[HN Gopher] Haiti's President Is Assassinated
___________________________________________________________________
Haiti's President Is Assassinated
Author : jbegley
Score : 423 points
Date : 2021-07-07 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| eutropia wrote:
| I don't know much about Haiti's international affairs, but I'm
| curious if other countries will be involved at all in the
| investigation of this murder (because the victim was a head of
| state). Complicating the situation of course, is the english and
| spanish speaking assailants, indicating that they might be
| foreigners.
|
| Will the D.E.A. (audio of the event being shared has a clip of
| someone yelling "this is a DEA operation, stand down" in a
| southern american accent) be expected to make some sort of
| statement regarding this? Should we believe them without a formal
| investigation and evidence?
| walrus01 wrote:
| The roots of the presently dire economic situation go back much
| further, but for persons interested in learning more about the
| current instability in Haiti, I would suggest researching/reading
| more about the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
| wyager wrote:
| Haiti has been in dire economic straits since achieving
| independence in 1804.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Many countries are in tough economic situations after a
| prolonged fight for independence.
|
| What stopped Hati from growing was 20 years after
| independence, the arrival of France with warships demanding
| 150 million gold francs as "reparations" for the slave-
| holders losing their "property".
|
| An absurd demand which was still being repaid until almost
| the 1950s. That's what screwed the country over.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Still does not explain why since the 50's it never
| developed, lot of examples of quick development like South
| Korea, Israel, baltic countries ... I guess it's a
| combination of a lot of factors, with Papa Doc not helping
| either. Just next to the border, the Dominican Republic, a
| former colony is doing way better.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Different circumstances. Israel received large amounts of
| foreign aid particularly from the US. South Korea's
| growth coincided with the Vietnam war and was a
| combination of domestic changes, and economic growth
| indirectly supported a lot by the US via aid and
| purchasing its exports (ex. textiles) - also part of Cold
| War geo-politics. (both of these are very handwavy
| summaries).
|
| Similarly for Haiti the summary is: post independence
| country was in debt as most are. 20 years later France
| demands payment. By late 1800s 80% of GDP is going to
| paying back that debt and loans taken out to cover the
| debt. Top holders of the debt are France, Germany, USA.
| Early 1900s US businesses (mainly banks) want to ensure
| they'll be repaid, so convince govt to invade Haiti. US
| occupies Haiti for 20 years. Takes over the national
| bank, takes the national gold reserves moves it to Wall
| St for "safe keeping".
|
| US puts in place propped up presidents from the mulatto
| elite vs the black majority population. Causes more
| economic issues, introduces things like Jim Crow - all of
| this leads to more racial and class strife. Great
| depression hits. US and and mulatto elites still
| controlling the country in the 1940s. This eventually
| causes the backlash and revolution of 1946 of which
| Estime then is the first elected on a platform of helping
| the working class and supporting the poor. Papa Doc rides
| this same platform of resentment of external intervention
| particularly in finances, and the poor and black working
| class being ignored and takes over. He's incredibly
| corrupt and horrible, but raises to power given the
| circumstances. Their family rules until the mid 1980s.
|
| The country shows some growth, then a massive earthquake
| hits and it hasn't fully recovered economically.
|
| Summary, US banks wanted to be ensured they'd get paid
| back so convinced US govt to take over the country. The
| violence and racism of the US occupation along with poor
| economics lead to a growth of populism in the country,
| which set the stage for Papa Doc whose family was a
| disaster. And there hasn't been much time since then to
| get back on track.
|
| So while not the same, a story that rhymes with the US
| propping up the Shah of Iran and setting the stage for a
| worse govt, and Batista in Cuba and then getting a worse
| govt. Here post the US occupation it took longer to
| develop, but the movement that Papa Doc rode was born out
| of the US occupation of Haiti.
| bookofsand wrote:
| South Korea, Israel and the Baltic Countries have
| received large inflows of Western capital and
| technological investments. Haiti, not so much.
|
| Ballparking a proxy number, for example annual FDI net
| inflows circa 2010: KOR=10B, ISR=10B, LTU=1B, DOM=2B,
| HTI=0.1B. Per capita, 20x-100x investment levels.
|
| Why? Like you said, a complex equation.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Don't forget Germany and America occupied Haiti for
| decades each.
| caseyross wrote:
| For those interested, VICE recently did a fantastic report about
| the street violence that's consuming parts of Port-au-Prince, and
| how it's connected to Haiti's current political climate.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvp1WVl6nrY
| DrammBA wrote:
| The video is not available in my country. I'm in America, but
| not the correct part of America it seems.
| kingofpandora wrote:
| > The video is not available in my country. I'm in America,
| but not the correct part of America it seems.
|
| In English, "America" unambiguously refers to the United
| States. I say that as a non-American.
| DrammBA wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by "unambiguously" when Merriam
| Webster[0], Cambridge[1], and Oxford[2] dictionaries have
| several definitions.
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/America
|
| [1]
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/america
|
| [2] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/a
| meric...
| jonny_eh wrote:
| As an English speaking Canadian, now living in the USA, I
| concur. "The Americas" refers to the whole super continent.
| DrammBA wrote:
| What do you mean by "super continent"?
| tantalor wrote:
| {North,Central,South} America
| DrammBA wrote:
| Those are not super continents.
| newfriend wrote:
| You're being deliberately obtuse.
|
| A continent consisting of North+Central+South America
| would be considered a "Super-Continent".
|
| And no one says "I live in America" when they live in
| Canada. Do you refer to yourself as American? I've never
| heard anyone refer to a Canadian citizen as "American".
| Or someone from Mexico as "American".
|
| You can link any dictionary definitions you want, but in
| 99% of cases when people say "America" they mean the US.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Unavailable in Europe. What kind of news outlet censors reports
| based on reader's location?
| bargle0 wrote:
| The kind that doesn't want to deal with Europe's laws, for
| better or worse.
| dmos62 wrote:
| What laws are those? This is surely not GDPR, if that's
| what you mean.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'm not seeing a problem?
| dmos62 wrote:
| Because Youtube doesn't have problems complying with
| GDPR, as far as I know. Also, other videos would be
| unavailable as well.
|
| Edit: you've completely changed your comment.
| bombcar wrote:
| Just because the largest video sharing platform ever know
| is willing to comply with GDPR doesn't mean there isn't a
| cost associated, or that everyone is willing to pay that
| cost.
|
| Regulatory moats are a thing.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Isn't privacy protection worth that cost? I value my
| right to privacy, and I'm happy that GDPR protects it to
| an extent. Not that this has anything to do with the news
| report being unavailable.
| wyager wrote:
| Oh, one of the world's richest companies can afford to
| comply with EU law or eat the fines? Well I guess it's no
| problem then
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's not that, it's generally that the license is sold and
| they don't have copyright for it in Europe anymore, at
| least as far as VICE is concerned.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Also unavailable in Mexico, so, not just a GDPR thing.
| Absurd nonsense all around for a Youtube news piece on the
| internet.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's also the case in Canada, here the rights are sold to
| Bell. It's probably sold to some Mexican telecom too.
| rnhmjoj wrote:
| youtube-dl report it's only available in the USA.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I unfortunately can't really test it because the original
| video loads for me, but there are several snapshots in the
| wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20210610164053if
| _/https://www.yo...
| shp0ngle wrote:
| It's not available in Asia either. (And, I would guess, in
| Haiti itself.)
| baybal2 wrote:
| Why they killed him?
| gadders wrote:
| One thing that's always puzzled me - why are Haiti and Dominican
| Republic so different politically and economically? They both
| share the same island. Curious as to why their fortunes seem to
| have diverged so dramatically.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| In addition to what cryptohacks said, Haiti always had horrible
| relations with the US because it was founded by slaves. The
| revolution took place in 1804, a time when Americans,
| especially southerners were very worried about slave revolts.
| In order to dissuade more slave revolts the US did everything
| in its power to make sure Haiti turned into a failed state.
| adolfojp wrote:
| Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places
| also share an ethnic seed and they don't. Haitians and
| Dominicans are not one nation split apart. They're two
| different nations that grew side by side.
|
| The Taino, the original inhabitants of the island, were wiped
| out / assimilated by the Europeans who settled the island.
| Years later the Spanish and criollo settlers relocated to the
| east of the island leaving the west free for the French to
| develop.
|
| The French and the Spanish had different cultures and radically
| different strategies on how to develop their colonies and thus
| the island ended up with two different cultures and governments
| and languages and political systems and with people of
| different (but overlapping) racial composition.
|
| A lot of people wrongly assume that Caribbean is an ethnic
| group but that couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm a Puerto
| Rican and I have a lot in common with Dominicans and Cubans
| because the three territories are former Spanish colonies. But
| I have little in common with Haitians, Jamaicans or the
| inhabitants of the smaller islands of the archipelago. To
| illustrate my point, I have an archipelago 40 miles east of
| where I live and we have no ferry between the islands and no
| connection of any sort beyond the fact that we're both US
| territories. I've been there as a tourist but nothing more.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Sharing the same island means nothing unless the two places
| also share an ethnic seed ...
|
| Plenty of countries do very well without shared ethnic seeds,
| whatever that means, including the wealthiest country in the
| world.
|
| Edit: Thanks for explaining what you meant, below. That makes
| sense.
| adolfojp wrote:
| OP didn't understand why the two countries were so
| different despite sharing an island.
|
| I explained that they're different because they're
| comprised of different people with different histories.
|
| This might be obvious to you but in my experience a lot of
| people assume that the inhabitants of the Hispaniola came
| from the same seed, as in they were the same group of
| people who later split when that was not the case. One
| country was seeded by the Spanish and the other one by the
| French.
|
| My comment was not meant to be a thorough analysis on their
| respective economies.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Thanks. I amended my comment above.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The history summarised here is the main reason.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761407
|
| (You might hope that that quote exaggerates what was done to
| Haiti, but if anything it underplays it.)
| objectivetruth wrote:
| This poster explains exactly why:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761407
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The western part of the island was a French colony and gained
| independence early by force. The population was made of black
| former slaves so they might not have had a lot going for them
| in the beginning, even just in terms of organizational
| capacity, and none of the neighbouring countries particularly
| wanted them to do well (slavery was a thing in all of them).
|
| Spain colonized the East of the island and government and power
| remained in the hands of European settlers.
|
| Haiti was also occupied by the US in the early 20th century,
| which was not exactly a glorious episode, either, and certainly
| did not help.
| sorokod wrote:
| Dominican republic is rooted in Spanish colonialism, Haiti in
| French.
| yardie wrote:
| Haiti is French and American colonialism. At one point the US
| ran the government and was even talking of annexing it as
| another territory.
| Orou wrote:
| The Haitian revolution ravaged the new nation's economy. The
| machinery used to process raw materials for Haiti's valuable
| export products, in particular sugar and coffee, were mostly
| destroyed in slave uprisings, and they could not be produced
| locally. Haiti also lacked the natural resources necessary to
| develop an independent industrial base, and even if plantation
| outputs increased again (as many tried to make happen), luxury
| goods like sugar and coffee are only valuable as trade goods.
|
| Simply put, Haiti was highly dependent on international trade
| for the resources it needed, which meant that the embargoes
| from major powers crippled the nation.
|
| Mike Duncan has an excellent series on the Haitian revolution
| in his Revolutions podcast series, which includes a final
| episode that summarizes the history of the nation up to the
| mid-20th century.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| It wasn't just the embargoes. They really did pay back the
| billions of dollars-worth of "debt".
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yup, and the debt was due 200 years ago and worth around 21
| billion dollars.
|
| For fun I ran the numbers, at 4% real interest which is
| realistic for a developing country, that's 2.55 trillion
| dollars in lost interest.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I wonder what is owed Haiti for the profits extracted
| from the enslaved peoples forced to work to death there.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Given that the slaves rose up and murdered their
| slaveowners, who were also Haitian, there is no one left
| for them to collect from, even if you could find someone
| still alive from that period who worked as a slave. In
| other words, those slaves took payment, via genocide, a
| long time ago. That's one of the problems with murdering
| all your oppressors and seizing all their assets -- at
| that point you have no one left to blame when things go
| bad over the next few hundred years.
| soperj wrote:
| Haiti wasn't a country then, so no, they weren't Haitian.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I recommend reading up on the history of Haiti.
| Independence was declared first (by the upper classes)
| and the 1804 massacre came later. There were, of course,
| a number of slave revolts that happened throughout that
| time, but the genocide was in 1804.
| soperj wrote:
| November 1803 to 1804 doesn't make much of a difference
| there. They were still french when they were extracting
| massive profits from the slaves.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Haiti's historical issues notwithstanding, it is also
| incredibly dysfunctional politically. The difference in
| forestry policies alone between Haiti and the Dominican
| Republic make their land border almost possible to identify
| from satellite/aerial photos alone:
|
| http://latinamericanscience.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2014/03/H...
| gadders wrote:
| But that was 200 years ago. And does the Dominican Republic
| have natural resources that Haiti lacks?
| Simplicitas wrote:
| crytohacks comments above are a good place to start to
| understand Haiti's troubled history. Neither have faired so
| well as American neocolonies, not that foreign influence is the
| only factor. In "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or
| Succeed", Jared Diamond contrasts the two countries ecological
| policies in recent decades, and that may have something to do
| with DR slight edge.
| londons_explore wrote:
| An announcement over a megaphone in a language not spoken by the
| locals seems... like it must be Americans...
|
| Nobody else would be so culturally blind.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post cheap flamebait to HN and certainly please
| don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing
| we need here.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761583.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sorry!
| samatman wrote:
| Nah.
|
| Anyone would use English if the announcement was for worldwide
| consumption. Which, when assassinating a head of state, it
| obviously is.
|
| There are other reasons to expect the involvement of Americans,
| if not a TLA of USG itself. This one clue is not dispositive.
| paperwasp42 wrote:
| Having worked with former US military and three-letter-agency
| translators, I have to disagree. They undergo large amounts of
| cultural competence training, and when working, they are
| expected to translate not just the language, but also the
| cultural expectations. Even low-level grunts are given basic
| cultural competence training. "Cultural blindness" is
| considered a threat to safety, and especially in recent years,
| there's a lot of effort to reduce it as much as possible.
|
| I cannot imagine this sort of flagrant "cultural blindness"
| coming from the US military. I also cannot imagine what sort of
| benefit this sort of operation would gain the US, or why a
| country with the most highly-trained stealth operatives in the
| world would pick such a loud, public way of assassinating an
| enemy.
|
| This reeks of a false flag to me. Are there particular reasons
| you think differently?
| loceng wrote:
| I mean it's not like it'd be hard to try to frame a specific
| nation or use it as propaganda.
| spinny wrote:
| did he hang himself?
| logicchains wrote:
| Needs to be something more believable, like multiple self-
| inflicted shotgun blasts to the chest.
| bladefire wrote:
| He kinda got what he deserved.... People don't like dictators.
