Bangladesh and Katrina...
It has to be about Katrina and New Orleans now... The dark (literally and physically) underbelly of the U.S. that was laid bare on TVs across the world... If you believe the reports, this was a tragedy whose impact could've been lessened had there been prompt action. The overwhelming majority of people left fighting for their lives were black, and we don't know whether that put a dampener on the promptness. Anyway, things are finally happening and they'll surely rebuild the area - physically at least - to its former glory or hopefully a new glory, because the former glory, it seems, was there only for a limited few. The embedded and emasculated American media may perhaps stop the self-censoring and have the guts to ask Bush some tough questions, but I doubt it. Rove will have them all wedged into battle tanks for some new goose chase (more about it later) pretty soon.
Many commentators and talking heads were commenting on how the U.S. was
made to look like Bangladesh. I can understand the comparison with Bangladesh
only as far as the similarities of the storms. Everything else is a disservice
to the U.S., Bangladesh and even India (though Bangladesh is a sovereign
nation, we're the same people. They look like us. They're Bengalis. Regardless
of all the economic hogwash being peddled, we're (ranked 127) not much
better than Bangladesh (at 139) in U.N.'s human development index. In fact,
they'll probably be better than us in the near future if they can keep
the crazy mullahs at bay. And the cyclones that hit them every year also
affect us in similar tragic ways.) The differences between the American
tragedy and the ones that befell South Asia are many. For one, there are
no superdomes in these places to put poor people in during floods for future
non-evacuation. If at all there were any, I'm sure we'd have used something,
even our flying-coffin-Migs, to drop some water and food and they wouldn't
mind if these droppings continued throughout the year even if there's no
cyclone. The poor in Bangladesh do not wear $100 sneakers, though they
might be making such sneakers for one-hundredth of that price to be sold
to the American poor. Our leaders, whether it is a mullah, military dictator
or democratically elected stooge, would have been at the site immediately
for the valuable photo-ops (what else can they do). The military would
have been helping the people and not shooting at them. In fact, BBC's Daniel
Lak writes that lessons might be learned from India and other poor places
on dealing with disasters.
Contrast it with New Orleans. Why would the richest, most advanced country
on the planet wait for five days to start a semblance of a rescue operation?
Probably there are as many or more number of helicopters in their Gulf
Coast area alone than there are bicycles in whole of Bangladesh and India.
They had a warship out at sea all set with doctors, operation theaters,
water cleaning facilities etc., but was not called into action. There're
no plausible reasons available for the rigor mortis that affected America.
The race factor is always there, but that's not something new. It'd be
foolish to think that there is no discrimination. We mustn't forget the
fact that it was only in 1964 that the U.S. gave equal rights to blacks.
That's less than a generation. A black man in his 40s was a second-class
citizen at the time of his birth. Still, the pictures of the tragedy were
an eye-opener, even for many Americans judging by their responses. The
references to Bangladesh or the Third World perhaps were not about the
tragedy per se, but more at the embarrassment of this race issue, of mainly
black people living in Third World conditions amidst all that opulence,
coming out in the open in a stark manner. If this starts to snowball against
Bush, I have a feeling that he and Rove will start a new war (a la the
movie "Wag the dog") to "bring the nation together".
My fear is that it'd be Iran's turn to get the WMD, war-on-terror treatment.
One thing is sure. The American media will roll over on command and get
embedded pronto.
News: Barbie "Momma" Bush was in a generous, compassionate mood when touring the disaster area and said, "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (chuckling slightly) is working very well for them." Good for them. They got to move to a new dome alive and got to see former presidents and wives. All the poor, black neighbourhoods in other parts of America must now be hoping for a hurricane to hit their area so that things would get better for them.
Many countries have offered aid to the U.S., which it accepted after initially refusing for various reasons. No problems there. Kuwait offered 500 million dollars (400 of that in oil) and Qatar is giving 100 million. It's all part of the Islamic generosity of helping the poor and needy. Guess how much Kuwait and Qatar offered for the Tsunami effort, where the affected countries included Muslim-majority Indonesia. Ten million (later raised to 100 million after criticisms) and 25 million dollars respectively. Probably about a weeks grocery expense for the harem. But then, Aceh didn't have a superdome either.