THE WAR ROOM

There is no other one but you.

“What is that droopy dog on Looney Tunes called?” “Droopy.” “Yeah… That one…”

The saddest part is… this is a male horse.

Osgood: You must be quite a girl.

Daphne: Wanna bet?

I never feel like doing anything in the fall.  Boo.  Revitalization overdue.

To donate you can go to any Bank of America and donate to the following account:
Account Name: Gahutier Eduardo Loredo Transplant Fund
Account #: 518001091377

As many of you already may know, at least I hope so, there has been a clusterfuck of injustice shown towards a fourteen year old boy named Eduardo Loredo, who became mortally ill in June due his development of cardiomyopathy.  The only cure for this ravaging, blood-thirsty disease is a heart transplant, which he is currently being denied due to his lack of health insurance and half a million dollars for with which to pay for the surgery and the follow-up care.  Perhaps the biggest key role throughout this entire dystopian nightmare is that Eduardo has the special distinction of being known as what we would call an “illegal immigrant”.  Due to this special status, which was obviously beyond his control, he has basically been sentenced to death row.  His sentence is two to three years, but the power(s) that be may seek to claim him at any moment. 

The only hope for Eduardo is for outside forces to raise half of a million dollars to save his life.  For anyone, this is an insane amount of money in order to raise in such a short time.  I, myself, just polished off the last thing in my fridge, a few cuts of cooked bacon and I spent my last five dollars on a pack.  I don’t know where my next meal is coming from and I’m up to my ears in desperation, a quiet sickening feeling that I haven’t felt in years, not since I was thieving food in order to survive.  However, I know that my desperation is absolutely nothing in comparison with the desperation that Eduardo and his family feel.  Half a million dollars is an amount that has only existed in our dreams and we strive every day busting our asses for pennies compared to the fat cats that sit upon our society, squashing it under the weight of their enormous greed.  I know that despite how black everything gets, I will most likely survive to tell the tale.

It’s not the same for Eduardo.

What in the hell has infiltrated our society so deeply that it has poisoned people’s minds against allowing the most basic human instinct, the preservation of life?  Have we really let them lobotomize us to the point that we only see words, and not a young teenage boy that WILL die if he is not helped.  Illegal, Latino, Immigrant.  Put those words aside for a moment.  They have no business being involved in this situation.  Now think, a fourteen year old boy will die before his seventeenth birthday because of our selfishness.  Our unwillingness to reach out a helping hand to someone who truly needs it because he came to us with a negative prepackaged label and image that we judge him by and not as a boy in a fight for his life.

If we do not raise this money, Eduardo will never graduate from high school.  Eduardo will never go to college.  Eduardo will never become a productive member of this society.  He will be robbed of the most precious commodity in the world, life. 

What is going on here is homicide.  This is a blatant crime against humanity.  The only difference between what’s going on here and a murder is that we are watching him die, slowly, every day.   We have the chance to correct this wrong, which is an opportunity that does not come by very often.  I, for one, will not give up.  I will not turn my back on a dying child.  I don’t give a shit if I have to sell all of my belongings just to help out, I’ve lived in the streets before.  Like I said, I will survive, he may not.

I have to believe in truth and I have to believe in justice.  I have to believe that everything I fight for is not in vain.  This may be naïve, but there are worse things than naiveties.  I have to believe that Eduardo will be with us for many years to come.  I have to believe that we can remember how to be human beings and not just races and nationalities.  If I didn’t believe this I would have to put a gun in my mouth because I refuse to live in a world without hope.

So now I call on you, all of those who follow these ramblings of mine.  Let’s prove that humanity isn’t hung up on a meat hook.  Let’s band together and show the world what we are capable of.  Let’s make them very, very afraid of what we are capable of. 

Come to this and show your support for human life without boundaries. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=226285005660&ref=mf

I may be scooping moths out of my pockets but I will be there, performing and doing my moral and ethical duty.  I will be there to prove that this world can be a better place, we just need the numbers.  What the else better are you going to do today than to help save a child’s life?  The black cloud of judgment hangs low over all of us, threatening to wrap its fingers around our throats.  Resist them and fight.

