Talk:Alternative theories regarding Hurricane Katrina/Archive 1

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POV Check

  • Conspiracy theories have way too much potential for POV, and it's hard to write about them neutrally. I don't have time to completely evaluate the article, so I think a POV check is needed. Jedibob5 02:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Weather control

Has there been any mention yet of suspected weather control by the US government, esp. HAARP? (Bypassing the obvious question of why the US gov would do that to itself. Maybe like 9/11, it was an incredibly illogical, poorly-executed ploy to give Bush absolute emergency powers.) ~~ N (t/c) 01:18, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, now you've mentioned it... anyway, the emergency powers idea doesn't really jibe with the slow response. If this was a power play, the players would have pounced. -- BD2412 talk 01:27, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Actually, yes there has (see Google) but so far I have not seen any articles I would consider "authoritative" (of course "authoritative" is VERY subjective when you get into this realm!). But, I haven't really searched for one either.

It's an environmentalist plot to create more wetlands, masterminded by Al Gore, the true brains behind HAARP. — Phil Welch 06:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

There have been several discussions about Katrina and the New World Orders plans surrounding the illuminati's Problem Reaction Solution agenda on www.ickedownload.com

How is religious belief a conspiracy theory?

I don't think the trinity would count... And isn't God a unity to Islam? Tfine80 01:41, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Where does this info belong, if not here? I don't think there's enough material for a separate article. -- BD2412 talk 01:45, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
It belongs in the article it was originally in - whether or not those are conspiracy theories, they are political statements by politicised religious leaders.--The Bruce 01:46, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Removed. It was already in the politics article, and better there. ~~ N (t/c) 03:37, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Morons

You are all complete total idiots. --Anonymous 01:29, 4 September 2005 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.2.68.132 (talk • contribs) 03:34, 4 September 2005 (UTC).

Thanks for this eloquent and polite observation! ~~ N (t/c) 03:33, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

No credible work can be done on such an article. Besselfunctions 15:47, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

It takes one to know one! 207.30.145.6 12:06, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Causes is too conclusory

"Causes" suggests that these are actual, or even likely causes. These are merely alleged or asserted causes/ -- BD2412 talk 14:52, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Currently the article doesn't talk about the meterology that's there in the Hurricane Katrina article. Bring that in (and possibly rename it "Origins") and the article should work. Rd232 16:48, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Moved to "alleged causes". ~~ N (t/c) 17:04, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Other possibilities

The problem with a page like this is that its selectiveness makes it less than NPOV. You could just as well say that God is trying to teach the same lesson to Americans that he did to us Dutch in 1953, i.e. that negligence is a punishable sin, not a natural disaster. And yes there was a lot of negligence, my dear American friends. So another possibility is that Katrina is a blessing-in-disguise, because the 'ramp' of 1953 certainly has done a lot of good to the Netherlands. We decided to replace the blame game by a pledge that we would never be caught with our pants down again and leave our fellow Dutch behind to die like rats on a sinking slaveship. We became a better country for it. I wish America the same betterment af:Gebruiker:Jcwf

