For all the polarizing division in US politics on the issue of foreign policy (and even on many domestic issues) the two major parties are completely aligned to protect and benefit the capital-owning class.
Sanctions on Cuba? This is not because Cuba or Castro is "bad". We have absolutely no problem propping up horrific dictators as "allies" when it suits us (eg Pinochet, MBS, Saddam Hussein until it didn't suit us, even Erdogan, arguably even Netanyahu). What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations.
Sanctions on Venezuela? Again, Venezuela took the unacceptable step of nationalizing their oil assets. And with Russia's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine now threatening the energy sector, suddenly the Venezuelan sanctions aren't as important as we made out [1].
Sanctions on Iraq following the first Gulf War? Consider the words of our then UN Ambassador later Secretary of State Madeline Albright [2]:
> In that now-iconic interview, veteran journalist Lesley Stahl questioned Albright – then the US ambassador to the United Nations – on the catastrophic effect the rigorous US sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had on the Iraqi population.
> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”
> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
The US government works for the Bezoses, Gates, Buffetts and Musks of the world. Never forget that.
> Sanctions on Cuba? This is not because Cuba or Castro is "bad". We have absolutely no problem propping up horrific dictators as "allies" when it suits us (eg Pinochet, MBS, Saddam Hussein until it didn't suit us, even Erdogan, arguably even Netanyahu). What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations.
Close, but not quite right. Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to various people all of whom now live in Florida and vote as a bloc. Note that Obama actually tried to end the Cuban embargo, but was stopped due to politicians afraid of upsetting the various people-who-hate-Cuba-for-this-specific-reason.
Bingo. Well organised single-issue swing-state voting blocks are incredibly powerful. Particularly when they care strongly about an issue most Americans couldn’t give two fucks for.
I wonder if they’ll be more willing to revisit sanctions now that Florida is all but a red state. Given that bloc isn’t in a swing state anymore it makes sense on the surface.
Florida is still too close for any party to take for granted. Also those anti-Castro Cubans in FL are single-issue voters, and also can’t be taken for granted.
There is also a small cluster of Venezuelans that will vote GOP because they have, historically, a harder stance on Cuba and the Dictatorship in Venezuela.
Funny how left leaning voters call out imperialism but forget that Cuba, Russia and China have been doing that in Venezuela the last 30 years
Florida is 3rd largest state in terms of population. That means 3rd most electoral votes, third most house representatives. It’s also home to an important port of entry (Miami) numerous trade ports, offshore drilling, and many large companies have a significant presence there (Walt Disney World is its own county and Disney has special status to practically govern this county and provide its civil services like police, firefighters, etc).
While it’s only one state in the US it cannot be downplayed that it has an outsize influence compared to, say, Wyoming.
As another reply said, Florida is the third largest state, with the third largest number of electoral votes. Since electoral votes are winner-take-all (with a couple of exceptions), all you need is a tiny minority to make a huge impact on who wins the Presidency.
The two largest states reliably vote the same way in each election, but Florida is at least somewhat up for grabs. So Florida is one of the most important opportunities to make a big impact with a small advantage.
If this seems like an incredibly stupid way to run things... yes, we know.
Because it's still "sort of" a swing state, and there is a lot of money in Florida and they have a LOT of lobbyists in Congress handing out money to critical senators and reps for their votes. Also in general MAGAs don't like brown people so it's easy to convince them that "Cuba bad"
> Also in general MAGAs don't like brown people so it's easy to convince them that "Cuba bad"
The modern image of Cubans in the U.S. is effectively of white people, on account of the particular classes of Cubans which emigrated to the U.S. This also belies Cuba's own racial hierarchy, which mirrors that of most of the Americas.
> Close, but not quite right. Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to various people all of whom now live in Florida and vote as a bloc.
A bloc that resides in Florida is not responsible for the US policy against Cuba over the last 60+ years. Not to say it's not an element, but it's simply impractical as a flat reasoning. The nearby danger narrative is useful is another aspect. There are a few in aggregate.
Florida actually has voter propositions but these are routinely thwarted by the governor and the judiciary. Examples:
1. Florida has (3 times IIRC) voted to legalize recreational marijuana. All of those have been thrown on by a court on procedural grounds; and
2. In 2018, Floridians voted to restore the right to vote to the state's estimated 1.5 million felons, which would've been an amazing step forward. The response? DeSantis basically waited until the last possible moment of the next election and instituted a poll tax, that is that any felon would have to pay full restitution to the state. Not enough time to challenge this before the election. Felons tend to skew poor so having to pay several thousand dollars in, say, court costs and probation "costs" acted as an effective barrier to the will of the people.
One should remember that as horrible as almost every Republican state government is, most of them are minority governments that are kept in power by extreme gerrymandering. Wisconsin is a prime example, where Democrats lead by 10 points but the Republicans hold an unassailable super majority in the state legislature.
Fun fact: Texas has more registered Democrats than registered Republicans.
Change is inevitable. REpublican voters like to hold onto to the past (up to and including chattel slavery, sorry "state's rights"). These people skew older and religious. The former is dying off from old age (and Covid) and the latter is in historical decline.
I mention this because despite Florida's reputation, voting to restore voting rights to felons passed and is remarkably progressive for the US and we can draw some comfort from that.
>What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations... Sanctions on Venezuela? Again, Venezuela took the unacceptable step of nationalizing their oil assets.
Also set up one party states which ideologically align with every US enemy out there including USSR/Russia while completely ruining their own countries.
> We have absolutely no problem propping up horrific dictators as "allies" when it suits us (eg Pinochet, MBS, Saddam Hussein until it didn't suit us, even Erdogan, arguably even Netanyahu)
MBS doesn't even rule Saudi yet, despite having a lot of power. Erdogan is likely to lose the next election. Nethanyahu is out of office and facing charges. Leaders can suck without being dictators or preventing fair elections.
>And with Russia's unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine now threatening the energy sector, suddenly the Venezuelan sanctions aren't as important as we made out
Don't make too much of it. The admin will soon find out that Chaves/Maduro ruined the energy sector so thoroughly there isn't any oil to pump in the next decade.
> Also set up one party states which ideologically align with every US enemy out there including USSR/Russia while completely ruining their own countries.
It is unclear if you're referring to Cuba or to Venezuela or both. What exactly does "ideologically aligning" mean? Also does actions taken by a global superpower's military on behalf of elites in that superpower (I'm referencing the article here, "Invade Haiti, Wall Street urged, the US obliged") to steal, confiscate, block trade count towards "ruining their own countries"? My guess is that you're kind of trying to imply they caused their own ruin and deserved it by not being "ideologically aligned" with the US (does that mean Wall Street?), is that inaccurate?
Castro was aligned with USSR from day 1 and kept this alignment long after the Cold War. The consequent economic policies had the expected effect on Cuba. Chavez was also always aligned with the anti-Western bloc, and his policies led to 1 in 6 Venezuelans being a refugees. Both are unrelated to Haiti and as far as I know never cared much for it.
