Governor Rick Perry had just signed an order making Texas the first of what is likely to be many states to require that school girls be vaccinated against Human Papiloma Virus (HPV), implementing what at first blush appears to be sensible and humane legislation attempting to prevent the spread of the deadly STD. Perry, who usually votes with the conservative Christians who oppose this order, parted company with them, and little research is required in order to understand why given Perry’s cozy relationship with Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer. Not only is one of Merck’s principal lobbyists Perry’s former chief of staff, but his current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, state legislator, Dianne White Delisi, is the state director of Women In Government. Add to that a $6,000 political contribution from Merck for Perry’s re-election campaign and Merck’s generous donations to Women In Government plus a top official from Merck sitting on the Women In Government business council, and all the dots begin to connect.
Suddenly, Mr. Champion Of Family Values, Rick Perry, has dumped the fervent anti-fornicators of the religious right in favor of remaining in bed with Merck. If we didn’t know about that liaison, and if the governor's order weren't so draconian, we might be tempted to applaud his concern for the health of young Texas women.
Last week in Chile, on the other hand, President Michelle Bachelet took
on the Roman Catholic Church and right-wing opposition there by
signing a decree
that the morning-after pill be available to girls as young as 14, even
as the Constitutional Court of Chile ruled that she could not do so. In
the same week, however, Bachelet held a special ceremony in La Moneda,
Santiago’s presidential palace, celebrating new laws that ensure that
working mothers can nurse their children in the workplace, even when
there is no daycare center on the premises—another long-time taboo in
Chile’s traditionally Catholic, patriarchal milieu. Moreover, Bachelet
affirmed that her administration was “guaranteeing that people have the
tools to exercise a loving, spiritually strong maternity or paternity,
and allowing the bonds between mothers and children to be enriched.”
Say that again Michelle! That people have the
tools to be
good parents? You mean tools like guaranteed daycare for all Chilean
children, which you have instituted since you became president in
March, 2006? You mean a national healthcare system that is now “looking
forward to an unusual
surplus of funds
for 2008 and is currently evaluating how best to spend the unexpected
additional money”? And what about the unprecedented pension plan your
administration is implementing which guarantees that no one need retire
in poverty and that every person over 60 will have all necessary health
care for free? And those generous student loans that can be partially
re-paid through community and professional service instead of
graduating from college with a life-sentence of debt servitude? And the
generous new tax credits and guarantees you are now offering to small
businesses?
Well, every North American is waiting with bated breath to find out how
you will pay for all of this—the inveterate mantra of any society
locked in the jaws of corporate capitalism--those two “c” words so
antithetical to twenty-first century Chile’s other incomprehensibly
important “c” word: copper. It was that industry that helped destroy
Chile in concert with Augusto Pinochet when the infamous
Rothschild-connected Anaconda Copper Company was sucking the life blood
out of the nation’s economy until it was nationalized in the 1970s by
Salvador Allende, one in a long list of reasons for his overthrow by
the CIA.
In
those days, Michelle Bachelet was a teenager—what we in the U.S. might
call a “military brat”, moving from one location to another in Chile as
a result of her father’s position of General in the Chilean Air Force.
A socialist and staunch supporter of Allende, Alberto Bachelet was
arrested, tortured, and died in prison during the Pinochet coup.
Michelle and her mother were also imprisoned and tortured—something she
greatly dislikes talking about—but an agonizing, terrifying ordeal that
profoundly shaped her entire life and helped mould her into the
compassionate physician, parent, and now-chief of state, that she has
become. Of this she often says, “I haven’t had an easy life, but who
has?”
