Katrina and Mumbai

• It surely must be pretty agonizing for people in New Orleans. To gather human courage and get the thick-skin necessary to tackle such crises (BUT NOT THE APATHY that plagues us here), community leaders from the US must be invited to spend a few weeks in Orissa during the cyclone months. They will stop worrying about things like inability take a bath, not having cornflakes for breakfast or not changing underwear for one week. And start worrying about the real value of life.
• In the context of the noise raised about insufficient weather prediction by India Meteorological Deptt -- is anyone now asking why the US met deptt did not issue adequate warning or the local govenment did not evacuate people before Hurricane Katrina tore through the coast line? Weather prediction is not an exact science yet, even with supercomputer-driven models that can see one week into the future.
• Meanwhile one is reading how the poor are suffering in New Orleans. Well, where are they not?
• And CNN new readers are getting very worried that people haven't had a hot shower for three days now. I must agree. That is something that has been troubling me too.
• Americans in general do get pretty rankled when their Barbie Doll House is disturbed.
• Read the lead story in Alex Cockburn's CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org .