APOLARITY

Haiti | To Hell With Altruistic Capitalism – Kester Brewin on the deeper, systemic issues that allow the horror of what’s happened in Haiti, as well as some musings on a critique of capitalism in view of Jesus’ teachings.

And it is particularly pertinent in the aftermath of the horror of the earthquake in Haiti. We see the politicians on both sides of the atlantic with their bleeding-heart messages about the disaster…. when in reality the West has f*cked Haiti over time and time again – preventing proper development, forcing the poor into cities and sweatshops to create cheap clothing for the US, suffering coups supported by the CIA… and now told that they deserved this earthquake because they sold their souls to the devil when they bought themselves out of slavery from France.

Please, please give generously to help Haiti get back on its feet. But in a week or so when the story has gone from our screens, let’s not forget them, and let’s try to get the systemic issues sorted out. They need debt forgiven. They need minimum wage agreements. They need symmetric fair trade agreements. They need to be given a fair chance, especially by the US.

As I say in the post on what looks like being a great conference, Oscar Wilde had it right when he said that the worst slave owners were the ones who were kind to their slaves. Why? Because they prolonged the horrors of an abusive system. And yes, that, on the grand scale, is what altruistic capitalism looks like.

If you want to help in the short term, here’s some good advice for choosing how to maximize the impact of your dollars by choosing the best NGO. (We went with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Human Rights, Jesus, Politics, Social Justice, links, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.