One problem is that a large number of those weren't working-class, but welfare-class. Sometimes multi-generational welfare-class.

In Asia, those people were poor, but they mostly worked for a living, and appreciated and valued work and what comes from it, and the fact that others work too. They don't loot a neighbor's house because they appreciate how hard he worked to gain those few things he had. They don't loot a TV from a store because they're used to the concept of working for what you get, not getting everything for free.

Many of these Americans in New Orleans never engaged in honest work in their lives.

HOW quickly we forget that Fox "news" is the main manufacturer of the Amerikkklan image abroad!!!

Forgotten is the plight of a people whose only crime was being Black, and as the half-wit president showed the same kind of leadership that he demonstrated in the aftermath of 9/11, Fox switched to focus from Amerikkka's refugees who were abandonned by their 'Fearless Leader' and put the spotlight on a few predatory miscreants who one should expect to find in a city with 28% of its people living BELOW the poverty level in a land of milk & money.

Long before the first rescue attempt was made, Sean Hannity and his cohorts were harping on a criminal minority that shamefully took to the streets...so much so that NOW the common belief is that New Orleans residents are nothing but Black trash who somehow DESERVE to die!!!

I'm sure that many white folk across the globe will be shocked during the next election when Black folk finally wake up and realize that the ballot is bullshit, so they take up the bullet.

You haven't even seen the anarchy in the USA yet.

How's an American supposed to agree with this? It might very well be true but you attack "Americans". I'm not a glutton for verbal punishment; I didn't cause the problem in America.

Hey, how about you guys figure out how not to riot and trample spectators after every goddamned football game?

Better yet, how about you do something for the Turkish population in Europe, which is thoroughly ostracized and pitilessly scorned, especially in France, of all the enlightened places in the world.

wonderful australia which left refugees to rot in boats off the coast.

wonderful wonderful world.

99% of people in New orleans didi have 'community spirit' and are now living in other states on cots.

maybe you should take a tip from yourself ; dont blind yourself by poorly chosen sources. have you ever heard the phrase 'it bleeds, it leads'? this is actually how many media corporations are run.

---------

and frankly i didnt see all that much looting/shooting on tv. what i mostly saw was old people dying of neglect; this is a crime of the middle/upper class government organization, or perhaps the whole country, or the world in general; how many times did australia turn a blind eye to US support for sueharto since it meant keeping commies out of Darwin?

yeah, we are a violent country, thats because we actually accept immigrants instead of requiring them to have PHDs and speak 5 languages before we let them come in the country.

Similarly, there were NOT riots at the Baton Rouge shelter. And the worst threat that the National Guard faced when they approached the Convention Center was a nurse wearing an "I Love New Orleans" t-shirt saying "I have children who need help in here!" Nurses of mass destruction are all terrorists, I suppose, eh?

Of course, any viewer of Fox News who saw Geraldo at the Convention Center on Friday night would have already known this, as Geraldo, sans armed guards, freely roamed around the Convention Center talking to people. But hey, what's a little fact when we know, know I say, that those big buck negros are just savages who want to rape and kill our womens!

Ever hear the term "New South"? That's where major southern urban areas were revitalized by tying into the national--and indeed global--economy during the '80s and '90s. Name a southern city and you were naming a boom-town. Except New Orleans. That place remained a necrosis. Its main economy was selling porn paraphernalia and hot sauce to undersexed, underspiced tourists. The music scene there died sometime in the 1950s, though poseurs do tend to prate on about it. . . Here's a hint: Orleans doesn't rhyme with queen or bluejeans.

My position as the middle-class taxpayer who's going to getting the bill for this mess: this is a huge opportunity. Talk of restoring antediluvian New Orleans is irresponsible. Unless levees can be built to withstand a category 5 storm*, then the parts of the city prone to flooding ought not to be rebuilt -- I guess that leaves just the French Quarter! If we're going to pay to restore lives, nature has already given those people a huge push in the right direction: out of New Orleans. It would be a tremendous waste to not capitalize on this.