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait
| comments to Hacker News.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Entire GDP of Haiti was ~14 billion last year. Seems like the
| entire nation could be stood on its feet if world nations
| provided a grant of ~100 billion. Very important it be a grant
| and not a loan. A lot of money for sure but not that much in the
| grand scheme of things. If that money is administered by non
| corrupt foreign entities and spent on infrastructure you could
| have a brand new country in a decade.
| naveen99 wrote:
| what if it was just a single trillionaire ? What would you
| think of them becoming a benevolent dictator ? If the people
| could agree to an election where buying votes was allowed, how
| much would it cost to win the election if the people believed
| in such a dictator's benevolence ?
|
| There are 11 million people living there. It would cost 3
| trillion dollars to give each about $300,000 or about the mean
| wealth of an american. It would probably cost less than 3
| trillion to win such an election.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| There are no trillionaires. I mean in reality I am pretty
| sure you could get every vote you wanted for $5,000 each.
| Average annual income in Haiti is $500. So 10 years of
| salary. Also only about 6 million voters in Haiti and you
| only need half of them so you could be president for $15
| billion. Likely most people would sell their vote for their
| annual income, that means a total of $1.5 billion. I would
| not blame them either, extreme poverty is a terrible thing
| and for many the adage 'any port in a a storm' is likely
| true.
|
| This assumes that people would agree to sell their votes.
| With that said, I am very much against dictators, benevolent
| or otherwise. But I would understand.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Seems like wsb could fix a small failed state with a spac.
| cdolan wrote:
| I would argue none of us have any idea if there is a
| "trillionaire" in the world because we are notoriously bad
| at guessing someone's total net worth.
|
| As support, I would point you to this 10 year old article
| on Moammar Gadhafi, where he was estimated to actually be
| worth roughly $200b USD - an unheard of number in 2011.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-
| moamm...
|
| This week, if Bezos were not divorced, he would be worth
| $300b USD:
| https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/billionaire-
| news/...
|
| And finally, the ProPublica Peter Thiel $5b USD ROTH IRA is
| worth *double what Forbes thought Thiels entire net worth
| is per the 2020 Forbes Billionaire List* (he is on page
| 3... look at the massive jump in the animated graph!):
| https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
|
| That said, the IRS had 20 years of tax returns stolen from
| it which would detail the richest Americans, and so it is
| unlikely anyone in the USA is a trillionaire.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Probably threatened to expose the Clinton's Haiti shenanigans.
| airhead969 wrote:
| I don't see how this article is noteworthy or relevant for HN.
|
| We don't need mainstream news, politics, geopolitics, or
| conspiracy theories here.
| darepublic wrote:
| Is it just me or is this article badly written ? There are
| mentions of tryannical leaders of the past such as Papa and baby
| doc but no mention of where Mr moise comes from, how many years
| he has ruled, how he came to power, etc
| yardie wrote:
| Rule? The guy wasn't a despot he was the elected president in 2
| largely uncontroversial elections.
|
| He comes from the political elite as a member of the popular
| Tet Kale party where he eventually won 55% of the vote to
| become president. He wasn't a dictator, he didn't emerge from a
| military junta, or as a foreign backed darkhorse candidate. He
| was just your typical, center-right, Caribbean politician who
| had to make unpopular choices after taking office.
|
| Until something emerges there is nothing that says this guy
| deserved assassination. And that is the worrying bit, by all
| accounts he was popular which means his replacement will be
| under a great deal of scrutiny.
| permo-w wrote:
| >Rule? The guy wasn't a despot he was the elected president
| in 2 largely uncontroversial elections
|
| The word "rule" is not the same as "dictate". Have you ever
| heard the phrase "ruling party"?
| yardie wrote:
| Then maybe it's a quirk in the American English vernacular.
|
| A president presides but never rules.
|
| A dictator (or absolute king) rules not dictates.
|
| A public speaker dictates but only occasionally speaks.
|
| Ruling party is an English term, Americans using
| majority/minority parties to describe in power and out of
| power.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Earlier post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759652
| 3maj wrote:
| +1 for Killary
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > "A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking
| Spanish, attacked [...]"
|
| This is peculiar. Might just be too early for the dust to have
| settled, but both tagesschau.de [1] and Le Monde [2] report both
| Spanish _and_ English for to be spoken by the attackers.
|
| Edit: The Guardian [3] also quotes only Spanish, but later speaks
| of an English-language announcement on a megaphone. Guess we'll
| have to wait for a bit until things converge to The Truth(tm)
| here.
|
| [1]: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/amerika/haiti-
| praesident-m...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/07/07/hait...
|
| [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/haiti-
| presiden...
| ecedeno wrote:
| Here they have the video where you can hear that announcement:
|
| https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...
| black_puppydog wrote:
| You mean the megaphone part, right? Yeah, that seems to be
| it.
|
| I'm just curious because all four outlets I checked marked
| the "Spanish" or "English and Spanish" as direct quotes so
| I'm not sure if they got different sources or what happened.
| RobertoG wrote:
| What the megaphone guy says? I can't understand it.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think: "DEA operations everybody stand down. DEA
| operations everybody back up, stand down."
|
| The speaker definitely has a Southern American accent.
| The caption under the video makes it sound like the
| speaker was part of the security(?) team _responding_ to
| the intrusion /assassination which is perhaps why there
| is confusion about the assailants speaking
| Spanish/English.
| [deleted]
| RobertoG wrote:
| I wached the video again, the guy that is leaving is
| asking in Spanish "is this one of us?" about the guy in
| the floor, I think.
|
| I think it could be Dominican Spanish accent, but I could
| be wrong. I suppose it would make sense to hire
| mercenaries from Dominican Republic to something like
| this.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| The accent is off a bit. It sounds like somebody trying
| to impersonate an American southern drawl. I got $20 that
| says that there wasn't any American on the megaphone.
| codeddesign wrote:
| Having lived in the south for many years, it's definitely
| not a southern draw. It sounds more like South African.
| You can hear that many of the words are sharp at the end
| - which is opposite of southern accents that accentuate
| or "draw" verb endings. It's definitely someone that
| speaks english, but highly unlikely US born.
| lobocinza wrote:
| And there are many mercenaries from South Africa. Doing a
| Bayesian.
| rascul wrote:
| > The speaker definitely has a Southern American accent.
|
| Are you referring to the southern United States or the
| South America continent? I live in the southern
| Mississippi and it doesn't really sound much like how
| people typically talk here, so I suspect you might be
| referring to the continent. But also, the accents can
| vary widely across the southern United States so I'm not
| really sure.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I doubt a response team in Haiti speak English with that
| accent - let alone would use English over a megaphone.
|
| Could the megaphone be a pre-recorded recording designed
| to delay identification of the perpetrators?
| elliekelly wrote:
| I agree it's very odd. I also just noticed there seems to
| be a person laying injured in the street and none of the
| armed "security response" people are rendering aid or
| seem to care at all. They're just kind of casually
| milling around.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Something that surprise me is that nobody mention the
| bodyguards. I doubt the president of a country was
| unguarded (Olof Palme case showed how unwise that is even
| in Sweden).
|
| Maybe this unlucky guy in the floor was one and just
| nobody care enough about them to mention them?.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Some of the videos have the sounds of multiple gunshots
| which are audibly different, suggesting to me that
| different guns were firing. Perhaps there were bodyguards
| but they were engaged by the assassins.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I doubt a response team in Haiti speak English with
| that accent - let alone would use English over a
| megaphone.
|
| Could there be some kind of DEA SWAT team or something
| that was stationed there that may have been called?
|
| > Could the megaphone be a pre-recorded recording
| designed to delay identification of the perpetrators?
|
| Could be. One possibility is that is there _were_
| Americans involved, but they were private mercenaries
| (e.g. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mer
| cenaries-...). It sounds like there are also similar
| private Latin American mercenaries (e.g. https://www.nyti
| mes.com/2015/11/26/world/middleeast/emirates...). The
| Miami Herald article says the Haitian government is
| saying these were mercenaries, not DEA agents. It also
| sounds like this president was highly unpopular and
| arguably illegitimate, so he likely had a lot of enemies.
| It's not inconceivable that some those may have decided
| to hire a mercenary group for an assassination. Maybe
| they hired a mixed group, which would explain the use of
| Spanish and English.
| neom wrote:
| The New York Post (ugh) has a longer version, and it
| doesn't include the American voice at the start shouting
| about DEA operations.
| https://nypost.com/2021/07/07/haitian-president-jovenel-
| mois...
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| Poor country but still a LOT of money to be made for certain
| elements. Probable someone paid a hit squad to do the deed for
| a reason or another. A lot of people have that kind of money to
| pay for killings, so that is not an issue. What comes after can
| be...
|
| Someone that follows Haitian politics could tell us the power
| struggle inside the country.
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| Keep in mind that this would also be the easiest way to cast
| the assassins as "outsiders." Trust but verify.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It is a peculiar clue. For context, the majority language in
| Haiti is Haitian Creole, a French-derived local dialect. About
| half of the population, typically those better educated,
| involved in business, or involved in government, also speak
| French. Spanish and English are extremely minor languages in
| comparison.
|
| Spanish is spoken throughout Central America, including across
| the land border on the divided island in the wealthier
| Dominican Republic, and English is used by travelers and
| tourists. With a comparable economic disparity and ongoing
| immigration dispute, it would be analogous to an attack in
| Mexico by a group of unidentified individuals, some of them
| speaking English - the implication seems to be that the group
| is not native to Haiti.
|
| (Note that I did some fact checking, but I have no special or
| particularly recent knowledge here; this is speculation based
| on historical demographics - I haven't paid attention to
| Caribbean politics much at all in the past decade).
| cogman10 wrote:
| I have a sister that lived in the DR for a few years.
|
| Here's a bit of context from what I recall.
|
| * The Dominican Republic is the second poorest nation in the
| northern hemisphere. Haiti is the poorest. (so yes,
| technically wealthier, but not exactly swimming in the
| dough).
|
| * From what my sister describes, the people of the DR HATE
| the Haitians.
|
| * The DR itself is filled to the brim with corruption.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| All of the sources I could find have DR as significantly
| wealthier than Haiti, and wealthier than most countries in
| Central America and the Caribbean: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/List_of_countries_by_GNI_(PPP)...
| Grazester wrote:
| That list is incorrect. It list the incorrect order for
| certain nations there. I know where these countries
| should rank and how poor they are because I lives in some
| and travelled to others since childhood and had business
| there enough to know.
|
| I have never been to Haiti but I will tell you what. The
| DR is one of the few Caribbean islands I travelled to
| where I saw kids on the side of the road begging. I was
| take a back given the number of huge resort there.
|
| I also met someone whose wife was promised to him but her
| family because he was in a better financial state than
| they were. He said this kind of thing happens there.
| zucked wrote:
| Anecdotal data is... not particularly useful.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| yeah but also a list someone typed is just a list someone
| typed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But a list derived from a data set is as valid as the
| data set.
| e12e wrote:
| > the implication seems to be that the group is not native to
| Haiti.
|
| Pure and wild speculation - but Spanish and English is what
| one would expect from graduates of the school of
| Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
| Cooperation (WHINSEC) or CIA/DEA training programs. Although
| I suppose at this point former graduates are running their
| own training under various cartels etc.
| cpursley wrote:
| Bingo
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's possible, but Moise Jovenal was relatively buddy
| buddy with the state department. It could also be random
| mercenaries.
| grouphugs wrote:
| nice
| eynsham wrote:
| As US forces withdraw from Afghanistan and the West's loss of
| confidence finally results in actual withdrawals (though see the
| reversal by the French in Mali), it's worth noting that old-style
| selfish neocolonialism is still alive and kicking e.g. in Haiti.
| Whether or not it is wise to withdraw Afghanistan-style, it seems
| sad that this blatant selfishness and incompetence--which does
| not benefit Western peoples terribly much these days anyway--
| continues despite a change in the thinking of Western foreign
| policy elites.
|
| > Moise says he is entitled to another year in office. Legal
| experts agree that his interpretation of the law requires
| twisting it beyond recognition, but there's an old Haitian saying
| that the constitution is paper and guns are steel, and Moise has
| the backing he needs from the OAS and the USA. At a press
| conference on 5 February, the State Department took Moise's side
| in the end-of-term argument. Perhaps this was mere expediency
| from the White House - Haiti is a small country and the Biden
| administration has inherited a myriad messes - but Moise saw a
| green light.
|
| > American ignorance and blitheness was on full display this
| month during a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
| When one of the Haitian witnesses, Guerline Jozef, urged
| legislators to examine the root causes of Haiti's predicament,
| going back to the indemnity Haiti was forced to pay in 1825 to
| compensate France for its slaves,Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL)
| cut her off. He mansplained:
|
| > > Haitians individually within Haiti [need to] look in the
| mirror and say: 'We can't rely on America, we can't rely on
| France, we can't rely on others. We're hopeful for their
| assistance. But we have to look in the mirror and say, how do we
| do this?' And that's what I hope we can really really get to the
| root of, is ... what is it that they can look in the mirror and
| do to correct what is missing there?
|
| > A few minutes later, the Haitian activist Emmanuela Douyon
| tried to set Mast straight. 'Haiti is not waiting for the US,
| France or any other country in the international community,' she
| said:
|
| > > We've already decided what we want to do. What we're asking
| is for the international community to listen and respect our
| choice. We have a president whose term ended last February. He
| has benefited from the support of the OAS [and] the US State
| Department, despite the fact that most of Haitian civil society
| acknowledges that his term has ended, according to the
| constitution ... This is what we're facing now. And this is a
| perfect example of how when we don't listen to Haitians, we can't
| blame them later for the outcome. We want to end with all this
| corruption and impunity, we want to end with the old practices.
| [But] so many people do not want to give us a chance to decide
| for ourselves.
|
| https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/march/haitian-democracy
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| A bit of an aside, but it sounds like congressman mast was just
| being condescending in his explanation, I dislike the not-so-
| subtly implied sexism of the article's usage of the verb
| "mansplain" just by virtue of the fact that he is male and
| guerline is female.
| eynsham wrote:
| I suppose that there's no guarantee that it was motivated by
| sexism. I think some authors choose to use such words even
| when they aren't entirely sure because it's impossible to be
| completely sure and so they think it's better to flag cases
| somewhat inaccurately rather than not at all. I don't really
| agree with this, but on the other hand I don't know what else
| I'd do.
| nickik wrote:
| The US is not leaving Afghanistan because of 'loss in
| confidence' but rather because they are finally admitting what
| has been clear for more then a decade now (arguable for 1000
| years). Its incredibly idiotic and nonsensical to occupy
| Afghanistan. I would prefer to call it 'accepting reality' and
| that seems a good thing.
|
| And the problem in Mali is in large part because of totally
| idiotic over-confidence just a few years ago.
| eynsham wrote:
| I'm not sure we actually disagree: the Americans started out
| far too confident in their abilities and their view of what
| they can do now is, tempered by two decades of fighting, much
| more realistic. A loss of confidence, even if caused by a
| collision with reality, is still a fairly accurate
| description when taking into account what you point out.
|
| The French I think have a much more accurate understanding of
| their abilities. The reversals they suffer have been far
| fewer and less disastrous than those the Americans face. For
| example, in Chad, the FACT is now certainly on the back foot
| --even the opposition media who previously seemed to think
| that the FACT had a good chance of taking N'Djamena have
| stopped suggesting that that's a possibility and now focus on
| ructions between Deby fils et freres. Meanwhile in
| Afghanistan, the Taliban's hold on its strongholds is pretty
| much secure, and they may even retain some cities.
| maxbaines wrote:
| Thankyou this has given me some needed context regards Haiti.
| Wish perhaps the Afghanistan subject was not mixed in, as again
| I don't know enough and for sure its a different subject.
| eynsham wrote:
| Afghanistan I think is illustrative of the fundamental logic
| underpinning foreign policy decisions. There is no direct
| connexion, I agree. (Well, perhaps there is but neither of us
| are aware of it.)
