West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Elano on January 26, 2010, 10:35:45 AM
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But who cares about the millions of homeless people ?
Ah, ok. It's not a natural disaster ::)
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But who cares about the millions of homeless people ?
Ah, ok. It's not a natural disaster ::)
How is an earthquake not a natural disaster?
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But who cares about the millions of homeless people ?
Ah, ok. It's not a natural disaster ::)
How is an earthquake not a natural disaster?
hahaha you are so fuckin stupid :D
i'm talking about the homeless,you fucktard
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But who cares about the millions of homeless people ?
Ah, ok. It's not a natural disaster ::)
How is an earthquake not a natural disaster?
hahaha you are so fuckin stupid :D
i'm talking about the homeless,you fucktard
What about the homeless?
The huts they lived in can barely be called homes.
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But who cares about the millions of homeless people ?
Ah, ok. It's not a natural disaster ::)
How is an earthquake not a natural disaster?
hahaha you are so fuckin stupid :D
i'm talking about the homeless,you fucktard
What about the homeless?
The huts they lived in can barely be called homes.
:sign_withstupid:
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Fuck the homeless.
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It's because Haitians are gone as soon you are bored by them. Homeless keep annonying you, as you have to see them every day and you can't change that.
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It's because Haitians are gone as soon you are bored by them. Homeless keep annonying you, as you have to see them every day and you can't change that.
In Toronto we have homeless Haitian immigrants.
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This is a very important point brought up by the thread starter; and it has even deeper implications.
...See, there needs to be a shift in paradigm so that we can focus on standard of living, rather then focusing on the world's tragedies. Because if you restore a person's life in tragedy, only so much so that they can continue to live in misery and squalor then you have actually decreased the standard of living in the world.
Let me give another example not associated with Haiti. People complain about the loss of America jobs to factories overseas. In reality, this is nothing to complain about if we simply switch the focus from jobs to standard of living. Because the fact that production jobs are being relocated abroad only means that we have advanced from a producing society to a service society. And where backbreaking production jobs are lost, service jobs will be gained. And on top of that, we can then enjoy the products made overseas at cheaper prices; thus increasing our expandable income.
So the president, if he was smart, he should never talk about "American jobs". Or needing to provide jobs in America, instead he should only talk about increasing the "standard of living"... or better yet, not talk or do anything at all and leave things to the free market.
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^ I think that's deep as fuck right there. I agree!
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It's because Haitians are gone as soon you are bored by them. Homeless keep annonying you, as you have to see them every day and you can't change that.
In Toronto we have homeless Haitian immigrants.
You're funny and also really annoying.
This is a very important point brought up by the thread starter; and it has even deeper implications.
...See, there needs to be a shift in paradigm so that we can focus on standard of living, rather then focusing on the world's tragedies. Because if you restore a person's life in tragedy, only so much so that they can continue to live in misery and squalor then you have actually decreased the standard of living in the world.
Let me give another example not associated with Haiti. People complain about the loss of America jobs to factories overseas. In reality, this is nothing to complain about if we simply switch the focus from jobs to standard of living. Because the fact that production jobs are being relocated abroad only means that we have advanced from a producing society to a service society. And where backbreaking production jobs are lost, service jobs will be gained. And on top of that, we can then enjoy the products made overseas at cheaper prices; thus increasing our expandable income.
So the president, if he was smart, he should never talk about "American jobs". Or needing to provide jobs in America, instead he should only talk about increasing the "standard of living"... or better yet, not talk or do anything at all and leave things to the free market.
Would be fine, if only it would be true that service jobs randomly pop up as soon as production jobs are lost. People lose their production job, don't get an equal "service job" in return and thus lose standard of living and dignity.
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Yep when you replace a skilled job with an unskilled job, that the wages will sharply fall and therefore living standards will dip along with it. So then your trading deficit becomes astronomical, then the currency will continue to fall, raising the price of importing those goods into the country and making what was a self sufficient nation, one completely dependent and from that it's a vicious circle.
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It's because Haitians are gone as soon you are bored by them. Homeless keep annonying you, as you have to see them every day and you can't change that.
In Toronto we have homeless Haitian immigrants.
You're funny and also really annoying.
That is correct.
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Because supporting haiti is the cool thing to do right now.
The main reason people help out is because it makes them feel better about themselves.