There are people doing good, also, all over the country:
Marion, Indiana businessman takes bus to Slidell, LA, picks up nearly 50 residents

Remember 9/11?  The emergency response was provided locally.  Remember the four hurricanes that hit Florida last year?  Again, a local emergency response.

I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in the US the division between the haves and have-nots is staggering. Unfortunately the majority of have-nots are black, especially in New Orleans.

NOPD has had numerous resignations and even 2 suicides in the last week since the chaos ensued.
Between the ratio of ppl to emergency workers and the utter chaos, the good guys got overwhelmed.

The bad guys, while only a few compared to the whole, took over. Sadly the majority of the fore mentioned ppl were black, furthering the negative stereotypes and self-perpetuating cycles of violence and poverty.

In any natural disaster, the extremes of human behaviour occur more frequently. The US press reports and spreads that which sells the most ink, photons and electrons. (Others often spike stores as "not good for public morale") It is a _very_ sad commentary on human nature that the negative side sells so well.

Also note that as an Australian, you are getting a racism-permeated view of the situation. After all, you live in a nation that had an official "White Austrialia" policy until the mid 1970's, and racism is implicit in many other Australian policies, such as turning away boatloads of brown-skinned refugees while allowing white-skinned refugees in.

Finally, white-skinned Australians amongst dark-skinned people who have been left to die (as far as they can tell) are unlikely to be popular. You have to remember that Louisiana has a long history of leaving black people to die without rescue during floods. In the 1927 flood, tens of thousands of black workers were put to work at gunpoint shoring up the levees, given the choice of certain death via immediate lynching, or possible death if the levees broke. When the levees broke, their white overseers stepped into boats and fled. The black workers were left to slowly die of exposure on the remnants of the levees, those who didn't drown in the first place. Weeks later, when the floodwaters drained, the bodies of the black laborers were shoved into mass graves and forgotten. Except by the black community in Louisiana, which has passed that story from mouth to mouth down the years, and it is no wonder that they thought that this had happened again, that they were never going to escape the Superdome alive, that they were all going to die like in 1927, and that it was white people's fault -- again.

As for community spirit:

I saw a looter on TV.

They showed a guy with cases and cases of water and boxes of fruit. He had them on some sort of trolley.

He wheeled the trolley up to several people - probably about ten - who sat in lawn chairs on a side walk.

The "looter" handed out bottles of water and the fruit to each person sitting on that street. The people took the water and fruit with nods of thanks. Some people only took one piece of fruit and the "looter" gave them two or three more.

No one rushed the man to take the water or the fruit. There was not a rush on his kitty.

The "looter" then proceeded down the street with his water and fruit where you could see in the distance there were others waiting patiently on the sidewalk for the rescue they had been promised.

The "looter" was the only rescue they would see for a while, but I think he was a hero.

-- Daily Kos

These are the people that the freepers call savages...

"Has rampant free market philosophy infiltrated the American psyche to the extent that anything with no dollar value is worthless? Or perhaps the nanny state has removed peoples coping skills."

Note for future reference people - when a paragraph starts with a question and includes two opposing theories the author is positing questions !

How much public money for infrastructure and organization has been pocketed by corrupt officials who are now finger pointing?

The Police Department of New Orleans has been compared to a bunch of thugs on numerous occasions. Weren't the Feds called in a few years ago to provide law and order because the PD was killing witnesses to pay-offs and kickback schemes?

Likewise, the interviews I've seen in the UK press with white English people who were at the Superdome were pretty embarassing. They had hidden themselves away and didn't seem to have made any attempt to talk to the people they were sharing the space with, apparently out of racist fear. I found myself very puzzled why they didn't sit with one of the many families who seemed to be making the best out of a horrible situation.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I want to see some evidence before I start making judgements.

