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"Local government" there's no government in Louisiana. There is no such thing. As long as we have this much oil coming out of the ground, there is no such thing as government here. And it's been like that since we've had oil coming out of the ground. Since the Texas oil companies bought this whole coast. All of the swamps and marshes are owned by a Texas oil company. None of it belongs to anybody but them. That's why they can cut it up and do anything they want. It's their property. So when we're trying to fight to save this stuff, we're fighting to save their land. But their land is our coast and our protection. People don't understand all of this. People here are so focused on working in the oil field business, and making a living this way, that they're missing what's going on.
"Oil companies don't need protection. They need to fork money over to us and fix the areas that they've destroyed."
Hurricane on the Bayou
"The IMAX film wouldn't let me say anything. They wouldn't let me touch oil.
"The first levies built around the Mississippi river were to protect farms. Channeling the river all the way to the Gulf was not to protect farms from flooding. That was about choking the river down to make it deeper, blowing the sediment out, blowing it off the continental shelf, so that they could get big ships into there. (See http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1195/htmldocs/intro.htm for an explanation of sedimentary deposits on the continental shelf.)
"We need to bring the levies down, we need to raise everybody's houses like we used to be, we have to expect flooding and kind of wish for it. There was a time here when we used to pray for floods when it was dry, when they needed the ground to be replenished with that new topsoil and things like that, when we were over-farming it. Before technology, flooding was a major part of this area and a necessary part. This is what built this area, flooding. So let's go back to where we used to be. Let's expect a flood every now and then. It's Mother Nature. If you're going to live in the swamp, you have to live with the swamp. When you build levies you give everybody this false sense of security that they can build on the ground, and they're gonna be able to live there forever, and nothing's ever gonna happen.
"Well, why do people in New Orleans even think that? It should be common knowledge by now that most of New Orleans is below sea level. It wasn't always, but it is now. They're reliant on levies right now, every day, to survive there. You break a levy down right now; the city fills up again like it did after Katrina. Then take a hurricane and do it. All it takes is a broken levy. High tide and the south wind blowing could do it. A boat running into one of those walls".
"For about two years I was flying over New Orleans every day. I'd look down, and you'd see the levies that are big massive levies, and those are the river levies. All of the other levies are not. Look at the river levies. They have held. There has not been a breach in one of those river levies. Look how substantial they are. If you're going to build a levy out of dirt, you have to go wider as you go higher. And then you have to have some kind of lining in the inside. Especially around the city, the river is bulkheaded there. When you take the Highway 310 Bridge, you'll see that there is concrete around the inside of that levy. That's how you build levies, if you're going to build levies, and those are the levies that work. The problem is that those are the ones that need to come down. We need to let that river come down here, some kind of way, if we're going to stay here. That's the only thing that's going to fix this.
"The Gulf is not far. It's right there. It's twenty miles closer to the airport than when I was a kid. That's unbelievable amounts of land going. Swamps where I used to go camping and think, "look how beautiful this is, the natural bayou with the live oaks and on the other side of the banks there's lush green Cyprus swamp," I just thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. You have to stay pretty far north now to see Cyprus swamps. There's miles and miles and miles of it that are dead. I can guarantee we've lost, in my lifetime, I'd say 70%.
"The lake [Pontchartrain] is now open to the Gulf. The lake is the Gulf.
"You have to be realistic right now here. Optimism is thrown out the window. Now we're in survival mode. We actually have been for a long time, but Katrina just exaggerated it and accelerated it. So there is no more optimism here. And understand where you stand and understand what it takes to fix it, and go out and try to fix it if you want to stay here. The biggest thing we have right now is just educating people on what needs to be done and why it needs to be done and how it was done in the first place."
(1) Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine, Henry Holt and Company, New York, p. 411.
(2) Reports of as many as 70,000 body bags have been published, but have since vanished from Internet archives. In September 2005, the Modesto, California Bee and the AP reported, "The federal government is trying to purchase an additional 50,000 body bags for use in the Hurricane Katrina cleanup and in Iraq," according to John Hassapakis, manager of Central Valley Professional Services in Modesto. "Those were sent directly to New Orleans." Previously, the Federal Emergency Management Administration purchased 25,000 body bags and shipped them to New Orleans.
(3) George W. Bush instituted a "zero tolerance" for looting in the aftermath of the flood, even if someone was "looting" "food or water." Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, added a "shoot to kill" order to Bush's "zero tolerance" proclamation (see various media reports from BBC, ABC News, CNN et al). When National Guard troops from other states entered New Orleans five days after Katrina, troops aggressively pointed their rifles at black survivors who approached them while seeking aid (see People's Hurricane Relief Fund http://www.peopleshurricane.org). The private military company Blackwater issued a press release stating they were in New Orleans: see http://www.blackwaterusa.com/press/katrina2.asp. Reporters Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo quoted Blackwater operatives in September 2005: "They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force" (http://www.Truthout.org).
(4) Sun Oil & Gas Corp., a development stage company (China 3C Group), engages in gold mining and exploration for oil and gas principally in North America. The company has a participation agreement in the first test well that would be drilled on the Clovelly Prospect located in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. Sun Oil & Gas was incorporated in 1998 as Editworks, Ltd. and changed its name to TriLucent Technologies Corp. in 2001. Further, the company changed its name to Anza Innovations, Inc. in 2002 and to Gaofeng Gold Corp. in 2004. Later, it changed its name to Sun Oil & Gas Corp. [source: http://www.sunoilandgas.com; http://www.secinfo.com/d11Mkj.zc.htm]
(5) On July 14, 2006, the Registrant also completed the acquisition of a 5% minority interest in an oil prospect property from Sterling Grant Capital Inc. (formerly Sun Oil and Gas Corp.), a Nevada corporation located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana ("Sterling"). The property is the Clovelly Prospect's Allain-Lebreton No. 2 well ("Clovelly") which is located in southeast Louisiana in the Lafourche Parish. [source:
