Riverbend's news

Riverbend's last post on Baghdad's Burning concerned the infamous "wall". She is right about the link between walls and concentration camps, or at least walls and racism. I always associate walls being built to divide a city with the early 20th century days of Atlanta's Jim Crow, a history I absorbed rather than being specifically taught (no I am not quite that old, but I am old enough to have seen de-segregation getting under way.) Walls were built on the "black" side of "white" neighbourhoods to prevent easy passage through the privileged environs. A lot like apartheid, or a literal rather than symbolic ghetto. Interesting that this presents itself as a "solution" to the ilk of the American "advisors". But anyway.
In the Guardian, Riverbend posted a more personally dramatic announcement: she and her family are planning to leave Iraq, as so many others have done recently.