1st paragraph

I'm not fully done with my first paragraph at all .. right now i'm finishing up making the connections between all my sources... this is just a process i do to get the essay right. I know it's not really following the way the class has been asked to do it but it feels easier this way to me ..


anyway here is what my 1st paragraph would look like or rather the story it would be telling.

start by describing a diminished Salvador Allende ... democratically voted socialist President of Chile in 1970. I might begin to describe his suicide which took place during the attack on the Presidential Palace in Santiago (the capital of Chile). Allende gave one last speech on the radio to his supporters and chilean citizens alike right before he committed suicide. He was surrounded with soldiers form the Chilean Army led by General Pinochet and sponsored by the U.S. government when he shot himself with an AK 47 rifle .


I also think that i might quote some things he said in his Last Speech. which i found very moving .
Personally i think this is a good first paragraph or introduction because it's a very dramatic introduction to the coup and Salvador Allende which will be a bigger point of focus in my research paper.
I have not begun to write it because i usually don't begin by writing the first parts though i had this in mind all along.

edit- actually Allende was not diminished at all .. I think i will right that he is still confident in the future of Chile and then the second paragraph will introduce the relationship between him, chile and the U.S. that led to the coup and then my thesis paragraph.

Prewriting

I think that i have always had a general interest in Chile so wheni saw an opportunity to use it as the country i would research i was happy. Since Chile has always been of interest to me i think it would probably make for a better and more interesting essay not only for me to research but probably it will turn out much better than if i did a country i wasn't too interested in.

The only connection i knew before reading anything in the course book was that the U.S. had been involved in a coup that took Salvador Allende out of office (president). Chile also turned up in Engler ( How To Rule The World) and Klein (The Shock Doctrine).

I think the coup that occured in Chile is definitely supportive of the thesis " the U.S. is an imperial power", and i am also certain that i will find other things that support this thesis in my research. I want to know why the U.S. took interest in Chile and why the were involved in the coup. i want to know more about both Allende and Pinochet. I'm also interested in finding out more about the curent Chile/U.S. relations.

RE: Our Brand Is Crisis

Here is my understanding of Populism after looking it up on Wikipedia, a populist leader is one who typically takes side with the so called "common people". Typically this leader would create the divide between the people in the state almost like the marxist "have and have nots". It's usually a negative accusation and a label that most political leaders reject.

So in the film when Evo Morales , is accused of representing a "dangerous form of populism" one then has to ask: dangerous to whom ?

Well first of all the reason he and other Latin American leaders ( this is just my speculation) might be called populsit is because they are coming out of a social movement. The discontent in these nations is wide and overwhelming; they seem to hate the government and have a consensus that the recent or current administrations are corrupt.

Evo Morales was seen in the film leading many of the protests, one of which was the conflict of natural gas in Bolivia.

He gets elected to Presidency with more than 50% of the vote. Other information beyond this film comes from the book How To Rule The World by Marc Engler. We read a chapter for class called "Latin America In Revolt". It was about movement towards change happening in Latin America and further explores the actions and leaders of each country, leader that have also been called not only populists but anti american and demagogues. While Morales did come to power by social movement we cannot be to sure that the word demagogue describes him correctly, he did after all deliver on his promise to nationalize energy sources in Bolivia and use the benfits of this towards social reform programs. This move created a international "WTF?" In England and the U.S. he was panned by editorsand moved our former secretary of state Condeleeza Rice to use the term "demagoguery" to characterize Morales and the social movements in Latin America(281).

If populism is linked to "anti-americanism" and is called "dangerous", then perhaps it is not a stretch to say that maybe the danger that Latin American "populism" poses is a danger to the intense and long hold the U.S. has had i nthe region of the worrld for so long. The danger in this might be that the U.S. might not be able to exercise power freely in these countries any longer.

I also wonder if perhaps the word "populist" is used by critics to discredit these leaders and shed a negative light on what seems to me a very positive move that is going on in Latin America.

