Migrant Caravan
- Thread starter B00Mer
- Start date
They were until the eve of the election now they are on stand bye waiting for their marching orders
Hi. I was specifically addressing Mowich, who is not a dull-witted coward, so if you'd keep your clever observations, and your lies, to yourself, I'd be much obliged.
Thanks.
A funny libtard said that it was "illegal" to deploy troops in the U.S. How stupid can libs get.
Looks like the Mexicans need a wall.
Some Americans are trading their US homes for an international commute from Mexico
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06...g-their-us-homes-international-commute-mexico
Some Americans are trading their US homes for an international commute from Mexico
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06...g-their-us-homes-international-commute-mexico
Bar Sinister,
What's with all of the cartoons written by someone else? I think if an original thought ever entered your head, it would die of loneliness.
What's with all of the cartoons written by someone else? I think if an original thought ever entered your head, it would die of loneliness.
Sooo, if capitalism is evil and socialism is the answer, why is the caravan not heading to Venezuela? It's less than half the distance. Or why not stay in Mexico with its newly elected socialist govt?
Any of you ALT-left anti-capitalists wanna answer that?
When famed bank robber Willy Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he is reputed to have replied "Because that's where the money is."
Hope that helped.
No one, Tec. I was hoping that OB would explain why she thought these people should be allowed across the border as that is apparently why they are on this march.
Probably a little shy than a full and honest reply though. The IMF does not like breakaway states. They have helped everybody on their map and they are all run by business loyal to the IMF and most people are considered to be disposable.
Missing are the references to Company Farms and Big Oil being the ones that benefited from any investment. For the common people they met with death squads that are trained in the US. The country say 15% of the people get a head as they were needed by the foreign industries. High oil production yet they still fall into dept with the IMF, as did all the countries in Central and South America. Their social development is on track with what the French have done in Nigeria and Mali. Takes the riches and leave the people even worse off.
The ones getting contract for a telephone network for the whole country is paid to do that and the most that gets done is what they need to do business and nothing more. That is robbery. The people revolted and put Hugo in power. If the good old days were so goof for the people they would have revolted. They will never go back to that oppression. How are they worse off that the country sending the refugees to the US as that is a favored country and it looks to be as big a hole as the IMF has made of every country, not just the ones in revolt.
South Africa had people being hunted to the point of extinction. It appears 100 years on and the program is the very same, omly word leaks out every now and then and the spin that Walnut and you and the rest of the Jewish collective have to put out means you know how immoral you pricks really are.
When you implode don't expect anybody to help stop it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad
A death squad is an armed group that conducts extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances of persons for the purposes such as political repression, assassinations, torture, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror.[citation needed] These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities. Death squads may have the support of domestic or foreign governments (see state terrorism). They may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary militia groups, government soldiers, policemen, or combinations thereof. They may also be organized as vigilantes. When death squads are not controlled by the state, they may consist of insurgent forces or organized crime, such as the ones used by Mexican cartels.
Einsatzgruppen were paramilitary death squads created by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. These groups were mainly made up of police officers who killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.[2][3]
Cold War usage
In Latin America, death squads first appeared in Brazil where a group called Esquadrão da Morte (literally "Death Squad") emerged in the 1960s; they subsequently spread to Argentina and Chile in the 1970s, and they were later used in Central America during the 1980s. Argentina used extrajudicial killings as way of crushing the liberal and communist opposition to the military junta during the 'Dirty War' of the 1970s. For example, Alianza Anticomunista Argentina was a far-right death squad mainly active during the "Dirty War". The Chilean military regime of 1973–1990 also committed such killings. See Operation Condor for examples.
During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads achieved notoriety on March 24, 1980, when a sniper assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero as he said Mass inside a convent chapel. In December 1980, three American nuns, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Maura Clarke, and a lay worker, Jean Donovan, were gang raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of real and suspected Communists. Priests who were spreading liberation theology, such as Father Rutilio Grande, were often targeted as well. The murderers were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military, which was receiving U.S. funding and military advisors during the Carter administration. These events prompted outrage in the U.S. and led to a temporary cutoff in military aid at the end of his presidency.[6] Death Squad activity stretched well into the Reagan years (1981–1989) as well.[citation needed]
Honduras also had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was the army unit Battalion 316. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.[7]
In Southeast Asia, extrajudicial killings were conducted by both sides during the Vietnam War. For example, Viet Cong member Nguyễn Văn Lém, famous for being extrajudicially executed on camera by General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan on 1 February 1968 in Saigon, was himself later claimed to have commanded a death squad[citation needed] targeting South Vietnamese policemen and their families during the Tet Offensive in Saigon.
Recent use
As of 2010, death squads have continued to be active in several locations, including Chechnya,[8] Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Colombia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines among others.
