The Three Farm Laws: Not Only a Fight of Farmers for Themselves but Also for India’s Food Security
India has been painfully experimenting with a market based approach since 1990. Gurcharan Das in his second book on the question of Artha (wealth), titled India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age, (2000) describes economic reform as a process of inducing “pain in a slow incremental manner” (p. […]
Human Trafficking from Haiti to Chile
In Chile, as in every other country that has historically embraced slavery, there are numerous racists. It is equally fair to say that, like all countries with a similar history, the fraction of those who are appalled by the persistence of slavery in their lifetimes well exceeds the proportion of racists. And when well-meaning people, […]
Water for Profit: Haiti Comes to Flint
What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti. Sooner or later, it comes to places like Michigan’s Benton Harbor and Flint. Our destinies are linked. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish aristocrat who long puppeteered United States presidents from behind the curtains, has written: “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the […]
Water for Profit: Neocolonialism as Cannibalism
The notion of a colonist as cannibal in Haiti is widespread. This idea, called manje moun (eating people), could hardly qualify as superstition, given the experience of colonialism. It is daunting to find a better description for those who grab control of water and food, and then calculate the minimum caloric intake a population needs […]
Water for Profit: Haiti’s Thirsty Season
There is no shortage of water in Haiti. Yet, everywhere on the island, Haitians travel for miles to get water, pay dearly for it if they can find it, and sometimes die on their journey to collect it, like so many antelopes snatched by predators on their way to drink. How does a thing like […]