ROLE OF US GOVT. IN KATRINA DISASTER

Small-minded government

Last week's debacle in New Orleans highlights failings not just in the Bush administration, but in how the United States chooses to govern itself.

The term 'natural disaster' doesn't really do justice to the scenes that unfolded in the southern United States last week. For a start, the main cause of death in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will have been drowning as a result of the flooding in New Orleans that sprang from a widely anticipated failure of the city's flood defences. There is an overwhelming sense that the human calamity that befell the city was avoidable and represents a failure of the US government to protect its most vulnerable citizens.

Much of the blame for the painfully slow reaction to the hurricane has fallen on President George W. Bush, and for good reason. His belated and uninspiring personal response to the crisis has invited widespread criticism. The Department of Homeland Security, the newly created government department that fumbled the early rescue efforts, is viewed as Bush's creation and is ineptly staffed by the president's appointees.

Yet as criticism rains down on the administration, it should be pointed out that several contributory factors that led up to this fiasco preceded Bush's arrival in the White House. These include rampant poverty among African-Americans in New Orleans and other US cities; a systematic failure to build public infrastructure commensurate with America's vast wealth; the habitual creation of dysfunctional government agencies by congressional fiat; and the failure of scientists to successfully convey their concerns to policy-makers.

Previous US flood disasters — notably in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889 and in the New Orleans area in 1927 — prompted major political upheaval. It is not inconceivable that Katrina will force America's leaders to confront poverty and support public investment in infrastructure. But short of such far-reaching change, the disaster should lead to an immediate re-examination of how the federal government is organized, and how it responds to scientific advice.

The Department of Homeland Security was originally conceived in Congress as a response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. After initially opposing the idea, Bush co-opted it, removed its most potent aspect (the incorporation of the intelligence agencies) and implemented what was basically an amalgamation of existing government departments, including the once-admired Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

According to many observers, the reorganization has weakened FEMA and focused its attention on such scenarios as bioterror attacks. The public face presented by FEMA has been diminished, and the agency seems to have retreated from its traditional position at the forefront of disaster response. This weakening has left city and state governments in Mississippi and Louisiana bereft of leadership from the federal government at their moment of greatest need. The lesson is that sweeping reorganizations of government agencies in response to particular crises can have severe adverse consequences.

Knowledge of the risk of a storm-induced flood in New Orleans has been widespread in the scientific community for years, and researchers have sought to improve our understanding of it. Much of this work has taken into account stubborn facts such as the propensity of the poor, the elderly and the sick to ignore evacuation orders.

There seems to be a disconnect, however, between the process that identifies such risks and the people who make the decisions that might manage them. There are indications that many senior politicians — not just President Bush — were simply unaware that the New Orleans flood risk even existed.

River management, meanwhile, has developed into something of a scientific backwater in the United States, some of its practitioners complain. It has also been a subject of bitter political contention — generally between the supporters of the Army Corps of Engineers, which likes to build levees, and environmentalists, who favour marshland conservation and more 'natural' river flow. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this dialogue-of-the-deaf must end, and the assessment and management of natural risks should be genuinely embraced as a national priority.

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Editorial
Nature 437, 169 (8 September 2005) | doi: 10.1038/437169a
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7056/full/437169a.html

DALITS IN INDIA..........

Burri nazar walle, theri ghar mein ladki paida ho (You
evil-eyed people, may girls be born in your homes).

SCRAWLED ON the back of a lorry in Gohana, those words
capture the soul of casteism in Haryana. Even while taking a
crack at Dalits whose houses they had reduced to rubble, their
oppressors couldn't fail to proclaim women to be a
curse. (A view many of them clearly act upon. You can see that
from Haryana's appalling sex ratio of 861. That was the
worst among major States in the 2001 census.)

About the time 50 Dalit houses were set ablaze in
Gohana, the country marked 50 years of a law giving effect to the
Constitution's abolition of untouchability. As if to rub in
the irony, 25 more Dalit homes have been torched in
the same week. This time in Akola, Maharashtra.

Of course the Constitution banned untouchability. It
was to give effect to Article 17 that Parliament passed the
Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955. This was later
made more stringent and renamed the Protection of Civil Rights
Act,1955. Still the crimes went on. So, along the way, we
brought in quite a few other vital laws. Like the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of
1989. Crimes under this Act invite harsher penalties than
similaroffences would under the Indian Penal Code. Half a
century into the process, we grapple with the very crimes the
first of these laws sought to end.

Was Gohana 2005 a one-off aberration? We could then
say: awful, but these things happen. And get on with life.
The catch of course is that they happen every so often.
And to the same people. Even a show of mandatory anguish —
"what an atrocity" — doesn't begin to meet the problem. Not
when the crime is systemic, societal, and structured. Not when
a state disables its own citizens.

The countless reports on the subject over the years do
not show discrimination against Dalits to be dying away.
The many volumes of the National Commission for the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes make grisly reading. Crimes
against Dalits and Adivasis have risen by the decade. By as
much as 25 to 28 per cent in some periods. Yet the number of such
cases ending in conviction of the criminals is dismal. Less
than one per cent in some courts.

