South Of The Border

We have often kidded around, saying things like once certain people leave office, they may be arrested for war crimes and such. Just kidding, really. However, consider these: (the Barbara Bush referred to is the daughter of President Bush) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6688247.stm  
Washington diary: Nature v nation
By Matt Frei 
BBC News, Buenos Aires

  ...Then there is Luis D'Elia, the former secretary of land in the government of President Nestor Kirchner - before he was kicked out last November for being too radical. The war in Iraq has fuelled suspicions about Americans' motives He has turned out to be the Tompkins' most vocal opponent. "The Americans are in cahoots with the Pentagon which, as you know, is building an airbase across the border in Paraguay," he said. "And did you also know?," Mr D'Elia added, "that Barbara Bush came down the other day to buy 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of land in Paraguay?" A stocky man with an angry mien, he unfurls a huge map of Argentina in his office and points out all the pieces of "tierra gringa", the gringo lands, like a general pinpointing the enemy...




http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IC14Dj04.html THE ROVING EYE What drives biofuel Bush? By Pepe Escobar ...Diversification rules. Oil is a thing of the past. Jeb Bush and his Brazilian Green Sheikh pals are in to make a lot of money. And for a bit of R&R, retired George W can always count on the 100,000-hectare ranch daughter Barbara bought last year in the Paraguayan chaco. It may not be the green, green grass of home, but it certainly beats Fallujah.

http://paraguayparakeet.blogspot.com/2008/03/bushes-and-moons.html Monday, March 3, 2008 The Bushes and the Moons By Ken Layne Mar 2nd 2008 8:30PM Even zealot right-wingers trying to debunk the story only manage to solidify the secret dealings. George W. Bush's seven years in the White House have fueled all kinds of terrible, paranoid conspiracies -- and the greatest, weirdest Bush Conspiracy is the "Exile To Paraguay" tale. The story goes like this: George W. Bush and/or George H.W. Bush bought hundreds of thousands of acres in Paraguay, adjoining a similar spread owned by the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Both massive parcels are hidden within a remote South American wilderness atop the world's biggest freshwater aquifer adjoining a secret U.S. military airbase. All proven to be true. Oh, and there's a special non-extradition law to protect the Bush/Moon families as they enjoy their old age and run drug/weapons smuggling rings, safe from American justice...

This was all news to me - ranches next to Reverend Moon ranches and Paraguay !! of all places...one may as well don some false whiskers and change one's name to Eichmann or Mengele and go into hiding - and came about as I was looking into the following: The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive Aditya Chakrabortty Friday July 4 2008 Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian. The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body... Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush. "It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

Sometimes.... The older I get, the less I understand the things men usually say; the commonplace things. You would think common observations and what not would sort of contain a pure kernel of truth of some sort, admittedly it may be a nonsensical truth, but truth none the less. Something like "Hot enuf fer ya?". Surely this contains a basic truism related to heat and comfort and the uneasy proximity of two individuals constrained to conversation.
Well, I was reading about some observations about God, existence thereof, yea or nay. I was reading that God's existence is often called into question when people stand in the killing fields of our times, looking around at the desolation and destruction, they ask "Where was God when all this was going on?" Why just the killing fields? Is it the blatant nature of their horror? Is not the starvation of many also blatant, also horrific? When elected leaders cause the prices of food to rise so high that people may no longer afford it, is that not a horror? Yet, this horror, even though it is capable of immediate remedial action, will not be remedied, because there already is a large lobby funding its continued existence. The best we can do now, believe it or not, is to try to achieve some sort of modus vivendi where biofuels are still subsidized,and the people who need food may need a subsidy, too.

We will probably continue this until it falls apart, then do something else. In our political lives, we cannot perceive truth or falsity in a moral sense. I have already spoken of this recently in the article on Moral Relativism. There is nothing we like so much as to speak of morality and propound truthes about it.
BUT, our talk of morality...of responsibility, of culpability, of truth and falsehood...of Good and Evil...
It all comes down to: "Hey! Moral enuf fer ya?"