---------
My atheism is my rock - idiot boy

I believe that the Asian people in tsunami-affected areas had a greater tendency to help each other than did the Americans in New Orleans are displaying. This is probably because those people have always had to rely on themselves for their daily survival, while those in New Orleans have come to expect government to have a hand in nearly every aspect of their existence.

Now, human nature being what it is, I'm sure that there was a predatory element in Aceh as well, and that there are also some examples of community to be found among Katrina's survivors. However, if I had to be a victim among one of the two peoples, I'd pick Aceh in a heartbeat.

Many other Australians made the trek to the Superdome only to encounter murders, muggings and rape...To my knowledge, no Australians were so assaulted after the asian tsunami. How can the worlds sole remaining super power, which accords itself the mantle of superior morality perform so badly in comparison?

As an American who believes that moral superiority is what made this country great, the stories of looting, rape and murder (attempted and actual) coming out of New Orleans make me livid. It is my heartfelt prayer that every victim of the lawlessness taking place there will get justice.

The animals that are committing these crimes are not the same Americans who believe in our nation's high moral stature. Rather, they are the product of a politically correct curriculum which preaches the moral bankruptcy of this country; at least, when it isn't preaching that morality is non-existent. What we're seeing on the news, then, is simply the embodiment of liberal values, and the natural tendency of people live up (or down) to the expectations of their communities.

Its not just the anarchy in New Orleans that is appalling people, we've seen numerous talking heads blaming the chaos on the lowest parts of society, that they aren't representative of the USA. I ask how are they measuring this lack of height - money? Social status? Race? And are they not part of America? How a country treats its "lowest rung" in their time of need says much about the society.

Yes, it is the lowest element of society that is taking advantage of the anarchy in New Orleans. I think that one would have to be obtuse not to recognize that. But to define "lowest" empirically? Yes, they're poor, but poverty doesn't make them bad. Yes, they're predominantly black, but I reject the idea that their skin color predisposes them to lawlessness.

I would define the dregs of any society by their attitudes towards those around them. They tend to have the notion that they are owed something for which they have not worked, by virtue of some indirect, often historical offense which may have been real or imagined. It is this sort of mindset which justifies (to them) any act of retribution against "The Man." It matters not, then, who is hurt by their actions. If they hurt their neighbors, they do so out of contempt for "The Man's" laws. The acts of looting and arson, though they may destroy the very neighborhoods they will have to return to, are a blow to the economic mechanisms which empower "The Man."

The very deepest layer of American socioeconomic strata, then, consists entirely of self-made men and women, and for this they deserve no pity. Yet how does this country treat its "lowest rung"? Even in times of normalcy, we provide them with stipends, food, shelter, educational opportunities and medical care. In this time of strife, we are still struggling to bring needed food, water, medicines, shelter and law to these people. This in spite of the fact that the rescuers are being insulted and assaulted by the very people they're trying to help.

In many cultures the working class hold community values in a lot higher esteem than the so-called "better" levels of society. Has rampant free market philosophy infiltrated the American psyche to the extent that anything with no dollar value is worthless? Or perhaps the nanny state has removed peoples coping skills.

I have faith in the working class communities of America. The looters, rapists and people shooting at rescue helicopters and personnel, however, are far more likely to be welfare class than working class. What we are seeing in New Orleans is not the concrete product of a Free Market philosophy, but of a philosophy which posits that the goods in a market ought to be free.

It is unfortunately true that the spirits of self-reliance and community strength have largely disappeared in urban America. Watching the news coverage of the survivors sitting idly, I desperately wish for a leader to emerge. Someone who could give people hope by giving them tasks to fill their time. My god, how simple it should be to get people to collect corpses for burning. The resources to make simple stills shouldn't be too hard to scavenge from the rubble--teach people to make them, and they'll have all the drinking water they need. It has been reported that even the looters have organized into armed, roving gangs. The bad guys can't be the only ones who are armed. Why can't the good people organize their armed individuals to defend themselves and to scavenge for necessary supplies?

