NEW ORLEANS: SKETCH OF A CONSPIRACY THEORY
Like
the terrorist scenario played out in New York on September 11, the
disaster in New Orleans was something that virtually
everyone knew could happen; in both instances there was also plenty of
time to take appropriate measures to ensure that the anticipated
tragedy did
not happen.
Since the disaster in New Orleans nevertheless did happen, a great many questions need to be asked as to whether someone let it happen. We all know now that Bush cut the funding for the renovation of the levees to help finance his war in Iraq. We also know that the response seems deliberately to have been held off for a few days:
'Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"' (SOURCE)
What's more, radio communications in the New Orleans area were apparently being jammed by a pirate radio station in the Caribbean, presumably as a means of hampering the relief effort. (SOURCE)
But today emerged intriguing allegations that more than 25 eyewitnesses are aware of FEMA operatives somehow sabotaging the levee that precipitated the disaster. These witnesses may be referring to an episode in which a section of the levee was deliberately destroyed in order to divert flooding away from wealthier parts of the city. According to New Orleans resident Andrea Garland, 'part of the reason our house flooded is they [presumably FEMA] dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government.' (SOURCE)
So it looks like part of the reason that relief effort has been so woeful is because the real priority has been minimizing the extent of destruction in richer areas. In this respect, this webpage is extremely interesting. It shows that the rich and powerful are interested not in relieving the afflicted but with profiting from the disaster that has befallen them:
'This afternoon, I was having lunch at the Cosmos Club out on Massachusetts Avenue [in Washington]. A good friend is a member of the posh club (that once was the elegant town home of Sumner Welles), and while at lunch, I was privy to a very vocal conversation at one of the big round center tables in the club dining room.
BELOW: The Cosmos Club
One man was giving an overview of the situation to a group of his friends. The speaker was an undersecretary of an important department, well-liked by Bush and often in the White House to consult. The others ranged from an academic economist whose writings can be seen in a right wing paper and a number of Washington-based businessmen, all of whom are active and heavy contributors to the Bush White House.
The loud one had obviously had a few drinks at the bar and this is probably why he was not more discreet. The gist of his comments was horrible to contemplate and it sounded like a top Nazi discussing Jews. It is well known here that the Bush family and many of the top advisers at the White House are racists but instead of detesting Jews, in this case, they all detest blacks. Their rationale, aside from their view of racial superiority, is that blacks are all “welfare queens, unwed mothers and drug dealers.” It was the very firmly stated view of the host that it was better for everyone that New Orleans was under water for the time being.
In that way, we were told (and I was not the only person in the dining room who heard all this), this served to “chase out the niggers” and permit Bush-supporting businessmen from buying up the soon-to-be condemned sodden houses for five cents on the dollar from friendly insurance companies (which one of them was a CEO of) and put up an enlarged and very profitable combination of industrial park and office building section. The money for this would, naturally, come from government grants which a terrified Congress (Mid Term elections are coming) had just voted for and the contracts to demolish the wrecked low-income slums would go, as a no-bid contract, to another stellar Bush supporter.
As for the refugees, our table of proto-fascists all commented on the fact that most of them were on welfare and probably all voted Democratic so they could all be shipped to California or Chicago at the public expense and allowed to occupy less valuable public housing there.
This conversation went on in a similar vein for some time and it was difficult for both myself and my host to refrain from making nasty comments or, for that matter, to enjoy our meal. These people are greedy and purely evil and I am positive from the overall conversations that Bush is conversant with this attitude and has no intentions of interfering with it.'
With Bush's popularity ratings at record lows, opposition to the Iraq war becoming more outspoken every day, and Bush's chief advisor, Karl Rove, in serious trouble, it really wouldn't surprise me if this was less a natural disaster than a pretext for the implementation of the next phase of the Bush White House agenda.
AFTERNOTE ON THE RED CROSS: Whatever you do, please don't give money intended for disaster relief to the Red Cross. As Ken Adachi points out, the RC is just a 'disaster racket' which pockets the bulk of the money donated by a gullible public. 'The history is clear, the Red Cross and other large so-called charities are in actual fact front group collection agencies for the military industrial complex.' According to this webpage, the Salvation Army is virtually the only real charity in the U.S. today.