North America
Dominican Republic
After the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo there was a paramilitary force known la Patrulla 42, or just la 42, that used state terrorism to deploy fear in the population. During the 12-year regime of Joaquín Balaguer, the Frente Democrático Anticomunista y Antiterrorista, most known as la Banda Colorá, continued the practices of la 42.
Haiti
The Tonton Macoute was a paramilitary force created in 1959 by Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier that murdered 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians.
Honduras
Honduras had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 3–16. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial support and training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.[31] At least 19 members were School of the Americas graduates.[32][33] Seven members, including Billy Joya, later played important roles in the administration of President Manuel Zelaya as of mid-2006.[34] Following the 2009 coup d'état, former Battalion 3–16 member Nelson Willy Mejía Mejía became Director-General of Immigration[35][36] and Billy Joya was de facto President Roberto Micheletti's security advisor.[37] Another former Battalion 3–16 member, Napoleón Nassar Herrera,[34][38] was high Commissioner of Police for the north-west region under Zelaya and under Micheletti, and also became a Secretary of Security spokesperson "for dialogue" under Micheletti.[39][40] Zelaya claimed that Joya had reactivated the death squad, with dozens of government opponents having been murdered since the ascent of the Michiletti and Lobo governments.[37]
Guatemala
Throughout the Guatemalan Civil War, both military and "civilian" governments utilized death squads as a counterinsurgency strategy. The use of "death squads" as a government tactic became particularly widespread after 1966. Throughout 1966 and the first three months of 1967, within the framework of what military commentators referred to as "el-contra terror", government forces killed an estimated 8,000 civilians accused of "subversive" activity.[41] This marked a turning point in the history of the Guatemalan security apparatus, and brought about a new era in which mass murder of both real and suspected subversives by government "death squads" became a common occurrence in the country. A noted Guatemalan sociologist estimated the number of government killings between 1966 and 1974 at approximately 5,250 a year (for a total death toll of approximately 42,000 during the presidencies of Julio César Méndez Montenegro and Carlos Arana Osorio).[42] Killings by both official and unofficial security forces would climax in the late 1970s and early 1980s under the presidencies of Fernando Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt, with over 18,000 documented killings in 1982 alone.[43]
Greg Grandin claims that "Washington, of course, publicly denied its support for paramilitarism, but the practice of political disappearances took a great leap forward in Guatemala in 1966 with the birth of a death squad created, and directly supervised, by U.S. security advisors."[44] An upsurge in rebel activity in Guatemala convinced the US to provide increased counterinsurgency assistance to Guatemala's security apparatus in the mid to late 1960s. Documents released in 1999 details how United States military and police advisers had encouraged and assisted Guatemalan military officials in the use of repressive techniques, including helping establish a "safe house" from within the presidential palace as a location to coordinate counter insugency activities.[45] In 1981, it was reported by Amnesty International that this same "safe house" was in use by Guatemalan security officials to coordinate counterinsurgency activities involving the use of the "death squads."[46]
According to a victim's brother, Mirtala Linares "He wouldn't tell us anything; he claimed they hadn't captured [Sergio], that he knew nothing of his whereabouts – and that maybe my brother had gone as an illegal alien to the United States! That was how he answered us."[47]
Nicaragua
Throughout the Ortega regime, starting in 2006, but escalating with the 2018 Nicaraguan protests, the dictatorship has employed death squads also known as "Turbas" or para military groups armed and aided by the National Police to kill over 300 unarmed protesters including infants, and people burned alive, as well as "disappear" hundreds more to unknown locations and fate. These actions have been roundly condemned by the international community, the Organization of American States, Human Rights Watch, and the local and international Catholic Church.[48][49][50]
Missing are the references to Company Farms and Big Oil being the ones that benefited from any investment. For the common people they met with death squads that are trained in the US. The country say 15% of the people get a head as they were needed by the foreign industries. High oil production yet they still fall into dept with the IMF, as did all the countries in Central and South America. Their social development is on track with what the French have done in Nigeria and Mali. Takes the riches and leave the people even worse off.
The ones getting contract for a telephone network for the whole country is paid to do that and the most that gets done is what they need to do business and nothing more. That is robbery. The people revolted and put Hugo in power. If the good old days were so goof for the people they would have revolted. They will never go back to that oppression. How are they worse off that the country sending the refugees to the US as that is a favored country and it looks to be as big a hole as the IMF has made of every country, not just the ones in revolt.
South Africa had people being hunted to the point of extinction. It appears 100 years on and the program is the very same, omly word leaks out every now and then and the spin that Walnut and you and the rest of the Jewish collective have to put out means you know how immoral you pricks really are.
