Detained, Not Rescued: Katrina Survivors Testimony to Congress (AUDIO)

I want to emphasize that there is more to the audio than the few rough quotes transcribed below.

Katrina Survivors 1 - Why all the M-16s?

Leah Hodges: We got to the evacuation point and the military was nice to us at first, but we were wondering, “Why all the M16s?” It looked like we just stepped into a war.

Mama D: Please let whoever these people are know that New Orleans is not for sale! … We need y’all to take FEMA and Red Cross… and just get ‘em outta my neighborhood.

Leah Hodges written testimony submitted to Congress:

We were dropped off at a site where we were fenced in, and penned in with military vehicles, The armed military personnel brought in dogs. There we were subjected to conditions only comparable to a concentration camp…. As a hurricane survivor, I and my family were detained, not rescued.

This sounds so crazy, some CongressCritters wouldn’t believe it, ‘I just don’t frankly believe it’ said Rep Shays. In other words, to get away with murder, all the evildoers have to do is keep pulling shit that’s so absurd, nobody will believe it when it’s reported.

Katrina Survivors 2 - Concentration Camps

Rep McKinney: ~ I don’t think the 2nd Amendment was lifted just because of the catastrophic situation, there should not have been weapons confiscation.

Leah Hodges: We we’re 3 minutes from the airport… they could have taken us to any dry city in America. Instead they took us to a dumping ground, sealed us in there and backed up with all their authority with military M-16s. They hand picked the white people to leave first.

Rep Miller: ~ Please don’t call it a concentration camp.

Leah Hodges: I’m going to call it what it is. If I put a dress on a pig it’s still a pig… That is the only thing I can compare what we went through to.

Mama D: Why were people in Public Housing surrounded and forced to leave by gunpoint? That happened, we’ve got proof…. I said this in September- nobody is going to believe us because this is an unbelieveable story.

Rep McKinney: Do you have confidence in the number of dead that is being reported by the authorities?
Survivors: (unanimous) No!

show rant

Some of those forced out of the Public Housing developments were 70 years old- it wasn’t about the ‘looters’ … what was it about?

Katrina Survivors 3 - They Blew It

Ishmael Muhammad: Why were people locked out of their Public Housing development when there was little to no flooding?

Over 15,000 people in Orleans Parish have been evicted, when they are not even there to see the notice.

There were stories about the levees breaching due to explosions, stories about divers finding a crater at the bottom of the levee…

Mama D: “I was on my front porch, I have witnesses that they bombed the walls of the levee. The debris in front of my door will testify to that.”

Joe Edwards: I heard something go, “Boom”. (from tv report)

Reporter: So you’re convinced…
Joe Edwards: I know it happened…
Reporter: … that they broke the levee on purpose.
Joe Edwards: They blew it!

Katrina Survivors 4 - Show Us The Levee

Harry Alford: ~ Historically speaking, they blew the levee in 1927 on purpose.

I’m not a conspiracy freak, but there’s a coupla things I know. John Kennedy wasn’t killed by one person, and one bumbling idiot didn’t kill Martin Luther King by himself.

My friend, a Stanford educated engineer, cannot find a reason why the levees broke… If we came up with the funding for the National Association of Black Engineers to study the levees, would we be granted access?

Congressional Response: silence

Barbara Arnwine: It’s clear that the people in the 9th ward did in fact hear some kind of loud noise that night. What was that loud noise?

? Critter: … hundreds of thousands of gallons of water…

Barbara Arnwine: That would sound like, “boom, boom”?

Katrina # 5 - Martial Law

Not from the survivors testimony Dec 6, but a clip of Cynthia McKinney speaking about the Katrina disaster on the floor of the House last September.

The paper also advocated the roundup and transfer to quote “assembly centers” or “relocation camps” of at least 21 million American negroes. Now I didn’t write that- the US gov’t wrote that.

show spooky speculation

Was Katrina a dry run, practice for BushCo’s running of concentration camps as described by Cynthia in #5? Perhaps the problem with America is not the few Bush believers, but the rest that know Bush & Co are corrupt, but they still refuse to believe they’re actually evil, that they did it on purpose.

There is no doubt- Bush & Co are not above rounding up dissenters. In fact, the new “Patriot” Act creates a new federal police force, a Dept of Homeland Security Gestapo with virtually unlimited powers.

We must impeach them all now. I say we offer CongressCritters immunity if they speak up now, otherwise they’re going down with this wannabe dictator.

I apologize for not including more of the testimony, but some of the good stuff was also poor audio quality. For the full story, watch the entire 4 hours at C-span (scroll down to 12/6/05)