Amassing A Fortune: Chile, Conquistadores And Afghans
17 December 2009By Jane Stillwater
Writing all that stuff about the 2009 Chilean
presidential elections a few days ago has plum worn me
out -- and now I canīt think of anything else to write
about here in Santiago that would be even half as
exciting. But my hotel has free internet so I feel
like I gotta write about something. I know! I can
write about how freaking WARM it is down here. I knew
I had a reason for coming. Itīs 85 degrees. Perfect.
I went to the main cathedral in Santiago today -- and
somehow that reminded me of the war on Afghanistan.
The cathedral was built by conquistadores after their
war on the local Indios. Itīs the same principle. You
go to war. You amass a fortune. You spend your fortune
on grandiose things. The conquistadores had money
coming out of their ears and built this GLORIOUS
cathedral -- but they built it on the blood and the
bones of the poor slobs that they had conquered.
Is the amassing of fabulous wealth worth all the pain
that it costs? Do the victors really have the
right-of-way? And do they really get away scot-free?
What ever DID become of the conquistadores?
"Okay, Jane you are really wandering off base on this
one...." As usual. But look at it this way. The
conquistadores came here and occupied Chile. The
occupation was profitable. The Bush-Obama
administration has occupied Afghanistan -- and that
occupation is profitable too. But exactly who profits?
In the case of Afghanistan, it is clearly the weapons
manufacturers who have been amassing fortunes (It
surely isnīt me -- or the poor Afghans. Or the rest of
America either).
According to an article in AlterNet, the average
American like you and me is really hurting financially
right now. "Can you imagine an America without a
strong middle class? If you can, would it still be
America as we know it? Today, one in five Americans is
unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work.
One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on
their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in
default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on
food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for
bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped
more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has
left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens
to put ten million homeowners out on the street."
And have the weapons manufacturers, like the
conquistadores, used their wealth to build cathedrals
too? Get cracking, you guys! I want to see some bell
towers and stained glass produced really soon -- or at
least some mosques as nice as Al Aqas or the Dome of
the Rock.
Meanwhile back in old-time Santiago, the
conquistadores had obviously been living high on the
hog -- if judging by their cathedral is any rule of
thumb.
And in Afghanistan? Like the Indios in the old days in
Chile, most Afghans today are the poorest of the poor.
And if the Bush-Obama administration really wanted to
put an end to the Afghan occupation, it would simply
spend its billions on improving the conditions of the
Afghans instead of spending it on weapons.
I really enjoyed visiting the cathedral in Santiago.
And a whole bunch of Chilean Indios died to build it.
And if they want to stop being hypocritical in
Afghanistan, the weapons manufacturers should start
building cathedrals there too because they appear to
be the conquistadores of today.
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EsinIslam.Com
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