Think about the core idea that you’re defending: that nations do not have freedom of association if the choose to be friendly with regimes the United States doesn’t like, and it’s fine for the US to use it’s cultural and economic hegemonic power to crush those states for making the wrong friends or choosing the wrong ideology. Does that not strike you as an immoral thing for the US to do?
>it’s fine for the US to use it’s cultural and economic hegemonic power to crush those states for making the wrong friends or choosing the wrong ideology
There's making different choices and there's 'being friendly to the Soviets which were also very much into overthrowing the US' or 'Driving double digit percentage of your own population out to the point you're a foreign policy problem' or 'undermining neighbouring states due to your 'wrong' ideology'.
In the abstract, that sounds kind of right, but concretely, how about when that ideology is being actual Nazis? As in WWII and the Axis powers? Is the US wrong for lumping Italy along with Germany?
No policy is going to be correct all the time, just as no policy is going to be incorrect all the time. Choosing to apply economic and military pressure against Italy was the right thing to do in that specific set of circumstances. Just because it was the right thing to do in that circumstance doesn’t mean it was the right thing to do in every other circumstance. I would posit that broadly, this kind of guilty-by-association economic harm is the wrong choice more often than not.
I'm not sure this is true. I recall from listening to the Blowback podcast that Castro initially tried to align with the US, and there was disagreement among US leaders about whether he was friend or foe. But we had a bunch of people in Florida, among them the dictator he ousted, offering to try and kill him, so we just went with that.
Cuba policy may have made sense in the 60s and even 70s but 80s and onward it makes zero sense, just like our Venezuela policy makes zero sense. Follow the money and you'll find out that it's just corps blocking it.
> ideologically align with every US enemy out there including USSR/Russia while completely ruining their own countries.
"Ideologically align" ==> Bequeath all ownership of a developing country's national resources from citizens to NATO corporations. You have to be really blind to not have realized what Ideological alignment with United states actually means. Hint: it's not democracy.
NATO places world wide economic sanctions on small countries that are "ideologically misaligned" with NATO to devastate their economy, reduce it to ruins while simultaneously organizing coups. They have no option to trade with the other block to survive. Its either gives us control over all of your natural resources OR trade with Russia to survive.
Erdogan isn't going to lose the next election. He has too much power and likes it too much. The only way he gives that up is he knows he has a terminal illness.
It's well known the US supported useful dictators during the Cold War, nothing new there. That should not imply simping for every anti-US regime out there, or badmouthing every country which has decent relations with US. It should be possible to oppose US policy without supporting one's own set of dictators.
Ever considered that you are projecting. That you are bad mouthing every country that doesn't have decent relationships with the US and simping for every pro US dictatorship out there!
What good would it have done for OP to list the names of "families that nobody talks about"? Listing Bezos/Musk is an easy way to just say, "richest mother fuckers in the world". You don't have the same impact if you list a name that nobody knows.
Because then it would be, "The US government works for the Clarks of the world," and we'd all be going, "Huh?".
It's oversimplification which can only lead you to the foggy world of conspiracy theories. Modern society is complex, and full of conflicting interests, and that's why two evil dictators may have different kind of favors from US, or whatever country. There's for example a significant voting block which supports sanctioning Cuba, and absolute majority of them are not billionaires. Taking Venezuela case: as potential Russian win would send an encouraging signal to other expansionist regimes, including some who are absolutely willing to be US enemies, and big enough to make troubles, it's becoming more important to deal with bigger problem (compared to Venezuelan regime). There's an obvious solution to these ugly choice of whom of all bad guys to pay more for oil: let domestic extraction industry to increase development. But it happened so that a significant voting block supports diminishing of domestic extraction, and the ruling party doesn't want to annoy them as they have enough troubles without it. So suddenly its not only a game of capitals, but also of ideologies, family roots, voting strategies, and a lot of other elements. Some people say that is how democracy works in every big society. Also, on a side note: Netanyahu may be good, or not, but he is most definitely not a dictator.
> ... absolute majority of them are not billionaires.
I see two big factors in play here:
1. The widespread belief in American exceptionalism, once characterized as every American thinks of themselves as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire [1]; and
2. The power of propaganda. The number of low-income people who will fight to the hilt that Jeff Bezos shouldn't pay slightly more taxes to pay for the society that made his wealth possible and continues to make it possible is astounding.
[2] is only "astounding" if you don't take the time to understand peoples' political philosophies, and I can probably guess your political leanings if you believe [1] causes [2] or that "poor people" can only be intrinsically motivated. I don't know any millionaires but I know plenty of people who think it's wrong for the government to confiscate wealth, who you seem to classify as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I'm sure some people think they'll get rich (looking at you crypto bros) but a lot of people simply think it's none of your or the governments business how much money other people have and what they do with it.
I think 2 can be complicated as well. Increasing his tax liability along with many other very wealthy people basically requires taxing unrealized gains, which if applied to less wealthy people in the future could be very bad for them.
I’d like to see something that specifically targets the loophole of borrowing against stocks & repaying by taking additional loans and selling only assets which have declined in price.
>Netanyahu may be good, or not, but he is most definitely not a dictator
He's not a dictator for the israelis, but let's not forget that he rules over an apartheid state and for the palestinians (who don't get to vote, don't get to have their own country and yet get opressed by his rule) he is a dictator.
Sanctions against Cuba likely continue because those sanctions are popular with an influential demographic in a swing state, namely Cuban Americans in Florida. In 2020, 58% of Cuban Americans affiliated with the GOP, while only 32% of non-Cuban Hispanics did. Furthermore, Cuban Americans have high voter turnout relative to other Hispanic demographics in America.
The problem with Cuba is Florida. It’s a politically powerful state and the Cuban community owns the GOP.
Ethnic voting blocs are truly powerful. Religious fanaticism waxes and wanes, but strong ethnic identity endured for a few generations. That’s why southern baptists are suddenly sucking up to Catholic judges - it’s seen as a way to connect to Hispanic voters as conservative boomers die off.
I don't disagree about the power of the Cuban voting bloc in Florida. Had they voted more in line with, say, other Hispanic voters we may well have avoided a 20 year water in Iraq and Afghanistan [1].
> Ethnic voting blocs are truly powerful.
I'd generalize this further. Any substantial voting bloc is powerful, ethnic or otherwise. The NRA and, anti-choice lobbies and the pro-Israel lobby, for example. There is generational voting patterns (as you mention) but this seems to a subset of single-issue voters.
There's a reason we can precisely draw Congressional maps to gerrymander the electorate: voting patterns are highly predictable.
But a voting bloc can be a double edged sword. Cubans in Florida only hold power because they're the difference between the state being red and blue. It's why certain states are completely ignored in the election. One party or the other will comfortably win. Nothing will change that.
