inkbluesky

early 20th century acrobatic act. ‘adaptive logic: A behavior has adaptive logic if it tends to increase the number of offspring that an individual contributes to the next and following generations. If such a behavior is even partly genetically determined, it will tend to become widespread in the population. Then, even if circumstances change such that it no longer provides any survival or reproductive advantage, the behavior will still tend to be exhibited – unless it becomes positively disadvantageous in the new environment.’ which explains a lot about modern culture.

banana wallpaper

Intrigue. Power. Corruption. Death. Sex. The history of oil has nothing on that of the yellow fruit

The mass-produced banana first came to the United States in the 19th century. As the next century rolled on, buccaneering banana men pioneered such innovative business practices as propping up puppet heads of states throughout Latin America, keeping them in power through corporate largesse, and exploiting local workers, when not actually encouraging local governments to enslave or kill them. By building railroads, in exchange for land for plantations, United Fruit tightly entwined itself with the economies of many countries, and came to own huge swaths of Central America. Its reach was so extensive that it became known as “the Octopus.”

I paraphrase , but someone once said that real democracy seemed like a forever unfulfilled promise. The point was that as much as people like Jefferson and Madison had great put down some great principles in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights we have struggled literally from day one to live up to those ideals. Many of those that have twisted and perverted those ideals were corporations like United Fruit/Chiquita. In their guest book were the names of United States senators, scientists, CIA agents and Honduran presidents. All for money, power and in this case so Americans and Europeans could have a nice bowel of perfect yellow bananas on the table.

United Fruit was not to be crossed. In Colombia in 1928, 32,000 banana workers went on strike, demanding such niceties as toilet facilities at plantations. In a massacre later immortalized in literature by Gabriel García Márquez in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the military killed 1,000 unarmed striking workers and their families in the town square in Cienaga after Sunday church services.

Innocent until proven guilty. If someone declares that there will be no acquittals they don’t buy into that bedrock principle of justice, From Chief Prosecutor To Critic at Guantanamo

Air Force Col. Morris Davis instead took the witness stand to declare under oath that he felt undue pressure to hurry cases along so that the Bush administration could claim before political elections that the system was working.

[  ]…Davis said he wants to wait until the cases — and the military commissions system — have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

“He said, ‘We can’t have acquittals,’ ” Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. ” ‘We’ve been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.’ “

Legal prosecutions can be tricky, but if you haven’t coerced information from a suspect through torture and the evidence is on your side the odds are in the prosecutor’s favor. The torture and evidence part seems to be a little problem for the Bushies, but never the less there will be “no acquittals”.