Well, despite my lack of verbiage, here — or maybe my lack is because of it! — I have been reading. And even finishing books. And in case this has got you excited to read a full fledged book review, your premature elation was, well, premature. This is one of my *fushigi book blog things.It began, this morning with my continuing to zip through
Deterring Democracy
by
Noam Chomsky.
New York: Verso (New Left Books) 1991 ISBN 086091318X.
(Out of Print: the link to the title above goes to the text of the entire book at ZCommunications.org.)
This is filled with documented examples of the media's general misrepresentation of America's active role in destabilizing the world, rejecting peace, and subjecting 'client' states to terror, torture and death to ensure compliancy for the survivors to live in extreme poverty so as to benefit American corporate hegemony. Today's fushigi began with a particular gruesome read: that in some Latin American countries the extreme poverty has been effective in creating new 'free' markets. Specifically, the kidnapping, sale, fattening up and trade in babies and/or their body parts. Anyway, part one of today's first Deterring Democracy fushigis:
The foreign-imposed development model has emphasized "nontraditional exports" in recent years. Under the free-market conditions approved for defenceless Third World countries, the search for survival and gain will naturally lead to products that maximize profit, whatever the consequences, Coca production has soared in the Andes and elsewhere for this reason, but there are other examples as well. After the discovery of clandestine "human farms" and "fattening houses" for children in Honduras and Guatemala, Dr Lul's Genaro Morales, president of the Guatemalan Paediatric Association, said that child trafficking "is becoming one of the principal nontraditional export products," generating $20 million of business a year. The International Human Rights Federation, after an inquiry in Guatemala, gave a more conservative estimate, reporting that about three hundred children are kidnapped every year, taken to secret nurseries, then sold for adoption at about $10,000 per child.Yup, seems unbelievable that such a thing would happen, but as always Chomsky provides citations that are not easily dismissed. This description reminds me of Jonathan Swift's caustic satire A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public. And it poses the interesting question, in our news-hungry age: why isn't this kind of horror news-worthy? Chomsky's suggested answer is that it works against the notion of America's democratic benefits of free-markets.
The IHRF investigators could not confirm reports that babies' organs were being sold to foreign buyers. This macabre belief is widely held in the region, however; indicative of the general mood, though hardly credible. The Honduran journal El Tiempo reported that the Paraguayan police rescued seven Brazilian babies from a gang that "intended to sacrifice them to organ banks in the United States, according to a charge in the courts." Brazil's Justice Ministry ordered federal police to investigate allegations that adopted children are being used for organ transplants in Europe, a practice "known to exist in Mexico and Thailand," the London Guardian reports, adding that "handicapped children are said to be preferred for transplant operations" and reviewing the process by which children are allegedly kidnapped, "disappeared," or given up by impoverished mothers, then adopted or used for transplants. Tiempo reported shortly after that an Appeals Judge in Honduras ordered "a meticulous investigation into the sale of Honduran children for the purpose of using their organs for transplant operations." A year earlier, the Secretary-General of the National Council of Social Services, which is in charge of adoptions, had reported that Honduran children "were being sold to the body traffic industry" for organ transplant."
A Resolution of the European Parliament on the Trafficking of Central American Children alleged that near a "human farm" in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, infant corpses were found that "had been stripped of one or a number of organs." At another "human farm" in Guatemala, babies ranging from eleven days old to four months old had been found. The director of the farm, at the time of his arrest, declared that the children "were sold to American or Israeli families whose children needed organ transplants at the cost of $75,000 per child," the Resolution continues, expressing "its horror in the light of the facts" and calling for investigation and preventive measures.12
As the region sinks into further misery, these reports continue to appear. In July 1990, a right-wing Honduran daily, under the headline "Loathsome Sale of Human Flesh," reported that police in El Salvador had discovered l group, headed by a lawyer, that was buying children to resell in the United States. An estimated 20,000 children disappear every year in Mexico, the report continues, destined for this end or for use in criminal activities such as transport of drugs "inside their bodies." "The most gory fact, however, is that many little ones are used for transplant of organs to children in the U.S.," which, it is suggested, may account for the fact that the highest rate of kidnapping of children from infants to eighteen-year-olds is in the Mexican regions bordering on the United States.13
The one exception to the Central America horror story has been Costa Rica, set on a course of state-guided development by the Jose Figueres coup of 1948, with social-democratic welfare measures combined with harsh repression of labor, and virtual elimination of the armed forces. The US has always kept a wary eye on this deviation from the regional standards, despite the suppression of labor and the favorable conditions for foreign investors. In the 1980s, US pressures to dismantle the social-democratic features and restore the army elicited bitter complaints from Figueres and others who shared his commitments. While Costa Rica continues to stand apart from the region in political and economic development, the signs of what the Guatemalan Central America Report calls "The 'Central Americanization' of Costa Rica" are unmistakeable.14
Notes:
11. Anne Chemin, Lc Monde, September 21,1988; Guardian Weekly, October 2. Ibid., September 30, 1990. Tiempo, August 10, 17, September 19, 1988. Dr Morales, cited by Robert Smith, Report on Guatemala, July/ August/ September 1989 (Guatemala News and Information Bureau, POB 28594, Oakland CA 94604).
