What do you do when they are all on the take?

[JohnyCanuck]

The CBC Newsworld channel (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) aired a new documentary last night called "Big Sugar" which dealt with the historical roots of the sugar industry in slavery on plantations owned and run by rich 18th century West Indian sugar barons, and it also compared the era under slavery to the current state of the sugar industry in the US and the Dominican Republic where a few wealthy individuals families exert huge influence on the industry. In the case of the Dominican Republic, they keep their plantation workers in a state that verges, if not on outright slavery, on indentured servitude even today. It explained that the modern day sugar barons enjoy enormous financial government subsidies for the US sugar industry and aim to keep it that way by using their wealth to ensure they maintain close ties with both political parties.

One wealthy and influential Cuban-American family resident in South Florida (they mentioned the family's name but I forgot what it is) owns sugar plantation operations in Florida and in the Dominican Republic where, as this documentary showed the viewers, the workers (mostly all destitute blacks from Haiti) often left their shanty town type homes for the back breaking and extremely physically demanding task of spending the day under the blazing hot tropical sun in the cane fields cutting sugar cane and loading the sugar cane stalks onto carts without even eating breakfast and often enough without any food for a lunch break. They could often afford only one meal a day in the evening when they returned home and that was about it. Their kids frequently could only suck on sugar cane stalks (which ruined their teeth) to assuage hunger pangs when the family was out of food to eat, and even those workers who had spent almost an entire working life toiling for this very wealthy family owned little more than the clothes on their back (rags would be more like it) and would have had no access to health care without the work of the local Catholic priest who arranged for doctors' visits and prescription medication on a charity basis.

They revealed the workers had to live on the plantation and were forbidden to grow their own crops, and if they were discovered trying to grow any food of their own (instead of buying from the company store at jacked up prices) their crops were destroyed.

The documentary showed how this same wealthy Florida family (i.e. the owner of the Dominican Republic plantation) had one family member (he lived in a 6 million dollar Palm Beach mansion) who kept in close touch with leading Republicans including the Bushes and contributed generously to the Republicans. His brother (who lived in a 10 million dollar Palm Beach mansion) was the designated Democrat. He kept in close touch with movers and shakers in the Democratic party and contributed generously to Democratic causes.

The family moved among the political and financial elite and entertained lavishly (it turned your stomach to see them on the TV sitting down at the fancy dinner parties stuffing their porcine faces with gourmet fare while their workers could barely afford one bare bones meal a day) and frequently took pains to be seen sponsoring charity events in Florida. What was also disgusting for me was when they revealed how Al Gore got silenced when he proposed a 1 cent per pound tax on US sugar to pay for a cleanup of the Everglades (which are heavily polluted by runoff from Florida's sugar cane fields). The brother who was the Democrat just got on the blower, called up the White House and got put through to Clinton immediately (even as Bill was right in the process of enjoying the services of Monica, and I am not kidding about that part), and once this guy gave Clinton the word, no more was heard about the proposed tax on sugar to pay for the Everglades cleanup.

Here's a blurb I found on the web about the documentary:

If you thought tobacco and oil were industries that pushed society around to maintain their riches, Montreal documentary filmmaker Brian McKenna has a surprise in store with his epic two-part effort, Big Sugar, airing the next two Tuesdays on CBC.

"Big Sugar loves this night," a narrator says at the opening over a montage of Halloween trick-or-treating, which apparently is a $4 billion festival for the industry. Over the centuries wars have been fought and continents conquered in the name of the sweet tooth - sugar cane cutting proving to be the number one factor behind the whole practice of slave trading. And while nicotine addiction may cause cancer, it is sugar that is behind our society's obesity epidemic, McKenna says. Like tobacco, the documentary says, the sugar industry strives to denounce that evidence and to this day maintains a powerful lobby. The film even reports that sugar lobbyists are so influential in Washington that one of them had his call put directly through to President Bill Clinton at the very moment he was, er, hosting Monica Lewinsky in the White House. We're told that the lobby even manages to keep cheaper third-world sugar out of our economy, to the detriment of not just the price of candy but almost every food product. (Tuesday, Sept. 20, CBC)

http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/7/9/70488897.html

Too me this says there ain't that much that's going to change in the long run, if this is typical of how both the Democratic and Republican party are run, and I would have a hard time believing that the politicians (save for a few notable exceptions) are going to do anything that would kill the goose which they know will continue to lay them those magnificent golden eggs if they just leave it be.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. You see, if we were a real supernation, we could actually do something

about this. But we're a capitalist country in the process of disintegrating into chaos. And believe me, the capitalist in this country want the same kind of deal as that sugar family in latin America.

[Cocoa]

2. one of the "notable exceptions" is running in 2008

see my avatar. :bounce:

[arenar]

3. When I lived in the dominican republic I saw this all the time...

The haitians working the fields don't have much of a choice as they face deportation (and beatings and death of course) if they don't fall in line. And it is usually one of the only means of employment open to them in the DR besides being employed in construction or mining for almost no pay. And like you say, the political parties will just continue to turn a blind eye on all this for more contributions (in both countries).

[Psyop Samurai]

4. This is real, and it's a sickening travesty.

:kick:

[buzzsaw_23]

5. This deserves more readage and nominations

"To survive, the spectacle must have social control. It can recuperate a potentially threatening situation by shifting ground, creating dazzling alternatives- or by embracing the threat, making it safe and then selling it back to us"- Larry Law,

The problem goes back to when the powers, beauties, and deep knowledges of the age-old women's traditions were supplanted by military-caste mystiques & the accumulation of heavy metals

From d.a. levy
"Really"
                     the police try to protect
                     the banks - and everything else
                     is secondary"

[JohnyCanuck]

6. Hi all lurking DLCers

nice company you guys like to keep, but as long as they keep up with the generous donations and campaign contributions who gives a shit where the money comes from and who is made to suffer for it, right.