But back to that “c” word. In the same week that Bachelet invited a
group of working mothers and children to La Moneda to celebrate the new
“laws that protect families”, she stood in the middle of a
CODELCO
mining site in the Valparaiso Region of Chile and proclaimed one week
after Goldman Sachs at the Davos world economic summit begged to buy
CODELCO, “The good news is that CODELCO is attractive for people who
have lots of money. The bad news for them is that we are not going to
sell it, because CODELCO is going to remain a State-owned company.” So
while her counterpart in Venezuela is busy nationalizing the petroleum
industry, Bachelet is zealously guarding that precious orange mineral
that finances government policy based on authentic, rather than
ecclesiastically-designed family values, and in her socialist system,
as with that of Chavez, Morales, and Correa, natural resources are
being used on behalf of the citizenry, not to fatten the coffers of
corporate capitalism in cahoots with the state.
Also noteworthy is thatat the same time that the heterosexual lifestyle
is beingsupported in Chile, so, increasingly,is that of the gay and
lesbian community. WhileChile is still a traditional, patriarchal
society strongly influenced by the Catholic Church, acceptance ofits
gay community is growing. In fact, Chile’s Ministry Of National
Property has
given
the Movement For Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH), an
abandoned government building for its headquarters, and the
organization will be able to use the space for the next five years. For
the $12,500 of restoration work that will be required before the
building is usable, the government granted MOVILH a government subsidy.
While this kind of support is not equivalent to the legalization of gay
and lesbian marriages, we need only ask: When was the last time the
most liberal U.S. presidential administration inthe nation'shistory
demonstrated even this much support of the gay community?
In Chile and overall in Latin American countries, most medications are
available without a prescription, over the counter, and are
moderately-priced. For this reason, the pharmaceutical industry does
not influence the economies or cultures of those nationsto the extent
thatit does in the U.S. Thus, there is little doubt that Bachelet's
insistence on making the morning-after pill available to young Chilean
girls has nothing to do with her personal or political connections with
big pharma, but everything to do with a world view informed by being a
parent, a physician, and a socialist.
Bachelet herself proudly proclaims her agnosticism and is notorious for
having had a child out of wedlock, yet she was still democtractically
elected the first female president of Chile. Her anguish, her struggle,
and her commitment to Chile have cultivated within her at a cellular
level, a quality of family values that pious pontifications by clerical
moralists cannot begin to approach.
It's important to remember that Michelle Bachelet is not Hugo Chavez.
While both leaders concur politically, their styles are different.
Where Bachelet needs to toughen her stance is with the transnational
corporation
Barrick,
which is mining gold on the border between Argentina and Chile and
exploiting land and water in the process. A mutual treaty between
Argentina and Chile makes this possible, and activists of both
countries are demanding that Bachelet and Argentina’s
centrist-socialist President Kirchner suspend the treaty and Barrick’s
presence in the region.One of the realities of the so-called "Pink
Tide" of Latin America's move to the left is that these neo-socialist
countries are rejecting
Tapeworm Economics.
Every day I receive email from folks who want me to write about certain
topics, i.e., the bloated Pentagon budget, the Iraq War, Plamegate, and
many more topics, but all of those issues, important as each of them is
individually, are symptomatic of Tapeworm Economics and serve to
perpetuate it, and no one has elucidated the Tapeworm better than
Catherine Austin Fitts both at the
Solari website and at its companion site
Dunwalke.
I strongly recommend studying these sites because when one comprehends
the Tapeworm, so many other pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into
place.
Chile
is exemplifying the kind of society that can be created when the needs
ofthe citizenry dictate that the entire infrastructure of a nation is
constructed and organized around meeting those needs and not around the
needs of corporations.It is not a uptopia, and poverty, corruption, and
a conservative opposition to socialist policies remain obstacles to the
fullest realization of human rights and social justice.
Nevertheless, what Bachelet has accomplished in eleven months is not
only stunning but awe-inspiring as we in the U.S. navigate the
grinding, gray empire in whose belly we reside, otherwise known as
"TheTapeworm"—mean-spirited, niggardly, and “focusing on the
family”—not your family or mine, but a family that flourishes only by
attacking the values of every other family that is unlike it and in so
doing, belies its contempt for the heart and soul of the entire human
family.
[For further information on changes taking place in Chile, see the website of the Chilean Government]
Writings 
A frightening story came across the radio waves this week and was later 
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