Open Letter to Mr. President of the Republic Don Sebastián Piñera, a translation

This is an Open Letter to Mr. President of the Republic Don Sebastián Piñera, concerning the approval of the HidroAysén Dam Project, on 9 May, 2011. My English translation follows the original castellano.

Thank you very much to Brian Patrick Corcoran for forwarding this to me.

CARTA ABIERTA AL SEÑOR

PRESIDENTE DE LA REPÚBLICA

DON SEBASTIÁN PIÑERA

 

Señor Presidente:

Con el respeto que me merece su  persona y su investidura, me permito en mi calidad de ciudadano libre de compromisos políticos, empresariales e institucionales,  plantearle algunas preguntas y un comentario en relación al megaproyecto Hidroaysén, próximo a ser votado en cuanto a su factibilidad.

So what does abortion have to do with government fiscal responsibility?

Margaret Sanger, Founder , in 1916, of Planned Parenthood
(image via Wikipedia)

Other than possibly reducing the number of dependents upon the state who have been born into circumstances where they hardly have a chance at making decent lives for themselves, the two have little to do with each other. Yet this is a priority for people who claim to be crusading for liberty and ... no, not justice for all, but rather, freedom from the oppression of justice for all (and taxes).

A Rambling Diatribe Against How The US Conducts Its Latin American Foreign Policy: or How I Learned Who Exactly Is In Charge of this Ship of State Department

On Tuesday, 5 April, the US Ambassador to Ecuador, Heather Hodges, was declared to be persona non grata by the Ecuadorean government. At issue was an article in the Spanish newspaper, El País, about a WikiLeaks cable in which the ambassador had expressed her suspicions that police corruption rose all the way up to the level of President Rafeal Correa. When confronted about the allegations, the ambassador refrained from comment, her reason being that the cable had been illegally obtained.

Spiritual Vibrations

5 March, Ash cloud rising from Pu`u `Ō `ō as crater floor collapses
due to magma withdrawal, Kilauea Volcano. 


I was speaking figuratively in referring to Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess who lives in Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, when I wrote:

This force that is welling up from the interior of the planet is another incarnation of Mother River, the Mother of Life, the Nurturer, but also the Destroyer. She is what the Hawaiians call Pele, the Volcano Goddess.

How was I to know that she was so soon to express herself?

No Time for Democracy?

Naomi Klein coined the phrase Disaster Capitalism to describe the way that corporate interests swoop in to take advantage of the state of shock that people are in after a disaster that these interests may or may not have themselves caused. She wrote about it in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in terms of the military coup in Chile that brought Pinochet into power, the gentrification of New Orleans that occurred after Hurricane Katrina, and the bumbled attempt at a corporate takeover of Iraq. She has continued identify “emergency measures” taken that have furthered business interests in the wake of disasters such as the financial meltdown and the earthquake in Haiti. And most recently, she has been talking about the situation in Wisconsin and other states that have manufactured fiscal crises in order to diminish the rights of teachers and other government-paid workers.

The Female Force Erputs

The earthquakes in New Zealand and the tremors that have been shaking the earth all around the Ring of Fire are connected with the events in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The roiling energy that is escaping where it can from underneath the Earth’s crust is being reflected in the uprisings of people who live in the very regions where the chain of humanity reaches far back into history’s depths.

Hope Began Anew

Euardo Galeano
photo by Wikipedia author, Daniel Zanini H

Ojalá podamos ser desobedientes, cada vez que recibimos órdenes que humillan nuestra conciencia o violan nuestro sentido común. †

If only we could be disobedient, each time we receive orders that humiliate our conscience or violate our common sense.

Imagine that – Eduardo Galeano’s wish has come to pass.

There are those who look upon the momentous events in North Africa and the Middle East, at the underlying food crisis at the base of these events, at an uncertain future with fear in their hearts, and then there are those who, like, me, are full of hope.

I am in no way optimistic but I remain a prisoner of hope. ‡