| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
24 Aug 2007 07:56:40 PM |
| Object: |
Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
This is a multiple murder charge against BushCo.
1500 people died. It's treason again... and again...
and again. Impeach the bastards already! Is it
possible to impeach Pelosi, too?
Greg Palast: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 2:13pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast
[Thursday, August 23] It's been two years. And America's media is about to
have another tear-gasm over New Orleans. Maybe Anderson Cooper will weep
again. The big networks will float into the moldering corpse of the city and
give you uplifting stories about rebuilding and hope.
Now, let's cut through the crybaby crap. Here's what happened two years
ago -- and what's happening now. This is what an inside source told me. And
it makes me sick:
"By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the
state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had
breeched. Nobody."
The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House
withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to
flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this
was not just any source. The whistleblower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy
director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief
technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.
I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear
he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the
White House, FEMA, and the Army Corps hid, for critical hours, their
discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to
burst and drown the city.
Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of
the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now
safe -- and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with
the storm.
But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal
government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of
death by Tuesday.
Van Heerden revealed: "FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had
breeched. At 2 p.m., they flew over the 17th Street Canal and took video of
the breech."
Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"
Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."
Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'
Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA
knew. None of us knew."
I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.
That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House
not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?
The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of
God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law
dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the
damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van
Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated."
The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi
River levees to withstand known dangers -- or pay the price when they fail.
Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes,
New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the floodwaters
wiped away 190 homes. The Feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But
these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million
apiece -- the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.
There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in
Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes,
the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for
New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks.
Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home
Guantanamo -- with no plan whatsoever for their return.
And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?
I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the
hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said,
"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."
They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from
Hurricane George.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
For the rest of the story, get the DVD, "BIG EASY TO BIG EMPTY: The Untold
Story of the Drowning of New Orleans," as reported by Greg Palast from
Louisiana for Democracy Now - with Amy Goodman and the music of "the city
that care forgot." Watch a clip at youtube.com/GregPalastOffice.
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
25 Aug 2007 01:10:39 AM |
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In article <Lq2dnfdQ5_em41LbnZ2dnUVZ_tajnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Michelle Malkin" <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:
This is a multiple murder charge against BushCo.
1500 people died. It's treason again... and again...
and again. Impeach the bastards already! Is it
possible to impeach Pelosi, too?
Greg Palast: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 08/24/2007 - 2:13pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast
<snip>
That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House
not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?
The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of
God -- but a catastrophic failure of the levees is an act of Bush. Under law
dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the
damage -- and the deaths -- a federal responsibility. That means, as van
Heeden points out, "these people must be compensated."
The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi
River levees to withstand known dangers -- or pay the price when they fail.
Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes,
New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the floodwaters
wiped away 190 homes. The Feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But
these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million
apiece -- the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.
There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in
Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes,
the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for
New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks.
Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home
Guantanamo -- with no plan whatsoever for their return.
And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?
I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the
hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said,
"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."
They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from
Hurricane George.
And the day that happened, Hurricane George was on his vacation,
photographed at a golf resort in Arizona, playing the guitar.
Priorities.
I'd like to know why aren't some people in jail for murder or at least
negligent homicide and why don't we have a new president?
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
25 Aug 2007 09:36:04 PM |
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On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:10:39 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
And the day that happened, Hurricane George was on his vacation,
photographed at a golf resort in Arizona, playing the guitar.
Priorities.
I'd like to know why aren't some people in jail for murder or at least
negligent homicide and why don't we have a new president?
Same reason the majority Shia in Iraq didn't imprison Hussein.
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
26 Aug 2007 12:48:58 AM |
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In article <mnp1d31kr84967cc6r1d265o2d8jrkns0i@4ax.com>,
Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:10:39 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
And the day that happened, Hurricane George was on his vacation,
photographed at a golf resort in Arizona, playing the guitar.
Priorities.
I'd like to know why aren't some people in jail for murder or at least
negligent homicide and why don't we have a new president?
Same reason the majority Shia in Iraq didn't imprison Hussein.
True. It's hard to throw the dictator in jail while he's still in power.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
26 Aug 2007 07:59:36 PM |
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On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:48:58 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
In article <mnp1d31kr84967cc6r1d265o2d8jrkns0i@4ax.com>,
Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:10:39 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
And the day that happened, Hurricane George was on his vacation,
photographed at a golf resort in Arizona, playing the guitar.
Priorities.
I'd like to know why aren't some people in jail for murder or at least
negligent homicide and why don't we have a new president?
Same reason the majority Shia in Iraq didn't imprison Hussein.
True. It's hard to throw the dictator in jail while he's still in power.
Can we hope for rescue from some first-world power?
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Hurricane George: How the White House Drowned New Orleans |
26 Aug 2007 11:17:14 PM |
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In article <3f84d3l2fd1rm7sl0e516dp9khvfaj1jsf@4ax.com>,
Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:48:58 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
In article <mnp1d31kr84967cc6r1d265o2d8jrkns0i@4ax.com>,
Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:10:39 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
And the day that happened, Hurricane George was on his vacation,
photographed at a golf resort in Arizona, playing the guitar.
Priorities.
I'd like to know why aren't some people in jail for murder or at least
negligent homicide and why don't we have a new president?
Same reason the majority Shia in Iraq didn't imprison Hussein.
True. It's hard to throw the dictator in jail while he's still in power.
Can we hope for rescue from some first-world power?
If they came, I and many others would greet them with flowers and candy.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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