The Lies of Progress
By Rob los Ricos

Progress is a lie used to justify the domination of the world by Europeans
and their post-colonial bastard offspring. Global warming, chemical warfare,
women and children sold into slavery: it’s all the price of progress.
Genocide isn’t a concern of progress, progress is only concerned with
economics.

Let’s imagine a people living peacefully along the shores of a lake, as
their ancestors have done for centuries. Families share garden plots and
homes. People hunt and fish. The people are as a whole are healthy. No one
goes hungry, and their culture of dancing, festivals, folk medicine and
sharing encourages everyone to integrate into the community.

This is unacceptable. These people are not generating profits for
corporations or banks, or paying taxes to a government. These people and
their land need to be developed. Let’s have a look at these people after a
couple of generations of progress.

First of all, disease killed off a great many of them when they first
encountered Haoles (Hawaiian for ‘death breathers"). With liquor and
firearms, the developers corrupted a few of the people to help seize lands
once held in common by the community. The majority of the people refused to
go along with this plan, sot he military was brought in to subjugate them.
With military occupation achieved, progress picked up steam.

A dam was built upstream from the lake, to provide electricity for future
development. Water is also diverted from the lake for use by the town that
has grown around the military base. A paper and lumber mill once employed
some of the people, but when the forest was gone, the mills closed.

The lake is full of mercury and dioxin-- by-products of industrial
processes. People still eat the fish, which gives them cancer. The land is
all owned by former military leaders, who raise cattle on it. Jobs are hard
to come by and most people work servicing the military: doing laundry,
cooking food, prostituting themselves. The soldiers, in return give the
people unwanted children, venereal diseases, liquor and drugs.

This is progress on a micro level, and this progress has been repeated over
and over again-in the Americas, Africa, Asia, even in Europe.

On a larger scale, the lie of progress is even easier to see. Look at
Argentina. Once, it had an economy built around beef production. After the
Great Depression, Argentinians were determined to progress into a first
world nation, like Canada or Australia. It took them 50 years, but they made
it.

Unfortunately for them, this wasn’t acceptable to global corporate and
financial interests. You see, first world nations require a great deal of
the world’s natural resources to maintain their affluent lifestyles. There
just isn’t enough! No, there is only enough for a few fist world countries.
I don’t know—how bout eight?! So the IMF and World Bank stepped into
Argentina and destroyed its economy. Just 10 years ago, Argentina was a
prosperous country. Now its economy is all but imaginary, the currency
unstable, unemployment is greater than 50 percent and the economy is
centered around debt servicing, just like any other third world country.
This is progress: the disempowerment of local people in order to increase
the power of global corporations and financial institutions.