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By the time I’d reached the end of my 10 years of reportage on the impacts of the US occupation of Iraq in 2013, it was impossible for me to find an Iraqi who did not have a family member, relative or friend who had been killed either by US troops, an act of non-state sponsored terrorism or random violence spun off one of the aforementioned. Now, having spent the entire summer in Alaska, I’ve yet to have a conversation with national park rangers, glaciologists or simply avid outdoors-people that has not included a story of disbelief, amazement and often shock over the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) across their beloved state. — Dahr Jamail: In Arctic, Ancient Diseases Reanimate and Highways Melt as Temperatures Hit “Frenzy” of Records
Black Commentator’s radio station’s audio commentary on September 2 2005, Will the ‘New’ New Orleans be Black?, expressed the problems and the process quite well: One of the premiere Black cities in the nation faces catastrophe. There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans will one day rise again from its below sea level foundations. The question is, will the new New Orleans remain the two-thirds Black city it was before the levees crumbled? Some would say it is unseemly to speak of politics and race in the presence of a massive calamity that has destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people from all backgrounds. But I beg to differ. As we have witnessed, over and over again, the rich and powerful are very quick to reward themselves as soon as disaster presents the opportunity. Remember that within days of 9/11, the Bush regime executed a multi-billion dollar bailout for the airline industry. By the time you hear this commentary, they may have already used the New Orleans disaster to bail out the insurance industry — one of the richest businesses on the planet. But what of the people of New Orleans, 67 percent of whom are Black? New Orleans is a poor city. Twenty-eight percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Well over half are renters, and the median value of homes occupied by owners is only $87,000. From the early days of the flood, it was clear that much of the city’s housing stock would be irredeemably damaged. The insurance industry may get a windfall of federal relief, but the minority of New Orleans home owners will get very little – even if they are insured. The renting majority may get nothing. If the catastrophe in New Orleans reaches the apocalyptic dimensions towards which it appears to be headed, there will be massive displacement of the Black and poor. Poor people cannot afford to hang around on the fringes of a city until the powers-that-be come up with a plan to accommodate them back to the jurisdiction. And we all know that the prevailing model for urban development is to get rid of poor people. The disaster provides an opportunity to deploy this model in New Orleans on a citywide scale, under the guise of rebuilding the city and its infrastructure. In place of the jobs that have been washed away, there could be alternative employment through a huge, federally funded rebuilding effort. But this is George Bush’s federal government. Does anyone believe that the Bush men would mandate that priority employment go to the pre-flood, mostly Black population of the city. And the Black mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat in name only, a rich businessman, no friend of the poor. What we may see in the coming months is a massive displacement of Black New Orleans, to the four corners of the nation. The question that we must pose, repeatedly and in the strongest terms, is: Through whose vision, and in whose interest, will New Orleans rise again. For Radio BC, I’m Glen Ford.
What Glen Ford said in his September 2005 assessment of the situation facing the poor of New Orleans has proven true: “If the catastrophe in New Orleans reaches the apocalyptic dimensions towards which it appears to be headed, there will be massive displacement of the Black and poor. Poor people cannot afford to hang around on the fringes of a city until the powers-that-be come up with a plan to accommodate them back to the jurisdiction. And we all know that the prevailing model for urban development is to get rid of poor people. The disaster provides an opportunity to deploy this model in New Orleans on a citywide scale, under the guise of rebuilding the city and its infrastructure.” The Ethnic Cleansing of the port city of New Orleans is now under way and to make New Orleans the casino capital and the playland of the South. But New Orleans has lost its soul — it is now majority white. It was the birthplace of Jazz. Jazz, to me, represents the aspirations of an oppressed people for Democracy. Those aspirations have been shattered. (The powers that be are also now trying to gentrify jazz.) For producing the video Big Easy to Big Empty — The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans, exposing what went wrong when Kartina struck, in an act of attempted intimidation, the Federal Government, through the Department of Homeland Security, filed a complaint against Greg Palast. The bogus charge of filming ‘criminal infrastructure’ was later dropped. But guess whom the Federal Government did hire to determine what went wrong? You guessed it — Innovated Emergency Management Inc. (IEM) — the company that failed to come up with an evacuation plan prior to Katrina! — Roland Sheppard, The Ethnic Cleansing of New Orleans 2008 A Requiem
Video of the Day:
U.S.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Economy:
Wall Street’s Protection Racket: Mandatory Arbitration What people across Wall Street cannot figure out is why the Board of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank by assets, didn’t sack its CEO, Jamie Dimon, at some point between the bank’s first two felony counts in 2014 and its third felony count in 2015. Or, as two trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer point out on their web site, during the past five years as JPMorgan Chase racked up $35.7 billion in fines and settlements for “fraudulent and illegal practices.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens 
World:
Wall Street’s Latest Public Sector Rip-Off: Five Myths About Pay for Success Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, philanthropies such as the Rockefeller Foundation, politicians such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Massachusetts former governor and now Bain Capital Managing Director Deval Patrick, and elite universities such as Harvard have been aggressively promoting Pay for Success (also known as Social Impact Bonds) as a solution to intractable financial and political problems facing public education and other public services. In these schemes investment banks pay for public services to be contracted out to private providers and stand to earn much more money than the cost of the service. For example, Goldman Sachs put up $16.6 million to fund an early childhood education program in Chicago yet it is getting more than $30 million (Sanchez, 2016) from the city. While Pay for Success is only at its early stages in the United States, the Rockefeller Foundation and Merrill Lynch estimate that by 2020, market size for impact investing will reach between $400 billion to $1 trillion (Quinton, 2015). The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2016, the latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, directs federal dollars to incentivize these for profit educational endeavors significantly legitimizing and institutionalizing them. by Kenneth J. Saltman
Quotes of the Day:
US Guilty of ‘Basically Unconditional Support’ for Saudi War Crimes in Yemen “Every day, we are seeing the devastating impact of the sale of arms and ammunition for use on civilians in Yemen.” By Lauren McCauley 
Environment:
Dahr Jamail: In Arctic, Ancient Diseases Reanimate and Highways Melt as Temperatures Hit “Frenzy” of Records 
Ongoing/Big Energy Disasters:
Katrina Pain Index 2016 by the Numbers: Race and Class Gap Widening Despite receiving $76 billion in assistance after Katrina, poor people in New Orleans got very little of that help. Hurricane Katrina hit 11 years ago. Population of the city of New Orleans is down by over 95,000 people from 484,674 in 2000 to 389,617 in 2015. Almost all this loss of people is in the African-American community. Child poverty is up, double the national average. The gap between rich and poor in New Orleans is massive, the largest in the country. The economic gap between well-off whites and low-income African Americans is widening. Despite receiving $76 billion in assistance after Katrina, poor and working people in New Orleans, especially African Americans, got very little of that help. By Bill Quigley
Labor:
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare: