Wash Postie: 'Reasonable' Blacks Believe Levee Plot

NewsMax ^ | 9/18/05 | NewsMax

[montag813]

Robinson said that while he doesn't believe the levee breaks were deliberately engineered, that fact that so many blacks do "tells you something about our racial divide in New Orleans."

Yes, it tells you that Black racism is alive and well.

[brytlea]

Yes, I think you're right. If people aren't willing to go in there and take the schools back, then how can they sit back and complain? But...they do... :)
susie

[Riverman94610]

Well,I Do teach part time and I think its just as bad to INDOCTRINATE with conservative ideas as it is to do the usual liberal brainwashing that goes on today.
I question liberal orthodoxy all the time.Most kids where I live parrot it all the time without thinking.So I am constantly forcing them to dissect their beliefs and back them up with SOURCES and REAL SCHOLARSHIP,not"I feel that.....".That is not acceptable academic rigor.
Yet to stand up there in front of a class ramming GOP talking points down kid's throats is indefensable also.I will always demand critical thinking of my students and not replace an unquestioning ideology of one stripe with the opposite point of view.

[proud American in Canada]

any property damage or deaths occur from any violence resulting from this bogus drek, louie should be thrown in jail and left there.

I agree. Someone pointed out that this could be a good case for a slander lawsuit--but Farrakhan conveniently "declined to say" who he thought did the blasting.

People who stir up these things, who pit black people versus white people, and vice-versa, especially in such a time of crisis, deserve a special place in hell.

[RightWhale]

Reasonable maybe, but rational? What demagogue put them up to this?

[Heatseeker]

I moved to N.O. in 1968 and during the 1970s I spoke with numerous people who sincerely believed the levees were deliberately broken during Betsy to flood the 9th Ward and save the rest of N.O. These were sober white people. I never saw any evidence but a large number of people believed that. Back then many in 9th Ward were white so it wasn't a racial thing but a class thing. So this type of rumor has some deep roots in this area.

I think lots of times this is just people telling the "reporter" what they know he wants to hear. The reality is that the vast majority who believe this sort of thing are the same sorts who believe the CIA or the Mossad blew up the World Trade Center towers. The vast majority are probably white.

[Old Student]

I agree with you. I did not say to indoctrinate them. "If we did that, at least enough to get the kids exposed to both sets of idea, and how they developed, I'd bet we'd win."

Key in on "and how they developed..." and you have my point in a nutshell. You (or I, as the case may be) provide them with the ideas, and how they developed, and let them make up their own minds. Sources and scholarship, indeed. I tell them not to take my word for it, or anyone else's, word, but to read it for themselves, and decide what it means. I am quick to point out the biases of the people involved, including mine. (and yes, I'm quite aware that I, too, am biased.) I don't want robots. I, too, want critical thinkers who are capable of going out and finding out what is what, and why it is that way. (and if "that way" is bad, what do we have to do to fix it?)

As for GOP talking points, I don't even know what they are. I've provided the website addresses for both the DNC and RNC platforms, so they can go look themselves, but I don't try to tell them what it all means. I do like to hear why they think what they think, preferably citing sources. I also tell them that in a few years, they're going to be running the world, and I want them to have a better handle on what they are going to do than my generation had.

[beyond the sea]

"These are not wild-eyed people," Robinson insisted. "These are reasonable, sober people who really believe that."

These are foolish ignorant, brain washed people. This country is in trouble, because the lies continue continuously because of the old media.

***

The old established/liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.

[beyond the sea]

What's in that NO water?

poop

[beyond the sea]

Robinson is chuckling inside because he loves it when "reasonable" blacks believe what he wants them to believe.

I saw him on the show. You are right. The guy is part of the lie. He's a loser PIG!

[AmericanDave]

Louis Farakhan is a VERY scary dude. There is a real mental disease going on there.

[OB1kNOb]

"These are not wild-eyed people," Robinson insisted. "These are reasonable, sober people who really believe that."

Cap on !

[MortMan]

Note that we still have the recent upgrade and the possibility of contractor or worker fraud to look at.

You forgot to mention that earthen levees take time after being "upgraded" to re-compact and reach their full strength.

[AnAmericanMother]

Good summary of the possibilities.

I would point out one additional factor. For a period of time after rebuilding/repair, the soil has not settled and is more prone to erosion. If the flood wall was overtopped and water undermined the newly compacted soil, that could have caused subsidence and collapse.

Also, there are persistent stories that a drifting barge or boat struck the flood wall and breached it. Certainly there was lots of stuff floating around -- photos of the 17th St. Canal showed a backup of floating debris at every bridge.

[AnAmericanMother]

GMTA. < g >

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I once had an otherwise very bright African American student tell me that he firmly believed that the US Govt started AIDS to kill black folk... It's sad, but I'm not sure how you fight that.

You can't, not even when you tell them where the rumor came from. I've heard white liberals tell me the same thing. The AIDS hokum and that Central American children were being grown for organ harvesting by rich people both have the same origins. They were "parting gifts" from the KGB. In the mid 1980s the KGB started both disinformation campaigns at about the same time and kept them running till they closed up shop. They worked well on morons.

[sanemom]

I'm not surprised-many "reasonable" people with whom I worked at the time believed OJ was framed by the LAPD.

That's right, the LAPD is more interested in ruining the lives of aging black football players than they are in catching someone who cuts people's heads off. And that passes for reason in some circles.

[libsl]

I find the wording very strange. Was he expecting that most blacks would be unreasonable? Is he ridiculing blacks for their foolishness? There are so many ways to attack this article.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

"I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach.

I would be surprised if they didn't find a large "crater" there. The so called crater was caused by hours of water scrubbing the same place the same as hydraulic mining. To demonstrate, take a garden hose and point it at the ground. You get mud, of course but where the force of the water pressure concentrates, you get a dimple in the ground. If you hold the hose in the same place, the dimple gets bigger. Not the best way to dig a hole, but it works.

[Polybius]

"Reasonable" African Americans in New Orleans believe that the Bush administration engineered the levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina in a bid to save the city's white sections by flooding black neighborhoods, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said Sunday.

Are there levies separating different neighborhoods within New Orleans?

I don't think so.

If the land inside New Orleans flood bowl were equally elevated, keeping water in only one side of town would be a miracle of the same category as the parting of the Red Sea.

The flood damage in different sections of New Orleans can be easily explained: The earlier settlers settled on the best (highest) land and everybody from then on had to settle for progressively worse (lower) land.

The French Quarter (the oldest part of the city) was on the best (highest) land and was relatively spared. The New Orleans Garden District was settled in the 1850’s and was also on relatively good (higher) land. The modern subdivisions have been built on land that nobody would touch in the 1850's.

Yesterday, I was talking with my brother-in-law's father who is from New Orleans and was visiting here when Katrina struck. I asked him how their houses fared.

His daughter and my brother-in-law had bought a 100 year-old house in New Orleans. It had been originally built with a 2 1/2 foot elevation of the foundation above ground level. He told me it had some basement flooding and that was it. Some electrical fuse box repairs and some roof repair and it would be fine.

What about his house?

"The water is totally flooding the place. It's going to have to be bulldozed", he replied.

"How old is it?", I asked.

"Twenty years old."

So, there you have it.

Any New Orleans land was too dangerous to build on in the 1850's, is too dangerous to build on in 2005.