. . . "Everything in here is U.S. property. All the businesses --the supermarkets, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, all of them --are exempt from Panamanian laws and taxes. There are seven 18-hole golf courses, U.S. post offices scattered conveniently around, U.S. courts of law and schools. It is truly a country within a country. "
"What an affront! "
Fidel peered at me as though making a quick assessment. "Yes, " he agreed, "that 's a good word for it. Over there, " he pointed back toward the city, "income per capita is less than one thousand dollars a year, and unemployment rates are 30 percent. . . .
Canal Zone, Green Zone, it 's all the same. An Iraqi blogger named Riverbend heard about the Green Zone from a friend who works for an Iraqi sub-contractor (Americans have all the contracts): http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
the Green Zone . . . is a city in itself. He came back awed, and more than a little bit upset. He talked of designs and plans being made for everything from the future U.S. Embassy and the housing complex that will surround it to restaurants, shops, fitness centers, gasoline stations, constant electricity and water --a virtual country inside of a country with its own rules, regulations, and government. . . .
The Green Zone is . . . a slap in the face. It tells us that while we are citizens in our own country, our comings and goings are restricted because portions of the country no longer belong to its people. They belong to the people living in the Green Republic.
Rummy has another name for these oases of American privilege "inserted " or "projected " into areas where we have "interests " around the world, according to Middle East expert Robert Fisk,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/fisk_robert/robert_fisk_interview.html
but the essential disconnect from reality is the same:
Lily pads are what Donald Rumsfeld calls them, these zones where the Americans live. But they are not lily pads; they are armed fortresses.
It reminds me of the Crusader castles. They are quite lovely on the outside, but when you 're inside, it 's cold and damp and you can 't see out; you just have to peer through narrow slits. That 's all the Crusaders saw of the land they were occupying. And that 's now happening to Americans in Iraq.
What we 're fighting for in Iraq and all around the globe is the Green Zone, a rarefied bubble of corporate privilege and private wealth so great that its possessors can create a separate, unaccountable reality for themselves.
Unfortunately, even with support for the war in Iraq taking a nose dive, many Americans --probably the majority --still feel that they are living in an unassailable Green Zone of affluence, safe from the consequences of our actions in the wider world. The fact of the matter is, most of us live outside those walls, running risks and making sacrifices for those who truly are above --or below --the law. And those sacrifices and risks do not stop with the economy and war. What we are doing to the environment is a danger to the entire planet.
The poor and middle class people of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast are going to be a long time learning exactly what it means to live outside the Green Zone.
The propaganda and the steady stream of hate that 's been flowing from the right for decades now is as addictive as MacDonald 's French fries or cigarettes. A lot of people are really hooked. They buy into the illusion that we 're all passive spectators, just watching injustice. Helping people realize that not doing something is also a crime is dirty work. Luckily for all of us, the Cindy Sheehans among us are used to taking on the jobs that no one else wants.
Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at plgoldsmith@optonline.net.
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