KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis New Orleans is the Lost City of America. New Orleans has disappeared as surely as the lost city of Atlantis or the lost city of Pompeii, which former mayor Marc Morial and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) have compared us to in their statements. That New Orleans, the New Orleans I mean to tell you about, that will never, ever, exist again--that city of love, lust, death and sex--will never exist again. A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need. Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF Copy now! To order on Amazon.com, go here! A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor. SUSTAINING PATRONS RON DIENER, Wendell, NC, USA DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC, Belgrade, SERBIA LESZEK MICHAELWICZ, New Orleans, LA, USA MARIE SINSABAUGH, Granville, OH, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA Supporting Patrons BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MEREDITH TUPPER, Tampa, FL, USA NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI, Jos, NIGERIA NICK ALLEN, New Orleans, LA, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA ROBERT PURVIS, Montclair, NJ, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA STUART ALTMAN, ESQ., New York, NY, USA X.N. IRAKI, Jackson, MS, USA We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance. To support G21, please send checks or money orders to: Rod Amis Editor in Chief, G21: The World's Magazine 175-A Vernon Terrace Oakland, CA 94610 USA To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail. Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks. G21 at FeedBurner Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in February Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in May Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in July Rod Amis at the Huffington Post in August ENJOY WHAT ROD DOES! (From our Link Partner at Calabash Music. Merci!)

Rod Amis - Unbound

SMOKE & MIRRORS - THE ADVENTURER: ROD AMIS tries to get back on the horse. But "Dude, sometimes you get the b'ar and sometimes the b'ar gets you." Or words to those effect from the film "The Big Lebowski".

SMOKE

"Where there's smoke, there's fire ..." Popular Adage.

6 August 2006: A friend of mine in New Orleans, Greg Cowman, sent me the following copy of a blog post:

from ashley morris' blog......................

American Biafra

Why don't I just turn off the pipeline and shut down the port now?

Because if we try to secede, they will kill us, our children, our pets, our culture, our legacy.

They want us dead.

In 1967, seven years after Nigeria became independent, the Republic of Biafra seceded from Nigeria. Biafra was on the southern coast of Nigeria, and Biafra was an integral part in the Oil trade.

Biafra was not like most of the rest of Nigeria, and ethnic tensions between the native Biafran Ibos and the more conservative Hausas caused the death of over 30,000 Ibos, who fled to their homeland.

On may 30, 1967, Biafra declared their independence.

The Nigerians would not allow this, and would not be happy with a simple defeat over their former countrymen: they wanted to extract a pound of flesh; they wanted to make an example; they wanted to show them who was boss.

Two and a half years after the declaration of independence, between two and three million Biafrans, over a million of them civili ans (out of a population of 13.5 million) were dead.

Most of them died of starvation, due to a Nigerian blockade of food.

Nigeria starved their brothers to death.

Many other countries tried to help out Biafra. The Ivory Coast, Haiti, Rhodesia, South Africa, Israel, France and Portugal all provided food, money, medicine or arms.

It wasn't enough.

The Soviet Union, Egypt and Britain supplied plenty of arms to Nigeria, so that they could crush Biafra.

40 years later, the things that led to the Biafran war are still happening. Nothing has really changed, except the Ibos still have no real voice in government.

Compare this to New Orleans today.

New Orleans is a southern port city, vital to the oil trade. Unlike most of the area surrounding it, New Orleans is predominantly Roman Catholic, due to its French and Spanish heritage.

The rest of the nation, typically evangelicals, do not want tax dollars used to rebuild flood protection for New Orleans.

These red staters, the vinyl siding cowboys, do not want to let us rebuild, and are blockading our aid and our insurance money. Initially, they even blockaded entry and exit to our city, and would not allow us to flee, by threatening us with gunfire.

They even withheld food and drink, and those that tried to obtain it by other means were dealt with in a true draconian fashion. Using them as the baseline, what should Ken Lay get, other than an eternity in hell?

They tried to starve us literally, and now they're trying to starve us financially.

They're starving their brothers to death.

Congratulations. Mighty Christian of you.

Many nations have recognized us and given aid, but others know not to annoy Nigeria Washington.

One year later, little has been rebuilt, and most New Orleanians still cannot return to their homes.

When we are dead, they will show no pity for the corpse, and build their idea of a theme park, since the theme park maker wants nothing to do with us.

We are the first city I know of that has ever been completely abandoned by their federal government.

