Was Katrina Planned?

feel free to live in ignorance if u wish but this person was just trying to find out some info on katrina. after all thats what u do on a forum!!! this is also a cnspiracy site so how far out is weather control?? look up project H.A.A.R.P if u want to know more but definitly dont rule out anything if you know nothing of the subject.

to the original post.

i know nothing of the subject but am very interested. it would not supprise me one little bit if katrina itself was planned but am almost positive that the government would take an opportunity like this to get some guinea pigs to play with.

i'm not sure if you were referring to my post

but haarp does manipulate the weather i was just saying i beleive the insurance company's could be in cahoots with haarp for testing out this technology on the east coast in 2004 and 2005

i think katrina was a manipulated storm but not designed to destroy New orleans just raise insurance premiums, but who knows maybe they tried to kill two birds with one stone in there minds

This Guy is a highly respected journalist. His take on this(and many other issues) is detailed and accurate. This article shows how low(American) capitalism is prepared to sink to achieve its ends.

Subject: Buzzflash Interviews Greg Palast: New Orleans -- One Year Later -- Nothing Much Has Happened


Greg Palast: New Orleans -- One Year Later -- Nothing Much Has Happened
A Buzzflash Interview

December 22, 2006

"The White House knew [the levees broke] because the Army Corps of
Engineers sent them
photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the White House had the
photographs of the levees
breaking, and didn't tell state and local officials who had stopped the
evacuation because the
hurricane missed New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but
the White House didn't
tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning the city." -- Greg Palast

*****

Greg Palast is just unstoppable, and after you watch his remarkable new
DVD, "Big Easy to Big
Empty: The Drowning of New Orleans," you'll understand why. You have read
about the Katrina
disaster for more than a year now, but you'll see it in a new light after
watching Greg Palast's
reporting.

In an expanded documentary that now includes a half-hour interview with Amy
Goodman, Palast, in
his usual bold style, reveals new factual details about the Bush
Administration complicity in the
deaths of Katrina victims. You'll be convinced by the end of watching "Big
Easy to Big Empty" that
what we are dealing with here is criminal negligence.

*****

BuzzFlash: Greg your new DVD, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of
the Drowning of New
Orleans" is absolutely shocking because all of the footage you shot was one
year after Katrina hit
New Orleans. After all the devastation, virtually nothing has happened to
recover from Katrina, and
the residents have been left to fend for themselves.

Greg Palast: It's unbelievably ugly. You will see in the film mile after
mile of destroyed houses. The
9th Ward looks worse than Berlin after the war because there's hardly a
building standing. And this
was just filmed a couple months ago! This was filmed one year after the
flood. In Indonesia, they
have rebuilt after the tsunami. The only thing they are rebuilding here is
a Disneyland on the
Mississippi to recreate a new, white, conservative city.

And don't forget, keeping African-Americans from coming back into New
Orleans is amazing political
gerrymandering. This is going to be crucial to keeping Louisiana in the
Republican column in 2008.
That's really part of the story.

BuzzFlash: Sometimes I'll see you on TV or read something by you and I'll
think to myself, there
goes Greg again, saying something crazy -- Greg's saying they want to
destroy the public housing in
New Orleans to build new condos and keep the African Americans out.

But let me read you this from the Washington Post from December 7th:
"Public housing officials
decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500
government apartments here,
brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who
said the move was
intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the
city." (Read the Washington
Post Article)


Well, you were right again.

Greg Palast: Understand -- I used to work for the Housing Authority of New
Orleans. The most
beautiful housing in New Orleans are the townhouses near the French
Quarter. And as Malik
Brahim, an African-American leader there, says, "They just don't want them
poor black people back."
That's a crucial part of the film. It's about keeping the working class
black people out of the city.

They're talking about knocking down 4,000 public townhouses. These are dry,
safe, good houses.
That's why they're still there. They literally want to bulldoze these homes
because they don't want
those "black people back."

You'll see in the film a woman, Patricia Thomas. We help break into her
home because they've
boarded it up. Everything is dry. You could eat the dry cereal. They've
shuttered up their houses with
steel bars. Katrina didn't do this, she says, "Man did this." And "the man"
is in the White House and in
the Mayor's Mansion.

BuzzFlash: Why do you think the rebuilding effort and relief effort in New
Orleans has just come to a
complete halt?

