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Crime scene: New Orleans


umbertino
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Don’t blame Mother Nature – it was Big Oil that wreaked destruction on the Crescent City nine years ago, writes GREG PALAST
 
 
 
Sep
2014
Monday 1st
 
 
 
posted by Morning Star in Features

 

 

 

Nine years ago, New Orleans drowned. Don’t you dare blame Mother Nature.  

 

Ms Katrina killed no-one in this town. But it was a homicide, with nearly 2,000 dead victims.

 

If not Katrina, who done it? Who is to blame for the crushing avalanche of water that buried this city?

 

It wasn’t an act of God. It was an act of Chevron. An act of Exxon. An act of Big Oil.

 

Take a look at these numbers dug out of Louisiana state records: Conoco 3.3 million acres, Exxon Mobil 2.1m acres, Chevron 2.7m acres, Shell 1.3m acres. 

 

These are the total acres of wetlands removed by just four oil companies over the past couple of decades.  

 

If you’re not a farmer, I’ll translate this into urban-speak — that’s 14,688 square miles drowned into the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Here’s what happened. New Orleans used be to a long, swampy way from the Gulf of Mexico.  

 

Hurricanes and storm surges had to cross a protective mangrove forest nearly 100 miles thick. 

 

But then, a century ago, Standard Oil, Exxon’s prior alias, began dragging drilling rigs, channelling pipelines, barge paths and tanker routes through what was once soft delta prairie grass.  

 

Most of those beautiful bayous you see on postcards are just scars, the cuts and wounds of drilling the prairie, once the US’s cattle-raising centre. The bayous, filling with ’gators and shrimp, widened out and sank the coastline. 

 

Each year, oil operations drag the gulf four miles closer to New Orleans.

 

Just one channel dug for Exxon’s pleasure, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, was dubbed the “Hurricane Highway” by experts — long before Katrina — that invited the storm right up to and over the city’s gates, the levees.

 

Without Big Oil’s tree and prairie holocaust, “Katrina would have been a storm of no note,” Professor Ivor van Heerden told me.  

 

Van Heerden, once deputy director of the Hurricane Centre at Louisiana State University, is one of the planet’s leading experts on storm dynamics.

 

If they’d only left just 10 per cent of the protective collar. They didn’t.

 

Van Heerden was giving me a tour of the battle zone in the oil war. It was New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, which once held the largest concentration of African-American-owned homes in the US. Now it holds the largest contrition of African-American-owned rubble.

 

We stood in front of a house, now years after Katrina, with an “X” spray-painted on the outside and “1 DEAD DOG,” “1 CAT,” the number 2 and “9/6” partly covered by a foreclosure notice.

 

The professor translated: “9/6” meant rescuers couldn’t get to the house for eight days, so the “2” — the couple that lived there — must have paddled around with their pets until the rising waters pushed them against the ceiling and they suffocated, their gas-bloated corpses floating for a week.

 

In July 2005 van Heerden told Channel 4 Television: “In a month, this city could be underwater.” 

 

In one month, it was. Van Heerden had sounded the alarm for at least two years, even speaking to George Bush’s White House about an emergency condition — with the gulf closing in, the levees were 18 inches short.  

 

But the army corps of engineers was busy with other rivers — the Tigris and Euphrates.

 

So when those levees began to fail, the White House, hoping to avoid federal responsibility, did not tell Louisiana’s governor Kathleen Blanco that the levees were breaking up.  

 

That Monday night, August 29, with the storm bypassing New Orleans, the governor had stopped the city’s evacuation.  

 

Van Heerden was with the governor at the State Emergency Centre.

 

He said: “By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew.” 

 

So the drownings began in earnest.

 

Van Heerden was supposed to keep that secret. He didn’t. He told me, on camera — knowing the floodwater of official slime would break over him. 

 

He was told to stay silent, to bury the truth. But he told me more. A lot more.

 

“I wasn’t going to listen to those sort of threats, to let them shut me down.”

 

Well, they did shut him down. After he went public about the unending life-and-death threat of continued oil drilling and channelling, LSU closed down its entire Hurricane Centre — can you imagine? — and fired Prof van Heerden and fellow experts. 

 

This was just after the university received a $300,000 cheque from Chevron. The cheque was passed by a front group called “America’s Wetlands” — which lobbies for more drilling in the wetlands. 

 

In place of van Heerden and independent experts, LSU’s new “Wetlands Centre” has professors picked by a board of petroleum industry hacks.

 

In 2003, people in the US protested “No Blood for Oil” in Iraq. It’s about time we said: “No Blood for Oil” — in Louisiana.

 

There are more revelations from Professor van Heerden in Greg Palast’s bestseller Vultures’ Picnic (Constable Press). Palast is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

 

 

 

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-a417-Crime-scene-New-Orleans#.VATvKKMgt9Y

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Thank You Umberto... Probably wouldn't have heard anything about this if you hadn't brought it in. Much Appreciated

 

Van Heerden is a very brave soul for not staying silent...

I hope his bravery will help stop these atrocities against man and nature.

 

Salute' and Hats Off To You Mr Heerden  :tiphat:

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And here all this time they were telling me it was Dub-ya's fault.

 

Ummm... No Offense 429... perhaps you just happened to miss this part.

 

He sure didn't help when he could have.

 

 

Quote From The Article:

 

"In July 2005 van Heerden told Channel 4 Television: “In a month, this city could be underwater.” 

