Katrina's Birthday

A year ago, a terrible hurricane devastated New Orleans. This tragedy has a name: Katrina. All those houses destroyed, lives to be restart, economy of a state inexistent summarized in a name: Katrina. Yesterday’s front pages of most national editions were talking about the anniversary of this tragic natural catastrophe (http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=CA_TS ) I’d like to raise the question in general of anniversaries. What exactly is their function? To give a good conscience to people? It is true that Katrina showed up few times on the news over the past years, but this time we hear about it just because of the calendar dictates us to do so, and not because of any exclusive news on the matter. Did everything just become a name (here Katrina) or/and a date (August 29th)? Katrina raised a lot of questions such as how much the government cares about those none-east coast or west coast states, or why New Oleanders weren’t warned in advance about the hurricane coming in. Let’s try to think about those issues more than showing pictures of houses destroyed with a kid crying in front of them and tomorrow having the anniversary of the slave rebellion in 1800.

Here is an interesting article about the reconstruction on Lebanon from the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22pascual.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors&oref=slogin One of the good observation that the authore makes is that this time there will be no foreign companies brought to Lebanon to help them rebuild the country. Lesson taken from Iraq, where one third of the budget goes to security. The other interesting observation is that the international community will actually train and equip the Lebanese Army which would go to South-Lebanon and that "even before this conflict, the Pentagon had studied the modernization needs of the Lebanese military." Let's remember when Afik Hariri was assasinated by Syria. At this time, Lebanes placed their trust into the hands of the UN which sent a team to investigate. Today, Lebanon get their "reward"; the international community didn't forget them. Of course, there are other interests which are involved (having troops in that region, nowadays, is a good political asset) but it definitely helped a lot.

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