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Letter - 3
Note: This letter was written about the time that President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua was about to be eased out of power by the machinations of the USA. It appeared in the Arab News of 18 November 1988.
When President Bush (Senior) used the words, ‘this little man in his military uniform…’ and the word ‘Skunk’ to refer to President Ortega, he did it with obvious relish.
The United States has always displayed extreme savagery when dealing with the weakest countries of the world. Laos, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Libya… the list goes on. Why? Professor Noam Chomsky wrote in The Guardian of July 22, “They are threatening to carry out independent social, economic and national development outside the framework of American domination and control, and that means they are posing a threat to the whole international system dominated by the United States”.
Jeremy Seabrook in his book, Landscapes of Poverty, posits the theory that the most implacable enemy of wealth is not poverty, but sufficiency. Given the potential for wealth that this world holds, it is not as if we cannot achieve the goal of enough for all. Yet the illusion that there is not enough to go round has to be maintained for the survival of a system that has created the most obscene accumulation of wealth the world has ever known. To promote this benign strategy of getting richer, the poor and the defenseless must be made to forego their sustenance, such as it is. Wealth must come from the very marrow of the poor. The poor may perish, and indeed they do, but poverty itself must ‘thrive’.
Now, if the poor countries of the world are apt to use ‘our raw materials’ for their purposes, that’s a conspiracy that has to be exposed! They must be made to keep their appointed places in our scheme of things!
Easaw Joseph John
Riyadh