 

In one month, it was. Van Heerden had sounded the alarm for at least two years, even speaking to George Bush’s White House about an emergency condition — with the gulf closing in, the levees were 18 inches short.  

 

But the army corps of engineers was busy with other rivers — the Tigris and Euphrates.

 

So when those levees began to fail, the White House, hoping to avoid federal responsibility, did not tell Louisiana’s governor Kathleen Blanco that the levees were breaking up.  

 

That Monday night, August 29, with the storm bypassing New Orleans, the governor had stopped the city’s evacuation.  

 

Van Heerden was with the governor at the State Emergency Centre.

 

He said: “By midnight on Monday the White House knew. But none of us knew.” 

 

So the drownings began in earnest."

 

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The entire nation is also to blame.  We WANT that oil!  We NEED it for our transportation, farming, construction, plumbing, roads and streets, and bottles, and a thousand other things made from oil.  Oil is the lynchpin of the American economy. We use oil for a long list of applications, including:

·       Transportation Fuels (Gasoline, Diesel, Jet Fuel)

·       Asphalt

·       Military and defense

·       Fertilizer

·       Heating

·       Feedstock

·       Petrochemicals

·       Plastics

·       Polyurethanes

·       Solvents

·       Electrical generation

According to the Energy Information Administration, transportation (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc.) accounts for about 2/3 of the oil we use in the United States. 

 

Greed for black gold is a national problem and WE WANT IT.  The oil companies provide it for us.  Now who is to blame?  ALL OF US.  The oil companies just get the blame.  

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Greed for black gold is a national problem and WE WANT IT.  The oil companies provide it for us.  Now who is to blame?  ALL OF US.  The oil companies just get the blame.  

 

Yeah Right Nelg... "Those poor innocent oil companies"... just giving us what WE WANT. Lol

 

There have been alternatives for a long time... why have they been suppressed???

You are right about our being stupid on that front... believing all the oil co brainwashing.

We have the solutions... just not the courage to demand them. Why is that? Politics???

 

Don't know about you but I'd preferred that they would have sacrificed a little of their profits and stayed out of the guberment oil regulation business. You are right again though... WE are responsible for being so anti-regulation... we threw the baby out with the bathwater. There was Not a lot of forethought about what the consequences would be in allowing them to rape the land and poison our seas along with our shores. Now we are looking at fracking up the nation for some dirty oil that they aren't even making a profit on. They want that pipeline so they can just milk us for some more... damages to our water and precious land?... what the heck... let em go... right?

 

Don't even get me started on the oil wars... :shakehead:

 

The Words "Green Energy" Are Very Very BAD!!! <sarcasm>

Edited by Maggie123
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We have raped the land for centuries to pacify our "progress," including the "green" disguised groups.  

 

I'm not talking about "green disguised groups"...

 

This may come as surprise to you... There Has Been REAL Alternatives For Years And Years.

 

Time to start THINKING for ourselves... Start considering the consequences if we don't.

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Don't believe what they are telling you. My family is from New Orleans. I remember stories of my mother having to get on their roof because of a hurricane. This was in the early fifties. The problem is that New Orleans and a lot of Louisiana is below sea level. For years they've known this. Their attitude was always...what's the chances of getting hit by a hurricane head on. They never thought it would happen. Oil companies have dug, but over the years they just never thought it would happen. Damn just brought back memories of my childhood. Lake Ponchatrain


Very true!

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Don't believe what they are telling you. My family is from New Orleans. I remember stories of my mother having to get on their roof because of a hurricane. This was in the early fifties. The problem is that New Orleans and a lot of Louisiana is below sea level. For years they've known this. Their attitude was always...what's the chances of getting hit by a hurricane head on. They never thought it would happen. Oil companies have dug, but over the years they just never thought it would happen. Damn just brought back memories of my childhood. Lake Ponchatrain

Very true!

Grazie  for your testimonial.

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For once, I would love to see some of you people who are anti-oil and believe that we are causing global warming and destroying the planet to actually do something about your own consumption of products that are made from this evil product called oil. Every one of you use electricity in your everyday life, plastic products are probably throughout your home, you drive vehicles that require oil products to operate. Why don't you stop being hypocrites and get off of the internet, sell all of your man made plastic products (including the computer your using...cars etc...) and move out to the country and build yourself a wood/sod home. Better yet, rather than kill an innocent tree, find a cave. Grow a garden and live the way you want everyone else to live. If it works out for you, maybe some of the rest of us will look into it. :twothumbs:

Just sayin!

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My Father worked for Texaco. It its day it was a big three in the oil game. I remember in the 70's he told us girls that Texaco held a patent to a vehicle that could go for over 100 miles on one tank of gas. They bought that patent...they did not create it. He told us then that it would never see the light of day. So far...he was right. 

 

I dated a guy who's uncle was an inventor for GE back in the 80's. He invented a fan/air conditioning system that would cool a ordinary size living room for the cost of five cents a month. Again that will never see the light of day either I am sure. He built one for his sister (the guys I was dating's Mom and she used it for years as far as I know. He riged her home so that her electric bill was lass than $15.00 a month. and I was always warm/cool. 

 

Blame? Everyone is guilty. We in America are spoiled. We want to be comfortable. We think we NEED to be comfortable. Anything that makes us uncomfortable is bad. (so we think).

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