More on New Orleans

Our handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster compares poorly to that of Cuba, according to an article I read. According to that article, Cuba has plans to respond to hurricanes, including evacuation of residents, their animals (I hope this includes pets and not just livestock), and appliances like TVs and refrigerators (to prevent looting)! On this it may be the local and state officials' faultdts, since they must have had vehicles they could have used for evacuation. It must have been very bad for New Orleans residents to have to leave their pets behind, and to just leave them alone to fend for themselves is inhumane.

Thursday night Bush said there would be an investigation or review of the disaster response - but why was the idea of an independent (or at least Congressional) investigation of the response dropped in Congress recently? We need an independent, reasonably objective investigation to find out what went wrong (just like there should have been a better investigation of 9/11).

The Internet encourages rumors and conspiracy theorizing, but with this Administration it is hard to tell what is reasonable to believe (after all, it compulsively withholds facts, even from Congress, and has lied to the public so many times). Thursday I saw an article saying that the levee in New Orleans could have been broken by military forces who were there, about 5 of whom were shot by New Orleans police. The purpose of the flooding would then be to force out the black residents to allow corporate redevelopment. Whether this is true or not, it looks like a corporate, neoliberal-style reconstruction of the Gulf region is being planned. Unions are already under attack and a free trade-based economy is planned. This is like the situation in occupied Iraq, where the US has liberalized laws on foreign ownership of Iraqi companies and resources, given reconstruction money to foreign companies like Halliburton, instead of native (and cheaper) contractors, and even attacked Iraqi agriculture with new rules on seed saving (or maybe it was something else). Some or all of these changes are also illegal under international law, which prevents occupiers from re-writing the laws of a conquered country.

Earlier there was a controversy about what to call the people displaced by the disaster. By definition refugee fits, but at least some people are against the term. Why is that? I don't think it compares the suffering of survivors to the suffering of people in Africa (which is what one Herald-Sun letter writer said). Evacuees seems to be the preferred term now, so I'll use that.

The other big national story right now is the Roberts confirmation hearings. I've heard the hearings on NPR and not a lot sticks out as dangerous about Roberts there. But we have little information on what he thinks, since he won't comment on many issues and he says as a lawyer he would have taken whichever side he was hired to defend. I distrust Bush's motives in nominating Roberts and Bush will be able to fill two Supreme Court seats - is there a hidden plan at work to turn the Court further right or towards the Executive branch, starting with nominating Roberts? According to the radio program Democracy Now, Roberts may stand for increasing Presidential power, rather than a conservative agenda. This idea fits with the Bush Administration's secrecy and concentration of power in the Executive branch. I worry though that if Roberts is rejected Bush will not nominate a better candidate (one who won't turn the Court further right or serve the Executive branch), and maybe a worse one.