Katrina Survivors Tell Congress Levees Were Blown On Purpose

"We slept next to dead bodies. We slept on streets ... next to human faeces and urine," she said. "The way we were treated by police was demoralising and inhuman. They made everybody lie on the ground with their hands on their heads, even babies."

Leah Hodges, said with tears in her eyes that people were allowed to die as New Orleans was turned into a "mass grave." She called the response an "ethnic cleansing" and an "act of genocide" and said police screamed racial slurs at family members who were trying to get help for sick neighbours.

One heated exchange during the hearing came between Republican congressman Christopher Shays and Dyan French, a New Orleans resident who stayed in the city throughout the hurricane and its aftermath.

Congressman Shays said he did not believe Ms French’s claim that the levees in the city had been bombed on purpose and asked her if she could see the levees from her home. She took offence at the question.


Victim's anger: Dyan French, who stayed in New Orleans during the hurricane and its aftermath, gives evidence to the congressional committee. She claimed the city's levees were purposely bombed.
Photo: AFP

who was inspecting the levee break and said it had been blown up??

What happened to the diver?

They should both be able to tell us so that this whole little "misunderstanding" can be swept up nice and tidy.

Where are you diver? Where are you reporter?

what's next?

says everyone believes the levees were intentionally breeched to save the areas of NO that were more affluent.

things going on there in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

it's sad that people are in such grief, but she is delusional

the levees were not blown to save any rich neighborhood, indeed, the rich neighborhoods of lakeview are utterly destroyed

they need to get more of these people back in their neighborhoods and also allow them to see the other neighborhoods so they can get closure and accept that they are not the only ones this happened to

somewhere i have a photo of the barge in question, it was not a bomb, it was indeed a barge, and it actually ended up floating over or through the breach in one piece, i don't know how the hell they're going to move that thing, i've heard they'll have to take it apart with acetylene torches

the force of the water was beyond our normal experience, the brain interprets what it hears and sees based on past experience, however in daylight hours you can visit the area and see for yourself that water did this, and that it destroyed miles upon miles upon endless miles of fine rich homes owned by white, educated people, it isn't something that just happened to the lower ninth ward, the open letter from the homeless people of new orleans to george bush was actually published today by lakeview residents who have indeed been completely forgotten & ignored by the mass media who want to pretend this only happened to a small segment of the population

the conspiracy theories only serve to divide us

it is sad when victims try to understand their experience by spreading rumor and conspiracy, but at least it's understandable, however, those not from the area not affected by the storm are doing these people no kindness by repeating conspiracies that are provably untrue

one of the stages in grief is denial & it's completely understandable that people would deny that god or nature would be so cruel, in the end tho denial is a sorry substitute for reality & will just make it harder for people to get back on their feet

situation.

Do you have a link that proves that it did not happen or do you have a picture that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did not happen?

Not in 1927 in broad daylight with politicians celebrating it or anything!

When the rains broke records in April 1927, the Gulf of Mexico was full and worked as a stopper to the Mississippi. The Mississippi was full, too, pushing its own waters up tributaries, breaking levees and causing flooding as far as Ohio and Texas. All that water had to go somewhere.

It couldn't go to New Orleans, panicky city fathers told the Army Corps of Engineers; it would devastate the regional economy.

To save New Orleans, the leaders proposed a radical plan. South of the city, the population was mostly rural and poor. The leaders appealed to the federal government to essentially sacrifice those parishes by blowing up an earthen levee and diverting the water to marshland. They promised restitution to people who would lose their homes. Government officials, including Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, signed off.

On April 29, the levee at Caernarvon, 13 miles south of New Orleans, succumbed to 39 tons of dynamite. The river rushed through at 250,000 cubic feet per second. New Orleans was saved, but the misery of the flooded parishes had only started. The city fathers took years to make good on their promises, and very few residents ever saw any compensation at all.

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/12/you-killed-us-on-purpose.html

the other day.

She did not sound very coherent. Lots of rambling, disjointed ideas. Generally paranoid sounding.

Mamma Dee is a hard working woman who does a lot of beneficial volunteer work in the New Orleans area. However, I don't believe that she's a good spokeswoman for struggling people of this area. Any New Orleanian who has attended a city council meeting or a Mayor's town hall has heard her speak. She doesn't speak very coherently often rambling on until being interrupted. The last time I saw her speak in person, she told the Mayor that people were trying to kill him and that he needed to be very careful and hire his own security.

I don't doubt that the witnesses heard what sounded like an explosion. Millions of pounds of water breached the levees and the force of that would surely have made a loud sound.

However, I don't really think it helps our case for better protection to be claiming that we were bombed. I've seen no proof that we were. I've never heard from this mysterious diver. The proof I have seen is that faulty construction, and in my opinion, criminal negligence led to this disaster. The construction that protected us did NOT meet the specifications or guidlines that were required.

