Hurricane Katrina and the Twin Towers

[amicus]

I am rather addicted to several channels on satellite television, History, Military, Discovery, even NASA and National Geographic channels...

It comes from a lifetime of being a broadcast and print journalist where most of my spare time was involved in keeping up to date with news and the latest developments in all fields, so as to be cogent and current in writing and then in daily radio broadcasts...

So, off and on for the past week, I have watched a dozen 'Katrina' documentaries, from all directions and now, for the past few days, '9/11' documentaries are everywhere I look...and of course, like a moth to light, I must observe...


We are expecting my 20th grandchild, a boy, to make an arrival in late October, and I had the thought this evening while watching yet another '9/11' viewpoint, of how this young man, 20 years from October, will view, late August through September 11th...

It seems to two events have somewhat merged and one can see why, even though Katrina is aged but a year and 9/11, now five years...but in twenty years? Will there be a two week mourning period for those tragedies, or will they become forgotten history?

It is not my intention to make this political, however, I did have the passing thought that the two multibillion dollar loss events have in fact and in deed, changed the nation in which I reside and was born.

For those of you in the know, the financial disruption caused by 9/11 was huge and rippled not only coast to coast, but around the world. And most everyone knows the disruption and higher prices for energy that Katrina brought about and that, a year later, are still with us, of course, not to mention the human tragedy that accompanied both events...

Even the attack on Pearl Harbor, that brought the United States into world war two, caused no physical damage in the continental US, although the death toll was about the same as the twin towers and the pentagon, I find it to be an interesting comparison.

And as I listen to these various reports, I hear again and again, 9/11 will happen again and there will be even more devastating storms...perhaps worse than Katrina, in Miami or New York...or Houston....

Just things to think about...I guess....

 

[Liar]

Even the attack on Pearl Harbor, that brought the United States into world war two, caused no physical damage in the continental US, although the death toll was about the same as the twin towers and the pentagon, I find it to be an interesting comparison.

I ton't think the difference here is main land versus Hawaii as it were, but that Pearl Harbor was a military target. Many lives lost, civilians too, I assume, but what the japanese attacked were war ships. So Suburban Joe and Jane could still think to themselves "I'm not a war ship, so I'm reasonably safe "

9/11 and Katrina I guess stabbed at the subconscious notion that so many have, that disaster only happen to other people.

 

[amicus]

Good points, Liar, and yes...Pearl was a military target...not a terrorist attack...and Katrina and the Gulf Coast, happening not that long after the Tsunami in Banda Ache, showed the world that this nation could suffer as other nations have in a natural catastrophe....thank you...


amicus...

 

[Hooper_X]

Didn't they make that song, "I'm Walking on Sunshine?"

 

[Weird Harold]

We are expecting my 20th grandchild, a boy, to make an arrival in late October, and I had the thought this evening while watching yet another '9/11' viewpoint, of how this young man, 20 years from October, will view, late August through September 11th...

In twenty years, 9/11 will remain inthe public consiousness in much the same way that The Alamo, Maine, and Pearl Harbor do -- As a famous Battle Cry worth remembering but lacking ay real emotional impact.

Katrina on the other hand will be just another footnote in history like Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew, or other older hurricanes that only History Channel and Weather Channel fans know anything about.

The only real difference between recent storms, like Andrew and Katrina, and older disasters, like Camille, the Johnstown Flood, the Galveston Hurricane and the New England Hurricane of 1938, is that we have muchmore documentation on them -- especialy live video from the point of impact.

 

[Huckleman2000]

I know you didn't mean this to be a political thread, but I can't help but think the two events will be seen as bookends to a period when public fear was exploited by the Bush administration to enact the most devastating policy agenda in American history.

 

[Sean]

I know you didn't mean this to be a political thread, but I can't help but think the two events will be seen as bookends to a period when public fear was exploited by the Bush administration to enact the most devastating policy agenda in American history.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1864123,00.html

 

[Wildcard Ky]

I think Katrina will eventually pass into history footnotes the same as other natural disasters have done. They're easier to pass off, because nature caused it. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tsunamis are all beyond our control. History views it as part of the price that must be paid for living on this planet.

9-11 will never be forgotten. There was a fault in that one. 9-11 will be remembered even more than Pearl Harbor. Pearl was one uniformed fighting force attacking another. 9-11 was the act of cowards attacking civilians.

 

[Guest]

Katrina on the other hand will be just another footnote in history like Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew, or other older hurricanes that only History Channel and Weather Channel fans know anything about.

Not quite; different from Homestead and Galveston not only from media coverage. A whole city died, rich with nearly 300 years of history, re-known world over, and importing/exporting. It will take several years, if ever for it to recover. Not even half of the 485, 000 of her people returned as of June 2006.

A few of my fellow Cajuns, friends and family that evacuated to here in Washington state claim they will never live in the city of New Orleans again.

 

[cantdog]

It may rank with the Johnstown Flood, Weird. 1889 and still talked about, and for some of the same reasons.

 

[cantdog]

The Johnstown thing and what happened to New Orleans from Katrina are both massive feats of mis-engineering. Katrina in Mississippi was a natural disaster; your comments and those of the Wildcard are a propos to it. Katrina in New Orleans was a man-made disaster, due to failure of a man-made system of water control.

 

[BigAndTall]

20 years from now people in NOLA will be talking about Katrina like a badge such as they did from Betsy in 1968. What I wonder more is what will NOLA look like in the future.

 

[cantdog]

9-11 will never be forgotten. There was a fault in that one. 9-11 will be remembered even more than Pearl Harbor. Pearl was one uniformed fighting force attacking another. 9-11 was the act of cowards attacking civilians.