When you implode don't expect anybody to help stop it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squad
A death squad is an armed group that conducts extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances of persons for the purposes such as political repression, assassinations, torture, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror.[citation needed] These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers' identities. Death squads may have the support of domestic or foreign governments (see state terrorism). They may comprise a secret police force, paramilitary militia groups, government soldiers, policemen, or combinations thereof. They may also be organized as vigilantes. When death squads are not controlled by the state, they may consist of insurgent forces or organized crime, such as the ones used by Mexican cartels.
Einsatzgruppen were paramilitary death squads created by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. These groups were mainly made up of police officers who killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.[2][3]
Cold War usage
In Latin America, death squads first appeared in Brazil where a group called Esquadrão da Morte (literally "Death Squad") emerged in the 1960s; they subsequently spread to Argentina and Chile in the 1970s, and they were later used in Central America during the 1980s. Argentina used extrajudicial killings as way of crushing the liberal and communist opposition to the military junta during the 'Dirty War' of the 1970s. For example, Alianza Anticomunista Argentina was a far-right death squad mainly active during the "Dirty War". The Chilean military regime of 1973–1990 also committed such killings. See Operation Condor for examples.
During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads achieved notoriety on March 24, 1980, when a sniper assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero as he said Mass inside a convent chapel. In December 1980, three American nuns, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Maura Clarke, and a lay worker, Jean Donovan, were gang raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing hundreds of real and suspected Communists. Priests who were spreading liberation theology, such as Father Rutilio Grande, were often targeted as well. The murderers were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military, which was receiving U.S. funding and military advisors during the Carter administration. These events prompted outrage in the U.S. and led to a temporary cutoff in military aid at the end of his presidency.[6] Death Squad activity stretched well into the Reagan years (1981–1989) as well.[citation needed]
Honduras also had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was the army unit Battalion 316. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.[7]
In Southeast Asia, extrajudicial killings were conducted by both sides during the Vietnam War. For example, Viet Cong member Nguyễn Văn Lém, famous for being extrajudicially executed on camera by General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan on 1 February 1968 in Saigon, was himself later claimed to have commanded a death squad[citation needed] targeting South Vietnamese policemen and their families during the Tet Offensive in Saigon.
Recent use
As of 2010, death squads have continued to be active in several locations, including Chechnya,[8] Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Colombia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines among others.
North America
Dominican Republic
After the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo there was a paramilitary force known la Patrulla 42, or just la 42, that used state terrorism to deploy fear in the population. During the 12-year regime of Joaquín Balaguer, the Frente Democrático Anticomunista y Antiterrorista, most known as la Banda Colorá, continued the practices of la 42.
Haiti
The Tonton Macoute was a paramilitary force created in 1959 by Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier that murdered 30,000 to 60,000 Haitians.
Honduras
Honduras had death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 3–16. Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians, and union bosses were assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received substantial support and training from the United States Central Intelligence Agency.[31] At least 19 members were School of the Americas graduates.[32][33] Seven members, including Billy Joya, later played important roles in the administration of President Manuel Zelaya as of mid-2006.[34] Following the 2009 coup d'état, former Battalion 3–16 member Nelson Willy Mejía Mejía became Director-General of Immigration[35][36] and Billy Joya was de facto President Roberto Micheletti's security advisor.[37] Another former Battalion 3–16 member, Napoleón Nassar Herrera,[34][38] was high Commissioner of Police for the north-west region under Zelaya and under Micheletti, and also became a Secretary of Security spokesperson "for dialogue" under Micheletti.[39][40] Zelaya claimed that Joya had reactivated the death squad, with dozens of government opponents having been murdered since the ascent of the Michiletti and Lobo governments.[37]
Guatemala
Throughout the Guatemalan Civil War, both military and "civilian" governments utilized death squads as a counterinsurgency strategy. The use of "death squads" as a government tactic became particularly widespread after 1966. Throughout 1966 and the first three months of 1967, within the framework of what military commentators referred to as "el-contra terror", government forces killed an estimated 8,000 civilians accused of "subversive" activity.[41] This marked a turning point in the history of the Guatemalan security apparatus, and brought about a new era in which mass murder of both real and suspected subversives by government "death squads" became a common occurrence in the country. A noted Guatemalan sociologist estimated the number of government killings between 1966 and 1974 at approximately 5,250 a year (for a total death toll of approximately 42,000 during the presidencies of Julio César Méndez Montenegro and Carlos Arana Osorio).[42] Killings by both official and unofficial security forces would climax in the late 1970s and early 1980s under the presidencies of Fernando Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Ríos Montt, with over 18,000 documented killings in 1982 alone.[43]
