Monday, August 13, 2007

Land Use and Slavery

It does not change. It gets a little better. But it’s still a huge problem.

Land Use Management. People still want to grab land, any land, for themselves. If you can enslave the people who are already on that land to do the work for you--to develop and distribute the resources to you, all the better.

Arabs of Chad are in Darfur, grabbing scrubby farmland. The United States is in Iraq, grabbing oil land. The Israelis and Palestinians fight over rocks and sand in the name of Yahweh and Allah. The Japanese no longer do it, but for centuries they went after Korea and Manchuria...because, why not? Napoleon—nut. North and South America were the biggest land grabs in recent history. I was stopped at an intersection today, looking at a group of three women of European descent. One of them was quite old in olive green support hose and a pleated navy blue skirt. She had a very determined WWII energy about her. She had endured it all. She was appealing in an old world way. She seemed so very English or German or some other Northern European breed standing there on the hot sidewalk, put together, yet disheveled. She seemed so out of place in the brutal, pounding sun of Los Angeles, like a missionary. I really felt like she should go home. All the rest of the white people should follow. I’d go back.

But it’s so difficult now. Who wants to give up all the discount stores, movie theatres and amusement piers? Europeans came here, determined, to satisfy their appetites. Any other human type beasts be damned.

Remember when you were a child and you wanted your sister’s candy? You’d take a look at your sister and imagine her to have the equivalent heft of the button on the pillow of a side chair. She was nothing compared to that peanut butter cup. So you’d march over to her side of the playroom and just take it from her. And all hell would break loose.

This is what we do.

Why we still do it and expect any results other than all out war, I have no idea.