I don't get it. I really don't. Your city is under water, you have no electric, no food, no clean water. There are dead bodies floating past you and the most powerful man in the world is hovering over your head in a Government warcopter.

So what good is that new TV, that new computer going to do you? What twisted logic leads you to take potshots at the rescue copters evacuating 20,000 people from a football stadium?

Looting food, water I could understand. Just about. But these people are raiding electrical shops, gun shops. They're jacking cars and buses. People around the world are going to look at New Orleans and they're going to see the American people acting like this, and when America comes to those countries asking for aid in rebuilding Louisiana, what do you think the answer will be? These people are ambassadors, representatives of the United States and their message is going over loud and clear around the globe. Fuck the people, just grab as much as you can. It's the American way, isn't it? The acquisition of more things?

I heard on the radio this afternoon that people are calling this America's Tsunami. How crass. How selfish. How egotistical. A quarter of a million people died in the East Asian Tsunami. Untold millions were affected. Cities and towns on two continents were devastated. How can you look at a flood that's barely covered one city, barely killed a thousand people and put it on the same magnitude? How can you say that the deaths from Hurricane Katrina were as unavoidable and immediate as from the tsunami? These people had plenty of warning. They had every chance to get away.

I've also heard it said that the people doing the looting are as poor as the people from Indonesia who were devastated by the tsunami.

Are they serious? We're talking about the richest, proudest country in the world. They wouldn't let such abject poverty exist in one of their most major cities, would they? You seriously expect me to believe that right in the heart of America's Oil refining industry, there's people who survive on less than the basics - with little or no running water, meagre rations and living in tin huts?

If this is true, how can America bear to look the rest of the world in the face and lecture anyone about human rights and decent living standards? Why on earth should we accept that the American Way is the Right Way?

There's a quotation I heard once which says something like "The effectiveness of a state can be judged by its citizens". Following that rule, the US needs to be condemned in the strongest terms possible by as many people as possible.

And like the belligerent, cruel, hypocritical bully child it is, the US Government will take no notice whatsoever. Thoroughly disgusting.