The
Daymare That Remains
In New Orleans
By Eileen Fleming
24 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
On June 19, 2008, Rob Krall,
Editor of Oped News sent his 400+ unpaid writing staff a plea to wake
up and report on the devastating flooding in the Mid West.
I replied with a reminder of the following misery when the levees broke after Hurricane Kat blew threw three years prior.
Among the thoughtful comments posted on the thread is now an harmonious ending from Vic Sadot, Broadside Balladeer with his rendition of The Nightmare of New Orleans.
But I begin and end with Bob:
"If
it keeps on raining the levees are gonna break"-Bob Dylan
It has been three years since Hurricane Katrina blew in and exposed
that the empire has no clothes.
What happened in the Big Easy was foretold five years prior in a five-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and in the 2004 October edition of the National Geographic.
What had been published as a fictional story became fact; for it laid out the scene of the aftermath of Hurricane Kat that the world viewed in reality on TV.
Local officials and FEMA were well informed about the probability that even a slow-moving category three hurricane would cause catastrophic loss and a lot of human miseries, for 19th-century levees were not designed for that eventuality.
For years, climatologists have predicted and warned us that powerful storms will occur more frequently in the 21st century, because of rising sea levels from global warming.
The hardest-working marsh in America is the Louisiana bayou, and its health has been neglected. For three hundred years, men have built walls and levees to control that mighty force of nature, and it has wrecked havoc on New Orleans's natural defenses. From the Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any other place in the U.S.A.
Homeland Security should protect the homeland, but the War in Iraq costs American taxpayers millions a day on top of the $135 Billion the 'war on terror' began with.
The very innards of our nation are collapsing, and a government that has been commissioned to protect its citizens continues to blow it big time in support of Big Oil and the Industrial Military Complex.
"Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death." - Rev. MLK
In 2007, Project Billboard and the Center for American Progress released an analysis of the cost of the Iraq war, detailing exactly multiple projects to make America safer at home and stronger abroad.
"The "Opportunity Cost of the Iraq War" report reveals that for the cost of the Iraq war to date [2007], the United States could have undertaken 18 major projects to strengthen its security in the world and at home. Some of these include:
§
Adding two new divisions to the Army
§ Putting 100,000 new police officers on the nation's streets
§ Doubling the size of the Firefighters Grant Program
§ Doubling America's Special Operations forces
§ Undertaking significant improvements to safeguard ports
§ Funding important initiatives to safeguard loose nuclear weapons
"More
could be done to better secure or eliminate nuclear weapons, material
and technology to prevent terrorists from developing and exploding
nuclear or dirty bombs....These are just a few proposals that would
have represented a better investment in America's security than the...Iraq
"war of choice."
http://www.americanprogress.org/
issues/2004/08/b171440.html
No thinking person disputes the oppressive nature of Saddam Hussein's
regime and also understands that Iraq was not involved in the planning
or execution of the September 11 attacks and Iraq did not have a collaborative
operational relationship with Al Qaida. But, American army bases in
Afghanistan and Iraq are based all along the oil pipe line and we
the people have a homeland that is under-funded.
On June 20, 2007, Sen. Chris Dodd [D-CT.] sponsored S. 1668: Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007, a senate bill that required the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to allow specified uses by Louisiana of certain funds under the Road Home Program and set a deadline for the Housing Authority of New Orleans to make a certain number of dwelling units available for occupancy among many other things to benefit those still suffering the aftermath of Hurricane Kat.
From July from July 27-Aug. 2, 2008, I hope to find out how progress is going and will also be reporting from Central City, New Orleans on the good works of committed social justice compassionate Christians who have connected through NEXT International, because their hearts were broken and remain open to the horror we all witnessed when our sister and brother citizens were stranded on roof tops and in squalor after the levees broke.
Our sister and brother citizens on the Gulf Coast have been forgotten by most; for out of sight is out of mind. Hearts turn cold and harden when we forget to remember what had once pierced them apart. But, redemption is always possible and we the people can do something, when we know the truth.
If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break
If it keeps on raining, the levee's gonna break,
Some people are still sleeping
Some people ARE WIDE AWAKE.
-Modern Times, Bob Dylan
