According to Davids Medienkritik, a blog that monitors the German media, columnist Philipp Mausshardt wrote in the Tageszeitung that that because of Hurricane Katrina, "joy and sympathy beat simultaneously in my chest. I am, for example, joyful at the moment that the latest hurricane catastrophe hasn't again hit some poor land, but instead the richest country in the world.

"Yes, I even see in that a form of balancing justice for that which the inhabitants of that country have done to others through their war in Iraq.

"I would, however, be even more happy, if I knew that only the houses of Bush voters and members of the Army had been destroyed.

"I feel genuinely sorry for all the rest."