Greg Palast: It's not stalled. This is the plan. This is another White
House gimmick to hide their evil
intent in the clothing of incompetence.

The same with Iraq -- oh, we screwed up? We didn't get all the cheap oil
that Wolfowitz promised in
his congressional testimony, when he said the price of oil would decline.
Well, it's gone up. Golly
gee, who funds the Bush Administration but the oil companies and Saudi
Arabia? Who profits when
the price of oil goes up? That's "Mission Accomplished."

Look to New Orleans. Golly gee, the black folks haven't come back. There
are no labor unions
anymore in New Orleans. There are no public schools. It's all vouchers.
Worker wages have gone
down. It's "Mission Accomplished." This is the plan. This is the program.

The idea that this is just a screw-up, or a delay, or a stall is wrong.
This is the plan. You're seeing it
in effect. They don't ever want those people back. You still have 73,000
POWs - prisoners of "W."

New Orleans residents are locked in these "aluminum Guantanamos," also
known as FEMA trailers,
as you'll see in the film. There are a thousand mobile homes next to the
Mobil Oil refinery. These
trailers are in the middle of nowhere, and there's no way those people can
get any jobs. It's a cycle.
Some businesses and homeowners would like to rebuild New Orleans, but they
can't get workers,
and those who would like to work live too far away to get any jobs.

Families are not even allowed to move their trailer to their own home
property. It's a deliberate
program of ethnic and class cleansing in the City of New Orleans.

BuzzFlash: One of your big scoops in "Big Easy to Big Empty" was you found
a company,
"Innovative Emergency Management," that gave large donations to the
Republican party, to create
an evacuation plan in case of a hurricane. No one seems to be able to find
that plan.

Greg Palast: The most innovative thing about their emergency management is
that they had no
plans that anyone knew about.

When I went and talked to "Innovative Emergency Management," they called
security. I just went in
and said where's the plan? What makes you qualified to do an evacuation
plan besides your
relations to the Republican Party?

These people had zero qualification to do this planning. We were told that
the main problem was
that they had no plan for getting people out without cars. I mean, their
whole plan was "jump in your
car and drive like hell."

But what if you didn't have a car? We had one guy who didn't have his car
with him, and he was
abandoned for four days in the rising water, standing on the overpass. He
told us how he closed the
eyes of a grandfather who had died giving his last bottle of water to his
kids. The guy died of
dehydration.

That's a story that no one has reported. Forget Anderson Cooper and his
tears. By the way, we can't
find Anderson Cooper after the fact.

BuzzFlash: Have you been able to find "Innovative Emergency Management's"
evacuation plan yet?

Greg Palast: Actually, I finally got the contract that said they were
"supposed to create" an
evacuation plan. FEMA had withheld the documents we requested for a year
and a half. FEMA was
keeping it secret and was telling us it's a national security document
until we threatened to sue.

I worked on an evacuation plan in Long Island, New York, for a hurricane.
And you know what the
key part about an evacuation plan is? You have to have it. Cops have to
have it. Emergency workers
have got to have it. The bus drivers have got to have it.

The most important thing is that we found out from the experts at the
Hurricane Center at Louisiana
State University that they had a detailed evacuation plan.

BuzzFlash: Do you think part of the reason is that they may have had an
evacuation plan for a
hurricane, but not necessarily for a breach of the levees or a major flood?

Greg Palast: That's part of the problem, because they had no plan in case
of a breach. Number one,
the LSU Hurricane Center told the White House before the flood -- and I
want to reemphasize this --
before the flood -- that New Orleans would be under water on a class 3
hurricane, that the levees
were deficient, and that they were 18 inches short. The White House
completely ignored their
warnings.

You have to understand that the LSU hurricane experts actually spoke
directly to the White House
about this and what they saw as an emergency situation.

You should also know that the White House knew for nearly a full day that
the levees had in fact
been breached, and were about to drown the people left in the city. The
emergency crews and
police stopped the evacuation because they thought the city had survived
Hurricane Katrina
because the storm missed New Orleans. The hurricane watch center didn't
realize that the levees
had started to crack.

The White House knew it because the Army Corps of Engineers sent them
photographs. Again, I
want to emphasize that the White House had the photographs of the levees
breaking, and didn't tell
state and local officials who had stopped the evacuation because the
hurricane missed New
Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but the White House didn't
tell anybody the levees
broke and were drowning the city.

BuzzFlash: What explanation could anyone have for that kind of "criminal
negligence," as a City
Councilman says in the film.

