To the Editor:
The American capitalism model that some people prefer to socialism is a deeply flawed concept.
Socialists would be more successful if it weren’t for the American government and some of its batship crazy billionaires pouring money into toppling them.
The government itself has been responsible for interfering in over 80 elections around the world. This does not include regime change wars, and other forms of interference in the affairs of other countries.
Betsy DeVos is one billionaire who has been putting her not so hard-earned cash into toppling regimes in South America through one of her foundations. Months ago I stumbled across a video on YouTube of people thanking her for the training and the funding they needed to stage revolts.
In the old days it was done by the CIA at the behest of American business interests like the United Fruit company. Today, oil companies are front and centre.
Why the deeply devout Devos has chosen to put the money in fomenting revolution instead of making life better for children is a good question as she has taken a deep interest in their education and busting the teachers unions. She thinks they are paid too much.
I have not been following the situation in Venezuela that close but I am reminded of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. A million people died and he didn’t have any.
The article talks about how socialism makes everyone but a few at the top poorer. Dylan Ratigan, an American newscaster, got the boot from a major network for not towing the company line when he pointed out that American capitalism is doing the same thing.
Perhaps 1,000 people control 90 per cent of the wealth. As I have said myself, you go too far to the left or the right, the results are the same.
The powers that be in the USA are being lead around by the corporate donors who pour billions into the campaign coffers.
I was somewhat confounded by the Republicans trying to gut Obama care. And they slowly are. One suggestion they actually floated was that they put a cap on the amount of money that could be spent on a person. So, if you were born with a chronic condition your insurance could be tapped out by the time you were old enough to vote.
The greed they are exhibiting as they pursue profit is chilling. Monsanto decreed they could not stand to lose even a dollar of profit. They bombed farmers’ fields with pesticides to make sure they weren’t growing their canola.
In India, they bred a strain of cotton that produces its own pesticide. Farmers would turn their livestock in on the fields after harvesting and they started to die. Every day Indians committed suicide because of the price Monsanto charges them for seed stock.
One country had to pay Monsanto $75 million or they could not sell their soybeans. They had become contaminated with the Monsanto DNA. They stated they were not as worried about the corn that came into their country as they were the stuff that came in a plain brown bag. The implication was that Monsanto was deliberately scattering the seeds around the country.
Monsanto has been bought by Bayer so they don’t have to be called Monsanto anymore. And, they always were great collaborators. Agent Orange comes to mind.
Monsanto’s stated goal is to control the world’s food supply. This, too, is capitalism.
Capitalism is a two-edged sword. Mark Blyth, a political economist, states that capitalism on a small scale is good but when it gets too big it’s bad. Too greedy, too demanding, too willing to crush its own people.
Blind faith is never good. Socialism is not worse and no better than capitalism. Canada, by many standards, is a socialist country. We have universal health care and many are proposing Pharmacare and Denticare.
Whatever you are calling socialism and whatever it did to scare you so badly, please be advised that your dream of capitalism could well be a nightmare. I think it was former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev who stated that when it came time to hang the capitalists one would sell them the rope.
Eva Sartorius,
High Prairie