Greg Grandin claims that "Washington, of course, publicly denied its support for paramilitarism, but the practice of political disappearances took a great leap forward in Guatemala in 1966 with the birth of a death squad created, and directly supervised, by U.S. security advisors."[44] An upsurge in rebel activity in Guatemala convinced the US to provide increased counterinsurgency assistance to Guatemala's security apparatus in the mid to late 1960s. Documents released in 1999 details how United States military and police advisers had encouraged and assisted Guatemalan military officials in the use of repressive techniques, including helping establish a "safe house" from within the presidential palace as a location to coordinate counter insugency activities.[45] In 1981, it was reported by Amnesty International that this same "safe house" was in use by Guatemalan security officials to coordinate counterinsurgency activities involving the use of the "death squads."[46]
According to a victim's brother, Mirtala Linares "He wouldn't tell us anything; he claimed they hadn't captured [Sergio], that he knew nothing of his whereabouts – and that maybe my brother had gone as an illegal alien to the United States! That was how he answered us."[47]
Nicaragua
Throughout the Ortega regime, starting in 2006, but escalating with the 2018 Nicaraguan protests, the dictatorship has employed death squads also known as "Turbas" or para military groups armed and aided by the National Police to kill over 300 unarmed protesters including infants, and people burned alive, as well as "disappear" hundreds more to unknown locations and fate. These actions have been roundly condemned by the international community, the Organization of American States, Human Rights Watch, and the local and international Catholic Church.[48][49][50]
http://www.bu.edu/av/core/journal/xv/vol15-Dev-The%20United%20Fruit%20Company.pdf
By 1910, the United Fruit Company secured itself as a monopoly
trade in the Western Hemisphere as it drove all domestic and foreign
competition (Moberg 146). The company paid local producers higher
prices for bananas than other foreign companies, which eventually
drove those firms out of business. Once foreign competition was elimi-
nated, the United Fruit Company proceeded to extradite independent
local banana growers (149). By 1930, the Company owned twenty
times the land that it actually needed for production. It feared that the
Panama Disease might thwart plant growth, and therefore it needed
more land for cultivation (150). Acquiring this land forced small local
growers out of business while making the United Fruit Company the
largest multinational corporation in the region.
As the United Fruit Company forged a monopoly and began to con-
trol all levels of production, it vertically integrated these regions into
the United States’ economy. Banana production no longer appeared as
Journal of the Core Curriculum
a task done by the region, but was considered an extension of the
American economy. Although domestic people worked on the planta-
tion, an American company owned and operated the plantations
(Bucheli 80). Controlling all stages of production “required substantial
investments in infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean,
including: plantations, hospitals, roads, canals, docks, telegraph lines,
railways, and ships” (80). When the United Fruit Company controlled
all of the stages of production, it basically forced Latin America to be
dependant on foreign capital. It was the United States’ money that
maintained the infrastructure, not the money of the country where the
plantation existed. If an American multinational corporation controlled
everything in this region, then Latin America could no longer be thought
of as the producer of bananas. If the plantations were not controlled
by the people of that country, there would be a disruption in the inter-
national division of labor.
As the United Fruit Company dominated Latin America, it forced
Latin American countries to become dependent on the corporation. The
company owned about one fourth of one percent of all agricultural
land in 1955 (May 123). Therefore, local agricultural workers often
worked for the United Fruit Company because they had no other alter-
native. Because the company was successful, it was able to pay higher
wages than a domestic producer could (124), and the workers bene-
fited from increased wages. However, the total revenue earned did not
return to the host country since the United Fruit Company belonged to
the United States. For example, on average, the local governments
received only about 6.5 percent of the total revenue. Percentages
ranged from one-fifth of one percent in Colombia to 19 percent in
Costa Rica (124). If the host countries owned banana plantations, they
could have earned more revenue for their country.
When the United Fruit Company vertically integrated Latin America
into the American economy, it also forced the region to be dependant
on United States capital. Maintenance and further innovations came
from the company itself, and funding originated from America as well.
The countries relied on the US market to buy these bananas from the
United Fruit Company, which could become a problem if the company
no longer felt it needed a particular plantation because the costs of
production becomes too high. For example, the colony of British
44
Honduras “constituted no more than 3 percent of the United Fruit’s total
banana imports to the United States” (Moberg 151). If the company
decided to shutdown its plantation there, the government of British
Honduras could take control of it. However, it probably would not earn
profits since it could not compete with the United Fruit Company. Thus,
the host countries are at the mercy of the company to drive its econo-
my.