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Would be fine, if only it would be true that service jobs randomly pop up as soon as production jobs are lost. People lose their production job, don't get an equal "service job" in return and thus lose standard of living and dignity.
True! Plus, the people who are then producing our goods are exploited only for the companies' benefits. We wouldn't need cheaper goods if we still had the jobs which put us in the position to buy what was produced here.
Talking about the standard of living and dignity of a Mexican who produces for Wal-Mart in those Maquiladoras... The individual in the US or Mexico gains shit from those business practices.
Der Boss würde sie alle zerbersten!
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Would be fine, if only it would be true that service jobs randomly pop up as soon as production jobs are lost. People lose their production job, don't get an equal "service job" in return and thus lose standard of living and dignity.
You need to look at the big picture, because it doesn't happen directly like you described.
To understand economics you have to understand the "seen" vs. "unseen" concept. Like if a man throws a brick through the window of a barber shop, you would cheer, because you would think "now the window repair man (glacier?) will have work fixing the window to the barber shop". When in reality, what is unseen, is that now instead of spending the extra cash on a luxury item like taking his family to a movie, or getting a professional massage; the barber now has to spend his expendable income to repair the window; thus he experiences no increase in his standard of living!
So when you see production jobs being lost, like at General Motors for example. And you see cars being produced at lower costs and greater efficiency over in Japan, you cry, because you say "OHHH no, the poor people at GM lost their jobs, we must save the production jobs in this country, it's vital to our country's intererest". When in reality, the fact that millions of American's now have greater disposable income, by the fact that they can purchase less expensive, more efficient automobiles from oversea's markets; means that they now have the disposable income to spend in the service sectors of the economy; such as taking there family to a movie or out for a massage!
Understand? So where the jobs are lost in the production sector, such as General Motors; jobs are gained in massage therapy, yoga, entertainment industry, etc. Thus, the standard of living is increased!
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^ In a perfect world...
Who says people who lost their production jobs have the skills required for those jobs?
Infact, even if they have the required skills, why didn't they start earlier?
They either didn't like the work or the pay wasn't enough, either way the standard of living doesn't go up at all.
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^ In a perfect world...
Who says people who lost their production jobs have the skills required for those jobs?
Infact, even if they have the required skills, why didn't they start earlier?
They either didn't like the work or the pay wasn't enough, either way the standard of living doesn't go up at all.
Again, I said it doesn't happen directly or immediately. Like, you don't get fired from General Motors and then immediately pick up a job as a yoga instructor. Look we can all be hunter and gatherers or nomads and all have jobs, live off what we kill as hunters and grow in our farms and everybody will have a job and we can live like it was in the dark ages or like we are living in the Sahara in Africa, if that what you are looking for? That's full employment right? I mean, I guess the Native American's had a pretty good life, so if that's your argument then okay.
But, really, I think the goal is to increase the standard of living, not to provide jobs that are no longer needed. If it's no longer needed for us to have factories in America because American workers standards of living are so high that they won't work at the low pay and increased efficiency of foreign workers, then other sectors of the economy must be available to them.
I am talking about the American workforce as a whole. Why do you want to preserve jobs that are no longer needed? So I guess you wish history would have never invented such things as the printing press? Because many scribes who were paid to write out copies of books by hand, now were out of work, right? But what you don't see is that because of that invention the standard of living was greatly increased, and other sections of the economy picked up, such as book-binding, book selling and distributing; plus the knowledge base that existed in the world was greatly increased as information spread all over the world at a rapid rate; thus increasing productivity and efficiency throughout the overall economy.
There has to be personal responsibility. And an individual has to know that their respective skill set may one day be rendered useless by an increase in technology or a change in the times. So they have to adapt. Because if you insist on preserving jobs that are no longer needed then you prevent progress and decrease the standard of living; which is basically what the government has always done. Government has always been a roadblock in the way of people increasing their standard of living. The free market naturally responds to the needs and wants of society, where as the government only responds to what they want, and then they enforce it at the barrel of a gun upon the rest of society.
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What you seemingly overlook is the fact that unemployment was fairly low and the average wage was good to (during the manufacturing good days), now you have a situation in which unemployment has been steadily climbing and wages sharply falling.
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What you seemingly overlook is the fact that unemployment was fairly low and the average wage was good to (during the manufacturing good days), now you have a situation in which unemployment has been steadily climbing and wages sharply falling.
No shit... and that's part of my point.
