Georgianne Nienaber: Author. Journalist.

Baghdad on the Bayou: Disaster Capitalism and the War on Equality

Tab Benoit echoes Naomi Klein's assessment in her book, Shock Doctrine, that within days of Katrina and the floods that followed it was as if private contractors had recreated Baghdad's Green Zone on the bayous.

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Georgianne Nienaber: Source Asks

What is the real water policy of the United States as Army Corps of Engineers' levees are failing in the Foods of 2008?

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Susan Cowsill and Best Poetry CD for 2007: "Investigative Poetry"

Edward Sanders and Investigative Poetry

Michael Simmons writes in the Huffington Post about Susan Cowsill’s contribution to New York Times BEST POETRY CD OF 2007.

Full Article

“Edward Sanders' Poems For New Orleans has been called is one of the great American epic poems, on par with Whitman and Ginsberg. The New York Times' about.com website named the recording The Best Poetry CD Of 2007, saying: ‘Sanders utilizes his Investigative Poetry techniques and aesthetic to give the full backstory to the unbearable tragedy still in progress in New Orleans.’

“He read and recorded his history of the Crescent City and Hurricane Katrina with musical accompaniment over four months in 2007 and has released it on Paris Records, a label on which proprietor Michael Minzer has also released spoken word by Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Robert Creeley and a collab twixt Corso and Marianne Faithfull. (It's also available from Amazon.)

“A most powerful poem on this set is ‘Unearned Suffering,’ a spoken word duet with Susan Cowsill. It's a chilling, stark paean to those ‘born with anvils on their souls,’ the collaterally damaged of child labor, dangerous work, and those who make ‘the calm life glow for a few.’ The piece ends with a comparison of Hurricane Katrina to ‘unearned suffering worthy of the days of Poseidon.’ He then invokes the spirits of composer Charles Ives and poet Wallace Stevens, both of whom had been in the insurance racket (who knew?), and begs them to use their heavenly power to intercede on behalf of the storm's swindled victims.”

3000 Words and a Song for Louisiana

Having just returned from six weeks of research in Southern Louisiana, words alone cannot tell the story. Brain and hands are paralyzed. Air, water, land and people are suffering. Injury is visible and pain is palpable. Three proverbial pictures must suffice for now where words cannot.

The music here is used with the permission of Tab Benoit. Those of you who have seen the IMAX presentation on the Louisiana Wetlands will know who he is. Benoit is fighting ferociously for the preservation of the Gulf Coast wetlands and for a way of life that will be lost forever if we do not pull together and do something to heal the water and estuaries.

Please visit www.tabbenoit.com and click on the Wetlands Page www.voiceofthewetlands.com.

OpEdNews and COA News will have more on the environmental challenges and heartache in the coming month. Progressive media will tell you the real story of what has happened on the Mississippi Delta.

Meanwhile, reflect on the fact that Congress just approved $3.3 billion for Louisiana recovery and $11 billion for vehicles in Iraq.

Baghdad on the Bayou: New Orleans-Racial Whitewash, No Housing, and New Heroes

New Orleans is facing a housing crisis of epic proportions, but this crisis did not suddenly spring full blown from the heads of politicians or think tanks. One would think it has, given the recent flurry of press releases from notables and politicians condemning the proposed demolition of the C.J. Peete, Lafitte, B.W. Cooper and St. Bernard public housing developments.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent a letter of protest to George Bush on December 14, hours before the demolition was set to begin. Presidential hopeful John Edwards, who was in New Orleans in mid-November, issued a statement on December 11, calling the housing crisis “the result of government policies that have failed the people of the Gulf since Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.” Edwards went on to charge that the Bush administration was trying to “make a bad situation worse.”

Pelosi cited a 2007 UNITY study which estimates the number of homeless in New Orleans has doubled from January 2005 to 12,000. 50% of the 200,000 displaced who want to return are earning less than $20,000 per year. Meanwhile, Brookings Institution estimates there has been a 9,000 unit decrease in housing since Katrina.

Whether by luck, hard work of local activists like Kali Akuna of People’s Hurricane Relief, or election year political design, officials with the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) agreed in the eleventh hour on Friday December 14 to partially halt the demolition. On Friday, a Louisiana State Court Order postponed all de-construction at C.J. Peete, Lafitte, and St. Bernard housing developments until the New Orleans City Council approves the decision. The New Orleans City Council announced it will take this matter up on Thursday December 20, 2007. Under the agreement, HANO will proceed with demolition work, approved in November 2003 by the City Council, at the B. W. Cooper (Calliope) housing development.

The issue of public housing, the poor, and a face-lift for New Orleans is at least as old as 2003, meaning the hurricanes and floods provided motive and opportunity for corporate interests to remake the Big Easy in their own image. This is not a conspiracy theory. A coalition of 200 human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, formed the U.S. Human Rights Network and prepared a “shadow report” in order to rebut a more positive report prepared by the US State Department and quietly submitted to the United Nations with no publicity or fanfare.

In no uncertain terms, the shadow report condemns the State Department Report as a “complete whitewash,” and charges that the Bush administration is contributing to “racial, religious and ethnic discrimination in the United States.”

See: www.lacccenter.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/shadowrptsummary2008.doc

Abuses include including voting rights, health care, housing, education, homelessness, police brutality and fairness in the criminal justice system.
Most outrageous is the charge, according to IPS (Inter Press Service) reports that the “official” US report "misrepresents and/or cherry picks data demonstrating ongoing racial disparities and discrimination" and "suffers from glaring gaps clearly aimed at covering up the most egregious examples of persistent racism and racial discrimination in the U.S. today."

Local Profiles in Courage

The most stunning observation for a writer upon arriving in Southern Louisiana is the lack of writers researching what may well become the biggest story of our time. We figured the place would be crawling with media, since the area looks like Katrina hit two months ago instead of two years ago. It was a shock to learn that being an outside journalist was a novelty. People wanted to meet you, to tell their stories, and went out of their way to do so. Local bars on the bayous had beers waiting as we walked in the door. Writers realize that everyone has a story and everyone likes to talk, but the narratives in New Orleans were epic and soon became emotionally and tactically overwhelming, even for reporters fresh from the complications and obfuscations of Africa.

That being said, local media, especially the Times-Picayune is doing a yeoman’s job covering post Katrina issues. What the national media pick up are the pronouncements by Pelosi and Edwards in the minutes before the bulldozers roll. The political media machine is a behemoth. It doesn’t take much courage for a politician to say what is obvious and popular at the moment.

However, what was extraordinary was the courage possessed by activists, artists, and entertainers that enabled them to tell the dark side of the story from the beginning and before the story became fodder for national media. Why courage? Because, unlike politicians who emote when the media cycle is “just so” and favorable, we had well-known people with a lot to lose in terms of “marketability” factors come forward to tell it like it is in New Orleans.

