Devastating is an understatement when used to describe hurricane Katrina. This tragedy had me glued to CNN all night. I cannot believe this is happening to America, the world’s most powerful country. America must have thought it was invincible. And the response of its government is appalling. They can’t say they were caught unaware because they weren’t. The sad thing is that majority of the population of New Orleans, the most affected state, is black. Black people have always felt ostracized and disenfranchised in the land of the whites. In whatever field of expertise, even in entertainment (with the exception of rap/hip-hop, of course), there has always been this prejudice. Even Oprah is a victim of racism. And the way that the U.S. government handled this hurricane of a situation made it worse. It is already hard enough to survive without anything - no water, food, electricity, TOILET – for a day, what more when you had to bear with it for 3-5 days? The picture of a lifeless man in a wheelchair breaks my heart. Instead of heading straight to the scene, George Bush managed to stopover elsewhere to thank whoever for a job well done and blah blah blah go the PR blurbs.
Deadly storms, earthquakes, terrorism, bomb explosion, fire, landslide… these are banal in the Philippines. But a hurricane drowning a state almost the size of Great Britain in the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country is a different story. Devastating as it is, however, this catastrophe only goes to show that after all, we’re all in the same planet.
Deadly storms, earthquakes, terrorism, bomb explosion, fire, landslide… these are banal in the Philippines. But a hurricane drowning a state almost the size of Great Britain in the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country is a different story. Devastating as it is, however, this catastrophe only goes to show that after all, we’re all in the same planet.
