NAWLINS

Since I’ve been home this is the first evening I’ve had a chance to watch much news.  I slept for close to eleven hours yesterday, rising only once to quaff down a cheese dog and salad, and later an evening walk to the beach during which I saw the most unusual sight. Oh yeah, and this time?  I wasn’t the only one to see it! Later on that.  

Forgive me for forgetting who was reporting, all I remember was I was watching Global at the time.  Among numerous jolts of horror over the catastrophe, two sentences struck me like thunderbolt’s.

Paraphrasing here they were,

“The culture of New Orleans will be absorbed across America as many refugees may never be able to return to their homes.”

And,

“New Orleans will consist of a few tourist attractions, the French Quarter and oil interests”

My feet jumped up and pulled me off of my comfy new couch.
My hands grabbed a pad of paper, a pen and began scribbling down my thoughts in point form so’s I wouldn’t forget my focus once the computer got warmed up.

• I was thinking about FEMA, and their imbecile director who has no business being in charge of his wardrobe, let alone the safety of millions of American people.

• I was thinking about the resources of FEMA, their analysists, their experts, their billions of American tax dollars, their special powers, and their absolute lack of preparedness in this situation.

• I was thinking about why that damn Levee hadn’t been fixed, despite the multiple warnings and decent common sense.

• I was thinking about the people trapped under the rubble of the Golden Gate bridge so many years ago and  couldn’t help but remember the people who would’ve sued the ass off of the government for ignoring expert engineering opinion that GG Bridge receive Earthquake proofing redesign.  People who may have sued had rescue crews been allowed to do their jobs and rescue just a few.

What happened here?  How is this possible?  FEMA’s been planning for these catastrophe’s since before Y2K.  They’ve been running scenarios best and worst cases with everything in between, haven’t they?  What has the government been doing with their geologists, meteorologists, biogeneticists?  Am I to believe the foremost superpower, the most technologically advanced country on Earth, the main receptacle of so called Brain Drain benefits couldn’t foresee the need to update the levee, or educate the folks on emergency preparedness, or put in place plans for the delivery of food, supplies and medicine to a waterlogged land in such a situation as this?

As an ignorant Canadian with no background in Earth changes except for what I’ve skeptically read by Edgar Cayce and his camp, I knew the following:

• New Orleans was sinking.


• The Eastern Seaboard experiences severe weather every summer-fall season, with increasing power and damage over the past few years.


• The chances of a Katrina were high and climbing each year.


• New Orleans was exceptionally susceptible  to a five magnitude storm, and could be inundated with flooding all up and down the Mississippi causing massive loss of life and billions of dollars worth of damage.

C’mon!!  

FEMA couldn’t respond because “The water was too high”, what happened to contingency planning?  Why were there no ships or air drops coordinated?

How is it that a small group of search and rescue from Vancouver BC was the first crew to arrive with help other than media?

Here’s what I believe, call me a crank, hysteric, paranoid but unless there is some small outside chance that all the government heads involved are moron’s and honestly couldn’t see the need for proper maintenance, building practices, and preparedness for a storm struck N’awlins, this ‘lapse’ of judgment was a carefully constructed boondoggle.

I say that the civilian experts did their jobs, examined the possibilities, modeled and predicted all sorts of foreseeable events within the boundaries of their expertise, packaged and presented their findings to their various clients within the respective departments of government, FEMA, and outside commercial agencies including insurance companies.  Yet somehow, some way their recommendations were ignored.

Why?

Have you ever heard of the term bean counter?

A bean counter will calculate the costs of all such presented scenarios and their attendant costs.  From their exhaustive analysis would come the bottom line, most cost effective or favorable solution  for the client.

All the scenarios were spun, all the costs accounted for and certain people decided not to fix the levee while others decided to build on shifty land despite expert warnings.
Perhaps some of the decision makers truly didn’t recognize the danger of their many actions and inactions, but surely some people knew, why were those people ignored or silent?

But those strong few, in places of authority and decisive power decided to build in the most vulnerable area’s and chose not to fix the levee not in spite of the more clear minded protests but precisely because they knew the risks, they knew the outcomes and they also knew, it was only a matter of time before their ship in the form of hurricane Katrina would come in.

They chose to allow the poorest of the poor in America to die in order to pave way for their terrible plan, total control over the financial life blood of the Big Easy, the most popular of all American cities save Las Vegas.

I bet if you followed the money you could find out who would allow such horror to unfold.

“New Orleans will consist of a few tourist attractions, the French Quarter and oil interests”

Who controls the oil, liquor, entertainment and hotel regulations will inherit untold riches and power during a time where oil becomes increasingly scarce and domestic travel will become the hot ticket for American’s afraid to travel outside their own borders.

Don’t believe me?  Here is the transcript of what  the mayor Ray Nagin had to say to the Federal government, he spells it all out

Here is a breakdown of the spending cuts on flooding and hurricane preparedness before and after the worst hurricane season ever, 2004.

Reeling from such sick revelations, I am at once inspired by the outpouring of concern and action from ordinary people and extraordinary places such as Kuwait.  

I am once again witnessing the action of people, all over the world extending their arms past the confines of their own government bureaucracy and politics Even Thai have risen to the occasion amidst their own recovery in remembrance of the generosity and kindness of spirit shown them by the American people.  The same people being let down by their government during a time of absolute calamity and chaos.  

Here’s a list of agencies accepting donation.  Please check out the source before you donate, there are already scam charities being discovered.

I am in awe of the strength of the Louisiana people, their neighbor states and their fans around the world.  I am impressed by the coverage by media too shaken to subdue their sorrow, or outrage.

As Mayor Nagin says, when the waters recede America will wake up, again.

Lets hope they identify and shake off those who would sell their lives and steal their land just to turn a buck.

Let’s hope people world wide watch and learn from this through their tears of empathy and frustration, because soon we may be facing more catastrophe’s.

Have you seen the next three storms brewing just off the coast?  Ophelia, Maria, and Nico.