"They treat us like animals"

I'm listening to Godmorgon Världen's reports from New Orleans, and my rage grows for every second.

The radio reporter was obviously very shaken of what he saw. When he entered this metropolis through the main highway, it was totally empty except for fires and groups of refugees who created an impression of a third world country at war.

The reporter came to the Superdome during the evacuation, where the white soldiers told him not to go into the stadium because he could be mugged or killed. He passed through the gates where the military had locked the citizens in anyway, and saw something completely different than what those victims of white supremacy thinking had talked about. He saw devastated people, people who tried to make their families survive in a place full of excrement, filth and urin. And the fury over how the authorities had handled the situation was enormous, "they treat us like animals" was said by many people in the Superdome.

Dagens Nyheter followed Jesse Jackson into New Orleans. Jesse Jackson raised a tied fist, and many many of the New Orleans refugees did the same. Jackson told DN that

- This reminds me of the slave ships. Black. Desperate. People. These American citizens couldn't afford running from 'Katrina'. It's unworthy, more than I can stand.

The citizens were ordered to evacuate New Orleans. Those who had cars and money for a hotel drove away. Swedish media described all this and concentrated their reports during the first days on how Katrina destroyed the actitecture in the French quarters where the tourists go. But after a while, the social realities of the American South started to find its way into the media mainstream.

The poor people of New Orleans - almost everyone with black skin - were left behind when those who could drove away. No one ordered thousands of Greyhounds to come to the poor quarters of New Orleans and evacuate the citizens. George W Bush never offered the citizens of New Orleans to camp around his Texas ranch.

Yesterday, I watched Mississippi Burning. The FBI came to Jessup county, Mississippi, in 1964 to find out what had happened to three missing civil rights activists and found an environment of deep racism and hatred. To get a picture of white supremavy thinking in the South, just take a look at the quotes from the film. "It was a war long before we got here", the FBI cheif officer said. That war has never really ended.

The last twenty-five years in the US have been a constant low-scale war were the rich has become much richer and the poor even poorer. The money in the richest country in the world has been used for foreign wars and not for the needs of the people, as you can see here. Now, race and class seem to be on its way back to politics as an effect of the New Orleans disaster. And Bush is under hard pressure as the failure to handled the catastrophe is associated to his politics.

George W has just said no to two Swedish purification plants. They "can't handle it logistically". This is the world's only superpower of today.