So attacking civilians is all you need to do to be a coward?

 

[SeaCat]

So attacking civilians is all you need to do to be a coward?

No, but attacking civilians is a sign of cowardice.

Cat

 

[Boxlicker101]

Katrina was a natural disaster and will be remembered as such. It was greater than some and more documented than most, but really just one of hundreds. The Johnstown flood resulted from some rich people not caring a whit about ordinary people they put at risk, and getting away with it. That's why it remembered. Katrina was poor management at three different levels of government. The US government gets most of the blame but I think the mayor of New Orleans was much more at fault. He could have easily lessened the impact by commandeering school buses and city buses to get many thousands to safety. The levee break was sloppy work too, but it is hard to pin the fault on any person.

Pearl and 9/11 were similar in that both were sneak attacks. The perpetrators of Pearl Harbor paid heavily for their treachery, or for allowing such treachery in their names. That is not completely the case with 9/11 although the Taliban has paid a heavy price and continues to pay it.

 

[cantdog]

There is a distinction between "some rich people" and "governments." I concede it. I can only wish it were more marked.

So the Johnstown flood is more clear-cut, in that sense. But Johnstown didn't result in a new diaspora for cajuns, or anything like it. Some of the consequences of New Orleans will be more significant. Emergency planning , by federal fiat, has been radically centralized, in spite of decades of consensus for local control. The human carriers of creole and cajun culture have been displaced and scattered, some of them. And I think it may have an impact on the national confidence in these patronizing autocrats.

When the governments not caring a whit about ordinary people they put at risk say they take full responsibility, what they mean by the word is not accountability, but command. They are taking command, and they are not interested in accountability in the slightest. They don't want citizens, but sheep. Until New Orleans, it looked as if they were getting what they wanted.

 

[amicus]

Yup...kinda turned political...which is not particularly surprising as sooner or later the 'left' will turn to tactics assaulting the foundatios of liberty.

Hindsight is great, but many military and civilian planners in the mid 1930's warned of both Japanese and German expansion and rearmament. While I occasionally criticize the Roosevelt administration and European powers for not intervening with Berlin and Tokyo.

Many say that the reparations and land aquisitions by the Allied Forces following WW1 made German expansion and revitalization inevitable. The British, French and Dutch Empires in the Far East contributed by putting an economic strangle hold on Japan as these 'empires' protected their interests in China and Maylasia and India and Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

America at the end of WW1 was just a fledgling power, strong economically but almost powerless among European political influence.

And yes, the New Orleans levy system was in effect neglected by the powers that be, but a knowledge of the history of the planners and engineers at the city, county, state and federal levels indicates this was a wide spread infection of graft and corruption going back many years and confused and complicated to a degree that it could not be easily untangled and set right.

The Johnstown Flood references are just political cheap shots by cafe' socialists and should be ignored as having no value other than rhetoric and dialectic, all part of the late Marxist hatred of human individual rights.

More tragic natural disasters will occur as more and more people have sought coastal areas to reside in, take your guess, Miami, Tampa Bay, Houston, even New York City which a high tide Category Three hurricane would devastate as storm surge barrels up the rivers and into the subway systems.

While there was ample evidence of possible Japanese and German treachery in the 30's, there has also been many forewarnings of Muslim and Islamic terror intentions for nearly half a century. Muslims were chagrined by German and Allied occupation of North Africa and the Persian Middle East during world war two and the creation of Israel has been and will be a thorn in the side of the Arab world that will never go away.

Since even before the Jimmy Carter Presidency, many have warned of an expanding terror network.

While Roosevelt and the European powers can not truly be faulted for not intervening with German and Japan, history will fault all involved if radical muslims create world wide havoc and cost a hundred million lives in the process.

It is to the great courage of Great Britain and the United States, just to name two, who have acknowledged the threat and acted to stop or at least slow the progress of radical terrorists around the world.

And with the fullness of time, the security restrictions, so called, invasion of private rights to protect the nations, both England and America, will be seen as saving many lives, preserving a way of life and still maintaining the highest level of individual rights and liberties in a time of war.

As mid term elections in the United States near, the world at large should hope and pray that the American people are wise enough to continue to choose those who will protect and defend their freedoms and not let the appeasement of the left regain control of the Senate and House.

amicus...

 

[cantdog]

Dood. What weird ass shit.

 

[Tom Collins]

I still think the creation of Isreal was stupid and wrong, but that's not what this thread is about, eh?

 

[amicus]

Tom Collins]I still think the creation of Isreal was stupid and wrong, but that's not what this thread is about, eh?

[/I]

~~~~~~~

Not sure what the thread is about anymore, but the middle east certainly plays a part in it.

As I recall, the 'Balfour' resolution, about the time of world war one, was the driving force in the drive for a homeland for the Jewish people.

But with wider implications than that, the conflict in the middle east goes back to the Crusades and the ebb and flow of Christian or Muslim domination in that area.

I suppose one could say that the Protestant Reformation that divided Christianity did not have a similar counter part in the Muslim world, or if it did, was not as effective in breaking down the walls of absolute domination by the church or the mosque.

Muslems are still firmly rooted not just in the dark ages, but beyond, rejecting most all of that which modern man has achieved through enlightenment.

I purport that it is reasonable to predict that the coming global conflict will essentially be between east and west, christian and muslim, with the chinese and nuclear weapons thrown in as a wild card.

The question remains as to whether it will begin/end, with a whimper or a bang.

bets anyone?


amicus...