Katrina: How Bush turned a natural disaster into a for-profit massacre


While the Bush response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is most often cited as "inept", such a description inevitably sanctions Bush as patently stupid, though nonetheless innocent.

But is that an honest assessment of what happened?

Was Bush's action, or inaction rather, a manifestation of weak-thinking? Or, does the truth of how his administration's handling of the affairs in the Gulf Coast, post-Katrina, speak more to a business model that Naomi Klien has aptly entitled "The Shock Doctrine"?

Disaster capitalism, as Klein writes in her book, is a form of money-making that relies on the exploitation of suffering and fear, so as to leverage power and ram through unpopular, extremists government policies in a time of unmitigated crisis; crisis which, in large part propagated by those in power who should have been instilling calm and peace, instead of ramping-up the death toll by way of criminal negligence.

As we approach yet another anniversary of one of history's greatest natural, disasters albeit aided and abetted by government-endorsed corporate greed, James Ridgeway writes of "The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina."

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