NOLA: USer Disaster-Fucking-Capitalism At Work

Here's your paradigm case for Naomi Klein's thesis in her new book, The Shock Doctrine. (There's a very good vid there).

Via Truthout:

New Orleans: Demolition of Public Housing Starts
Cain Burdeau, reporting for The Associated Press, writes: "In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing."

The motherfuckers have no shame. The population in NOLA who need public housing simply to survive has DOUBLED since Katrina/Rita in '05.

The plan, as I understand it, is to tear down the Projects and rebuild far smaller projects with far fewer accommodations for the poor, while building up-scale units for sale at much higher prices. These projects largely escaped the flood-ravages of the storms, so they are in now-desireable locales. Part and parcel with turning NOLA into a fucking Disney theme-park-cum-gated community.

It's HUD housing they're tearing down, and it's poor, black CITIZENS who they're dispropriating, but it's rich, white developers and realty folks who're gonna make out like the dogs in the manger that they are. White folks are spooked because of a flyer that was circulated threatening to set fires to expensive downtown condo developments if the destruction of the Projects continued.

Ah, smell it? The Divine Wind! Gwine Blow Aw Dem Sweaty Kneegrows Plumb A-Away!

And I'd bet you any money you'd care to wager that there are STILL Blackwater gunsels in the woodwork.

P.S. For a truly harrowing trip through the devastated landscapes that are STILL not unusual on the Gulf Coast even today, go HERE, and go through the portfolio. Awesome!