just read!

I'm going to back off a bit today. I've got too much to do, not enough sleep, my head hurts, and I've been slinging way to many italics around the last few days.
So instead, I'll just throw out a few things for y'all to read and more or less have done with it.

First, this link, lifted from Ran Prieur (who has been moved to permant link status), where Naomi Klien of the Guardian discusses the gentrification of New Orleans and how low-income residents are starting to band together to fight off the inevitable attempt by the Business Class to replace poor people with rich people in NOLA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Why is so often the British who report on injustice in America?

But not always, see The Nation and in particular this article about rebulding NOLA (well, it claims to be about that, and it does contain this quote: "Yeah, this could be their dream come true," he says. "Get rid of all the poor African-Americans and turn the place into Disneyland.")

By the way (prepare for horn-tooting): I've been saying for a while that the Business Class would take advantage of the destruction in NOLA to build a poor-person-free Vacation "Paradise" there. I said this for instance (from Aug 30):

I'd guess that the old tourist spots, (new) parkland, and big-donor commercial interests will all be there in 10 years, but I [would bet] that the ordinary (read: poor and black) residents will be finding new homes in the suburbs. Then look to big-dollar vacation condos on the newly-raised land where their homes once sank.

I even used the phrase "Disney-fied French Quarter", but, alas, cannot find where (probably somewhere in Brin's blog comments). Oh well, you'll just have to trust me.
Tin-foil hat types might even say that the reason the levees were ignored by BushCo is so that big-money types could do just that, but that indicates too much competence on the Administrations part.
My wife tells me I'm too negative.
I say I'm pragmatic - when you plan for the worst, you're ready for the worst, and when it comes to people, especially Big Business people, it's best to be ready.
For Anything.