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Our feature story today is from Panama, and asks: Has the United States become the equivalent of what we in this country used to call a ‘banana republic?’ In this ironic editorial, the newspaper Panama America of Panama makes a pretty convincing case that in fact – the U.S. has become the caricature that we once invented to describe many countries to our south.
“These banana republics passed out contracts to those closest to power, issued paper money like it was toilet paper and sold seats in Parliament and other sinecures to the highest bidder. If we analyze the present, we have a country governed by an operatic “president” whose grey eminence [Dick Cheney] has been accused of plunging the country into a senseless war and until he was elected to office, led a company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in non-bid contracts for that war. Furthermore, it is a country that is printing billions of dollars without any real economic basis, and where the President-elect’s Senate seat was being sold to the highest bidder at a base price of $2.5 million.”
EDITORIAL
Translated By Mari Suyama
December 16, 2008
Panama – Panama America – Original Article (Spanish)
In the 1970s and 80s, the term “Banana Republic” or República Bananera was a derogatory way of referring to a badly governed country. The prototype was a Central American republic with a “President,” who was always an operatic personality dressed in military garb, inclined to initiate wars for the most trivial reasons and surrounded by sycophants who flatter him far more than his meager capabilities would merit. Normally standing behind him was a “Grey Eminence” pulling the puppet strings and making millions at the expense of the government’s damaging decisions.
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