Global Warming? only if you can't read

Does the insert 'global warming' camp think that by mixing in something somewhat less crackpotted that you're going to somehow make this article survive VFD? I see the same broken argument being presented over and over here by the same people, claiming that someplace someone is saying that Katrina is special compared to other tropical cyclones and that it was caused/made worse by global warming to an extent that others were not. When pressed for citations, I just get the same tired reports such as the times article [1] where Katrina is only mentioned to hook readers, or the german minister [2] who quite clearly says "frequency of these natural events". Was this a mistranslation? Did they mean to print "Hurricane Katrina" rather than 'these natural events'? I find that doubtful. Whats worse is that not only is this misunderstanding being used to excuse spamming all the Katrina related articles with global warming claims, but that it's causing the entire issue to be misrepresented (that is, it's being represented on wikipedia outside of tropical cyclone as something special about Katrina when no one is claiming that). For the sake of accuracy, give it up. --24.165.233.150 23:46, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Since it's clear that the text is just going to be blind reinserted without discussion if I remove it again, last night I made some changes which at least made it less misleading. It still will leave the readers going what the heck, and it's inferior to the text in tropical cyclone... but whatever, you have your mention of global warming... it still won't be enough to keep this article from being VFDed. --24.165.233.150 19:04, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
The point of the article is to document allegations that have been made. Would it be sufficient to say that supporters of the theory that global warming leads to stronger hurricanes have recently invoked the name of Hurricane Katrina with the intent of convincing their audience that the two are connected? By the way, to address your earlier point, the major purpose of this article is to prevent "spamming all the Katrina related articles with global warming claims", along with the various "divine retribution" and "weather control" theories that will doubtless spring up again in the other articles from which they came if deleted here. -- BD2412 talk 19:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
It would be accurate and approiate to state that people have invoked "katrina" to bring up the global warming issue, and direct people to the correct discussion on Tropical Cyclone, which is what I had been changing the text to do. If there had been an intent to claim that Katrina was more related to global warming than other recent storms then someone would have come out and said exactly that, but no on has. So to say otherwise is a misrepresentation. I do appricate keeping the material out of the main articles, but it seems to have happened at the cost of reduced oversight on the quality of the claimes we were making on Wikipedia. You spent quite a bit of effort trying to insert global warming stuff into the Hurricane Katrina article itself, and when you were told no by multiple editors you came here. Now a lot of people are satisified by this, but left in this little hole there is little pressure to make sure the text here is accurate. I will be dissapointed that this material will no longer remain confined here, but at least I won't be the only person telling you to take a hike when you insert it back into the main article. :) Oh, and thanks for replying to my message, ... it was pretty frustrating that the only thing I could do to hear from your side was pull the text. :) --24.165.233.150 20:32, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about not responding - for some odd reason, I had the article on my watchlist, but not the talk page (probably because the article was moved after it was made). Also, you're quite simply wrong that I "spent quite a bit of effort trying to insert global warming stuff into the Hurricane Katrina article itself," and was "told no by multiple editors". As the discussions show (Talk:Hurricane Katrina#Causes and the Global Warming Discussion and Talk:Hurricane Katrina/Archive08#Global Warming), a majority of editors did want global warming material in that article. The only thing I personally added about global warming was the external link to the CNN article - which you objected to, and which was then soundly approved by the editors on the talk page discussion (Talk:Hurricane Katrina/Archive04#Global warming article link?), objected to only by you under two different signatures. I later moved that link to the separate article on Political effects of Hurricane Katrina (see Talk:Hurricane Katrina/Archive07#External links), because I agree that there is more politics than science to these contentions, and I then moved all of the global warming material in that article to this article, to keep all the fringe theories in one place. I haven't touched the actual Hurricane Katrina article in days except maybe to revert simple vandalism, but plenty of other editors are still putting global warming commentary there. -- BD2412 talk 20:58, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Can someone please provide a source for the following statement: "Most climatologists today believe that the relationship between climate change and hurricane intensity is unproven, and that the increase in hurricane activity noted over the last 20 years, can be accounted for by factors other than climate change such as the 25-40 year cycle." --Dante456 01:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Misquote

It has been quoted on several Wikipdedia articles that Repent America claimed Katrina was divine retribution. This is not substantiated by the press release. Marcavage never places blame on any event. While he does devote most of the press release to the upcoming Southern Decadence festival, he also mentions other examples of "wickedness":

"New Orleans was also known for its Mardi Gras parties where thousands of drunken men would revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to expose their breasts and to engage in other sex acts. This annual event sparked the creation of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. Furthermore, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion clinics with half of them operating in New Orleans, where countless numbers of children were murdered at the hands of abortionists. Additionally, New Orleans has always been known as one of the "Murder Capitals of the World" with a rate ten times the national average.

