Since we are coming up on the 5th anniversary of the Bitch Named Katrina(sponsored by Nature) and the Federal Flood (engineered by the Corpse of Engineers), it’s time for the Rising Tide to do it’s thing. This year it will be at The Howlin’ Wolf.
Hie thee to the Rising Tide for more information.
More about the vigilantes who ran roughshod over folk after the Federal Flood in Algiers.
I have no words for what I’m feeling right now. No way to quiet the screaming of my soul over shit like this.
Maitri has a Blog up concerning the new HBO series “Treme”. I am definitely going to watch it. You should too because it tells much of the truth about what happen to New Orleans post-Flood.
John Goodman is a great representation of our Late Great Ashley Morris, a Blogger for the city back then. I think he will pull this one off.
We are getting screwed over and over. Hundreds of millions of dollars over 40 years and our floodwalls collapse flooding 80% of the city. Four years down the line, and many hundreds of millions more, the Corpse of Engineers says that they will have to close the gates on the London Ave Canal at 2.5 feet?
I thought these assholes spent those millions of $$$ to make the floodwalls stronger. I believed that these people gave a shit about us. I thought that they cared…
Obviously not.
Well, we are at 9+ foot and worst-case scenario is 8.5 foot for flooding. We have a back-up generator and soon solar, to keep us going. We have enough food for 2 months and we can purify water, but what about the others that couldn’t pull off what we did?
They are fucked, plain and simple.
They repaired their flooded slab-on-grade houses trusting in the Corpse, but to no avail. Many of us warned them, but they wouldn’t listen. Now it’s time to see the possibilities of the Future.
The Federal and State Guv;mits don;t care about US. The Port and the oil yes, but not about us who live in this wonderful city. (well they do love the brothels…)
I’m going back in time to Ashley Morris- we must secede from the Gret Stet and take our royalties from the gas/oil industries and then hire the Dutch to save us. Middle America does not care about us. Our ancestors were sold along with the land two centuries ago, and our way of living is abhorrent to thier supposed minds.
We are New Orleanians and this country must pay reparations for the damages to our homeland and our people.
Sinn Fein!
Over the last few months my Blogging has almost become non-existant. It’s not that I don’t have enough to rant about… I’m just tired. Four years of slogging and smacking down mooks for being stooopid on top of the cares of rebuilding our home and lives, care for friends and love for New Orleans have taken much out of me. It has also upset that delicate balance that I had acheieved years ago with my little dance with HIV.
For months I’ve been more of a news aggregator funneling good pieces onto dear old FB and just letting the chips fall as they will. I had gotten away from what I started doing right after the Flood in educating folks about what was going down here and explaining the arcane systems that the powers-that-be had concocted for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. One-liners followed by a link doesn’t fit the bill in my book.
This weekend I was with many of us original NOLA Bloggers for the Rising Tide 4. I felt connected again and so proud of what they continue to do even now at the eve of the 4th anniversary of the Federal Flood. I realized that I wasn’t a parrot, but an owl. My life has spread half-way around the World twice, I have the Blessing to be able to have been able to rebuild my life and Being as it must be and I am surrounded, physically and in cyber with some of the best souls I have ever known. Some of the folk there asked why I had gotten quiet on my Blog, that they missed the rants and the snarky diatribesand the Tales of Our City.
The Blog no longer had any meat.
There has to be the meat, the processing of a news article by a person in order to make sense, show some relation and postulate what a political decision can lead to down the line.
So I’m going back to Blogging more regularly. If someone trashes New Orleans of the Gulf Coast, I am going to freaking eat you alive. Some politician wants new rules that will be to our disadvantage here, I will dig to refute or abuse you in creative ways. And when I just want to talk about life or my beloved New Orleans, I will do just that. There is a story to be told about a chunk of the country that has been used and abused for the Nation’s benefit but is sadly lacking when it comes to being helped to heal. (the volunteers who have come understand and we hail them). I’m talking State and Federal governments and the oil/gas companies. I’m talking about the destruction of our wetlands… the disregard for the folk of the swamps as just fools and simple folk. About buying a populace and culture and just running it into the ground because “people of this region do not count”.