Many of you read popular Cajun Blues musician Tab Benoit’s eloquent plea for the wetlands and his brave statements in opposition to the agenda of Shell Oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Benoit was not afraid to take on the sponsors of IMAX’s Hurricane on the Bayou, and said that FEMA exercises were not about saving

Baghdad on the Bayou: Cyril Neville Talks About the Threatened Projects and Losing the Home He Loves

Cyril Neville Talks About Going Home and the New Orleans Projects

“I left because my life had been devastated by the storm and its aftermath. Up until that time, for 57 years I had stayed in the city I love—and I love it no matter what—I love its people and it is where the bones of my mother and father lie. It is home.”
--Cyril Neville December 13, 2007

Cyril Neville lost his home in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans in August 2005 when the levees broke and hurricane Katrina’s flood waters drowned lives, destroyed dreams, and shattered hopes for hundreds of thousands. Power lines still dangle from utility poles overgrown with vines and kudzu in Gentilly, and black and blue plastic tarps snap smartly in breezes that blow through empty neighborhoods, abandoned homes, broken windows and the mean streets of 2007.

Neville told us that he has been “informally back" and trying to fix his home since October of 2005. Like many other returning residents whom we interviewed, Neville was “ripped off” by contractors, “to the tune of $19,000” in his case, and he has had all of the copper wiring stolen—twice. It is important to Neville that people understand that he hasn’t exactly been “gone” from New Orleans for the last two years.

“I left because my life had been devastated by the storm and its aftermath. Up until that time, for 57 years I had stayed in the city I love—and I love it no matter what—I love its people and it is where the bones of my mother and father lie. It is home,” Neville wrote in an early morning email to us. “Home” was capitalized and underscored.

Cyril Neville is part of the “heartbeat” of New Orleans, but his own heart is heavy. He knows the despair and vulnerability experienced by the displaced. Neville is one of 200,000 people who have not returned full time to New Orleans, and wants to show his solidarity with those still besieged with uncertainty, indecision, and fear. Neville may have resettled in Austin, Texas, but he misses the old neighborhood, the ability to get up in the middle of the night and drive to the market for a Hubig’s Pie, and the convenience of walking a few blocks to visit family and friends. Quite simply, Cyril Neville misses the neighborhood.

Anyone who has followed New Orleans politics since Katrina understands why
Neville has been hesitant to come forward about recent public housing controversies and conflicts. Comments he made in interviews and in print about the way local, state and federal governments failed to respond to the needs of the displaced drew fire from many quarters, and Neville has been reluctant to take a public stand since. However, truth prevails with time, and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have issued statements that vindicate Neville and indict rescue and reconstruction efforts in New Orleans as being too little and too late—slow at best—and wrought with malfeasance and racism at worst.

“I think it's important that the people involved in this struggle know that I stand with them and that the song I speak of here is a rallying song for this monumental movement. After all, I am a charity hospital baby from the Calliope projects, born and bred in the bricks,” Neville said in a statement.

The song Cyril Neville wants the world to hear is called The Projects. He insisted that we link to it here.
“Born and bred in the bricks…we played with toys, not guns, and there wasn’t much dope.”

The lyric reminisces about growing up in “the bricks,” watching his brothers play music, and enjoying their youth. It is the recollection of a grown man facing today’s grim realities of life in New Orleans.

I love New Orleans, I love my culture, and I love my country,” Neville told us pensively.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has underscored the “struggle” Neville speaks of with plans to demolish the four largest public housing projects in New Orleans on Saturday. If officials at (HUD) have their way, bulldozers will rumble through Lafitte, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper (Calliope)—drowning the sounds of bullhorns and protesters that are sure to greet them. Gentrification will destroy the heart and soul of New Orleans; Neville knows it, and wants to say so publicly.

Despite the fact that 200,000 residents, of all colors, are still displaced, HUD is authorized to spend $762 million in US taxpayer funds to tear down 4600 public housing apartments and replace then with 744 units. The math is easy. Where are the rest of the families supposed to go who occupied the 84 percent of the housing units that will not be rebuilt? Neville is convinced that the loss, through depopulation, of the “gumbo” of New Orleans will leave an empty, soul-less shell of “urban development”—a city designed and planned for the wealthy.

Rhythms Rising II: Ruby Rendrag's Class Act in New Orleans

Photo by Dennis Gardner

Ruby Rendrag’s hair is, well, red. A nice red. Not exactly “ruby” red. Hard to describe. Subtle tones, but definitely red. Pretty. Her music is subtle, too. Definitely rock, but there are the pop and folk influences also. Maybe just a hint of Rilo Kiley. Yeah, definitely.

We first caught up with Ruby at Station 8801—a nice little bar and restaurant tucked along a levee in New Orleans’ Garden District on Oak Street. Doing a series on musicians was not originally on the agenda for an investigative reporter fresh from Africa, and Ruby’s gig was supposed to be down time to reconnect with a new acquaintance. Ruby’s band changed all of that, and thus the Rhythms Rising Series was born for progressive media. No matter that the band was playing outdoors and a train added a sub-woofer rumble to the sound. This group was far better than just “good,” and you don’t often hear a cello added to a rock sound, but it sure worked.

Turns out Ruby was everywhere on the club scene in New Orleans for the next six weeks. We knew some of the same people and it was inevitable that we would be meeting at our Louisiana Pizza Kitchen “headquarters” for an interview. She showed up with Suki Kuehn in tow, who was the same cellist we heard back at Station 8801. An interesting man and classically trained to boot, born in Japan and reared in Baton Rouge, Kuehn says he got the classical bug when a “good-looking woman demonstrated cello for his fifth grade class in Ohio.” Kuehn was on the move even as a kid.

Kuehn may be “classical, in musical temperament” but he’s got a devastating sense of humor, listing his musical influences as “mostly dead guys from the 18th century.” But don’t let Kuehn’s humor fool you. He may have just invented the southern rock cello—a perfect counterpoint to Ruby’s accomplished guitar.

Ruby’s musical roots are all New Orleans. She grew up in Kenner and played bluegrass with five brothers. Someone handed her a guitar, “put her in a room to learn chords,” and told her to “figure out how to keep up,” she says.

Well, she certainly learned to do more than just keep up, and has developed a unique sound that musicians in the Big Easy actually term the “Ruby Rendrag sound.” A sound that is difficult to categorize, Ruby calls it “eclectic with a rock edge,” but you really get the idea what she is all about when she explains that she went “straight from bluegrass to Led Zeppelin influences.”

Call it what you want, the Ruby Rendrag sound is sophisticated and plays out as if real musicianship went into the arrangements and lyrics. The compositions are intelligent and go far beyond simple folk/rock three chord progressions and reliance upon a cheatin’ capo. Like Dana Abbott, whom we first profiled in this series, Ruby knows how to use the frets on the guitar and works the instrument for all its worth.

She also knows how she wants to be presented. We showed up with video camera in hand and offered two venues for the shoot. We could do a street musician thing up against the levee at the end of Esplanade, or do something more “fancy” in the courtyard of a nearby hotel. It was no contest. Ruby knows exactly who she is and Kuehn’s cello would work nicely in the courtyard, thank you very much. Ruby Rendrag is a class act.

