Jim Devine wrote:
"call me a crude materialist, but it's not just a "belief." It's also
the facts that (1) the US media find more to broadcast about national
events; (2) the event involved the US government, the most powerful in
the world; (3) it involved NASA, a government organization that (despite
its military connections and privatization) is overwhelmingly supported
by people in the US and gets a lot of support around the world; and (4)
the US is currently the most powerful country in the world."
Not crude at all. Someone once said something like "Ten deaths are a
tragedy, 10,000 deaths a problem in public sanitation." One could add
that the 10 deaths are tragic only if the media tell us about them. I
think the best commentary was written about 60 years ago -- Carrol
Deportee
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps.
You are flying them back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
My father's own father he waded that river,
They stole all the money he made in his life.
My sisters and brothers come working the fruit trees
And rode the truck til they took down and died.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted.
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to the Mexican border.
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains,
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river -- we died just the same.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon --
A fireball of lightning which shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just . . . deportees.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit --
To fall like dry leaves, to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
Goodbye my to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria.
You won't have a name when you fly the big airplane
And all they will call you will be deportee.