(in part)
https://www.ft.com/content/778739c4-f869-11db-a940-000b5df10621
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https://www.ft.com/content/778739c4-f869-11db-a940-000b5df10621
Early on Monday February 3 1975, a man threw himself out of his office window, 44 floors above Park Avenue, New York. He had used his briefcase to smash the window, and then thrown it out before he leapt, scattering papers for blocks around. Glass fell on to the rush-hour traffic, but amazingly no one else was hurt. The body landed away from the road, near a postal service office. Postmen helped emergency workers clear up the mess so the day’s business could carry on. One policeman at the scene spoke of the selfishness of ”jumpers”, who didn’t think of anyone ”down below”. This jumper was quickly identified as Eli Black, chief executive of the United Fruit Company, which had been making huge profits from bananas since the late 19th century. United Fruit had dominated business and politics in Central America. It was the first truly multinational modern corporation, spreading the spirit of liberal capitalism. As well as harvesting the region’s fruit, however, the company wielded formidable influence over small nations, which were often ruled by corrupt dictatorships. United Fruit gave the world not just bananas, but also ”banana republics”. It emerged that Black, a devout family man, had bribed the Honduran president, Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, with $1.25m to encourage him to pull out of a banana cartel which opposed United Fruit. The story was about to come out in the US press. United Fruit’s Central American plantations were also struggling with hurricane damage and a new banana disease. Facing disgrace and failure, Black took his own life. His death was shocking, not least because he had the reputation of a highly moral man. Wall Street was outraged, the company’s shares crashed and regulators seized its books to prevent ”its further violation of the law”. The company subsequently disappeared from public view and was seemingly erased from the collective mind. United Fruit may no longer exist, but its legacy on world affairs endures. Its activities in Cuba, where it was seen as a symbol of US imperialism, were significant in the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution of the late 1950s. Its participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, in a vain attempt to overthrow Castro, led to the Cuban missile crisis. As the world stood on the brink of nuclear holocaust, few could have imagined it had anything to do with bananas. United Fruit began life in the 1870s when Minor Cooper Keith, a wealthy young New Yorker, started growing bananas as a business sideline, alongside a railway line he was building in Costa Rica. Both ventures took off, and by 1890 he was married to the daughter of a former president of Costa Rica and owned vast banana plantations on land given to him by the state. The bananas were shipped to New Orleans and Boston, where demand soon began to outstrip supply. Keith teamed up with Andrew Preston, a Boston importer, and in 1899 they formed United Fruit. Bananas sold well for their tropical cachet: they were exotic, a luxury only affordable to the rich. But the rapidly rising output of United Fruit’s plantations brought down prices. The company created a mass market in the industrial cities of the US north-east and Midwest. The once bourgeois banana became positively proletarian. By the 1920s, United Fruit’s empire had spread across Central America. It also included Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In South America the company owned chunks of Colombia and Ecuador. It came to dominate the European as well as the US banana markets with the help of its Great White Fleet of 100 refrigerated ships, the largest private navy in the world. There are more than 300 varieties of banana, but United Fruit grew only one: the Gros Michel or ”Big Mike”. This variety suited most tastes; it was not too big or too small, too yellow or too sweet - if anything, it was a little bland. This was the forerunner of the transnational products we have today. For Big Mike read Big Mac. But mass production took its toll. In 1903, disease hit United Fruit’s plantations in Panama. An array of pathogens kept up the attack, and the banana was discovered to have a genetic weakness. Its seeds are ill equipped for reproduction, so growers take cuttings from one plant to create another. The banana is a clone, with each inbred generation less resilient. (In 2003, New Scientist reported that the banana was dying and might have only a decade to live. Genetic modification scientists have been called in to save it, so far without success.) Although the banana was diseased, United Fruit marketed it as a product that exemplified good health. Banana diseases did not affect humans, and the fruit was said to be the cure for many ills: obesity, blood pressure, constipation - even depression. In 1929, United Fruit set up its own ”education department”, which supplied US schools with teaching kits extolling the benefits of the banana and the good works of the company. Meanwhile, United Fruit’s ”home economics” department showered housewives with banana recipes. One of United Fruit’s most successful advertising campaigns began in 1944, designed to boost the banana’s profile after its scarcity during the war. It featured Senorita Chiquita Banana, a cartoon banana who danced and sang in an exuberant Latin style. Senorita Chiquita bore a close resemblance to Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer who, in her ”tutti-frutti” hat, wowed Hollywood at the time. Sales soon regained prewar levels. By the 1960s, the banana had become an inseparable accompaniment to the morning cereal of most American children. And today, in countries such as the US and Britain, it has ousted the apple as the most popular fruit. In the UK, figures indicate that more than 95 per cent of households buy bananas each week, and that more money is spent on them than on any other supermarket item, apart from petrol and lottery tickets. Over the years, United Fruit fought hard for low taxes and light regulation. By the beginning of the 20th century, troublesome anti-trust laws had been passed in the US to crack down on business behaviour such as price-fixing and other monopolistic practices. Taxes on large corporations were increased to fund welfare benefits in the US and fully fledged welfare states in Europe. But, with a centre of operations far from the lawmakers of Washington DC, United Fruit largely avoided all this. The company also gained a reputation as being ruthless when crossed, and acted to remove governments that did not comply with its wishes. United Fruit had first shown its tough nature in the invasion of Honduras in 1911, which was planned by Sam ”The Banana Man” Zemurray, a business partner of United Fruit who later headed the company. Efforts by Zemurray and United Fruit to set up production in Honduras had been blocked by the Honduran government, which was fearful of the power it might wield. United Fruit was not so easily deterred. Zemurray financed an invasion, led by such enterprising types as ”General” (self-appointed) Lee Christmas and freelance trouble-shooter Guy ”Machine Gun” Molony. Thanks to United Fruit, many more exercises in ”regime change” were carried out in the name of the banana. In 1941, the company hired a new consultant, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had adapted the early disciplines of psychoanalysis to the marketplace. Bernays is known as the ”father of public relations” following his seminal 1928 book, Propaganda, in which he argued that it was the duty of the ”intelligent minority” of society to manipulate the unthinking ”group mind”. This, Bernays asserted, was for the sake of freedom and democracy.