We set up in an atrium with southern ambience to spare and, unknown to Ruby and Kuehn, an audience of a few tourists hanging over the fifth floor balcony, who rewarded the duo with applause after a few warm up measures. That moment provided our first glimpse of Ruby smiling broadly, rocking back in her chair, and laughing out loud with Kuehn. It was obvious that the spontaneous, accidental applause was heartwarming. Ironically, the tune that merited the appreciation was “Long Way Up”—Ruby’s “Katrina” song.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to play it out for us, since, as she said, it is an “angry” song. The strong, anxious arrangement and hard-hitting chord progressions certainly conveyed fury and more.

When she sings “all night long…waiting for the sound of a gun,” you know exactly what the aftermath of Katrina meant for those who stayed.

Hurricane Katrina and the flood of 2005 may have spared the Garden District or Ruby’s home in Kenner, but it certainly submerged the New Orleans music scene and it will be a long road home for most musicians. Those who have stayed in spite of it all are a tough, dedicated lot. Currently, Ruby is recording and mixing a new album at Studio in the Country, which as Ruby says, is “one of the last really good studios near New Orleans.” Things are going well and engineer Ben Mumphrey is offering “fantastic support,” Ruby said in an email as we were preparing this piece.

It is a story we heard too often in storm-ravaged south Louisiana. The property that houses the recording studio was almost sold and turned into a golf course. This is the fear you hear from well-known and not-so-well-known artists. Development and big money are hovering over a hurting land and culture. Artistic venues and affordable housing for artists, musicians, and just regular people of all stripes stand to be devoured by the vultures of corporate development—circling over New Orleans in search of their carrion prey. Ruby’s concern is palpable and everywhere—will new Orleans still be a refuge for the true artist, or will the glitz and hype of Nashville devour the New Orleans’ music scene as well? Individualism and freedom of expression are on the line, and as another musician told us (tongue in cheek)—she didn’t want to have to move to Nashville and be forced to wear “funny clothes.”

Ruby Rendrag has a bright future, Nashville or no Nashville. If the accompanying audio of “Superman” is any indication, she might already have a hit if the right person hears the tune. Try not to end up humming the melody after one play. The arrangement snaps and the vocal is right on. Subtle, but strong. Definitely rock, but then there are those pop and folk influences also. Definitely worth your attention.

Both Ruby Rendrag and Suki Kuehn can be found on MySpace.com. Ruby’s web site is due to be up and running soon at www.RubyRendrag.com.

Next: Marc Stone is one of the best known guitarists and singers in New Orleans, and his resonator guitar really plays the blues out over the Delta. We’ll take a look at his unwavering support for New Orleans roots music, including his latest projects with The Campbell Brothers and soul legend Betty Harris.

HUD Huffing and Puffing to Blow Down NOLA Public Housing by Christmas

Graphic Provided by People's Hurricane Relief (NOLA)

The ghost of hurricane Katrina is blowing through New Orleans this week as activists try to put the brakes on Housing and Urban development (HUD) plans to bulldoze thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. This is Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine unleashed in its full fury and there appears to be no national outrage at this blatant application of the doctrine of disaster capitalism. Bill Quigley, a white human rights attorney for the displaced and abandoned in New Orleans, writes that “Katrina has caused the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War.”
Despite the fact that 200,000 residents, of all colors, are still displaced, HUD is authorized to spend $762 million in US taxpayer funds to tear down 4600 public housing apartments and replace then with 744 units. Do the math. Where are the rest of the families supposed to go who occupied the 84 percent of the housing units that will not be rebuilt? This is a systematic attempt to depopulate the “gumbo” of New Orleans and replace it with a white bread facsimile of “urban development.” Where will the displaced poor live? No one seems to have answered that question, but they will not be in New Orleans, since the 1000 “market rate” apartments that are slated for construction will cost $400,000 each, according to Quigley.

On Monday, ironically Human Rights Day, a dozen activists from NOLA visited the offices of Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) in Raleigh, pleading with her to support the Gulf Coast Recovery Act (S.1668). Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, HUD is moving steadily forward to begin demolition on four public housing complexes when the number of homeless has doubled since the flood and storms.

It is two years post Katrina, and S. 1668, a bill to assist in providing affordable housing to those affected by the 2005 hurricanes, is still languishing in the halls of government. Still in the “first stages” of the legislative process, the bill has been referred to the Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Committee. Dole is a member of this committee, and in an unbelievable, blatant application of disaster capitalism, Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter is blocking the bill.

What is also unbelievable is that there is no collective national outrage at what is happening in New Orleans. Louisiana is part of the United States, even though residents we spoke with, including employees in City Hall, are questioning whether Louisiana is still part of the Union. An employee there remarked that “It looks like we got lost somewhere,” while we were waiting, in vain, for a representative of Mayor Ray Nagin to meet with us. And, no, we will not give up the person’s name.

We did spend some time with Kali Akuno, of the Coalition to Stop Demolition, while we were in the NOLA area. Residents have not been allowed into these now boarded-up projects to retrieve belongings. In many cases the brick projects are in habitable condition and fared much better than other, wood frame buildings.

"In the past two years, New Orleans has faced a series of social crises that have struck a blow to our collective vision for a more just and equitable city, not simply one that is more inviting to elites. Yet none of these crises has been as uniquely urgent as this. What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return," Akuno said in a statement.

This is not only a human rights violation; it is a violation of international rules as stated United Nation’s position governing internally displaced persons (IDP’s). Semantics aside, it is generally agreed that any person removed from his/her homes by civil war, governance collapse, border conflicts, famine and other natural disasters, restructuring of the economy, as development "oustees," and by persecution are considered IDP’s. A cursory examination of these criteria would assign governance collapse, natural disaster, and an occult restructuring of the economy by use of the shock doctrine to apply to Katrina victims. Persecution would also seem to apply here, by any reasonable application of the definition.

Activists were thrown a sop by NOLA’s Housing Conservation District Review Committee on Monday when the committee refused to approve demolition at one of the four public housing developments that the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) wants to replace with their version of a "mixed income" neighborhood. Six members are on the committee which deadlocked on approval to demolish the Lafitte Project. Louisiana In October, 2006, there was much fanfare over Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, broke ground at St. Louis and Galvez streets, adjacent to the Lafitte Project, of a Hollywood style film and production studio. The 300,000 square foot facility will be owned and operated by LIFT Productions.

"Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the film industry was one of the fastest- growing sectors of the region's economy. It was also one of the first sectors of our economy to come back after Katrina. This project symbolizes the industry's rebirth and commitment to the city of New Orleans," New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said in a statement, adding that the facility would “provide the critical infrastructure that we have been lacking."

Tell that to the people who called Lafitte home.

The 3-3 vote means that HANO must go before the NOLA City Council in order to win approval to begin tearing down 76 buildings at Lafitte. The same committee approved demolition plans for 55 buildings at C.J. Peete in Central City and 88 buildings at B.W. Cooper, off Earhart Boulevard.

Housing concerns have reached far beyond crisis proportions on the Gulf Coast. Estimates are that there are still 50,000 FAMILIES living in formaldehyde spewing trailers.

50,000 families still live here

Road Home monies have still not reached the needy, despite Louisiana Recovery Authority’s press releases of “gratitude” to the feds for coughing up the funds two years after Bush stood in Jackson Square and promised immediate help. Never mind that Louisiana got the money as part of a sweetheart deal which gave Bush more money for Iraq.