See, you are all focused on employment and wages when you should be focused upon standard of living. In the manufacturing days I may have had a consistent job and a higher wage; but I wouldn't be able to obtain free information/entertainment from anywhere in the world via the internet, and travel to Africa, the Middle East with relative ease. And drive around in my own car when I was only 16 years old and every day since, and always have running water, electricity, and heating and cooling everywhere I go in America for my whole life.
So if you compare the average standard of living to the standard of living of someone in the manufacturing days you will see that it has increased; in spite of the governments increasing efforts to deter it. Government is slow and inefficient, and an individual moving alone can still find freedom in an unfree world.
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Yep when you replace a skilled job with an unskilled job, that the wages will sharply fall and therefore living standards will dip along with it. So then your trading deficit becomes astronomical, then the currency will continue to fall, raising the price of importing those goods into the country and making what was a self sufficient nation, one completely dependent and from that it's a vicious circle.
But who says 'unskilled jobs' are taking over skilled jobs? Isn't it that there is simply a bigger market of skilled people out there as globalization continues? Are we not becoming more and more an integrated world economy? Thus some people's living standards rise and others fall? Probably your point can build on to this rather than challenge it, because it is also true that the nature of globalization is that no nation is utterly 'self-sufficient' anymore, we all buy each others things, we all need to trade; every State, every Leviathan.
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What you seemingly overlook is the fact that unemployment was fairly low and the average wage was good to (during the manufacturing good days), now you have a situation in which unemployment has been steadily climbing and wages sharply falling.
No shit... and that's part of my point.
See, you are all focused on employment and wages when you should be focused upon standard of living. In the manufacturing days I may have had a consistent job and a higher wage; but I wouldn't be able to obtain free information/entertainment from anywhere in the world via the internet, and travel to Africa, the Middle East with relative ease. And drive around in my own car when I was only 16 years old and every day since, and always have running water, electricity, and heating and cooling everywhere I go in America for my whole life.
So if you compare the average standard of living to the standard of living of someone in the manufacturing days you will see that it has increased; in spite of the governments increasing efforts to deter it. Government is slow and inefficient, and an individual moving alone can still find freedom in an unfree world.
Hmm no, you are intermeshing technological advancements with standard of living. The technological advancements have occurred throughout history, courtesy of manufacturing. We know that the standard of living is sliding because inflation continues onwards and upwards while real wages have remained stagnant for the most part in the last 15 years.
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Hmm no, you are intermeshing technological advancements with standard of living. The technological advancements have occurred throughout history, courtesy of manufacturing. We know that the standard of living is sliding because inflation continues onwards and upwards while real wages have remained stagnant for the most part in the last 15 years.
Yes, but the standard of living has increased since the manufacturing days you mentioned in a previous post. But now you have shifted (like you usually do) and you are just saying that the standard of living has decreased so I can only assume that you mean since the 90's? What exactly do you mean?
Because I would argue in many ways the standard of living has still continued to increase. Most of our entertainment and information is now at the click of a button even if we are taking a shit at a gas station we can get almost anything through our cell phones, the whole world is at the tip of our finger when it wasn't in the 90's.
And you said I was confusing technological advancements with standard of living, but the two go hand in hand. They are totally related. Because if the government artificially seeks to save jobs i.e. in the manufacturing industry by restricting companies from moving manufacturing businesses abroad; then they have effectively slowed the efficiency of the economy and it's advancement and expansion.l
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Yep when you replace a skilled job with an unskilled job, that the wages will sharply fall and therefore living standards will dip along with it. So then your trading deficit becomes astronomical, then the currency will continue to fall, raising the price of importing those goods into the country and making what was a self sufficient nation, one completely dependent and from that it's a vicious circle.
But who says 'unskilled jobs' are taking over skilled jobs? Isn't it that there is simply a bigger market of skilled people out there as globalization continues? Are we not becoming more and more an integrated world economy? Thus some people's living standards rise and others fall? Probably your point can build on to this rather than challenge it, because it is also true that the nature of globalization is that no nation is utterly 'self-sufficient' anymore, we all buy each others things, we all need to trade; every State, every Leviathan.
What I meant was in the west the manufacturing base, which was largely skilled has been replaced by a service sector economy in which the jobs are largely unskilled. There are of course skilled jobs within the service sector but they make up only a small proportion of the total jobs available.
