Vapid, Useless Air-heads and Death Squads

What a bizarre title, 'eh? (Although cryptic post-titles appear to be a compulsion with me.)

But I've written about death squads before. They're seen as a necessity by the elites if they're going to perpetuate their systems of domination and exploitation. And they put the lie to claims that we're concerned about "development" and "democratization."

Death squads inflict terror and horror on civilian populations, in order to dissuade them from demanding social justice and genuine democracy. They are designed to keep people subservient to systems of mal-development, social inequality and political oligarchy. They are designed to perpetuate a system whereby the wealth of "Less Developed Countries" is priced low for the benefit of the "Developed Countries" and to protect the fortunes of those few compradors who benefit by their relationship with the "Developed Countries" selling them coffee or mining rights or cocoa , or whatever, and who dominate their countries political systems to help the "Developed Countries" to keep them in a pattern of raw materials provision and mal-development.

Here's an example of how death squads work:

On March 7, 1980, two weeks before the assassination, a state of siege had been instituted in El Salvador, and the war against the population began in force (with continued US support and involvement). The first major attack was a big massacre at the Rio Sumpul, a coordinated military operation of the Honduran and Salvadoran armies in which at least 600 people were butchered. Infants were cut to pieces with machetes, and women were tortured and drowned. Pieces of bodies were found in the river for days afterwards. There were church observers, so the information came out immediately, but the mainstream US media didn't think it was worth reporting.

Peasants were the main victims of this war, along with labor organizers, students, priests or anyone suspected of working for the interests of the people. In Carter's last year, 1980, the death toll reached about 10,000, rising to about 13,000 for 1981 as the Reaganites took command.

In October 1980, the new archbishop condemned the "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population" waged by the security forces. Two months later they were hailed for their "valiant service alongside the people against subversion" by the favorite US "moderate," Jose Napoleon Duarte, as he was appointed civilian president of the junta.

Okay, ... you can all look for more stuff on your own. ALL of you. This shit is still going on in Colombia, Iraq, and other places.

So, what about the vapid airhead? Well, a while ago, when I wrote about a racist moron's book, a number of that idiot's fan-boys came and condemned me for not knowing what I was talking about.

One of them, a "Mark" fellow, didn't really have anything to add to the discussion other than to note that I said that I didn't have the time to discuss all the points being raised but that I was able to type out several thousand words in my replies. Which was true, I didn't have the time, but I was being polite to the several people who showed up. Besides that, "Mark" (I suppose) tried to argue that the Republican Party of the United States is controlled by its base, among whom, John McCain is a popular candidate.

However, in a later post I wrote the following:

But if we're going to talk about the working class, in this era of globalization that means everyone. From the displaced manufacturing workers of the North, to the underpaid miners of Russia, to the sweatshop workers of Asia, to the oppressed plantation workers of Central America, to the displaced peasants of Mexico, to the exploited miners of Africa.

Every instance where the capitalist system uses its wealth and power to keep commodity prices low, via death squads and corrupt governments and invasions of oil-producing nations, ... all this has to be factored into the "success story" that is globalization.

To which "Mark" in an air-headed attempt at humour replied:

Speaking as one member of the oppressed Canadian Proletariat to another, those death squads in the motherland (I live abroad now) are quite ruthless, eh?

Now, here's the thing. Obviously I never wrote that death squads are operating in Canada. But I don't think "Mark" believed that either. The most charitable interpretation I can give this is that is that "Mark" thought I was indulging in over-the-top leftist rhetoric which he thought he'd puncture. However, it remains a fact that death squads are real. Their atrocities are documented. They were ubiquitous in the US fiefdoms of Latin America, and are a constant presence wherever US interests are threatened by organized and armed opposition. Sometimes they're employed in areas where the opposition isn't armed. And even when the opposition is armed, the death squads usually do their gruesome work on unarmed civilians. And in those places where the opposition is armed, it is usually do to the historically established fact that the US and its puppet-state governments employ violence against any forms of organized opposition.

Meanwhile, "Mark" and other dimwitted denizens of the "developed" countries continue to bitch about their taxes, listen to corporate news propaganda and/or right-wing radio, follow their favourite teams, and vote for the mainstream political parties that sell them and pretty much everyone else down the river. All the while living in blissful ignorance, and putrid, cowardly delusion, about the nature of the system they support.

The existence of death squads, ... the persistent endurance of death squads, says something about a political system. It says that it is inhuman. It says that it is fundamentally undemocratic at its roots. The endurance of death squads has discredited this entire experiment in capitalist "democracy" and the denial of air-heads such as this "Mark" character do nothing to change this. Their denial does help to perpetuate it though.