Honduran Migrant Caravan: Can she identify the "foreign assistance?"

What I think about the Daily Beast is unprintable but the publication can sometimes be helpful by accident. This was the case today with their report headlined, Forget Trump Hysteria, Here’s How the Migrant Caravan ‘Crisis’ Really Began: "It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal, but a TV station close to the Honduran gov’t wanted to embarrass an organizer and said he’d pay for everything. Then ‘the avalanche’ began."

However, the big news in the report isn't found in the lede but in this passage:

... But then a report on the country’s most-watched cable news channel, HCH, painted a picture of the caravan that changed everything. The anchors interviewed a woman who was supposedly part of the caravan. The woman talked about safety in numbers, called [Bartolo] Fuentes the organizer and mentioned foreign assistance. ...

The reporter goes on to type:

The anchors, without any supporting evidence, then said that Fuentes would pay for the migrants’ food and transportation

Then supposedly things got out of control, with hundreds then thousands of Hondurans swelling the ranks of the original small caravan as it traipsed to Guatemala. In a phone interview with a Beast reporter Mr Fuentes pointed the finger of blame at the TV station.

Fuentes was later interviewed by the anchors and strongly refuted what was said, but by then the damage was done.

He did not explain to the Beast how it was that he came to be arrested in Guatemala while helping to coordinate the out-of-control caravan's progress in Guatemala and deported back to Honduras.

Nor did the Beast attempt to delve into the unnamed woman's bombshell statement that foreign assistance was being provided to the caravan.

Instead The Beast rattles on, talking about everything but the key issue, which is that nobody told the U.S. Democratic Party, or the Republicans for that matter, what century this is.

I have a message for those dinosaur political parties. This is not the era to weaponize the troubles of other countries for America's domestic political or defense purposes. Here's why said weaponization is a really bad idea in the 21st Century:  

The single largest driver of the present crises in all the world's poorest countries is that their societies were monetized to such an extent during the past century that their crucial subsistence farming sectors were destroyed.

With that, the countries went from being 'societies' to economies. These economies, which can't hope to hold their own in agricultural trade against the wealthy economies, can be likened to a mountain of gunpowder. All it takes is the spark of a severe climate event to set off an explosion. 

Which is to say Americans haven't seen anything yet when it comes to migrant crises forming south of the U.S. border. 

If the Trump administration ever decides to acknowledge this century, it can throw technical assistance at small-scale farmers in Central America that teaches them how to do something new for a change: Raise enough food to actually feed themselves, instead of trying to raise crops/livestock to sell so they can get enough money to buy food to feed themselves.

The Trump administration, and the European Commission, could also provide the same technical assistance to small-scale farmers in all other basket-case regions of the world.

If U.S. and E.U. governments balk at the idea of de-monetizing a certain segment of a county, then let them prepare to bomb migrant caravan ocean liners making stops all along the shores in better-off countries. 

By the way, there's something else the U.S. and its buddies can do, which is to stop sucking the water tables dry while fighting terrorists in arid regions of the world, which just so happen to house a few billion people who live in the world's poorest -- uh, economies.

The next Pundita post. Bring beer. You'll need it.

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