-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Buzzflash Interviews Greg Palast: New Orleans -- One Year
Later -- Nothing Much Has Happened
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 06:24:57 -0500
From: Greg Palast <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Greg Palast: New Orleans -- One Year Later -- Nothing Much Has
Happened
A Buzzflash Interview
December 22, 2006
/"The White House knew [the levees broke] because the Army Corps of
Engineers sent them photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the
White House had the photographs of the levees breaking, and didn't tell
state and local officials who had stopped the evacuation because the
hurricane missed New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but
the White House didn't tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning
the city."/ -- Greg Palast
*****
Greg Palast is just unstoppable, and after you watch his remarkable new
DVD
<http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing_list/lt/t_go.php?i=3&e=Mjk4ODM=&l=-http--www.palastinvestigativefund.org/19>,
"Big Easy to Big Empty: The
<http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing_list/lt/t_go.php?i=3&e=Mjk4ODM=&l=-http--www.palastinvestigativefund.org/19>
Drowning of New Orleans," you'll understand why. You have read about the
Katrina disaster for more than a year now, but you'll see it in a new
light after watching Greg Palast's reporting.
In an expanded documentary that now includes a half-hour interview with
Amy Goodman, Palast, in his usual bold style, reveals new factual
details about the Bush Administration complicity in the deaths of
Katrina victims. You'll be convinced by the end of watching "Big Easy to
Big Empty" that what we are dealing with here is criminal negligence.
*****
*BuzzFlash:* Greg your new DVD, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story
of the Drowning of New Orleans" is absolutely shocking because all of
the footage you shot was one year after Katrina hit New Orleans. After
all the devastation, virtually nothing has happened to recover from
Katrina, and the residents have been left to fend for themselves.
*Greg Palast:* It's unbelievably ugly. You will see in the film mile
after mile of destroyed houses. The 9th Ward looks worse than Berlin
after the war because there's hardly a building standing. And this was
just filmed a couple months ago! This was filmed one year after the
flood. In Indonesia, they have rebuilt after the tsunami. The only thing
they are rebuilding here is a Disneyland on the Mississippi to recreate
a new, white, conservative city.
And don't forget, keeping African-Americans from coming back into New
Orleans is amazing political gerrymandering. This is going to be crucial
to keeping Louisiana in the Republican column in 2008. That's really
part of the story.
*BuzzFlash:* Sometimes I'll see you on TV or read something by you and
I'll think to myself, there goes Greg again, saying something crazy --
Greg's saying they want to destroy the public housing in New Orleans to
build new condos and keep the African Americans out.
But let me read you this from the Washington Post from December 7th:
"Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed with the
demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here, brushing aside
an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said the
move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to
repopulate the city." (Read the Washington Post Article
<http://www.gregpalast.com/mailing_list/lt/t_go.php?i=3&e=Mjk4ODM=&l=-http--www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/07/AR2006120701482_pf.html>)
Well, you were right again.
*Greg Palast:* Understand -- I used to work for the Housing Authority of
New Orleans. The most beautiful housing in New Orleans are the
townhouses near the French Quarter. And as Malik Brahim, an
African-American leader there, says, "They just don't want them poor
black people back." That's a crucial part of the film. It's about
keeping the working class black people out of the city.
They're talking about knocking down 4,000 public townhouses. These are
dry, safe, good houses. That's why they're still there. They literally
want to bulldoze these homes because they don't want those "black people
back."
You'll see in the film a woman, Patricia Thomas. We help break into her
home because they've boarded it up. Everything is dry. You could eat the
dry cereal. They've shuttered up their houses with steel bars. Katrina
didn't do this, she says, "Man did this." And "the man" is in the White
House and in the Mayor's Mansion.
*BuzzFlash:* Why do you think the rebuilding effort and relief effort in
New Orleans has just come to a complete halt?
*Greg Palast:* It's not stalled. This is the plan. This is another White
House gimmick to hide their evil intent in the clothing of incompetence.
The same with Iraq -- oh, we screwed up? We didn't get all the cheap oil
that Wolfowitz promised in his congressional testimony, when he said the
price of oil would decline. Well, it's gone up. Golly gee, who funds the
Bush Administration but the oil companies and Saudi Arabia? Who profits
when the price of oil goes up? That's "Mission Accomplished."
Look to New Orleans. Golly gee, the black folks haven't come back. There
are no labor unions anymore in New Orleans. There are no public schools.
It's all vouchers. Worker wages have gone down. It's "Mission
Accomplished." This is the plan. This is the program.
The idea that this is just a screw-up, or a delay, or a stall is wrong.
This is the plan. You're seeing it in effect. They don't ever want those
people back. You still have 73,000 POWs - prisoners of "W."
New Orleans residents are locked in these "aluminum Guantanamos," also
known as FEMA trailers, as you'll see in the film. There are a thousand
mobile homes next to the Mobil Oil refinery. These trailers are in the
middle of nowhere, and there's no way those people can get any jobs.
It's a cycle. Some businesses and homeowners would like to rebuild New
Orleans, but they can't get workers, and those who would like to work
live too far away to get any jobs.
Families are not even allowed to move their trailer to their own home
property. It's a deliberate program of ethnic and class cleansing in the
City of New Orleans.
*BuzzFlash:* One of your big scoops in "Big Easy to Big Empty" was you
found a company, "Innovative Emergency Management," that gave large
donations to the Republican party, to create an evacuation plan in case
of a hurricane. No one seems to be able to find that plan.
*Greg Palast:* The most innovative thing about their emergency
management is that they had no plans that anyone knew about.