(in part)
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-significance-of-the-united-fruit-company.html
Significance
The United Fruit Company had operated under the pretence of helping to develop areas in Central and South America. These nations later became known as the Banana Republics and included Costa Rica and Guatemala. The United Fruit Company was responsible for building a great amount of infrastructure that was said to improve quality of life and generate job opportunities. However, due to fears that it would detract away from their profitable rail system, the company tried to actively discourage the construction of government roads. This is an example of the ways in which the United Fruit Company operated as a "monopoly". There are reports of at least one railroad being destroyed under the guise of the UFC.
Nonetheless, the company owned a large amount of property in the Caribbean lowlands and had a great degree of control over transportation networks such as the railway as well as steam ships. The United Fruit Company also helped create the "Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company". Largely thanks to beneficial laws such as tax breaks, the company was able to expand throughout the region. This resulted in the company's profits highly benefiting their employees and overseas investors instead of local recipients.
Drawbacks
The United Fruit Company was responsible for a large degree of environmental degradation when it was at its thriving stage. During this time, forests were cleared, low swampy areas were filled in, and water systems were destroyed. Previously, the ecosystem had high biodiversity. Farming techniques also led to the loss of biodiversity and caused harm to the land. There were many strikes by the workers which hindered the company. The company was due to suffer under the Arbenz government's Agrarian reform legislation and was also accused of communism.
Massacre at Santa Marta
Although exact numbers are disputed, it is estimated that at least 47 workers of the United Fruit Company were murdered after being shot by members of the Colombian army in 1928. The strikers were seen as a communist threat, an idea that was backed by the United States government. This was one of the major catalysts for a period of time in Colombia that is none for having been very violent.
The names have changed, possession and death squads are the norm. The lie is about who pays them. The IMF does.
By 1910, the United Fruit Company secured itself as a monopoly
trade in the Western Hemisphere as it drove all domestic and foreign
competition (Moberg 146). The company paid local producers higher
prices for bananas than other foreign companies, which eventually
drove those firms out of business. Once foreign competition was elimi-
nated, the United Fruit Company proceeded to extradite independent
local banana growers (149). By 1930, the Company owned twenty
times the land that it actually needed for production. It feared that the
Panama Disease might thwart plant growth, and therefore it needed
more land for cultivation (150). Acquiring this land forced small local
growers out of business while making the United Fruit Company the
largest multinational corporation in the region.
As the United Fruit Company forged a monopoly and began to con-
trol all levels of production, it vertically integrated these regions into
the United States’ economy. Banana production no longer appeared as
Journal of the Core Curriculum
a task done by the region, but was considered an extension of the
American economy. Although domestic people worked on the planta-
tion, an American company owned and operated the plantations
(Bucheli 80). Controlling all stages of production “required substantial
investments in infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean,
including: plantations, hospitals, roads, canals, docks, telegraph lines,
railways, and ships” (80). When the United Fruit Company controlled
all of the stages of production, it basically forced Latin America to be
dependant on foreign capital. It was the United States’ money that
maintained the infrastructure, not the money of the country where the
plantation existed. If an American multinational corporation controlled
everything in this region, then Latin America could no longer be thought
of as the producer of bananas. If the plantations were not controlled
by the people of that country, there would be a disruption in the inter-
national division of labor.