Many outsiders don't realize it, but a HUGE area of town that was almost exclusively white upperclass was also devastated. If some unscrupulous group were trying to practice "ethnic cleansing" on the african american community, i don't believe this area would have been wiped out as well. One witness compared this catastrophie to the holocost, and I don't believe that's a fair comparison at all. The death lists I've seen are a mix of white, black, asian, latino, young and old.

The breached areas should and will be excavated to investigate the actual reason for failure. At this point, I'd like to focus our energy on better levee protection instead of sinister conspiracies. There's plenty of criminal fault in the failures without even the mention of a bomb or the unnacceptable federal response.

"If some unscrupulous group were trying to practice "ethnic cleansing" on the african american community, i don't believe this area would have been wiped out as well."

The difference is, the poor, minority areas cannot afford to rebuild, would have far less insurance coverage, and the residents have been scattered across the country with limited means to return, whereas the wealthy, white areas can afford to rebuild, had better insurance coverage and have the capability to return at will, as soon as their area is rebuilt. Ethnic cleansing can be accomplished in many ways.

The difference is, the poor, minority areas cannot afford to rebuild, would have far less insurance coverage, and the residents have been scattered across the country with limited means to return, whereas the wealthy, white areas can afford to rebuild, had better insurance coverage and have the capability to return at will, as soon as their area is rebuilt. Ethnic cleansing can be accomplished in many ways.

this is not the case, the area of lakeview, the rich area in question, was destroyed by flood, not by wind

flood insurance is capped at $250K, the people cannot afford to replace their homes & rebuild because you can't pay off the mortgage on a million dollar home and rebuild a new home after that

overnight a fine rich area of academics, attorneys, gov't workers, etc. was mercilessly destroyed & these people have little or no hope of rebuilding

the poor homeowner's house will be completely covered & they can rebuild, some lived in those homes for generations, so the home is paid off, others have homes that are well under the $250K limit & when they get their money, they will be able to pay off the old note and start again

it isn't the poor who are most hurt financially, it is the middle class to upper middle class who have gone from good jobs, possibly as university professors at uno or suno, and have now lost everything, overnight, so that they will own nothing except hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt

the conspiracy theory is just plain silly, the people making these accusations literally do not understand the size of the area of devastation or what happened in lakeview

now the poorest of the poor -- the renting class -- is screwed anyway you look, but pitting homeowner from the 9th ward against homeowner from lakeview, the poorer homeowner is going to recover more quickly, many in lakeview apparently are considering suicide or have tried it already because they can never get back a middle class lifestyle now

along with the poor! :eyes:

Please give us the four street boundaries of this devastated region.

BTW, the Funkybutt was my favorite Tuesday night hangout.

The Gentilly area is very mixed. Some very poor, some rich, and a good bit in between. The barge strike was only a few blocks from my old address.

The other levee breech, that looks to have been from levee failure, was in a better class area. The quality of the homes that are in the first direct path are definitely upper middle class.

The flooding covered almost all of NOLA. No city is all poor. Rich and middle class home were also hit in abundance.

Take off the tinfoil hat and look at the aerial photos.

neighborhood that was devastated.

however her statement is just not correct as to the facts

people in grief have a hard time coming to grips w. the fact that god can be this cruel, we handle it all in our own way, i wake up angry every day at god, some people however go on and say "praise the lord" and have to blame someone else

it's human nature but the reality is that rich affluent neighborhoods were also totally destroyed down to the last house, car, truck, and boat

it didn't just happen to her but right now she is in too much grief to see it

It is not really fair to attack one person, and therefore the idea.

Ishmael Muhammad stated in the hearing that divers had discovered a crater at the bottom of the levee, witnesses have come foward saying they heard explosions...why shouldn't we at least look into it? As he also said 'who would have believed they intentionally gave small pox to the Native Americans? Who would have believed that they purposefully gave Africans syphilis? There are so many things we can say are unbelievable, but yet they are out there in history'

Many, many people have been talking about this. There is a general understanding in many circles that the levees were intentionally breached. If the congress has nothing to hide, if the Bush Adminstration has nothing to hide...they should have no problem allowing the people to investigate.

To breech a levee by explosives, the explosives are placed close to the top of the levee. The levee are extremely broad at the base, and narrow at the top. When the water is lapping at the top of the levee, then some charges at the top will cut a channel across the top, water runs through the channel making it bigger, and bigger, until the levee collapses. The power of the rushing water is huge and any craters that might be there were caused by it.

There are many mechanisms by which levees can fail naturally. A good discussion of them can be found in "Rising Tide" by John Barry.

I am often amazed at the way so many conspiracy theories are so ignorant of science.

Please educate all of us ignorants savages with your magical science, strange and wonderous white man!