The events in Gohana and Akola are just a part of an
ongoing crime against humanity. For that's what caste-based
discrimination is. (But I'm still sure you'll see
editorials that tell us these things are wrong because `they send
bad signals to investors.')

In Gohana, the dominant castes, the police, the state,
all did their bit in bringing terror and ruin to the Dalit
basti. (The police say that after a Jat died in a clash with some
Dalits, the Jats `retaliated.') Fearing an attack, over 1,000
Dalits fled the basti. The police steered clear of the
village while a mob of some 1,500 people burned around 50 Dalit
houses to the ground. A thousand people had fled knowing an
attack was coming. Yet the police claim they were clueless about
it.

The Dalits here are Balmikis. That group is possibly
the worst off within the Scheduled Caste fold. More so in terms
of the humiliation it bears. In caste society's eyes, the
Balmikis embody the worst forms of "impurity." They are `manual
scavengers.' They handle and dispose of "night soil."(That's
polite society's term for human excreta.)

Gohana's Balmikis had tried to climb out of that
caste-imposed rut. They had educated their children. Got jobs
outside their traditional role. Some even landed low-level
government posts. And over years the Balmikis fought off the efforts of
the Jatsto extract begar — or forced labour — from them.
Their relative improvement was itself a major provocation.
This is consistent with attacks on Dalits in other parts of
thecountry too. Doing better is a crime.

The mob in Gohana did not kill any Dalits. Partly
because they had already fled. The focus, though, was on looting
and on destruction of property. Dalits owning decent houses?
With fridges and television sets? They had to be shown
their place.Houses having gas connections were destroyed using the
absent owner's LPG cylinders. The relatively good houses of
the Dalits were an eyesore to their enemies.

Gohana's Balmikis had, against daunting odds, emerged
from the depths of deprivation. They had created these houses
and assets over decades. With a kind of effort that much
of society might never understand. In these, they
invested not just their money but their emotions, passion, dreams,
and the future of their children. The death of those dreams,
the destruction of those assets, was achieved in hours.
Petrol cans and police connivance were all it took.

The State now offers each home Rs. 1 lakh as
compensation. A fraction of its losses. Forget tending to the trauma.
Note the manner in which the Dalits were `punished.' In true
feudal tradition, an individual offence became a collective
crime. A Dalit is alleged to have killed someone. All Dalits in
his basti must pay the price. The due course of law gets
dumped.The caste panchayat reigns higher than the courts.

It was in the same State a few years ago that police
battered little Usha, also a Balmiki, in Jind. The girl, not
yet in her teens, was helping her mother clean a local school.
The school headmistress accused her of stealing a gold chain. Not
content with thrashing the frail child herself, she called in
the Haryana police. Meanwhile, the chain was found. The
headmistress had merely mislaid it. The family got the
girl back, unconscious, badly bruised and with teeth
broken.

We could, of course, say "that's Haryana." And there
would even be an element of truth in it. Except that the
same prejudices work in many ways across most of the
country. Chunni Lal Jatav, a survivor of the Kumher massacre in
Rajasthan, once put it famously. "All the judges of
the Supreme Court do not have the power of a single police
constable. That constable makes or breaks us. The
judges can't re-write the laws and have to listen to learned
lawyers of both sides. A constable here simply makes his own
laws. He can do almost anything." With state and society winking at
him, he pretty much can.

And those committing crimes against Dalits know they
have a great chance of getting away with it. State
Governments have dropped countless cases filed against upper caste
offenders under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989. Kalyan Singh's BJP Government
in Uttar Pradesh dropped such cases in thousands. A move
quickly emulated by the Shiv Sena regime in Maharashtra. Later
governments did not reinstate these cases.

In Tamil Nadu, Dalits have been forced out of elected
office even in reserved panchayats. In Melavalavu, the Dalit
panchayat president's head was severed and thrown into
a well. Dalits in Dravidian Land, an excellent book by
Frontline's S. Viswanathan, paints a powerful picture of Dalit life
in that State.

Oddly, whether it's Gohana, or Jhajar before it, discussion on
these issues seldom links up to those other, ongoing
debates. For instance, that on reservation. No link is seen
between any of this and the debates on social justice. On present
SC / ST quotas. Or on the call for quotas in the private
sector. Gohana actually has people who gained, if modestly,
from reservation.

Against huge odds, Gohana's Balmikis snapped their
chains. They educated their children. This is not easy. In
schools, their boys and girls face the taunts of `upper' caste
peers. (Across the country, large numbers of Dalit pupils
drop out of school to escape such humiliation.) First, society
places them under inhuman handicaps. Then we demand a "level
playing field" against them in jobs and education.

The children of manual scavengers and other poor
people return each evening to homes without electricity. And so
cannot study in the way other kids can. They go back to homes
without good books. They cannot afford "tuitions." They have no
"connections" to land them jobs or seats. In the face
of these odds, their achievements are admirable. A true level
playing field could actually tilt the balance in their favour.
For it would start by ending their handicaps. But look at the
fury stoked by the mere idea of private colleges setting
asideseats for such people. (Never mind that the Supreme
Court judgement allows such colleges to create quotas for
rich NRIs.)

