When was the last time you saw a cover like that on a news magazine?

On 23 August, 2005, the remnants of Tropical Depression Ten collided with a tropical wave over the Bahamas forming Tropical Depression Twelve. The next morning the system was upgraded to a Tropical Storm. The US National Hurricane Center began tracking it with the name Katrina.

On the morning of 25 August, it was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane (Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale) as it crossed Florida. As it crossed the Loop Current of the Gulf of Mexico it increased to Category 3.

On the morning of 28 August, Katrina was declared a Category 5 hurricane on a scale that goes no higher.

By the time Katrina made its second landfall (on the Louisiana coast), on the morning of 29 August, it had weakened to Category 3.

The Category 5 hurricane had missed New Orleans. That city, and a swath of the Gulf Coast, was devastated by a hurricane that was not "The Big One".


If "The Big One" does hit Louisiana, or even if another Category 3 or perhaps even a Category 2 hurricane makes landfall there, New Orleans, which is still trying to recover from both nature's effects and human incompetence, will not survive. Not if they keep repeating the mistakes that devastated that city the first time.

Read on.

For a take on the cover picture of TIME, take a look at BAG.

The unclothed emporer

George W. Bush is going to be in New Orleans today for another photo op. A lot of people aren't too happy about that. From First Draft:

Bush will be in New Orleans today. A Rebuke of Bush is planned at 2pm. Via Humid City is the statement of rebuke from Katrina Survivors....

JOIN THE KATRINA SURVIVORS’ REBUKE OF PRESIDENT BUSH
2:00 PM THURSDAY MARCH 1
SAMUEL GREEN SCHOOL
2319 VALENCE ST.
(Near Freret and Napoleon)
NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans Needs Federal Aid, Not Presidential Photo-Ops.
Mr. President: Katrina Survivors Do Not Welcome You, We Rebuke You!

We live in a devastated city and you are a big part of the reason why it sill sits in ruins. Your administration has abandoned our children by savaging their public schools. Your administration has tortured our working class people by refusing to reopen the city’s public housing developments. And your administration is fully complicit in placing our uninsured in harms way by ruthlessly pursuing the privatization of local public healthcare in the aftermath of Katrina. And, finally your administration is guilty of sending our sons and daughters of to war for oil and empire just when we need them most to help us rebuild our community.

Mr. President, we, Katrina Survivors all, do not welcome you to our city, we rebuke you!

Sponsored by Survivors Village, United Front For Affordable Housing.

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