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Surprised China has not stepped in here and offered to provide
| the Haitian government with funding and security. Seems the
| perfect situation for them to establish a foothold similar to how
| they have done in Africa.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Wayyyyy too close to the U.S.A. to do that. I am virtually
| certain it would result in a military response from the US.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I agree with you in general theory but not sure how it would
| play out in real life. China would claim they are stepping in
| to help a country that clearly needs it. Would the US be
| willing to go to war over that? Taiwan would be a Chinese
| colony the next day. Lots of complicating factors.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Given that the U.S. has already been involved in Haiti, and
| that the President was arguably not legal (i.e. there is no
| current valid President), I have little doubt.
|
| The Taiwan precedent makes sense in the abstract, but
| militarily the prospect of potentially being in conflict
| over Taiwan makes it all the less likely the U.S. would let
| China get a foothold that close to it.
| flarco wrote:
| My parents live in Haiti. This looks like it was an inside
| job/collaboration. He was assassinated inside his home, in the
| middle of the night. His home has multiple gates/barriers to get
| inside, very secured by guards, yet only him died. No guards or
| 3rd parties were injured. No resistance or loud gun exchanges to
| prevent them from getting in. His wife was shot and injured, but
| is currently stable in a US hospital. From what I heard, the
| gunmen were all Spanish speaking. 5-7 of them arrived in multiple
| cars, killed him and left without issues. Very disturbing, but
| that's the world we live in.
| seibelj wrote:
| Anyone who honestly thinks the USA is a "failed state" needs to
| contextualize what an actual failed state looks like. Murdering
| the president in his sleep is not a good look!
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on offtopic flamewar tangents. You
| started a doozy with this provocation. You also have a long
| history of doing things like this, unfortunately. Would you
| please review the site guidelines and stop posting destructive
| things to HN? We've had to ask you and warn you and cajole you
| many times, and we're going to have to ban you if you don't fix
| this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| moksly wrote:
| Didn't right wing extremists seize the legitimate American
| government while it was in session a few months back?
| variant wrote:
| No.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| They didn't. They occupied the legislative building, but they
| didn't seize the government because they made no attempt to
| exercise power, and if they had it wouldn't have been taken
| seriously.
| yardie wrote:
| Well didn't take that long to turn this into a US thing,
| again.
| viro wrote:
| no?
| gifwithaj wrote:
| No, a handful of Trump supporters walked around taking
| selfies for a few minutes inside a building because they
| mistakenly believed the election was fraudulent. They did not
| hold any power at any point and were not right wing nor
| driven by a left/right idealogical divide, they were fools
| mislead about vote integrity.
|
| That said, left wing extremists did actually seize and hold a
| section of Seattle for an extended period of time, which
| would be a more genuine example of a failed state- violent
| rebels holding territory inside a major city.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into political or
| ideological flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Reasonable comment except
|
| > and were not right wing nor driven by a left/right
| idealogical divide,
|
| What were you thinking when you wrote that?
| gifwithaj wrote:
| Trump is not a right wing politician and his supporters
| aren't either. He's a populist who was a major donor to
| the democrats while he was a real estate developer and
| his political stances jump all over the map based on
| popularity, power, loyalty and personal vendettas.
|
| Nobody at the capitol was there because of any sort of
| policy, law or philosophical idealogy that in any way
| represents right wing political thought. They were there
| because Trump told them vote fraud was happening and they
| believe him more than the people saying the vote was
| legitimate.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Are you serious? The far-right Capitol rioters killed at
| least one officer, injured at least 138 others, breached
| the chambers chanting "Hang Mike Pence" and had built
| gallows outside. Many were seriously armed.
|
| I have zero doubt if they managed to get in the chambers
| before they were evacuated, congresspeople would have been
| killed. The government would not have just carried on like
| normal after that.
|
| The right-wing downplaying these idiots as "tourists" or
| simple protestors is disgusting. It was an attempted coup
| of a democratic government.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Just watched The New York Times' mini-documentary of the
| events and it really sad. The police should have reacted
| way faster and with more force.
|
| However just to correct:
|
| >breached the chambers chanting "Hang Mike Pence" and had
| built gallows outside.
|
| The gallows (at least to me) seem like over statement.
| There was hastely constructed noose that was hung on a
| thing, but it is not like they build actual gallows
| outside the capitol building.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I'll happily grant you that they weren't prepared enough
| to build an actual gallows; they just had to make due
| with the perfectly functional suspended noose to do the
| thing they were chanting, rather than a purpose built
| wooden frame for it, as they violently stormed the
| nation's capital building, demanding the overthrow of a
| legitimate election because of the lies of the former
| president, causing the actual elected officials to have
| to flee, unable even to hit the panic buttons that had
| been removed from the wall.
|
| Sure, calling it a 'gallows' is an overstatement.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Impromptu execution station doesn't really sound much
| better
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| it wasn't "Impromptu execution station" it was literally
| some redneck who spun couple meters of paracord into a
| noose shape.
|
| >doesn't really sound much better
|
| >sound much better
|
| >sound
|
| This is the problem. It isn't enough that "they made a
| noose and yelled for Pence to be hung" now it has to be
| "execution station" or "gallows" which are way different
| things.
|
| I am not saying that that is OK either, but it is like
| saying "they had full-automatic rifles and anti-personel
| granades" when they really had couple of hunting rifles.
| Still terrifying and fucked up. No need to spread lies.
| xienze wrote:
| > The far-right Capitol rioters killed at least one
| officer
|
| Surprise! Months later it turns out he had died of
| natural causes:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/19/988876722/capitol-police-
| offi...
|
| > Many were seriously armed.
|
| Name the folks inside who were armed.
|
| > It was an attempted coup of a democratic government.
|
| I find it humorous how the same people who say the 2nd
| Amendment is useless because the US has tanks and nuclear
| bombs simultaneously believe that we were ->this<- close
| to having the government overthrown on January 6th
| without a single shot fired.
| EricE wrote:
| >I find it humorous how the same people who say the 2nd
| Amendment is useless because the US has tanks and nuclear
| bombs simultaneously believe that we were ->this<- close
| to having the government overthrown on January 6th
| without a single shot fired.
|
| No kidding! Also all the handwringing over US citizens
| being in the people's house (ooh, the hubris!) when the
| same are utterly silent on the "summer of love" and
| mostly peaceful protests - give me a break.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into political or
| ideological flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| No officer was killed, looks like you're a victim of a
| Russian propaganda spread on reddit.
| mythrwy wrote:
| No officer was killed by capital rioters.
|
| One was misreported to have been killed by rioters (with
| a fire extinguisher) but that later turned out to be
| either a mistake or fabrication and he actually died of
| natural causes a day or few days after the riot.
| dirtyoldmick wrote:
| The autopsy said the riot had nothing to do with his
| death.
| pfarrell wrote:
| If you're referring to Officer Sicknick, he died of two
| strokes a day after being attacked with bear spray by
| Julian Khater and George Tanios and being subjected to
| the most stressful day of his life. Medically, he may
| have died of natural causes, but those strokes were the
| result of the riot, whether because he was sprayed with
| bear repellent [1] or because of the stress of the day.
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/24/us/of
| ficer-si...
| mythrwy wrote:
| "most stressful day of his life", "were the result of".
|
| He died of a clot in an artery. What you are saying is
| speculative.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| dashundchen:
|
| You might want to double-check your news sources. Sounds
| like you're in the cnn/msnbc/wapo fake news bubble.
|
| They've retracted most of their major stories.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into political or
| ideological flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Is assassinating a president really a sign of a "failed state"?
| USA has had multiple presidents assassinated. And countless
| other attempts.
| eplanit wrote:
| A symptom, at most. Mexico and South American countries have
| very few assassinations, yet all of them are failed states.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| While I understand why people tend to put all of South
| America under the same umbrella, saying that all South
| American countries are failed states is a bit too much.
| Uruguay in particular is doing _really_ well.
| the_af wrote:
| > _While I understand why people tend to put all of South
| America under the same umbrella_
|
| The only explanation is rampant ignorance. How could one
| consider that, say, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and
| Bolivia are all "under the same umbrella" except by
| simply failing to pay attention in school?
|
| It's like saying that every country in North America is
| more or less the same.
| eplanit wrote:
| You mean the 2 North American countries? Yes, the U.S.
| and Canada are similar in that they have functioning
| economies, and citizenry that is not desperately trying
| to flee.
| stickfigure wrote:
| There are three countries in North America.
| SllX wrote:
| North America includes everything from and including
| Panama northward, including the Caribbean, and Greenland.
| Ain't just the US and Canada.
| the_af wrote:
| I expect more than this kind of ignorance from an HN
| reader.
|
| The US and Canada are not the same just because they both
| have functioning economies.
|
| Even worse, "South American countries" in general don't
| have their populace "desperately trying to flee". Some
| might, many don't. The phrase "South American countries",
| as if Brazil and Argentina for example were a single
| entity, is so stupid it boggles the mind.
|
| Here's my suggestion to you: educate yourself, learn
| about other countries, and stop making blanket, incorrect
| and offensive statements.
| eplanit wrote:
| I think you can use some enlightenment, as well. You
| should visit the US/Mexico border to see the "some".
|
| Generalizations are never 100% complete (by definition).
| But so much poverty and corruption, and so much desperate
| migration, sustained for such a long time (decades) is a
| picture of overall failure.
|
| Mexico has the fewest excuses. It is perfectly positioned
| in the middle of the earth, with coasts on both the
| Atlantic and Pacific, and with abundant resources. They
| could be an economic _powerhouse_, with trade relations
| with the entire world (thing manufacturing, shipping,
| ...) if they could get it together (and I hope they do).
| But, history seems to show that isn't likely for a long
| time, if ever.
| handrous wrote:
| You're encountering trouble in this thread because your
| understanding of geography appears to be very different
| from most people's, e.g. writing that Canada and the US
| are the only to countries in North America (while common
| definitions would include Mexico), or writing "South
| America" where you (I think?) mean what most would call
| "Central America".
| the_af wrote:
| > _Generalizations are never 100% complete (by
| definition)_
|
| Yet you decided it was a good idea to call out "South
| American countries". It's not too late to admit you made
| a mistake, you know.
|
| At this point you don't even know (nor seem to care) if
| you're arguing specifically about Mexico, all of South
| America or what.
|
| Canada and the US being considered the same doesn't bide
| well for the quality of your generalizations, either.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Rampant ignorance is right. At least in my subjective
| experience as an American, public education about South
| America pretty much stopped after the beginning of
| Europe's colonial expansion.
|
| Unless you studied it in college or on your own time, the
| only people who know much of anything about South
| American countries are people who's social circles
| contain people from South America.
| avaldes wrote:
| That's ignorant bullshit. Venezuela is the only SA country
| one can call a failed state. The rest is doing well. No
| first world countries nor the highest HDI but call them
| failed states it's just stupid.
| eplanit wrote:
| Then why are so many migrants crossing Mexico (walking,
| spending lifes' savings on coyotes, sending children
| alone, ...) to come to the US?
| guythedudebro wrote:
| Mexico isn't in South America
| quantumBerry wrote:
| Are you proposing that it is possible to travel by land
| from South America to USA without entering Mexico? Or
| perhaps the impoverished South Americans are buying
| yachts and tourist visas to bypass Mexico?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| How many of those are from South America? My
| understanding was that most of that migration was from
| Central America, largely Guatemala and Mexico itself.
|
| Among other things walking (or traveling in any way,
| really) through the border area between Colombia and
| Panama, including southern Panama, is tough-bordering-on-
| impassable, even relative to crossing the US border in
| the desert.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Mexico could be worse, but could also be better.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Earning potential is simply better in the US. It's not
| just Mexicans that figured it out, but immigrants
| worldwide did. People with decent lives all over the
| world fly here and overstay their visas because the
| earning potential is just greater. The truth behind the
| 'all immigrants are desperate' narrative is most are not
| desperate, but ambitious, and literally making a business
| decision.
| [deleted]
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Mexico and Central America are not South America.
| dahdum wrote:
| >Mexico and South American countries have very few
| assassinations, yet all of them are failed states.
|
| Mexico has had at least 88 political assassinations since
| last September.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/30/americas/mexico-political-
| kil...
| eplanit wrote:
| Wow. I stand corrected. Thank you.
| the_af wrote:
| Neither Mexico nor "South American countries" (which ones?
| That sounds like an incorrect blanket generalization) are
| "failed states".
| handrous wrote:
| Mexico might qualify, in that the _de jure_ government
| comes nowhere near having 100% _de facto_ control of its
| territory, and doesn 't appear to be on a path to
| reaching such a point, either.
| qshaman wrote:
| Mexico is literally run by narcos, and the government
| can't do anything about it. A failed state? depends on
| your definition of it, a narco state?, for sure. -
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/19/mexico-
| amlo-el...
| mythrwy wrote:
| What's the definition of a failed state?
|
| I travel to Mexico somewhat frequently and although some
| things work differently then in the U.S by and large
| everything works. The power is on, the roads are decent,
| there are a very large number of fully stocked stores
| (including chains you would see in the U.S like Walmart and
| Home Depot).
|
| Is it corruption and crime? Well by that definition many
| areas of the U.S are failed states. Or is it just
| politicians getting killed that makes a failed state?
| nradov wrote:
| A failed state is one which has lost an _effective_
| monopoly on violence over part of its claimed territory.
| Stable, functional states have occasional illegal
| violence but the state security forces are still
| fundamentally in control. But in Mexico there are large
| regions under _de facto_ control of organized crime where
| the official government has been evicted.
| bluGill wrote:
| IT is an open question if Mexico will remain like that.
| They have been reforming, if those reforms stick and
| continue they are no longer a failed state. There are
| many who don't want the reforms to stick (it is better
| for them personally even though it is worse for the
| country as a whole), if they win the country is still a
| failed state. Your guess is as good as mine as to what
| the future will hold.
| mort1merp0 wrote:
| By your definition of a "failed state", then the USA has been a
| "failed state" in the past. Since there have been a couple of
| assassinations of US presidents.
| _Microft wrote:
| There was an earlier submission from another site that got
| eventually flagged. It had not attracted that many on-topic
| comments but here is the link anyways:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759652
| techbrobane wrote:
| Colonizers still gonna get paid.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti
| Leader2light wrote:
| Yep, sounds like this guy had it coming. Good work to the men
| willing to put their lives on the line!
| [deleted]
| 15charlimitdumb wrote:
| Clinton foundation is a key player in Haiti's debt prison.
| https://www.coreysdigs.com/clinton-foundation/5-shocking-fac...
