Connections

Usurpation of symbols and slogans.

A favorite elephant within an elephant within an elephant--from India

I love elephants and have quite a collection of them though I can only think of two which were not  gifts from one of the 400 international adults we've hosted in our home since 1980.  The one above, brought to me from India by my husband,  is actually three elephants carved from one piece of stone.  Some of my favorites are elephant jewelry but I rarely wear them because elephants have been co-opted by an ideology I strongly disagree with. 

When we were younger, we always put out the American flag on Flag Day and Independence Day.  Then in the late 60s the "love it or leave it" crowd began to paste flags, along with that slogan, in the back window of their vehicles.  And more recently, patriotism has become associated with religious fanaticism.  I just cannot figure out what is appropriate about playing religious songs during the 7th Inning Stretch of baseball games.  I am patriotic, love our country and support our troops. I still stand, honor the flag and proudly sing the Star Spangled Banner to begin the game.  However, I usually go for ice cream when God Bless America or America the Beautiful is sung between the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning and, sadly, we no longer fly the flag at our home.

I used to pride myself on being "fair and balanced."  Now even that pronouncement comes with a paragraph of disclaimers.

What I continue to do, however, is hold fast to multiple options instead of "either-or" dichotomies, advocate the scientific method for determining the soundness of scientific claims, and support research on problematic social issues in order to find viable solutions--not to produce topics for political propaganda and/or financial gain.

I am thankful that no offensive cause has yet commandeered any of my favorite symbolic birds, the corvids (crows, magpies and jays), as its mascot.  I suppose crows are too in-your-face and raucous for most organizations, certainly not  appropriate for a political organization catering to the corporate elite.

Neruda and The Inauguration!

I receive periodic newsletters from the Red Poppy which is a group celebrating Pablo Neruda's life and writings--and also has a progressive populist political leaning.  Today the newsletter featured this poem which represents my views on this inauguration day.  For me it is a sad day for our country.  I hope our country can survive four more years of mismanagement, deception and greed.

"The United Fruit Co." .

When the trumpet sounded, everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehovah distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
The Fruit Company Inc.
reserved the juiciest for itself,
the central coast of my land,
the sweet waist of America.
It re-baptized the lands
"Banana Republics"
and on the sleeping dead,
on the restless heroes
who'd conquered greatness,
liberty and flags,
it founded a comic opera:
it alienated free wills,
gave crowns of Caesar as gifts,
unsheathed jealousy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soppy
with humble blood and marmelade,
drunken flies that buzz
around common graves,
circus flies, learned flies
adept at tyranny.

The Company disembarks
among the blood-thirsty flies,
brim-filling their boats that slide
with the coffee and fruit treasure
of our submerged lands like trays.

Meanwhile, along the sugared up
abysms of the ports,
indians fall over, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls, a thing
without a name, a fallen number,
a bunch of dead fruit
spills into the pile of rot.

-Translated by Jack Hirschman from The Essential Neruda

En espanol:

"La United Fruit Co."

Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo
todo preparado en la tierra
y Jehová repartió el mundo
a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, y otras entidades:
la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
la dulce cintura de América.
Bautizó de nuevo sus tierras
como "'Repúblicas Bananas",
y sobre los muertos dormidos,
sobre los héroes inquietos
que conquistaron la grandeza,
la libertad y las banderas,
estableció la ópera bufa:
enajenó los albedríos,
regaló coronas de César,
desenvainó la envidia, atrajo
la dictadura de las moscas,
moscas Trujillo, moscas Tachos,
moscas Carias, moscas Martínez,
moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas
de sangre humilde y mermelada,
moscas borrachas que zumban
sobre las tumbas populares,
moscas de circo, sabias moscas
entendidas en tiranía.

Entre las moscas sanguinarias
la Frutera desembarca,
arrasando el café y las frutas
en sus barcos que deslizaron
como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.

Mientras tanto, por los abismos
azucarados de los puertos,
caían indios sepultados
en el vapor de la mañana:
un cuerpo rueda, una cosa
sin nombre, un número caído
un racimo de fruta muerta
derramada en el pudridero.
          --Pablo Neruda--

APEC flag

One of many areas in Chile that flew the APEC flag

We left Chile two days before the Asian Pacific Economic Conference began.and four days before 30,000 people in Valparaiso protested against President Bush and his policies.  During the entire week prior to the conference we saw highly visible  beefed-up security everywhere.  As if Bush and his policies  hadn't already sufficiently  tarnished the reputation of Americans around the world, his official tantrum demanding that all other heads of state go through a metal detector before he would attend the official APEC gala and dinner in his honor was the final embarrassment.  Kudos to Chile's President Lagos for making a stand and canceling the entire affair and letting the world know why.

A platoon of Chilean security had blocked his lead agent from following him into a dinner when the president, who had been posing for photographs with wife Laura Bush, noticed the shoving match, doubled back, reached into the scrum, and pulled the agent out.

Television cameras caught the US leader shaking his head and adjusting his shirt cuffs after the incident.

The White House later made light of the incident with spokesman Scott McClellan joking: "The president is someone who tends to delegate, but every now and then he's a hands-on kind of guy."

Chilean officials also downplayed the glitch as an isolated "minor incident" but on Sunday another security squabble, this one over US plans to run the 400 guests at a banquet in Bush's honor through a metal detector, led Chile   to scrap the feast and replace it with a 20-person working dinner.

"I won't let them do that to my guests," Chilean President Ricardo Lagos was quoted as saying by a foreign ministry official. US officials did not dispute the thrust of that account.

The incidents were covered in detail by leading US newspapers, including a front page story in the Washington   Post, and the New York Times reported that Chilean officials had been appalled by the demands of Bush's security team.

"Can you imagine someone like the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court having to submit to an inspection by gringo security agents in order to get into our own seat of government?" the Times quoted one person who had been scheduled to attend Sunday's banquet.

"That's an affront no Chilean was going to tolerate, and Lagos had no choice but to act the way he did," the man told the newspaper. The entire article can be read here.

Several days later one of my more conservative friends in Chile wrote me in Spanish, "Tu presidente está completamente loco," which translates to, "Your president is completely crazy."

Actually Bush may be more aware than I gave him credit for:  Perhaps he knows how much he is hated and distrusted around the world and is rightfully paranoid.

However, now my foreign friends are asking me, "Why would your country re-elect this man."  I just hang my head in embarrassment and say, "I really don't know."