![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Levee Explosions?
This is the latest highly speculative conspiracy item I’ve seen circulating around about New Orleans. I’m posting it not because I believe it or because I find it personally useful to worry about this stuff. But I do think it’s worth looking at the stories that people are telling to make sense of this situation. With that disclaimer, the latest word out of the conspiracy underground seems to be that some New Orleans residents claim to have either witnessed or heard explosions just before the levees broke, flooding much of the city. A thread on Above Top Secret begins:
“The 17th Street levee was bombed by the Army Corps of Engineers to save the more valuable real estate in the city… to keep the French Quarter protected, the Ninth Ward was sacrificed… people are afraid to speak out… everyone who was near there heard the bombings… they bombed seven times. That’s why they didn’t fix the levees… 20 feet of water. Gators. People dying in water. They let the parishes go, not the city center. Tourist trap was saved over human life.”
Do I think this could happen? I think a lot of things could happen. There are a million and one much more likely explanations here though, and that thread on ATS has a decent number of arguments focusing on both sides of the case. I don’t have any firsthand information, and I haven’t followed through to original sources for these rumors.
Again, I’m not posting this because I believe it, but because it’s a rumor that’s gaining traction for whatever reason. Maybe it’s simply a watered-down variation of the over-arching “the government caused the hurricane” conspiracy. If nothing else, it highlights in yet another way the uncertainty, anger and tension that people are experiencing surrounding the preparations for, actions during and relief efforts related to the hurricane.
- UFO Crash Dream
- Movies watch us
- National Propaganda Radio
- Fallout from Hurricane Katrina
- What is “true” spirituality?
- Prev: Plane Crash Dreams
- Next: September 11, Four Years Later
September 11th, 2005 at 9:30 am
it was done back in 1927 for certain. This time blowing a levee to keep another from failing wouldn’t make much sense though. It wasn’t the river that was threatening to flood, so that more valuable property was never in the same danger.
However, if they wanted to turn this into a premeditated act to be implemented under the cover of a storm, to destroy the substandard, low income housing so that a richer, whiter New Orleans could be built on the land sezied from the displaced people, that theory would definitely work.
I seem to remember that the 17th Street levee had just undergone a big project recently. There was a lot of construction going on there in the past few years. It could have be underfunded or rushed, with the contractor trying to bring it into a budget that was too low. I just don’t know.
With how quickly the rebuilding contracts are being handed out to cronies though, the conspiracy theories about the destruction of New Orleans are only going to snowball.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:46 am
Certainly the levees could have been blown up. I don’t believe the powers-that-be have any moral scruples that would prevent them from doing it, and they certainly have motive. However, this doesn’t mean that the levees were blown up.
There are many other explanations for sounds of explosions: maybe a levee breaking naturally sounds like an explosion? Maybe the hurrican destruction caused natural gas leaks that ignited explosions? Even if the levees were exploded intentionally, it is possible that the motive was triage rather than explicit ethnic cleansing.
Hearsay reports of exploding levees are the weakest evidence in support of a hypothesis that there was an organized program of ethnic cleansing. There are many more well-documented oddities that more plausibly suggest such a sinister motive. (E.g. intentional withholding of food/water, existence of Blackwater agents before the hurricane and continuing to today, etc.)
September 11th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Whether or not the levees were intentionally blown, don’t doubt that opportunists are going to snatch up land in the area at criminal prices.
Kelo + Katrina? “Reconstruction efforts” could easily be taken in court for good-faith efforts towards the public good.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Saw that coming on Day 1 of Katrina. Apparently, for the Bush ra-ra’s, private property is only sacrosanct if it already belongs to the super wealthy.
September 11th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Ditto gun rights.
They’re no conservatives and they’re no Christians.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Excellent point, slomo, this reeks of disinformation. It seems like it could be a “straw man” the Powers that Be would insert into the NOLA Conspiracy meme: As far as it being “conspiracy” to suggest the Army Corps of Engineers blew up the levees–I’m not an engineer, but I bet that sound arguements could be made for that type of sacrifice, much like one theory I’ve heard, that the WTC was lined with explosives so that, in the event of disaster, it could be imploded rather than falling lengthwise and destroying Manhattan. Thus, it’s possible to discredit, in many’s eyes, an entire theory on the basis of a tangential detail.
At the same time, I’m not so sure that it’s wise to call what appears to be rank incompentence a “conspiracy.” *No one* stands to gain from the destruction; already, one Bush appointee has lost his job, Bush has lost a lot of respect, the Nat’l Guard has appeared impotent, the New Orleans and LA govt’s performed poorly, the State Dept. and Ms. Rice have rejected foreign aid except from Mexico, etc., etc. The stock market did gain 300 points in the face of universally bad financial headlines, which is very suspect
As far as Kelo-based reconstruction, most insurance stipulates that any structure must be restored as close as is feasible to the original. New Orleans will likely not become a shining example of urban re-design, should it even be rebuilt.