THE ENDANGERED BANANA

Two days ago we were discussing bananas in the context of the Elvis Presley sandwich. Now Johann Hari, writing on Huffpo, tells us the days of the jolly yellow, phalic fruit may well be numbered.

“Bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible. There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon - in five, 10 or 30 years - the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world - and where they are leading us.”

Banana production also turns out to be of a model of capitalism at its most viciously merciless.

"Find a poor, weak country. Make sure the government will serve your interests. If it won't, topple it and replace it with one that will. Burn down its rainforests and build banana plantations. Make the locals dependent on you. Crush any flicker of trade unionism. The term "banana republic" was invented to describe the servile dictatorships that were created to please the banana companies. In the early 1950s, the Guatemalan people elected a science teacher named Jacobo Arbenz, because he promised to redistribute some of the banana companies' land among the millions of landless peasants. President Eisenhower and the CIA (headed by a former United Fruit employee) issued instructions that these "communists" should be killed, and noted that good methods were "a hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker or kitchen knife". The tyranny they replaced it with went on to kill more than 200,000 people.” (Click here for more.)

(And maybe proving the reality of karma, the politicization of Che Guevara actually took place when he was in Guatemala City during the CIA overthrow of Arbenz.)

The secret word is Peel