Disproportionate power only comes when you're the balance of power.
This is a great post about the open and obvious actions the US government has done to protect capital’s interest, but to truly go down the rabbit hole and understand the evil we have done in service of profit, check out what the CIA did in Central and South America, fighting “land reform”
>The US government works for the Bezoses, Gates, Buffetts and Musks of the world
the tax department maybe but America's billionaire tech entrepreneurs have barely any relationship with America's foreign policy establishment. It's not clear to me what Bill Gates gains out of subduing Latin American countries and Musk and Cook seem to be pretty positive on China given that they make and sell a lot of their stuff there.
America's foreign policy establishment consists of think tanks, intellectuals, politicians, paperbelt types, ideologues and so forth but America's tech sector is to a large extent disconnected from this stuff if not straight up an alternative power center which routinely makes foreign policy hawks very mad.
The US has been an oligarchy for a good bit now. Politicians have shifted from discussing how to make our country better and replaced it with why you should hate their political opponents (both sides - ever wonder why it seems like neither political party has a message aside from “at least I’m not the other guy”?). Democracy ends in oligarchy.
It’s not like this is new. John Bagot Glubb talks about this in “The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival”. Our ruling class is showing the same patterns of those ruling an empire at the end of its days. Squabbling over the riches earned by those who came before with no regard for their people or the future.
> both sides - ever wonder why it seems like neither political party has a message aside from “at least I’m not the other guy”?
This is pure cynicism. It is both lazy and false.
Democratic goals:
- address climate change
- extend the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc.
- election integrity: ensure equal access to the ballot, eliminate gerrymandering, eliminate the electoral college
- legislative reform: eliminate the filibuster
- education: address educational debt
- address inequality through tax measures and public expenditures
- appoint liberal judges
- preserve access to abortion and contraception
- reform policing, making it more community based, less punitive, more accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc.
- etc.
Republican goals:
- facilitate resource extraction
- privatize public assets
- roll back environmental protections and regulations of all sorts
- roll back the social insurance programs that are foundational to the welfare state: social security, the ACA, medicare, etc.
- reduce taxes, particularly on the wealthy
- roll back commitments to international agreements and organizations
- enshrine Christian morality and customs in law
- roll back protections for historically disadvantaged groups
- reduce ballot access for constituencies that tend not to vote Republican
- preserve the electoral college and gerrymandering (see previous point)
- prevent the teaching of anything touching on diversity or historical prejudices or injustice
- appoint conservative judges
- prevent access to abortion and contraception
- reform policing, making it more lethal, more punitive, less accountable in the case of police wrongdoing, etc.
- etc.
This lists could be much longer. There are thousands of passionate politicians and activists for both parties who work on these things all the time. However, people are more motivated by negative partisanship than anything else. It turns out listing good stuff you intend to do on behalf of your voters is much less motivating than detailing the perfidy, real or imagined, of the other party and promising to punish it.
False equivalence is the way you create oligarchy, not how you fight it.
I generally agree with criticizing of "bothsidesing" the US poltical climate. That is intellectually lazy and simply not true. Conservatives mainstream Nazi propaganda [1] and the liberals are really just an inefective center right party that likes the aesthetics of social causes without having to do anything.
> Democratic goals: ...
This is propaganda I'm afraid. The goals of the Democratic Party are to systematically erase any progressive element from the party (eg Bernie, AOC) while positioning themselves as being not as bad as the Republicans for pure fundraising reasons without ever actually having to do anything.
Roe v. Wade was handed down 49 years ago. There have been multiple opportunities since then to codify this in Federal law. Most recently Obama the candidate campaigned on doing this as his #1 priority. Obama the new president, who had a super-majority in the Senate and thus didn't even need to repeal the filibuster (which he should've anyway) decided it wasn't that important. To the contrary, Obama actually made abortion less accessible [2].
The Democrats are absolutely feckless and are quite happy to do so as long as they can maintain office. The Republicans are straight up monsters but they are effective in that they give their base what they want.
Example: compare whipping efforts by the GOP and disciplining its members (eg Kevin McCarthy and Madison Cawthorn) vs the Democrats. If the GOP was faced with a Manchin or Sinema they would be primaried and stripped of key committee positions (most notably Manchin's on Energy) to bring them into line.
Don't for a second think the Democrats actually want to do anything.
> If the GOP was faced with a Manchin or Sinema they would be primaried and stripped of key committee positions (most notably Manchin's on Energy) to bring them into line.
The Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate. The Republicans have 50 seats. The Democrats have control only because Kamala Harris provides a tie-breaking vote. Sinema and Manchin are actively being courted by the Republicans ceaselessly. So if the Democrats try to whip them into line they can just withdraw their support from the Democratic caucus and then Mitch McConnell has the power. This isn't to say that the everything the Democrats have done to try to control the situation has been perfect, but these are the parameters they're working with. The story that the Democrats are feckless and happy to achieve nothing is the propaganda. It is spread both by idealists working with a fantasy notion of US politics and agents provocateurs who prefer the left stay cynical and demoralized.
Another element of this fantasy version of politics: the "Obama had a super majority" story, which echoes endlessly. Obama had this super majority for a number of weeks. First Republicans prevented the seating of Al Franken for months. Finally he was seated. Several weeks later Ted Kennedy has to withdraw entirely from his job because he was dying of a brain tumor. Then he died. During this time the legislative priority was passing the ACA. They wasted vast amounts of time with the Republicans playing a Lucy-and-the-football delaying tactic. But ever since defeatists trot this out as though Obama could have passed virtually everything during this brief window and the fact that he didn't proves his fecklessness. This is the propaganda. The Democrats have failed to achieve more not because they as a party don't want to achieve anything but because they are a relatively disunited party with different people pulling in different directions and they have only had very brief moments when they could exercise significant power. This is why everyone but Sinema and Manchin want to reform or abolish the filibuster: they realize that it prevents their ever achieving anything because at this point the Republicans will never work with them except on trivial matters.
Use Occam's Razor. It isn't secret cabals and epicycles that govern the political universe. It is exactly what you see: disunited people, some of whom are corrupt (Sinema and Manchin, e.g.) or stupid (Sinema and Manchin, e.g.), working with brief windows of opportunity within the campaign cycle. If you actually want leftist ideas enacted, working with a fantasy version of politics is worst way to go about it. It may make you feel individually virtuous and important, which is a great temptation for everyone, but it doesn't get anything done.
P.S. Obama could not abolish the filibuster. This is something the Senate has to do by amending the rules they are organized by. They can do it with a simple majority, but it has to be a majority of senators. And Obama's chief priorities when he came in were the ACA and enacting carbon pricing, not codifying Roe v. Wade into law. He managed to achieve one of these things largely because Nancy Pelosi gave up the House's more progressive plans when Ted Kennedy was gone and she realized further negotiation was fruitless. And despite herculean efforts on the part of all the Democrats in power at the time (well, except certain assholes), the circular firing squad devotees paint them all as feckless.
