The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one - known as the Gros Michel - was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct.
Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies - Chiquita and Dole - because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.
?????? Not quite sure I catch your banter ;-) But I got a bit o' time to lean on the fence and and have a chin wag. I never was a fan of Ayn Rand but then I had a bad reaction to southern California politics behind the "Orange Curtain" (Orange County: back in the days of mushroom clouds, they would let us out of school to go listen to Mister Schwartzs' anti-Communism rants, when restricted neighborhoods meant no Jews). But I digress . . .
I don't think the "kid" was talking about plagues of the medical sorts, specifically. We've had other plagues, most recently, they seem to swirl around President Monkey Smirk. (I know it is an infantile thing to do but there isn't anything I can do to him except show my contempt of him.)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
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haven't had the pleasure of reading it yet but I've heard her speak of it.
Editorial Reviews Amazon.ca Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.
"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves... Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater... After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts... New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.
The predatory behavior incompasses the taking advantage of natural disasters to, the subject at hand, the creation of the disasters themselves with the subsequent depredation being planned in advance.
Ayn Rand believes in selfishness for the individual to express themselves but some actions must be hidden as they are too reprehensible and pop up like Nietzsche's gnome at the side of the "superman".
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