I've debated, and disagreed with Iavas, on many occasions. And here again, I happen to disagree with him.
However, to say that he needs professional help is silly and condescending, especially when posted publicly on a board. It is an overreaction. Iavas is simply stubborn and will stick to his guns in a conversation, no matter what. But he is also capable of changing his mind when the conversation is over. Saying that he needs professional help can only cause him not to change his mind on the subjet at hand. As a friend of Iavas, Lidless, you'd better try, again and again, to convince him with sound arguments that he is wrong, if you believe that this is of such importance. I have a friend who is a communist, a real one (he thinks that the psychological violence of capitalism imposed through advertisement and the necessity to work to earn one's life is equivalent to physical violence!). Needless to say, I strongly disagree with his political views, but I have never said to him to seek professional advice (I would not even say that to a PJ lover, although I have a hard time understanding how one can find his films to be masterpieces of cinema.
). And you know what? I have seen my friend mellowed as of late. We each have different views of the world. Hey, some of the great thinkers in the history of humanity had extremely strange views of the world and were considered as mad outsiders in their time.
Regarding the subject at hand: I think that the Bush administration is incompetent and is in general not interested in the plight of poor people (This looks like a strict application of a calvinist moto: the community formed by the people chosen by God should not welcome the poor people, seemingly damned by God; I personally find it a horrible and arrogant principle). That could explain (in part, for as for all imprevisible events, the N.O. disaster had many causes) what happened at N.O. with the poor left behind.
Foremost, Katrina could be a turning point in the perception of neo-conservatism in the US, as some have observed. In a way, it reveals how much Bush's policy is conducted at the expense of the poor people in the US. It shows how much Bush's views of the world are directed towards the wealthy and neglect poor people who did not have the chance to be born in a wealthy family like Bush. What happens at N.O. sheds a bleak light on Bush's internal policy, on the fact that 37% of the people of N.O. were below the poverty level, on the consequences of a policy obsessed by security and wealth. Bush currently has its lowest approval ratings. Katrina may thus prevent the "fascist" regime apparently feared by Iavas from happening in the US. It is thus extremely unlikely that what happened at N.O. was done on purpose, unless Iavas considers plausible that the neo-cons wished to commit a political suicide, which I find even more unlikely.
I think it was Camus who said that the most dangerous weapons in the world were stupidity and ignorance. In that respect, Bush is a heck of a WMD. Stupidity and ignorance will always be more destructive than any conspiracy led by Men. History shows that Men cannot really control the remote consequences of their acts, of their plans. There is an inherent imprevisibility factor attached to all the acts carried out by Men. Due to this factor, many of the acts that we believe were perfectly controlled or planned in hindsight were in fact less controlled than we thought. Imprevisibility and the absence of a rational explanation, are a part, and among the many charms, of life. When Men try to control History, as the philosophies of History have shown, it sometimes turns into a catastrophy. IMO, there is no God, therefore it is for us to give a meaning, a sense, to our life, despite its inherent imprevisibility.
Finally, men will never really learn to control Nature; the closest thing from control Men will learn in respect of Nature is the ability to destroy it, to mess with it. Katrina is a lesson to those who believed that you can mess with the environment without damage.