It absolutely infuriates me to see people bitch about their situation and then sit idly by waiting for their complaints to be addressed, when there is so much that they could be doing to make their positions a bit more bearable. But I suppose this is to be expected from a people who have grown to depend on government for their survival.

We get the uneasy feeling that this is a microcosm of American society, that you have so plundered and devalued the social contract that the USA can no longer be called a truly civilised country. We see George Bush smirking and playing the guitar, vowing his friend's beachfront mansion will be rebuilt and we wonder what has happened to the USA we used to know.

The televised lawlessness of New Orleans is not a microcosm of American society. It is, if anything, a subculture. These are actions carried out by a tiny, yet very noticable segment of the population.

As for civilization, no matter where you go, what passes for "civilized" is nothing more than a thin veneer over human nature that is rapidly shed in times of desperation.

And if you really want to politicize this disaster, please understand this. The Federal Government of the United States was never intended to be a first responder to natural disasters, nor the primary body which plans for their occurrences. The primary responsibility for the safety of New Orleans' residents lies with its mayor (who, since you're politicizing this tragedy, is a black Democrat.) Yes, he made a good call in ordering a mandatory evacuation of his city, but he fumbled terribly in not using the hundreds of city-owned school busses to facilitate the evacuation.

The next major rung on the responsiblity ladder lies with the governor of Louisiana (who is, I'm sure you'll be interested to know, a female Democrat). What she has done for the people of her state, I have no idea. What she has not done, however, is to set up a command and control structure to coordinate relief efforts.

The last rung on the responsiblity ladder is indeed the Federal government. Yes, a Republican is in charge there. But it has never been the President's job to micromanage anything--not wars, not the economy and certainly not disaster relief.

Yes, relief efforts have been embarassingly ineffective on every level, but it's ridiculous to blame Bush for this, and terribly partisan to focus on him while giving the mayor and governor a pass.

This is America in raw, unedited reality.  Underneith our "American Beauty" story that the rich people keep pushing is the harsh truth that most people deal with: individual first.  This is the land of individualistic capitalism.  Within this system, there are "have-nots" with unrealistic media-driven expectations.  In this lower social/economic class is bred unmitigated and undirected rage and aggression, kept in check only with the threat of lethal force and incarceration.

When those threats go away, people move to get their needs met.  Simple.

You think 10MM dollar mansions come without social cost?  Here it is baby.  
Remember the French revolution?

The point of the article is *not* the bungling of disaster relief, rather the reactions of the New Orleans residents. Perhaps I shouldn't have made the throw-away comment re Bush - Mea culpa.

The comments re Australia's treatment of refugees. Yes I believe Australia's record there is a disgrace, also - so what? its irrelevant to the questions in the article. Submit a op-ed on this, its a worthy subject.

The comments re the riots in Redfern are more to the point, though maybe not as much as some think. The redfern riots were in response to perceived police brutality whereas the situation in New Orleans is a breakdown of order once authority was removed. I'm not sure they are comparable.

First - grab a clue stick. The US is a federal system. Bush doesn't have the authority to order evacuations of cities or to move troops into them. The reason the evacuation was delayed was because the Mayor of New Orleans didn't want to declare one. The reason the poor weren't evacuated was because New Orleans officials didn't have a proper evacuation plan and didn't even follow the plan they had.

Second - who put people in the Superdome? Hint: It wasn't the Feds. They weren't there. It was the same idiot mayor who didn't want to evacuate people in the first place.

Who was responsible for protecting and rescuing the citizens of New Orleans? Here's another hint: FEMA's mission is to show up within 3 days after the disaster to help with the recovery. Who's supposed to be the first responders dealing with the disaster? Well, la-dee-dah, it's the same mayor - the mayor whose cops stripped off their uniforms to hide their identities, the cops who stopped showing up for work, the cops who were joining in with the looting.

What we're dealing with in New Orleans is a culture which is overwhelmingly black - both the poor and the rich. New Orleans' poverty level is not all that different than elsewhere in the US - 30ish% vs 27%. This is not an issue of race.

