The AP story described it this way: U.S. Border Patrol agents opened fire along the Rio Grande Saturday after being pelted by rocks from the other side of the river.
It was not known by U.S. officials whether anyone was killed. If so, it would not be the first time. Previously, a 15-year-old boy was murdered by trigger-happy agents after he threw rocks at them.
I suppose it’s an even fight, heavily armed thugs against rock-throwing kids. Sounds a lot like the West Bank.
Border Patrol spokesman Henry Mendiola said that no agents were injured. He also pointed out that other border clashes had involved drug smugglers. Evidently, the U.S. believes that only drug runners would throw rocks at its agents.
As the rocks were thrown, Mendiola said that at least one agent “feared for his life.” Oh, I’ll fucking bet.
We’ve got this situation, you see, in the United States, where every significant political figure and both major parties are hip-deep in lies and demagoguery. Nobody’s telling the truth and nobody’s acknowledging what’s actually happening. Who pays dearly for this moral lapse? That’s right.
The right wing describes it as a problem of illegal immigration and law enforcement. People are coming over the border because they want the great benefits of living in the U.S. without bothering with legality. These trespassers are taking jobs away from real Americans. They crowd out schools, suck up free health care, and pay no taxes. They also commit lots of crimes and are protected from the consequences by liberals and socialists.
Much of what thinks of itself as the left in the U.S., including I suppose many Democrats and even backers of Barack Obama, takes a different view. These immigrants would like to be citizens except we make it so hard for them. They are victims whose circumstances should be alleviated by a ‘path to citizenship.’
As a political issue, that’s how it falls. The Republicans want the law enforced and all of these foreigners thrown out; of course, they don’t understand, or don’t wish to, that these ‘illegals’ pay taxes and never collect the benefits, such as Social Security, which accrue to citizens. The Democrats want the law changed so that they can stay without fear; also, the Democrats want their votes.
Both parties apparently believe that ‘illegal’ immigrants desire nothing more than the chance to become U.S. citizens in this greatest of all nations, which is a crock.
The U.S. is not in fact the greatest of all nations. Mostly, the illegals do not want to become citizens. They would far rather have not left home. They miss their own countries, their own families in some cases, their own cultures. They are here because the policies of the United States, often in league with the ruling classes of their home countries, have systematically destroyed their livelihoods.
In other words, due to NAFTA and other colonial imperialist policies crammed down the throats of Central and South American countries, a lot of people can’t make a living without coming to the U.S.
A real analysis of the economic vectors will have to wait for a day when I’ve got time to run the numbers. But in the meantime, consider that, as an example, NAFTA has crushed Mexican agriculture, at least in terms of family farms. The empire has cranked out more profit for agribusiness and screwed the ordinary farmer; the new rules have had a catastrophic impact on the prices of local produce and manufacture to the degree that people can’t make a living. If they don’t want to get into the drug and weapons trade, and if they don’t want to starve, they find a way to get into the U.S.
Don’t make any mistake about this. U.S.-based corporations are thrilled to have a large population of ‘illegals’ inside our borders. It drives down the cost of the labor pool for ‘unskilled’ work, squeezes young citizens into the army where they can be turned into units for international business projects, and distracts the boneheads, including a lot of Tea Partiers, from the real source of their problems.
Congress, meanwhile, the most useless aggregation of human flesh seen since Rush Limbaugh shared a limo with Michele Bachmann, pacifies its sponsors and holds off the rabble by building electric fences and digging moats.
So we’ve got kids throwing rocks at border patrol cops, and we’ve got the cops, ‘fearing for their lives’, shooting back.
It’s pretty much hopeless to expect any truth about all of this in the U.S. media. These suckers take their cue from the owners, and the owners don’t think North Americans can handle reality and they’re probably right.
Using a range of paramilitary operations, and working through such CIA fronts as AID, the U.S. destabilizes governments, corrupts officials, trains death squads, kills where necessary, and pretends that these things are ‘partnerships’ concerning matters such as ‘drug trafficking.’ A few days ago, the rulers of Mexico and the U.S. completed the rigging of the Mexican presidential election. The chief opposition, a moderate described as ‘leftist’ by the whores in the U.S. press, c.f. the stories in your local paper, is said to be complaining irrationally about the unfavorable result.
In Honduras recently, a nation where the U.S., in league with the military, overthrew the democratically-elected government in 2009 –– Obama pretended dismay but made the deal anyhow –– there are ‘anti-drug’ helicopter gunships killing innocents in ‘raids’ which have nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with domestic repression.
John Perkins, whose book, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ has pulled back the curtain on U.S. practices in that region of the world, says that his job was to visit newly-elected Presidents, congratulate them, and offer them the choice. We would make them rich or we would overthrow them, maybe kill them. That’s U.S. foreign policy. That’s who we are in the world.
