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From a June 20, 2003 commentary by Charles Jenks

Senator John Kerry Speaks Out - He Was ‘Misled’

Senator John Kerry says he - in fact “every one of us” - was misled by President Bush concerning Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. And he says the deception is one reason he is running for President

Here are links to the Globe and BBC reports on Kerry’s realization that he had been lied to and his determination that he will not let President Bush “off the hook.”

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/170/nation/Kerry_Iraq_war_intelligence_questionable+.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3002820.stm

If John Kerry had been interested in the truth, why did he refuse to meet with his Western Mass constituents before voting for the war resolution? Why did he close his Springfield office on October 11 - shutting out his constituents - in the aftermath of his vote in favor of war? http://traprockpeace.org/KerryOffice101102/

Before his vote, on September 30, a group of his constituents, including this writer, met with his foreign policy aide, as part of a national effort organized by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peace Action, Sisters of St. Joseph, and others. This joint effort worked to bring important resources and constituent concerns about the war directly to their Members of Congress. 140 citizens from 23 states fanned out and had meetings in 102 Congressional Offices, primarily meetings with Senate foreign policy aides.

The intellectual core of the resources presented were from the UK.

1) The ‘Counter-Dossier’ - http://traprockpeace.org/counter-dossier.html - written by Glen Rangwala, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Cambridge and Alan Simpson, Labour MP) was written to counter the notorious Blair dossier released on September 24, 2002 to Parliament and

2) ‘Counter-Dossier II’ - http://traprockpeace.org/archivecounter-dossierII.html a more technical treatment of the weapons of mass destruction claims.

(Traprock had published these papers in the US on the internet and in booklet form with the cooperation of Glen Rangwala. Mr. Rangwala updated and replaced Counter-Dossier II as the lead-up to war progressed - see http://traprockpeace.org/iraqweapons.html )

(As a prelude to the citizens’ lobbying, Traprock Peace Center visited 31 Senate offices on September 24, distributing the Counter-Dossier and meeting with some Senate aides, and WILPF followed up by bringing it to House members the next day.

In October, 2002, 23 Senators and 133 Representatives voted against the Bush Administration’s war resolution. John Kerry voted for it. What did 156 Members of Congress know that Kerry did not know? Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his constituents had called him, urging him to vote against war. After he voted for war, over 20,000 constituents wrote in the name of Randall Forsberg, who ran against him in a last minute write-in anti-war campaign in November.

The afternoon after his vote on October 11, 2002, he locked his office in Springfield, MA. Western Mass. neighbors and Traprock members were denied entry. Nine of us had gathered outside the building to vigil after individuals had been shut out earlier. We then went to the office. A nice albeit uncomfortable staff person came to talk wtih us at the door but would let no one in. Another 5 others joined us while we were up there. Some had been told there was no room in the office (note one of the empty chairs) and that people would pose a fire hazard. See the PHOTOSTORY of this visit! A certificate of achievement will be given to whoever identifies the peacemaker in the picture!

During the lead up to war, much came to light in terms of US and UK deceptions concerning the weapons of mass destruction allegations. Surely, Senator Kerry took note of these developments.

A few examples:

1) Colin Powell made a case for war to the UN Security Council on February 5th. (See Glen Rangwala’s analysis at the time - http://traprockpeace.org/firstresponse.html ) Powell referred to a British intelligence report, at the UN and as a follow-up before Congress. Glen Rangwala broke the story to the British press that the British ‘Intelligence’ report was largely a plagiarized and out-dated paper by a postgraduate student. http://traprockpeace.org/britishdossier.html Per the Observer (UK) “the finished document appeared to have been cobbled together not by Middle East experts, but by the secretary of Alastair Campbell, the Government’s chief spin doctor, and some gofers.” http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,891940,00.html

