Opinion

A tale of two cities

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

September 11, 2005—Pardon me, Mr. Dickens, for borrowing your title. You must admit there are similarities between the guillotine-sharp, terror-crazed Paris and class-stabbing London of your time and the smashed New York and flooded New Orleans of my time.

New York's and New Orlean's apocalyptic events occurred within 13 calendar days and nearly four years of each other—September 11, 2001, and August 29, 2005. And the events echo each other eerily, the themes of terror, bloodshed, governments against the people, and the tsunami of rage and revolt rising in reaction. Perhaps my time bears more of a resemblance to yours, Mr. Dickens, than one would imagine.

Consider, on this the fourth anniversary of 9/11, the media will refresh with images of survivors' recollections, the falling towers, questionably due to airliner/missile fires and an abominable absence of government response, and some would say, an unforgivable level of government participation. We will be bombarded, so to speak, with these images again, the living falling to their places in heaven or earth; the brave first responders buried under tons of exploded pulverized concrete and twisted steel; the total disappearance of all WTC "crime-scene" evidence within eight months and the strange fact that FEMA was in New York City the night before 9/11 for a terror "drill."

With these images we will be melding the images of New Orleans, the hurricane approaching, as Joel K. Bourne, Jr., wrote in his "Gone with the Water," presciently nine months before Katrina, in the October 2004 National Geographic:

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

It is amazing what the human mind, especially Mr. Bourne's, was able to imagine before it occurred—and with such detail. If one were overly suspicious, one might imagine the National Geographic Society—called by some an organization that the CIA hangs its hat on—has some strange foreknowledge of the event. But how could one predict a natural catastrophe with such accuracy?

Well I suppose one could imagine Telsa-type electromagnetic weapons, the same that evolved into HAARP (High-frequency Active Aural Research Project) weapons, that authors Dr. Nick Begich and Jeanne Manning in their 1997 book, Angels Don't Play This HAARP, described as "American Weather Weapons." The weapons based on patents of Bernard J. Estlund, who admitted they were partly drawn from previous experiments of Nikola Tesla, and which were developed by the US Navy, were not only possible of producing violent weather, but inducing earthquakes. In short, they could mimic cataclysmic natural disasters, even a tsunami—weapons that could put the planet itself in jeopardy. In fact, Mr. Dickens, here we cross from what seems like science fiction to nightmarish realities. We cross from historic past times to today's end times. Imagine what you could fashion from it.

Also, with 9/11's images we will process the sights of thousands of New Orleans' citizens who must leave their homes, with FEMA present again and pressuring people to go. With FEMA now under Homeland Security's belt, fully digested, budget et al, we process how we would feel if we had to give up everything to return to nothing, no home, possessions, pets, neighborhood, or property, if we were lucky enough to own some. And what restitution would be made to anyone for anything? Or if, as Wayne Madsen points out in one of his September 7 entries to his online Report,

Of course, FEMA and DHS want people to abandon their homes. If and when the forced evacuees of New Orleans ever return they might find that the Russian Mafia friends of Michael Chertoff, Natan Sharansky, Marc Rich, Mel Sembler, Jack Abramoff, and Adam Kidan have stolen their property for Indian gambling casinos, duty free shopping malls, hotel and condo complexes, and cruise ship terminals. Old deeds to property and homes suddenly are null and void with new deeds held by off-shore companies in Antigua and the Bahamas. Hey, stealing private property worked on the West Bank of Palestine, why not New Orleans?

Indeed, Wayne—and Mr. Dickens listening wherever you are. Not to mention the fact the fact Madsen points out chillingly in his second September 8 entry . . .

Meanwhile, WMR is receiving reports that mercenary private military contractors (PMCs) are now operating in the New Orleans metropolitan area. These may include foreign nationals with questionable human rights records in their native South Africa, Israel, Colombia, El Salvador, Britain, and Australia. PMCs have been extremely active in occupied Iraq, especially under the aegis of massive Pentagon omnibus contracts awarded to Halliburton and its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary. Joseph Allbaugh, the former FEMA director under Bush and current FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown's college roommate, is currently a registered lobbyist for disaster relief business for Kellogg Brown & Root. Allbaugh's lobbying firm is called the Allbaugh Group. Halliburton has recently been awarded lucrative contracts to repair U.S. Naval bases damaged by Katrina.

Well, isn't all that swell? In fact, all of this, as Bourne pointed out in paragraph eleven of his amazingly predictive article, could have been avoided by a plan to protect what was left of the marshlands surrounding New Orleans . . .

Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades. But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work can begin.

Today, for starters, Bush is asking Congress for $51.8 billion, according to the September 9 New York Times' article, "Cost of Recovery Surges, as Do Bids to Join in Effort," by Edmund L. Andrews and Carl Hulse. Bush's projects, whether wars or tax cuts, tend to go on and on as more and more suppliers come on board, and more and more US taxpayer dollars are disappeared, a blend of criminal incompetence and truly shameless looting.

Also the American victims of this catastrophe are now being regarded as refugees, like escapees of a foreign country to the safe high grounds of neighboring states, where business will be booming in rentals and human services and lobbyists trying to suck up money for their clients from the government to provide services. Yes, we will be processing all these images of the wanton and the worked-over in New Orleans, as well as the families of 9/11 victims still litigating for recompense for the loss of their loved ones. Among them is no less than Bob Doleﾒs former chief of staff.

We will be thinking of and seeing those families and the nearly three-thousand dead, while we imagine, as the New Orleans mayor, does anywhere from 4,0000 to 10,000 dead. We will be mired in the sludgy mud of the lost, while "protective forces" circle in to fend off "looters" (if they're black), "finders" (if they're white). If you remember my Online Journal article, "How about that Pentagon plan for martial law," in which the generals assume all power, literally to "Engulf and Devour" the National Guard, police, Army soldiers, battle gear, et al . . . Think of how in just a few weeks you now have a sequel for 9/11 in Katrina: lights, camera, action! It's not just Hollywood that specializes in disaster movies. It's the US government.

And notice how the tanks and trucks and choppers rolled in sufficiently late to pen in the poor, on their rooftops or in the Astrodome, after their more affluent brothers and sisters had moved to safety. And think about all the foreign choppers and aid waiting in the wings from Europe, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, which we are barring from entry. Talk about Survival of the Fittest and Darwinian evolution. Or is this, excuse me, Intelligent Design in action to weed out the weak, the woebegone?

And so, looking behind us and before us, we see today's tale of two cities, matching Dickens's Tale of Two Cities for cruelty, bizarreness, destruction, personal and public tragedy. We see history in the making, undoing the creation of American democracy. Each day is a page we turn, waiting for new tales to be written. Anything is possible. Must freedom come at the hands of a yet-to-rise Madame Lafarge and the guillotine; from a seething mob that rushes like a hurricane, like a wild river, like the tsunami's wave over the elite, the oligarchs, the ruling classes, scything down the bad and the better among them in one fell swoop, unyielding, unquestioning as the C-5 storm that hits here, there, everywhere?

And so now the past, Mr. Dickens, convenes again with the present, criss-crossing oceans of time like the English Channel your characters once crossed from Paris to London and tragically back to Paris to their deaths.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer residing in New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.