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| More on the Clintons and Haiti at BBC.com:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37826098
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Specifically, it largely debunks the claim:
|
| > While the Clintons in their respective roles clearly had a
| say over where some of the quake relief cash flowed, their
| political enemies have wrongly claimed the family foundation
| directly controlled all the billions in funds.
|
| > The foundation itself raised a relatively modest $30m for
| aid projects in Haiti.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| ctrl+F "clinton", very bottom comment. Stay blissfully
| ignorant, HN.
| brettermeier wrote:
| https://archive.is/O2KbS
| wayneftw wrote:
| Where are the global surveillance satellites when you need them?
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| I was curious if Haiti's political system was like India's -
| where the President is a figurehead position and the Prime
| minister has the practical authority, or if it was like the US -
| with President at the helm. It seems like it's a bit of both, a
| "semi-presidential" system like France. Wikipedia says the
| President is the "head of state" and the Prime minister is the
| "head of government"... but that doesn't really help me
| understand the role and powers of each in practice.
| s_dev wrote:
| > Wikipedia says the President is the "head of state" and the
| Prime minister is the "head of government"... but that doesn't
| really help me understand the role and powers of each in
| practice.
|
| This is like Ireland. The head of government is responsible for
| running the country day to day. While the president is
| responsible for representing the country in a ceremonial way
| (far less powerful but often more popular). Often they rubber
| stamp some legislation but often have little power. In the US
| the roles are combined in to the Presidency. In the UK the
| Queen is the head of state and Boris Johnson is head of
| government.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Following the assassination, the prime minister (Claude Joseph)
| has said he is now running the country, which suggests that the
| president has real power.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| In several states with such a semi-presidential system, if the
| prime minister and the president are oppositional, the prime
| minister will take primary responsibility for more domestic
| matters like education and health, whereas the president will
| take primary responsibility for most national/international
| matters like trade, the economy and foreign affairs. When the
| president and the prime minister are allied, the president
| often takes the lead on most matters.
|
| I have never seen a semi-presidential federation, and my
| intuition has become that in a semi-presidential system, the
| president is holds the responsibilities of a prime
| minister/president of a federal government, whereas the prime
| minister is holds the responsibilities normally given to the
| premier/governor of state - as if there's only a single state
| and a single legislature for the state and the federation. Of
| course, as with federations, the exact boundaries will depend
| on the country concerned.
|
| Whether Haiti works that way, I cannot say.
| pyduan wrote:
| There are multiple types of semi-presidential systems in
| practice. Those where the Prime Minister is appointed by and
| accountable to the President (and not just by Parliament) are
| typically much closer to a pure presidential system in
| practice.
|
| In France (source: I'm French) the President is typically
| extremely strong despite it being nominally a semi-presidential
| system, in some respects even stronger than his US counterpart.
| Also note that this depends a lot on practical details, like
| political customs -- former President Nicolas Sarkozy famously
| publicly called his Prime Minister his "collaborator", for
| instance -- and electoral timings. There was a reform in the
| early 00s to sync Presidential elections and Parliamentary
| elections, meaning that even though the Prime Minister is
| accountable to the Parliament, in practice the latter tends to
| be of the same majority as the President (whereas before, we
| had cases of Presidents and Primes being of opposing parties,
| which is known as 'cohabitation'), which gives him enormous
| power.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Wikipedia says the President is the "head of state" and the
| Prime minister is the "head of government"
|
| I grew up in the USA and this is exactly how those terms were
| defined for us in school.
|
| The head of state is the leader of the country. They deal with
| other heads of states, and typically are in control of the
| military.
|
| The head of government is the top bureaucrat. They do
| governmenty bureaucratty stuff like meet with their cabinet and
| manage the executive branch.
| simonh wrote:
| In the US system the President basically assumes the
| constitutional position of George III circa 1770. Executive
| orders are Royal decrees. The president signing laws is Royal
| Assent. Presidential pardons are Royal pardons. The power to
| adjourn Congress is proroguation.
|
| The oddity to me is the position of the Speaker of the House,
| which is a weird amalgam of the role of the Speaker of
| Parliament and also acting as a de facto Prime Minister
| although there really isn't an explicit equivalent role in
| the US.
| boxed wrote:
| That's not universally true though. Swedens head of state is
| the King. He has no power.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| According to Wikipedia:
|
| * The speaker of parliament is responsible for nominating
| and dismissing the prime minister (who appoints the prime
| minister? the parliament as a whole appoint the prime
| minister? does the king get to, but is compelled to appoint
| whoever the speaker nominates? does wikipedia mean
| "appoint" when it says "nominate"?)
|
| * The king is not part of parliament, and bills do not need
| royal assent to become law.
|
| * The king is not part of an executive council like the UK
| privy council. Formerly there was a Council of State.
|
| However the king does have royal immunity from criminal
| prosecution. If the Swedish King killed you, they would
| probably have a crisis over whether the absolute immunity
| the king possesses is in fact not absolute.
|
| So the king is clearly a special person in Sweden, but it
| does seem they are almost powerless according to the
| constitution, unlike say the British queen.
| OlleTO wrote:
| >who appoints the prime minister?
|
| Parliament votes on whoever the speaker nominates. If
| that person is tolerated (<50% of parliament votes
| _against_ the nominee) they become prime minister.
|
| If the vote fails the speaker gets to nominate someone
| else. After 4 failed such votes, an extra election is
| called.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| Thanks for the clear answer. I think I like that system.
| Sometimes minority governments make more sense that
| slightly larger but more fractious coalitions. If I was
| trying to design a republican constitution for my own
| country I think I would include a similar provision.
| doikor wrote:
| > who appoints the prime minister? the parliament as a
| whole appoint the prime minister? does the king get to,
| but is compelled to appoint whoever the speaker
| nominates? does wikipedia mean "appoint" when it says
| "nominate"?
|
| Prime minister is whoever gets the majority of the
| parliament behind them in a vote. In practice in Sweden's
| case the leader of the biggest party in the coalition
| that makes the majority.
|
| (Due to how the voting system works in Sweden more than 2
| parties exist in the parliament and thus coalitions of
| parties make up the government as no party manages to get
| 50% if the seats)
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > The head of state is the leader of the country. They [..]
| typically are in control of the military.
|
| This isn't true, at least in Western states. E.g in the
| Netherlands and Germany the king and the President
| respectively are head of state, but neither of them controls
| the military, which is done by respectively the Prime
| Minister and the Chancellor.
|
| It's really hard to make a universal definition for heads of
| state and government, since they fulfill different roles in
| forms of government. However, generally, the head of state is
| a more ceremonial role while the head of government actually
| governs. But there are exceptions.
| namdnay wrote:
| In a parliamentary system, the head of state is more
| ceremonial. In a presidential system, the head of state has
| the power (e.g. France, USA)
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| The US has combined the head of state and head of
| government in a single position (President), so it
| doesn't make sense to say either has more power. France
| is indeed one of the (many) exceptions with a semi-
| presidential system where the head of state has more
| power.
| pintxo wrote:
| Actually, for Germany, the head of the military is the
| Minister of Defence. Only if the parliament declares
| Germany to be in a situation of defence
| (Verteidigungsfall), will the command of the military be
| given to the Chancellor.
| brummm wrote:
| The head of the military in Germany actually is the
| parliament.
| chadash wrote:
| In general, head of state is more ceremonial and has less
| power, but there are so many exceptions that making a rule of
| thumb is tough because it varies so much state-by-state.
|
| In the US, head of state and head of gov are the same (the
| President).
|
| In Russia, the head of state is Putin. He's not officially
| head of gov, but c'mon, we all know who controls the show
| there.
|
| In Canada, the Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II. But for
| all practical purposes, Justin Trudeau holds both rows. It's
| not like the Queen is handling Canada's foreign policy. She
| technically has the power to dissolve Canada's parliament,
| but it would be hard to imagine her exercising this power.
| When foreign leaders visit Canada, they aren't going to see
| the Queen, whereas they might if they visit the UK.
| rgblambda wrote:
| >In Canada, the Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II. But
| for all practical purposes, Justin Trudeau holds both rows.
|
| Does Canada not have a Governor General, like other
| countries where Elizabeth II is the absentee monarch? The
| Governor General performs most of the functions of the head
| of state and technically has the power to appoint or
| dismiss the Prime Minister, but much like the Queen the
| role is mostly ceremonial.
| Naga wrote:
| Yes, Canada does. The Queen is Head of State, who
| appoints a governor general to rule in her place.
| Effectively though, the Queen appoints a governor general
| on the advice of the prime minister. The Governor General
| and the Queen are constitutionally the "Crown" in Canada.
|
| The Governor General is mostly ceremonial, but is mostly
| a case of Chesterton's Fence. The Crown is an important
| safety value for when things are abnormal. For example,
| the Governor General of Canada in 2008 essentially chose
| who would be prime minister (See https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_par...). The issue that
| arose was that, during a hung parliament, the opposition
| announced that they would vote non-confidence in the
| government at the next opportunity and intended to form a
| coalition. The prime minister at the time instead went to
| the Governor General to request prorogation, ending the
| parliamentary session.
|
| This was a crisis that required judgement by the governor
| general. The prime minister clearly no longer held the
| confidence of the House, but not officially. On the other
| hand, the governor general is constitutionally required
| to follow the advice of the prime minister. She chose to
| follow the prime minister and prorogue Parliament for
| better or for worse. I'm not a legal scholar and I think
| the Governor General got it right, but having an
| independent individual make these decisions is a feature,
| not a bug.
| zinekeller wrote:
| There is, but in all seriousness outside of events that
| will probably also happen in a republican state (like
| tension between the prime minister and the leader of the
| opposition) the Government-General takes a hands-off
| approach, so _effectively_ ( _de facto_ , in practice)
| the prime minister is the head of state.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _She technically has the power to dissolve Canada 's
| parliament, but it would be hard to imagine her exercising
| this power._
|
| The Governor-General of Australia has forcibly dissolved
| Australia's parliament before back in 1975, causing a
| constitutional crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_A
| ustralian_constitutional...
|
| But yes, the current monarch strongly adheres to
| conventions of not exercising her devolved(?) powers.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's hard to imagine of the UK or Canada, but it's a nice
| safety net. Perhaps easier to imagine of a smaller less
| developed Commonwealth nation (not an Australia joke!) - I
| can sort of see a tyrannical (and probably crucially also
| unpopular) leader getting overthrown that way if it were
| necessary; probably led by/combined with measures through
| other parliaments, i.e. military intervention.
|
| I don't have one in mind, I don't think there's a likely
| one - there's an argument that it brings a sort of long-
| term stability that makes an actual application of its
| powers unnecessary, like a nuclear deterrent - I just think
| if there was some sort of unrest or rising dictatorial
| power in a state with ER as monarch 'we' would pay (even)
| more attention than otherwise?
| nickik wrote:
| In Switzerland the President has is just one of the 7 chief
| ministers who are in control of departments like military,
| justice, finance, The Federal Council.
|
| The person who is president get 2x the vote in case a vote
| is tied (abstention is permitted). Also the high honer of
| being the first to shake hands with foreign presidents when
| they arrive.
|
| The Federal Council is both head of state and head of
| government.
|
| Seems to be a pretty good system, the idea is to actually
| share this between different parties at all times. It
| always seems strange to me when in countries like the US
| there is the constant massive power shift back and forth
| every couple years.
| peeters wrote:
| > When foreign leaders visit Canada, they aren't going to
| see the Queen, whereas they might if they visit the UK.
|
| Though they would typically be hosted by the Queen's
| representative in Canada, the Governor General (as of
| yesterday, R.H. Mary Simon). The Queen would never
| _directly_ exercise her head-of-state powers in Canada.
| However, the GG _does_ have to make some controversial
| decisions about choosing governments from time to time.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In Great Britain at least the Prime Minister frequently meets
| with other heads of state, e.g., Churchill meeting with
| Roosevelt. Of course the monarch is the head of the state in
| Great Britain and she does meet with other heads of state as
| well, but it seems less clear-cut than you describe? Is this
| a peculiarity of Britain? Or does "head of state" imply a
| sort of figurehead position?
