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Wash Postie: 'Reasonable' Blacks Believe Levee Plot
NewsMax ^ | 9/18/05 | NewsMax

Posted on 09/18/2005 10:16:23 AM PDT by wagglebee

"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.

"I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered in order to save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black," Robinson told NBC's "Meet the Press."

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

The levee break conspiracy theory parallels the plot outlined early last week by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

"I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry," Farrakhan told a North Carolina audience.

The Washington Post columnist's report suggests that Farrakhan's poisonous theory appears to have gained currency.

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."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; US: Louisiana
KEYWORDS: black; bush; conspiracytheory; katrina; leftists; leveeplot; levees; mediabias; neworleans; neworleansflood; noi; tinfoil; washingtonpost
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To: rock58seg

That was the upshot of H. G. Wells' short story "The Country of the Blind": sighted man stumbles into a land of blind people, can't deal with the blind-oriented culture, is derided as insane (crazy guy thinks singing angels are small winged feathered animals that fly, what is he nuts?), his alleged insanity is attributed to these two small damp round things on the front of his head, and he manages to escape before being persuaded to have these round things surgically removed.


181 posted on 09/19/2005 10:29:53 AM PDT by ctdonath2
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To: KC_for_Freedom; AnAmericanMother

I'm an engineer in a different discipline, but here is my take on the concept:

The design for the levee will take into account the compaction issue with respect to the required strength of the levee - which was designed to withstand Cat 3 hurricanes (including their attendant water pressures from storm surge). That means that, once compaction is reached and the levee is full strength, the levee will have been over-engineered, and hence stronger than designed.

Remember that the upgrade would have affected the strength of the levee respective to other sections of the structure. As long as the levee was designed correctly, incorporating the correct strength as built (not as strengthened by compaction), and was built to the design, there is no negligence.

The levee break came on the heels of a cat 4 hurricane. The break itself may have been caused by debris - I have seen reports that a barge may have gotten loose and slammed that part of the levee. The truth should become known at some point, but as yet have not been revealed (to my knowledge).

The higher than expected water pressure, combined with (speculatively) debris damage apparently affected the "weak link" section of the levee - even though the levee as built may have met the specifications.

Negligence in this case would mean the levee was built substandard with respect to its specifications. There have been assertions of this, but no evidence presented - only rampant conspiracy mongering.


182 posted on 09/19/2005 10:34:33 AM PDT by MortMan (Mostly Harmless)
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To: wagglebee
"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.

To which 'reasonable' blacks in New Orleans is he talking? I thought everyone had been evacuated. If there are any holdouts among the black community who chose NOT to be evacuated even when apprised of the dangers of staying, I wouldn't consider them reasonable.

The columnist is simply putting this crackpot theory in 'reasonable peoples' mouths so that he can give it wider play. Elite blacks are scared to death that this stronghold of racial politics is being torn asunder, and that some black people might just start seeing that 'whitey' doesn't hate them after all , thus diluting the power the elite blacks have among liberal whites.

183 posted on 09/19/2005 10:35:10 AM PDT by SuziQ
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To: It's me

Breaking one levee can allow water from Lake Ponchartrain or Mississippi River to be released and relieve the pressure on other levees. However, it would not have been performed on the east side of the 17th Street Canal obviously which resulted in all of N.O. flooding. One would look at the east side of Intracoastal Canal to flood lower 9th ward which is close to area that flooded during Betsy.

BTW the ones who told me that people did this very thing during Betsy did not live in the 9th Ward. It was told by those who lived in N.O. and were spared by the flooding. They viewed it as a leg amputation to save the patient. It was not the claim of those who flooded but the claim by those who were spared the flooding. I was told this so much growing up that I actually accepted it as fact until much later.


184 posted on 09/19/2005 11:31:17 AM PDT by plain talk
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To: norton

Yup.

Unfortunately, all true.


185 posted on 09/19/2005 8:57:48 PM PDT by spinestein (Forget the Golden Rule. Remember the Brazen Rule.)
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