There are an estimated 12,000 homeless living in NOLA, and one camp is located directly across the street from City Hall. Look under any overpass of the I-10 and you will find tents, lawn chairs and sleeping bags. T-Shirts that read “save the folks on the Gulf Coast Highways” are not historical collector items. This is real time tragedy.

So, here we are on the twelfth day of Christmas and HUD is revving its bulldozers against the poorest of our poor.

A community action group, The Coalition to Stop the Demolition, will begin a week of activities, including non-violent civil disobedience training for protesters and organizers. Too bad Blackwater did not have the same training when it entered New Orleans post Katrina.

You won’t find this discussion on Larry King or the Today Show. King was busy last week gushing over Brad Pitt and his plans to continue bulldozing the ninth ward for “affordable,” low income Hollywood-style homes of $150,000. Low income indeed.

Click here to view powerful video that examines these issues in a straightforward manner.

Baghdad on the Bayou Redux: Tab Benoit Interview

By Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber
Tab Benoit— “Government Needs to Tell People the Truth”

Voice of the Wetlands All Stars: Cyril Neville and Tab Benoit Front and Center

The soul of Louisiana is calling to us through her artists, musicians and writers. As this series on Louisiana unfolds, people have written to us asking what they can do to help. Perhaps a way to begin is to listen to the soul of Louisiana. Cyril Neville asked that Tab Benoit give us a copy of some music he and Benoit produced for a Voice of the Wetlands CD compilation. The music gives “voice to the water and land, to the swamps and marshes.”[1] The songs are all about how to fight to keep what is about to be lost.

“Louisiana Sunrise,” a song by Cyril Neville and Rusty Kershaw, was recorded during the first week of January 2005. Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. The prescient soul of Louisiana was crying for help months before the wreck. Listen

What follows now is Part Two of our interview with Tab Benoit—one of the many important voices of the wetlands. Hear his voice as he mourns the loss of a 200 year-old Cajun culture where English was long a second language—a culture that unfolded with the first French settlers who were later joined by freedom-seeking Acadians from Nova Scotia. Listen as Tab Benoit explains that disaster preparedness meetings organized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency prior to Katrina were about saving defense and oil infrastructure and not about saving people. FEMA organized a mock hurricane response program called Hurricane PAM in 2004 in Baton Rouge that cost taxpayers millions of dollars but never had the people’s interests in mind to begin with. Listen as he wonders what happened to the civics lessons he learned as a child in the bayou schools.

Tab Benoit was a central star in the mammoth IMAX theatre film presentation Hurricane on the Bayou, which has been running across the country in IMAX theatres. Listen to Tab Benoit’s palpable distress as he tries to distance himself from the IMAX theatre presentation he stars in, which has become a public relations tool for Shell Oil and the bigger oil companies behind it.

The Entergy IMAX Theater in New Orleans was sponsored by the utility company that declared bankruptcy, after years of record profits, and transferred Katrina “losses” to taxpayers, but continues to ignore utility problems in the Ninth Ward and Gentilly. A plaque on the Entergy New Orleans’ IMAX wall listing the sponsors of the Audubon 2000 “Wetlands” Campaign” is a Who’s Who of environmental and social devastation all over the world: Chevron-Texaco; Dow Chemical, Exxon-Mobil, Entergy, Freeport McMoRan, Pepsi, IBM, Shell Oil, Textron, Petroleum Helicopters, McDermott International, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Audubon Nature Institute produced Hurricane on the Bayou in partnership with Chevron, Dow Chemical, Dominion Oil, the Weather Channel, and several “philanthropic” foundations. The film green washes the truth— there is not one word about big oil and defense and not a single image of the vast oil infrastructure that blankets the Gulf onshore, offshore, underground and underwater.

Listen to Tab Benoit and know that he is speaking his truth, and it is an apt truth that resonates with those who are suffering from the multinational corporate structure we call “government.” Tab Benoit loves the land he grew up on, and he speaks from his heart for the plants, the wildlife, the cypress forests and native bayou peoples decimated by our thoughtless consumption of the earth.

Part Two

“The only reason I got into music is because I knew it was the one talent that I had that I could help others with. It was a bigger, more universal way to help. I don’t just play music to try to sell records or to try to be cool or try to be famous; I would rather not to tell you the truth. I’d rather just be a regular old guy. It was killing me when I was flying for a living… I wasn’t doing the thing that I was supposed to be doing.”

—Tab Benoit, Houma, LA, November, 2007

Truth

“The first thing that needs to be done is the government needs to tell people the truth. I thought that the FEMA meetings would be that opportunity. These are public meetings, here’s a chance to tell everybody that lives in the lower ninth ward. It was a good opportunity to get everybody to evacuate and get everybody out of there. They didn’t talk about people. They didn’t mention that there would even be people there. It took me a while to understand it.

“You walk out of these meetings and you hear two hours of jargon, and you really don’t know what you heard, until you walk out and it starts going through in your head. I’d listen to everything they had to say, and reviewed it in my head, and I’m sitting in front of the building talking to people, and it just hit me. They didn’t even talk about people. You wouldn’t have noticed that they didn’t talk about people because they were so involved in all this other stuff that you had to go back and see what they didn’t say to figure out what they were gonna do.

Baghdad on the Bayou Redux: Wasting the Wetlands

By Georgianne Nienaber and Keith Harmon Snow

Flying Over the Delta November 2007 (Copyright G. Nienaber)

Part One: Wasting America’s Wetlands It was not a hurricane named Katrina that wrecked the city of New Orleans. It was, quite simply, a warfare economy and a sold-out government. It was shoddy pumps and levees, barges run amuck, strategic resources of petroleum and natural gas, environmental deregulation, too much rain, and the destruction of sponge-like barrier wetlands that once absorbed the storm surge. The hurricane was an act of nature, but such storms can no longer be separated from the politics and economics of corporate consumption that are driving the American “war on terror.” Katrina created a huge business opportunity for “government,” for multinational corporations and private profiteers.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have now joined the ranks of “Third World” countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Guatemala, Haiti, Somalia, Congo—suffering the shocks of America’s permanent warfare agenda. This global apartheid sanctions vicious actions toward subjects who resist. The people of New Orleans join the ranks of the homeless, indigenous people suffering genocide, the refugees and internally displaced and other victims of globalization—millions of people set adrift in a sea of nowhere, with no rights, no possessions, no protection and little prospect for survival.[1]

Disaster capitalism is showing its teeth in America, and the picture isn’t pretty.

It was not a hurricane named Katrina that displaced an entire population from the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. It was a flood of biblical proportions and a history of racism and elitism that created poverty and vulnerability in parallel with wealth and privilege. The storm followed decades of business as usual and a “war on terror” that set the stage for a rapid intervention project in urban and social re-engineering.

New Orleans Business Council chairman Jimmy Reiss was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically."

FEMA—the Federal Emergency Management Agency—did not fail. As Louisiana’s local Cajun blues musician Tab Benoit told us, there was a plan and it was followed to perfection.[2] Homeland Security absorbed FEMA in 2001 and Homeland Security is not in the business of rescuing people.

