Letters

Every time I read an article about "looting" my blood pressure rises. New Orleans is largely destroyed, thousands are possibly killed, hundreds of thousands will be homeless for quite a while. So why are we giving even a second glance at looting?

The people left behind in New Orleans are the poorest residents, the ones who couldn't afford to buy a car to run away in, or buy a plane ticket out of Louisiana. They're stuck in a ruined city with no fresh water, no electricity, and no way out except by helicopter rescue teams. Of course they're going to "loot" grocery stores. How are they going to survive otherwise? And it's not as though there's anyone in the store to accept their money if they did want to pay.

These are poor people left to die in the face of a hurricane. We've failed them enough already without branding their struggle to survive as criminal.

-- Denise Riffle

I am a lifetime resident of New Orleans; and Earl Ofari Hutchinson's piece is spot on the money. I have, all my life, watched the poverty here which seemed irreparable (local corruption, of course, does not help, but our admirable Mayor Nagin has gotten rid of much of it).

Those worst hurt by the hurricane will be those who had the least (seemingly) to lose; the many renters in the city, who lived in decomposing houses in low-lying neighborhoods. It would be much better for most of the city to be raised up on piers, as has been suggested, and rebuilt in the styles admired in the historic areas.

The drowned urban forest of my beloved city can be replanted and regrown. The remnants of fine architecture can be reused on new structures. The French Quarter and the Garden District are mostly intact; one day perhaps technology will exist to raise them as well.

Unfortunately our national government has struck a new low in stupidity (those holes in the levees could have been stopped up with concrete filled barges) and I fear remaking New Orleans into the poetic garden it should be will not be of any importance to the Oval Office chimp.

-- Sarah Jumel

I am truly worried that Katrina might cause a loss of life of 1,000 or more -- which is of the same order as 9/11. Unfortunately, there was the tidal surge in Gulfport and Biloxi. The death count currently stands at 100, but could go much higher. You have New Orleans, where you can't even begin to accurately estimate the number of the lives lost, but I am pretty sure that more than 2,000 have already been rescued by helicopter -- this does not bode well, and you have lower Louisiana, which we have heard nothing about, but got creamed.

On the economic side, flooding is not covered by insurance policies. Water damage could conceivably destroy 50,000-100,000 homes in New Orleans or roughly $20 billion in uninsured losses. Lost business, productivity and wages for a city of 400,000 could easily reach $5-10 billion. If you include insurance losses and other non-New Orleans losses, the Katrina losses might be as big as 9/11.

Fortunately, it shouldn't help George too much. The little guy was out giving a speech about how we need to win in Iraq to keep the oil out of the hands of Osama bin Laden. This could be the next Michael Moore movie. And besides, what is going to be his solution -- America needs another tax cut? War on Iran? War on Syria? Or simply saying that Katrina had links to Osama?

-- Stewart W. Lenz

Isn't it ironic that Bush is telling us that he wants "zero tolerance" for price gouging at the gasoline pumps? The billions of profits his oil company cronies are salting away isn't gouging; that's just lawful greed, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just more evidence that Mr. Bush treats his citizens with contempt by handing out clichés and talking points and no substance.

-- Stephen Speaking Wheat

Normally we would have a National Guard to come in and deal with natural disasters like the hurricane in New Orleans. Thousands of people are likely to die for lack of resources to evacuate people and bring in emergency aid. But we don't have a national guard in our own country anymore because they are all over in Iraq. Poor judgment has put America at risk.

-- Marc Perkel

The subhead of Scott Lamb's evaluation of world media response to Katrina ("Among the responses: Sadness, sympathy, but not a lot of charity") was patently unfair and deeply misleading.

The evidence for this lack of "charity" was apparently one disgruntled editorial in one German publication, vociferously denounced by another German publication. Based on this, it seems, selfish greedy foreigners have no "charity" for suffering Americans. On the Canadian Red Cross Web site there is a prominent link explaining how I can make a donation directed to Hurricane Katrina victims. The Weather Network, Canada's answer to the Weather Channel, has a similar link. The British Red Cross Web site has a link for donating directly to victims of Katrina -- and so, surprise, surprise, does the French Croix-Rouge. I will be most curious to see if any media bothers to report on how much aid does come in from overseas sources; so far, its contribution seems to be posting e-mails from people wondering "whether Asian tsunami victims will collect money for us?" ("Don't count on it," Jack Cafferty glowered in response on CNN the other night.)

This sort of nonsense fuels America's growing paranoia and xenophobia. Shame on Salon for contributing, especially at a time when the world is standing with Americans in need.

-- Lisa MacLeod

The idea that other countries are somehow uninterested or unsympathetic to the disaster in New Orleans is unfortunate.

The story of Katrina has followed this shape: dire predictions, then widespread reports that New Orleans had been spared, now the news that the worst is coming true.

Here in puny Manitoba, more than $3,000 in donations had been received by a single aid agency before noon yesterday. Newspapers and Web sites have been telling people where to donate, and the Canadian government has formally extended an offer of help. The U.S. has yet to ask for, or accept any, foreign help.

What is unfolding right now is terrible, and will only get worse. Canada and Canadians are offering help, but the focus of the media has been on flooding, looting, death, the Superdome, and George Bush cutting two days off his vacation.

-- Dougald Lamont

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