Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Corporations Are Parasites
Liberals and Conservatives both agree that modern corporations are a vital and necessary economic force in society. The difference between the two is merely a matter of degree. Conservatives/ Republican Party want to allow corporations free rein to exploit markets without regulatory interference. Liberals/Democratic Party want corporations to be less heavy handed by placing a vaguely defined minimum of regulatory restraints on their exploitative practices.
In the last 100 years corporations have become bigger, richer, more aggressive, and thus more powerful. In the United States, corporations are now the dominant force in civil society. They have become the dominant force because of a Supreme Court decision in 1886 known as Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway where a distinction was made between natural persons (human beings) and legal persons (corporations). The Supreme Court ruled that legal persons had the same rights as natural persons. Then came a succession of Supreme Court rulings expanding the rights of legal persons culminating in a Supreme Court ruling (1976) known as Buckley v. Valeo where the court ruled that money was free speech. Since corporations are the richest private organizations in society, according to Buckley v. Valeo, corporations enjoy the most free speech. The more free speech corporations have the louder corporate voices become drowning out other voices. As a direct result politically, the corporate agenda becomes the agenda because nearly all of the decision makers (Liberals and Conservatives) have become servile lackeys of the corporation.
Conservatives/Republican Party talk incessantly about the need for government to stay out of free markets because the invisible hand of the free markets will ultimately create economic efficiencies through price competition thereby making life better for people in general. In bumper sticker fashion. ”Regulation is Bad. Freedom is Good.” The problem with this economic conception is that it is nothing more than a myth. The American economy is dominated by oligopolies that do not compete over price. Instead these oligopolies compete through advertising: “Buy my stuff and you will save money!”
An oligopoly is a market condition in which the production of identical or similar products is concentrated (to the tune of at least 40% of market share) in a few large firms. Examples of oligopolies in the United States include the steel, aluminum, automobile, gypsum, petroleum, tire, banking, energy, and beer industries. The introduction of new products and processes can create new oligopolies, as in the computer or synthetic fiber industries. Microsoft sells more than 80% of the operating systems in the U.S. market. Oligopolies also exist in service industries, such as the airlines industry and the food industry. Oligopolistic practices include the practice of “dumping” in order to destroy the competition. Several years ago a national hamburger chain moved into a medium size central Texas town. The town had been served by several Mom and Pop hamburger stands for years. Circumventing existing unfair competition laws in place in Texas at the time, the hamburger chain advertised locally that they would take coupons, including super market coupons. The hamburger chains pricing scheme meant that every hamburger sold was sold at a loss. Within two months the Mom and Pop stands went out of business because they could not compete at a price point that was not profitable. After the Mom and Pop stands closed, the chain stopped taking coupons. Price competition ended and the national hamburger chain controlled the entire local market. Months later another hamburger chain moved into the local market but there was no price competition between the two. The same kind of hamburger sold at the same price in each hamburger store.
The raison d'être for corporations is to get bigger, richer, and more powerful. The logical future for corporations is to replace their competitors, dominant and eventually control the entire market, and in the long run, either reduce or even eliminate government regulation. Conservatives applaud and encourage this corporate behavior. It is also no exaggeration to conclude, however, that corporations are at their core irrational, politically anarchistic, and economically parasitic. And like all parasites, corporations will kill their host and in the process commit suicide. The problem for all of us is the fact that the corporate host is civil society and the entire physical planet.
Liberals/Democratic Party will argue that the best way to deal with corporate power is to capture the government and use the legal system to control and moderate corporate excesses. They will say that since the corporation was a legally defined entity, it should not be difficult to legally rein it in or put it out of business all together. These people forget that the modern form of government is an invention of the corporation and at the same time, organically, the modern corporation is an invention of the modern form of government. This can be seen symbolically where the business suit, the uniform of the corporation has become the uniform of the government. Over the last 100 years the entire government has been transformed into a creature that primarily serves the interest of the corporation. It has been the Supreme Court in conjunction with the United States Senate that has managed this transformation over the last 100 years because the Supreme Court and the Senate has been staffed disproportionately with Conservative pro corporate lawyers and businessmen.
