We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Nations as Foreign Capital Corporations

Click here to access article by Francisco Fernández-Bullón from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard

The article is not well written (or translated), but one still gets a realist impression that many of the Latin American countries (the US's "backyard") are ruled by mafia-like corporate gangs who have plundered such countries for many decades. Such insights are helpful in understanding why so many Central Americans are marching to the US border
The foreign capital company strips all of the homelands of its excess inhabitants, who then have to migrate on foot looking for other lands. The only nationals that Honduras has at the moment are Orlando Hernandez and his cadre of cocaine traffickers who are the only ones who feel at home in the country (although they would probably prefer to live in Miami and be North Americans) and perhaps the high-ranking US military stationed at the base of Palmerola. .... However scarce the rights enjoyed by the Hondurans that manage to enter the stepmother country of adoption that could be the USA, they’ll always have more than in their own country, where they have none and where their death isn’t news. Now finally they have become “news” after many decades of being anonymous victims, thanks to an epic journey on foot, crossing the hostile lands of Central America and North America: lands hostile to those who don’t have more capital than only their hands or their wit, as long as they do not use it to foment crime and robbery.