Also just to clarify, mostly all nations in the world have never been self sufficient, here for instance, we are but only island, who courtesy of population growth among the baby boomer generation, have never really been in a position to feed the population with domestic argiculture particularly as more houses were built to accomodate the increased numbers. However America was a truly self sufficient nation and yet it has thrown away this gift and instead becoming steadily reliant also.
Now in terms of standard of living, we need only look at the recorded economic growth of America during the manufacturing years and contrast them to the last 15 years, to illustrate how standards of living are sliding into the gutter. In fact the only reason why America has any standard of living right now, is courtesy of the dollar being the world reserve currency.
As for Haiti, the mind boggles, bearing in mind this is Chuck Baldwin writing about this, but it's certainly food for thought
People of goodwill everywhere are rightly sympathetic to the plight of hundreds of thousands of innocent Haitians in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake that rocked the island country. Private donations and volunteer efforts are pouring into Haiti from all over the globe--especially from the United States. This is a good thing, right? So, why am I troubled?
Simply put, I cannot remember such an all-out "relief effort" by our nation's military and government forces following a natural disaster anywhere--ever! Not even New Orleans, Louisiana, and surrounding Gulf Coast communities here in the homeland received the kind of attention from Washington, D.C., that Haiti is receiving.
According to Agence France-Press (AFP), "The US military is ramping up its mission in quake-hit Haiti, with 20,000 US troops expected to operate on ground and offshore by Sunday [January 24], the US commander overseeing the region said."
No doubt, this would include ships and personnel from the USS Carl Vinson carrier group. Cost to US taxpayers to send an entire carrier group--along with more than 20,000 (so far) military personnel--to Haiti already numbers in the multiplied millions of dollars. It is also almost certain that there will be no quick exit from the island nation. There never is. In other words, our military presence (dare I say occupation?) in Haiti will doubtless last for years. At least, that's the way Latin American and European countries see it. And they are probably right.
Suffice it to say that the United States military is now completely in charge in Haiti.
At this point, it would be very enlightening for everyone to read Walter Williams' column dated January 20, 2010, entitled "Haiti's Avoidable Death Toll."
See Walter's column at:
http://tinyurl.com/haiti-avoidable-death
In short, Williams notes that the high death toll in Haiti is directly related to the inferior political/economic philosophies of the Haitian government.
There is no economic liberty, which has relegated it to being one of the world's poorest nations, with no opportunity to build the kind of homes and businesses that can withstand natural disasters. Williams is right when he says, "President Barack Obama called the quake 'especially cruel and incomprehensible.' He would be closer to the truth if he had said that the Haitian political and economic climate that make Haitians helpless in the face of natural disasters are 'especially cruel and incomprehensible.'"
Williams also observes, "Corruption is rampant" in Haiti. Crime is, likewise, ubiquitous in Haiti, with little real law enforcement.
Private property rights are nonexistent. Like many (if not most) third world countries, people live in tyranny and bondage to insensitive, power-mad strongmen who use up the country's resources for their own selfish purposes. Tyranny always impoverishes people; freedom enriches them.
Williams rightly concludes, "Haiti's disaster demands immediate Western assistance but it's only the Haitian people who can relieve themselves of the deeper tragedy of self-inflicted poverty." Amen.
All of that said, however, there are still several things bugging me about the Haiti story.
For one thing, why was an earthquake of this magnitude not felt beyond Port-au-Prince? (The only reports saying tremors were felt out of Haiti belong to US-controlled sources.)
All of the testimonies that I have read from people living in the adjoining country of the Dominican Republic (which shares the same island with Haiti) that were quoted by French, British, or Spanish outlets universally say they felt nothing.
If the foreign press is reporting the story accurately, the devastation was almost exclusively contained in and around Port-au-Prince. That is very strange to me. Even most of the roads reportedly remained open after the quake.
Another oddity is the fact that this earthquake did not produce a tsunami.
It is being called "miraculous" that an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter Scale did not produce a colossal tsunami, which would have affected everyone in the region.
Furthermore, does the French government know something that we don't--but should? According to a report of the Global Analysis International Intelligence (GAII), "Not coincidentally, Agence France-Press (AFP), which of course is closely affiliated with French intelligence, filed a report on 14th January which contained the following concluding sentence:
"'On Wednesday, Obama ordered a "swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives" in Haiti following the murderous quake, as a massive US aid mission swung into action, using troops, naval forces, aircraft and rescue teams.'