For example The Supreme Courts ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee (1/21/10) swept away all restrictions on corporate spending thereby allowing corporations to overwhelm the election process. The decision was 5-4 where the five justices (sic) who ruled in favor of corporations are all corporate lawyers or Republican Party operatives. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was a corporate lawyer in his father’s practice in San Francisco and Sacramento. While in Sacramento Kennedy also worked as a lobbyist for Republican Party causes when Edwin Meese, special advisor to Ronald Reagan, advanced his career. Antonin Scalia began his legal career at Jones Day, where he worked from 1961 to 1967. Jones Day is an international law firm specializing in corporate law and is currently the second largest law firm in the United States, with approximately 2,400 lawyers and gross annual revenue in excess of US$1.4 billion. Clarence Thomas was a corporate lawyer in the pesticide and agriculture division of the Monsanto Company. Thomas’ mentor, who also shephered Thomas through the Supreme Court confirmation process, was Senator John Danforth whose grandfather was William H. Danforth the founder of Ralston Purina. Samuel A. Alito also had his career advanced by Attorney General Ed Meese when Meese had Alito appointed Assistant Solicitor General, Deputy Attorney General, and United States Attorney for New Jersey. Chief Justice John Roberts was a corporate lawyer for Hogan & Hartson, the oldest major law firm in Washington D.C. According to Chambers & Partners Global 2008: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business, Hogan & Hartson is recognized globally for its excellence in the following areas: data protection, international trade, real estate investment trusts, life sciences and technology, media and telecommunications.
The key for the future of the planet is to disband the corporation and replace it with an economic system that is not parasitic but sustainable. Just as any attempt to make a pig fly of its own accord, any attempt at reforming the corporation using the modern form of government will certainly never get off the ground.
In the last 100 years corporations have become bigger, richer, more aggressive, and thus more powerful. In the United States, corporations are now the dominant force in civil society. They have become the dominant force because of a Supreme Court decision in 1886 known as Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway where a distinction was made between natural persons (human beings) and legal persons (corporations). The Supreme Court ruled that legal persons had the same rights as natural persons. Then came a succession of Supreme Court rulings expanding the rights of legal persons culminating in a Supreme Court ruling (1976) known as Buckley v. Valeo where the court ruled that money was free speech. Since corporations are the richest private organizations in society, according to Buckley v. Valeo, corporations enjoy the most free speech. The more free speech corporations have the louder corporate voices become drowning out other voices. As a direct result politically, the corporate agenda becomes the agenda because nearly all of the decision makers (Liberals and Conservatives) have become servile lackeys of the corporation.
Conservatives/Republican Party talk incessantly about the need for government to stay out of free markets because the invisible hand of the free markets will ultimately create economic efficiencies through price competition thereby making life better for people in general. In bumper sticker fashion. ”Regulation is Bad. Freedom is Good.” The problem with this economic conception is that it is nothing more than a myth. The American economy is dominated by oligopolies that do not compete over price. Instead these oligopolies compete through advertising: “Buy my stuff and you will save money!”
An oligopoly is a market condition in which the production of identical or similar products is concentrated (to the tune of at least 40% of market share) in a few large firms. Examples of oligopolies in the United States include the steel, aluminum, automobile, gypsum, petroleum, tire, banking, energy, and beer industries. The introduction of new products and processes can create new oligopolies, as in the computer or synthetic fiber industries. Microsoft sells more than 80% of the operating systems in the U.S. market. Oligopolies also exist in service industries, such as the airlines industry and the food industry. Oligopolistic practices include the practice of “dumping” in order to destroy the competition. Several years ago a national hamburger chain moved into a medium size central Texas town. The town had been served by several Mom and Pop hamburger stands for years. Circumventing existing unfair competition laws in place in Texas at the time, the hamburger chain advertised locally that they would take coupons, including super market coupons. The hamburger chains pricing scheme meant that every hamburger sold was sold at a loss. Within two months the Mom and Pop stands went out of business because they could not compete at a price point that was not profitable. After the Mom and Pop stands closed, the chain stopped taking coupons. Price competition ended and the national hamburger chain controlled the entire local market. Months later another hamburger chain moved into the local market but there was no price competition between the two. The same kind of hamburger sold at the same price in each hamburger store.
