Hurricane Katrina laid bare a lot of problems and issues which America suffers from. Unable to be ignored or covered up, the tragedy broadcasted these problems to the world not surprisingly. However many Americans were forced to recognise or realise these problems.
This article highlights many of these problems- racism, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, poverty, and so on. It might be sort of long, being 4 pages but it's well worth the read.

"To truly grasp how events in New Orleans unraveled, America would have to grapple with its ahistorical understanding of race, ambivalence toward class and antagonism toward government. But those rabbit holes proved too deep and too ugly, and in the end it was a journey the country had neither the will, curiosity nor leadership to make."

Blackwater USA security firm, notorious for when several of its men were killed and their corpses displayed in Fallujah Iraq, benefitted and profited greatly from the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, to the tune of over $30 million. Blackwater is one major example of private companies which have reaped huge contracts from the American government for performing actions which should have been the responsibility of the government but have been offloaded to the private sector at huge costs. Of course Blackwater in addition to New Orleans has also provided private paramilitary or mercenary sevice on behalf of the US in Iraq for which its main purpose is for.
Blackwater is experiencing large growth because of the frequency with which its services have been called upon.
In the Black (water) provides some background about this company and its operation in New Orleans.

An extract: "We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who has been one of Blackwater's few critics in Congress. "They have again given a sweetheart contract--without an open bidding process--to a company with close ties to the Administration."

A little over a year ago, the calamity in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina occured. With much of the city wrecked and destroyed by the ensuing floods, it will be a long time before things can even be remotely described as normal. Repairs, reconstruction and resettlement will have to take place on a massive scale to rebuild the city to as good a normal a condition as should be.
These articles from The Nation talk about some of the distressing and sinister aspects on the politics behind the disaster, the city and rebuilding efforts.

To start it off, here's Naomi Klein writing about the increasing privatisation of government and its duties and responsibilities such as disaster-relief. There's a large consensus among many that privatisation means more efficiency, expertise and accountability. Miss Klein tries to break this consensus/myth by examining how privatisation of disaster-response played a large part in all the neglect and tragedy in New Orleans.
Basically privatisation is the allocation of duties to private firms from the government, whether it be federal, provincial or city. Besides duties, control of national resources are also privatised such as in impoverished African countries for instance. Anyways the rationale behind privatisation is that by having private companies perform tasks and services instead of government, the tasks are done more efficiently especially since these companies are profit-driven, government is slimmed down and becomes more effective by focusing on fewer tasks in addition to saving money because of this reduction in duties.

Well many of this is erroneous and false. While private companies may do things more efficiently, they also do things for profit and it is profit not people which is their main priority.
Look at Bolivia for instance with the water riots in Cochabamba. Privatising several essential services like water, the corporation that controlled the water service started charging exorbitant rates for water usage until finally poor and other Bolivians rose up and rioted against this, in a rare successful show of people power, forcing the government to rescind its water contract and the corporation to leave.

Anyways a few extracts from the article illustrate the problems more clearly with the New Orleans calamity: "We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent."
and "But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditures for these private contractors."
and finally "state-within-a-state [private contractors] has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it."

Klein ends by forseeing a bleak future called disaster apartheid which even now is apparent in the present.

Uganda- the LRA's Joseph Kony speaks out against the government claiming that government forces have fired on LRA members and thus, breaking the truce in place between the government and the LRA. Also Kony is unhappy with how government forces have been ordering the LRA as it retreats to designated areas across the border in neighboring Sudan.
The government denied all of this saying they were "following the truce religiously".
So it doesn't take much to see how precarious this truce is as well as how much caution should be applied to any hopes about progress from the truce.

