The problem with New Orleans is that the levees broke and the city was left to soak for just a little too long. To make matters worse, George Bush is the president of America (yes, that always makes matters worse) and he hired a chicken farmer to clean up the mess. Now, I don't know many chicken farmers, but I don't think they're that big on hygeine. This idiot certainly wasn't, he had no idea of how to handle the situation appropriately. To make matters worse, New Orleans, a city where you can go to jail for jay-walking, is at the moment only accomodating the relatively wealthy - they're the only ones who can afford the cleanup costs and other related expenses. This has led to 'ethnic disproportion' in comparison to what the city was like before the flood, bizarrely making the obscurely lucid Ray Nagin a hypocrite. Now there is all sorts of corruption and confusion at the local level. This is the problem with New Orleans, speaking from a non-American point of view.

I am from New Orleans and I don't know how realistic this "pulling together" idea is when it comes to the specific problem of crime. There were crack-fueled criminals in New Orleans before Katrina and there are crack-fueled criminals after. These guys are not going to put down the pipe and pass up what can only be described as a golden criminal opportunity simply because "pulling together" makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That's unrealistic, and too much to ask of a city that has just had every major department including it's police force and justice system decimated. We're still finding bodies. We're committing suicide daily. Everything we ever knew is changed and we have no idea what New Orleans will even mean in the next two to five years. The "problem with New Orleans" is that it was brutally smacked by an unimaginably harsh act of god that damaged every person, every neighborhood, every service. Forgive us if we aren't quick enough to dust off and "pull together" in time for the third act of the Australian news cycle. I've been all over the world and love many cities, but have never known one that pleases my every sense like New Orleans does. I'm working hard to make things better - a lot of people are, but we're just people and to think that we can have this fixed already indicates a serious underestimation of how big the problem is.

People are pulling together, but that does not make the news. The people in politics a busy trying to put Bush's money in their pockets.

The problem, foundationally, is not with New Orleans but with the U.S. Two years later, the 9th Ward, an all black area, sits much as did after the storm, except for the tall grass that's taking over. Did I mention ~ all black area? It's coming out now that innocent black people (two families together on the Danzinger Bridge) were killed by N.O. police and national guard during the flooding melee, and that's just one horrific racist story out of the multitude coming out of this historic American city. Another example is the Navajo Nation reservation, a part of it the size of Connecticut, has no plumbing whatsoever. Old people and young mothers, have to haul water for their homes and livestock, just like in 3rd World Countries. Foundationally on both counts .. racism. These people haven't been abandoned by federal, state and local government, they've been completely ignored. Invisible. (Maybe if we ignore them they'll just go away?) Look at the American government's non-involvement in the slaughter in Rwanda, Darfur, the list is endless. In Hotel Rwanda, Nick Nolte, tells a Rwandan man that the world doesn't just see them as niggers but as Africans. The worst apparently. We turned our backs on the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people.

Corruption, nepotism and fraud.

They aren't painting an unreal picture of New Orleans. The problem is corruption and apathy. Just like Pre-Katrina.

New Orleans was my lady, and she was murdered in front of my eyes. To all of your that think you know what went wrong and who is to blame, you don't know a god damn thing. It's everyones fault, and no ones fault. It was every fucking person for themselves. Unless you were there, you don't know. So don't pretend like you do. It will never be the same. The city is dead.

New Orleans is the crowing jewl in Bush's shame. I was down there a couple of months ago and the place is in shambles, the people who were displaced have not been able to return, the place is crawling with people from everywhere, yet, the natives are anywhere but in their hometown. The houses are still boarded up and falling apart. What touched and saddened me the most was to see the markings in front of the houses (which I assumed to be grafitti), it was later explained to me that as the recognize teams would come, they'd go into the houses and assess the toll to humans, they'd go outside draw an X in the facade of the house with numbers in it. Depending on where the numbers where, that meant how many bodies were inside, how many alive, how many pets, etc. and the rescue teams would go in based on that. Heartwrenching! Bush should have been tried as a war criminal for that alone!