The issue here is, however, of urban welfare culture and with the attitude of "I'm getting what's due me". That's the attitude we've seen most largely portrayed, and that's the attitude which promotes such wanton inhumanity.

Keep in mind here that there were local and state level "get out of town" warnings for days, and there was plenty of time to get out if they'd wanted to. The real problems didn't come until after the hurricane when the levy broke.

The failure for people to get out of New Orleans in time falls squarely on the shoulders of:

• the individual people themselves. How can people expect others to be responsible for their welfare, when they themselves are not willing to take those measures?
• the city officials and the mayor. New Orleans is incredibly corrupt, and this is part of the problem. However, where were the 300-some city buses and the 200-some school buses during this whole affair? Well, until the day after the hurricane they were sitting around doing nothing. The day after the hurricane? Well, they were under water in their parking lots.
• The governor of LA Where was she during this mess? She alone has the authority to activate the LA national guard and ask for outside-state help. Why didn't she call in FEMA beforehand?

-Soc
I drank what?

I guess you guys have the same problems with your minority black population as we do, eh? So spare us all your preening righteousness and worry about the fact that your country can't even integrate a mere 2% of your population. I mean, when black people were winning gold medals for the USA in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, it wasn't some nationally cathartic moment. Guess we're a little more advanced on the race relations than Oz...

By the way, could you pick a consistent line of criticism? I would think that "rampant free market philosophy" and "nanny state" are basically mutually exclusive.

While not as bad a disaster as Katrina, it made a wreck of our downtown and knocked down quite a few houses.

I was so impressed with how the community pulled together that at times I thought it would be nice for disasters to take place now and then because they tie the community back together.

I guess it's not that way anymore.

-- "You're not as big an asshat as everyone seems to think." - Kurosawa Nagaya.

We get the uneasy feeling that this is a microcosm of American society, that you have so plundered and devalued the social contract that the USA can no longer be called a truly civilised country.

It is, at best, unsurpising that we get this 'microcosm' feeling from the most wretched behaviors after the disaster, instead of the normal behaviors or, indeed, the heroic.

Because the many people that risked or spent their lives to save others necessarily tell us less about the american experiment than the misadventures of common criminals left unchecked in a near-deserted city.

I mean, he's an idiot, right?

He did nothing to help these poor and mostly black people, right?

Oh, except acting 2 fucking days in advance of the hurricane.

This is the black role model in America. 50 Cent.

This is the black role model in America. Notorious BIG.

This is the black role model in America. Tupac.

Note: Tupac and Notorious BIG are both dead. Apparently Notorious BIG ordered a hit on Tupac, then Tupac's boys killed Notorious BIG in revenge. 50 Cent has a whole history of violence himself.

Please take a look around their websites and note the names of their songs:

1. Tupac:
I Don't Give a Fuck
Violent
Crooked Ass Nigga
Young Niggaz
Fuck the World
Death Around the Corner
Outlaw

2. Notorious BIG:
Ready to Die
Gimme the Loot
I Love the Dough
Notorious Thugs
My Downfall

3. 50 Cent:
In My Hood
I'm Supposed to Die Tonight
Gatman and Robbin'
Ski Mask Way
Gunz Come Out
Position of Power
What up Gangsta
PIMP

Understand something. Unlike white musicians who are mostly just posers (like NSYNC), some of these rappers are the real fucking deal. They really are gangsters. They are considered legends and heroes by black youth.

II. Black leadership is virtually non-existent in this country.

Some of these gangster rappers come from the streets. They make it big. They go from dirt poor to filthy rich. They have an opportunity to do something for "their people". But for the most part they throw the opportunity away. Just like Tupac and Notorious BIG did, when they showed what exemplary role models they were by killing each other. Rather than using their massive wealth to address the problems of the black community, they continue to blow cash on booze, drugs, and fast cars, all the while making music about how bad Whitey is and how the white man is holding them down. Anger sells. The race card always pays big if you know how to play it.