Greg Palast: It is criminal negligence. Remember, I was a racketeering
investigator.

The levees are federal property. If the federal levees failed, then it
becomes a federal evacuation
issue, and Bush and his gang did not want to be responsible.

Even more important is that they are financially responsible for all the
homes lost, because the
levees were deficient.

The original story coming out of the White House was that the Mississippi
River and the lake north of
New Orleans simply overflowed, right? Just big waves crash over the city
and later the levees broke.
Uh-uh. The city flooded because the levees broke.

Ivor van Heerden of the Louisiana State University hurricane center said he
flew over those levees
and he counted 28 levee breaks.

He said the White House, when they knew that the city was about to drown,
said that there was one
break. And he found 28. As he said, "That's not an act of God. That's an
act of negligence."

BuzzFlash: You have a lengthy interview with Amy Goodman as part of the
bonus features of the
DVD. At one point, you spoke about the wetlands and the marshes that
protect New Orleans from
storm surges and floods. You place at least part of the blame on the oil
industry, which is continuing
to drill off the coast.

Greg Palast: The oil industry laid pipelines and canal routes through the
marshlands. People say,
"How come these people live in a city that's below sea level?" Well, they
weren't anywhere near the
sea, is the answer, except that over this past century, the oil industry
has drained and destroyed the
marshes. Now the Gulf of Mexico has come real close to the city.

BuzzFlash: What needs to happen to turn the situation around, when you have
so many people and
families displaced and so much profiteering going on? How do you ever break
the deadlock?

Greg Palast: A couple things. One, people have to know what the hell's
going on. That's why they
should get the film, invite friends and family, and have a screening so
people can get informed. If
you don't know what's going on, you can't solve it. This is like the war in
Iraq. Once people figured
out what's going on, they started wanting to get our troops the hell out.

And second, we have to allow the people of New Orleans to rebuild their
homes. We need to give
the people back their homes, and give them the jobs to rebuild their homes.
And that will take care
of it.

In fact, I show an example of a group called "Common Ground" which is
rebuilding homes with the
residents with their own sweat equity and a few bucks for materials. And
this week, they're being
evicted.

You have a group which has already put 115 families into homes that they've
built themselves, and
now they're being evicted this week. And by the way, all the money -- the
million dollars of material
and the hundred thousands of hours of sweat equity -- are all being stolen
away from them by
developers who are saying "Oh, you didn't have the right to rebuild those
houses, we own them."
And they're literally stealing their houses. That's what's happening.

And that's all with the grand approval of the Bush Administration. It's all
with the grand approval of
the Mayor of New Orleans, who is doing nothing about the mass evictions of
people who have
rebuilt their homes, and now their properties are being seized by banks and
land speculators.

BuzzFlash: Greg, as always, thank you for speaking with us.

Greg Palast: Thank you.

* * *

Interview conducted by BuzzFlash Senior Editor Scott Vogel.

Get your personally signed copy of "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story
of the Drowning of New
Orleans" or browse for other signed gifts at
Greg Palast: New Orleans -- One Year Later -- Nothing Much Has Happened
A Buzzflash Interview

December 22, 2006

"The White House knew [the levees broke] because the Army Corps of
Engineers sent them
photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the White House had the
photographs of the levees
breaking, and didn't tell state and local officials who had stopped the
evacuation because the
hurricane missed New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but
the White House didn't
tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning the city." -- Greg Palast

*****

Greg Palast is just unstoppable, and after you watch his remarkable , "Big
Easy to Big Empty: The
Drowning of New Orleans," you'll understand why. You have read about the
Katrina disaster for
more than a year now, but you'll see it in a new light after watching Greg
Palast's reporting.

In an expanded documentary that now includes a half-hour interview with Amy
Goodman, Palast, in
his usual bold style, reveals new factual details about the Bush
Administration complicity in the
deaths of Katrina victims. You'll be convinced by the end of watching "Big
Easy to Big Empty" that
what we are dealing with here is criminal negligence.

*****

BuzzFlash: Greg your new DVD, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of
the Drowning of New
Orleans" is absolutely shocking because all of the footage you shot was one
year after Katrina hit
New Orleans. After all the devastation, virtually nothing has happened to
recover from Katrina, and
the residents have been left to fend for themselves.