After decades of injustice—born out of American slavery—the victims of the storm fell prey to an all-out military invasion involving aircraft carriers, Boeing Chinook and Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters, M-1 Abrams battle tanks, M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles, amphibious assault ships, state-of-the-art weaponry, Blackwater mercenaries, U.S. Special Forces, and the special Bollinger “SWIFT”—the U.S. Navy’s interim Mine Warfare Command and Support catamaran.[3] High-tech military command and control centers were set up all over the place, some at Lockheed Martin facilities in the Gulf.[4]

They couldn’t get people out, but had no problems moving troops and weaponry in.

For most black people this was no rescue, it was a roundup, often at gunpoint.

According to the U.S. military, at least 60,000 active and reserve U.S. military troops deployed to New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina, “which affected tens of thousands of people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.[5]

Hurricane Katrina “affected tens of thousands” of people? Here is the Pentagon’s deceptive information warfare at work. The truth is that Hurricane Katrina affected hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans alone. According to current numbers, at least 200,000 residents of New Orleans and some 500,000-700,000 people along the Gulf coast became “internally displaced persons”—refugees inside the borders of the United States of America.

The Divided Road Home

While the state and national government have celebrated the reconstruction of New Orleans and return of its citizens, at least 200,000 people remain displaced from New Orleans as of December 1, 2007.

The biggest international charity in America, United Way, also minimizes the numbers of displaced people and misrepresents the realities. “Thousands of people were displaced and there has been hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to lives and property along the Gulf Coast,” reads a United Way public relations bulletin on December 4, 2007. “Many of those who evacuated have now settled in new areas—thanks to the generosity of many—and may never return.” [6]

The United Way summary above suggests that the helping hand of society has blessed the people displaced from New Orleans, but the inability of hundreds of thousands of people to return to New Orleans is a travesty. Thousands of families remain separated, scattered across the country, and the American Civil Liberties Union agrees that there are egregious violations of human rights under internationally recognized covenants and treaties.[7]

It was not a hurricane named Katrina that has left hundreds of thousands of United States citizens homeless and destitute.

Homeowners of all stripes suffered casualties in New Orleans, but people of color were blamed for their own suffering and targeted for both elimination and personal profit. Blacks were universally relegated to the status of criminals and many people were shot outright. The independent film Welcome to New Orleans produced by Rasmus Holm shows white vigilantes in New Orleans bragging about the “open season” on black people, admitting openly and brazenly “we shot ‘em!”

There has been no accountability, and no transparency.

There is no available database that documents exactly where the “thousands” of internally displaced persons are located—or even if they are still alive. There are witnesses to and victims of racial-profiling, police brutality, tortures and summary executions by armed forces, but most witnesses are psychologically and physically traumatized—many simply terrified into silence.

The Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Gretna neighborhoods remain in shambles.

Meanwhile, there are record contracts and profits for Bollinger, Lockheed Martin, Textron, Northrup Grumman and other corporations in New Orleans that continue to manufacture, test and deploy weapons of mass destruction.

This is definitely Baghdad on the Bayou.

Body Counts in New Orleans’ Red Zone

“Tanks arrived by train and were seen on Canal Street [downtown] by September 1, 2005,” says New Orleans community organizer Kali Akuno. “The tanks are still in New Orleans. We’ve only seen them on rare occasions since July 2007. They are reported downtown at the Marriott from time to time and also in the Ninth Ward.”

Private military forces were paid in the hundreds and often thousands of dollars daily to commit atrocities with the sanction of our now privatized U.S. government. As one witness who worked around the mercenary forces in New Orleans revealed, “these were professional paid killers. They talked about their adventures in Asia and Africa. They had phenomenal weaponry. Killing is part of their vernacular.” [8]

No one will ever know the true body count from the New Orleans Red Zone. The funeral company, Kenyon, a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), was awarded a no bid contract for retrieval of the dead—decaying and bloated bodies abandoned in attics, swept out to sea—lost souls clogging canals and streets because of Kenyon’s slow response. Local funeral directors complained that they were excluded from the recovery efforts to protect Kenyon’s windfall bonuses of $12,500 per body.

Naomi Klein notes in The Shock Doctrine that Kenyon was accused of improperly tagging bodies and that many bodies were found mummified in attics a year after the flood. Bush crony and campaign contributor, Robert Waltrip, is the chairman of SIC’s board of directors. In 2005, SCI listed revenues of $1.7 billion.

FEMA outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina to a company—SIC—involved in one of the biggest funeral home scandals in United States history. In a 2001 Florida investigation, the Menorah Gardens cemetery chain was sued for dumping hundreds of bodies into woods where the bodies were devoured by wild hogs. Backhoes were used to open vaults and remove the corpses to make room for more bodies.[9] SIC owned and operated Menorah Gardens and they paid $200 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by family members of the deceased.

Done in by suicide or design, the manager of the Menorah Gardens chain, Peter Hartmann, was later found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.[10]

It was not a hurricane named Katrina that ripped Miss Louise and Miss Edna from neighborhoods that sheltered family and kin for generations. It was an American administration that has transformed Federal Emergency Management into a privatized Homeland Security apparatus which—by design —ignored the defense and protection of the citizens that the same administration vowed with hand upon Bible to protect. Oaths of office became premeditated lies.

The authority of the Constitution and the protections supposedly afforded every American citizen in the Bill of Rights were summarily swept away with the rising tide of “national security.” Witnesses swear that bodies riddled with military caliber bullets were buried in mass graves with the rest of the lies.[11]

Survivors of Katrina, both black and white, unconsciously quote the bible as they describe their experiences. We heard, “we were seeds scattered to the wind,” and “we have been wandering for years,” and that God “wrought his vengeance.” The experience for the victims was one of objectification. The Gulf of Mexico was transformed by collective psychic shock into a mighty entity more powerful than any gods of retribution or all the voodoo the sorcerers of New Orleans could muster.

Katrina victims became “seeds,” no longer human, denied freedoms of will and desire. They were dehumanized objects, nameless criminals, the subjects of news loops of looting that CNN played again and again to drive the lies home. The message was clear, and too easily believed, an American white-man’s perception instilled through decades of racial media spin. These impoverished residents of the oil rich coast are subhuman; they are not like “us” sitting comfortably in our white-bread homes, thanking a white God that we do not live like them or near them.

“People outside of New Orleans were getting a very one-sided interpretation,” says New Orleans resident Leon Waters. “The villain here was the government.”

The hydra of war and power in New Orleans two years after Katrina has developed many tentacles, and the truth lies partially buried in the mass graves that only a brave few will openly talk about. Truth lies somewhere in the former leper colony that held the bodies not counted in “official” tolls of 1300 dead. It lies onshore in the soils contaminated by arsenic and offshore in the sands of barrier islands contaminated by petroleum wastes. The truth lies with New Orleans Police, federal agents, U.S. troops, ATF and FBI agents, National Guardsmen, Blackwater mercenaries and vigilante whites who know what they saw, and know what they did, and today remain silent—and therefore complicit—in crimes against humanity.