> Obama had this super majority for a number of weeks
Even that is an exaggeration. There was never a Democratic supermajority.
He was able to cobble together a super majority on one issue. One of the Senators making up the supermajority that passed ACA literally spoke at the RNC convention and endorsed Obama's opponent[1].
So why didn't the US impose sanctions on the Saudis after they nationalized US oil companies in Saudi Arabia? Or (checks notes [1]) Sri Lanka, Turkey, Bolivia, Bahrain, etc.?
The problem with this theory is that it doesn't account for all of the nationalizations that the US didn't respond to with sanctions or invasions. Which is, I believe, larger in number than the reverse.
For Saudi Arabia, it seems they didn’t nationalize anything but demanded 50 % of profits, which is not too far off from being considered a tax. They then bought the other 50 % decades later.
For Sri Lanka, it seems it wasn’t oil production but merely the domestic petrol distribution? Also unclear how much of it was British and not American.
For Turkey I can’t find the company at issue, but it apparently happened before the Second World War and I’d guess American interests just weren’t very substantial at the time? The article suggests the US was supporting Turkey in getting out from under existing relationships with the old powers of Europe.
“I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
It's fun to demonize, isn't? But in the glare of attention we all say stupid things at point or another. In her own words (per WP):
Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda", saying that her question was a loaded question.“I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” She wrote, "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean",[127] and that she regretted coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel".[121] She apologized for her remarks in a 2020 interview with The New York Times, calling them "totally stupid".[128][122]
> Sanctions on Cuba? This is not because Cuba or Castro is "bad". ... What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations.
It is not surprising that US reacts more harshly when a foreign country violates human rights of US citizens than when it 'just' opresses their own citizens.
> The sanctions on Venezuela have nothing to do with nationalization.
> Section 1. Purpose: The United States recognizes the need for more freedom and democracy, improved respect for human rights, and increased free enterprise in Cuba
> What's the real issue with Cuba? Castro nationalized assets and resources that belonged to US corporations.
> Sanctions on Venezuela? Again, Venezuela took the unacceptable step of nationalizing their oil assets.
But is this not saying that the real issue with Cuba is [actual] communism? This requires no conspiracy, it is the root of publicly-cited reasons for US policy towards the island.
I think the reason these statements have the allure of revelation despite not being so is an unresolved dissonance in the American civic religion.
Capitalism and property have displaced most other rights of the liberal pantheon, old and new. Merely to discover the once unremarkable fact that capitalism in inherently unjust, and that neither property nor free enterprise are actually its synonyms, is lamentably revelatory.
I suppose the deliberate destruction of any rational, shared understanding of what communism actually entails, enacted by demagogues attacking Democratic politicians and policy, has also helped break the prior clarity of these embargoes' official justification.
Cuba does treat their people in horrible ways, oppressing anyone who resists. But yes, we support plenty of countries that do that - like Turkey! Cuba comes into the 'legacy countries we hated in the past', communism division.
Fair is fair: capital is what builds economies, capital wins wars, capital allows culture to form, capital makes resources available. And capital will go where it is best protected.
So a country that lets it's capital get destroyed is pretty much fucked.
This is the fundamental issue with most forms of communism, socialism and theocracy: they're perpetually short of capital.
Places like Northern Europe work very hard to simultaneously protect capital and human assets. And that's good. And we should emulate that. But all to often people try to down grade capital instead of upgrading people.
The places people so often think of as alternatives (Venezuela as a recent example) all too often fall for this error and doom themselves.
Not really. If you can keep your capital from fleeing but do away with them then good for you. Cuba and Russia have both made a good stab at that. Saudi too. But again, it's very difficult.
The most notable theocracies - Iran and Saudi Arabia, do fairly well compared to the other two forms of government. I wonder why they're do better than one might expect.
Saudi Arabia is not a theocracy, it's a regular old monarchist dictatorship with some window dressing, and on pretty much any measure they do worse than their capitalist competitors like the UAE or Qatar.
Iran, Afghanistan and the Vatican are the only modern theocracies.
US troops are still (illegally) occupying territory in Syria to "protect oil fields" or something - odd how we never hear about that in the context of our newfound deeply held belief in inviolability of national sovereignty and borders.
Anyhow, Haiti is a truly tragic story. Just in terms of the real estate it's sitting on there's a massive opportunity for anyone who could get the country semi-functional to build a thriving tourism industry.
Haiti's GDP per capita in 1990 was higher than China's[1]. I'm skeptical of the ability of history from 100-200 years ago to explain why there's been such a massive divergence since. Put another way, if you looked at the picture in 1990 where China and Haiti GDP per capita have been similar for decades with Haiti often in the lead, what facts would have led you to correctly predict the massive divergence over the next 30 years? The events of 1914 or 1803 in Haiti? But the opium wars, China being subjugated by Japan, Mao killing ~45 million of his own people would not similarly handicap China? See also Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, etc.
> ... what facts would have led you to correctly predict the massive divergence over the next 30 years? The events of 1914 or 1803 in Haiti?
The U.S. has been meddling in Haiti's affairs ever since, threatening leaders who dare to raise the minimum wage, among other things. Your skepticism of "history from 100-200 years ago to explain" seems more like a straw man argument. The comparison between Haiti (10 million residents) and China (1 billion residents) is kind of strange, for GDP per capita is not dependent on the work of independent individuals. You take the total for the country and divide by the number of individuals, so any country with a billion residents and the ability to produce and set wages without restrictions has a massive advantage over any country with 1 percent of their population. Lastly, your comparison with China could be done with a hundred other countries, so you could easily dismiss their history just the same. There's a lot going on you might not be aware of.
That wasn't an invasion, that was just Civil Asset Forfeiture. That is a difficult read on a Sunday morning.
> Some historians cite tangible gains, like hospitals, 800 miles of roads and a more efficient civil service, but they also point to the American use of forced labor, with soldiers tying up civilians in ropes, making them work for no pay and shooting those who tried to flee.
The phrase "America is the worlds police" is now understood in its rightful context. America keeps its own peace by killing and shaking down those who it can.
I grew up in the Canal Zone (former American colony in Panama). We Americans built roads, sewer, water systems, etc. in Panama. We paid good wages by Panamanian standards. This is the standard imperial justification. We thought Panama would never be able to run the canal without us. We were wrong. Panama ended up much better off without our presence. While we were “benign” colonists we held the country back.
Someday, hopefully, powerful nations will not feel the need to be in control of other nations even when those nations do uppity things like control their own destiny.
The US is still heavily involved in Panama and used force to remove the narco-authoritarian leader Manuel Noreiga. Panama received a huge gift in the form of the canal. Panama still uses the dollar as its currency. Without US involvement Panama would look more like the other country considered for a canal -- Nicaragua. Panama's per capita GDP is 6x Nicaragua. US imperialism was fantastic for Panama.