He never says any of these things were the reason for the hurricane. He only says this now poses an opportunity for "...this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God." Johntex 19:47, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

  • FYI BD2412 and I had some discussion about this at my talk page. I think his reworded sentence is much truer to what Repent America did/did-not come out and say. They did call the hurricane an "act of God", but it is not clear whether they mean that in the "directly sent by God for a specific reason" sense or in the "all things in the world are caused by and due to Almighty-God" sense. Johntex 20:47, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Name of this article

This article has now bounced around between a number of different names, none of which is 100% satisfactory. It was originally "Hurricane Katrina conspiracy theories," which was rejected because neither divine retribution nor global warming can really be called a "conspiracy"; it was then moved to "Alleged causes of Hurricane Katrina," which is a problematic because it doesn't capture the non-mainstream tenor of these theories, and because the weather control, global warming, and some divine retribution claims were not really about the cause of the hurricane itself, but about factors that purportedly strengthened it or directed its path. Also, there's a nifty theory floating around the internet to the effect that the levee was sabotaged or just outright blown up as part of some nefarious plot - which is related to the hurricane, and should go in this article if any notable figure endorses it, but is not an alleged cause at all. I propose "Alternative theories regarding Hurricane Katrina". Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 20:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I've had a think about this, and something like Non-scientific causes of Hurricane Katrina or Unconventional causes of Hurricane Katrina might be good because it makes it clear that these ideas are not in the mainstream. It does mean that global warming won't fit too well, but that's quite possibly worthy of being moved into other articles. --Apyule 06:11, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
Agree with "alternative theories". ~~ N (t/c) 21:18, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that "alternative theories" is better than conspiracy or alleged, but I'm not sure that it puts enough emphasis on the out-there nature of most of these ideas. --Apyule 01:41, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Depends entirely on who you ask - there are plenty of people who would readily go for either/or between the global warming and the divine retribution. Maybe not so for weather control, blowing up the levee, or hiding the body count. We shall see... -- BD2412 talk 01:47, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
That is a good point. Personally, I wouldn't put global warming in the same catagory as the others that you mention, or even in the same article, but that's not a fight that I'm willing to take up. To be honest I'll be happy whatever the name as long as it stays encyclopedic. --Apyule 04:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

another one

this itme it's ment to be the Yakuza that caused Hurricane Katrina: http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn1050908J5463.html

I'm Sorry

...but why is Global Warming listed as a conspiracy theory?? What is wrong with you people, Global Warming is a model of global climate change, not some kind of bizaire conspiracy theory, I realize about half the country would rather dig their heads in the sand, and return to the 1800s back when you could only teach church sanctioned sciences, but please, this is an encyclopedia, not a bible...

  • for reference, here are some examples:

Conspiracy Theory(example): Space aliens came from Mars and offended Jesus with their illegal space immigration, causing the government of France to team up with space Jesus and make a hurricane
Not Conspiracy Theory(example'): The increase in average global temperatures over the past hundred years may have an effect on weather patterns..

  • Long story short, Global Warming isn't a conspiracy theory so please re-categorize it some where else--172.128.245.193 19:40, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Note: Moved 172.128.245.193's above comment to the talk page currently in use for this article. -- BD2412 talk 21:13, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
  • See above regarding naming dispute. ~~ N (t/c) 21:18, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Mercenaries and burning bodies

I deleted the following material about burning bodies and mercenary soldiers from the article because there is only one source cited, and that source is itself purporting to relate second-hand accounts. However, this seems like a ripe rumor to be discussed (and, if necessary debunked) in the article, if it really is being asserted by any direct, reputable sources, and has gathered any steam:

