Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> ?Doug:
> ?? ? Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, Grenada, El Salvador?
> ??
> ?? yeah, and look what happened to them
> ?
> ?Not much really beyond what had already been wrong with them. They were all
> ?backward semi-feudal countries, revolution was a desperate attempt to
> ?overthrow the hated ruling classes, but did little to change the effects of
> ?centuries of backwardness. Their effect was similar to that of aspirin on a
> ?HIV patient. Their failures were a result of the condition of the patient
> ?rather than the influence of a witch doctor aka the US.
>
> The US invaded Grenada, sponsored long, vicious proxy wars against
> the rest. Did you forget those pesky details?
They were not semi-feudal; they were western colonies. It is unimaginable that anyone who claims to be literate could forget the pesky details of the ravaging of these nations by the u.s. or by u.s. supported regimes. Between the victory of the Sandinistas and the beginning of the Contra war Nicaragua was doing rather well. The ruling classes of Nicaragua & El Salvador were vicious but not even semi-semi-semi "feudal" classes. The chatter among the ruling families of El Salvador during the internal conflict of the '80s was to the effect that in the early '30s they had needed to slaughter 50,000 peasants to reestablish order; they wondered how many it would take this time. (I'm not sure what the final death toll was.) Bombing with u.s.-made planes, u.s.-supplied white-phosphorous bombs (worse than napalm), flown by u.s. trained pilots went on for years. Archbishop Romero sent a pleading letter to President Carter asking him to stop supporting the slaughter of the El Salvadoran people. Carter didn't even reply. Romero was assassinated. On the day of his funeral the army/police pulled off a massacre of mourners in the plaza before the cathedral. There is a huge amount of available literature on this, much of it written in simple enough terms even for a racist such as Wojtek. The label "semi-feudal" from someone who claims to be a scholar can't be described as anything else than a racist epithet.
Carrol