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the people of the United States of America have been offered yet another chance to open their eyes and see reality for what it is. However, before this series examines the aftermath, one truth is undeniable. The flood waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River system were not preordained to reach the 17th Street Canal, the Lower Ninth Ward, or the New Orleans neighborhoods of Gentilly, St. Bernard, Metairie and Lakeview.

There were many warnings that the wetlands, estuaries and tidal swamps of the Mississippi Delta were all that stood between New Orleans and disaster. One of these was a famously prescient 2004 public service announcement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UjVBQChwxM by “Mr. Bill,” a.k.a. Walter Williams of satirical Saturday Night Live fame. In the last frames of the film, the clay man is seen standing on the roof of a home, while roads are flooded and impassible.

All the warnings were ignored, for years.

Wasting the Wetlands

Wetland Loss--Source: NASA MODIS

Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, and hurricane Rita struck land on September 24, 2005. Anyone who disputes the awesome force and violence of these combined storms as they swept across the Gulf and over the land would be denying the obvious. Driven by Category IV hurricane winds and torrential rain, the storm surge washed over the city.

Over the past decades, the coast of southern Louisiana has been losing rather than gaining land. This is undeniable fact. Satellite imagery from NASA and the U.S. Geological Service clearly illustrate the loss of land and estuaries. The blame, and there is plenty to go around, lies squarely with river (mis) management designed to support big industry and big oil. Hurricanes are natural severe weather events that, having been named and personified, draw attention away from the honest mistakes, outright lies and criminal actions that have dominated Delta politics and “development” for over 100 years. The loss of land and culture has escalated in the past twenty years, dramatically altering the Mississippi Delta.

Nature, time, and sediment took 100 million years to form the Mississippi River Delta. It took the Army Corp of Engineers less than 100 years to wreck a perfect eco-system that supported both one of the world’s largest fisheries off shore and a culture rich in music, tradition and family ties that lived on it.

Three thousand years ago, the land that now lies under New Orleans did not exist—the site was open water in the Gulf of Mexico. Walter Williams has produced a video illustration of this process.

In the last 100 years, the Mississippi diverted its course to the Atchafalaya River, which begins its flow northwest of New Orleans. Fifty years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers became concerned that the Mississippi would actually change course and form its main channel in the Atchafalaya Basin.

Congress ordered the Corps to construct floodgates that could be opened and closed as necessary to protect economic development along the Delta. This is the Old River Control Structure—the death-knell event that caused a decrease of sediment and the beginning of the end of the Delta. Dredging and channels cut by big oil, hostile environmental action, unregulated expansion, industrial pollution and artificial channeling—otherwise lauded as “economy” and “development”—have completed the destruction. There is a documented net loss of land, saltwater has intruded into fresh-water basins, estuaries and aquifers, and subsidence—sinking of land—has increased.

Since 1932, at least 1.2 million acres of wetlands or 1,900 square miles have vanished from the Louisiana shores—an area about the size of Rhode Island. At least ten square miles are lost every year, and if nothing is done to stop this loss, an additional 500 square miles will disappear by 2050.

Indeed, some 530 square feet disappeared while you were reading the last sentence.

“We’re facing annihilation down here every summer,” says Walter Williams, creator of Mr. Bill, “and my documentary warned about the loss of wetlands protection from hurricanes.” Williams is alarmed by wetlands destruction that has left New Orleans vulnerable to hurricanes every season. In 2002 the State of Louisiana started using Williams’ documentary in the “America’s Wetlands” campaign. It wasn’t long before Shell Oil Company co-opted the movement and polluted the message.

Mr. Bill was soon at war with Shell Oil and the hand of an honest Walter Williams pulled Mr. Bill from the campaign. Williams believes the Wetlands Campaign is selling out to big oil companies—the number one cause of wetlands destruction. Environmentalists and human rights defenders are quick to connect Shell Oil Company’s war on the Gulf wetlands to Shell Oil operations in Nigeria, where Shell supplied weapons to Nigerian troops in their war against the indigenous people, and where Shell, Chevron and other oil companies have devastated the wetlands of the Niger River Delta.[12]

Is the American public composed of nothing more than spineless Mr. Bills? Are we men and women of clay, powerless to determine our collective destiny? Like the Mr. Bill satires of Saturday Night Live, are we dependent upon a disembodied “Mr. Hand” that hovers over us and makes all of our important decisions?

In the Gulf Coast region the petroleum industry is the biggest economic sector, and greenhouse-gas emissions are the highest in the nation. Most of the big industry is out of compliance with federal environmental regulations that are weak and inconsequential to begin with, literally watered down by the corporate-owned and increasingly privatized U.S. government.

The Congress is mandated by the Constitution to be the voice of We the (clay) People, and the voice is loud and clear in favor of environmental and social destruction.

A hurricane named Katrina was not to blame for the wetland loss.

What Was Beautiful is Broken[13]

Mainstream media played the battering storm theme over and over but has never addressed the root causes of the rising storm surge: the destruction of the Gulf Coast environment by and for big industry. Millions of acres of Gulf Coast wetlands have been ruined by the military industrial complex.

Like its nearby Gulf Coast neighbors, Louisiana is overrun with industry out of control. Chemical refineries, agribusiness, shipbuilding, paper mills, sugar and timber plantations, industrial trawling and shell-fishing, defense and aerospace industries have obliterated and polluted mile after mile of pristine natural ecology once worthy of World Heritage Site status. Louisiana is rich in flora and fauna that depend upon the wetlands, harboring over 28% of all wetlands in the lower 48 states.[14]

Nearly 70 million acres of coastal plain forests once stretched from Virginia to Florida to eastern Texas. Once dominated by longleaf and other species of pine trees, the indigenous forests have mostly been obliterated by logging, plantations and petroleum infrastructure.

With more than 352,000 acres of private plantation lands in Louisiana, Weyerhaeuser Corporation has been a leading destroyer of natural forests. The lower coastal plain was once a continuous moist pine barren known as Gulf Coast pitcher plant bogs, but less than 3% of the pitcher plant bogs remain.[15] Less than 1% of the original vast grasslands and coastal plain prairies of the western Gulf region remain intact. The giant cypress trees of the bayou wetlands have been mowed down everywhere, and Wal-Mart sold cypress mulch from Louisiana.

Absence of wetlands and increased storm activity create a feedback loop that increases salinity in freshwater systems, including drinking water aquifers. Mangroves and Cyprus trees have unique root systems that trap sediment and protect coastal shorelines from erosion and storm damage but petroleum dredging, chemical pollution and channels are destroying these unique trees.

Once amongst the most beautiful and biologically diverse coral reef ecosystems on the planet, the reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico have been rapidly dying off due to siltation (soil runoff), oxygen-depletion, chemical pollution, over fishing and temperature changes caused by industrial dredging, trawling, and especially by drilling and other petroleum activities.

The Gulf Coast has the largest and most valuable shrimp fishery in the United States, and in 1999 the region produced 78 percent of the national total shrimp landings.[16] The large acreage of coastal marshes along the Gulf Coast is thought to be the reason for this bountiful harvest of shrimp. This region also contributed 58 percent of the national oyster production.[17] These “industries” harvesting from the sea are in massive decline all around the U.S. Coast but nowhere is the threat greater than in the Gulf.