12. Ibid.
13. La Prensa Dominical. Honduras, July 22,1990.
14. CAR, April 28, 1989. For discussion of these matters, see references of Chapter 12, Note 58.
Okay, so what constituted the fushigi? About an hour after reading this, at work I opened my gmail account, had received, as I do every day, from Powells Books their 'Daily Dose' — a book and a customer's review of that. Well, today's Daily Dose was The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar.
Here's the text from the e.mail:
The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar.I laughed at the juxtaposition of the description of the text to that of the title. What a weird fushigi.
Rachel's Comments:
"I was afraid I had become too cynical a reader to enjoy fiction anymore. This book restored my faith in fiction and in just about everything else. It's one of those reading experiences that makes you feel like you've emerged from a cocoon. Hector Tobar is my new hero. Absolutely amazing."
Publisher Comments:
New York Times Notable Book for 2011;
A Boston Globe Best Fiction Book of 2011.
The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves — a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity.
With The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions.
Well, if that weren't enough, the following night, 2012.06.06, instead of finishing this very disturbing fushigi book blog, I finally answered a co-worker who asked for my opinion on a proposal he wrote to help 'fix' the problems of the high costs of imprisoning people, and that of the problem of too light sentences and recidivism.
I wasn't swayed by his argument. I felt it ignored the roots of the problem and proceeded with some false assumptions on the nature of punishment and human behaviour. In part, this is what I wrote:
Dear RM:Well, the next night, shortly after recommencing Deterring Democracy, I read the following:
I read your appeal and it has passion but does not convince me for several reasons. I will take the time to respect your effort by providing you with reasons for my opinion.
… the American solution is financially effective: the state contracts prison management to giant corporations, who have lobbied with millions to ensure that they get the job because they are solely concerned with the social well being of black Americans. (Right!) And thus is created an MBA's wet-dream: make it illegal to be poor, offshore all significant manufacturing jobs to create endless unemployment, under-fund public schools, and you will have created a corporate money making machine. So what if it costs the state $150,000.00 per year (or whatever the number is) to incarcerate the serious criminals, because it ensures that the shrinking middle classes' taxes are transferred not into the hands of those unworthy welfare bums and drug addicts, but into the coffers of big business who have successfully lobbied to avoid paying taxes. I would not be surprised if, in the near future, your solution is enacted with the USA. It is a serious money making solution. But this pales in comparison to Jonathan Swift's solution to the problem of Irish poverty, when the British lords made destitute the already poor by forcing them off the land. Read his essay A Modest Proposal, which is a satirical presaging of today's MBAs. Of course, William Blake also delineated the solution to poverty in Britain in his time by highlighting the trade in children as chimney sweeps. Of course, this is now echoed in the current child sex trade practices of Asian countries, which is dependent for its continuation on poverty, a poverty which pelf takes advantage of and enriches the overseers. And I have just read in Deterring Democracy where Chomsky sites the trade of baby parts and organs for transplants for wealthy Americans and Israelis within the context of the destitution created by American 'free trade' practices brutally brought into place with wars both covert and overt, and with prolonged help of death squads and terror.
My pragmatic MBA nature found Brazil's solution to the problem of their criminal street children quite appealing: quietly kill them with covert death squads. Clean, simple, and efficient. And if the social poverty continues to create these ungrateful miscreants, then the price of a bullet is cheap, especially if the government is paying an American manufacturer for the supply of both the guns and bullets.
…
The share of the poorer classes in the national income is "steadily falling, giving Brazil probably the highest concentration of income in the world." It has no progressive income tax or capital gains tax, but it does have galloping inflation and a huge foreign debt, while participating in a "Marshall Plan in reverse," in the words of former President José Sarney, referring to debt payments.So, there you go. Not a book review, but a pair of the oddest fushigis.
It would only be fair to add that the authorities are concerned with the mounting problem of homeless and starving children, and are trying to reduce their numbers. Amnesty International reports that death squads, often run by the police, are killing street children at a rate of about one a day, while "many more children, forced onto the streets to support their families, are being beaten and tortured by the police" (Reuters, citing AI). "Poor children in Brazil are treated with contempt by the authorities, risking their lives simply by being on the streets," AI alleged. Most of the torture takes place under police custody or in state institutions. There are few complaints by victims or witnesses because of fear of the police, and the few cases that are investigated judicially result in light sentences (228).30
Note:
30 South, November 1989. Reuters, NYT, Sept. 6, 1990.
And I strongly recommend that you give Deterring Democracy a read. It is very, very good. And, despite some of the reviews I've read, not all that hard to read.
2012.06.09 Fushigi Addendum.
Well, the theme of prison reform continued to be fushigi extended: today, when I picked up my weekly Globe and Mail, the cover story was about bail reform: CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A case for bail reform by Kirk Makin June 8, 2012.
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