The raison d'être for corporations is to get bigger, richer, and more powerful. The logical future for corporations is to replace their competitors, dominant and eventually control the entire market, and in the long run, either reduce or even eliminate government regulation. Conservatives applaud and encourage this corporate behavior. It is also no exaggeration to conclude, however, that corporations are at their core irrational, politically anarchistic, and economically parasitic. And like all parasites, corporations will kill their host and in the process commit suicide. The problem for all of us is the fact that the corporate host is civil society and the entire physical planet.
Liberals/Democratic Party will argue that the best way to deal with corporate power is to capture the government and use the legal system to control and moderate corporate excesses. They will say that since the corporation was a legally defined entity, it should not be difficult to legally rein it in or put it out of business all together. These people forget that the modern form of government is an invention of the corporation and at the same time, organically, the modern corporation is an invention of the modern form of government. This can be seen symbolically where the business suit, the uniform of the corporation has become the uniform of the government. Over the last 100 years the entire government has been transformed into a creature that primarily serves the interest of the corporation. It has been the Supreme Court in conjunction with the United States Senate that has managed this transformation over the last 100 years because the Supreme Court and the Senate has been staffed disproportionately with Conservative pro corporate lawyers and businessmen.
For example The Supreme Courts ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee (1/21/10) swept away all restrictions on corporate spending thereby allowing corporations to overwhelm the election process. The decision was 5-4 where the five justices (sic) who ruled in favor of corporations are all corporate lawyers or Republican Party operatives. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was a corporate lawyer in his father’s practice in San Francisco and Sacramento. While in Sacramento Kennedy also worked as a lobbyist for Republican Party causes when Edwin Meese, special advisor to Ronald Reagan, advanced his career. Antonin Scalia began his legal career at Jones Day, where he worked from 1961 to 1967. Jones Day is an international law firm specializing in corporate law and is currently the second largest law firm in the United States, with approximately 2,400 lawyers and gross annual revenue in excess of US$1.4 billion. Clarence Thomas was a corporate lawyer in the pesticide and agriculture division of the Monsanto Company. Thomas’ mentor, who also shephered Thomas through the Supreme Court confirmation process, was Senator John Danforth whose grandfather was William H. Danforth the founder of Ralston Purina. Samuel A. Alito also had his career advanced by Attorney General Ed Meese when Meese had Alito appointed Assistant Solicitor General, Deputy Attorney General, and United States Attorney for New Jersey. Chief Justice John Roberts was a corporate lawyer for Hogan & Hartson, the oldest major law firm in Washington D.C. According to Chambers & Partners Global 2008: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business, Hogan & Hartson is recognized globally for its excellence in the following areas: data protection, international trade, real estate investment trusts, life sciences and technology, media and telecommunications.
The key for the future of the planet is to disband the corporation and replace it with an economic system that is not parasitic but sustainable. Just as any attempt to make a pig fly of its own accord, any attempt at reforming the corporation using the modern form of government will certainly never get off the ground.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Whither Haiti
The proto-primates on the political right have been floating their none too subtle racial theories on why Haiti is so backward. On the left liberals and progressives wring their hands and shrug their shoulders offering no explanation why Haiti is such a poor and miserable place. The answer lies in Haiti's long and tortured history.
Overcoming the armies of Spain, Britain, and France, and the divisions between themselves, the slaves, mulattos, and free Blacks came together to fight their common enemy. In 1804, Haiti became an independent nation. Yet Haitians had to continually struggle to maintain their security and their freedom: The hostility of the world's powers formed insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of a healthy nation. The new rulers drawn from the gens de couleur and Black military leaders wanted to establish a profitable economy based on commodity production for export; many tried to reestablish plantations. The majority of former slaves wanted freedom from the humiliation and hardship of plantation labor, and the right to subsistence farming on their own plots of land.
Meanwhile, the world powers, led by the U.S. and the Vatican, would not recognize Haiti's sovereignty. In 1825, France finally agreed to recognize Haiti, but at a price: Haiti was to pay 90 million francs as an indemnity to the French planters who lost their land in the revolution. This saddled Haiti with a debt that crippled its already foundering economy and increased Haitian dependence on France. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti until 1862 then continued it’s embargo on trade and political relations with this lone Black nation. By the late 1800s, principle and interest on the debt payments made to France amounted to 80% of the Haitian budget.