Greg Palast: It's unbelievably ugly. You will see in the film mile after
mile of destroyed houses. The
9th Ward looks worse than Berlin after the war because there's hardly a
building standing. And this
was just filmed a couple months ago! This was filmed one year after the
flood. In Indonesia, they
have rebuilt after the tsunami. The only thing they are rebuilding here is
a Disneyland on the
Mississippi to recreate a new, white, conservative city.

And don't forget, keeping African-Americans from coming back into New
Orleans is amazing political
gerrymandering. This is going to be crucial to keeping Louisiana in the
Republican column in 2008.
That's really part of the story.

BuzzFlash: Sometimes I'll see you on TV or read something by you and I'll
think to myself, there
goes Greg again, saying something crazy -- Greg's saying they want to
destroy the public housing in
New Orleans to build new condos and keep the African Americans out.

But let me read you this from the Washington Post from December 7th:
"Public housing officials
decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500
government apartments here,
brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who
said the move was
intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the
city." (Read the Washington
Post Article at
www.washingtonpost.com...
AR2006120701482_pf.html)


Well, you were right again.

Greg Palast: Understand -- I used to work for the Housing Authority of New
Orleans. The most
beautiful housing in New Orleans are the townhouses near the French
Quarter. And as Malik
Brahim, an African-American leader there, says, "They just don't want them
poor black people back."
That's a crucial part of the film. It's about keeping the working class
black people out of the city.

They're talking about knocking down 4,000 public townhouses. These are dry,
safe, good houses.
That's why they're still there. They literally want to bulldoze these homes
because they don't want
those "black people back."

You'll see in the film a woman, Patricia Thomas. We help break into her
home because they've
boarded it up. Everything is dry. You could eat the dry cereal. They've
shuttered up their houses with
steel bars. Katrina didn't do this, she says, "Man did this." And "the man"
is in the White House and in
the Mayor's Mansion.

BuzzFlash: Why do you think the rebuilding effort and relief effort in New
Orleans has just come to a
complete halt?

Greg Palast: It's not stalled. This is the plan. This is another White
House gimmick to hide their evil
intent in the clothing of incompetence.

The same with Iraq -- oh, we screwed up? We didn't get all the cheap oil
that Wolfowitz promised in
his congressional testimony, when he said the price of oil would decline.
Well, it's gone up. Golly
gee, who funds the Bush Administration but the oil companies and Saudi
Arabia? Who profits when
the price of oil goes up? That's "Mission Accomplished."

Look to New Orleans. Golly gee, the black folks haven't come back. There
are no labor unions
anymore in New Orleans. There are no public schools. It's all vouchers.
Worker wages have gone
down. It's "Mission Accomplished." This is the plan. This is the program.

The idea that this is just a screw-up, or a delay, or a stall is wrong.
This is the plan. You're seeing it
in effect. They don't ever want those people back. You still have 73,000
POWs - prisoners of "W."

New Orleans residents are locked in these "aluminum Guantanamos," also
known as FEMA trailers,
as you'll see in the film. There are a thousand mobile homes next to the
Mobil Oil refinery. These
trailers are in the middle of nowhere, and there's no way those people can
get any jobs. It's a cycle.
Some businesses and homeowners would like to rebuild New Orleans, but they
can't get workers,
and those who would like to work live too far away to get any jobs.

Families are not even allowed to move their trailer to their own home
property. It's a deliberate
program of ethnic and class cleansing in the City of New Orleans.

BuzzFlash: One of your big scoops in "Big Easy to Big Empty" was you found
a company,
"Innovative Emergency Management," that gave large donations to the
Republican party, to create
an evacuation plan in case of a hurricane. No one seems to be able to find
that plan.

Greg Palast: The most innovative thing about their emergency management is
that they had no
plans that anyone knew about.

When I went and talked to "Innovative Emergency Management," they called
security. I just went in
and said where's the plan? What makes you qualified to do an evacuation
plan besides your
relations to the Republican Party?

These people had zero qualification to do this planning. We were told that
the main problem was
that they had no plan for getting people out without cars. I mean, their
whole plan was "jump in your
car and drive like hell."

But what if you didn't have a car? We had one guy who didn't have his car
with him, and he was
abandoned for four days in the rising water, standing on the overpass. He
told us how he closed the
eyes of a grandfather who had died giving his last bottle of water to his
kids. The guy died of
dehydration.