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| _> In Great Britain at least the Prime Minister frequently
| meets with other heads of state, e.g., Churchill meeting
| with Roosevelt._
|
| The exception here is that the US President is both head of
| state and head of government, so Churchill meeting
| Roosevelt is actually a meeting between two heads of
| government.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| But they were meeting about military matters which is a
| responsibility attributed to head of state according to
| OP.
| fullahbandit wrote:
| One thing to add is that the prime minister is often
| appointed by the president so he does not really hold any
| real power. I think the closest equivalent in the US system
| would be the Vice President, except that the prime minister
| can often be replaced at the president's discretion before
| the end of the term.
| liversage wrote:
| Or the opposite. The German prime minister is Angela Merkel
| while the president is Frank-Walter Steinmeister. I had to
| look the second up because I didn't know who it was but I
| know that he doesn't have political power like Merkel.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > They deal with other heads of states, and typically are in
| control of the military
|
| No head of state is in control of the military. Head of state
| is a ceremonial role. They may be the ceremonial "head" of
| the military, as in "her majesty's ship".
| nybble41 wrote:
| > No head of state is in control of the military.
|
| In the U.S. the office of the President unifies the roles
| of head of state, head of government, and Commander in
| Chief of the military. This is not merely a ceremonial
| role.
|
| As the saying goes, the exception proves the rule false.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| > The head of state is the leader of the country. They deal
| with other heads of states, and typically are in control of
| the military.
|
| Not quite true, at least not in limited constitutional
| monarchies, like the UK and Canada (I'm Canadian): The Queen
| is the Head of State for both the UK and Canada (and for many
| other countries) and her role is almost exclusively
| ceremonial (without getting into the role of the Governor
| General, who represents Her Majesty when she is out of the
| country).
|
| In both the UK and Canada, the head of government is the
| Prime Minister, that is, the leader of the party that
| controls the House of Parliament. In both countries, they do
| far more than "bureaucratty stuff" since, among other things,
| they choose and chair the cabinet, set the overall government
| agenda, etc. The military reports to cabinet through the
| appropriate minister(s).
|
| (Mitchell Sharp once wrote a book on Canadian government in
| which he rightly asserted that ours is government-by-cabinet,
| more than government by parliament....)
|
| In both countries, the PM is effectively head of the
| executive branch, but definitely not head of state, as well
| as sitting atop the legislative branch.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, the obvious example is the UK, where the Queen is head
| of state and the PM is the head of government. Other
| westminster inspired systems sometimes keep around the
| monarchy (represented by the governor general) or replace the
| role with an elected president.
|
| Usually such a role is a literal figurehead, or a de facto
| figurehead who de jure has power but culturally is not
| supposed to exercise them, (such as the aforementioned Queen,
| or the Irish President). Attempts by such a de facto
| figurehead to use powers they officially have have led to
| controversy, such as the 1975 incident with the Australian
| Governor General (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australi
| an_constitutional...)
| fionnoh wrote:
| There is precedent to the Irish president exercising their
| power. In 1994 Mary Robinson refused Albert Reynold's
| request to have the Dail dissolved (well, let it be known
| that such a request would be refused), leading to a new
| government being formed without a general election. If the
| Queen refused a similar request from a Prime Minister that
| would be a shock though.
| Macha wrote:
| Ah, I was unaware of that, and was thinking more of the
| 1982 incident where Patrick Hillery shut himself in and
| avoided answering the phone so as not to be required to
| dissolve the government.
|
| Both of these fall to me under "refusing to exercise
| powers" rather than exercising powers though.
| fionnoh wrote:
| Really? I don't understand that. The power isn't in
| dissolving the Dail itself, it's in the choice to do if
| it's deemed appropriate, whether the Taoiseach wants it
| or not.
|
| When the Queen dissolves parliament she's just going
| through the motions, it's a formality. If she had
| refused, say, Theresa May's request for a general
| election in 2017, saying that there was no need as the
| Government had a clear majority and Brexit needed to be
| the focus (and she did this by either hiding down the
| countryside, not answering her phone or by shooting down
| the idea preemptively) that would be a huge deal. That
| would be her exercising her power.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Yikes I can't believe that 1975 event happened and the
| royal family still remains in their seats.
|
| All of these former British territories are 1 terrorist
| attack and 1 ambitious politician away from a political
| crisis.
|
| Roll the dice 10 times, each time one of these monarchs
| could make a play for power.
|
| Although I'm not even sure how to handle the dissolution of
| the monarchy without executing everyone. Taking their
| property only means a foreign state would prop them up.
| ylyn wrote:
| The British royal family had very little to do with that
| incident. Yes, the monarch is the de jure head of state,
| but again in practice she delegates all decisions to the
| GG.
| fx18011 wrote:
| It is more like France of Russia.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Francois Fillon does work for Russia but the country remains
| sovereign.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A group who spoke English and Spanish, claimed to be the US Drug
| Enforcement Agency, had a US registered helicopter, killed the
| Haiti president...
|
| The same guy pushing a change to the Haiti constitution that the
| US strongly opposed...
|
| And the US has a history of getting rid of leaders it doesn't
| like...
|
| Although US clandestine operations at least usually have some
| level of plausible deniability... Which this does not.
| booi wrote:
| could be a false flag operation
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nobody false-flags the US... Do that, and you'll probably
| have a drone fall on you overnight...
| georgeglue1 wrote:
| do you have a reference to the US helicopter / DEA claims btw?
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| But why would the DEA outwardly announce itself while
| assassinating someone?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Perhaps because they believe they are killing a drug lord,
| and didn't do their research to find out this was the address
| of the president (who also may be the drug lord)?
| depingus wrote:
| So...they were serving a no-knock warrant on the wrong
| house? I like it.
| meepmorp wrote:
| This sounds like an action-comedy. I imagine the new guy
| was the one who blurted it out, and the others gave him
| shit for it the whole ride back home in the chopper. Later
| they went out for beers, and the night ended with some
| fistfights in a parking lot and a bit of male bonding.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You are starting to sound like those YouTube videos that
| pick out a bunch of numbers at random and then end with
| "And see!! ILLUMINATI!!"
| airhead969 wrote:
| I prefer tea leaves and coffee grounds. :)
|
| HN has been gradually colonized by Trump truthers, anti-
| science, antivaxx, conspiracy theorist, uneducated
| individuals, trolls, and people outside startups who
| can't out down irrationality or their egos.
| dweekly wrote:
| BBC coverage at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
| america-57750358 (no paywall)
| idoubtit wrote:
| So, an American newspaper writes about Haiti, including a few
| paragraphs about the historical context: the independence from
| France in 1803, the thirty years of the Duvalier dictatorship,
| etc. And they forgot to mention the 20 years of American
| occupation ! Would they write that Vietnam fought against the
| French occupation, then suffered under communist rule?
|
| I don't expect a random American to know any of the various
| countries that the USA invaded and occupied, apart from Vietnam,
| but I sure expect a big newspaper to give this basic context.
| neom wrote:
| Apparently this has also created somewhat of a constitutional
| crisis for them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rN76uqM_6U
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Haiti was already in a constitutional crisis, because Moise's
| election in 2016 was a complete mess.
| jurassic wrote:
| I don't have a horse in this race, but from the WSJ article I
| read it sounds like the dead president was a Trump-style wannabe
| dictator who was narrowly elected in 2016 and then refused to
| leave office when his term was up. When people don't respect the
| law and democratic process it shouldn't be a surprise when others
| also choose to disregard the law and take matters into their own
| hands.
| cryptohacks wrote:
| "But debt is not just victor's justice; it can also be a way of
| punishing winners who weren't supposed to win. The most
| spectacular example of this is the history of the Republic of
| Haiti - the first poor country to be placed in permanent debt
| peonage. Haiti was a nation founded by former plantation slaves
| who had the temerity not only to rise up in rebellion, amidst
| grand declarations of universal rights and freedoms, but to
| defeat Napoleon's armies sent to return them to bondage. France
| immediately insisted that the new republic owed it 150 million
| francs in damages for the expropriated plantations, as well as
| the expenses of outfitting the failed military expeditions, and
| all other nations, including the United States, agreed to impose
| an embargo on the country until it was paid. The sum was
| intentionally impossible (equivalent to about 18 billion
| dollars), and the resultant embargo en sured that the name
| "Haiti" has been a synonym for debt, poverty, and human misery
| ever since." - Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber
| wyager wrote:
| It's described in that quote and in the article as if the
| Haitians defeated the French on their own. The Haitian
| revolution was essentially part of a fight between the French
| and the British, and internecine conflict between various
| French factions. 45,000 British soldiers died vs 75,000 french
| soldiers, so presumably the British involvement was also as
| significant as the French one.
|
| Also, of the first leader of "liberated" Haiti, Dessalines:
|
| "Dessalines marched into Port-au-Prince, where he was welcomed
| as a hero by the 100 whites who had chosen to stay behind.
| Dessalines thanked them all for their kindness and belief in
| racial equality, but then he said that the French had treated
| him as less than human when he was a slave, and so to avenge
| his mistreatment, he promptly had the 100 whites all hanged."
|
| Off to a great start...
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| And 200,000 Hatians.
|
| Kinda odd you left that part out...
| andremendes wrote:
| Not saying assassination by revenge was correct but one could
| argue that an even greater start would be the avoidance of
| transatlantic slave trade.
| rory wrote:
| It was less an assassination and more the beginning of a
| full genocide (a specifically _French_ genocide, not
| against whites in general) around the country.
|
| Dessalines went around the county killing all (fully white)
| French males. A lot of powerful Haitians opposed this,
| especially those of mixed racial background who had white
| family. The crimes that followed were really pushed forward
| by Dessalines the man, not the Haitian people in general.
|
| Transatlantic slavery was incredibly cruel, but persecution
| by "the French" doesn't excuse a genocide of all French
| people on the island. Ironically, the people most
| responsible for the crimes against enslaved Africans (the
| "grand blanc") were largely back in France and so escaped
| personal harm.
| wyager wrote:
| Haitians also continued using slavery - ah, excuse me,
| _forced labor_ according to academic sources - after their
| revolution. They don't really have the moral high-ground
| there either.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| wouldn't mind a citation of those academic sources which
| use this term in this context.
| wyager wrote:
| https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Librar
| y/e...
|
| "The revolution ended slavery in Saint-Domingue but not
| forced labor. Louverture and several of the early
| governments of independent Haiti used the army to impose
| forced work on the plantations"
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Thanks, the citation I was hoping for would be a
| published, peer reviewed paper with listed authors rather
| than a summary from what looks to be a departmental
| public outreach project, the grunt work of which are
| typically farmed out to grad students or RAs.
|
| nonetheless I'm disappointed; the assertion looked so
| juicy and worthy of a deep dive. you made it sound like
| "academia" was conspiring to demote slavery to forced
| labor under specific conditions. yet no evidence of this
| is to be found in the linked text.
|
| rather, the summary makes a point of distinguishing
| slavery from forced labor. granted, it doesn't define
| either term (as a proper paper would) but it doesn't
| pretend they are interchangeable either.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Mix corruption and France teaching them about how to
| profit from slavery and it's no surprise they might have
| continued with slavery.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Slavery and forced labor are not necessarily the same
| thing; thought the former usually implies the latter.
|
| Being forced to work 8-12 hours a day, but _free_ to go
| about your business the rest of the time is a very
| different scenario to being _owned_ and having your
| offspring becoming another persons property.
|
| Chattel slavery goes way beyond forced labor - both are
| terrible, but not equally so.
| rory wrote:
| Yeah, the "worker" conditions that followed were more
| like serfdom than chattel slavery. A serf's offspring is
| still tied to the land like their parents, so the
| practical difference probably wasn't that great, but it's
| still an important distinction.
| tenpies wrote:
| I always wonder, if there had never been a trans-Atlantic
| slave trade, would modern opinion in the West be that
| slavery is perfectly fine?
|
| After all, the West still doesn't really care about slavery
| - there's more slaves today than ever in history. They also
| do not care about benefitting from slave labour or they
| would boycott the top countries in the Global Slavery
| Index: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#p
| revalenc... Slavery continues to be a thriving industry in
| Africa and the Middle East for example, and for the most
| part concern about this only comes from a few Western NGOs.
|
| It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became
| politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an
| actual concern. I wonder if it will ever stop being in
| political vogue.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| What does any of this have to do with the subject at
| hand?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Not OP, but the transatlantic slave trade is materially
| related to the history of Haiti, which is the topic at
| hand.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| But he's not talking about the Transatlantic Slave Trade,
| he's talking about the bad-faith right-wing talking point
| of "There are slaves all around the world today!!!" None
| of the groups that OP professes to care about are part of
| the transatlantic slave trade.
| colpabar wrote:
| > _It largely seems to be a matter that at some point
| became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather
| than an actual concern._
|
| It's diabolical. The ruling class, who benefitted the
| most from slavery, have figured out how to use it to keep
| people from uniting against them. According to them, it
| was white people who enslaved black people, not rich
| people who enslaved poor people, and we should all be
| upset the former and never think about the latter.
| wyager wrote:
| The global elimination of slavery, to whatever incomplete
| extent that happened, was primarily a British and
| Christian moral crusade. Christian morality plus the
| feasibility of replacing slavery with industrialization
| is what made the global reduction of slavery possible. I
| say this as a non-Christian. I don't think it's
| reasonable to say the West "doesn't really care" about
| slavery.
| steve76 wrote:
| Europeans saw African barbarity, human sacrifice,
| genocide, torture, war, and cannibalism, the Europeans
| said stop that please. I'll pay you. Send them away.
|
| Hong Kong left people alone. Limit the violence. Hong
| Kong was the richest place in the world until the Marxist
| brought their brutality and bullying, and with far less
| resources. Haiti's corrupt insane leadership killed and
| took and allowed lawlessness and violence as long as they
| got what they wanted. Haitians have been literally eating
| dirt for decades.
|
| Liberals build coastal resorts and wall off the populace
| as humanitarian efforts. They dare not take charge, and I
| really don't blame them. Cuba and Venezuela has nukes and
| a spies linked with drug smugglers. If we go there and
| make things nice Putin or Xi will look for monsters we
| awakened and give them billions and weapons.
|
| Leave people alone. You're not in charge. If you want to
| govern, govern. First and only rule, limit the violence,
| don't create it.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I wonder who is the 'source' of this 'information'. Could it
| be a European?
| [deleted]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| All the white population was massacred, actually [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre
|
| Edit: Thank you for being so mature and for going through my
| comment history to downvote all the comments you can. Way to
| go, really. Probably why the previous thread was flagged...