As the United Fruit Company dominated Latin America, it forced
Latin American countries to become dependent on the corporation. The
company owned about one fourth of one percent of all agricultural
land in 1955 (May 123). Therefore, local agricultural workers often
worked for the United Fruit Company because they had no other alter-
native. Because the company was successful, it was able to pay higher
wages than a domestic producer could (124), and the workers bene-
fited from increased wages. However, the total revenue earned did not
return to the host country since the United Fruit Company belonged to
the United States. For example, on average, the local governments
received only about 6.5 percent of the total revenue. Percentages
ranged from one-fifth of one percent in Colombia to 19 percent in
Costa Rica (124). If the host countries owned banana plantations, they
could have earned more revenue for their country.
When the United Fruit Company vertically integrated Latin America
into the American economy, it also forced the region to be dependant
on United States capital. Maintenance and further innovations came
from the company itself, and funding originated from America as well.
The countries relied on the US market to buy these bananas from the
United Fruit Company, which could become a problem if the company
no longer felt it needed a particular plantation because the costs of
production becomes too high. For example, the colony of British
44
Honduras “constituted no more than 3 percent of the United Fruit’s total
banana imports to the United States” (Moberg 151). If the company
decided to shutdown its plantation there, the government of British
Honduras could take control of it. However, it probably would not earn
profits since it could not compete with the United Fruit Company. Thus,
the host countries are at the mercy of the company to drive its econo-
my.
(in part)
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Early on Monday February 3 1975, a man threw himself out of his office window, 44 floors above Park Avenue, New York. He had used his briefcase to smash the window, and then thrown it out before he leapt, scattering papers for blocks around. Glass fell on to the rush-hour traffic, but amazingly no one else was hurt. The body landed away from the road, near a postal service office. Postmen helped emergency workers clear up the mess so the day’s business could carry on. One policeman at the scene spoke of the selfishness of ”jumpers”, who didn’t think of anyone ”down below”. This jumper was quickly identified as Eli Black, chief executive of the United Fruit Company, which had been making huge profits from bananas since the late 19th century. United Fruit had dominated business and politics in Central America. It was the first truly multinational modern corporation, spreading the spirit of liberal capitalism. As well as harvesting the region’s fruit, however, the company wielded formidable influence over small nations, which were often ruled by corrupt dictatorships. United Fruit gave the world not just bananas, but also ”banana republics”. It emerged that Black, a devout family man, had bribed the Honduran president, Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, with $1.25m to encourage him to pull out of a banana cartel which opposed United Fruit. The story was about to come out in the US press. United Fruit’s Central American plantations were also struggling with hurricane damage and a new banana disease. Facing disgrace and failure, Black took his own life. His death was shocking, not least because he had the reputation of a highly moral man. Wall Street was outraged, the company’s shares crashed and regulators seized its books to prevent ”its further violation of the law”. The company subsequently disappeared from public view and was seemingly erased from the collective mind. United Fruit may no longer exist, but its legacy on world affairs endures. Its activities in Cuba, where it was seen as a symbol of US imperialism, were significant in the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution of the late 1950s. Its participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, in a vain attempt to overthrow Castro, led to the Cuban missile crisis. As the world stood on the brink of nuclear holocaust, few could have imagined it had anything to do with bananas. United Fruit began life in the 1870s when Minor Cooper Keith, a wealthy young New Yorker, started growing bananas as a business sideline, alongside a railway line he was building in Costa Rica. Both ventures took off, and by 1890 he was married to the daughter of a former president of Costa Rica and owned vast banana plantations on land given to him by the state. The bananas were shipped to New Orleans and Boston, where demand soon began to outstrip supply. Keith teamed up with Andrew Preston, a Boston importer, and in 1899 they formed United Fruit. Bananas sold well for their tropical cachet: they were exotic, a luxury only affordable to the rich. But the rapidly rising output of United Fruit’s plantations brought down prices. The company created a mass market in the industrial cities of the US north-east and Midwest. The once bourgeois banana became positively proletarian. By the 1920s, United Fruit’s empire had spread across Central America. It also included Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In South America the company owned chunks of Colombia and Ecuador. It came to dominate the European as well as the US banana markets with the help of its Great White Fleet of 100 refrigerated ships, the largest private navy in the world. There are more than 300 varieties of banana, but United Fruit grew only one: the Gros Michel or ”Big Mike”. This variety suited most tastes; it was not too big or too small, too yellow or too sweet - if anything, it was a little bland. This was the forerunner of the transnational products we have today. For Big Mike read Big Mac. But mass production took its toll. In 1903, disease hit United Fruit’s plantations in Panama. An array of pathogens kept up the attack, and the banana was discovered to have a genetic weakness. Its seeds are ill equipped for reproduction, so growers take cuttings from one plant to create another. The banana is a clone, with each inbred