That's a story that no one has reported. Forget Anderson Cooper and his
tears. By the way, we can't
find Anderson Cooper after the fact.

BuzzFlash: Have you been able to find "Innovative Emergency Management's"
evacuation plan yet?

Greg Palast: Actually, I finally got the contract that said they were
"supposed to create" an
evacuation plan. FEMA had withheld the documents we requested for a year
and a half. FEMA was
keeping it secret and was telling us it's a national security document
until we threatened to sue.

I worked on an evacuation plan in Long Island, New York, for a hurricane.
And you know what the
key part about an evacuation plan is? You have to have it. Cops have to
have it. Emergency workers
have got to have it. The bus drivers have got to have it.

The most important thing is that we found out from the experts at the
Hurricane Center at Louisiana
State University that they had a detailed evacuation plan.

BuzzFlash: Do you think part of the reason is that they may have had an
evacuation plan for a
hurricane, but not necessarily for a breach of the levees or a major flood?

Greg Palast: That's part of the problem, because they had no plan in case
of a breach. Number one,
the LSU Hurricane Center told the White House before the flood -- and I
want to reemphasize this --
before the flood -- that New Orleans would be under water on a class 3
hurricane, that the levees
were deficient, and that they were 18 inches short. The White House
completely ignored their
warnings.

You have to understand that the LSU hurricane experts actually spoke
directly to the White House
about this and what they saw as an emergency situation.

You should also know that the White House knew for nearly a full day that
the levees had in fact
been breached, and were about to drown the people left in the city. The
emergency crews and
police stopped the evacuation because they thought the city had survived
Hurricane Katrina
because the storm missed New Orleans. The hurricane watch center didn't
realize that the levees
had started to crack.

The White House knew it because the Army Corps of Engineers sent them
photographs. Again, I
want to emphasize that the White House had the photographs of the levees
breaking, and didn't tell
state and local officials who had stopped the evacuation because the
hurricane missed New
Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but the White House didn't
tell anybody the levees
broke and were drowning the city.

BuzzFlash: What explanation could anyone have for that kind of "criminal
negligence," as a City
Councilman says in the film.

Greg Palast: It is criminal negligence. Remember, I was a racketeering
investigator.

The levees are federal property. If the federal levees failed, then it
becomes a federal evacuation
issue, and Bush and his gang did not want to be responsible.

Even more important is that they are financially responsible for all the
homes lost, because the
levees were deficient.

The original story coming out of the White House was that the Mississippi
River and the lake north of
New Orleans simply overflowed, right? Just big waves crash over the city
and later the levees broke.
Uh-uh. The city flooded because the levees broke.

Ivor van Heerden of the Louisiana State University hurricane center said he
flew over those levees
and he counted 28 levee breaks.

He said the White House, when they knew that the city was about to drown,
said that there was one
break. And he found 28. As he said, "That's not an act of God. That's an
act of negligence."

BuzzFlash: You have a lengthy interview with Amy Goodman as part of the
bonus features of the
DVD. At one point, you spoke about the wetlands and the marshes that
protect New Orleans from
storm surges and floods. You place at least part of the blame on the oil
industry, which is continuing
to drill off the coast.

Greg Palast: The oil industry laid pipelines and canal routes through the
marshlands. People say,
"How come these people live in a city that's below sea level?" Well, they
weren't anywhere near the
sea, is the answer, except that over this past century, the oil industry
has drained and destroyed the
marshes. Now the Gulf of Mexico has come real close to the city.

BuzzFlash: What needs to happen to turn the situation around, when you have
so many people and
families displaced and so much profiteering going on? How do you ever break
the deadlock?

Greg Palast: A couple things. One, people have to know what the hell's
going on. That's why they
should get the film, invite friends and family, and have a screening so
people can get informed. If
you don't know what's going on, you can't solve it. This is like the war in
Iraq. Once people figured
out what's going on, they started wanting to get our troops the hell out.

And second, we have to allow the people of New Orleans to rebuild their
homes. We need to give
the people back their homes, and give them the jobs to rebuild their homes.
And that will take care
of it.

In fact, I show an example of a group called "Common Ground" which is
rebuilding homes with the
residents with their own sweat equity and a few bucks for materials. And
this week, they're being
evicted.

You have a group which has already put 115 families into homes that they've
built themselves, and
now they're being evicted this week. And by the way, all the money -- the
million dollars of material
and the hundred thousands of hours of sweat equity -- are all being stolen
away from them by
developers who are saying "Oh, you didn't have the right to rebuild those
houses, we own them."
And they're literally stealing their houses. That's what's happening.

