September 2nd, 2008

This year another hurricane passed over the crescent city. Gustav left New Orleans with a tremendous amount of damage but none of the horrors that his sister Katrina did.

The media will discuss the effects of the hurricane on the Republican Convention and will report the big numbers, 800k without power, 2 million evacuated. But one thing will be certain there will be little or no discussion of why there was no evacuation plan in 2005, why the White House never did tell the locals about the levee breaches or why up until this year people were still living in Guantanamo-like camps. We can be sure that the words 'right to return' won't pass the lips of the talking heads. We certainly won't here about the 89,000 names pulled from the voter rolls after the storm.

It's stories like that that get reporters in trouble, you lose access, you lose your precious seat in the press conference. Well we find press conferences boring, and we never get called on anyway. The last time we were in Louisiana, Homeland Security was called on us... so we figure we must be doing something right.

You can read a full review of Palast's writings on New Orleans and Katrina here. Also you can see a clip from the film Big Easy to Big Empty, listen to podcasts and read excerpts from Armed Madhouse.

You can pick up the film and support our investigative fund here.