Rebuilding New Orleans for Big Oil |
by Carol Rawle, Unknown News
Sept. 9, 2005
First we have to wonder if there's more going on than incompetence and indifference in the piss-poor Federal response to the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina disaster. This bunch in the White House rarely, if ever, overlooks an opportunity to exploit any catastrophic event for their own ends, at the very least to utilize it as a means to enhance their political image. Yet they did NOTHING after Katrina hit. Or did they?
We should ask ourselves the question: What does the Bush administration and their corporate cronies have to gain by sitting by and allowing the levees to fail and thousands to die in New Orleans and surrounding areas? Then afterwards, by delaying FEMA's and the Coast Guard response, they made a disastrous situation far, far worse. It was almost as if they were allowing it to happen.
It sounds callous to even suggest it, but what if they were actually using the disaster to get rid of thousands of inconvenient poor, black people and to demolish an entire city? What would be accomplished to benefit Bush/Cheney and their friends?
The port where New Orleans sits is one of the most important on the Gulf Coast, if not the most important. A huge amount of oil, gas, and other commerce moves through this port. On top of this, for years now, the Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) industry has been trying to get past strict environmental regulations to try to establish a LNG terminal somewhere along this coast, but has run into nothing but roadblocks. It's just too damn dangerous to have such a facility located anywhere near so many people. It has its own inherent dangers, being that there would be such a huge amount of explosive gas moving through the area, but it would also be certain to attract terrorists.
But what if they could get rid of one of the biggest roadblocks, the people? Enter Hurricane Katrina, and you have the perfect opportunity.
We haven't heard from Dick Cheney through this entire ordeal. Suddenly he emerges from his Wyoming hideaway, and he is being dispatched to New Orleans to oversee the reconstruction. How telling. How convenient. Just the man for the job, that is, if it involves furthering the interests of Big Oil/Gas rather than rebuilding for the little people, and poor black ones at that.
President Bush's own mother recently toured the Houston Astrodome and remarked that all those poor people housed there are "so much better off" now than what they're used to, and that many want to stay in Texas!
From the beginning of the evacuations, many of us were skeptical that these hurricane victims would ever be allowed to return home. Barbara Bush's comment should be a big signal to us of the intentions of our government to prevent these people from returning. I expect we'll hear one excuse after another as to why it's not "safe" or "expedient" for these evacuees to return to New Orleans. It shouldn't come as a big surprise as we watch New Orleans transformed into the biggest oil/LNG port on the Gulf of Mexico.
Perhaps they'll throw in a few big convention centers and rebuild a portion of the French Quarter so the rich, like our president in his youth, can continue to have their playground and meeting place.
But rest-assured, this Big Oil-friendly, corporate bought and owned White House will somehow see to it that their loyal friends are the ones to benefit from this disaster. And no doubt it will amaze us how many different ways they will discover to transform this epic catastrophe into corporate profit.
© by the author.
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