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| That is a fascinating read. The aftermath section
| especially.
| runako wrote:
| That's not what the article you linked says, actually:
|
| "A contingent of Polish defectors were given amnesty and
| granted Haitian citizenship for their renouncement of
| French allegiance and support of Haitian independence."
|
| Update: I generally agree with your revised point, but for
| the sake of history I believe it's important not to
| needlessly exaggerate historical events. Let the events
| themselves stand on their own. My country has an ongoing
| problem with propagating accurate history, so I am aware of
| the need to get things correct.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I'm not here to nitpick or defend genocide. A few white
| people might not have been killed, and some foreign
| troops, like those defectors, spared. Read the whole page
| where you found this quote to single out.
|
| Considering how the slaves had been treated it is perhaps
| understandable that the backlash was brutal, but that was
| a genocide nonetheless, with the white population
| massacred, not just a few people in an unique event.
|
| I certainly don't think that I have exaggerated anything.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop taking HN threads further into
| flamewar? How we ended up with an argument about
| competing genocides is a case study in how threads end up
| in internet hell. Now it's headed toward the bombing of
| Japan.
|
| This is _not_ what this site is for. No more of this
| please.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I have not started nor incited a flamewar. I have simply
| posted a historic fact in a neutral way then stayed on
| point. Haiti's history is messy and the past informs the
| present.
|
| In response I have been attacked (classic us of
| nitpicking to discredit an unconvenient point), flagged,
| and one or more people went through my comments history
| to downvote all the comments they could (as mentioned).
|
| I feel like I'm victim of a mob here, and being blamed
| for it... Good for intellectual curiosity, for sure.
| dang wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what you posted were obviously flamewar
| comments. "I have simply posted a historic fact in a
| neutral way" is a misleading description for two reasons:
| (1) "facts" is a red herring (see https://hn.algolia.com/
| ?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for explanation
| of that); and (2) a drive-by one-liner on an extremely
| inflammatory topic is not at all "neutral". (Also, (3)
| what you posted appears _not_ to have been a fact, and
| when someone pointed that out you responded litigiously
| with "I'm not here to nitpick or defend genocide" - more
| flamewar behavior.)
|
| It's not at all surprising that this made the flamewar
| worse--a neutral observer would expect precisely that,
| and that means you're responsible for the effects,
| whether you intended them or not. https://hn.algolia.com/
| ?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| If you don't see how that's the case, I can understand
| why you might feel like a victim, but such perceptions
| have a lot of cognitive bias in them. It's hard for
| people (I mean all of us) to see the provocations
| contained in our own comments, and all too easy to see
| the negative contributions of others. Objects in the
| mirror are closer than they appear: https://hn.algolia.co
| m/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
|
| As for downvoted comments, which ones are you talking
| about specifically? When users do the kind of thing
| you're describing, we often remove downvoting rights from
| them. I didn't see it when I took a quick look, though.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I posted a Wikipedia article about an historically
| established genocide (the use of the term is not mine)
| against the white population. That population was wiped
| out.
|
| The article says " _By the end of April 1804, some 3,000
| to 5,000 people had been killed and the white Haitians
| were practically eradicated, excluding a select group of
| whites who were given amnesty._ ". Someone else posted a
| link to an academic article that states that former
| slaves " _eradicated Haiti 's white population in 1804_".
|
| Pointing out that a few polish troops were spared in
| order to try to discredit me and my summary of the
| article that all the white population was massacred
| (which is accurate on the whole and not a "drive-by one-
| liner") is a nitpick to prevent discussion, and it
| worked.
|
| It's disappointing that you're siding with that behaviour
| and that you're accusing me of flamewar, or even of
| provocation. That's a sad testament to how much the scope
| of possible discussion has narrowed. As mentioned, I
| really only posted it for historical purposes on the
| messy past, and present, of Haiti as part of, I thought,
| a mature discussion. I didn't even think that this was an
| inflammatory topic, and in fact I still don't that's why
| I'm very unpleasantly surprised.
|
| > _As for downvoted comments, which ones are you talking
| about specifically?_
|
| All my comments that were downvotable (so less than 24h
| old, no matter what discussion) were downvoted in a
| matter of minutes, if not seconds, some time after I
| posted the comments in this thread.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That type of behavior is a consequence of war. It
| happens, and the victors define who is worthy of
| punishment or praise.
|
| Using World War 2 as an example, the Army Air Forces
| immolated Japanese cities with white phosphorus and
| napalm before the atomic bomb was available. In Tokyo
| alone, hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to
| ash, and the glow of the firestorm was visible from
| hundreds of miles away. Those actions, followed by the
| atomic bombing, are marginally controversial today but
| largely accepted as "ok".
|
| Because the allies won, those actions are rationalized,
| and those rationalizations have merit. Had Japan won,
| events like the rape of Nanking would have been
| rationalized by their standards, and actions of the US
| Army Air Forces would have been viewed very differently.
|
| With respect to Haiti, the colonialist mindset focuses on
| the individual tragedy of slaughtered Europeans living
| their life in the colony. But from the perspective of the
| rebel slaves, those individuals were complicit in
| systematic barbarous conditions in the cane fields that
| killed thousands of slaves horribly, every month for a
| century or more. The wife of the banker who financed or
| leased slaves is the same as the overseer. Those rebels
| won the battle, but ultimately did not win the war nor
| write the history.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Acts of war, like military bombings during a conflict,
| are obviously not on the same level as genocide. There's
| a very crucial difference and I invite readers to look up
| what 'genocide' means.
|
| This is an off-topic diversion in this discussion,
| though.
|
| I think it's important to call things out and to see
| history for the complex mess it is instead of trying to
| divide everything and everyone between heroes beyond
| reproach and unredeemable villains.
|
| Yes, the black slaves were treated barbarously, and yes
| they committed genocide against the white population
| after they gained their freedom. That's what happened. We
| can look for explanations but I think we should avoid
| trying to look for excuses because once we start to label
| some genocides less wrong than others, or even acceptable
| to the point of defending them then we've crossed a major
| red line.
|
| Shockingly it looks like that red line has been crossed
| in this thread.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I would respectfully disagree. I called out WW2 because
| it's more approachable and known that some obscure
| colonial outpost.
|
| War by its nature breaks the norms of morality and
| civilized behavior. When Lincoln called for Americans to
| embrace the "better angels of our nature", he did so
| knowing that war is where you break the glass and do
| whatever is necessary to prevail.
|
| With respect to civilian victims of war, that's just
| reality.
|
| Post US Civil War military doctrine is that the whole of
| a mobilized society is part of the war effort. That's why
| Sherman burned everything in his March to the sea. That's
| why the meat grinder of WW1 continued until German
| society collapsed. That's why open bombardment of cities
| was the WW2 norm. The era of field armies duking it out
| for king and country died with Napoleon.
|
| We can argue about definition or scope of genocide is.
| But I think at the end of the day the tragedy of Haiti
| from 1493 on speaks for itself, and looking for good guys
| and bad guys is a waste of time. I'm naive, but I think
| Lincoln's appeal is more relevant than ever, and doing
| the hard work of settling differences without warfare is
| how we all improve.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Acts of war, like military bombings, are obviously not
| on the same level as genocide. There 's a very crucial
| difference._
|
| What's the difference when the target is the civilian
| population, as was the case with the bombings of Japan
| (and many of the cities in the European theatre of the
| war as well)? Other than the fact bombing cities from a
| B-29 flying high is more _impersonal_ for the
| perpetrators.
| greedo wrote:
| Actually, when conducting the firebomb missions, the
| B-29s flew at low level. Their after action reports
| clearly mentioned the smell of smoke etc. It was far from
| impersonal.
|
| " In January 1945, General Curtis LeMay arrived in the
| Mariana Islands to take over the problem-plagued B-29
| command. For two months, his crews flew similar high-
| altitude missions over Japan with little more success.
| His job on the line, General LeMay decided on a risky new
| strategy: his pilots would fly daring, dangerous bombing
| missions at altitudes as low as 5,000 feet, low enough to
| be within range of anti-aircraft weapons. Robert
| Rodenhouse was shocked:
|
| "We thought they could throw the kitchen sink up there
| and hit us. Can you imagine flying a big four-engine
| bomber at 5,000 feet? Why that was just unheard of,
| absolutely unheard of. And like my crew says, I think
| those generals lost their marbles. They weren't thinking
| straight."
|
| The low-altitude bombing runs turned out to be highly
| successful. The planes carried much larger bomb loads.
| Crews flew at night to avoid enemy fighters. And flight
| personnel were kept to a minimum. Most of the gunners
| were removed to make room for still more bombs --
| incendiary bombs."
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/paci
| fic...
| the_af wrote:
| I think this doesn't detract from my main point.
| greedo wrote:
| I was just addressing your comment that it was impersonal
| for the B-29 pilots. They knew exactly what was occurring
| below them.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Your comment is silly.
|
| In the European theater, Germany did firebomb areas of
| Britain, so it wasn't just Allied behavior.
|
| And Japan not only started war with the US, they were
| literally anti-Geneva Convention - they passed a law to
| execute American captured airmen.
| the_af wrote:
| Are you sure you understand the argument the OP was
| making?
|
| They didn't claim only the Allies engaged in this
| behavior, nor that Japan was blameless. Their claim was
| in the first sentence, and let me quote it verbatim:
|
| > "That type of behavior is a consequence of war. It
| happens, and the victors define who is worthy of
| punishment or praise."
|
| And it goes on to elaborate:
|
| > "Because the allies won, those actions are
| rationalized, and those rationalizations have merit. Had
| Japan won, events like the rape of Nanking would have
| been rationalized by their standards, and actions of the
| US Army Air Forces would have been viewed very
| differently."
|
| To spell it out, the argument is that it's silly to
| single out the Haitians when they murdered their
| oppressors (and people in the same social caste as their
| oppressors), because this kind of stuff tends to happen
| in war regardless of who the involved parties are.
| Western powers engage in it in their own wars and
| conflicts, it's just that since they are usually
| considered the victors, this behavior is less often
| singled out as barbarous (it is, but less often).
| Conversely, nobody identifies the former Haitian slaves
| as part of a victorious West -- especially since Haiti is
| a failed state and decidedly not part of "us" -- and
| therefore it's easier to single them out as barbarous and
| genocidal.
|
| Things not claimed in the other post: -
| That Japan wasn't guilty of similar crimes. -
| That it was just Allied behavior. - That the US
| was worse than Japan or viceversa.
| creddit wrote:
| Generally very different standards are applied when
| speaking about actions during a war against belligerents
| and those actions taken after a war against a subjugated
| people.
| soperj wrote:
| No one really accepts them as ok except the country that
| did them.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell.
| It's exactly what we don't want here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| andrepd wrote:
| Very well put
| crashdelta wrote:
| "Using World War 2 as an example, the Army Air Forces
| immolated Japanese cities with white phosphorus and
| napalm before the atomic bomb was available. In Tokyo
| alone, hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to
| ash, and the glow of the firestorm was visible from
| hundreds of miles away. Those actions, followed by the
| atomic bombing, are marginally controversial today but
| largely accepted as 'ok'."
|
| How else would you deal with an enemy that would not give
| in? Most people fail to understand that the axis was all
| in, in every way, shape and form. When it comes to the
| Japanese, they flat out were not going to give up. Their
| will had to be broken, somehow, someway.
| didroe wrote:
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-
| really-bo...
|
| > "the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people
| made little impact on the Japanese military."
|
| - Plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy
|
| > In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Truman's
| political advisers overruled the military in determining
| how the end of the war with Japan would be approached.
|
| > "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and
| Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against
| Japan"
|
| - Truman's chief of staff
|
| > "the Japanese position was hopeless even before the
| first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost
| control of their own air."
|
| - Commanding general of the US Army Air Forces
|
| > "[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia's postwar
| behavior...[and thought] that Russia might be more
| manageable if impressed by American military might, and
| that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia."
|
| - Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, talking about
| Secretary of State James Byrnes
|
| It doesn't seem like dropping the bombs served any
| military purpose.
| ant6n wrote:
| You literally wrote "All the white population was
| massacred" 10 minutes before this second message.
| sreque wrote:
| I don't know why you are getting downvoted. Your
| detractors seem to be arguing like 5-year-olds.
|
| Parent: "You didn't pick up your room at all!"
|
| Child: "Wrong! I picked up these 5 small items!" (out of
| the 100+ items on the ground)
|
| From the article you linked: "By the end of April 1804,
| some 3,000 to 5,000 people had been killed[24] and the
| white Haitians were practically eradicated, excluding a
| select group of whites who were given amnesty. "
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Also from the article:
|
| >Philippe Girard writes "when the genocide was over,
| Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent."
|
| That seems pretty in-line with what OP stated, I'm not
| familiar enough to know if Philippe Girard is a reliable
| source but the reference seems legitimate.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/003132205
| 0010619...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Non-existent" encompasses both "killed" and "left the
| country as refugees".
| rory wrote:
| Well sure, but they left to escape being murdered. Their
| main beef was with specifically French white people
| though. They spared a group of Poles and worked with many
| white German and USA American traders in the following
| years.
| sangnoir wrote:
| "It's described in that quote and in the article as if the
| Americans defeated the British on their own. The American
| revolution was essentially part of a fight between the French
| and the British..."
|
| How does that sound to you?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Sounds about right.
| LaMarseillaise wrote:
| Accurate. I have said basically this a number of times. And
| I am from the US.
| queuebert wrote:
| Incorrect. The French didn't get involved until after
| Washington had scored a couple of (lucky) victories. Guess
| they didn't want to back a loser.
| nkozyra wrote:
| The French didn't get involved _directly with the
| revolutionary war_ until then, but the greater impact was
| war with France in Canada and the Seven Years ' War,
| which pulled British resources away from the New World.
|
| Without France as a belligerent to England in the years
| up to the war, the latter would have been far better
| equipped to defend the colonies.
|
| The David versus Goliath mythology that tells of feisty
| upstart democratic republic felling the great monarchy
| taught in school typically doesn't get into a Great
| Britain heavily depleted and indebted from years of war
| with France.
| queuebert wrote:
| Agreed. It's also my impression that Britain didn't take
| the war seriously at first. Not until after maybe Trenton
| did they allocate real resources (as much as they had
| anyway).
|
| The irony from the US perspective is we're taught the
| superior force was defeated by guerilla tactics and
| unconventional warfare. Then we completely forgot that
| when we went to Vietnam. Oops.
| solipsism wrote:
| Undoubtedly. But saying conflicts with France
| significantly affected the outcome of the American
| Revolution is a far cry from saying the Revolution was
| _essentially part of_ the conflicts between Britain and
| France, as if the Revolution was some kind of proxy war.
| That 's just not true. France piled on, and the conflict
| with France helped set things up, but the colonies had
| legitimate beef with Britain and walked the path toward
| revolution without having to be nudged by the French.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| How many French died on behalf of the US during the
| revolution ? In Haiti it was about 20 percent of the
| overall casualties.
| queuebert wrote:
| France had maybe 10% of the actual battle losses,
| relative to the Americans, and less than 1% of the total
| war-related deaths, which includes disease and
| starvation.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| That's how I was taught the American Revolution... What do
| you find so offensive about it?
| soperj wrote:
| As a non-american, sounds accurate to me.
| dahfizz wrote:
| That sounds correct. That's what I was taught in school as
| an American. What is your point?
| sangnoir wrote:
| The second sentence is incorrect, according to the
| American founding myth. It was a fight between the
| revolutionaries and the British, with _assistance_ of the
| French. It turns out, when it comes to the founding of
| countries, the parties you give agency to matters a lot
| wutbrodo wrote:
| What a bizarre comment. Someone describes Haiti's
| revolution accurately (presumably), and your claim is
| "how dare you prioritize reality over mythology", using
| the (also-incorrect) American founding myth to somehow
| support your point?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > [...] your claim is "how dare you prioritize reality
| over mythology", using the (also-incorrect) American
| founding myth to somehow support your point?
