Reviews, Reflections, Recollections

Just a blog filled with my usual irreverent observations about life and all that.

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

enjoys reading and is perpetually trying to find space for all of the books he owns in his room. He also enjoys films, and in particular, going to the cinema. Although a self-confessed trivia buff, reports that he is an insufferable know-it-all are completely unfounded. He enjoys a nice glass of tipple now and then, be it a pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single malt whisky.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

The Aftermath of Katrina

America has been stunned by the effects of hurricane Katrina, but perhaps not in the way in which they imagined. The effects in human cost were great and the sight of one of the great southern cities all but submerged in a deluge of water has been sobering and stunning. But surely what shocked people more were the reports of looting in the streets, of strong-arm police tactics that included the shooting of at least two people who attempted to leave the packed stadium where the majority of New Orleaners had sought refuge. It is the sight of bloated corpses washed down overflowing streets, of children nearly starving because they had no food and had not received any form of aid.

Nicholas Kristoff of the NY times has got it spot-on when he says that Katrina underlies America's Larger Shame as he puts it: Hurricane Katrina also underscores a much larger problem: the growing number of Americans trapped in a never-ending cyclone of poverty. He rightly criticizes the Bush administration for neglecting America's poor, and it seems ironical to me that a man who trumpets a 'no child left behind' policy now finds himself with more than 1.1 million more people living in poverty since 2003. Mr Kristoff cites a whole series of statistics, several aimed to shock on purpose, such as the fact that Washington D.C has a higher infant mortality rate that many areas in the Indian state of Kerala, but his article is a sobering reminder of an enormous problem that America faces. What has got to do with Katrina? Kristoff provides another illuminating example:

One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.
"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."
The reasons for this are complex and partly cultural, but one reason is that Japan has tried hard to stitch all Japanese together into the nation's social fabric. In contrast, the U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.


Indeed, the Bush administration has focused on giving tax cuts to the richest 5% of the population, while America's medicaid and medicare systems stand in urgent need of reform and while the plight of America's urban poor - such as the poor people of New Orleans - worsens. In this he does seem to be turning America into a country of have and have nots, of the rich and successful and their progeny to those born into poverty. In this, he is forgetting the maxim of the great British essayist Samuel Johnson who said that the "truest test of a society is in the way in which it treats its poorest members". While Ronald Reagen, Bush's famous Republican predecessor was famous for remarking that "We have fought a war on poverty and poverty has won" but at least he was attempting to do battle: the implications of Bush's policies are that he couldn't care less.

Another interesting aspect in the aftermath of Katerina is the offering of aid to America from many foreign countries, in particular China and India. While I am greatly encouraged by this show of support, however nominal, it raises questions on American policies on foreign aid to begin with, another contentious issue. America has long been criticized, and rightly so, for their miserliness in terms of foreign aid. While the average Norwegian gives about $300 in aid, America's figure stands at about $20, which is appaling and well below the weighted world average of around $50. Leaving aside the arguments about the efficacy of foreign aid, it is still something that surely needs to be addressed. America stands at the forefront of the battle to attain the UN Millennium Goals to halve poverty, and it is only with a lasting contribution from America that signficant headway can be made into achieving these. In the wake of Katrina, the world has responded to America's plight. It will be interesting to see if the favour is returned in kind.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

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08 September, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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08 September, 2005  
Blogger ade said...

you have weird people randomly trying to sell things to you... hmmm... spammers are AWFUL!

08 September, 2005  

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