httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A2q60qg0WA&feature=player_embedded In reply to Pat Robertson’s comments about Haiti’s alleged “pact to the devil” (aptly described by Gawker as “galactically vile”), Mr. Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., says: “I...
new orleans
What Is New Orleans? Come Find Out.
How Do You Define a City? Anybody who is within driving, walking, or biking distance of Loyola University in New Orleans on Wednesday night should think positively about coming to the discussion titled “What Is New Orleans” to hear the thoughts of panelists Richard...
Viva Burlesque!
Will you pardon us while we take a break from being all-serious all the time? This weekend, Sept. 11-13, The City That Care Forgot hosts the first annual New Orleans Burlesque Festival, which we hope will be the first of many to come. Featuring Foxy Flambeaux, Praline...
RT4: Sinking to New Heights
Just a quick word to say hello to our friends gathering in New Orleans this weekend for the fourth annual Rising Tide bloggers’ conference on the recovery and future of the Sunken City. Can’t be there this time—profound regrets—but we’ll be there in spirit and hope to...
‘Surrounded by Water’ Now at Historic New Orleans Collection
In New Orleans last week we visited an excellent exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection on Royal Street, “Surrounded by Water: New Orleans, the Mississippi River & Lake Pontchartrain.” As usual with the HNOC, you get the best of archival maps and photographs of Louisiana with detailed explanations, a French Quarter-cum-Oxford University Press approach to any subject they take up.
Armies of Compassion Aim for New Orleans – City to Host North American Summit in April – Democrats, Show America ‘We Are All Orleanians’
We couldn’t bear to listen to the president’s State of the Union Speech Monday night, but we were happy to find this in the transcript:
Viva New Orleans—for Art’s Sake!
One of the happy (re)discoveries at the Rising Tide 2 conference of Katrina bloggers this past weekend was the New Orleanians’ sheer vitality, creativity, and ingenuity-their will to survive, to renew, to make the city better than it was before. We came away reinvigorated, reassured that in at least one American city democracy and citizen activism are alive and well. (If you keep busy, it doesn’t hurt quite as bad-and anyway, struggling for your very survival has a way of concentrating the mind.) In part because some public officials are lame and passive, and others are working but overwhelmed and underfunded, gutsy determined citizens are taking into their own hands the work of rebuilding, forming civic associations, alerting fellow citizens about opportunities and dangers (potential funding, criminal activity on the streets or in City Hall), etc.
A Brief History of Bush Cuts to Flood Control
From 2001 to 2005, the Bush administration’s budget allocations for New Orleans area hurricane protection averaged one-fifth of the amount requested by Louisiana officials. In the 2005 budget, Louisiana requested about $26 million; even after the very active hurricane season of 2004, the Bush White House offered only about $4 million, an amount that the U.S. spends about every 20 minutes in Iraq. (Current U.S. expenditures in Iraq now run at approximately $10 million per hour, roughly $12 billion per month.)
Interview with Christopher Cooper and Robert Block:
Authors of Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security
Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security is a superb, authoritative work that focuses on the federal response to the disaster-a catastrophe within a catastrophe-but also gives an excellent background on the history of FEMA and of the levee system around New Orleans. Cooper and Block know New Orleans (Cooper lived there 10+ years as a Times-Picayune reporter) and they know FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
This is a book of reportage that readers of any (or no) political persuasion can appreciate: Cooper and Block keep their opinions to themselves and let the facts do the talking. They show that the 80-percent evacuation of metro New Orleans was a resounding, unprecedented success; that the Bush administration severely and repeatedly cut federal funding for ongoing reinforcements of the city’s flood protection system; and that the U.S. government through the Army Corps of Engineers failed to protect the city, whose citizens never imagined the canals’ floodwalls would ever collapse.
Interview with Ivor van Heerden, author of ‘The Storm:
What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina:
The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist’
IVOR VAN HEERDEN of the LSU Hurricane Center is familiar to millions who watched the Katrina news reports as the straight-talking hurricane expert with a Dutch accent (actually he’s South African). In The Storm, he has written a detailed, analytical, and compelling account of Hurricane Katrina and its terrible impact on Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. He shows what happened-and what didn’t have to happen.
What sets The Storm apart from other Katrina books is that van Heerden, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, goes on to propose a workable and affordable plan for Category 5 strength storm protection, modeled on the Netherlands’ successful system: a combination of reinforced levees, storm gates, and coastal restoration, including barrier islands.