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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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]?
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] dan353hehe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
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.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/17/venezuela-oi...
[2]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/25/lets-remember-m...
[+] [-] warning26|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yyyk|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] andreilys|3 years ago|reply
Yes they definitely work for three new-money tech billionaires and not the old money generational wealth families that nobody talks about.
[+] [-] brokenkebab2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/02/most-cuban-...
[+] [-] Spooky23|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MarkMarine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rajin444|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jcranmer|3 years ago|reply
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_co...
[+] [-] akhmatova|3 years ago|reply
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]
[+] [-] pphysch|3 years ago|reply
Here is the actual strategy laid out in an official government document: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/10/20/2017-22...
This policy was released in 2017. In 2021, there was a brief and ineffective attempt at a color revolution in Cuba.
[+] [-] zajio1am|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DANK_YACHT|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] random314|3 years ago|reply
They work for banks and resource mining corporations. They don't work for software technology new money titans.
[+] [-] rafaelm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w0de0|3 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] rnk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robinsoh|3 years ago|reply
China?
[+] [-] steve76|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LatteLazy|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] themgt|3 years ago|reply
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.
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=gdp+per+capita+haiti%2C...
[+] [-] sitkack|3 years ago|reply
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Haitian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jovenel_Mo%C3...
Those old black and white photos of troops boarding a ship to Haiti in 1915 is focused through a lens to arrive at the present here, https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1439989195871825921
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.
[+] [-] anonymousiam|3 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37826098
[+] [-] robonerd|3 years ago|reply
Well then...
[+] [-] 1024core|3 years ago|reply
This just makes me so sad.
Here's the thing: what's in the past is over; what can we do about it today is all that matters.
Wouldn't be great if the French decided to spend a couple of billion dollars to set up schools, hospitals, colleges, etc. in Haiti?
Everybody makes mistakes. But it takes real courage to own up your mistakes and fix them.
[+] [-] _gabe_|3 years ago|reply
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]?
[0]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/30/saudi-arabia-10-reasons-...
[1]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/18/afghanistan-taliban-depr...
[2]: https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/human-traffickin...
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
As someone from a third world country, I’m ambivalent about these “blame the white people” stories.
[+] [-] sailingparrot|3 years ago|reply
> 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.
https://archive.ph/9InwY#selection-851.0-908.0
[+] [-] skippyboxedhero|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|3 years ago|reply
http://cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/chomsky/year/y501_008....
[+] [-] azinman2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TMWNN|3 years ago|reply
After two centuries, one might start to think that the problem with Haiti is Haitians, were such a concept not wrongthink and therefore verboten.
Relevant Reddit post:
>TIL that Haiti has had 23 constitutions since 1801, with the most recent being enacted in 2012. At least two have declared the country to be an empire. <https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3t5wzt/til_t...>
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viksit|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmclnx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizardactivist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itissid|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sorokod|3 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bannedbybros|3 years ago|reply
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