The destruction of New Orleans is a blow to the entire nation that is not going to be over soon, possibly not ever. We start with the horrors of the people left stranded in complete misery, but there are more horrors to come.
Got this via email but didn't want to post the entire column, and I don't know anything about this site but they had it there so here it is:
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored
graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets
could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be?
The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was
simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic,
then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial
minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the
agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really
weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred
near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the
Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the
prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear
strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways,
distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America
was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added
value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The
navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question
mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist,
and it was not clear that it could recover.
The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and
south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the
history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in
the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It
exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are
agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion
of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo,
nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not
only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so
on.
A simple way to think about the New Orleans port complex is that it is
where the bulk commodities of agriculture go out to the world and the
bulk commodities of industrialism come in. The commodity chain of the
global food industry starts here, as does that of American
industrialism. If these facilities are gone, more than the price of
goods shifts: The very physical structure of the global economy would
have to be reshaped. Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if
steel doesn't come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies
if U.S. corn and soybeans don't get to the markets.
Here are a few lines of what God told the Israelites would happen to them if they did not obey the Law of the Covenant they had just made with Him:
Deuteronomy 28:15 "But it shall come to pass come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: 16 "Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. 17 "Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 "Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. 19 "Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out ... 25 "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. ... you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you.
As long as the attitude continues to prevail in this country that disaster is a matter of statistics and nothing out of the ordinary, as long as God is ignored or reviled or considered to be remote from these "ordinary" disasters, they will only get worse.
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