The 8000 square mile dead zone of oxygen depleted (hypoxic) water in the Gulf of Mexico just off Louisiana is expanding daily due to toxic industrial flushing, petroleum drilling wastes, chemical run-off and dumping from so-called “Cancer Alley” in the Louisiana Bayou, and wetlands loss further depletes nutrients and feeds the dead zone.

“Clearly, in the Gulf Coast region, where the fossil-fuel industry is the biggest economic sector and where greenhouse-gas emissions are among the highest in the nation,” wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists in an 83-page report about the environmental problems in the Gulf region, “it is critical to find ways to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions without reducing the economic vitality of Gulf states.”

Examination of the massive UCS study, Confronting Climate Change in the Gulf Coast Region (2001) provides a clear example of where those perceived to be watchdogs for the public trust have sold out to big industry, “national security” and the defense of their own organizational and career interests.

There is not one word in the entire report about the extent of environmental devastation wrought by petroleum and defense interests, and almost nothing at all about chemical refineries.

Instead of calling for an immediate moratorium on gas-flaring—the single most important global source of devastating toxic gaseous emissions—the Union of Concerned Scientists points to the importance of “investment in the region’s substantial renewable energy resources (e.g., solar, wind, and biomass)” and “incentives for new technology development and economic diversification while reducing air pollutants and greenhouse gases.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists has offered a band-aid for a gangrenous (industrial) infection.

The UCS study’s subtitle—“Prospects for Sustaining Our Ecological Heritage”—suggests that these scientists and the institutions they are part of are completely blind to the scale of the devastation, or merely unwilling to challenge the sacred cow of “national security” and its petroleum addictions.

How can we “sustain our ecological heritage” when it has nearly been obliterated?

Government Sanctioned Ecocide

The mighty Mississippi River has been channeled into hundreds of miles of concrete canals. There are Shell Oil Company refinery pipelines criss-crossing people’s yards in Norco, Louisiana, an onshore oil lease within 40 miles of New Orleans.[18] Conoco operations in Mossville, Louisiana caused massive deadly sulfur dioxide gas “spills” but the people were not told about them.[19]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Departments of Environmental Protection have sanctioned hostile petroleum and gas operations killing wildlife, wetlands and people all over the Gulf States.

Seismic testing blasts marine life with deadly sound and pressure waves, and these kill elements of the food chain essential to the ecological health of wetland, coastal and undersea ecosystems.

Buzzing all over beneath the seas in the Gulf of Mexico are the ultra-state-of-the-art Unmanned (or Autonomous) Underwater Vehicles (UUVs or AUVs), an entirely new class of weaponry for the Pentagon, a new class of robotic machinery for offshore petroleum operations and seabed mining, a new classified “research” agenda for Woods Hole Oceanographic and Scripps Institute and their many affiliated “academic” institutions.[20]

Eleven of the top twenty U.S. ports by cargo volume in 1999 are found in the Gulf Coast region, including New Orleans, Houston, Mobile, and Tampa. Port facilities located between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Baton Rouge handle over 230 million tons of cargo annually, valued at more than $30 billion. The cargoes managed by these port facilities make up approximately 25 percent of the nation’s total exported commodities.

Everything is couched in terms of profits and strategic resources, while the losses are shrouded in platitudes and corporate greenwash—funded and produced by the industries responsible for the destruction—peddling popsicle blue seas and coral reefs and sandy white shoals in Shell Oil, Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman advertisements.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems has been the prime contractor occupying the 832-acre NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in eastern New Orleans since 1973. Located some 24 miles from New Orleans International Airport and 15 miles from the French Quarter, the facility was designated as a “superfund” pollution site in 1995 due to illegal disposal practices and accidents that contaminated Michoud’s soil, surface water, and groundwater with deadly trichloroethylene and other contaminant byproducts of space weaponry.

The Michoud facility includes extensive deepwater canals, port facilities and privatized channels linked to the Gulf and the Mississippi waterway, and they are currently seeking a major port expansion that will further usurp and destroy wetlands.

No money to help the people of New Orleans? Concerned about wetlands and the environment? The numbers speak for themselves.

In June 2002 NASA extended the Space Shuttle External Fuel Tank contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems to September 2008 with a $341 million addition to the original contract. On September 28, 2007, Northrup Grumman Ship Systems in New Orleans was awarded a $13 million contract for the U.S. Navy’s LPD 17 Class Amphibious Transport Dock Ship Program. On June 23, 2007, the U. S. Army Tank Automotive Armaments Command awarded $255.5 million for 369 more M1117 Armored Security vehicles ($4 million added on October 9, 2007) to New Orleans-based Textron Marine & Land. And these don’t even scratch the surface on New Orleans-based defense contracts alone.

On December 3, 2007, the U.S. Department of the Interior concluded a deepwater oil and gas lease sale of $281 million in new oil concessions in the Gulf of Mexico.[21]

Lockheed Martin has extensive research links with the University of New Orleans and others. The “core tenant” of the University’s $162 million Research and Technology Park is the 400,000-square-foot Space and Naval Warfare Information Technology Center (SPAWARITC), which is affiliated with Lockheed Martin. SPAWAR is directly linked to “black programs” that have for years funded beyond top-secret military programs through contractors like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

The Country Club of Privatized War

New Orleans is at the heart of America’s most extensive and lucrative petroleum reserves and ground zero for massive defense infrastructure. Like so many before them, post-Katrina contracts benefited Bush cronies like Donald Bollinger—CEO of Louisiana’s Bollinger Shipyards—and Joe Canizaro—a wealthy real estate developer and leading Bush supporter-- and the elite CEO members of committees and boards dictating structural changes behind the scenes.

Northrup Grumman director Lewis Coleman is also director of the international “non-government” organization Conservation International and of the philanthropic Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The former (CI) is involved in defense, intelligence and mining projects in Central Africa and the Amazon, while the latter funds big industrial development agencies involved in undersea ventures (Woods Hole, Chemical Heritage Foundation) and, at the same time, many of the so-called “environmental” and “conservation” organizations involved in wetlands, oceans and other natural resource protection: World Wildlife Fund, Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Audubon Society, and Environmental Defense (Fund).

Northrup Grumman directors Ronald Sugar and Kevin W. Sharer are also directors of Chevron Corporation, another of the many petroleum majors deeply responsible for devastating the natural and social environments of the Gulf Coast.

Norman R. Augustine, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, is also on the Advisory Council for the Department of Homeland Security. Lockheed Martin’s Vice-President of Communications, Mary Jo Polidore is on the board of directors of United Way of Tarrant County (Texas), whose officers also include a Bell Helicopter/Textron executive.

