Levee Breaks, 9-11 Part of Govt. Plot, Farrakhan Implies

(CNSNews.com) - Forty-eight hours before the Louis Farrakhan-led march of African Americans through the streets of Washington, D.C., the controversial minister Thursday repeated his charge that levees in New Orleans were intentionally blown up on Aug. 29, following Hurricane Katrina. He also implied that the Bush administration may have orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, and his followers on Saturday will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March in the nation’s capital. By many estimates, the march ten years ago attracted far fewer than the one million Farrakhan expected.

Among the expected participants Saturday will be liberal civil rights organizations like the National Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congressional Black Caucus, together with prominent individuals like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams.

None of the groups or individuals has apparently repudiated Farrakhan’s allegation that the levees were detonated in the hours after Hurricane Katrina out of a desire to flood the disproportionately poor and black 9th Ward of New Orleans.

At a National Press Club news conference Thursday, Farrakhan said his weekend Millions More Movement was intended to put a stop to the "lies, to thieves, to murderers in the name of government.

Hear Audio "When you have people who politically feel that they get their advantage by killing people and blaming it on somebody else, then it makes us wonder what really happened to the Twin Towers (in New York City)," a reference to the terrorist strikes against the U.S. four years ago that brought down the World Trade Center.

"Was the heat from fuel from two airplanes sufficient to compromise the steel in that building? (sic) People had said they heard explosions and the buildings came down like we see old buildings in Vegas or in Florida or in other places, implode," Farrakhan said. "So who was the victor there? Who got the advantage there? It wasn’t the American people.

Farrakhan said the 2000 presidential election, which was only decided when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a ballot recount in Florida, divided the country and caused "great animosity" between Republicans and Democrats, but that 9/11 changed all of that.

"[O]n the day after that happened, the beneficiary was George W. Bush. The Senate, the Congress united, and the American people lost through the Patriot Act and the American people lost through a war on the basis of a lie and $340 billion of the taxpayers’ money has been spent and there is no end in sight," Farrakhan said in reference to the war in Iraq.

In light of the 2001 attacks, Farrakhan said the New Orleans levee breaks may have been "all part of a fabric ...

"When the government wants something, they have to justify what they want by doing something — whether it injures a hundred, whether it injures a thousand, whether it injures millions," Farrakhan charged.

With some residents of New Orleans’ 9th Ward convinced that the levees were detonated, Farrakhan said "it is the duty of government to either prove the rumor is false or prove that their suspicions are true and that somebody is not only guilty of the mass destruction of billions of dollars worth of property, but that somebody is guilty of mass murder."

Millions of dollars in relief donations have poured into the Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but Farrakhan has suggested that African Americans not contribute to the American Red Cross recovery efforts because, according to Farrakhan, the organization is "too white."

"FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is too white to represent us and so is the Red Cross, so we’re going to demand our place at the table," Farrakhan said in September, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Cybercast News Service recently reported on how the liberal civil rights establishment, backed by the Congressional Black Caucus, was attempting to "partner " with the Bush administration in the Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts, which are expected to cost about $200 billion.

When Farrakhan was asked by Cybercast News Service whether any of the participants in Saturday’s march had expressed uneasiness over his remarks about the New Orleans levee breaks, Farrakhan implied that there had been none.

"All of the (civil rights) leaders have said that FEMA is insensitive because there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA, and certainly the Red Cross is the same," Farrakhan alleged. "It’s too white. It is. If it represents those who are victims of disaster, should not those who are culturally sensitive to us be a part of that?

"Don’t you ever think that racism that has poisoned the bloodstream of religion, education, jurisprudence, politics, culture — that it is not existent in FEMA and the Red Cross?" Farrakhan asked.

Farrakhan, often accused of being anti-Semitic and racially divisive, took exception to a question along those lines on Thursday, insisting that the tough questions should instead be directed toward Christian Coalition Founder Pat Robertson, who recently called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"Why don’t [conservatives] write about murder coming out of the heart of a Christian pastor? Leave us alone. I have not plucked one hair out of the head of no white person or black person, no Jewish child." Farrkhan said.

"You have never seen Farrakhan say one thing about harming Jewish people or white people or any people for that [matter]. So don’t compare me with the killers that arise out of your (white) race," he responded to the Cybercast News Service question.

Farrakhan also praised Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, while lamenting what he sees as America’s shortcomings in treating its poor.

"Every Cuban has a house to live in, no matter how meager. That house is provided by government. Every Cuban who gets sick can go to a doctor or a hospital and get medical attention while 45 million Americans don’t have medical insurance," Farrakhan said.

"Every Cuban can get education from the kindergarten through college and they don’t have to pay," he continued. "What is Castro doing that we might benefit from — if we are not too arrogant and falsely proud to see what he is doing in a small nation and what we have not been able to do or not been willing to do in the greatest nation on the earth?"

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