Of course any criticism of these guys is dismissed as racist. Western intellectuals and college professors (handsomely paid in their universities, living in their gated communities well away from the black ghettos) claim that the music is a justified outburst against white oppression. Nevermind that these western intellectuals make a lot more money than 90% of the white population. Hell just take a look at Ward Churchill. Chairman of Ethnic Studies - makes a nice $118,000 a year as a tenured professor. Well, ok now its only $90,000 a year because he resigned his chairmanship after his outburst regarding 9/11 and capitalism was widely publicized. The race industry pays well and man, talk about job security! Here in the good 'ole USA there will always be a need for people who can point fingers and blame capitalism and white people for all the world's ills.

Many black people have developed a conspiratorial mindset. Just take a look at Kanye West's rant that the media is portraying all black people as crooks, National Guardsmen are being sent in to shoot them, and George Bush doesn't care about black people. This same idiot said that AIDS is a secret bio-weapon developed by the CIA to kill Africans. Yep, thats just the ticket to improving race relations in America.

Black congressmen are often no better. Shelia Jackson Lee spends here time bitching that not enough hurricanes are named after black people while Cynthia McKinney delivers conspiratorial rants about Israel and 9/11.

Any criticism of black leadership in this country is immediately labeled racist hate speech. George Bush is called a racist even though he has appointed two black people to his cabinet - an unprecedented move by any president. Why the criticism? Well, you see, because Condi Rice and Colin Powell don't count as black people even though they are black. They are conservative, so they don't fit the leftist agenda. Since they can't be exploited by leftists for political gain, they are simply Uncle Toms.

Bill Cosby, a famous black comedian, goes on tour across the country accusing black people of being part of their own problem. Days later he is mysteriously accused of rape. The rape charges are eventually dropped, but by then his credibility is shot. Gee I wonder what power players were behind that dirty trick?

Have you noticed the absence of criticism of Mayor Nagin of New Orleans? He is black, therefore he gets a pass for his criminal negligence. In fact, he is called a "genuine hero" by the BBC, even though he failed to evacuate his city until 12 hours before the storm - a critical blunder. He also failed to tell his people to stock up on water and food - to carry an emergency kit of at least 48 hours of water and food with them.

Then he has the gall to point fingers at President Bush on the radio airwaves, demanding "500 buses" from all over the country. Of course, he apparently never thought to use his own buses to evacuate people days before the storm struck, even though his city's own disaster management plan called for it. Failing to do his duties, he escaped out of the city prior to the hurricane's landfall. Of course you don't hear about any of this on the news. All you hear about on the news is George Bush's "colossal" failure to personally fly in and save 100,000 people in 24 hours. Why? Because he is white. Putting even an ounce of blame on the Mayor would be racist, and we can't have that can we? No of course not.

III. There is little hope of the situation getting better. Why?

1. Black people are kept in a constant state of learned helplessness. Democrats need an underclass of people in order to get voted in power. Dispite their rhetoric, many of them don't want black people to succeed because that means they can't play the race card to gain political points.

2. Republicans are reluctant to put money into social programs for black people. Call it selfishness, call it greed. But there is another component - recklessly feeding money into the system just plays into the Democrat agenda of creating an underclass of people totally dependent on the government.

3. Many black youth just seem hopeless. Money poured into black school districts makes no difference on test scores because the students don't want to learn. They want to be gangsters just like 50 Cent. If you think the behavior during the storm is bad, just imagine putting up with that crap on a daily basis. That is what happens in the inner city. The problem is a financial black hole. Millions of dollars poured in to help are squandered and wasted.

4. The vicious conspiracy theories form a cycle of continuing dispair. Black people think the white man is deliberately trying to hold him down. Everything that happens is viewed as a plot against black people. Just take another look at Kanye West's pathetic rant. If black people feel hopeless, that is if they feel they cannot succeed because of whitey, then they have no motivation to improve or learn. Hence their role models are gangsters and drug dealers.