Yet, Gohana's Dalits have achieved something more.
Dalits in Haryana are now stepping into the public space in a
way not seen too often. And Dalit women appear to be in the
forefront of the protests. There is a lot of pressure on the
government to act. The Congress' own Dalit MLAs are in the hot
seat. All this is good. Yet there is a much larger house on
fire. If only we could see it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
P.Sainath

this article appeared in THE HINDU,Sept. 6, 2005
http://hinduonnet.com

THE TWO AMERICAS

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered
the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds.
More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher
ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane
destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret?
According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor
at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in
Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in
the community to begin with. People know ahead of time
where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said
Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction
to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the
Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three
days to make a TV appearance and five days before
visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on
Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the
president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual
to the point of carelessness - suggested that he
understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is
unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have
medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have
family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the
neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs
insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV
sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't
reluctant to leave because people might steal their
stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations
International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited
Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR
director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could
easily be applied to other countries with similar
economic conditions and even in countries with greater
resources that do not manage to protect their
population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than
ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in
intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New
Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush
set about to prevent states from controlling global
warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of
Engineers' budget for levee construction in New
Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops
and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war
in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief
for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago,
"It appears that the money has been moved in the
president's budget to handle homeland security and the
war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the
Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact
that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as
well as homeland security - coming at the same time as
federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain,"
which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and
sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we
were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a
senior project manager in the New Orleans district of
the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means
keeping the country secure from deadly natural
disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has
failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental
level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York
Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about
some of the essential functions of government. They
like waging war, but they don't like providing
security, rescuing those in need or spending on
prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for
shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice
presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two
Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot
at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney
King aired on televisions across the country, poor,
desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their
neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which
had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted.
That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we,
mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a
glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and
class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the
Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people
affected were largely poor people. Poor, black
people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking
point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a
place where you probably have thousands of people that
have died and thousands more that are dying every day,
that we can't figure out a way to authorize the
resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had
boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal
agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the
circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a
line of bull, and they are spinning and people are
dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that
except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of
desperate people trying to find food and water to
survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on
drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug
supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the
edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was
imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place.
Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's
preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's
long-standing preparations for an invasion by the
United States, said, "We've been preparing for this
for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a
message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane
Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed
closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain
and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit
are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor,
who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure
places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and
homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the
entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h
o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of
Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers
Guild, and the US representative to the executive
committee of the American Association of Jurists.

----------------------------------------------------------
By Marjorie Cohn

t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Saturday 03 September 2005

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml

NEW ORLEANS and HURRICANE KATRINA

The Politics of Displacement
Will the "New" New Orleans be Black?

By GLEN FORD

One of the premiere Black cities in the nation faces catastrophe. There
is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans will one day rise again from its
below sea level foundations. The question is, will the new New Orleans
remain the two-thirds Black city it was before the levees crumbled?

Some would say it is unseemly to speak of politics and race in the
presence of a massive calamity that has destroyed the lives and
prospects of so many people from all backgrounds. But I beg to differ.
As we have witnessed, over and over again, the rich and powerful are
very quick to reward themselves as soon as disaster presents the opportunity.

Remember that within days of 9/11, the Bush regime executed a
multi-billion dollar bailout for the airline industry. By the time you
hear this commentary, they may have already used the New Orleans
disaster to bail out the insurance industry one of the richest businesses on the
planet. But what of the people of New Orleans, 67 percent of whom are
Black?

New Orleans is a poor city. Twenty-eight percent of the population
lives below the poverty line. Well over half are renters, and the median
value of homes occupied by owners is only $87,000.

From the early days of the flood, it was clear that much of the city's
housing stock would be irredeemably damaged. The insurance industry may
get a windfall of federal relief, but the minority of New Orleans home
owners will get very little even if they are insured. The renting
majority may get nothing.

If the catastrophe in New Orleans reaches the apocalyptic dimensions
towards which it appears to be headed, there will be massive
displacement of the Black and poor. Poor people cannot afford to hang around on the
fringes of a city until the powers-that-be come up with a plan to
accommodate them back to the jurisdiction.

And we all know that the prevailing model for urban development is to
get rid of poor people. The disaster provides an opportunity to deploy this
model in New Orleans on a citywide scale, under the guise of rebuilding
the city and its infrastructure.

In place of the jobs that have been washed away, there could be
alternative employment through a huge, federally funded rebuilding
effort. But this is George Bush's federal government. Does anyone believe that
the Bush men would mandate that priority employment go to the pre-flood,
mostly Black population of the city. And the Black mayor of New Orleans
is a Democrat in name only, a rich businessman, no friend of the poor.

What we may see in the coming months is a massive displacement of Black
New Orleans, to the four corners of the nation. The question that we
must pose, repeatedly and in the strongest terms, is: Through whose vision,
and in whose interest, will New Orleans rise again.

---------------------
Glen Ford is Co-Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Black Commentator,
where this editorial originally appeared.