The Katrina Aftermath: Could It Happen Here?
Looking at the events after Cyclone Katrina, and the way the government looks to the US for ideological inspiration, it's a fair question.
The way the US has responded to the disaster has drawn attention to the type of society that the US has become. It begs the question whether we are headed down the same path.
Will the enactment of US style labour laws, and the cuts in welfare that are sure to follow, create the large social underclass so evident in New Orleans?
Will the cost of the government's obsession to participate in US foreign adventures, while cutting other government expenditure to allow the provision of tax cuts, cause a lack of planning against the inevitable, and stymie our response when the inevitable happens?
Will our government become so bankrupt that it will "never, ever ask for a shared sacrifice?"
And lastly, will this event will be a wake up call for the conservative forces who think our social, political and economic structures should uncritically emulate the US?
To the last question ... I'd like to think so, but I'm not holding my breath.
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I hear this morning that President Bush has decreed that the displaced persons musn't be referred to as Refugees becuse this implies they are illegals. Good grief. What semantics!!
Well having recently talked to a friend who had just finished her first 12 hour shift as a volunteer at the Red Cross centre in Utah - they ARE refugees. No idea where they are, hating it and having to be encouraged to use body lotion and chapsticks because their skin isn't used to dry desert air. They've lost their homes and families and will probably never regain the communities they lived amongst. The lives they knew have been destroyed. What isn't refugee about that.
But can't you just hear Mssrs Howard and Ruddock doing the same.....
Sue, this event, among other things, has shown the world just how large and deprived the US underclass is.
With any luck, it just might be the beginning of the end of the neo-cons in Washington.
Then again, I've previously thougth that about other issues.