It’s been going on since the day Chris Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492, and not much has changed since. The Western hemisphere was colonized by European powers for what we would today recognize as profit driven motives, and the aboriginal people of two continents (not to mention Africa) paid the price in blood and lives. Unfortunately, the atrocities are still going on today.
(SOURCE) What began with villagers at Ojo de Agua in Chiriquí province using trees and rocks to block the Pan-American highway earlier this month – trapping hundreds of lorries and busloads of tourists coming over the border from Costa Rica for six days – has now placed Panama at the forefront of the enduring and often violent clash between indigenous peoples and global demand for land, minerals and energy. Carrera is emerging as a pivotal figure in the conflict.
“Look how they treat us. What do we have to defend ourselves? We don’t have anything; we have only words,” Carrera protests. “We are defenceless. We don’t have weapons. We were attacked and it wasn’t just by land but by air too. Everything they do to us, to our land, to our companions who will not come back to life, hurts us.”
At the height of the protests, thousands of Ngäbe-Buglé came down from the hills to block the highway; in El Volcán and San Félix they briefly routed police and set fire to a police station. (full story)
Isn’t it awful?
I mean, even conservatives will say to me that yes, while what we did to Native Americans was awful, those were different times and we wouldn’t do that now.
But two seconds reviewing what our corporations do in South America or Africa show that to be a terrible lie. In fact, it’s worse, faster, more total. Coke in South America, Chevron in Africa, even the Bhopal thing.
Capitalism is more voracious than it was in the 1500s.
So true. What we have all over the world are varying degrees of slavery and serfdom. In the developed world, wages for manufacturing and services are shrinking; in fact, they are barely living wages.
When the developed world outsources to the developing world, things get even worse. Not only are the wages still minimal (even in impoverished countries), but there is little or no oversight of the conditions faced by their workers, i.e., Foxconn. There was some interview with Steve Jobs from a years ago where he stated that it was not viable at all to produce in the US. (Excuse me, but that has served us very well for at least a few decades!)
So where is all the money going? To the “best and brightest”–including bank CEOs who need bailing out, corporate CEOs making crap goods, and college presidents and deans caught lying on their CV/resumes or plagiarizing. The king/banker/CEO/academic bigwig can do no wrong. Doesn’t matter if their actions are not always wise or even halfway intelligent. If they do well, they get huge bonuses. If they do just OK, they get good bonuses. If they fall flat on their face–like Netflix last year–they still get a bonus.
The old saying attached to the acronym FUBAR comes to mind.
Right after 9/11 and our over-the-top reaction, I bought a tee-shirt at a Navajo-run museum hop in Albuquerque.
Photo of Geronimo and a few of his buddies posing with their rifles over the caption:
“Homeland Security – fighting terrorism since 1492″.
One of these days I’m gonna get me one one of those. Definitely a classic.