|
| I made no such claim. Also "founding myth" is a term with
| a distinct meaning separate from "mythology" in that it
| is not necessarily _untrue_ - romanticizing the truth and
| excluding any unflattering details is usually enough.
|
| I really wish more people read biographies, especially by
| multiple people who where belligerents in the same
| conflict. When you hear the same story told from
| different perspectives, you begin to question if the
| history your were taught was in fact, the objective
| "reality".
|
| What you called "reality" was just a perspective from a
| single point of view, which I can safely assume was
| European.
| [deleted]
| solipsism wrote:
| What's incorrect about the American "founding myth"?
| Please explain what role France played in the
| disagreement about taxes between the colonists and the
| crown?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Mentally insert "under the assumption that these are
| myths", if that makes you feel better. I have no interest
| in getting derailed into an essentially irrelevant
| conversation.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| That is absolutely not what any American high schooler is
| taught.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's what we were taught when I was in school. Granted,
| that was 30 years ago, so it may have changed since.
| mcculley wrote:
| It turns out that America is a big place with many school
| districts. They are not all teaching from the same books.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The joke's on you! I was taught world history in high
| school and never American history.
|
| The "American" studies class was about the Constitution,
| various laws, major Lobbying groups (ACLU, NAACP, FOP,
| NRA), how primaries work, etc. etc. American history was
| left to grade school.
| tjalfi wrote:
| There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than
| are dreamt of in your philosophy.
|
| One of my high school history classes presented this
| view; we used A People's History of the United States as
| a textbook.
| wyager wrote:
| It's also what I was taught in American (private) high
| school.
| solipsism wrote:
| I'm curious to see the curricula that are teaching this
| incorrect rubbish.
|
| What role did France play in the Boston Tea Party? I'm
| not aware of any at all. Certainly France jumped in once
| they saw the opportunity happening, but the idea that the
| revolution was really part of the conflict with France is
| just wrong.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| It's 100% what I was taught, as I mentioned in my
| previous comment before even reading those. Where do you
| get such confidence in claims that are so incredibly
| wrong and so guaranteed to be easily rebutted?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into race flamewar hell or any
| other flamewar hell. With this glib and snarky provocation of
| atrocity grievance, you turned what was already a wretched
| subthread into a tire fire. I assume you didn't intend that,
| but if it wasn't arson it was criminal negligence. We want
| the exact opposite of this on HN.
|
| You also have a history of posting flamebait to HN. Please
| review the site guidelines and take a _lot_ more care with
| this place. The ecosystem here is fragile. I 'm sure you
| wouldn't drop lit matches in a dry forest or at a gas
| station, or toss Molotov cocktails into crowds at parks. So
| please don't do the equivalent here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Bitcoin fixes this.
| underdeserver wrote:
| No, it doesn't.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Tongue meet cheek.
| thrthrthrow wrote:
| Could you please explain why you think it doesn't?
| jethro_tell wrote:
| How does it fix it?
| cryptohacks wrote:
| Happy to chat about it but this does not seem like a
| welcoming space for the discussion.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Just curious? What's the use case for breaking an
| international embargo with crypto?
| edgyquant wrote:
| When someone makes an extraordinary claim, "Bitcoin fixes
| this," the burden is on them to explain how that is the
| case.
| cryptohacks wrote:
| Was it a bitcoin comment? It could help.
| tekromancr wrote:
| I don't think you understand just how powerful states with
| big fucking guns are
| thrthrthrow wrote:
| Could you please explain how?
| haskellandchill wrote:
| I'm being sarcastic, I know it's a risky move here but I
| couldn't help myself. Bitcoin is a scam.
| henvic wrote:
| Bitcoin is definitely a scam. Just like fiat money,
| though. https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/
| leto_ii wrote:
| > Bitcoin is a scam.
|
| You're really tempting fate twice here :))
| dang wrote:
| We ban accounts that troll HN as you have in this thread.
| No more of this please.
|
| You've also been posting mostly unsubstantive comments in
| general lately. Would you please fix this? We're hoping
| for better than that here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sha256kira wrote:
| Whats bitcoin again?
| tekromancr wrote:
| I would say so. You attempted to use sarcasm in a
| community of people who dis-proportionally don't pick up
| on sarcasm, using a medium that notoriously doesn't
| transmit sarcasm well.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| Yes but I laughed and maybe a couple others. The OP
| comment was by a crypto throwaway account, the subtle
| message was there anyway, I just blew it up. Graeber is
| completely correct about Haiti getting screwed over by
| debt but I wanted the Bitcoin message underlying it to be
| exposed and have more substantial conversation about
| financial policies that could help. Did it work? Maybe.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It isn't that people here don't pick up sarcasm it's that
| sarcasm as an entire comment isn't really welcome here.
| This isn't Reddit and comments are supposed to have
| substance.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| It's both! Sorry I'll see myself out.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into classic flamewar hell. A
| comment like this is vandalism.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| wow - that is shocking - thank you for enlightening me with
| this information :(
| nickik wrote:
| I would not really recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years by
| David Graeber as a good source.
|
| While there are sometimes good historical nuggets, it mostly
| concerns itself with interpreting ever possible situation in
| the last 5000 years according to Graebers ideology and
| confirming that it is correct while constantly claiming anybody
| else that worked on these same topics and didn't share his
| interpretations are idiots (while often not actually seeming to
| know what they actually wrote).
|
| This is just state policy if they don't like other states. Its
| just legal justification for states to do what they want to do.
| States have found a billion way to justify hostile action
| against other states. Claiming reparations of one kind or
| another is very common for a very long time.
|
| Even had they been able to pay that money, its very
| questionable if that would have changed the disposition of the
| other stats towards it. Cartage managed to pay Rome back in
| full, and Rome then decide to destroy it anyway.
|
| They might just have a different excuse for the same policy.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Firmly agree and I keep the book on my shelf as a lesson that
| with funding, credentials, and details anything can get
| published.
| akudha wrote:
| _The sum was intentionally impossible (equivalent to about 18
| billion dollars),_
|
| Assuming this figure in today's money - we have a country of
| more than 10 million people who can't afford to pay 18 Billion,
| and we have at least two _individuals_ who are worth at least
| _10 times_ that amount (at least on paper)!!
|
| Yes, I am aware it is a weird and useless comparison. Still, it
| is kinda astonishing.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| The reference to being impossible to pay was in 1825, when it
| would have been impossible for pretty much any country to
| pay.
| cousin_it wrote:
| deleted
| leereeves wrote:
| Amazingly, that's a real quote from the book[1] (according to
| that source David Graeber blames bad editing), and it does
| raise questions about the credibility of anything else in
| that book.
|
| But that story about Haiti's debt can be found in better
| sources.
|
| 1: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/on-april-fools-day-we-
| reme...
| cryptohacks wrote:
| I admit, I've only read the first 30 pages of the book, and
| the editing is pretty bad.
| dang wrote:
| Copy-pasting a piece of high ideological rhetoric into this
| thread created one of the worst tire fires I've seen in a long
| time, including flamewars about competing genocides, the
| origins of Apple, Bitcoin, the bombing of Japan, and the devil
| knows what else.
|
| Perhaps if it were one flamewar amid a bunch of on-topic,
| thoughtful replies, that could be called a coincidence, but in
| this case it's painfully clear that your comment set off the
| whole thing. Please don't ever do anything like this on HN
| again.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Igelau wrote:
| (Can someone please clarify) how was that ideological
| rhetoric? Are these not historical facts? And if they are,
| aren't they relevant to a story about political instability
| in Haiti? Is Haitian politics itself off-topic? It seems like
| it's such emotionally charged territory due to its agonizing
| history that containing all the flame wars would constitute a
| de facto ban on the topic.
|
| Edit: really? There's a whole other thread making these exact
| same points that didn't get flagged
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761847
| ekianjo wrote:
| THis book is better known as "ignorant writes about History by
| cherry-picking data points"
| rozab wrote:
| This debt was still being collected by Citibank up to 1947. For
| the 'theft of property'... That is, the citizens of Haiti
| themselves.
| [deleted]
| weimerica wrote:
| Let us not white-wash the Haitian revolution which did not
| simply free the enslaved but also genocided every European and
| mixed-heritage Haitian.
|
| If Germany is to pay back for its crimes of the 20th Century,
| why not Haiti?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That's what you get from revolutions by slaves, bro.
|
| To calrify (reagrding comments) I'm not saying this is noble
| deed but I would not judge them with ordinary moral
| standards.
| weimerica wrote:
| So when one has their citizens slaughtered whole-sale, they
| are then under obligation to offer good trading terms?
|
| If we are to reinterpret France's wrongs in light of modern
| norms, why not too interpret the wrong of the Haitian's?
| Why is this "rules for thee?"
| mrow84 wrote:
| "Fighting oppression is more just than committing
| oppression" is a norm that has an incredibly long
| history. What also has an incredibly long history is
| trying to elevate the importance of the marginal
| consequences of those fights, over what was being fought
| against.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The same reason we don't get too hung up on American
| soldiers slaughtering SS officers after liberating
| concentration camps. Two parties can both be in the wrong
| while at the same time one is way more in the wrong.
| cloverich wrote:
| Because enslsavers created the situation in the first
| place. They wronged themselves by taking people who could
| have been educated and empowered and instead taught them
| violence and ignorance.
| einpoklum wrote:
| One of the tragedies of slavery - like other severe forms
| of oppression - is that it doesn't ennoble the oppressed.
| In fact, it makes the enslaved person accustomed to
| cruelty, violence, iniquity, tyranny; and is likely to
| result in individuals who tend to be possessive, anxiety-
| prone, vengeful, violent etc. A bit like the adage about
| abused children growing up to become abusive parents.
|
| (Of course, this too is a crass generalization.)
| viro wrote:
| war crimes are war crimes, abuse is abuse. Being a past
| victim doesn't make ur actions any less evil.
| CyanBird wrote:
| "Chaotic good" doesn't mean "Chaotic nice"
| cloverich wrote:
| Because violence begets violence. If you violently abuse,
| maul, and kill a group of people, then they are loosed,
| you don't need to think in terms of anything more than
| "what else did you expect"? I don't know if you've ever
| watched someone you love beaten to death, or been
| maliciously mauled yourself, but I bet the person that
| came out on the other side would not be someone you would
| recognize. Violence has consequences beyond the immediate
| victims and it takes time and effort to undo. Everlasting
| economic sanctions certainly won't help.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm not saying it's not evil, I'm just saying that if A
| enslaved B and B's family, it's perfectly normal for B to
| kill A and A's family. Is it legal? Is it good? I mean do
| you really think slaves care about laws or moral? It's
| brutal reality that we better avoid in one way or another
| in the future.
| rory wrote:
| Well in this case, B killed everyone that looks like and
| shares an ethnicity with A. And if C enslaved B and B's
| family, but C had 1/4 of the same racial ancestry as B,
| he was spared. So not really a 1:1 comparison.
| thisiscorrect wrote:
| Murdering infants is barbaric. It's impossible to
| corroborate now, but many reports at the time suggested
| they used impaled French infants for a battle standard. I
| don't have a word strong enough to condemn that
| depravity. "That's what you get from revolutions by
| slaves, bro." comes across as extremely flippant. Slavery
| is wrong. Murdering innocent people is also wrong, bro.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Singling out acts of violence to try to say that both
| sides are equally evil or that one side is more moral
| because of that one act of evil is stupid.
|
| The greater picture is this: Haitians were slaves and had
| every right to fight against their oppression. The "white
| Europeans" belonged back home in France. They brought it
| on themselves.
|
| I always like to use this thought experiment: which of
| the two sides had power to change the situation?
|
| The Haitians couldn't help being slaves until they
| rebelled. The French could from the very start choose not
| to be slavers.
| concordDance wrote:
| > The "white Europeans" belonged back home in France.
|
| Just like the black haitians belonged back home in West
| Africa?
|
| If you're going to deport people based on race at least
| be consistent.
| the_af wrote:
| Who brought the black Haitians to Haiti? Did they stay
| there voluntarily during white European rule?
|
| Details matter.
| concordDance wrote:
| I don't see how being brought to Haiti matters. Imagine
| some white settlers brought as children who have just
| become young adults. Do they need to go back to France?
| the_af wrote:
| > _I don 't see how being brought to Haiti matters_
|
| It does matter if they were brought as slaves and against
| their will, and made by force to call Haiti their home. I
| hope you see the difference between this and the children
| the settlers brought with them. Comparing children to
| slavery is nonsense.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| The point is not that they were in Haiti. The point is
| that they were engaging in slavery, and they had the
| freedom not to.
|
| I was not making any statements on settler colonialism
| which is a separate issue entirely. I was just saying,
| the French cannot claim be victims when they were the
| ones engaging in slavery.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > many reports at the time suggested they used impaled
| French infants for a battle standard
|
| Sure, and the Soviets claimed the Katyn massacre was
| perpetrated by the Nazis.
|
| Consider sprinkling a few grains of salt on contemporary
| accounts by interested parties.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Let's say when you do wrong X to someone, it's quite
| possible that they return the "favor" someday. I don't
| know what we are arguing here. Are they evil? For sure,
| but do you really expect them to be gentlemen
| revolutionaries who only kill those "should be killed"?
|
| Actually Europeans did the same in not so long ago, not
| as slaves, but as slavers (or some more fancy words), so
| people can go down much further IMHO.
| [deleted]
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wrong - the Poles who fought with Dessalines were allowed to
| stay and settle.
| weimerica wrote:
| So they made a carve-out on their genocidal rampage? That
| does not make the slaughter of women and children better.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Sure, some men were allowed to live as well as every woman
| who agreed to marry black men, but thousands were still
| killed.
| Orou wrote:
| Genocide was committed on both sides, and from a purely
| numerical standpoint the Haitian slaves had it worse. Why
| shouldn't France have been forced to pay back Haiti for the
| enslavement and genocide that it committed? Or should we just
| forget about the Vicomte de Rochambeau and his attack dogs?
| onemoresoop wrote:
| "Convinced that the crisis in Hispaniola could only be
| resolved by mass murder, Rochambeau undertook to massacre
| much of the non-white civilian and military population.
| Under his direction, the French imported hundreds of attack
| dogs from Cuba, which were used both in counterinsurgency
| operations and in grotesque public spectacles in which
| unfortunate prisoners and servants were eaten alive.
| Rochambeau also displayed exceptional cruelty in a number
| of other ways, such as massacring enemy troops after they
| had surrendered to his forces, burning men and women alive,
| and executing many soldiers and civilians by torture and
| drowning." [0]
|
| [0] http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part02-slide13.html
| clairity wrote:
| > "Let us not white-wash the Haitian revolution..."
|
| let's also make sure not to miss the misdirectional,
| identity-based non sequitur, focusing exclusively on a few
| colonizing europeans and a singular incident over the
| shackled lives of millions of slaves and their prolonged
| casualties over literal centuries. with one being the
| consequence of the other, no less.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Exactly Germany has to pay for its crimes...not the liberated
| Jewish people.
|
| Could you imagine Germany sending a bill for the total cost
| of WW2 to the newly created Country of Israel?