Wayne Madsen also reported that FEMA is treating evacuees like "internees" and that Private Military Contractors are in New Orleans and may be burning victims' bodies to try to cover up the number of actual victims who died:
September 8, 2005 -- Some evacuees are being treated as "internees" by FEMA. Reports continue to come into WMR that evacuees from New Orleans and Acadiana who have been scattered across the United States are being treated as "internees" and not dislocated American citizens from a catastrophe. Some FEMA facilities are preventing these internees from leaving on their own. Reports of mandatory registration and the issuing of FEMA ID cards suggest that FEMA, an agency that is rife with right-wing security goons and severely lacking in humanitarian workers, has other motives in treating poor and destitute American citizens as prisoners in their own country.
Meanwhile, WMR is receiving reports that mercenary private military contractors (PMCs) are now operating in the New Orleans metropolitan area. These may include foreign nationals with questionable human rights records in their native South Africa, Israel, Colombia, El Salvador, Britain, and Australia. PMCs have been extremely active in occupied Iraq, especially under the aegis of massive Pentagon omnibus contracts awarded to Halliburton and its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary. Joseph Allbaugh, the former FEMA director under Bush and current FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown's college roommate, is currently a registered lobbyist for disaster relief business for Kellogg Brown & Root. Allbaugh's lobbying firm is called the Allbaugh Group. Halliburton has recently been awarded lucrative contracts to repair U.S. Naval bases damaged by Katrina.
The presence of PMCs is worrisome. There are unconfirmed reports of mercenaries shooting residents of New Orleans and that mercenaries are involved in burning the bodies of victims in makeshift crematoria set up throughout the city. Three mercenary companies have been reported to be in the New Orleans area: Blackwater USA, Steele Foundation, and Wackenhut. The reported burning of bodies could be an attempt by the White House to suppress the total death count to an "acceptable," "manageable," and "spinnable" level.

[3] -- BD2412 talk 00:06, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

No, Pat Robertson did not say that

The assertion that Pat Robertson blamed Hurricane Katrina on the selection of Ellen Degeneres to host the Emmy Awards is false, see Snopes on the question. -- BD2412 talk 18:33, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Considering that some do believe that Pat did say that, and his history of saying such things, maybe it should be reinserted with it being clear that this is a false attribution. Donovan Ravenhull 20:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
Good point, but it must be clearly set aside from the actual quotes! -- BD2412 talk 20:52, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Deleted unsourced material

The following unsourced (and likely unencyclopedic) material was deleted from the article:

  • An anonymous resident of Southeast Louisiana gives Al-Queda the credit. His satirical explanation makes about as much sense as the above ones:

"Those muslim dudes that hate us must have hired an African witchdoctor. He did a raindance that caused one of them atmospheric wave things in the mountains of north Africa. That wave crossed the ocean, became a hurricane, and almost destroyed one of America's most strategic cities. They tried to take out Houston too, but my neighbor stopped that."

Feel free to restore it if it can be sourced and shown to have some significance. -- BD2412 talk 03:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Oooookay

Was it just me, or was that one poster reeeeaaaallllly weird? Donovan Ravenhull 02:16, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Reverted edits by Prodego

I have reverted certain edits by Prodego, specifically the removal of comments by Fred Phelps diff which Prodego found objectionable, and secondly the introduction of a warning/disclaimer stating, "These religous comments should be taken carefully as they may seem inflamitory to some users, as religon can be used to condone or explain anything if it is twisted correctly." diff. please understand that Wikipedia is not censored to remove potentially offensive content, especially in the form of notable statements by notable individuals about a notable event; furthermore, disclaimers are not required where the article pretty clearly indicates that the content of the statement is offensive.  BD2412 talk 19:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, it's kind of funny looking back on this, as it was my first interaction with Prodego (who quickly became a fine editor, and an administrator). bd2412 T 07:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Disclaimer

I am sorry if my attempt to warn users was uncalled for and apologize fully for my mistake. I intended to say that some comments could be objectable to some readers, however my warning was strongly worded, as I was slightly angry with the

"I do not think – and only Allah [really] knows –that this wind, which completely wiped out American cities in these days, is a wind of mercy and blessing. It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire."

comment, and the accusations that the american govenment would deliberately harm its citizens, and may have overreacted.

The profanity and hatred against homo-sexuals must be removed, and I am once again removing it (I have seen no complaints about it's removal, if you wish to complain send a message to my talk page. before removing it as I do not wish to start a dispute.).