And that's all with the grand approval of the Bush Administration. It's all
with the grand approval of
the Mayor of New Orleans, who is doing nothing about the mass evictions of
people who have
rebuilt their homes, and now their properties are being seized by banks and
land speculators.

BuzzFlash: Greg, as always, thank you for speaking with us.

Greg Palast: Thank you.

Here is the project:

Project Cirrus was the first attempt to modify a hurricane. It was a collaboration of the United States Weather Bureau, the US Army Signal Corps, the Office of Naval Research, and the US Air Force.[1] After several preparations, and initial skepticism by government scientists,[6] the first attempt to modify a hurricane began on October 13, 1947 on a hurricane that was heading west to east and out to sea.[5]

An airplane flew along the rainbands of the hurricane, and dropped nearly 80 pounds of crushed dry ice into the clouds.[1] The crew reported "Pronounced modification of the cloud deck seeded".[5] It is not known if that was due to the seeding. Next, the hurricane changed direction and made landfall near Savannah, Georgia. The public blamed the seeding, and Irving Langmuir claimed that the reversal had been caused by human intervention.[6] Cirrus was cancelled.[5] Lawsuits were threatened. Only the fact that a system in the 1906 season had taken a similar path, as well as evidence showing that the storm had already begun to turn when seeding began, ended the litigation.[5] This disaster set back the cause of seeding hurricanes for eleven years.

en.wikipedia.org...
Don't think for a second these tests didn't continue and that project seeding wasn't a result in the direction change of the hurricane. AND it was in 1947 can you imagine what we know now with all the other seeding attempts.

[edit on 8-2-2007 by leafer]

yes hurricane's can be modified

i think that anyone modifying hurricane's (air force?) may have worked in conjunction with some big wigs in the insurance field.

how much money was made from the increased premiums to those people living anywhere near the water? TONS

modify a few storms here and there send them towards land, modify some high pressure areas to steer these storms further toward land and reduce the wind shear (so they can develop easier) sounds good

and then after you do that in the united states take your business else where (australia), indonesia who's next

the only thing that could have been planed as far as new orleans goes is the levee's being detonated by small explosives, WHO MADE MONEY OFF Of new orleans being flooded?

Right right.

So Katrina was a 'test'?

Originally posted by PisTonZOR
Right right.

So Katrina was a 'test'?

Yes and we all failed Not one single person who knows anything about hurricanes, anywhere in the world, spotted that it wasn't perfectly natural.....

Ok, so it was a hurricane. It happens. There was poor emergency planning due to the scope of this disaster. That also happens. This happened in 2005. It was weather. Why are there still threads about this? Why is there even a section for this on ATS? Was it planned? Right, that makes sense. It was a storm. The storm was not a racist. To blame the FEMA short-comings on race is pretty lame. It wasn't a conspiracy against any group of people. It was poor emergency management. If you go to Burger King and your order gets screwed up, is that because they were racist? No. Was the hurricane diverted? Please, they said it was going to hit at least a couple of days ahead of time. I've lived in a coastal city before, and dealt with hurricanes. (Charlie and Jeanne both hit us point blank, within three weeks of each other.) If the people would not heed the warnings and get out of town....what else can one say? All it takes is a little common sense to see these things. Or was everyone too upset by what Kanye West said on live TV? Give me a break. His influence has obviously outlasted his "musical career." To say that this was a plan is going way overboard. Once again...it was a storm. They happen. I bet if we just wait, there will be more this year too. What a shock!

[edit on 6/26/2007 by venom79x]

i was on an airforce base in biloxi MS when katrina hit....i remember going out to a little fun park with put put, on the saturday before....because my girlfriend was coming out the next weekend and i was seeing what thier prices where....the manager said...."if we're not to damaged after the hurricane"...and to my knowledge it wasnt that large...and i replied "it'll be okay, it's not that big"...that night all students were recalled to their dorms by 8 pm...the next day sunday they evacuated us to our hurricane shelters which were only rated for a catagorey two....i saw some cool things looking out the glass doors on monday early morning....i had cell phone capability untill 12 am monday morning....after that...i could get a signal every couple of days....very weak.....the base did not have relief for 5 days...i remember living off of MRE's and rumors of how bad it really was....after 7 days they started letting civilians on once a day for food

it was 2 weeks before we were off base helping the local people...i remember the first time i saw the beach line....it was horrible everything was gone....

if this was just biloxi MS imagine how bad LS was....they were slow...but thats because they couldnt get anywhere....

people that live where its floods roughy every 11 years nat geo are not the brightest darwism at its job

Yeah fair enough.

