Re: Nordwestblock, Germani, and Grimm's law

> > > Wrong, *kaN-t-. And there was no professional military. The
> > > society was the army was the society, as in to a certain extent
> > > until recently in Turkey and some Latin American countries.

> > A meaning attested anywhere at all, or made up by you?
>
> In Latin America, the army has traditionally been the scourge of
> society, more like an anti-society or a legalized mafia.

You forget that all governments are mafias and all governments are mafias, distinguished only by the ideological justification of governments, which is what European pagan kings etc sought in conversion to Christianity. Also, there is the ethnic aspect in that division in Latin America, at least in its origin, which means that 'the law' is only the law of the ruling class. North America has with its different policy towards the original population, or else the attitude of the immigrants towards manual labor on the land, marginalizing the natives, whichever theory one prefers, had a law that was recognized, at least in principle, by the whole population. But, demographically, it's getting there.

> It's been a
> lumpen-based organization, one of the few means by which outcasts
> could accrue wealth, at least until the rise of the drug cartels

I translate that to mean that deciding to work for the government was interpreted as a betrayal of one's own community. Am I right?

Torsten

Military-based governments, yes, because they often sought to replace the old oligarchy with a new military caudillo system. And to be an honest politician would be a betrayal of the oligarchy --e.g. Salvador Allende.

In Latin America, the army has either been at the beck and call of the land-owning and factory-owning elite or it has risen up to replace them with counter-oligarchies.

Interestingly enough, with the rise of "democracy" -i.e. popularly elected semi-transparent governments on a very short leash (demodura--as Eduardo Galeano calls them), drug cartels have truly gotten out of control. Under the military thug-ocracies, drug-trafficking was given a minimal space.