Aftershock

It's been horrifying watching the scenes of chaos and violence unfold in New Orleans. Bodies lying in streets running with raw sewage, people looting and shooting, fights for food and water amid the squalor of the Superdome. It's hard to believe this could happen in the world's richest and most powerful country.

There's also been an interesting reaction from some of the world's press -- storms like Katrina, it is being argued, are one of the side effects of global warming. The US is the world's worst offender in this by far, and the most resistant to reducing emissions. It's a 'warning from god', said Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao newspaper.

Which is a pretty hardcore point of view, and just one of many. 'This is our tsunami', some American commentators have said. Wrong, says Alertnet. I buy that. But this isn't the time for US-bashing, and it's maybe a little too easy to forget that the people trying to feed children and care for the sick amid piles of human shit are not the rich white redneck SUV drivers we all love to hate, but overwhelmingly poor and black.

As in most natural disasters, those who are the hardest hit and who lose the most are those who are least well equipped to recover: the poor and vulnerable. The difference in the US is that some of the poor and vulnerable have guns, and are markedly harder to portray sympathetically on the television.

joella