Do you think that a crater would survive the force of the water rushing over it for hours?

And I told you in my post how a leveee is blown. To leave a crater like you speak of would require that a very large bomb be placed UNDER the levee, and that would mean a lot of digging in a short time. And the digging itself would make the levee fail.

Educate yourself on the subject and get back to me. Your conspiracy theories are based on ignorance, just as your bird flu posts also show ignorance of the subject.

and educate me!

Or is that not today's assignment or something?

If you've actually got something to say, join the discussion.

Excellent chapter on how the flu virus works. By John Barry also.

How perfect, considering.

However, since you seem to be a conspiracy theorist, you will weave it all into a master conspiracy.

history of 1927 flood (seven year before the New Orleans flood) and the 1918 influenza epidemic (the year before before the big avian bird flu scare) is a bit of a coincidence, now isn't it?

You wouldn't think either of these esoteric history books would have great commercial appeal, but somehow both of them keep being bandied around as hugely important tomes that all of us ignorant skeptics need to read before proffering any opinions on either the subject of New Orleans levees or the subject of avian flu.

Of course, it's possible that John M. Barry is just insanely lucky. Or maybe he's a little clairvoyant. How else can you explain a 1998 book about a 1927 flood somehow landing among Amazon.com's top 750 Christmas sellers?

His research into a subject is meticulous. I never checked to see what else he has written.

Going to Amazon....

Interesting. I have just ordered "The Ambition and the Power", and "Power Plays: Politics, Football, and Other Blood Sports". I am going to pass on the others he has written.

Clairvoyant? I will pass on speculations of that nature.

I was just reporting what I saw. She did not appear to be "all there." I'm sure she is feeling the despair of what happened to her, family and friends, and I feel for her, but that doesn't change the fact that she is spouting foolishness.

Tuskegee experiments or something!

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html

a women that is borderline incoherent and pretty paranoid sounding have to due with the Tuskegee experiments?

Are you trying to claim that because Tuskegee happened, the levees were blown up?

what happened to him at Tuskegee.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/katrina-survivors-unleash-own-fury/2005/12/07/1133829660904.html

actually, more telling is the congressional hearing itself. It is still on Cspan if you can find it.

Not just Mama D, but several witnesses discussed the bombing of the levee, and they even said they would pay for an investigation themselves if only congress would give them access. They sounded very confident like everyone had been talking about it and agreed. One guy said his friend was a physical engineer and could find no logical explaination for why the levees breached after the hurricane.

abductive inferences, for facts. One may be wrong on the facts, but people make bad witnesses. But when they mistake inferences for facts, they cannot be taken at face value, except by fools.

When erstwhile witnesses do so, it's up to the listener to engage in some critical evaluation of the testimony: What's a fact, what's speculation, what's a well-grounded, likely or even necessary inference, and what's an inference in harmony with the facts but far from being the only possible inference?

I've seen nobody saying that Ms. French didn't mistake her inferences for her observations, and her speculation for facts. I've seen many people assuming her speculations are observations.

Asking if she could see the levee was an attempt--a reasonable one, if worded poorly--to separate speculation from fact. One person's sense of victimization should not justify compelling another to be a fool.

I wanted her to slap him upside the head with this:

"Senator, that is just about the purtyest way I've ever heard someone call me a God-DAMN liar!"

Of course, it's a distinction that's increasingly ignored. More's the pity.

Any time someone brings up a question of justifications for the Iraq war, we can count on the GOP apologists to provide the whole spin cycle about acting on misinformation versus lying requiring intent to deceive, and so on. Anyone who isn't at least aware of the distinction hasn't been getting the memo.

People feel less vunerable if they can find a villian they can blame for the bad things that happen. And sometimes there are villians, but often there aren't. If there is a villian then they can believe that if they can either get rid of the villian, or figure out the logic by which he operates then they avoid further harm and can be safe. But if the answer is, "Shit Happens." then there is no ultimate safety because shit is random and can strike anywhere, anytime.

I could have told them they were not there when they started spending the first billion to find them.

Yep, shit happens and that is all the more reason why it should be questioned.

Why must this lady from NO be put down? She has a right to her opinion.

She is not the only person that heard the sounds from the levee.

People in the 9th ward are not "stuck on stupid."

I don't understand why we are so willing to just say, ok GW and Condi, if you say there are no torture prisons, you are exactly right.

I would bet my life that there are Torture Prisons in many countries, put there and paid for by America.

But, let's just move along and go along with GW and Co. They have been doing this for year. Making us afraid to question anything.

Well I don't know if the levees were sabotaged or not, but I want some REAL answers.

You have already decided to believe that the levees sabotaged by Bush and no amount of evidence that it was a natural occurrence will change your mind.

