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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
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 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-58339635132245662. 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.
Georgianne Nienaber is a writer, author, and investigative journalist. She lives in the world. Her articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, SCOOP New Zealand, Glide Magazine, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Friends of the Congo, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction exposé of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and recently spent six weeks in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction. She is currently developing a documentary on the Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE.
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