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June 20, 2008
"If it keeps on raining the levees are gonna break"
By eileen fleming
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.-Bob Dylan
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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.
Our sister and brother citizens on the Gulf Coast have been forgotten; for out of sight is out of mind.
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.
My heart as yours was broken as we all witnessed the horror of our sister and brother citizens on roof tops and in squalor after the levees broke.
Hearts turn cold and hard when we forget to remember what had once pierced them apart.
Redemption is always available and we the people can do something, when we know the truth.
I will be reporting from Central City, New Orleans from July 27-Aug. 2, 2008 on the convergence of committed social justice Christians who are doing something to help restore hope and homes for the poor.
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