This blog has some good posts about the northern Ugandan civil war. This one especially has some interesting points about the conflict and the LRA, such as
".....though it is obvious, let us be clear: military might is a non-starter regarding the LRA. While rooted in a bizarre cult, the LRA is conducting a classic insurgency against an unpopular ruling authority. This crisis can only be addressed by improving overall living conditions throughout northern Uganda - so that even the LRA lieutenants can see that they are pursing a false agenda."
The AllAfrica article at the beginning is a good one for understanding the depth of suffering that has developed because of the civil war. People such as Kony seem so demented but undoubtedly their craziness also carries genius.

Ceasefire begins in Uganda

Some hopeful news from Uganda where the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government agreed to a truce which came into effect yesterday on August 29. The Ugandan military or UPDF is creating a set of land corridors for the LRA to safely retreat into designated points in Southern Sudan as part of the truce.
UPDF troops are standing down as are LRA troops and some sort of calm is returning to most parts of northern Uganda. This article details what is happening at the moment with the Internally Displaced Persons or IDPs who have been living and languishing in refugee/IDP camps for years suffering from immense poverty, lack of resources and infrastructure and diseases. Of course lack of infrastructure and lack of food are also impediments to many of these people from returning to their homes.
With the truce in effect now and a safer environment, hopefully the government will devote more money, resources and effort to improving conditions in the North for these people.

This civil war has been going on for about 20 years since the early eighties when Joseph Kony too action against the Ugandan military with his LRA, which he is still heads. He claims to represent the interests of Northerners, specifically the Acholi, who had feared discrimination by the Ugandan government. After experiencing waning support by the Acholi, he turned his wrath onto them, attacking villages, killing and looting, making thousands of people internal refugees/IDPs and abducting children to serve as female slaves and child soldiers.

This is not to say that Uganda's government has been like a bunch of angels because they've been accused of discrimination and oppressiveness especially against the people in the North. Furthermore Prime Minister Museveni's actions such as taking Uganda into the War in Congo in the late-nineties, his crackdowns against opposition and critical media, as well as changing the consititution to allow a Prime Minister to serve more than 2 terms, thus benefitting Museveni, have caused him to be viewed as dictatorial and repressive.

Still whatever the faults of the Ugandan government and Museveni, the LRA cannot be seen as legitimate guerilla resistance in any manner because of their terrible actions against civilians and widespread lack of support from the public. Instead of fighting oppression, they have become the oppressors, forcing a great deal of suffering, fear and misery onto the civilians of Northern Uganda. They have achieved some notable attention due to their frequent abductions and near-slavery of Northern Ugandan children and the 'Night Walks', the nightly marches that thousands of children make from their villages to towns in order to sleep securely and avoid being abducted by the LRA in their homes. Two Canadians even created a campaign called Guluwalk to highlight these walks by recreating them in Toronto with volunteers.
For further insight into the plight of the children in Northern Uganda, check out this documentary here.

Lessons learned

Israel sure learned some lessons indeed after their recent failed invasion and attempts to vanquish Hezbollah. This is a good article from The Nation on the recent war in Lebanon. Inspite of the terrible damage inflicted on Lebanon, Israel lost in a major way in that despite overwhelming military force and technology, they could not prevent Hezbollah from fighting back whether firing rockets or ground action.
The real lessons referred in the article title are the ones that we, the public can learn from the conflict. There are 4 here and all are very true and useful. Especially true is that we must not accept a government or state's actions "at face value" which can be applied to the US as well as obviously, Israel. We always have to look at the facts, get the story from both sides and look at any issue critically. The most glaring question relating to Israel's military actions is how does kidnapping several Israeli soldiers justify waging war onto a nation.

Again sticking with LA Times, here's an editorial from the famous economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, author of "The end of Poverty", a book that I'm planning on reading later this year. Besides denouncing skeptics of foreign aid he makes his case that there is indeed much hope for Africa and provides several steps on what needs to be done to substantially help Africa with a very vital one being support in the areas of agriculture, health and agriculture. If China and India can do it, so can Africa, he basically states. A little too optimistic in my view but I support his overall point that the West does have a responsibility and must continue to aid Africa.

