October 17th 2011, Mike Davis, “Catastrophic Economics: The Predators of New Orleans.”

In this article one may learn about hurricane Katrina in August of 2005. Katrina turned into a category 1 hurricane near Miami, missing the city of New Orleans by 55km. It damaged approx. 90% of the levee systems in the east. They nicknamed the area that had flooded "Lake George." The United states Governement allowed huge firms like hailburton, the Shaw group and Blackwater Security to move in so quickly. The mayor was accused of not being responsible of taking good care of the city. The articles shows both sides of the government, the black and the white.

Here is a quote from the article, "No disaster in American history has been so accurately predicted in advance." It was Hurricane Betsy in 1965 that started technological advancements. Katrina was politically influenced, and New Orleans was a black majority and democratically ruled.

When the water flooded New Orleans and its suburbs, it was hard to reach someone on the phone for help. Emergency command was put out of operation early in the emergency by a shortage of diesel to run its backup generator for two days, Nagin and his aides could not reach outside the area. A lot of homeless individuals had no where to live and they were not able to afford to rent or buy.

Public Opinion
Katrina + Iraq occupation
= failure of government

-Unrealizable, unsustainable economic promises
-Social engineering and future electorate
-Lowering ecological and economical obstacles for selected businesses

October 3rd 2011, Felix Guattari, “Remaking Social Practices.”

September 26, 2011: Bruno Latour. "A Plea for the Earthly Sciences."

In this particular article Latour discusses James Lovelock's book 'The Revenge
of Gaia'. (The Gaia hypothisis "proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.")-Wikepedia Latour does not approve that Lovelock did not talk about the fundementals of human revolution agaisnt the Gaia. He believes many important aspects about our near future was left out by Lovelock; as Lovelock says 2050 will be the end of civilization which Latour abrutly states that it is not possible that it can happen that fast.

We must be ecologically and socially concered. There is a fast dissapearence of “nature” & “society” as Latour suggests in his text. He points out "I have proposed to say that all matters of fact have become matters of concern." In other words we must be the change to our own mishaps. It is up to earthlings as he refers to us, to be the change and not to wait for the change to just come to us.

This text seems in a way, frustrated and loud in a way to be heard. Latour mentions near the end "Who are you really, Earthlings, to believe that you are the ones adding relations by the
sheer symbolic order of your mind, by the projective power of your brain, by the sheer
intensity of your social schemes, to a world entirely devoid of meaning, of relations, of
connections?!" Thus another way to tell humans to wake up.. and smell the coffee!