Reply #1: Great article! But it left one item out--that Venezuela announced they were canceling Haiti's debt [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

for a big, low-cost oil deal they had with Venezuela. This put further pressure on the IMF to do the same.

The Chavez government never gets credit in the corpo-fascist press for anything good that it does--even for its more spectacular achievements in education, health care, poverty reduction, good management of the oil revenues and private sector economic growth--so the Left should be provide the balance, seek out the information and give credit where credit is due.

Aside from this, the article lays out the IMF "shock doctrine" problem in the clearest terms possible. Excellent work by writer Johann Hari of the London Independent!

I saw a documentary on Jamaica some years ago that also was marked by particular clarity. (I've forgotten the title. Got it from Netflix.) Among other things, it laid out the destruction of Jamaica's local, fresh dairy business by the U.S. ag dumping of cheaply priced powdered milk on the Jamaican market. It is so-o-o-o-o sad! A Jamaican dairy farmer, who has been driven out of a business he loves, that has been passed from generation to generation, laments the loss of KNOWLEDGE that this will mean--his expertise will not be passed on. They destroyed not just his business--they destroyed the future!

Jamaica was rendered unable to feed its people--for the same thing was done to other kinds of small, local farmers. It was all based on ruinous IMF loan conditions, incurred by corrupt rightwing governments, and the upshot was creation of a "free trade" zone, on Jamaica's docks, outside the jurisdiction of Jamaican labor laws or any kind of regulation, where products manufactured right on the docks, by sweatshop labor, were immediately loaded on tankers and shipped out. The destruction of Jamaican local businesses (the biggest job provider in many countries, including the U.S.), the onerous loan conditions, the loss of social services and the whole ruinous package created a pool of cheap labor with no rights whatsoever. You work in the sweatshops or you don't work.

Horrible! It was just horrible to watch what super-rich U.S./European investors had done to Jamaica! You just hurt inside, so deeply, to see this hard-working dairy farmer, who was able to provide his local area with fresh milk and other dairy products, who knew his business so well, who supported his family with it in reasonable prosperity--not riches, just a good living--and who was proud of his skills and his knowledge, proud of his family tradition, proud of his cows, proud of being able to feed so many people, weep for his loss and Jamaica's loss.

I didn't know of the exact same kind of IMF destruction of Haiti's rice farmers--revealed by this article. Thank you for posting it at DU!