Opinion

Looks like the jackals are already gathering in New Orleans, before the flood waters have been pumped away. The areas which took the worst of the flooding were the homes owned and rented by poor people, who have traditionally lived in the bottom lands of southern American cities, where the residents were subject to malaria, cholera and other hazards of life in swampland. Despite all the evidence that the Katrina disaster was made worse by disregarding environmental axioms about building in marshes, the speculators are clearly looking at the ravaged zones as one big building site, this time controlled by the right people. On the radio Thursday, a New Orleans economic development honcho was interviewed saying that from now on it was going to be a city for middle-class people, and another city employee rhapsodized about how new programs were going to turn all those poor folks middle class. (Tell me again about the rabbits, George….) -more-

The cover photo of this week’s issue of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur shows an armored vehicle labeled “state police tactical unit,” manned by grim-faced booted and helmeted figures with clenched jaws, wearing dark glasses, and carrying big guns, staring straight ahead. In the lower right-hand corner, we see two middle-aged African-American women looking up at the truck. One, wearing a red floral muu-muu, hair in curlers, raises her arm in supplication to the men, who ignore her. The headline is stark: “L’Amérique mise a nu”—America laid bare (literally, nude). The sub-head says that “The hurricane reveals the fissures in the society of everyone for himself.” -more-