Unlike the intellectually limited, culturally retarded, and compassionately lacking Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson, who believe the Haitian people deserve or asked for the horrors that have befallen them, this most recent global tragedy has me pondering profoundly.
My first query involves seismic testing and its implications, the proximity of the USA torture camp at Guantanamo Bay in southern Cuba, the US Military HAARP project in Puerto Rico, and the possibility that this earthquake is no accident. It’s possible. They were so successful with the 9/11 cover-up, the subsequent and endless “war on terror,” the search for Osama who’s been dead for years … the masses are enthralled with the corporate spin of controlled media, (they'll believe anything), so why not push that envelope?
The truth is that US monopoly capitalism, often misnamed the “free market,” has had its mask ripped off with the bail-out of too big to fail banks. The scars are beginning to show, the people beginning to question whether it’s “socialism” or unfettered capitalism that is their ultimate enemy. With little exception, the only thing the USA produces is WAR.
Remember WWII, when the US economy began to recover from the depression of the thirties? Well I don’t, but I do remember people talking about how the US only entered the war as it neared its end, and how their entire economy boomed as a result. Many many people are employed in jobs that are directly, or indirectly, connected to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction or other instruments of death.
What’s absolutely essential to a war economy is an endless and persistent need for war and reconstruction. Like little boys with tonka trucks in the sandbox, it sometimes seems it’s all the patriarchy knows – destruction, and reconstruction. Unable to birth, they kill and rebuild.
Sure, the intentional triggering of an earthquake the likes of which the world has never seen can easily be dismissed as conspiracy theory, and I personally hope my first gut reaction isn’t actually true, but I’ve lived long enough to realize that anything is possible. Those who believe they are the superior of the species, deserving all that life has to offer even if it’s attained at the expense of all other life on the planet, it seems there is nothing they won’t do to maintain their selfish hubristic lifestyles.
Why not Shock Doctrine Haiti, get Cuban to open up their airspace for the first time in perhaps decades, then perhaps launch a "terrorist" attack in Canada during the Olympics as an excuse to release US military into our communities? Voila – jobs all around. The “free market” of monopoly capitalism reborn.
Secondly, why does my government suddenly have money to send to Haiti?! I’m all for helping people in need, I helped transport over 200 tons of humanitarian aid to Cuba these past two years, necessary because of the immoral US blockade against a small island nation that insists on doing something other than monopoly capitalism. I appreciate, and am not surprised, that Cuba and Venezuela were the first in Haiti with doctors and essential supplies. We all ought to help, where we can, when people are in need. But when a facebook friend reported hearing on a local radio station that the City of Victoria will be sending “temporary housing and water filtration systems” to Haiti I, like her, responded with an audible What The F*ck?!!
On any given night there are over a thousand homeless people in Victoria. We’ve recently won a court decision rendering a city bylaw, that prevented homeless people from erecting shelter to protect themselves, unconstitutional. We’ve pleaded with Victoria city council to consider Portland’s Dignity Village model, to meet us half way in attempting to help the homeless help themselves by establishing temporary shelter in a community on public land. Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Now, suddenly, the city will be sending temporary housing to Haiti? As they watch their own people suffer, night after night, here in the northern Canadian winter?
Ultimately, we may never know the extent to which Haiti’s earthquake might have been avoided, or forewarned. What we do know is that it’s cold in Canada in winter, and there are an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 homeless people, victims of monopoly capitalism that sees value only as it’s affixed to material wealth and stature. Why isn’t that considered an emergency, calling for immediate action?
Thirdly, in my meditations on Haiti, I count my blessings. Though I may join the ranks of the homeless some day, since I’ll forever refuse to “go corporate” or sell my body (which appear to be the options that will remain after the great coup), today I’m looking past Arbutus and Douglas Fir trees to the peaceful and life giving Salish Sea. I’ve made a new dog and cat friend in this house minding moment on Piers Island, where people commute by boat from their ocean front homes, only occasionally drive golf carts on the small road that rings the island, and collectively mind the wilderness that thrives in the centre of the island.
The rain has stopped and the eagles are calling from nearby trees. It’s about an hour’s walk around the perimeter of Piers Island, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to escape the various noise and pollution that accompanies city life (though I’m grateful for my happy niche there). I wander and wonder and ponder …. has the human species been entirely removed and replaced with alien life forms? How else to explain why Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson continue to be heard? Just how massive is the pile of lies we’re all expected to assimilate?