I grew up there and came to the United States to go to college. I was there during the Noriega years but was in the U.S. during Just Cause. As I recall Panama uses the Balboa as its currency and the Balboa is pegged to the dollar. Panama does not make paper currency but it does have its own coins (which are the same size, weight as American coins).
As one rabiblanco put it to me the last time I was there, “When America left we had to grow up.” Therein lies the pernicious nature of benign colonialism.
You have no idea what Panama would look like had the canal not been built. Maybe it would be more like Costa Rica than Nicaragua. The difference between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is that Nicaragua had the temerity to get a government we didn’t like. Heck, you don’t even know if Panama would be a country in the alternate timeline where the canal isn’t built.
How do you know the extent of my knowledge of Panama’s history based on my original response? Must I be ignorant simply because I believe the U.S. ended up being bad for Panama by the time of the Treaty? Who propped up Noriega and encouraged the expansion of the PDF? Who wanted Battalon 2000 to be in Amador and was fine with the PDF being the de facto rulers of Panama? (Until Herrara Diaz made his accusations and the people rose up.)
> Heck, you don’t even know if Panama would be a country in the alternate timeline where the canal isn’t built.
I mean, the US more or less sponsored Panamanian independence from Colombia solely because they didn't like Colombia's terms on offer for acquiring the land for the Panama Canal.
But Costa Rica is so rich because it's a western tourist state. It's entirely white settler colonialism behind Costa Rica AND panamas relative success...
Always hilarious to see people justify colonialism / controlling another country. I'm sure you wouldn't feel that way if this was your own country that would not control its destiny and was controlled from imperial powers abroad.
Ask anyone in Panama, they feel much better being independent. Yes Panama is obviously still having strong ties with the US, but they are happy that their own land is not owned and managed by of a foreign army.
After a while assimilation and integration occurs and thus the argument would not apply to present day California. The U.S. made no attempts to incorporate Panama, as a whole, into the U.S. Poor Panamanians were prevented from getting mangoes in the Canal Zone. It took rioting and deaths before the Panamanian flag was flown in the Canal Zone. I don’t think the comparison to California is apt.
Having that canal here in Panama and having the guarantee that the US will intervene with force of the security of the canal is threatened is the best thing for Panama. Without the ousting of Manuel Noriega by military invasion, this country would look a lot more similar to Nicaragua or Venezuela. There are still people here that are bitter about it, but there are also many that recognize that Panama owes much of its success and stability to the US.
A guarantee of force by a different nation isn’t always in the best interest of a nation: the comparison that comes to my mind for external application of force when a canal’s “security” was threatened, is the Suez Canal.
I agree in general that it could be a bad thing. But in the case of Panama and the US I see it as a very positive thing.
For one, Panama doesn't have a military anymore since Noriega was ousted in the invasion. That's a huge blessing of stability to the country. You don't have to look far in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to see how dangerous a military is to democracy. And we don't need a military for defence, because everyone knows the US will rush to the defence of Panama if the canal were threatened. Purely from self interest, but that aligns nicely with the intersts of Panama in this case.
It was not stolen, the lease was based on mutually agreed treaty, which has also advantages for Panama (by US providing support during its independence revolt).
(Although one could say it was stolen from Colombia, through support of Panama independence.)
>(Although one could say it was stolen from Colombia, through support of Panama independence.)
The Panamanian independence movement from Colombia had existed for decades. Did the US leverage it to obtain territory for the canal? Yes. Did independence reflect local sentiment? Yes.
I think that Panama would not be any near as well off had the Canal Zone remained. We stunted Panama’s political and national growth. It’s not a coincidence that the Thatcher Ferry Bridge was the only bridge across the canal on the Pacific side while America was in control. The political will to develop the infrastructure of the country simply was nonexistent until after we left.
I agree with that, but it doesn't take away that giving the canal to Panama was a gift. One might argue a deserved gift, since it's Panama's territory, but it was a gift nonetheless. Panama wouldn't necessarily exist as an independent country were it not for US imperialism and constructing that canal in the first place.
However, the Noriega business would have the death of Panama had it not been for the US intervention. That was some necessary tough love for Panama.
You're right though that, at the end anyway, the canal zone was holding the country back. In the early days it may have been different. It's tough to say.
I understand better your point and agree with it. I have been concentrating in my remarks in the tail end of U.S. control of the Zone. It was beneficial to Panama to get the Canal as a result of the treaty.
Nicaragua is not such a good analogy since US foreign policy had a deliberate negative effect on Nicaraguan politics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States. A better analogy would be a country that was non-aligned but didn't experience much interference. I can't think of many examples, aside from maybe Botswana or something.
> War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
> I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
> I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
> There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
> It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
> I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
> I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
> During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
You can see him in archival footage talking to the Bonus Army in Washington DC.
This is exactly the shit they standardize out of history class. What they tend to cover is wars. It makes for a good militaristic political nationalist student that gives credence to the idea that the US Government is a moral authority.
Haitians of German descent* had a stranglehold on Haitian ports and maritime commerce. Wasn’t that a casus belli? We could have de-Germanized those industries, handed them back to majority along with Haitian government and it would have been a win-win without occupation.
*Yes I know what Haitian constitution said about everyone being black but unlike Polish Haitians German Haitians resolutely intermarried only with each other to the point of inbreeding like Greeks in Ancient Egypt.
> In September 2003, Amiot Métayer was found dead, his eyes shot out and his heart cut out, most likely the result of machete-inflicted wounds. He was, prior to his death, the leader of the Gonaives gang known as "The Cannibal Army." After his death, his brother Buteur Métayer swore vengeance against those he felt responsible for Amiot's death—namely, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Buteur took charge of the Cannibal Army and promptly renamed it the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti.
> Everybody makes mistakes. But it takes real courage to own up your mistakes and fix them.
Yes, but like you said, this happened in the past. The current French citizens are not the ones who made these mistakes.
For the same reason that we don't punish the children for the crimes of their parents, we shouldn't be accusing people today of the crimes of their ancestors. I agree that it would be amazing if the French decided to help restore Haiti, but it's not beneficial to cast blame on the French people of today and demand reparations.
At the very least, if we demand reparations of them today how far back do we go and who else do we demand reparations from? The Germans committed atrocities against the Jews less than 100 years ago, but nobody is demanding reparations there? What about Mao Zedong, also less than 100 years ago? Or how about the evils going on right now in places like Saudi Arabia[0], Afghanistan[1], or the very alive slave trade of over 21-45 million people right now[2]?
There's a nuance here that you are deliberately ignoring. It's not like I'm asking the French to atone for slavery (which is what you seem to be implying); the reality is even worse than that: the French made the Haitians pay 150 Million Francs for their own freedom (an amount 10x larger than what USA paid France for the state of Louisiana).