I foresee the coming of a zombie insurrection.  I see bodies rising from the earth steaming with newfound breath and a genuine appreciation for the second chance at life.  I see mud falling off of dreaded hair, flesh growing back over mottled and mutilated bones, rotting skulls being reborn from decay, eyes revealed from newly formed lashes.  Their legs walk drunkenly like sailors on dry land but their steps even out as they come together in a sea of raised fists. 

            And what a sea it will be!  A rolling sea, a ferocious sea, a churling sea.  A sea with waves that plunder off in every direction incapacitating everything that dares to stand in the way.  Not even those loan wayward survivors on the roof waving pathetic white flags will be spared, the shock will be that cruel and violent.  It will be the black, consuming monsoon of the New Order.

            It will be the moment of our salvation.  I speak of zombies, not as the undead, but the disenfranchised, the exploited, the raped, the murdered, the tortured, the killed, the snitches, the starving, the infirm, the political prisoners, the 99% of us that are kept deliberately away from resources that should be allocated so that there may be enough for us all to live.  The victims of war and abuse, of someone else laying their hands on you or yours, the pawns that they use for their gain only to throw them into mass graves, child soldiers.  The indigenous peoples who have been removed forcibly from their homes in order to make way for 500 years of repression of a Eurocentric persuasion.  The ghettos that breed racial tension and prejudice.  The workers who slave their whole lives for some slick rat bastard to have four Lamborghinis while they’re left counting pennies by candlelight.  Those who continually fight the good fight every day without rest.  The prisoners who rot in privately owned prisons that make profits out of putting young black men behind bars.  The ones who just can’t catch a break.  The unwilling agents of corruption.  It is of these people that I speak, for all of us.  We, who have been enslaved by a society of cruel and malicious intent, the benefit of the few over the misery of billions.

            The disparity of power and numbers in our world has become an unsustainable system of greed, corruption and exploitation.  Disastrous economic policies have crippled nations and brought an onslaught of instability throughout the base of our world.  Corrupt leaders keep conniving and enslaving populations to keep them under control and playing the game that’s rigged for only them to win.  Every once in a while there is one that gives hope to them, that breaks free and becomes a telenovela star.

            If you look at history, at the governments that controlled people the most, you will find that it is horrifyingly easy to dupe a seemingly educated population into a mass-controlled freak out.  With an influx of propaganda, education and social reconstruction it is beyond simple to transform a society within a matter of years, if not less.  Imagine the possibilities of the innate human capability to adapt and thrive in almost any situation.   The human spirit is indomitable, as we have seen through the words of rebels who may exist in hell on earth but are still steadfast to their cause.  There always have been certain, undeniable truths throughout the twisted history of humankind, truths that rise up again and again in the face of almost certain doom.  That is because among us, as an intellectual species at best, we recognize that everyone has the right to live their own way, to think their own thoughts and dream their own dreams without impediment.  We, as Americans and supposed members of the free world take this for granted.  But all the time I have in the back of my mind the people that were tortured and thrown naked out of airplanes over the ocean.  Sleeping with the fishes was not even an image, but a grotesque reality.  People that said less than what I am saying now.  Our government has killed for less, and they will continue to kill for less.  As they say, I’m living off of borrowed time and I’m just waiting for it to run out.

            We, as a species are destined to be free.  Why would we be granted this access to knowledge and betterment if we were not?  At the heart of every human being, we wish to be secure in our lives, to be secure in what we are doing, looking for the hope to better our situation.  Even the Richie Riches recognize this, which is what leads to exploitation.  We maintain a standard of living that cannot exist in this world.  Look at yourself, you are better off than billions of people in this world.  You feel that it is your right to educate yourself and to read my words without fear of persecution, at least at a basic level.  You have not yet thought about your right to drink a glass of water that is free from feces.  You have not yet thought about your right to shit in a toilet and not in a hole in the ground.  You have not yet thought about your right to an education based upon the fact that your parents are not criminals.  You have not yet thought about your right to wear shoes.  You have not thought about your right to collect change you find on the streets.