2) Newsweek reported that the UN Inspectors had hidden the full interview Gen. Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of Iraq’s weapons programme before Gulf War I. He defected in 1995 and provided details of Iraq’s programme, but said Iraq destroyed its WMD’s. The US Administration heavily replied in its public statements on the parts of the Kamel interview that it liked, while neglecting the sticky parts - such as his assertions that the WMD’s had been destroyed. Conveniently, the UNSCOM kept the interview under wraps. The CIA re-buffed Newsweek’s story, saying “It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue.” (see http://traprockpeace.org/kamelcoverage.html for a chronology of media coverage). Then, Glen Rangwala showed the CIA was ‘misinformed’ when he published the original transcript of the interview. See his briefing (with a link to the full transcript) at http://traprockpeace.org/kamel.html

3) The so-called evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger - a major reason that Kerry says he supported the war - were widely reported by March 8 to be fraudulent (Chicago Tribune - “Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the UN inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence.” http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/abstract/303432721.html?did=303432721&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&PMID=7684&desc=U.S.+evidence+called+forged

Further, on March 16 the Tribune reported that the US had relied on the faked evidence. “At one point, the Niger letters were seen as key evidence in the U.S. case against Iraq. In December, the State Department said Iraq’s declaration to the United Nations regarding its weapons program omitted numerous items. Among them, the State Department said, were “efforts to procure uranium from Niger.’” http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/abstract/306231861.html?did=306231861&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&PMID=7684&desc=Fake+document+tied+to+Niger+Embassy

See also “The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update” by IAEA Director General Dr. Monhamed ElBaradei, March 7, 2003: http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml

The report states: “Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. However, we will continue to follow up any additional evidence, if it emerges, relevant to efforts by Iraq to illicitly import nuclear materials.”

John Kerry had ample opportunities to discern the truth, before he voted for the war resolution in October, 2002 and during the build up to the invasion. He says that the Bush administration misled everyone. 156 of his colleagues in Congress would disagree; they voted against war. And, thousands of his constituents would disagree - they called his office or voted for his write-in opponent in November. After the deaths of between 5567 and 7240 civilians in Iraq as of this date (per the Iraq Body Count Project - http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ ) with almost daily shooting deaths of both US soldiers and Iraqi during the occupation (not to mention the thousands of Iraqis who will die due to destructions of infrastructure and health care systems, continuing violence and exposure to the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium residue left in Iraq from US and UK munitions), Senator Kerry speaks out.

He says was misled. Perhaps he did not understand what 156 colleagues and thousands of his constituents understood. Or, could a politican in his position have realized the truth and for political reasons went along, knowing that one could claim later - after things had started to go badly - that one had been misled, along with “every one of us.”

Charles Jenks

Editor’s Note: This is a slightly revised version of an email that the author published via email on June 19, 2003.

Constituents Locked Out of Kerry’s Office the day he voted for the war resolution in October, 2002.

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Liberation and Deliverance
By Kathy Kelly

(An interview with Kathy Kelly and fellow prisoner Dave Corcoran, on the day that she reported to prison for 4 months - reprinted with permission from http://www.vitw.org)

Barely a week goes by when I don’t think about the nuns who were so much a part of my childhood.

I grew up in a working class neighborhood on the Southwest side of Chicago where most families identified closely with the nearest Catholic parish. Ours, St. Daniel the Prophet, was centered in the standard church, school, convent, and rectory buildings. The convent was home for several dozen religious women sent to us by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Father Mulligan, the pastor, said Mass, heard confessions and paid attention to the Sunday envelope collection, but essentially the nuns ran the parish. They taught our classes, directed the choirs, organized church events, and supervised parish functions. We’d never heard of feminism, but we certainly knew that the nuns were in charge.

As youngsters, my friends and I would wait at the convent door to carry their books to school; we’d stay after school to wash the chalkboards, clean the erasers and carry their books back to the convent.

We grew to know them very well. And yet they were quite distinct from our everyday family life, almost exotic in an otherwise plain area. If nuns were taking a walk in our neighborhood, word would quickly pass along a street: “The nuns are coming!” Then people would sit out on their front porches, eager to share a good word with these women.

Once a year, the neighborhood held “Sisters’ Shower” in the church basement. At this event, people would donate all manner of kitchenware, cleaning supplies, and equipment to the nuns.

