Word: peasant
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...president, if he is to survive politically, badly needs some concessions from Marulanda on issues such as prisoner exchanges, and a tangible effort to restart a peace process. But for Marulanda, there's no great hurry. Business has probably never been better for peasant-turned-Maoist-turned-tycoon...
...trudging catalog of depredations and atrocities. Bardem hasn't the charisma to bring variety to Arenas or his plight. The only leavenings are guest turns by Depp (good in two roles, as the torturer and a drag queen) and Sean Penn, in gold tooth and brownface, as a skeptical peasant. Penn's twisted delivery of the line, "I won't join the rebels"--it comes out "I no yoin thee rebels"--is just one of this film's unintended comic highlights...
...Coca doesn't help the peasant farmer to improve his life. The coca provides profits for narco-traffickers, and the guerrilla, and the AUC. The farmer earns more with coca than other crops, but at the same time, everything costs him much, much more in coca-producing zones. Plus there's prostitution, alcohol - and there's no social fabric, no education, no health care...
...rain forest is not good agricultural land, to put it mildly: the very nature of the ecosystem is to recycle organic matter without enriching the underlying soil. Once cleared, the acidic dirt of the forest floor is exhausted after a few harvests. That in turn causes peasant farmers to keep moving and sell their barren holdings to cattle ranchers looking to buy cleared land on the cheap. So the devastation continues to creep forward. All over the Amazon, I saw vast areas of degraded land where before there was a virtually unbroken expanse of trees. In all, the Amazon contains...
...convincing an argument when every single one of their seven asses hit the blue mats at some point over the course of the competition. Without Bela and his Romanian discipline, the American cause is hopeless. My blockmate disagrees: "They're normal, healthy chicks, unlike the Russian and Romanian peasant girls. Those gymnasts don't go to school and they just practice all day to escape their misery. I'd choose freedom over a gold medal any day." Whatever. I certainly wouldn't. Gymnastics is all about contortion, stunted growth, hopeless oppression and tears shed for the sake of the cameras...