Think about it: THE FRENCH FORCED THEIR SLAVES TO BUY THEIR OWN FREEDOM FOR 150,000,000 FRANCS!
If your grandfather robbed a family and left them impoverished, yes, you are not responsible for the theft, but you continue to benefit from it, and you are the one who can choose to make amends, not your grandfather.
If a Swiss banker today is in charge of the gold extracted from the teeth of Jews, Romani, communists, homosexuals, etc. murdered in concentration camps, must he give it back to the descendants of the victims? He was neither a Nazi nor the banker the Nazis sent the gold to originally. He is not responsible for their actions, but he is now the steward of this stolen wealth. What is his responsibility at this point?
Money seems different from gold because it is fungible and abstract. Your standard of living may be based in part upon some historical theft, but which part and how much? There isn't a particular dollar bill or pound note you can point to as stolen. Gold melted down from fillings isn't like that. But this just speaks to the poverty of our imagination, not anything morally relevant.
> The German government and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced an increase in funding for social welfare services for Holocaust survivors by $88 million on July 10, 2018. This funding increase will allow survivors to receive more frequent and better quality home care, food support, transportation and medical services. This allocation makes Germany’s 2019 total pledge to the Claims Conference $564 million.
(Emphasis mine)
I think this final paragraph in that article says it all. Who are the reparations going to? The Holocaust survivors. I'm not aware of any Haitians that were wronged by France in the 1800s that are still alive today, but if any of them are still alive that makes it much easier to figure out how to pay reparations :)
My general point was that it's ridiculous to pay reparations of wrongdoing to people that weren't wronged. And you can go down the whole path of how certain people are born into higher social statuses and whatnot, but that's a different argument and that ultimately boils down to the fact that life isn't fair or equal. There's nothing we can do about that.
What we can do is fight the crimes against humanity that are happening right now. We can make life better for the people around us. We can help influence our small circle of impact, and hopefully make the world a better place in the process. Focusing on the evils of our ancestors won't get us anywhere (unless we're studying them to avoid making the same mistakes). But maybe we can fight the crimes that are going on right now so that our posterity won't have the same arguments about how we wronged them by not fighting the injustice that is now.
The US often skips many many chances to help our fellow new worlders in the south both in the caribbean and mexico on down. It will definitely come home to bite us in the future.
You might want to read the article you are commenting on a bit more carefully, since this is explicitly mentioned.
While Haiti gained independence from France in 1791, France demanded "reparation" from that loss under the threat of a war.
> They reveal a debt so large, and so lasting, that it would help cement Haiti’s path to poverty and underdevelopment.
Haiti became the first and only country where the descendants of enslaved people paid the families of their former masters for generations.
> In 1825, France demanded five annual payments of 30 million francs.
The amount was far beyond Haiti’s meager means. The first payment alone was about six times Haiti’s entire revenue that year, according to the prominent 19th-century Haitian historian Beaubrun Ardouin.
The comparison with other countries tends not to be made.
Germany took huge amounts of money from the US, Japan (the CIA were rigging elections in Japan until a few decades ago), South Korea...in the 1940s, 100% this argument was justifiable.
But after that point, particularly if you look at what happened in Central and South America, it is very clear that other explanations pre-dominate (and, not coincidentally, some of these places have been content to blame others all the way...Singapore was poorer than any country in Africa 60 years ago, had race riots worse than any place, they are now richer than most of Europe).
Also, I did my PG thesis on this specific issue: whether you think it is right or wrong, this is how sovereign debt crises were resolved at the time. Egypt, Ottomans...there were few other options that creditors had because most of these places weren't nation states in the way we perceive them today. So passing financial management over to creditors or hypothecating specific revenues (something not mentioned in the article, but which happened in Haiti) were the only way that people agreed to lend...and they lent, they provided financing for everything. The article doesn't invert their question (deliberately, I think we all know what the agenda is here...it relates to contemporary politics only): if the US and France didn't lend, how does Haiti industrialise? The population had no savings, do you think roads and hospitals just spring up for free out of nothing? The US, Germany (in part), Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea...they all industrialised using foreign capital.
Finally, I think forced labour was used in road construction in almost every country (certainly in the US). The implication today has to be that this was because of racism or some inherent desire for evil...it wasn't, it was because (once again) of the lack of reasonable alternatives.
> The comparison with other countries tends not to be made.
I find that problematic because it reduces the situation in these developing countries to a moral narrative with the ultimate purposes of embettering descendants of european countries. But these narratives don’t facilitate solutions. The French are not, for example, going to ever pay back the $20 billion or so in reparations they demanded from Haiti. Nor are the British going to pay back the $1 trillion+ they expropriated from India.
I’m much more interested in cross comparisons to industrial development to European countries. Bangladesh is currently industrializing using foreign capital. What parallels can be drawn to Germany or the US that would help keep that going? Because at the end of the day, the 6-7% annual GDP growth the country is currently enjoying is more significant to Bangladeshis than the combined effect of all the moral narratives ever penned about the country by the likes of the New York Times.
Bangladeshis seem perfectly happy with a “Pakistan invested nothing in us from 1947-71” narrative while buying air defense systems from them well into 21st century.
And they’re downright gleeful about the recent divergence in GDP per capita growth between Pakistan and India/Bangladesh, as well as Pakistan’s inability to get their birth rate down to replacement levels.
But that doesn’t top India’s recent preoccupation with being mad not about the 700 years of Muslim rule prior to British colonization…
I don’t worship Aurangzeb and neither should anyone else. What’s going on is about erasing Muslims rather than moving forward (moving the buildings or building a new mosque on a different site, etc). Inventing sacred sites (and I am not saying this about Kashi/Mathura because those are well documented) is the oldest trick in the book (see attempts at Charminar in Hyderabad by Hindus, Shab Bhar Masjid in pre-Partition Lahore, etc)
Speaking of Shab Bhar Masjid, today’s Google Doodle is of none other than Gama Pehlwan, who was involved in that and also saved lives of many Hindus during Partition.
Can you help me understand what your last paragraph is saying? There's a way to read it as a justification for forced labor, but I feel like I must be misunderstanding it.
So was Bangladesh (where I’m from). But because of natural bounty and resources, not technology or social organization. That’s why the Europeans were able to establish colonies in the first place. And even if restored to that level of wealth that would make them desperately poor by European standards today.
Searching for "rich" and "wealth" in that document doesn't turn up a demonstration of the claim, which I find extraordinary. Would you mind quoting the part which you believe does?
>Saint Domingue was the wealthiest European colonial possession in the Americas," Hans Schmidt writes, producing three-quarters of the world's sugar by 1789,
Though I believe the poster was asking about the economy post independence.
The US has had what, 29? Articles of Confederation, US Constitution, and then 27 amendments. I guess several of the amendments came together so it'd be slightly lower.
Tldr - France and french banks forced haiti to pay reparations for having earned their freedoms for so long that 2.53 out of every 3 dollars they made for centuries went to “white people”. This led to a loss of 25 billion dollars conservatively or 200 if you’re being real.