The donations were put to good use. When the nuns weren’t teaching us, or praying in church, or visiting our homes, we would generally see them doing chores. Show any Catholic who grew up in the fifties a bib apron checkered with tiny blue and white squares and count on immediate recognition—that’s what the nuns wore over their habits. Nuns at work. But were the nuns ever paid? Well, no. Ever? Never.

For me, the main role models during my formative years were women who never gave any visible sign of having even the slightest interest in accumulating personal wealth. I want to repeat that. They showed no interest in accumulating personal wealth.

They taught us an invaluable lesson.

What’s more, we knew that somewhere in Chicago nuns were taking care of poor people. And they were caring for poor people all over the world.

Sometimes a religious order will invite me to speak at their motherhouse where they care for nuns nearing the ends of their lives. I often cry when I visit these homes. Most of the nuns I meet in these places are elderly and frail. Many are dressed in pastel sweaters and pleated skirts, their hair carefully coifed. Some nod off during my talk. They promise their prayers. Always, before I leave, several will offer me their beautiful hands.

Where else can one find such simplicity, such sharing of resources, such long periods of reflection?

Ironically, I have found similar realities when incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In a life marked by living quite simply and sharing scarce resources, women in prison live behind closed doors, but they are also behind coiled razor wire. During nine months spent in a maximum security prison and three months in a minimum security prison, I never saw “the bad sisters.” I met women grievously harmed by inexorable war against the poor. I met women who posed almost no threat whatsoever to U.S. people, - certainly nothing compared to the menace of nuclear weaponry, weapon proliferation, and the industrial poisoning of air, water and ground accomplished by U.S. corporations.

I slept on the top bunk in a corridor lined by 16 bunks on each side. My bunk was closest to a bank of phones. I couldn’t help but overhear conversations of women making their weekly phone calls home. Once a woman’s call is connected, she knows what the person at the other end will always here, a recorded voice saying: “This is a phone call from a federal prison. This phone call will be monitored. If you wish to accept this phone call, press ‘one’.” If you wish to reject the call, press ‘three.’ If you wish to reject all future phone calls, press ‘five’.”

The woman prisoner holds her breath, hoping the person she has called will press one. If a child answers the phone and gleefully shouts, “Mom!” this might cut the call because any voice level that goes over a certain volume automatically terminates the connection.

Sitting on my top bunk, here is what I often heard:

“Momma? Momma, hi, hey, you got it right. Boy, the last time when you pressed the wrong button, it was a mess on this end, but hey, we’re all right. Are the kids home?

They’re out? A birthday party? Momma, I sent a post card, I thought we could set up this time, cuz you know it’s so hard for me to get at the phone here.

You mean, the kids really wanted to go to this party. Right. You’re right, Momma. Yes, yes, I do want them to have a good time. But, momma, I want to write them every week, but here’s my problem. I just don’t have any more stamps. I’m all out. Momma, could you put some money on my commissary account, cuz you know that’s the only way I can get stamps, and without stamps I can’t write. I’d love to write every single day…I know, momma, you’ve done everything you can.

That’s right, momma. Keep letting people know. . But, momma, I hate to ask you this, but, you know I‘ve got nothing but time here, and I could crochet hats and scarves and mittens, I could even do an afghan for grandma, but I just don’t have money to buy the yarn. Women here are tired of me borrowing all the time. Isn’t there somebody who’d want to help with buying yarn? I need money on commissary to buy that yarn. No, nobody can donate. Oh, momma, I’m sorry, I know money’s tight. I know how hard you’re trying.

But, momma, what about your brother? Wouldn’t he think of driving the kids to see me just once? –momma I’m dying to see them

Momma. Don’t be upset with me. I’m trying my best. I love you so much. Momma, tell the kids, tell them, …” Then I could tell that the line had been cut.

After that, a woman would make a hairpin turn, careening into a shower or a bathroom stall. She’d emerge, eyes red, face puffed, cheeks tear-stained, but somehow having found extraordinary courage to face the day, the week, the months, the year, … one fourth of the women with whom I was imprisoned were sentenced to eight years or more.

They are trapped, …and there are no nuns to help them.

