I see cnn has been playing the mayors interview omitting most of the juicy parts and cuss words. now they are to busy folowing the presd around. By the way I am watching all three main cable news networks and to there credit i have only seen this story on cnn.

Welcome to corporate American government. We don't just use planned obsolescence for our manufacturing output, we use it on whole communities!

Horrorcane Katrina has generate a stink worse than a run-down sports stadium in the middle of a white Christian fundamentalist man-made natural disaster.

I'm still waiting for some twenty bargain-basement oil-rigs to turn up on eBay.

I wonder if any US officials will be tried for crimes of genocide at the International Criminal Court? Probably not, they were only following orders.

Actually, the exact opposite of what you think about the media is true. Instead of ignoring the bad news, they tend to focus exclusively on the death and destruction, completely ignoring anything good that may happen. Not that there was much good in this case, but this time around, there wasn't even any talk of the many dramatic and dangerous rescues, and the huge outpouring of help that's coming from across the rest of the country. Despair and finger pointing are all that's making it into the news, mostly because the mainstream media in America hates our current President and does everything in its power to make him look bad. Which, come to think of it, DOES mean you shouldn't trust the media. But, contrary to your experience, virtually every second of news time here in America has focused on Katrina and the aftermath. How sad that Ray Nagin's decision not to get his people out with the city's school busses hasn't rated a mention ...

Most of the so-called journalists, especially in the USA and UK but far from exclusively in these countries, as well as the so-called "news" outlets are terribly guilty in recent times of several things.

Amongst these are a moral and at time legal failure on their part to do their job properly as well as a car crash mentality that, though loathsome, is perhaps understandable in the general public but inexcusable in people who claim to be professional journalists.

If you add outright corruption by some notable journalists (not necessarily notable for the quality of their writing or reporting), the use of many others as puppets of one vested interest or another (and their allowing themselves to be so used) and the disgusting editorialising that is passed off as journalism all the time now, it's a wonder anybody can figure out what is going on anywhere.

On top of all of that, online sources like blogs (especially when combined with RSS etc) are adding a ridiculous layer of misinformation, disinformation, confusion, political distortion and plain lunacy to what most people are getting in their regular diet of "news".

No doubt, hurricane Katrina was "a wonderful opportunity" for true humanity and heroism to be displayed but the overall disaster was appalling in the scale of unecessary death, suffering, strife, disorganisation, disharmony, in-fighting, inaction, name-calling, irresponsibility and insensitivity.

If America doesn't want a large number of people to hate their president and is tired of everybody criticising him, then perhaps they should take greater pains to avoid having such a large and slow-moving target (of criticism, ok? I dont want to be accused of needing "re-education" in Cuba.) "lead" their nation.

In the world's loudest and most powerful proponent of what it defined (and, until recently, enshrined) as free and democratic government, it is pretty shocking that only just over forty per cent of the electorate could be bothered to use the right for which so many have paid such a great price. The turn-out rate for lower-level elections is traditionally even lower.

And there you have the root of the problem: a nation that has long prided itself (deservedly so) on excellence, gumption, self-empowerement and self-determination has descended into largely a bunch of lazy, whining, irresponsible, ignorant, selfish, poor-me's who would rather blame anybody except themselves for all of their problems.

Of course that is an extremely uncharitable blanket statement and of course there are huge numbers of people who have not, it could be argued, had many of the benefits that someone like myself has enjoyed but, sooner or later, if you don't help yourself, you can't expect anybody to help you.

It is one thing to expect to help the unfortunate few who need it. It is quite another for an entire society to leave all responsibility for thought, decision and action in the hands of their hardly-elected representatives.

The mentality that leads to eligible voters failing to turn out for elections that result in "leaders" like Nagin and Bush is probably the first thing that needs to be blamed.

I marvelled at a short bit of video showing a single military Blackhawk helicopter trying to rescue somebody while some six or more TV news choppers somehow failed to collide with each other in their eagerness to provide the rest of the world with what some cretin of a corporate news whore no doubt reckons is invaluable footage.

Surprisingly (yes, that is more than a hint of sarcasm), I never saw this video repeated. This was perhaps the only news video I did not see shown about two thousand times by BBC World. What a surprise.

To call hurricane Katrina "our tsunami" was ignorant, disingenuous and thoughtless.

Sure, if you discount the fact that there was several days' discrete warning of the storm and decades of scientific and professional alarm about the city's precarious condition.

Sure, if you discount some quarter of a million people from three continents who were wiped off the map by the Asian tsunami.

Sure, if you ignore the countless communities that were erased last December. Nobody knows how many of the uncharted and unregistered smaller tribes were lost.

I wonder how many Americans have considered how the television rescues of the "poverty-stricken" of New Orleans must have looked to the poor people of the rest of the world (or, more precisely, WOULD have looked to many of them if they had TV. Or electricity. Or eyesight.) Many of the victims were quite clearly very obese and were on the roofs of houses most of the world's truly destitute can only dream of occupying, even if it has to be several families per house.

Again, I know this is far from fair to many of the victims of this disaster. However, it is high time America learned how to handle reality as well as learn a little about how the rest of the world lives and the terrible negative effect much of America's way of life has on it.

If nothing else, perhaps Katrina has forced much of America to take note and start doing something about the terrible negative effect America's way of life has just on itself. There is little news in this for people of colour in the USA but maybe now the rest of the great Union will begin to wake up and smell the Starbucks.

Maybe.