If you would really like to learn how levees can fail, read "Rising Tide" by John Barry.

that I would ONLY believe they were sabotaged.

That is not what I said, I said, simply prove it to the people that believed that they heard the sounds.
They are certainly willing to listen.
They demonstrated that they have patience ,beyond the masses, if they even survived Katrina.


Maybe they could all be given a copy of "Rising Tide" so they would understand that their ears were hearing something entirely different. I'm sure they would be willing to see a demonstration or a mock up.

If only they had the time to read the book since they have no homes, no hope and people are telling them that they are crazy.

Why should they just accept what the government tells them?

Bush told Brownie that he "did a good job."

They happen to believe that Brownie did not do a good job and I agree with them on that one!

A huge barge being driven by Cat 3 winds into the wall at the top of the levee is going to make a LOT of noise. The collapsing of the levee is going to be very, very, noisy, and sudden.

But none of that matters to a CTer.

The feelings of the people do not change the laws of physics.

I was wondering why this was posted/moved to the 9/11 Forum. It's clear to me now...

I'm sure that the people that have lost everything will be supremely interested in what you want to make them understand.

I am surprised that you have no understanding of their feelings.
The feelings of people in such a traumatic situation would have been covered in Psychology I.

... they just don't happen NATURALLY.






Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

just how did the BFEE control the hurricane?

but conventional physics falls short of explaining large-scale linear cloud formations inside cyclonic storms, doesn't it?

See also Hurricane Isabel's Pentagram Eye out over the open ocean in 2003.
http://images.google.com/images?q=isabel+pentagram&hl=en


Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

Pentagram? Like the "Face on Mars?" Have you ever looked for faces and figures on clouds? Same thing. It isn't a precise pentagram, just a very lopsided cloud formation that happens to have five major clouds and you think you have seen something.

Every eight years the planet Venus happens to trace out a pentagram. Is that a big deal, or just a coincidence?

> Pentagram? Like the "Face on Mars?"

No. Like a five-pointed star:



> Have you ever looked for faces and figures on clouds? Same thing. It isn't a precise pentagram, just a very lopsided cloud formation that happens to have five major clouds and you think you have seen something.

How do STRAIGHT cloudwalls, MILES LONG, form inside the eye of a CYCLONE?

> Every eight years the planet Venus happens to trace out a pentagram.

Roughly, yes. Specifically because of the relative locations and orbital speeds of Venus and Earth. Now what causes large-scale straight cloud formations inside cyclonic storm systems?


Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

In your top picture Katrina is at sea. Well formed eye and a strong storm.

In your bottom picture, Katrina is completely on land, (About over Meridian, MS) cut off from the hot water that it feeds on, and is dying. The eye begins to become disorganized and fills with clouds. At the point in your picture, Katrina was barely a hurricane.

Completely normal.

I realize that you will not believe a simple scientific answer. For a believer in such Conspiracies the Conspiracy becomes like a religious belief and must be adhered to in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Much the way some people refuse to accept evolution and cling to creationism.

In the Katrina pic over the ocean, you're not yet seeing the pentagon inscribed inside the eyewall.
And over land, it didn't merely break up, it exhibited pinwheel- and swastika-like structures. Really long straight edges and hard right angles.

See also Isabel Pentagram over the open ocean in 2003, linked to in my post with BFEE in the subj line.


Ray Ubinger
http://911foreknowledge.com

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Somehow I doubt it.

Read the book "Rising Tide" by John Barry. There is an excellent section on levee construction and different ways they can fail.

Unless you are afraid that some serious learning may cause the tinfoil hat not to fit.

I'm sorry that the only way you can argue your "point" is to recommend that we all buy a book and read one of its chapters which supposedly explains something that you can't personally explain, but that's really not my problem.

You set the charges at the top of the levee to cut a trough at the top, water runs through and enlarges the trough until the levee collapses. It would not leave a crater.

The most common way that a levee fails is simply water rises above the levee, runs over it, cuts a channel in the levee, rushing water enlarges the channel, then the levee gives way, masssively and suddenly and with a LOT of noise.

Read up on the topic.

Why is this?

Are there no explosives that work underwater? Or is it too cold, dark or smelly down there or something?

I mean, suppose you wanted to blow a levee, but make it look like the levee failed in the "most common way." In that case, what approach would you and John Barry recommend?

It would look exactly like water had over topped the levee, and leave no traces. It would also take less explosives.

Your idea of a massive explosion underwater runs into lots of problems. For one thing, the bases of those levees are HUGE !! The amount of explosives required would be monstrous. There would be a seismic signature of a blast that big. You would have proof positive of the levees being blown if it was done that way.

You still would not have a crater. The rushing water would still wash it out. However, a blast like that would leave a print on the opposite side of the canal that even a amateur would be able to see.

breach made using explosives that looks exactly like a natural breach would not?