Each time I’ve stepped outside the gates of a U.S. prison, a “free” woman, I’ve known that I’m leaving behind a world of imprisoned beauty, a world unrecognized by the majority of people in the U.S. who accept a “throw away the key” mentality.
People drive past prisons all the time. The razor wire, tall fences and elevated guard posts may seem to blend into the landscape. Why trouble oneself about who lives inside those walls?

There are many reasons to be troubled about the fact that one fourth of the world’s prisoners are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. Certainly this statistic points to realities about how the U.S. deals with poverty. The prison-industrial complex, the fastest growing new industry in the U.S., represents a war against the poor. I think our entire criminal justice system shows a callous disregard for poor people and a shameful readiness on the part of many people to earn great profits by working in this system.

We’ve nurtured a callous disregard for poor people all over the world. I’ve seen it function in Nicaragua, Haiti, and Iraq where people have suffered horribly because of U.S. policies that wage war against the poor in order to exploit resources in the lands where they live.

What do we gain from this attitude? Are we actually benefiting from U.S. policies that subjugate poorer nations to serve our colonizing demands? If the fundamental purpose of U.S. militarism is to project immense military might all over the world so that other nations will submit to serving our national interests, then why is the cost of projecting this military might so great that we can’t afford to improve conditions amongst the poor in our country. Why are we making less social progress? Why aren’t we seeing more benefits?

The nuns exemplified the main ingredients of an alternative to U.S. military dominance. They practiced simplicity, service, sharing of resources, and a reverence for all of life. They “exported” these values through their everyday witness.

Many people may believe that the nuns are history and that their values are fading with them. But I believe that they held a key to a door we could and should open if we’re to liberate ourselves and our children from the consequences of our over-consumptive and wasteful lifestyles. It’s one thing to point our fingers at powerful elites who make reckless choices that endanger our planet and our lives. It’s quite another to recognize that our everyday lifestyles are out of control in terms of a realistic future for the planet and next generations. As we deplete the remaining supplies of fossil fuel energy, we loot the stores available to our children and their offspring.

When I look for leaders who can help guide us toward radically changing our lifestyles and rebuilding our societies, I think often of several nuns who just emerged from prison after serving lengthy sentences for nonviolent direct action protesting nuclear weapons. Ardeth Platte, Jackie Hudson, and Carol Gilbert taught us, throughout the years they recently spent in prison, to care about their fellow prisoners and to make adult choices on behalf of “Mother Earth” and all her children. (see www.jonahhouse.org)

In the remaining days of January, 2006, several dozen U.S. activists will appear before judges who will almost certainly sentence them to prison for nonviolent actions protesting U.S. warfare. I think their confinement will help liberate more compassion in our world. (see www.stpatricksfour.org and www.soaw.org). In February, a sturdy group of Chicago young people working with Voices for Creative Nonviolence will undertake a 33 day electricity fast through which they hope to better empathize with people in Iraq, living under U.S. occupation, who endure constant outages.

Back in St. Daniel the Prophet parish, the school library shelves were filled with the lives of the saints and the lives of the nuns. I imagine that by now the pages are yellowed, the binding frayed, Perhaps the books haven’t been opened lately. Nevertheless, new chapters are being added. Prophets among us practice the works of mercy and make sacrifices to help end the works of war. If you hear that they’re walking through your neighborhood, rush to meet them. If you spot word about them on the internet, press “save!”

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a Chicago based campaign to end U.S. military and economic war against Iraq, www.vcnv.org

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For Whom They Toll
October 26, 2005
by Kathy Kelly

Today, in cities and towns throughout the U.S. and beyond, activists will gather to grieve and protest the carnage wrought by the unlawful and immoral war in Iraq. Thousands will gather to commemorate the 2,000 lives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and call upon U.S. people to stop funding the war. Others will focus chiefly upon the well over 100,000 Iraqi lives lost, and, in a campaign launched some months ago, will ring bells 100,000 times –1,000 chimes each in 100 different locations - as names of Iraqi civilians killed since the start of Shock and Awe are read aloud.