When I went and talked to "Innovative Emergency Management," they called
security. I just went in and said where's the plan? What makes you
qualified to do an evacuation plan besides your relations to the
Republican Party?
These people had zero qualification to do this planning. We were told
that the main problem was that they had no plan for getting people out
without cars. I mean, their whole plan was "jump in your car and drive
like hell."
But what if you didn't have a car? We had one guy who didn't have his
car with him, and he was abandoned for four days in the rising water,
standing on the overpass. He told us how he closed the eyes of a
grandfather who had died giving his last bottle of water to his kids.
The guy died of dehydration.
That's a story that no one has reported. Forget Anderson Cooper and his
tears. By the way, we can't find Anderson Cooper after the fact.
*BuzzFlash:* Have you been able to find "Innovative Emergency
Management's" evacuation plan yet?
*Greg Palast:* Actually, I finally got the contract that said they were
"supposed to create" an evacuation plan. FEMA had withheld the documents
we requested for a year and a half. FEMA was keeping it secret and was
telling us it's a national security document until we threatened to sue.
I worked on an evacuation plan in Long Island, New York, for a
hurricane. And you know what the key part about an evacuation plan is?
You have to have it. Cops have to have it. Emergency workers have got to
have it. The bus drivers have got to have it.
The most important thing is that we found out from the experts at the
Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University that they had a detailed
evacuation plan.
*BuzzFlash:* Do you think part of the reason is that they may have had
an evacuation plan for a hurricane, but not necessarily for a breach of
the levees or a major flood?
*Greg Palast:* That's part of the problem, because they had no plan in
case of a breach. Number one, the LSU Hurricane Center told the White
House before the flood -- and I want to reemphasize this -- before the
flood -- that New Orleans would be under water on a class 3 hurricane,
that the levees were deficient, and that they were 18 inches short. The
White House completely ignored their warnings.
You have to understand that the LSU hurricane experts actually spoke
directly to the White House about this and what they saw as an emergency
situation.
You should also know that the White House knew for nearly a full day
that the levees had in fact been breached, and were about to drown the
people left in the city. The emergency crews and police stopped the
evacuation because they thought the city had survived Hurricane Katrina
because the storm missed New Orleans. The hurricane watch center didn't
realize that the levees had started to crack.
The White House knew it because the Army Corps of Engineers sent them
photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the White House had the
photographs of the levees breaking, and didn't tell state and local
officials who had stopped the evacuation because the hurricane missed
New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but the White House
didn't tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning the city.
*BuzzFlash:* What explanation could anyone have for that kind of
"criminal negligence," as a City Councilman says in the film.
*Greg Palast:* It is criminal negligence. Remember, I was a racketeering
investigator.
The levees are federal property. If the federal levees failed, then it
becomes a federal evacuation issue, and Bush and his gang did not want
to be responsible.
Even more important is that they are financially responsible for all the
homes lost, because the levees were deficient.
The original story coming out of the White House was that the
Mississippi River and the lake north of New Orleans simply overflowed,
right? Just big waves crash over the city and later the levees broke.
Uh-uh. The city flooded because the levees broke.
Ivor van Heerden of the Louisiana State University hurricane center said
he flew over those levees and he counted 28 levee breaks.
He said the White House, when they knew that the city was about to
drown, said that there was one break. And he found 28. As he said,
"That's not an act of God. That's an act of negligence."
*BuzzFlash:* You have a lengthy interview with Amy Goodman as part of
the bonus features of the DVD. At one point, you spoke about the
wetlands and the marshes that protect New Orleans from storm surges and
floods. You place at least part of the blame on the oil industry, which
is continuing to drill off the coast.
*Greg Palast:* The oil industry laid pipelines and canal routes through
the marshlands. People say, "How come these people live in a city that's
below sea level?" Well, they weren't anywhere near the sea, is the
answer, except that over this past century, the oil industry has drained
and destroyed the marshes. Now the Gulf of Mexico has come real close to
the city.
*BuzzFlash:* What needs to happen to turn the situation around, when you
have so many people and families displaced and so much profiteering
going on? How do you ever break the deadlock?
*Greg Palast:* A couple things. One, people have to know what the hell's
going on. That's why they should get the film, invite friends and
family, and have a screening so people can get informed. If you don't
know what's going on, you can't solve it. This is like the war in Iraq.
Once people figured out what's going on, they started wanting to get our
troops the hell out.
And second, we have to allow the people of New Orleans to rebuild their
homes. We need to give the people back their homes, and give them the
jobs to rebuild their homes. And that will take care of it.
In fact, I show an example of a group called "Common Ground" which is
rebuilding homes with the residents with their own sweat equity and a
few bucks for materials. And this week, they're being evicted.
You have a group which has already put 115 families into homes that
they've built themselves, and now they're being evicted this week. And
by the way, all the money -- the million dollars of material and the
hundred thousands of hours of sweat equity -- are all being stolen away
from them by developers who are saying "Oh, you didn't have the right to
rebuild those houses, we own them." And they're literally stealing their
houses. That's what's happening.
And that's all with the grand approval of the Bush Administration. It's
all with the grand approval of the Mayor of New Orleans, who is doing
nothing about the mass evictions of people who have rebuilt their homes,
and now their properties are being seized by banks and land speculators.
*BuzzFlash:* Greg, as always, thank you for speaking with us.
*Greg Palast:* Thank you.
* * *
Interview conducted by BuzzFlash <http://x-msg://254/buzzflash.com/>
Senior Editor Scott Vogel.
Get your personally signed copy of "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold
Story of the Drowning of New Orleans" or browse for other signed gifts
at the Palast Investigative Fund Store
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