True.

Katrina was not the problem. The entire country is ignorant on the matter. It was NOT a natural disaster. It was an ENGINEERING failure. The Army Corps of Engineers KNEW the levees would fail at LESS than Category 3 conditions. When Katrina made landfall, it went east of city, meaning that only Cat. 1 - Cat. 2 winds were pressing against the levees. The levees were supposed to withstand up to 20 feet of storm surge but failed at less than 8. They knew this would happen since Hurricane Betsy back in '65. They knew, and instead of evacuating people, they took them to the Superdome and the Convention Center to literally torture them for over a week before unleashing them on the bosom of America. This was a planned attempt to allow an engineering failure to relocate the city's uneducated, poor population SOMEWHERE ELSE. This way, the poor folks can't rebuild.

Anyone remember white flight and redlining? This all happened in the same decade when Betsy hit and when the Army Corps of Engineers took control of the 300-plus miles of levees in Jefferson, Orleans, and Plaquemines Parishes. I personally think they didn't want a poor, black city and were just waiting for "the big one" or just "the one" they could use as an "unavoidable natural disaster." Few media sources actually admitted that this was an ENGINEERING FAILURE. This was the PERFECT opportunity to gentrify New Orleans and to make it the next cookie-cutter white-bread American city. Don't believe me? Why then are the homes here being bought up by wealthy white people? NO ONE FROM HERE CAN AFFORD TO LIVE HERE ANYMORE.

The only reason New Orleans is even an after-image of what it once was is because we are die-hard, proud people, and we're not going to lay back and watch our city become another city IF we can help it, which I honestly believe we can't.

What happened Aug. 29th-30th, 2005 is a LOT more complicated than 90% of everyone thinks.

La Nouvelle-Orléans mourra de l'apathie!!!

This is crazy man... the next season begin real soon and its suposed to be crazy!

If anything, I think the levees breaking/failing was planned.

Maybe an act of God? Or accurate, an allowance of God.
Meaning God allowed it.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
This way, the poor folks can't rebuild.

Anyone remember white flight and redlining? This all happened in the same decade when Betsy hit and when the Army Corps of Engineers took control of the 300-plus miles of levees in Jefferson, Orleans, and Plaquemines Parishes. I personally think they didn't want a poor, black city and were just waiting for "the big one" or just "the one" they could use as an "unavoidable natural disaster." Few media sources actually admitted that this was an ENGINEERING FAILURE. This was the PERFECT opportunity to gentrify New Orleans and to make it the next cookie-cutter white-bread American city. Don't believe me? Why then are the homes here being bought up by wealthy white people? NO ONE FROM HERE CAN AFFORD TO LIVE HERE ANYMORE.

The only reason New Orleans is even an after-image of what it once was is because we are die-hard, proud people, and we're not going to lay back and watch our city become another city IF we can help it, which I honestly believe we can't.

What happened Aug. 29th-30th, 2005 is a LOT more complicated than 90% of everyone thinks.

La Nouvelle-Orléans mourra de l'apathie!!!

I'm sorry, but seeing as I just went to NOLA last weekend, and also last year, I have to disagree. I don't see that much has changed post-Katrina. Sure, some businesses were replaced, but it's more or less the same as it was. People still doing street shows painted in silver. People still doing magic tricks. People still getting wasted and puking on Bourbon St.

I do agree that Katrina events were a lot more complicated than everyone in other parts of the U.S. think, however the whole South East got hit hard. That's what a lot of people don't understand. A good chunk of Mississippi, which was a predominantly white area in Biloxi/Ocean Sprins/Gautier got hit just as bad as NOLA. The problem with NOLA was that it was under sea level. This is why Kanye's, "Bush hates black people" line was completely ignorant from a man who had no clue what he was talking about. I'll never forget driving through Biloxi after it hit and seeing the casinos that were built on the water south of the highway being on the north side of the highway after the hurricane. Thank God where I live didn't get hit too hard, but we did get some heft damage. We at least had our homes still, just minus the fences/trees/bushes and a few missing shingles.