October 25th marked the 2,000th American service-member death in the Iraq war: October 29th will mark one year since The British Lancet, perhaps the world’s foremost medical journal, estimated from careful research that tens of thousands of Iraqi people had died due to this same horrific war. The demonstrations will overlap, but for once we can claim that separate demonstrations, held simultaneously, can actually raise awareness and hopefully affect change. These protests are after all the same: One life, two thousand lives, one hundred thousand lives, or many, many more - are all too much to pay for the imperial ambitions of the few.

Let me tell you about something I just learned. Eager to help promote the “100,000 Rings” campaign, I recently accepted an invitation - from a literature class at a Baltimore community college - to bring some experiences of injustice and war to the students’ literary pursuit – in this case, the ancient Greek drama, Antigone. It was a surprisingly good fit. Sophocles’ heroine dies utterly forsaken and alone in punishment for standing against Creon, her king, who decrees that her slain brother, declared an enemy of state, will rot, unburied, above ground. Antigone defies the king and adheres to her conscience. In front of witnesses, she pours dirt upon her brother’s corpse, and when the King’s guards undo her work, she returns openly to the scene of her “crime’ to repeat her act once again.

After the King sentences her to be buried alive, the blind seer, Tiresias, denounces the unjust King, saying: “Thou hast thrust children of the sunlight to the shades, . . .but keepest in this world . . . a corpse unburied, unhonoured, all unhallowed,” entombing the living and refusing to honor the dead. When Creon relents, of course it is too late. Tiresias had warned him of his madness and as the Greeks and others echoing have said: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

The lesson for our time is painful.

All over the world, people can see that the U.S. went to war against Iraq because the ruling elites in this country knew Iraq couldn’t fight back. Enough madness. We are mired in a war that could last ten years or more, one that is already intensifying other, perhaps even more dangerous conflicts. Now, whatever security we might establish, as U.S. people or as people of the world, rests in seeking fair trade relations and raising vigorous opposition to the warmongers who run this country. Any other behavior would be madness.

We must not show Creon’s callous disregard to those slain by war. A few months ago, our friend Scott Blackburn went to downtown Chicago, alone, and rang a bell, once a minute, in memory of each U.S. soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The dreadful total then was still “only” 1594, and it kept him there for over 24 hours, ringing his bell once a minute. People who stopped to talk with him learned that honoring the other dead of this war would take months. A local reporter came by, and although Scott’s story of our troops made the paper, nothing he had told the reporter about the Iraqi casualties was considered news. For Scott, the 100,000 rings project was immediately apparent as a burning obligation.

Like all war, this rotten folly creates victims on all sides. What it has done to our safety in this most precarious of times, by destroying most of what was left of our good faith with the world, by further fracturing international solidarity and understandings of rights and law, by escalating conflicts of both grave terror and war-making, has prevented U.S. people from seeing the greatest terrors we face, the disasters generated by our own degradation of the world’s resources and our planetary environment. And let us each consider also the small but real tragedy of not being able to look at ourselves in the mirror each day without wondering how much longer we’ll continue to make war against people for the sake of gluttonously controlling their precious and irreplaceable energy resources.

Which is to say: if you see people gathered in your neighborhood this week, in anger or grief or guilt, with their bells or their candles, perhaps it’s best not to ask if it’s an observance for 2,000 Americans or for the well-over 100,000 Iraqi tragedies our government has not yet even seen fit to count. A life is a life, and the full tragedies of this cruel war are yet to be told. Advice I read in sixth grade remains true today: “send not to know for whom the bell tolls.”

It tolls for thee.

Kathy Kelly (kathy@vitw.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence - www.vcnv.org - a Chicago-based campaign to challenge U.S. military and economic warfare against Iraq. She’s grateful to her friend and co-worker Sean Reynolds for elements contributed to this article. For more information on the 100,000 Rings campaign, visit www.iraqmortality.org

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October 7, 2005

by Charles Jenks

William Bennett, in his eye popping statement that aborting all black fetus’s would lower the crime rate, has been rightly condemned for racism. It’s amazing and revealing that he would think that genocide, which is the most grievous crime under international law, would lower crime. The paradox is obvious. In other words, how could one reduce crime by committing the highest crime possible against humanity? According to this way of thinking, black lives don’t count a whole lot.

