Greg Palast: BIG EASY TO BIG EMPTY:

Grag Palast’s work is seldom shown in the United States. His film Big Easy To Big Empty is not even listed on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB)
He is not a particularly popular writer, filmmaker, political commentator but he is an essential addition to an informed knowledge base for those who want to be informed. Known for his work on Democracy, the Bush debacles and many other issues, he is not knowN for his latest work, a documentary entitled Big Easy To Big Empty. It is a short documentary on want happened and continues to happen in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina.


It is a worthwhile film not just to inform on the Government’s failure to act before and after the Katrina and Rita disasters but to be able to predict the future because New Orleans will one day explode and the source of that explosion is chronicled in GrEg Palast’s work.

The people in New Orleans are angry. They see with intense clarity what is planned for them; their expulsion by the overflowing Mississippi capitalized on by those with the money to continue building their empires to attrack those with money to be spent and lost without evidence of its existence. (Donald Trump, Bill Gates but not Magic Mountain. He has already been sent packing with his plans in tow)

Throwing away money is only a small part of the source of rage the former inhabitants are reacting to. They are not stupid, nor naive and they are being given guns for little money and no evidence of established need required. They are being ostracized from their former homes without legitimate cause and they are being passed over when it comes to who will rebuild the City. Certainly the hands that will do the work will not be those of color, not if the present administration has its way.


While the natives of New Orleans don’t like to hear or use the work Government we the onlookers can and must. Because the meeting of the enemy head on is something I never envisioned possible until this weekend when I arrived in New Orleans and talked to the people and listened to them speak and saw their tears, their pain, their humanity crying out to be heard.

Greg Palast gives the viewer an insight into the horror of the broken levees that should have been kept to apple pie order. He presents the escape routes that were up and ready to run prior to the disaster and the insistence of the Government to ignore them. Greg Palast documentary is a must see, an insight into the future, into what youth is being reared on so that whey they strike we know what side they and we are on.



Linda Zises