to do so?
The levees or earthworks that surround New Orleans and which are supposed to protect the below-sea-level city are designed only to withstand category three hurricanes.
The levees were breached and the city was swamped, while up to 40 per cent of National Guard personnel who would normally tackle natural disasters have been sent to Iraq to service the occupation there.
As inadequate as the flood defences have been, Congress has recently debated cutting the area's flood protection budget.
The American Dream portrays every US family as having their own transport. Reality is different, with 25 per cent of those affected being too poor to afford a car.
Compare the everyone-for-themselves attitude of the US government with the response of Cuba to the ever-present threat of hurricanes and tidal waves.
There are no bland calls to flee. The authorities provide adequate transport and mobilise all facilities to minimise loss of life, ensuring shelter, food and water.
The panicky response in steaming New Orleans was to dump 20,000 people in the Superdome sports stadium, with inadequate food, water and bedding, overflowing toilets and no showers in conditions that defy description.
Instead of confronting this nightmare of heat, hunger and stench, the authorities are more worried about 'looting' by those left without the basic conditions of life.
The real looters are the oil companies that are pushing up the price of petrol to maximise profits from other people's misery, but capitalism's rampant greed will be absolved, allowing media hysteria to be directed at those fending as best they can.
