In Baghdad In Palestine On the US/Mexico Border Around Gated Communities More and more walls...what are they for? I got a bit of a jolt about this as I listened to the cd of Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine on a recent road trip. At the end of the book she discusses the Israeli economy and the walling off of Palestinians in the occupied territories. She says, What Israel has constructed is...a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity. . I immediately thought of a speech given by David Simon (creator of the HBO show "The Wire") where he talked about the fact that, in our post-industrial economy, every day that goes by, humans are worth less. In other words, our current system as it now operates, needs less of us to make a profit and is content to categorize millions of people as "surplus humanity" and then wall them off to protect us from their anger and rebellion. And in cases where
Nancy LeTourneau's big picture look at politics and life