"FACT: An 'act of God,' or natural calamity, is NOT a 'murderous quake.'
"The use of the word MURDEROUS here implies that someone is doing the MURDERING."
GAII further speculates that the earthquake may have been the work of US Black Ops, which "flattened the French embassy and many of its officials, imploded the United Nations' own establishments in the Haitian capital, and no doubt obliterated evidence of US Government and rogue official drug-running complicity . . . channeled through the Haitian capital for many years."
See the intelligence report at:
http://tinyurl.com/gaii-haiti
Intelligence reports are also circulating about the possible disruption of liens http://www.investorwords.com/2800/lien.html and seizures of trillions of dollars by the international community relative to past crimes committed by former Presidents George Bush I and II, and Bill Clinton, which were being channeled through Haiti's Central Bank.
If any of this is even remotely true, it is certainly more than convenient that the Haitian capital was destroyed.
This particular part of the story is a real sore spot with me. And I know if I broach this topic, many readers (especially my Christian brethren who live under the delusion that the Bush family can do no wrong) will refuse to believe anything I report and will even take their anger and umbrage out on me. So be it.
I am personally convinced that certain members of the Bush and Clinton families have been involved in the international smuggling of illicit drugs for decades.
I have spoken in confidence with those who were in positions to know, and they have emphatically told me that both then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and then-President George H.W. Bush were complicit in CIA-assisted drug running out of Mena, Arkansas. (You don't think I would say this if I did not have absolute confidence in the integrity and credibility of these sources, do you? Plus, why would they tell me this at potential great harm to themselves, if it were not true? And, no, I cannot divulge their names, for obvious reasons.) And there is absolutely no reason to believe that similar operations are not ongoing.
In my opinion, it would be utterly naïve to think otherwise.
After all, it has been often reported that the CIA used Army Special Forces troops to facilitate the smuggling of drugs out of Indochina during the Vietnam War, has it not? Yes, it has.
That rogue elements within the US government would use war--or even earthquakes--as cover and facilitation for illegal drug smuggling or money laundering would not surprise me one bit.
I realize it is extremely difficult for many Americans to contemplate that members of their own federal government could be evil enough to be involved in anything such as is implied above. According to the thinking of many Americans, evil people only live in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or North Korea. And, of course, that is exactly what government propagandists want us to believe.
The truth is, no country or people has a monopoly on sin. As the prophet Jeremiah was inspired to say, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9) The Apostle Paul agreed. He told the Philippians, "We . . . have no confidence in the flesh." (Philippians 3:3)
Thomas Jefferson said virtually the same thing when he said, "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
This is why Jefferson and the rest of America's founders insisted that we should be diligent to hold our civil magistrates accountable to the limits and protections of the US Constitution. They well understood the sentiments so wisely expressed by Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Christians, of all people, should understand this.
So, why are so many of us so quick to believe everything our government and their toadies in the national media are telling us? Are we so naïve as to believe that unregenerate politicians in Washington, D.C., are incapable of the same evil acts of barbarity and savagery that might be found in other parts of the world? Are sinners less sinful because they happened to receive their fallen nature from American bloodlines?
Am I saying that Black Ops personnel manufactured the earthquake in Haiti--and killed tens of thousands of people in the process--for the purpose of hiding or facilitating illegal activity? No, I am not. How in the world would I know it, even if it were true?
What I am saying is that, once again, for me, there are many things that do not add up regarding what is going on in Haiti.
The way the earthquake behaved; the lack of related seismic and tsunamic activity usually associated with earthquakes of this magnitude; the unprecedented involvement of US military forces being used for "relief efforts" even as commanders are desperate to fill combat theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan; the occupation of another independent nation, which occurred at lightning speed; the vast sums of US taxpayer dollars being expended; the devastation done to key Haitian governmental and banking institutions--which were known to be conduits for international financial disbursements--with virtually no devastation experienced anywhere else; and intelligence reports of surreptitious activity circulating all over Europe and Latin America all add up to one big question, What's really going on in Haiti?
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Hmm no, you are intermeshing technological advancements with standard of living. The technological advancements have occurred throughout history, courtesy of manufacturing. We know that the standard of living is sliding because inflation continues onwards and upwards while real wages have remained stagnant for the most part in the last 15 years.