I've been in Europe for 2 weeks. People ask "What's it like there?" I reply: "You ever seen Hiroshima? Well, Japan rebuilt Hiroshima."

Sinn Fein.

I could only read this with a sense of despair, as Longtime Loyal Readers might imagine. I debated mightily whether my best choice was to return to New Orleans this summer or to return to California instead. Because of the NewsTrust.net project I'm involved in, I decided that the Cosmos was tilting to California. Well, that and the encouragement of old friends here - none of whom, except Bill Purcell, I've actually seen since my arrival over a month ago. Bill is an East Coaster like myself and therefore puts a higher premium on friendship than most.

In many ways, too many to list here, coming back here to northern California represents my first true return to America since coming back from Europe in 2001. New Orleans was and is certainly NOT America, as I've written there before. Lizard Lick wasn't, either. It is an isolated backwater in the woods that is postally appened to a nearby city, Wendell, on an arbitrary basis. Somebody probably flipped a coin and said, "Yeah, it's as close to Zebulon as it is to Wendell but Wendell deserves a bone."

Now that I am actually back in America, I am reminded not only how convenient certain things, activities, public transport, can be but also how noisy, harried and wasteful American life ultimately remains. There is a pervasive sadness to America.

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For those of you interested in such things, I broke down again this month and began a new project at the Huffington Post. This one is called World Without End and explores the effects of the religious belief in the Eschaton, or "End Times" in our modern world. Comments are appreciated and do click the "Send to Friends" link at the bottom of the page. Who knows, I might beat the cartoons yet.

INSIDE THE MAGAZINE

THOMAS "TABLOID" HART returns with this edition to provide a humorous dish on the Mel Gibson scandal that dominated last week's news cycle.

Irrespressible MATTIE LENNON does a fun piece on left handers in IRISH EYES that is just whimsical enough for you to enjoy.

We feature a new writer, JOHN KARANGA KARIUKI, from Kenya, at G21 FICTION this week.

And I highly recommend MPHUTHUMI NTABENI's review of William Mervin Gumede's new book on South Africa President Thabo Mbeki. "Mpush" does his usual great job of presenting a case. It's the second our out two G21 AFRICA articles for your delectation this week.

MIRRORS

8 August 2006: The people I've seen the most of, since returning to California, are my Ethiopian immigrant friends. They act truly overjoyed that I am back. We are working together again.

My housemate situation is in flux. Though this is only a sublet - I have to move again in September - my former roomie, Peter, a 23 year old engineer, has already been replaced by Kate, a fellow journo just returning from an internship at the Modesto Bee.

Intriquingly, I have found myself in a house of journos. Tim, my rock steady housemate of thirty-something, is the anchor here. He's working as Tech Writer now but once was Carl Bernstein, of the Watergate/Nixon story fame, assistant as well as working at various publications across the country. Meanwhile, the other two housemates, Tim's wife and the woman from whom I'm subletting, are also doing journalism internships and should return soon. Fortuitous, I feel.

It's good to be around youthful enthusiasm again.

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I have various causes for concern (building my ulcer) right now. Among them:

1. Though I have invoiced my newest employer, I have yet to receive payment, and the money with which I moved here to California is running low, and;


2. I need to move to new apartment in less than a month;


3. One of my putative employers has had her funding for writers cut, and;


4. I have not been able to successfully pitch a single story to the other in weeks.

I am seriously trawling for new writing jobs these days, when not just pacing and worrying...

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Again, a short post from me this edition. I shall try to do better after the summer, after the new books from our G21 imprint.

Man, I gottah tell you, opening this publication up to fiction, at the insistence of my writers, was a HORRIBLE idea. I am buried in fiction submissions right now.

Rust needs some sleep.

Keep me in your prayers, as I keep you in my own.

Thanks for coming back this week.

THINGS ROD HOPES FOR THIS WEEK

1 - New writing jobs before the money runs out.

2 - Meeting more women.

3 - Becoming prepared for the next book projects for the G21 Books imprint.

4. Getting paid by my new job.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "

Love,
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting System (PBS's) WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS Internet magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, r eaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. When he's not busy here, he writes technology columns for IT Manager's Journal and NewsForge, business columns for Enterprise Leadership and Slashdot. He he also acts as a Host and Project Coordinator at NewsTrust. Rust never sleeps.

Our Resident Philosopher is taking to the road once again. Wish him luck..

In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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© 2006, GENERATOR 21.

E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your kudos, brickbats and suggestions to rod@g21.net.