Ecuador...

My lapse in posts can be explained by a sudden disinterest in world news that came over me a few days ago. The dominating stories usually include stories of violence, struggles over oil, war here, war there, and then some more violence. A case in point are the stories coming out of Ecuador right now. A beautiful country straddling the Andes Mountains and dipping into the Amazon jungle, Ecuador only makes the news when a disruption to their oil supply occurs. Largely poor protesters have been able to halt production by taking over sections of the infrastructure. The protesters simply want to see some of the profits from the oil returned to the community. Now the military is involved as the disruption is hitting the pocketbooks of the European descended elites. According to the above linked BBC article, "The economic impact [of the disruption in oil production] is far worse than any war." Of course the military has been brought in to restore the machinery to the elite so that their profits continue. Amazingly only injuries and no deaths have been reported, but again, the reporting is vague: "The army has used tear gas to disperse protesters in clashes that have left dozens injured." This begins to get at what I was trying to explicate earlier in this post. The news media not only is filled with reports of violence - usually perpetrated against the poor of the world - but the focus of many reports are on the best interests of the elites, which happen to be running most of the governments on the globe. The interests of the poor are only bylines. I know this isn't really any great revelation, it's just that sometimes one needs a break from the constant and never ending injustices perpetrated by the modern west.