generation less resilient. (In 2003, New Scientist reported that the banana was dying and might have only a decade to live. Genetic modification scientists have been called in to save it, so far without success.) Although the banana was diseased, United Fruit marketed it as a product that exemplified good health. Banana diseases did not affect humans, and the fruit was said to be the cure for many ills: obesity, blood pressure, constipation - even depression. In 1929, United Fruit set up its own ”education department”, which supplied US schools with teaching kits extolling the benefits of the banana and the good works of the company. Meanwhile, United Fruit’s ”home economics” department showered housewives with banana recipes. One of United Fruit’s most successful advertising campaigns began in 1944, designed to boost the banana’s profile after its scarcity during the war. It featured Senorita Chiquita Banana, a cartoon banana who danced and sang in an exuberant Latin style. Senorita Chiquita bore a close resemblance to Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer who, in her ”tutti-frutti” hat, wowed Hollywood at the time. Sales soon regained prewar levels. By the 1960s, the banana had become an inseparable accompaniment to the morning cereal of most American children. And today, in countries such as the US and Britain, it has ousted the apple as the most popular fruit. In the UK, figures indicate that more than 95 per cent of households buy bananas each week, and that more money is spent on them than on any other supermarket item, apart from petrol and lottery tickets. Over the years, United Fruit fought hard for low taxes and light regulation. By the beginning of the 20th century, troublesome anti-trust laws had been passed in the US to crack down on business behaviour such as price-fixing and other monopolistic practices. Taxes on large corporations were increased to fund welfare benefits in the US and fully fledged welfare states in Europe. But, with a centre of operations far from the lawmakers of Washington DC, United Fruit largely avoided all this. The company also gained a reputation as being ruthless when crossed, and acted to remove governments that did not comply with its wishes. United Fruit had first shown its tough nature in the invasion of Honduras in 1911, which was planned by Sam ”The Banana Man” Zemurray, a business partner of United Fruit who later headed the company. Efforts by Zemurray and United Fruit to set up production in Honduras had been blocked by the Honduran government, which was fearful of the power it might wield. United Fruit was not so easily deterred. Zemurray financed an invasion, led by such enterprising types as ”General” (self-appointed) Lee Christmas and freelance trouble-shooter Guy ”Machine Gun” Molony. Thanks to United Fruit, many more exercises in ”regime change” were carried out in the name of the banana. In 1941, the company hired a new consultant, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had adapted the early disciplines of psychoanalysis to the marketplace. Bernays is known as the ”father of public relations” following his seminal 1928 book, Propaganda, in which he argued that it was the duty of the ”intelligent minority” of society to manipulate the unthinking ”group mind”. This, Bernays asserted, was for the sake of freedom and democracy.
(in part)
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-significance-of-the-united-fruit-company.html
Significance
The United Fruit Company had operated under the pretence of helping to develop areas in Central and South America. These nations later became known as the Banana Republics and included Costa Rica and Guatemala. The United Fruit Company was responsible for building a great amount of infrastructure that was said to improve quality of life and generate job opportunities. However, due to fears that it would detract away from their profitable rail system, the company tried to actively discourage the construction of government roads. This is an example of the ways in which the United Fruit Company operated as a "monopoly". There are reports of at least one railroad being destroyed under the guise of the UFC.
Nonetheless, the company owned a large amount of property in the Caribbean lowlands and had a great degree of control over transportation networks such as the railway as well as steam ships. The United Fruit Company also helped create the "Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company". Largely thanks to beneficial laws such as tax breaks, the company was able to expand throughout the region. This resulted in the company's profits highly benefiting their employees and overseas investors instead of local recipients.
Drawbacks
The United Fruit Company was responsible for a large degree of environmental degradation when it was at its thriving stage. During this time, forests were cleared, low swampy areas were filled in, and water systems were destroyed. Previously, the ecosystem had high biodiversity. Farming techniques also led to the loss of biodiversity and caused harm to the land. There were many strikes by the workers which hindered the company. The company was due to suffer under the Arbenz government's Agrarian reform legislation and was also accused of communism.
Massacre at Santa Marta
Although exact numbers are disputed, it is estimated that at least 47 workers of the United Fruit Company were murdered after being shot by members of the Colombian army in 1928. The strikers were seen as a communist threat, an idea that was backed by the United States government. This was one of the major catalysts for a period of time in Colombia that is none for having been very violent.
The names have changed, possession and death squads are the norm. The lie is about who pays them. The IMF does.
Why should they be treated any differently than anyone else?
What is so bad about them that they should be denied the right to apply for entry?
Well, I'm not sure OB gets a say, being Canadian and all.
There's a bunch of people headed for the border, a number of whom say they are seeking asylum. They banded together for safety, as travellers have been doing for millennia. When and if they get to the border, the law says they can apply for asylum.
What part of this do you disagree with?