Prodego 19:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

EDIT: I just noticed the part in your message, BD2412, about Fred Phelps and have put the content back and am preparing to despute.

  • The fact of the statement itself can not be disputed - there is no question that Phelps actually said what he is quoted as having said. The dispute you have raised is whether it is appropriate to have so offensive a statement in Wikipedia, to which I can only respond that Wikipedia is not censored for content.  BD2412 talk 20:33, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Official Wikipedia rules and regulations

I would like to dispute the inclusion of Fred Phelps comments under the Wikipedia Offical Rules for Civilty

Prodego 20:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC) EDIT: I am relenting and will abide by your rules, I belive this needs to be looked into.

  • Uh, the rules of civility apply to users, not subjects of articles. Is Fred Phelps "christian"? -- Chris Ccool2ax contrib. 05:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

great article

just popping in to say that it makes me glad that wikipedia can put so much information to use like this, and that it hasn't been deleted under "non-encyclopedic", whatever that means by deletionist numbskulls. i guess this place isn't all bad. :) Joeyramoney 23:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you gotta have faith. See the essay on how to write an article deletionists can't delete for more (I forgot the link). Deletionists havent deleted this yet due to it being immune to their best tool, notability, an essay that says "If I havent heard of it i can delete it".-- Chris Ccool2ax contrib. 04:20, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Why the conspiracy theories are wrong

I scanned this picture from a St. Petersburg Times article about neighborhoods damaged by Hurricane Katrina, since it didn't appear in the online edition of that article. Almost immediatley after this article was printed there was a frenzy of accusations against the federal government accusing it of trying to kill black people. And yet, according to this, the majority of neighborhoods were mixed race neighborhoods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg

Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg

So, I'd say there's no conspiracy here. DanTD 11:53, 14 August 2006 (EST)

Generally speaking, the conspiracy theories are wrong because they rely on the existence of explanations more complex than what is required to explain the phenonena under investigation. Which is why we have this article, instead of including these theories in Hurricane Katrina. bd2412 T 17:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
That's not why the conspiracy theories are wrong (they're wrong because you can't ochestrate a natural disaster). The theory of evolution is more complicated than creationism, but that's doesn't make the former wrong or the latter right. Occam was a simpleton. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.218.178 (talk • contribs)

Religious interpretation and original research.

From the article: "It should be noted that most of these [alternative theories] do not reflect the mainstream thoughts of their religions." I'm afraid this is a classic instance of original research. See Wikipedia:Original research#Synthesis_of_published_material_serving_to_advance_a_position. We as editors cannot introduce our own exegesis and apply it to the hurricane — no matter how popular this interpretation would be among Wikipedians. And we certainly haven't decided where "mainstream religious thought" begins and ends, nor dug up any study on what people believe. So I've removed the text (diff). I think the criticisms section could be expanded: that's where this kind of theological question can be discussed, using sources of course. Omphaloscope talk 14:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The revert by Mets501

I disagree with the revert by Mets501. He removed a link to judicial-inc.biz on the grounds that it's a biased, unreliable site. I imagine I'd agree with him on this point. But the citation was supposed to support the following claim:

"Various 'conspiracy' centered websites have asserted that some of the New Orleans levees were intentionally weakened in advance of the storm or deliberately breached after it had passed."

From what I saw, judicial-inc.biz is a "conspiracy centered website" and it made exactly that assertion, so this is a good citation. It proves the point. Yes, in a way, it cites an unreliable source in order to do so, but it doesn't depend on reliability. The claim is "Some X say Y" and it can be proved by showing an X that says Y, even if X is unreliable.

Personally, I find just about every conspiracy site unreliable and biased. So we have three choices: (1) Cite such sources to establish that sources like that say Y; (2) Wait for someone else to say "Some X say Y" and then cite him; (3) Give up on reporting what conspiracy theorists say. I prefer (1).

Remark: This may be academic anyway. I can't link to the website since it's on a spam blacklist apparently. Phiwum 01:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)