5. As a result of this, a lot of white people just give up. There doesn't seem to be any way to fix the situation. Criticism makes you a racist. Aid money flows down the tubes with no measureable result. And trying to help gets you shot at, robbed, and beaten up. Hell just try going near one of these black neighborhoods if you are white. This is how you are treated. Real cool aint it. Gangsta-nigga-like just like his role model rappers taught him! But of course, in America, only Whitey can be racist. Daring to suggest otherwise makes you a racist.

Don't believe me? Just wait for all the replies I get on K5. I will be called every name under the sun. I will be called a KKK clansman. I will be called a racist. I will be called a Nazi. Just for speaking the truth.

This is the America I live in.

because clearly the way that the bottom rungs of society act when a huge natural disaster has made law enforcement impossible is indicative of the way that an entire civilization of 300M people conducts its affairs.

Yes, we unfortunately have a frat boy jackass for a president at president, but that doesn't change the fact that you're being an asinine twit.

Myself, I cannot remember the last time that I personally raped an Australian tourist.

There are a lot of people that have said the wealthy don't care about the poor and that the response is bad, but you hit on a point that I'd like to address here. I'm going to ignore the class-based arguments, because someone's wealth in Louisiana/New Orleans is relative to that of someone in LA. Cost of living is the real issue, and I'll address it here.

While many outside of the United States usually loathe the government for its intrusive policies and actions as "world's police", the prevailing internal arguments many of the US's citizen's have are its bureaucracy and charity with strings attached.

It is entirely possible to live in a state with a low cost-of-living, like Louisiana, and drift between jobs and unemployment checks and credit card payments. In fact, you could arguably make house payments with gov't checks and build personal value while never working. In cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, this is not the case. Even given gov't checks, you will still be living on the street.

The only things the willing unemployed have to deal with are lines waiting for their unemployment checks. The nanny state has done these individuals a HUGE disservice by coo-cooing their troubles and pampering them well into their thirties.

So let's look at a hurricane hitting Florida. Florida has a relatively high cost of living. Because of this, unemployment only gets you so far. Those relying on the government to take care of them or place them in federal and state housing certainly don't live near the coasts. So when Hugo hits, the people that live there work on a regular basis anyway and have no trouble getting their asses and elbows to work. Eventually the federal government would get there to help, but a great deal of work had already been done in preparation.

The flood in the US Midwest in the mid 1990s are another good example of this. Individuals that had no idea what they were doing were helping with reconstruction and aiding people they never knew. Not just because they cared about their neighbors, but because they believed that any help they could provide would be greatly valued.

On the other hand, New Orleans is a tourist city. If you don't have a job in tourism, then you simply don't have a job or spend your time selling trinkets. Very few people there have had to work hard, and know nothing of taking care of themselves. Most of the time they are told if they aren't qualified to do something, they shouldn't. You see, they have lived with the assumption, perpetuated by our government through bureaucratic charity, that they aren't capable of providing help, but are instead the dregs of society.

Devastation provides a look at how the culture of a location has evolved. New Orleans has apparently become an example where bureaucratic charity has frozen the populace into waiting for the nanny state to come solve the problem.

That simply isn't true.

I don't think this is just an issue of Americans vs. non-Americans. To me it's the equivalent of a social experiment where you lock people with vastly different socio-economic status in an extremely large and hot room (the Superdome), without enough food and water. Add to this a lack of adequate police protection and the fact that the poor greatly out number the middle class (the tourists), and it is not difficult to guess what is going to happen. The African-American community in New Orleans is the poorest of the poor in this country, and the heavily-accented and white foreigners who were unfortunate enough to visit NOLA at that time must have been extremely visible targets.

I don't mean to sound callous, however. I shudder to think what those poor people you have described must have gone through.

Help is on the way

Things are getting better

Humans are animals and we do only care about something if it affects us