So I take it I'm supposed to feel guilty for something my ancestors did? Sorry but I don't. Take it as a warning that corps have government tied around their finger and have for centuries, sure I can agree with that. I looked up some other articles by the authors they all seemed to have a heavy handed opinion overlaid over what should be simple reporting, so take this article with a grain of salt.
You're partaking of the spoils of your ancestors, and the material losses they caused can be directly traced to the living citizens of Haiti today. It's not really that much about guilt, but about actual liability.
Too often people take these articles and say "well I didn't do that" "what do I have to do with it" "that happened hundreds of years ago, there's a whole new set of people nowadays". It's not just the actions in the moment, but the fact that actions have an effect over time.
Take for example a country that loses a certain number of men in some battle many years ago. Well some of those men would have gone on to work on the land and have offspring, now no longer. Because of that, there was a hit to birth rates, and food production, which in turn affected nourishment country wide, and a smaller next generation adjusting for growth. Which later in turn affected GDP overall and other certain critical economic factors. The point is that actions don't happen in isolation, one might know this as the butterfly effect.
How does this implicate "the white man that lives in america"? Because of all of this plundering and horrid behavior done on foreign soil and because of the slavery that happened in this country, it was a large contributing factor to bringing us to where we are now. And in the same way that it contributed to our success, it detracted from those oppressed group's success. We now live in a world that whether we like it or not, is founded on these horrible truths, and whether we like it or not there are groups of people, countries even, that are worse off because of that, sometimes significantly so.
This is the foundation for conversations about reparations. What can we do now to balance the playing field, a field that we ourselves didn't throw out of balance, but that we are in the singular position to fix.
"American interests", an euphemism used to this day to refer to whatever's most profitable for american capitalists and industrialists. It can be found in actual government documents released today. The context almost always consists of some country not making life easy for some american "stakeholder". Makes me cringe every time I read those words.
You should read “The Fish that Ate the Whale“ by Richard Cohen. The American government did insane things in Central and South America for/on behalf of the banana industry.
The coup in Bolivia in 2019 was also for American, and more broadly, transnational corporate, interests, primarily related to privatizing publicly-owned natural resources like lithium. Elon Musk literally said "We will coup whoever we want" when asked about it.
See also the efforts for years now that US govt officials have been pushing for the "recognition" of the "interim government" of Venezuela, who sits on large publicly-owned oil reserves.
Make sure that after Wall Street hijacks your government and uses your taxes and lives to terrorize some poor country you've barely heard of, for the benefit of bankers and capitalists you haven't heard of at all, that you, personally, feel guilty about it.
That is the most crucial part, because you will have to repent and atone for those deeds, never them.
There's nothing extraordinary about historical facts. The U.S. propaganda machinery has not yet been able to erase all its wrongs and crimes from history, even though it's actively working at it.
From [1]: “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
And "The bigger spender wins congressional races 91 percent of the time" [2].
But if that's not credible enough for you maybe go see the speech by President Eisenhower [3].
Don't you remember the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq?
There are so many examples that I have no idea how you think this is a conspiracy theory. There is no need for that, people just act on their perceived best interest, and when you have the top ~1000 people controlling almost every asset, isn't it obvious that they will dictate the course of history?
Thanks for actually posting links, although none of them show that "US foreign policy exists to make corporations rich". They are just vague general warnings about concentration of power.
The US has a huge and robust left-leaning press. I would have expected extensive wall-to-wall reporting if "US foreign policy exists to make corporations rich". Yet I see none. In what way is this not a generic "america=bad" conspiracy theory?
The US Trade Representative publishes a naughty list of countries every single year pointing out nations that aren't conforming to american intellectual property laws. These reports are riddled with language such as "our stakeholders say", implying rich corporations and industries are telling the US government what to do and who to target. As a result, countries with high crime rates and without universal basic sanitation have to waste resources policing imaginary american property within their borders.
Conspiracy theory? I thought it was common knowledge and accepted fact. Haven't you heard all the oil jokes? "Oil discovered in Antarctica, the US says it will liberate the penguins from the fascist tyranny with WMDs of the snow". And that's only for the obvious stuff, banana republic was literally coined after US companies' exploitation.
I can recommend "I was a Gangster for Capitalism", really good book.
An amazing article that should be required reading apart from
this one is this : https://nyti.ms/3G3zNKB
(Part of the same series on Haiti, and truly shows the scope of the rot).
TL;DR - France and french banks forced haiti to pay reparations for having earned their freedoms for so long that 2.53 out of every 3 dollars they made for centuries went to “white people”. This led to a loss of 25 billion dollars conservatively or 200 billion if you’re being real.
The US just took over as the next colonial power. They even helped get rid of the only President in decades to have brought this whole thing up as an issue again.
Interesting. I’m reading “Harsh Times” — an awesome novelization of essentially the same phenomenon in Guatemala.
Independence. Was that a trap for Haiti? Would they have been better off as a vassal state of France? Should they have just fought the French again? Is there a counterfactual that suggests what could have been done differently?
While it's possible to imagine a history where the French free the slaves and somehow still convince them to work on the sugar plantations, resulting in a better outcome for everyone, reaching such a set up would have been a Herculean task. It's hard to view independence as a bad outcome for the slaves without such a scenario.
>Should they have just fought the French again?
Without the distraction of the French Revolution, I can't picture France losing that war. From the article, the US lost ~15 men in the 1915 war to ostensibly conquer the country, throughout most of the 19th century France likely could have won with similar ease. That's surely what the Haitians believed, as they only agreed to the indemnity due to gunboat diplomacy.
> Is there a counterfactual that suggests what could have been done differently?
The best counterfactual is the US, where the French acknowledged and supported us allowing a new nation to be built. Nobody gave Haiti support, save a couple thousand Polish soldiers.
At most, maybe without the 1804 massacre of the French the Haitians would have gotten somewhat better treatment. But as they were already given such poor treatment, I doubt it'd have vastly improved things.
Why hire an artist to draw portraits of the scumbags responsible? Surely the pictures used for models are available if you need to show them at all. Printing that next to an American showing off his "hunt" of Hatians is just bizarre.
Four of those five illustrations is a redrawing of the public domain photographs wikipedia has for each (Roger L. Farnham doesn't have a wikipedia page, but I bet his portrait was redrawn from a public domain photograph too.)
Not sure if it's public domain but I found the Farnham reference photo on image search, complete with the polka dot bowtie. A strange use of an artist's time
Interesting read, I never understood why Haiti has had so many financial issues over the years.
I think France and the US should pay off all its debts as restitution to what was done over the years.