Yes, but the standard of living has increased since the manufacturing days you mentioned in a previous post. But now you have shifted (like you usually do) and you are just saying that the standard of living has decreased so I can only assume that you mean since the 90's? What exactly do you mean?
Because I would argue in many ways the standard of living has still continued to increase. Most of our entertainment and information is now at the click of a button even if we are taking a shit at a gas station we can get almost anything through our cell phones, the whole world is at the tip of our finger when it wasn't in the 90's.
And you said I was confusing technological advancements with standard of living, but the two go hand in hand. They are totally related. Because if the government artificially seeks to save jobs i.e. in the manufacturing industry by restricting companies from moving manufacturing businesses abroad; then they have effectively slowed the efficiency of the economy and it's advancement and expansion.l
Dude, the standard of living is measured by the financial health of a nation, so we look at a number of variables, the furthering of technology does not mean that standards of living are increasing if people do not have the means of comfortably acquiring said luxuries without seeing their savings vanish, or their home reposessed, or their credit cards maxed out.
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Dude, the standard of living is measured by the financial health of a nation, so we look at a number of variables, the furthering of technology does not mean that standards of living are increasing if people do not have the means of comfortably acquiring said luxuries without seeing their savings vanish, or their home reposessed, or their credit cards maxed out.
So you are saying "standard of living" is not related to technology? And that the furthering of technology does not mean an increase in standard of living?
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www.dictionary.com
"standard of living"
–noun
a grade or level of subsistence and comfort in everyday life enjoyed by a community, class, or individual: The well-educated generally have a high standard of living.
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So if modern invention allows me to take a warm shower with ease, rather than having to go fetch some buckets of water from a nearby stream to dump over my head that is not increasing my standard of living?
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learn how to summarize I'm not going to read all that shit.
Infinite, Just because jobs are created doesn't mean that the people who are jobless are able to fill them, that was my point I just pointed out a flaw in your argument.
EDIT: WHo even says the jobs pay better?
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learn how to summarize I'm not going to read all that shit.
GTFO
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I can't summarise what isn't my writing!
I said standard of living is measured by the ease by which said luxuries can be acquired, so if inflation keeps moving up and peoples income stays stagnant then the aggregate financial health of the nation is falling aka standards of living are falling.
As for using hot water lol.....I said in the past 20 years or so, particularly in the last 15 years, standards of living have fallen.
When you go to the supermarket and the same basket of goods costs you 15% more than it did a year ago, your standard of living has fallen because you have less disposable income.
GDP is a little crude, but it's somewhat reflective of standards of living, as I said, just research how GDP has slid
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learn how to summarize I'm not going to read all that shit.
Infinite, Just because jobs are created doesn't mean that the people who are jobless are able to fill them, that was my point I just pointed out a flaw in your argument.
EDIT: WHo even says the jobs pay better?
There will naturally be people to fill the jobs. Wherever there is benefit to be gained, people will respond to what is in their self-interest. And if American's aren't capable of filling the positions, then workers educated in India can do the job.
And...Yo... I didn't say the jobs pay better. I said they may pay worse. But still our standard of living can be higher even if we are paid less. For example, a King in the 10th Century may have had a higher paying gig then me, but yet I have warm shower and heating and cooling everywhere I go in America, and all the information and entertainment I want from all over the world at the click of a button from my cell phone.
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http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=564
28 Jan 2010
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the "swift and crude" appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the "relief effort" and Bill Clinton the UN's man, The Comedians, Graham Greene's dark novel about exploted Haiti comes to mind.
The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.
The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.
The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security”. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.” Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power.”
In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W. Bush’s policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700 billion. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup.
For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the “relief effort”: a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. As president, Bush’s relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans’ black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti’s sweatshops.
When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan.
Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN’s man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as “Mr. Nice Guy... bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land”, Clinton is Haiti’s most notorious privateer, demanding de-regulation of the economy for the benefit of the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed “tourist playground”.
Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington’s “rollback” plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by US-sponsored regimes.
The first rollback success came last year with the coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama’s secret support for the illegal regime carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the US seven military bases to, according to US air force documents, “combat anti-US governments in the region”.
Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama’s next war. On 14 December, researchers at the University of West England published first findings of a ten-year study of the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of the Chavez government, while the majority denigrated Chavez’s extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler.
Such distortion and its attendant servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American corporate media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support.