Beware of the jaded American

   I think that I'm becoming more and more and more jaded as the years go on.
I cite my indifference to the environmental atrocities that Chevron has perpetrated
in the third world recently.  Don't get me wrong, it's not a sense of indifference
born out of a lack of empathy for the borders behind my own home country.
Rather..... my indifference stems from the simple realization that the third world is
essentially the wild wild west.  A company like Chevron has money and power and those
two elements alone are enough for a corporate colossus to create an unchecked fiefdom of
unethical behavior.  I watched the video of one of the locals talking about the land that
Chevron had contaminated in his village and I couldn't help but thinking...... this man is
essentially signing his own death warrant by speaking out.  If Chevron doesn't buy his
silence or use the legal process to skate away with a slap on its collective wrist, there is a
good chance that this brave farmer won't ultimately live to see justice done anyway.
Indeed, the third world isn't like our government here in the great USA.  Our government
believes in the old death by a thousand cuts methodology.  Often times, OUR government
slowly squeezes its dissenters until they are finally forced to cry uncle.  In the third world,
dissenters are usually eradicated by despots with fatalistic problem solving skills.  Here's
hoping that one man's bravery doesn't end up costing a family their father.  Here's hoping
that one man's bravery doesn't end up making a widow out of his wife.  Remember, the
third world is the place where a man like Che Guevara was essentially led to the slaughter
by the very people he tried to liberate.  In America, we tune revolutionaries like Che
out if we don't like their message.   In the third world, idealists like Che are betrayed
and ultimately fed to slaughter.  Then again, maybe there is always a price
to be paid and a sacrifice to made in the name of justice and or idealism.