A tale of two crises

Joyce Chediac

In the Middle East, after a month of Israeli bombing, the people of Lebanon are digging themselves out from the rubble and struggling to return to their homes. In the United States, a full year after Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans are still fighting to do the same thing: return home. It might seem odd to compare the two. After all, Lebanon is recovering from war, and New Orleans from a natural disaster and broken levees. But this is only the superficial story. A look at the New Orleans relief effort and its aftermath shows that poor people’s right to return home has become just as much a battle there as it is in Lebanon. In the United States, the New Orleans relief effort was spearheaded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington’s disaster relief arm. In Lebanon it is being organized by Hezbollah, the grassroots Lebanese resistance movement that George W. Bush calls "terrorist"...

continua / continued