[Peace-discuss] a friend: Haiti's problem is overpopulation

[C. G. Estabrook]

If you've ever seen "News from Neptune" (or listened to it, in the old days) you
know that we explain the title by quoting Chomsky's remark that in the US media

    "Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying,
    or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune."

We try to say something true every Friday 7-8pm on cable channel 6.

--CGE <www.newsfromneptune.com>


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 1:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Two centuries of US attention, so to speak, have reduced the richest colony
> in the Americas (more profitable than all thirteen British colonies) to the
> poorest country in the hemisphere.  It's not an accident; in the past century
> liberal Democratic presidents (Wilson, Clinton) have overthrown popular
> governments and destroyed the economy. If there were any justice in these
> matters, we'd be paying massive reparations, not occupying the country
> militarily.
> 
> Although Aristide was a Catholic priest when he was elected president against
> US wishes, the situation has little to do with Catholicism.
> 
> Across the world, people are not poor because they have too many children:
> they have too many children because they're poor.  An extended family is
> often the only form of social security amidst poverty, especially the poverty
> created by neoliberal "Washington consensus" policies, as in Haiti.
> 
> Your friends' ignorance is all too common among liberal Americans, I'm
> afraid.
> 
> 
> And also among "conservative" Americans.  Let's face it....only a tiny 
> handful of us possess anything even approximating The Truth.   Which tends to
> make us unpopular among the masses whom we say we want to "organize".  News
> from Neptune, remember?
> 
> 
> --CGE
> 
> 
> Karen Medina wrote:
> 
> At a dinner party last week, we were briefly discussing Haiti.
> 
> A friend said that Haiti's poverty problem is due to overpopulation, that
> their Catholicism kept them from using birth control, and that if they used
> birth control it would be the biggest help to solving their poverty problem.
> 
> How terribly uninformed can people be? Even MY FRIENDS are saying things like
> this. I was shocked.
> 
> For starters, as far as I know, Haiti is not a Catholic country. Voodoo and
> Protestantism seem more prevalent than Catholicism. For instance, United
> Methodists have a mission in Haiti and they are just one among hundreds
> probably.
> 
> How do YOU deal with people like this?
> 
> -- karen medina

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