Tornado Alley (PROG)

[sortagreen]

>>>freedom is what they want, and a chance to make a decent living just like the rest of us...

I'll bet the first thing they may want is food. Just a hunch.

It's all too easy to have answers, much more difficult to deal with questions. Of course what you say is right. But saying that is only the beginning... understanding the dynamic in individual situations is often an elusive goal, but for good men, surely one worth pursuing.

Consider this. I'm not sure what you know about a country like say, El Salvador, but 14 families literally own nearly every square inch of El Salvador. Google it. Now there are several million others there that don't, and hence their needs don't count, not to that elite and not to the US or its corporate masters. This leads to an interesting and venal dynamic, because 14 families don't really need that much food and if you own all the land you grow tobacco, coffee and cotton, for cash. Food you can buy. So in one of the richest agricultural zones on earth there's widespread starvation and poverty. Anyone who talks about reform in a place like that is a communist. ...But of course. Joan Didion wrote agreat book about the violence in the early eighties, Salvador, later made into a movie with James Woods.

One doesn't work hard and get ahead in El Salvador. The elites there can always have their needs met through starvation or brute force. Those who own everything have little need to share.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/El-Salvador-HISTORY.html

Nicaragua under the Somozas was a US client. The younger was actually known to put parasites in the rivers to cause river blindness among the peasants as they would be more docile and still able to work the fields. He was overthrown at long last by a "communist" revolution led by the Sandanista Front. Those "communists" ruled briefly and then held elections, as they had promised, giving Nicaraguans the first democracy they had ever known. They did win the first elections, but not the subsequent ones, although Daniel Ortega just did this year. Nicaragua has had mixed success, what with a decade of assault on their nation and economy, but they're by and large a peaceful country... I'm actually going to go look at it too. Expats are starting to look at Nicaragua as the next Costa Rica.

http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/somoza.html

Gore Vidal wrote a really good piece a while back called "In the Lair of the Octopus". I can't find it on line with out subscribing to something, but I already have it in his book of essays "Dreaming War" I think... or maybe some other. It discusses Guatemala and the United Fruit Company, known there as "el Pulpo" or "the Octopus" because of the scope of its reach in that country. The elected government of Jacobo Arbenz sought to enact land reform (2% of the population having controlled 72% of the arable land at that time)... and was promptly overthrown as "communist", by the CIA at the behest of United Fruit. In Vidal's words, "Gautemala has been a slaughterhouse ever since." He ain't kiddin'.

http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/documents/guat.htm

In "Murder as Policy" (April 24), Allan Nairn notes, accurately, that the "real role ... of all U.S. ambassadors [to Guatemala] since 1954 [has been] to cover for and, in many ways, facilitate American support for a killer army." Nairn's report on the capers of one Thomas Stroock, a recent viceroy, is just another horror story in a long sequence which it was my ... privilege? to see begin not in ... exerpt from "In the Lair of the Octopus" - Gore Vidal.

It has never been uncommon in that part of the world to see the population of entire villages rounded up and trucked to some rail yard and dumped. Simply put, someone decides the land is better used for some other purpose.

I've heard it said that democracy starts with defending the right of ordinary people to own property. But every attempt to remedy such lopsided as these situations in Central America or anywhere in the world is branded as communism and meets with brutal repression directed out of Washington. 20th century history is crystal clear on this. How then is democracy to form or take hold?

Whenever people talk about the ills our country has brought about in the third world someone invariably says, "Well, if we're so bad, how come everyone wants to come here?" Do I have to go into how really stupid that sounds? Where the f#sk else are they supposed to go?

Consider how much business we do in Mexico. Why have we never pressured the Mexican government to create any opportunities that would keep Mexicans in Mexico? Is there not enough wealth there? upwards of 12 million people have risked their lives to come here and work like slaves, and in some cases as slaves. ( http://www.ciw-online.org/ ) Can you blame them? And more to the point if we ever pushed the Mexican government into reforming, would our ruling elites get screwed out of that work force... and even be forced to pay real wages to North Americans again?

For the record, I'm not a big fan of Hugo Chavez. He's a mixed bag, part hero, part asshole... I understand this. (But he loves fu*king with Bush and that's cool enough :).) But what he represents is the right of our little brown friends south of the border to make decisions that we don't "approve of" and actually elect a native American and a populist to their presidency. (Evo Morales is another example of this.) I'm all for letting them do that. I don't feel threatened in the least by these movements. Nothing there can be worse than what we've seen up to now.

I woke up this morning with a bit of a hangover... (I gotta stop doing that) and went back to sleep 'til almost 1:00. So'd the wife. Then we got up and had a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs and now she's cooking up a storm for a Super Bowl party. I actually have to go help now in my role as "prep cook". Anyway, why do I throw that in? Because I'm put in mind of that Bob Geldorf line "Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you". And I try to hold that thought somewhere.


I appreciate your comments regarding my service. I like to think I'm serving America today as well. Not everyone appreciates that though.