The new Black nation also faced the constant threat of invasion by the world powers. Haitian writer Michael J. Dash writes of how the U.S. before the Civil War, fearing that the example of a successful slave rising and independence struggle might spread, used its influence in Haiti to promote internally repressive, externally obedient, regimes. In fact the Haitian Revolution did inspired the planned slave revolt in South Carolina of Denmark Vesey in 1822, the slave revolt of Nat Turner in 1831 and militant abolitionists like John Brown and Frederick Douglas. Thus it was no accident that the internal policy of slavery followed by Jim Crow segregation in the United States mirrored U.S. foreign policy regarding Haiti. That foreign policy tended for two centuries to favor any regime which reduced Haiti to an impoverished, peasant community.
In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt began to flex the United States' new found muscle. He "asserted that the Monroe Doctrine carried 'the exercise of an international police power' in the Western Hemisphere." This assertion was quickly recognized as the Roosevelt Corollary and was often cited to exonerate intervention throughout the Caribbean. The Caribbean Basin would become known as "an American lake." If the Caribbean was an American lake, Haiti was to become America's beachfront property.
From 1915 to 1934 the U.S. played a long and devastating role in Haiti, including a brutal nineteen-year military occupation,. Writes Historian Mary Renda: “While in Haiti, marines installed a puppet president, dissolved the legislature at gunpoint, denied freedom of speech, and forced a new constitution on the Caribbean nation, one more favorable to foreign investment. In a series of speeches in his 1920 campaign for Vice President, Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that he, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-1920), wrote the constitution which the U.S. imposed on Haiti in 1915. With the help of the marines, U.S. officials seized customs houses, took control of Haitian finances. U.S. Marines went straight to the Haitian national bank and removed its gold reserves to Citibank in New York City. Meanwhile, marines waged war against insurgents (called cacos) who for several years maintained an armed resistance in the countryside, and imposed a brutal system of forced labor that engendered even more fierce Haitian resistance. By official U.S. estimates, more than 3,000 Haitians were killed during this period; a more thorough accounting reveals that the death toll may have reached 1 1,500.
The attitude of the U.S. government toward the Haitians can best be summed up by the following observations made by successive American Secretaries of State. William Jennings Bryan (1913-1915) infamously said of the Haitian elite "Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French." Secretary of State Robert Lansing (1915-1920) believed that "the experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government.
The U.S. withdrew it’s troops in 1934. Before leaving, however, the U.S. government made a deal with Stenio Vincent, the new Haitian leader. Known as the Executive Accord of August 1933, in exchange for withdrawal of troops and a loan, the U.S. government would maintain supervision of Haitian finances until all outstanding American bonds expired in 1952.
From 1957 until 1986 Haiti was brutalized by the U.S. supported and incredibly corrupt Papa Doc/Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorship. In 1985-86 a powerful uprising swept Haiti again, forcing the U.S. to rescue Baby Doc and fly him to the French Riviera, in order to preserve their basic control of the country through the Haitian Army. A series of military governments followed, known to Haitians as “Duvalierism without Duvalier.”Under the Duvalier dictatorship, between 1973 and 1980, Haiti's debt increased from $53 million to $366 million, while the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty increased from 48 percent in 1976 to 81 percent 1985. Loans were contingent on an economic orientation on agricultural exports and the assembly industry-"The American Plan" which explicitly aimed to cut the ground out from under peasant agriculture by large-scale imports of cheaper U.S. goods, driving hundreds of thousands of peasants into the cities and shantytowns, desperate for work in U.S.-owned assembly plants being set up by the likes of Disney and Kmart, which paid workers 11 cents an hour to make pajamas and t-shirts. The American Plan proved an economic disaster. Official unemployment increased from 22 to 30 percent between 1980 and 1986, and in the same period economic growth showed an annual 2.5 percent decline.
Since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship the United States continues to interfere in the internal affairs of Haiti. The popularly elected Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by the American client Emmanuel “Toto” Constant nine month after his election in 1990. For the next three years a wave of terror was unleashed on the people of Haiti. Duvaliers death squads known as the Tontons Macoutes came out of hiding and began to rip up the networks of mass organization, especially in slums like Cite Soleil, that were Aristide’s base of support. Thousands of his supporters were killed, up to 300,000 went into hiding, and another 60,000 fled the island in makeshift boats many to Florida.The United States again invaded Haiti in 1994 with 20,000 troops. Aristide was brought back to power but only after President Bill Clinton forced Aristide to privatized electricity and phones among other state own businesses.This "deal" was known as the Governors Island Accords.