Yes we do. Without us and the sacrifices over the last century the rest of the U.S. would not have what it has now. Our homeland, bought as just swamp and some chattel have been almost crushed, but life still flows here.
Sinn Fein!
Well Darlin’s this day makes Year 233 A.R. (After Revolution). We all should be proud of the fact that somehow the strange collection of folks that have lived through those years managed to keep it all together (The War Between the States was a major blip on the screen…), and so much has been done by the people of this Nation. I can’t say by the Nation because the people are the Nation. It has always been up to citizens to create, build and advance our lives here and to provide for the ones to come.
I am proud to be an American. I’m proud of the service I rendered in the Navy to help protect this country. But… I am upset with the Government for the slow, and possibly non-existent rebuilding along the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. Many private people stepped up to the plate to help all os along the Coast out from the devastation, but the Government has been sorely lacking, especially for those of us in New Orleans who lost almost everything from the failure of the Federally designed and built floodwalls and levees. Betty and I lost 95% of our pasts and four years of our lives fighting to rebuild our little world. Many others have lost and they have yet to be able to get to the restoration point that we have reached. Along the Coast many of us feel as if America, the Government, has forgotten us. We know that America the People didn’t.
The Church of Our Lady of Gentilly wishes many Blessings to the American People. Party hearty!
Sinn Fein
From our dear friend Matt McBride (Fix the Pumps) concerning Donald Rumsfeld’s decisions in the nightmare we call poast-Katrina/Federal Flood here in New Orleans-
Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans—and the
same day that Bush viewed the damage on a flyover from his Crawford,
Texas, retreat back to Washington—a White House advance team toured
the devastation in an Air Force helicopter. Noticing that their
chopper was outfitted with a search-and-rescue lift, one of the
advance men said to the pilot, “We’re not taking you away from
grabbing people off of rooftops, are we?”
“No, sir,” said the pilot. He explained that he was from Florida’s
Hurlburt Field Air Force base—roughly 200 miles from New Orleans—which
contained an entire fleet of search-and-rescue helicopters. “I’m just
here because you’re here,” the pilot added. “My whole unit’s sitting
back at Hurlburt, wondering why we’re not being used.”
The search-and-rescue helicopters were not being used because Donald
Rumsfeld had not yet approved their deployment—even though, as
Lieutenant General Russ Honoré, the cigar-chomping commander of Joint
Task Force Katrina, would later tell me, “that Wednesday, we needed to
evacuate people. The few helicopters we had in there were busy, and we
were trying to deploy more.”
[...]
The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New
Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with
the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that
morning and said, “You’re going to need several thousand troops.”
“Well, I disagree,” said the SecDef. “And I’m going to tell the
president we don’t need any more than the National Guard.”
The problem was that the Guard deployment (which would eventually
reach 15,000 troops) had not arrived—at least not in sufficient
numbers, and not where it needed to be. And though much of the chaos
was being overstated by the media, the very suggestion of a state of
anarchy was enough to dissuade other relief workers from entering the
city. Having only recently come to grips with the roiling disaster,
Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning.
According to several who were present, the president was agitated.
Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked,
“Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on
television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World
nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?”
Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard
deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would
create “unity of command” issues. Visibly impatient, Bush turned away
from Rumsfeld and began to direct his inquiries at Lieutenant General
Honoré on the video screen. “From then on, it was a Bush-Honoré
dialogue,” remembers another participant. “The president cut Rumsfeld
to pieces. I just wish it had happened earlier in the week.”
But still the troops hadn’t arrived. And by Saturday morning, says
Honoré, “we had dispersed all of these people across Louisiana. So we
needed more troops to go to distribution centers, feed people, and
maintain traffic.” That morning Bush convened yet another meeting in
the Situation Room. Chertoff was emphatic. “Mr. President,” he said,
“if we’re not going to begin to get these troops, we’re not going to
be able to get the job done.”
Rumsfeld could see the writing on the wall and had come prepared with
a deployment plan in hand. Still, he did not volunteer it. Only when
Bush ordered, “Don, do it,” did he acquiesce and send in the troops—a
full five days after landfall.
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