However on the issue of western aid for Africa, there is much more than just charity and developmental aid that can help Africa. There's also political and economical measures that the West can do especially with fairer trade practices. One of the biggest contentious issues Africa has with the US is the farm subsidies that American farmers get from their government which thus allows them to sell their produce on the world market for far cheaper than African farmers can so driving them out of business and livelihood. See this op-ed about the most recent WTO failure in Geneva back in July to read about American subsidies and their detrimental effect.
This article from the Washington Post however reveals another disturbing fact with American farm subsidies, namely that many Americans who are paid subsidies are not even farmers but receive such payments because they own land that used to be farmed.
In many cases people are being paid even if they are using such land for other uses such as building residential neighborhoods, starting timber plantations or just living on the land. These people often are not farmers but land developers, investors or landowners who've inherited their land. For them it's a good piece of change they get from the government. According to one of these recipients, an oilman who purchased 20 acres and lives on the land "The money is free".
In Texas "..... so many landowners and farmers are collecting money on their former ricelands -- $37 million last year alone -- that the acres no longer used for rice outnumber the planted ones."
Of course the federal government should repeal or change the laws granting these subsidies so that the only ones who receive subsidies are those who farm and get low prices for their produce. Sadly obstacles such as this- "Efforts to overhaul the farm subsidy network have been repeatedly thwarted by powerful farm-state lawmakers in Congress allied with agricultural interests" abound.

If American lawmakers can't even stop farm subisidies going to those who don't need or deserve them, how can they stop subsidies going to American farmers who export their crops onto the world market and compete unfairly with poorer farmers?

Sobering situation of Africa and development
This article in the LA (Los Angeles) Times describes the grim situation in Africa regarding its developement or lack of. Fifty years after African colonies started gaining independence, Africa's "dependence on foreign "experts" is greater than ever, and the influence of proliferating Western aid agencies is more powerful than ever".
Among the sad facts the writer gives is that every year tens of thousands of African professionals emigrate to foreign nations while 100,000 foreign (Western) experts come to Africa, also that "Roughly 40% of African savings are held outside the continent, compared with 6% in East Asia and 3% in South Asia". Corruption is also a big issue as many African governments and bureaucrats take their nation's revenues for themselves and mire their people in deeper poverty.

The writer makes a striking point that development aid should be phased out and ended as he believes this has caused and furthered dependency and poverty in African countries. Though I understand his point, it seems rather drastic to me. In many cases African nations have little or no money to perform required services such as medical health services or food distribution and without aid agencies many people would undoubtedly suffer more. Still I'm not unaware that in some cases development aid does causes dependency as well as additional problems like inflation and corruption. Definitely aid agencies must focus more on helping local people become more self-sufficient and put in place permanent solutions instead of just relief and charity.
I'm also skeptical about the writer's emphasis on business measures such as allowing businesses to registered in shorter time than it is now. Anyways at your convenience, please read it and form your own opinions. I know it's kind of old but I only recently came upon it in a local newspaper.

A fine article by Gwynne Dyer on the recent presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formely known as Zaire. This country has suffered a great deal, even when you consider how much the continent has suffered. One of the largest countries in Africa and with hundreds of ethnicities, cultures and languages, decades of poor governing and corrupt dictatorship, a regional war involving up to 6 African countries and continual strife have made the DRC one of the worst countries in the world in terms of poverty, infrastructure, developement and law and order.

The civil war in Sri Lanka has intensified within recent weeks as violent clashes, bombardments and many thousands of people forced to flee have occured. This article in Der Spiegel describes the grim situation.

Regarding the Mideast conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah has come in for some criticism including that of using human shields by blending in with the civilian population in Southern Lebanon. While this may have some element of truth in it, there is also some hypocrisy as this Counterpunch writer alleges in this article. Furthermore and not surprisingly there is also media bias against Hezbollah.