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761407.
| thoughty wrote:
| Treaty of Versailles which asked Germany to pay for world war
| 1 is what restored in world war 2. I don't think Germany was
| stick with an invoice after world war 2
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| >I don't think Germany was stick with an invoice after
| world war 2
|
| If only there was some way of searching for this
| information so you don't have to rely on shitty gut
| feelings
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_reparations
| carschno wrote:
| To quote the most relevant parts:
|
| > According to the Yalta Conference, no reparations to
| Allied countries would be paid in money. Instead much of
| the value transferred consisted of German industrial
| assets as well as forced labour to the Allies.
|
| > Later the Western Allies softened their stance in
| favour of the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Germany
| continued to deliver industrial goods and raw materials
| to the Soviet Union until 1953
| weimerica wrote:
| > I don't think Germany was stick with an invoice after
| world war 2
|
| It was.
| praptak wrote:
| Yes it was, technically. GPs point about not repeating
| the post-WWI mistake still stands though. Germany also
| received huge help as part of the Marshall plan.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The US has extraterritorial rights to German military bases
| to this day.
|
| So they may not have a crippling financial debt, but the
| loss wasn't "free".
| dogman144 wrote:
| Interesting book until 1/2 of the way through it finally drops
| the point of it: debt is slavery and exclusively exists to
| perpetuate this form of slavery.
|
| Perhaps, but credit markets also provide critical benefit. 500
| pages of such a singleminded dismissal of nuance was too much
| for me.
| andrepd wrote:
| You definitely did not read the book if that's what you think
| it's saying.
|
| It wouldn't have 500 pages if it was just "debt = slavery" :p
| cabalamat wrote:
| David Graeber also wrote (in the same book):
|
| >Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly
| Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon
| Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of
| twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's
| garages.
|
| That's an impressive amount of wrong to pack into one sentence!
| So much wrong, that I would not trust anything based on
| Graeber's word.
| eplanit wrote:
| Surely there are photos of the early Apple engineers in the
| 1970s, with their _laptops_ in each other's garages. /s
| [deleted]
| magnio wrote:
| How about Wikipedia?[0]
|
| > After the Haitians gained independence from French colonial
| rule in the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the French returned
| in 1825 and demanded that the newly independent country pay
| the French government and French slaveholders the modern
| equivalent of US$21 billion for the theft of the slaveowner's
| property and the land that they had turned into profitable
| sugar and coffee-producing plantations.
|
| > Haiti's legacy of debt began shortly after a widespread
| slave revolt against the French, with Haitians gaining their
| independence from France in 1804. President of the United
| States Thomas Jefferson - fearing that slaves gaining their
| independence would spread to the United States - stopped
| sending aid that began under his predecessor John Adams and
| pursued international isolation of Haiti during his tenure.
| France had also pursued a policy that prevented Haiti from
| participating in trade in the Atlantic. This isolation on the
| international stage made Haiti desperate for economic relief.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti
| handrous wrote:
| Has any other author ever been so consistently dismissed over
| one errata-worthy, not-particularly-crucial, sentence in a
| first edition of one book? Why is that brought up as some
| kind of "gotcha" every time he comes up? You could dismiss
| most any author with any significant amount of published
| material over similar trivia.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Graeber was a good writer but a bullshit merchant, and that
| sentence is his oeuvre's purest distillation: It sounded
| good and right to him when he wrote it, so nobody bothered
| to check if it was true or not.
| handrous wrote:
| Could you point me to some good criticism of him? I've
| sought it before because he does _feel_ that way to me,
| reading him, but what I 've found has mostly been low-
| quality.
| nickik wrote:
| The book is so wide range and meta narrative with a bunch
| of really specific examples. Some of those have been
| addressed but nobody seem to want to address the book as
| a whole.
|
| The basic idea of the book is very old and not original.
| Social science and philosophy has been arguing about the
| definition/meaning/origin of debt, money, property right
| for a long time. He takes a very clear position on it
| that is clearly based in his ideological believes and
| then does a running narration of 5000 years of history
| that all proves his point crossing every social science
| in the process.
|
| From my perspective as somebody that knows economics, its
| blatantly clear that he has no respect for economist and
| has not bothered with history of economic thought beyond
| finding a few quotes to slander. At the same time its
| totally clear he has never seriously read the works he
| seems to despise. It seems that it is his serious believe
| that economist and apparently the whole history of
| economics is simply justification for imperialism and
| slavery.
|
| Not to mention that he is incredibly rude and response
| with personal attack when people point out that he made
| some very basic factual errors.
|
| Some of his claims are so incredibly wrong that even
| somebody who only did the simplest online '101 History of
| Economic Thought' should not make.
|
| Let me give you an example. Consider this text:
|
| > Voluntary as well as compulsory unilateral transfers of
| assets (that is, transfers arising neither from a
| 'reciprocal contract' in general nor from an exchange
| transaction in particular, although occasionally based on
| tacitly recognized reciprocity), are among the oldest
| forms of human relationships as far as we can go back in
| the history of man's economizing. Long before the
| exchange of goods appears in history, or becomes of more
| than negligible importance...we already find a variety of
| unilateral transfers: voluntary gifts and gifts made more
| or less under compulsion, compulsory contributions,
| damages or fines, compensation for killing someone,
| unilateral transfers within families, etc.*
|
| This was written by an economist in 1892 who according to
| Graeber only improved on Adam Smith work "by adding
| various mathematical equations".
|
| The text above was from Carl Menger, one of the most well
| known economist of the century and one of the founders of
| modern economics. Not just that, even on that wrote
| precisely on many of the questions Graeber book
| addresses. So exactly the kind of person Graeber seems to
| be wanting to debate and dismiss. The perfect pillar of
| modern (as in Post-Marginal) economics to shoot down.
|
| Why then would Graeber claim that he only "adding various
| mathematical equations"? I seems that the only
| explanation is that he look up the wrong person on
| wikipedia, as there is another person with the same name
| who was a mathematician. Nobody who read even an
| introduction to modern history of economic thought would
| make that mistake.
|
| He clearly doesn't have a clue who Carl Menger was and
| clearly has hasn't read his works. He clearly didn't
| actually study history of economic thought when writing
| his book. Rather he had preconceived notion and all he
| needed was a few selective Adam Smith references and
| dismiss the rest.
|
| At the same time he proudly reference the 1925 'The
| Gift', to prove how much smarter anthropologists are as
| they understood the importance of the Gift economy.
| Compared to economist who according to him only believe
| in the "Mythical Land of Barter".
|
| He speaks with equal authority about some almost unknown
| tribal societies, 5000 year old city states that we only
| have very basic data on and 2000s century politics and
| modern central banking (that he has borderline no
| understanding off). Given his very clear and explicit
| bias and he evident willingness to do selective reading
| and misinterpretation I much rather read on these topics
| from actual experts without such a clear bias and
| explicit political message.
| handrous wrote:
| This post was really helpful, thanks. I've had an actual
| academic text on the history of economic though on my-to
| read list for years, at this point--you've prompted me to
| bump it up the queue.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Author gets dismissed because the follow on editions are
| still a detail-packed journey through ancient anthropology
| that all cleanly lands as "see, debt is slavery and always
| has been." I don't know how someone can take such a un-
| nuanced view of credit markets seriously.
| handrous wrote:
| I read it, and recall there being a bit more to it than
| that. For one thing--of many--the book treats extensively
| of debt as a kind of social glue, fundamental to human
| relationships & societies, which isn't compatible with:
| "see, debt is slavery and always has been."
|
| One consistent problem I've had trying to take in
| criticism of the book (and I have looked for it!) is that
| it rarely seems to have been written by people who read
| the same book I did. It's bizarre.
| andrepd wrote:
| You definitely did not read the book if that's what you
| think it's saying.
|
| It wouldn't have 500 pages if it was just "debt =
| slavery" :p
| handrous wrote:
| Lots of the 1-star reviews of it on Amazon, for instance,
| are by people who seemed to have skimmed it, because
| they'll level complaints like "the book said X, which is
| ridiculous because Y!" when the book explicitly
| identifies and addresses _exactly_ Y within a paragraph
| or two of introducing X. It 's like they're not familiar
| with that form of writing[0] and, on reading something
| they think may have problems, just skip ahead to the next
| argument.
|
| Longer-form criticism I've read of it tends to exhibit
| similar, if less egregious, problems with reading
| comprehension. Which is frustrating because I suspect the
| book actually _does_ have issues and oversights that
| would be nice to read about from a person with the right
| background who actually closely read & understood the
| book.
|
| [0] I do have my _suspicions_ about what kind of economic
| /political writing these folks are used to reading,
| that's (evidently) conditioned them not to expect
| anything resembling a sincere and thorough attempt to
| address problems with an assertion or argument to follow
| close on the heels of same assertion or argument, so may
| incline them toward skipping ahead or skimming heavily on
| reading something they immediately think of an objection
| to....
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| First I had heard of it. But I was surprised to see how he
| waved it away as simply "garbled" and then moved
| immediately to threats of lawsuits claiming libel.
|
| I agree the sentence is a small one. The author's reaction
| however only succeeds in drawing even more attention to it.
| handrous wrote:
| IIRC, whatever else you think of Graeber's reaction
| there, "moved immediately to threats of lawsuits claiming
| libel" does not accurately describe what he did, as that
| post is part of a _much_ larger exchange.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Are you trying to say that Apple Engineers in 1978 weren't
| using their MacBooks? I wonder why the democratic drum
| circles were in garages instead of Starbucks? LOL.
|
| That's beyond impressive, that in extraordinarily and
| spectacularly ignorant prose.
| zja wrote:
| Graeber actually addressed this sentence on this site a few
| years ago (It was a "garbled sentence in the first edition
| that was instantly removed").
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17193121
| rjzzleep wrote:
| How'd that sentence make it into the first edition? And who
| wrote it?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| David Graeber wrote it, and the first question is
| answered in the comment you're replying to?
|
| Are you making a larger point?
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Are you making a larger point?
|
| Not OP, but I think the idea is one should be skeptical
| of other things the guy has to say, considering that the
| aforementioned sentence about Apple isn't just wrong,
| it's wrong in a way that shows no familiarity with the
| subject. at all.
|
| Or, more bluntly, the guy sounds like he's full of shit.
| dang wrote:
| If everyone is to be judged by the worst sentence they've
| written then literally everyone ends up in the junk pile.
| This is not a substantive argument, and it's completely
| off topic. Please don't take HN threads further down lame
| generic tangents.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| chroma wrote:
| His excuse is about as plausible as, "My dog ate my
| homework." Yes dogs do sometimes eat homework, but most of
| the time that claim is a lie.
|
| First, it's odd how such a garbled sentence managed to be
| perfectly understandable English. If it was garbled, what
| was the original intention? I don't know of any major tech
| company founded in SV in the 1980s by ex-IBM engineers who
| were mostly Republican. I can't recall any famous company
| or organization that was known for forming democratic
| circles of 20-40 people with laptops in garages (regardless
| of the decade). Any sort of elaboration or clarification on
| the intended meaning would have gone a long way toward
| convincing me. The original sentence is simply too coherent
| to be "garbled" without further elaboration.
|
| Second, book drafts are read and reread by teams of
| professional editors. Excerpts are circulated among
| colleagues and domain experts. It is practically impossible
| that such a "garbled" sentence could sneak by all of them.
|
| I agree that DeLong behaved despicably, but Graeber can't
| be trusted.
|
| Edit: I've tracked down previous excuses by Graeber.
| Initially, he blamed incorrect information from an
| unpublished study by a student of the Marxist economist
| Richard Wolff. Annoyingly the Twitter thread is totally
| broken, but individual tweets are still there:
|
| https://twitter.com/chumpchanger/status/141218501024157696
| "David Graeber,Debt,p96: Apple was founded by engineers
| from IBM who formed little democratic circles of 20-40 with
| laptops in garages.-HUH?!"
|
| https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/141581278880346112
| "yeah I know I think Wolff was just kind of wrong about a
| lot of this; I tried to check with him but he didn't answer
| the email"
|
| https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/141536818398113792
| "no I mean Richard Wolff the Marxist economist whose
| student did a study of the origins of Apple and never
| published it"
|
| Around six months later he blames a copyeditor[1]:
|
| > The endlessly cited Apple quote was not supposed to be
| about Apple. Actually it was about a whole of series of
| other tiny start-ups created by people who'd dropped out of
| IBM, Apple, and similar behemoths. (Of them it's perfectly
| true.) The passage got horribly garbled at some point into
| something incoherent, I still can't completely figure out
| how, was patched back together by the copyeditor into
| something that made logical sense but was obviously
| factually wrong. I should have caught it at the
| proofreading stage but I didn't.
|
| Good luck trying to track down the startups that Graeber
| says he was referencing, or the report that he claims he
| got the information from. The much more likely explanation
| is that he wrote some nonsense, got called on it, and
| refused to own up to his mistake.
|
| 1. https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/02/seminar-on-debt-
| the-fir...
| andrepd wrote:
| ... So let me get this straight: you disregard something
| because the person who wrote it had a since-corrected editor
| error in the first edition of an unrelated work. Is that it?
| handrous wrote:
| I'm open to the idea (though have yet to see what I'd
| consider strong evidence for it) that Graeber was,
| generally, full of shit--his public presentation and the
| kind of books he wrote _incline_ me to believe it, in fact,
| even if the books themselves have, so far, surprised me by
| having a lot more substance than I expected--but the way
| people harp on that sentence makes me think they 're not
| familiar with the way broad-reaching books like this are
| researched, written, and edited. Getting a handful of
| details wrong, even _very_ wrong, is downright normal.
| Failing to acknowledge and fix them when they 're pointed
| out might be a problem, but... did that happen, with that
| book? Not just there, but anywhere else?
|
| I'd be much more interested in criticism that addresses the
| core ideas, evidence, and arguments of the book, or that
| illustrate a pattern of presenting incorrect information,
| especially if it's left that way once it's made known, or
| if it's something the arguments presented by the book hinge
| on. Bringing this one bit up over and over and over doesn't
| really prove anything, and isn't helpful.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on offtopic flamewar tangents.
| What a useless train wreck.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dogman144 wrote:
| The book is awful. I said it in another response, but it's
| basically a narrative looking for evidence with a mix of
| anthropology.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Ah yes, the popular field of finding convoluted ways to blame
| Europeans for all the failures and atrocious dystopias created
| by non-whites.
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