Not worth it

The wake of hurricane Katrina is still being felt in New Orleans. With the city some 80% underwater the convention centre and Superdome have finally been emptied of refugees, since they've been sent to Texas. The number of dead, expected to be in the thousands, is still increasing however, since the rest of the city had become like a war zone with snipers and gunfire everywhere along with other violence and looting. The dubious media coverage has been iteresting to watch, what little of it there's been. There were a few now notorious images that showed some black citizens wading through water with some food, and another with some white people in a similar position, having captions that read looters stealing and victims finding food respectively.

Bush and company have had to start acting to defend their image in response to all the bad press for their slow reaction to the disaster. Bush has had to respond to attacks by saying the government response has been unacceptably slow, and this had nothing to do with the race of the people affected. But without Mardi Gras the typical population of New Orleans is poor and black, not your typical Republican voter and not of great interest to the American news media. So like the millions of Africans dying of AIDS, TB, malaria and starvation, the people of New Orleans have learned that being poor and black means you're not worth the time or effort.