Since the disaster in New Orleans nevertheless did happen, a great many questions need to be asked as to whether someone let it happen. We all know now that Bush cut the funding for the renovation of the levees to help finance his war in Iraq. We also know that the response seems deliberately to have been held off for a few days:
'Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"' (SOURCE)
What's more, radio communications in the New Orleans area were apparently being jammed by a pirate radio station in the Caribbean, presumably as a means of hampering the relief effort. (SOURCE)
But today emerged intriguing allegations that more than 25 eyewitnesses are aware of FEMA operatives somehow sabotaging the levee that precipitated the disaster. These witnesses may be referring to an episode in which a section of the levee was deliberately destroyed in order to divert flooding away from wealthier parts of the city. According to New Orleans resident Andrea Garland, 'part of the reason our house flooded is they [presumably FEMA] dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government.' (SOURCE)
So it looks like part of the reason that relief effort has been so woeful is because the real priority has been minimizing the extent of destruction in richer areas. In this respect, this webpage is extremely interesting. It shows that the rich and powerful are interested not in relieving the afflicted but with profiting from the disaster that has befallen them:
'This afternoon, I was having lunch at the Cosmos Club out on Massachusetts Avenue [in Washington]. A good friend is a member of the posh club (that once was the elegant town home of Sumner Welles), and while at lunch, I was privy to a very vocal conversation at one of the big round center tables in the club dining room.
BELOW: The Cosmos Club
One man was giving an overview of the situation to a group of his friends. The speaker was an undersecretary of an important department, well-liked by Bush and often in the White House to consult. The others ranged from an academic economist whose writings can be seen in a right wing paper and a number of Washington-based businessmen, all of whom are active and heavy contributors to the Bush White House.
The loud one had obviously had a few drinks at the bar and this is probably why he was not more discreet. The gist of his comments was horrible to contemplate and it sounded like a top Nazi discussing Jews. It is well known here that the Bush family and many of the top advisers at the White House are racists but instead of detesting Jews, in this case, they all detest blacks. Their rationale, aside from their view of racial superiority, is that blacks are all “welfare queens, unwed mothers and drug dealers.” It was the very firmly stated view of the host that it was better for everyone that New Orleans was under water for the time being.
In that way, we were told (and I was not the only person in the dining room who heard all this), this served to “chase out the niggers” and permit Bush-supporting businessmen from buying up the soon-to-be condemned sodden houses for five cents on the dollar from friendly insurance companies (which one of them was a CEO of) and put up an enlarged and very profitable combination of industrial park and office building section. The money for this would, naturally, come from government grants which a terrified Congress (Mid Term elections are coming) had just voted for and the contracts to demolish the wrecked low-income slums would go, as a no-bid contract, to another stellar Bush supporter.
As for the refugees, our table of proto-fascists all commented on the fact that most of them were on welfare and probably all voted Democratic so they could all be shipped to California or Chicago at the public expense and allowed to occupy less valuable public housing there.
This conversation went on in a similar vein for some time and it was difficult for both myself and my host to refrain from making nasty comments or, for that matter, to enjoy our meal. These people are greedy and purely evil and I am positive from the overall conversations that Bush is conversant with this attitude and has no intentions of interfering with it.'
With Bush's popularity ratings at record lows, opposition to the Iraq war becoming more outspoken every day, and Bush's chief advisor, Karl Rove, in serious trouble, it really wouldn't surprise me if this was less a natural disaster than a pretext for the implementation of the next phase of the Bush White House agenda.
AFTERNOTE ON THE RED CROSS: Whatever you do, please don't give money intended for disaster relief to the Red Cross. As Ken Adachi points out, the RC is just a 'disaster racket' which pockets the bulk of the money donated by a gullible public. 'The history is clear, the Red Cross and other large so-called charities are in actual fact front group collection agencies for the military industrial complex.' According to this webpage, the Salvation Army is virtually the only real charity in the U.S. today.