Another coup overthrew Aristide on February 29, 2004 instigated by France, Canada, and the United States after Aristide tried to undo the Governors Island Accords and simultaneous demanded France pay back, in 2004 value, the 90 million francs Haiti had to pay France in 1825. Again the United States President George W. Bush sent in 1,000 marines to occupy the country. The U.S. military literally kidnapped Aristide and his family and put him on a plane to the Central African Republic, where he was kept as a new regime in Port-au-Prince was consolidated. By March 1, hundreds of U.S. Marines again controlled the capital, and new waves of attacks, often by U.S. soldiers, were unleashed on the people. In June they were replaced by a force of 7,000 UN troops (mainly Brazilian) who have been cited by Human Rights groups as widely practicing “Summary Executions.”
When the former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz said a century ago: “Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States”, he did not know that he would speak for Haiti. Despite the countless natural resources of Haiti, the combined effects of American Imperialism and a predatory Haitian ruling class have conspired to reduce the vast majority of Haitians to unimaginable poverty.
While liberals blind themselves to Haiti's "Danse Macabre" with the United States and Conservatives quote history from John Wayne movies, the people of Haiti, in utter contempt for their tormentors, will continue to fight on. “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la mort!”
January 2010
Overcoming the armies of Spain, Britain, and France, and the divisions between themselves, the slaves, mulattos, and free Blacks came together to fight their common enemy. In 1804, Haiti became an independent nation. Yet Haitians had to continually struggle to maintain their security and their freedom: The hostility of the world's powers formed insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of a healthy nation. The new rulers drawn from the gens de couleur and Black military leaders wanted to establish a profitable economy based on commodity production for export; many tried to reestablish plantations. The majority of former slaves wanted freedom from the humiliation and hardship of plantation labor, and the right to subsistence farming on their own plots of land.
Meanwhile, the world powers, led by the U.S. and the Vatican, would not recognize Haiti's sovereignty. In 1825, France finally agreed to recognize Haiti, but at a price: Haiti was to pay 90 million francs as an indemnity to the French planters who lost their land in the revolution. This saddled Haiti with a debt that crippled its already foundering economy and increased Haitian dependence on France. The U.S. refused to recognize Haiti until 1862 then continued it’s embargo on trade and political relations with this lone Black nation. By the late 1800s, principle and interest on the debt payments made to France amounted to 80% of the Haitian budget.
The new Black nation also faced the constant threat of invasion by the world powers. Haitian writer Michael J. Dash writes of how the U.S. before the Civil War, fearing that the example of a successful slave rising and independence struggle might spread, used its influence in Haiti to promote internally repressive, externally obedient, regimes. In fact the Haitian Revolution did inspired the planned slave revolt in South Carolina of Denmark Vesey in 1822, the slave revolt of Nat Turner in 1831 and militant abolitionists like John Brown and Frederick Douglas. Thus it was no accident that the internal policy of slavery followed by Jim Crow segregation in the United States mirrored U.S. foreign policy regarding Haiti. That foreign policy tended for two centuries to favor any regime which reduced Haiti to an impoverished, peasant community.
In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt began to flex the United States' new found muscle. He "asserted that the Monroe Doctrine carried 'the exercise of an international police power' in the Western Hemisphere." This assertion was quickly recognized as the Roosevelt Corollary and was often cited to exonerate intervention throughout the Caribbean. The Caribbean Basin would become known as "an American lake." If the Caribbean was an American lake, Haiti was to become America's beachfront property.
From 1915 to 1934 the U.S. played a long and devastating role in Haiti, including a brutal nineteen-year military occupation,. Writes Historian Mary Renda: “While in Haiti, marines installed a puppet president, dissolved the legislature at gunpoint, denied freedom of speech, and forced a new constitution on the Caribbean nation, one more favorable to foreign investment. In a series of speeches in his 1920 campaign for Vice President, Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that he, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-1920), wrote the constitution which the U.S. imposed on Haiti in 1915. With the help of the marines, U.S. officials seized customs houses, took control of Haitian finances. U.S. Marines went straight to the Haitian national bank and removed its gold reserves to Citibank in New York City. Meanwhile, marines waged war against insurgents (called cacos) who for several years maintained an armed resistance in the countryside, and imposed a brutal system of forced labor that engendered even more fierce Haitian resistance. By official U.S. estimates, more than 3,000 Haitians were killed during this period; a more thorough accounting reveals that the death toll may have reached 1 1,500.
