The mess created by Katrina could be the worst environmental catastrophe since the first Gulf War or Chernobyl. Of course Katrina may have been stronger because of global warming which is also an obvious environmental catastrophe. Hurricane Katrina may prove to be only setting the stage for bigger storms to come.
In regards to the political aspects of this disaster... Politicians from both parties and at all levels of government have failed the people of New Orleans. The poor people without resources should have been bused out on the governments dime and the evacuations centers should have been stocked with food and water (that's not such a radical idea is it?). After the storm hit and the levee broke looting should have been completely overlooked because billions were going to be lost anyway and saving lives should have been made the priority -- the governor however ordered the opposite values to be upheld. Despicable.
FEMA head Brown flippantly wrote off many of the abondoned people by suggesting that they just should have heeded the evacuation order. President Bush later complimented him (and he'll probably even get some sort of commendation). For his part, before going to the diaster area, Bush went ahead to a fund raiser where he played guitar and spoke of other things as New Orleans drowned. Respect him, he is your fearless leader (evil chicken-hawk moron). Now he is going to investigate his own mishandling of this situation... I wonder if he'll discover his own ineptitude.
For her part, in the wake of this disaster, Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice went shopping and then to the Monty Python Play "Spamalot" where she was booed afterwards. Her role may serve to quell the idea that race played a factor in the neglect of the victims in NOLA, and this may hold some truth, but just because this callous bitch is black doesn't mean she can't dislike black people.
And if you want to question the idea of institutional racism in Amerika you might want to read a history book or look at the prison-industrial complex (or maybe the social security safety net which many black people pay into but never get old enough to collect) or maybe you should examine the fact that black men are 63 percent less likely than white men to get heart bypass surgery even though they have a higher rate of cardivascular disease.
Back to the subject of NOLA... I wish they would have waited to pump out the toxic water into Lake Ponchartrain until they could have cleansed it at least a little bit. Frankly, I think that New Orleans should have been left as a flooded reminder of man's arrogant attitude towards nature. If they had to, they could rebuild a New New Orleans north of Ponchartrain. Since they aren't... they run the risk of this happening all over again. And what happens if al Queada blows a hole in the levee a few years down the line? As culturally and historically significant as New Orleans has been, it was and will be a disaster waiting to happen.
It's hard to see how anything good will come out of this disaster, but a disaster is what change may have been waiting for. We need a revolution at all levels in this country -- in terms of spirit, values, and ways of life in general. Let's hope Katrina proves to be the impetus for that revolution so that all of those abandoned people will not have died for nothing.
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