Well for one, it's a nation, which is a legal fiction. Haiti and Haitians are not the same thing. That is to say all the previous action of said nation, including the accrual of debts, hadn't ought to be a real liability to the Haitian people. It's precisely inheriting your parent's debt on a magnitude that is baffling. Moreover if one examines the rate of interest it's quite probable that the sum total of principal has been paid. Finally, they had ought to be allowed to default. Risk is one of the reasons given to justify interest, if the lender isn't actually accepting risk, the interest should be close to nothing. If anything such debts had ought to be forgiven simply as a product of the moral imperative of noblesse oblige.
What it really is, is a smokescreen for imperialism to keep the capital gradient in check and forward the Western agenda.
By redistribution of wealth that was gained from theft and exploitation.
I'm an immigrant too, and I am definitely benefitting. Not as much as some, but it would be closing my eyes to ignore how I benefit from past and present imperialism.
Patriotism is pledging allegiance to a country and meaning it, taking the bad together with the good. Why would you give a vote to someone who wasn't serious about improving the country?
Because then someone has to decide who's "serious about improving the country" and who's not, and that "someone" then effectively gets to singlehandedly decide the election results.
Revoking my vote is the very opposite of the spirit of American democracy. The biggest problem America faces is the rise of collectivism (and also Fascism from the right). California leading the pack. I didn't come to America to be part of a socialist nation which wants equality of outcome. The strength of USA, and I would say uniquely, is in individualism, freedom, rights and its core founding principles.
This is probably the most offensive thing you can say to anyone. It is so strange to see young generation of this place veering towards Autoritarian socialist nation. We've seen how that turns out (North vs South Korea, Cambodia, USSR, Cuba). Universities in the US is the hotbed for this non-sense.
Regarding reparations, Russia paying reparations after the war to Ukraine? Probably OK. Woke Russians 600 years later telling the new generation to feel guilty about what Putin did 6 centuries ago? NOT OK.
Patriotism involves sharing the burdens of your country and working for its betterment. Among these burdens are moral burdens. If your country does something wrong the patriotic thing to do is to contribute to making it right. Calling this "collectivism" is bizarre. It is simply what it means to be patriotically committed to your country: you wish your country to thrive, not merely yourself.
This is a facade of morality is extremely condescending. Just because I don't support socialism != not serving the nation and being patriotic, looking out for the interest of the country.
If you want to serve the country: build good communities, hold government accountable, make it efficient, engage in philantropy, join your local soup kitchen, be thankful for people that serve in the military and public services, serve if you can, run for public office and build good products/services that improve lives of people.
I'd argue that not supporting individualism is doing a disservice to the country. It is the reason why we have transistors and MRI machines, medicines and vaccines, iPhones and semiconductors, agriculture and roads (paid by taxes, 40% from large corporations). The impact of which is on an unprecedented scale compared to virtue signaling reparations.
You have missed my point. You can be conservative and patriotic. You can be liberal and patriotic. But if you are patriotically committed to your country, it means you agree to help carry your country's burdens. If your country has done something wrong and shameful, it is not patriotic to ignore this, much less to insist everyone else ignore it, or to hope they don't ignore it but that no one asks you to chip in. This is selfishness and dishonors the country you claim to love and support. The patriotic thing to do is to help right the wrong, make amends. This glorifies your country.
This isn't to say this is any more than an ideal, but it is a mark worth aiming for, and when a country grants you citizenship it expects that you buy into this notion at least as an ideal. Yes, you can in effect buy citizenship in many places, but this is generally regarded as a shame and an embarrassment.
May be we are talking past each other. "Collectivism" has a formal meaning and that's what I am referring to. Mao's collectivism. The sacrifice of the individual (killing of millions) for the good of the society.
I am sure you would agree, given the definition, it is Un-American.
> when a country grants you citizenship it expects that you buy into this notion at least as an ideal
I hope this is not an accussation inclined towards my loathing of what's going on in this nation. If it is not, well said, if it is, then it is extremely condescending because any immigrant knows this better than anyone else. It is obvious and I live by it every single day. It makes me uneasy to hear this from someone, almost offensive and alienating.
> I am sure you would agree, given the definition, it is Un-American.
Why are you sure? What definition of "American" are you referring to? Do you claim authority to state what are America's values?
It sounds like you insist that we obey the founding fathers' wishes about what constitutes the nation of the USA, grounded in some nebulous-if-real sense of "national identity and culture". Do you actually know what their positions are on matters of resource distribution, immigration, or healthy democracy?
I agree. I am all for helping struggling nations move forward but when I hear reparations, I just change the channel. Come back and talk to me when you remove that from your vocabulary. Reparations just beget more reparations and don't fix the rot at the core of the Haitian government or any other. Just like removing all college debt would just be a bandaid and the problem would still be there. It requires fundamental chance to fix things, throwing cash at it and changing nothing won't
In the balkans, people actively rooted for trump, because they were afraid that another clinton will start another war here.
What I find really sad is, that the same people who have ukraine flags and "putin bad" everywhere, ignore eg. US soldiers that were just sent to somalia, and a bunch of other us/nato missions, eg syria, libya, not to mention "allies", from saudis to israel.
People don't have the time or inclination to understand the world, so they focus on the targets pushed out in front of them, especially if you can paint them as comic book villains so people don't have to take too much time figuring out who they side with.
It's not that... if americans kept to themselves and dealt with their internal politics (like massive student debt, screwed up health system, etc.) noone from outside would care about the american presidents. If one of the options like to drop bombs all over the world, to "protect americas freedom" (or whatever the excuse is), then even the outside people start caring.
If there is a comic book villain in modern leaders then it's Putin; belligerent, racist, sexist, using religion to justify his white supremacist policies, referring to Stalin as his favorite leader, etc. I mean there is literally nothing "good" about him.
By "the balkans" I presume you mean Serbia? The country that twice committed ethnic cleansing and genocide against its neighbors until the Clinton administration made them stop?
I live in slovenia. And I still don't want the clintons in europe. Nor do I want the american army here, including american army bases. Maybe if you guys stopped destroying random countries all around the world (you're sending troops to somalia right now, while pointing the finger at putin), people would like you more.
You're the exception. Your government chose to join NATO, and 15 different European countries have chosen to host US army bases, including every large NATO country except France. Many of those countries participate in US overseas operations, both invasions of hostile countries like Afghanistan/Iraq as well as peacekeeping operations. Nearly every country outside the US preferred the Clintons (Bill and hypothetically Hillary) as presidents to other recent presidents like Bush and Trump.
Remind us again, who attacked the WTC? Was it Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Iran? Iraq? Kuwait? Vietnam perhaps? Which one of the dozen countries that the U.S. has bombed, invaded, or wrongfully accused in the last decades of some wrong-doing was it?
Their financial freedom just twisting in the wind of what can be termed as neo colonialist capitalism.
I edited the wiki page of C.I.C bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit_Industriel_et_Comm... today after reading the part of NYTimes about French involvement in late 19th century before the Americans decided to join the party. More people should know that almost every big bank in the west has a very shady past.