            I am conscious of these little rights that we enjoy every waking moment of every day and even when I sleep, leaving me paralyzed in fear when I wake up in the morning.  To even begin to contemplate the suffering that occurs in this world is a caustic, horrid task, but a very necessary one.  Without knowing our enemy, and what we are up against, there is no possible triumph for us.  It means that we have to live with the blinding horror every day and acknowledge it in every way possible.  The first step they always say is to admit that you have a problem.  Admit to your ignorance, so that one day you may be able to find the light of truth.

Alright, and finally, the Conclusion of the Immigration article.  If anyone would like to see our list of sources just click on the picture!

Conclusion 



Commercial agreements based on the doctrines of Neoliberalism have led to what Antonia Juhasz calls corporate globalization (Juhasz, 8). In Latin America the patter of corporate globalization gives birth to the following pattern: 1) Legally binding agreements lead to domestic and international investors (private lenders, banks, financial institutions) to monopolize the industrial and banking sectors of the domestic economy. This, in turn, leads almost always to massive layoffs. As part of the agreement governments are asked to greatly reduce the amounts of taxable profits. With massive unemployment and lack of resources due to the reduction in the tax base the government in question asks for borrowed money from international lenders in order to try to obtain resources that might be used in order to create jobs or needed infrastructure or to pay for products the country was able to produce before barriers to trade were opened according to neoliberal principles. The amount of money that is lent either by private bankers or the International Monetary Fund is tied to a set of obligations or collateral. Among these obligations are: 1) The sell of state enterprises to private international investors 2) Reduction of the Budget (this usually means massive cuts to things like social programs) 3) liberalization of the banking industry (meaning that either national or foreign investors can appropriate as many banks as they desire). The latter set of policies is followed by more unemployment, an even lower taxable base, and difficulty in obtaining resources to pay the foreign debt. This need to pay the foreign debt is usually followed by another loan which is tied to the conditions mentioned above. The result of such a cycle is the monopolization of Latin American economies; high rates of unemployment, lack of accessibility to credit, ever increasing need for money and declining power vis-a-vi lenders. The above mentioned cycle creates a set of social and economic circumstances that makes individuals desperate enough to cross the border illegally in the United States. 

The migration process is not met with a change in the rules of commercial agreements that shape economies, but rather the method chosen has been to increase militarization in the border as well as an intensification of the economic measures that have increased the need for Hispanic families to cross the United States border legally and illegally. Not surprisingly increments in the militarization of the United States border only put more power in the hands of human traffickers by increasing the amount of money they charge families who want to migrate.

Since the beginning of the militarization process human traffickers have had to choose more dangerous areas from where to cross thereby increasing the chances that the aforesaid families will die in the process. Also, desperate workers tend not to demand much from employer making it easier for Latin American workers to be exploited as well as to begin the process of lowering standards of living in the host country by making one labor force against the other. 

The actions of particular groups of people in the arenas of politics and economics are bound to affect the majority of the population who is not involved in the decision making process. The clear long-term trend has been one in which the rules of international commerce and finance have shaped the economies of the continent (and by now much of the world) in such a way that unskilled and by now skilled workers of the United States and Latin America are put in a kind of competition that allows for the exploitation of Latin American workers and the lowering of standards of living in the United States.

Finally, it is important to point out that, even though we have concentrated in detailing the politico-economic processes that have led to Mexican immigration, much of the same economic cycle described above is true of most of Latin America and now it is making its presence felt through the outsourcing of American industries to China and India well as the regressive character of the American tax system, the trade deficit and the high levels of debt needed to sustain the purchasing power of the American people, and the reduction in investment in infrastructure and public programs. 



Up until this date neither the mainstream media nor politicians in Congress have educated the American population about the collective rules of commercial behavior that push people of Latin America to risk their lives as well as the lives of their children in order to survive. Whoever is interesting in addressing the issue of immigration in an intellectually honest and moral manner will have to deal with the politico-economic conditions and the power groups that bring about such conditions.