An Interesting Update

while i have the time to , i wanted to post about this month's issue of Latina magazine. As you might remember my first post was about farmingville and hate crimes and i noted that this magazine had an article about latino hate crimes in september.
Well there latest issue arrived last week in the mail and i was a bit taken aback , wondered if maybe it was May or a mexican holiday that i forgot. But no, they had indeed decided to dedicate an entire issue as to why Mexico, mexicans and our culture is amazing and what it has done for the world and other latin american countries (!!). They did this because they felt Mexico has been getting such bad press in the media lately.
Pretty awesome issue Latina magazine.


it includes articles on our amazing food and by far my favorite an article on the Must See Films of Mexican cinema. Which is thrilling for an avid foreign film junkie like myself. They included tons of my all time favorite like Amorres Perros, Rudo y Cursi and La Ley De Los Herodes.

another of my favorite articles in the issue wsa about the music label fonovisa which regurlarly signs traditional Mexican musicians like , los Tigres Del Norte. I actaully don't like this type of music but they have been known to write full albums aboyut illegal immigrants which lyrics would bring any Mexican to tears.


i'll try and post pictures of the cover and links to certain films later on this week

Revision Brainstorm

To be honest i have no idea what my thesis was , so i don't think i was convincing anyone in my essay. I guess i was trying to form some sort of argument that would link war profiteering with free market and globalization ideology .
i always have problems with my thesis.
I think i had good evidence to support my thesis even if my thesis is vague.
I dont' think i have a conclusion and i could've done a bit more with the last paragraph, which i felt had some very good ideas. I think i would go back and cite and include even more evidence.
I think i cut the first paragraph a bit short .. maybe i should add another paragraph after that one that furthur explores my thesis and the link between the two texts i am trying to make
maybe maybe maybe..

edit-- i'll probably be adding two new paragraphs .. one is a conclusion and also elaborating on the second one and my thesis paragraph . hopefully i can get an even better grade. especially in the last paragraph i kind of just mulled over a variety of topics or specific examples without forming ideas about them or linking them to my over all argument .

Revised Paragraph

original paragraph:
"Free Market has been an uncontested mainstay for the U.S. economy; globalization has played a major role in securing U.S. as an economic global power. Schlosser classifies the McDonald’s Corporation as one of the key players in this global free market economy:

Macdonald’s now ranks as the world’s most highly recognized brand in the world …practices of the American fast food industry are being exported to every corner of the globe helping to create a homogenized international culture that sociologist Benjamin R. Barber has labeled ‘McWorld’. The fast food chains have become totems of Western economic development. They are often the first multinationals to arrive when a country has opened its markets (Fast Food Nation pg.229)

Certainly the McDonalds and its counterparts are centered in free market ideology and profits to be made from international diversification. A McDonald’s appears in countries and cities and people know that it is a U.S. corporation, there because the markets are open to western corporations; the U.S. has arrived and brought the Big Mac with it. But what happens when the U.S. military is because an opportunity to exercise free market ideology?"


Revised paragraph:
The globalization of U.S. fast food corporations has been an uncontested mainstay for the U.S. economy since the end of the Cold War. This has played a major role in securing U.S. as an economic global power. Schlosser classifies the McDonald’s Corporation as one of the key players in this globalized free market economy, "Macdonald’s now ranks as the world’s most highly recognized brand in the world …practices of the American fast food industry are being exported to every corner of the globe helping to create a homogenized international culture that sociologist Benjamin R. Barber has labeled ‘McWorld’ (Fast Food Nation pg.229)."Certainly the McDonald's corporation and its counterparts are centered in free market ideology and profits to be made from international diversification. When a McDonald’s appears in countries and cities, people recognize it as a U.S. corporation. They know it's there because their countries' markets are open to western corporations; the U.S. has arrived and brought the Big Mac with it. But what happens when the U.S. military becomes an opportunity to exercise free market ideology?

RE: Engler on Klein

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I think for one that Professor Tanenbaum meant to write that it was Engler who wrote

"“Bremer was sent to Iraq to build a corporate utopia,” Klein writes; “instead, Iraq became a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded.” I'm not positive but i think that's what she meant .

I belive Engler is saying that a limit to Klein argument would be that the major corporations that were greedy for ways to profit from the war were not getting the profits they thought they would.

"The oil companies are not alone in finding profits to be more elusive than antcipated. The fiasco in Iraq has limited the profiteering ventures of of even those compaines that embraced the war and sought to benefit from it"

I believe he is saying that the war was fought for reasons that were essentially neoconservative.

Their attempts for geopolitical power were largely unsucessful, many nations in the world frown on the decision to invade Iraq. Our current President was against the invasion and it is a mess that is being cleaned up by the current administration.

edit- i felt like both Engler and Kein think that whatever the reason for the war, it was an unsuccesful venture whether for neoconservatives or for war profiteers. Meaining that i think that they both believe the war was a mistake and failure for the U.S., though i do think Klein would be more inclined to argue that it proved a success for businesses like Halliburton that profited.