Entergy Corporation director J. Wayne Leonard is a trustee of the United Way of Greater New Orleans. Entergy Louisiana, the state’s largest utility, declared bankruptcy in September 2005, and thereby gained a government (taxpayers) bailout.[22] Entergy Louisiana earned about $168 million in 2004, while Entergy’s overall revenues were $2.4 billion in 2004. (Note: If corporations’ subsidiaries incur losses they are transferred to taxpayers and ratepayers, but profits go straight to directors and shareholders.) Meanwhile, over two years after Katrina, electrical wires still dangle all around the Ninth Ward and Gentilly.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed E. Renae Conley, the CEO of Entergy Louisiana, to the Board of Directors for the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF), established just after Katrina to fund “disaster relief.” E. Renae Conley also serves on Louisiana’s Cultural Economy Foundation Board and as a member of Governor Blanco’s Advisory Commission for Coastal Restoration and Conservation.

LDRF director C. Berwick Duval, an attorney for the New Orleans law firm Duval, Funderburk, Sundbery, Lovell & Watkin, is also an executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, the Bayou Chapter of Coastal Conservation Association, and the South Central Industrial Association.

Is this a perfect example of industrial expansion masking its devastating activities with a “conservation” front and profiting off misery and destruction through a “humanitarian” front like the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation?

The Duval law firm specializes in maritime law and counts as clients the Bollinger Shipyards, Fina Oil Company (Italy) and other maritime and petroleum sector firms, including Apache Operations, the second largest Gulf Coast petroleum leaseholder and operator.[23]

There are twelve Bollinger “family-owned” shipyards in southern Louisiana, with five in the immediate New Orleans vicinity, and ten on the “panhandle” New Orleans peninsula. Like many Gulf Coast industrial giants, Bollinger facilities were literally built over the swamp. Bollinger Gulf Repair in East New Orleans by itself covers 58 acres with 3,300 feet of wet dock area.

Donald Bollinger served as a delegate to every Republican National Convention since 1976 and has served on the Republican National Finance Committee, the National Steering Committees for both Bush presidential administrations, and was the State of Louisiana’s Finance Chairman for the George W. Bush for President Campaign and Campaign Chair for the General Election. He serves on the National Petroleum Council and previously served on the President’s Export Council under the administration of President George H.W. Bush. He is Chairman of the Governor’s Maritime Advisory Task Force, on the board of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Military Affairs, and former Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans.

Blame Katrina Blame the Victims

The selling off and destruction of Louisiana’s wetlands and other environmental assets occurs today behind powerful business groups like those listed above. This is the classic modus operandi of the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism. It was not a sudden realization or awakening brought about by a hurricane, but an ongoing, simmering project that seized the moment it had been waiting for.

It was not a hurricane named Katrina that wrecked the Gulf Coast wetlands.

The wetlands that once protected the city of New Orleans from tropical storms have been obliterated and corporate industry and our now privatized government have accomplished an environmental—on top of the political—coup d’etat by blaming the problem on Mother Nature.

Industrial Canal Lower Ninth-- Courtesy Mac McKinney

It was not a hurricane named Katrina that wrecked New Orleans. It was big oil, big industry and the big, everyday deceptions peddled by mass media and entertainment complex and consumed as news by the American people. Every square foot of wetlands that disappears from the Gulf Coast offers greater opportunities for the petroleum industry.

Petroleum companies have already set up rigs in other New Orleans communities and witnesses have seen people prospecting for oil in the Lower Ninth Ward. Like the people of New Orleans and rural Gulf Coast communities, the lingering wetlands are obstacles to more oil and more profit. It’s not over, the remaining wetlands can be restored, recovery is possible, Mother Nature is our biggest ally, and hopelessness, denial and fear are our biggest enemies.

Next:
Baghdad on the Bayou Redux:
Disaster Capitalism and the War on Equality
Part Two of Interview with Tab Benoit in Houma

NOTES:

[1] See for example: keith harmon snow, “Darfurism, Uganda and the U.S. War in Africa,” Global Research, November 2007.

[2] See “Katrina Scattered People Instead of Bombs,” an interview with Tab Benoit, OP-ED News, December 3, 2007, http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_071203_baghdad_on_the_bayou.htm

[3] U.S. Navy Fact File, HSV SWIFT,
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1400&ct=4

[4] Alice Lipowicz, “FEMA uses Lockheed Martin facility for Katrina relief,” Washington Technology, September 2, 2005.

[5] Stephanie J. Santos, “Recapturing 2005: A year of change for Fort Drum,” Blizzard Online, January 12, 2006, http://www.drum.army.mil/sites/postnews/blizzard/blizzard_archives/news.asp?id=8&issuedate=1-12-2006.

[6] “United Way's Role in Hurricane Response and Recovery,” http://www.unitedway.org/Katrina/index.cfm

[7] See: Broken Promises: 2 Years After Katrina, American Civil Liberties Union, August 2007.

[8] Private interview, New Orleans, October 30, 2007.

[9] click here

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FEMA_outsources_Katrina_body_count_to_firm_implicated_in_bodydumping_scan_0913.html

[10] http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/12/27/cemetery.scandal.suicide/index.html

[11] Issues of executions, murders and mass graves will be examined in subsequent articles

[12] Anne Rolfes, Shell Games: Divide and Conquer the Diamond Community, The Concerned Citizens of Norco (LA) and Communities for a Better Environment, (circa 2001, 2002).

[13]Northbound 35; Jeffrey Foucault

[14] http://www.crcl.org/

[15] “The American pitcher plants,” Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, 34: 110–125; and “The Gulf Coast pitcher plant bogs,” American Scientist, 70: 260–267.

[16] Holiday, M.C., and B.K. O’Bannon (2000). Fisheries of the United States, 1999. Current Fisheries Statistics No. 9900. Silver Spring, Md.: National Marine Fisheries Service.

[17] Holiday, M.C., and B.K. O’Bannon (2000). Fisheries of the United States, 1999. Current Fisheries Statistics No. 9900. Silver Spring, Md.: National Marine Fisheries Service.)(56: Broutman, M.A., and D.L. Leonard (1988). The quality of shellfish growing waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Washington, D.C.: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Ocean Services

[18] Anne Rolfes, Shell Games: Divide and Conquer the Diamond Community, The Concerned Citizens of Norco (LA) and Communities for a Better Environment, (circa 2001, 2002).

[19] Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Birds of Prey: Conoco, Condea Vista, and PPG Feeding Off of Mossville and Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, (circa 2001, 2002).

[20] The U.S. Navy Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) Master Plan, November 9, 2004, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/technology/uuvmp.pdf.

[21] Press Release, “Western Gulf of Mexico Sale 204 Nets $287,081,023 in High Bids,” Minerals Management Service, December 3, 2007, http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/whatsnew/newsreal/2007/071203a.pdf

[22] Entergy Corporation is running the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant beyond capacity and safety margins: in August 2007 an Entergy cooling tower collapsed spilling millions of gallons of radioactive water and causing Vermont Yankee to “scram”—leaving the water-cooled nuclear reactor dangerously close to a potential meltdown and nuclear explosion. See: Citizen’s Awareness Network, www.nukebusters.org

[23] Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation: http://duvallawfirm.com/representativeclients.asp>. Apache Operations: http://www.apachecorp.com/About_Us/Global_Strategy_and_Operations/Operations_Overview/United_States/