The attitude of the U.S. government toward the Haitians can best be summed up by the following observations made by successive American Secretaries of State. William Jennings Bryan (1913-1915) infamously said of the Haitian elite "Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French." Secretary of State Robert Lansing (1915-1920) believed that "the experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government.
The U.S. withdrew it’s troops in 1934. Before leaving, however, the U.S. government made a deal with Stenio Vincent, the new Haitian leader. Known as the Executive Accord of August 1933, in exchange for withdrawal of troops and a loan, the U.S. government would maintain supervision of Haitian finances until all outstanding American bonds expired in 1952.
From 1957 until 1986 Haiti was brutalized by the U.S. supported and incredibly corrupt Papa Doc/Baby Doc Duvalier dictatorship. In 1985-86 a powerful uprising swept Haiti again, forcing the U.S. to rescue Baby Doc and fly him to the French Riviera, in order to preserve their basic control of the country through the Haitian Army. A series of military governments followed, known to Haitians as “Duvalierism without Duvalier.”Under the Duvalier dictatorship, between 1973 and 1980, Haiti's debt increased from $53 million to $366 million, while the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty increased from 48 percent in 1976 to 81 percent 1985. Loans were contingent on an economic orientation on agricultural exports and the assembly industry-"The American Plan" which explicitly aimed to cut the ground out from under peasant agriculture by large-scale imports of cheaper U.S. goods, driving hundreds of thousands of peasants into the cities and shantytowns, desperate for work in U.S.-owned assembly plants being set up by the likes of Disney and Kmart, which paid workers 11 cents an hour to make pajamas and t-shirts. The American Plan proved an economic disaster. Official unemployment increased from 22 to 30 percent between 1980 and 1986, and in the same period economic growth showed an annual 2.5 percent decline.
Since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship the United States continues to interfere in the internal affairs of Haiti. The popularly elected Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by the American client Emmanuel “Toto” Constant nine month after his election in 1990. For the next three years a wave of terror was unleashed on the people of Haiti. Duvaliers death squads known as the Tontons Macoutes came out of hiding and began to rip up the networks of mass organization, especially in slums like Cite Soleil, that were Aristide’s base of support. Thousands of his supporters were killed, up to 300,000 went into hiding, and another 60,000 fled the island in makeshift boats many to Florida.The United States again invaded Haiti in 1994 with 20,000 troops. Aristide was brought back to power but only after President Bill Clinton forced Aristide to privatized electricity and phones among other state own businesses.This "deal" was known as the Governors Island Accords.
Another coup overthrew Aristide on February 29, 2004 instigated by France, Canada, and the United States after Aristide tried to undo the Governors Island Accords and simultaneous demanded France pay back, in 2004 value, the 90 million francs Haiti had to pay France in 1825. Again the United States President George W. Bush sent in 1,000 marines to occupy the country. The U.S. military literally kidnapped Aristide and his family and put him on a plane to the Central African Republic, where he was kept as a new regime in Port-au-Prince was consolidated. By March 1, hundreds of U.S. Marines again controlled the capital, and new waves of attacks, often by U.S. soldiers, were unleashed on the people. In June they were replaced by a force of 7,000 UN troops (mainly Brazilian) who have been cited by Human Rights groups as widely practicing “Summary Executions.”
When the former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz said a century ago: “Poor Mexico! So far from God, and so close to the United States”, he did not know that he would speak for Haiti. Despite the countless natural resources of Haiti, the combined effects of American Imperialism and a predatory Haitian ruling class have conspired to reduce the vast majority of Haitians to unimaginable poverty.
While liberals blind themselves to Haiti's "Danse Macabre" with the United States and Conservatives quote history from John Wayne movies, the people of Haiti, in utter contempt for their tormentors, will continue to fight on. “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la mort!”
January 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