Apparently for him, genocide would be an easier option for a government than ending racism in education and the economy. His suggestion of a Final Solution would create a whiter culture, one that is more homogeneous and obedient to its laws (to his way of thinking), while saving the government billions of dollars in social programs. Neo-Con is starting to sound like Neo-Nazi.

His statement is condemnable for many reasons, along with the every minute of the day racism that this society perpetuates.

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September 5, 2005
by Charles Jenks

Has there been a week when so many in the US have had the worst week of their lives? I grieve for the people of the entire Gulf Coast region, but focus here on Orleans Parish because, in my opinion, it has been attacked, and hundreds if not thousands have been killed, by the actions and inactions of government.

Sitting here, I can’t sort out the relative failures of the city, state and federal governments. All levels of government knew that this type of catastrophe could happen - they gamed for it in their “Hurricane Pam” scenario. They knew that a Level 4 Hurricane would swamp the levees and drown the city.

All levels of government knew that this particular “perfect storm” (coined thus by HSD Secretary Chertoff as an excuse for government failures) was coming and that everyone who stayed faced a high risk of death. Yet, there were no mandatory (I mean really mandatory) evacuations. This was obviously a storm that would strike the entire Gulf region and affect the entire nation. Yet the Bush Administration did not take leadership. Instead, the government merely reacted after the fact.

Outrageously, authorities directed many thousands to the Superdome, the Convention Center and other ’shelters’ with no food or water, no lights, no sanitation and no security. People got to experience Hell on earth, courtesy of the government, which enticed and abandoned them.

Perhaps Bush can’t be blamed for the start of the shelter fiascos. Yet, while he was cavorting in Arizona and San Diego - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9174806/site/newsweek/ - the city was drowning and people were falling into an abyss.

Was it all merely incompetence? I would like to think so, but I am not convinced.

A few facts. Orleans Parish is overwhelmingly African-American (67%) and overwhelmingly Democratic (it voted for Kerry by more than 3:1). Those left behind in the squalor of the shelters were nearly all black and too poor to have been able to afford an escape from town by private automobile. The biggest group of white faces was seen at the Superdome when hundreds of tourists were able to cut in front of thousands of poor people who had waited for days in the muck and mire. The privileged guests from a nearly hotel boarded buses brought forth specially for them. It was mind-numbing and boggling for storm victims and reporters who watched this spectacle.

While the rich got a quick ride out of town, the masses could only wait during the day, hoping to survive the heat and lack of water. During the night, they huddled in fear of attack after the police and national guard had gone off shift, leaving armed gangs to roam and terrorize.

This sounds like a plot for an early Mel Gibson movie. No one would have believed that such a thing could happen, not in the United States of America. Now everyone believes that this can happen here, because it has. Our views of ourselves - what were are capable and in-capable of - are changed forever.

I consider some important facts - the forewarnings not heeded, the opportunities for preventive and remedial measures not taken, and the abandonment of people who had already been shuffled aside by the economic system. I have concluded that the government has demonstrated its contempt for these people based on their race and class.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just over-the-top, unbelievable incompetence. We’ll see what happens.

Will the Orleans Parish victims be restored to their homes? Will the government fund their rebuilding? Will reconstruction jobs go to local inhabitants? Will the flood control system finally get the funding it has needed for years? WIll the schools and community institutions be rebuilt to meet the needs of the people who have lived there for generations?

Or will the victims (termed ‘refugees’ by a government intent on moving them) be permanently resettled in scattered locations across the nation? Will Halliburton and their ilk get the reconstruction dollars and bring in outsiders to rebuild? Will landowners take their insurance monies and run? Will poor landowners be offered pennies on the dollar to sell their soggy bottom land, or will land be taken by eminent domain? Will New Orleans be rebuilt as a glitzier version of itself as ‘tourist city,’ with a new set of low wage workers - but without the community ties - imported to replace the dispossessed natives of the city?