The price of blood, the taste of sugar

EDITORIAL - In 2024, blood is worth less than matter. Matter is money. Blood is the effort and time one must devote to earning a living and contributing to the upkeep of the state. This is only through VAT, for example, and especially the VAT on basic necessities: the most unfair tax there is for the lowest-income citizens (1).

In our consumer society, the need for money works on the brain like a drug. A real and harmful drug, like sugar, for example.

And to earn money, enough to satisfy one's material needs, one must work hard. Sweat blood and tears. Or even kill oneself at it.

In this regard, it is important to note that even today, the life of sugarcane cutters remains incredibly grim. For example, Black Haitians, often teenagers, the majority of whom are illegal immigrants, work in the fields of the Dominican Republic for $1.20 per ton of sugar...

This shamefully embodies a sugar culture that, in the 17th century, became inseparable from the slave trade, due to the democratization of tea, coffee, and chocolate, which skyrocketed the demand for sugar. The Atlantic slave trade, a “fabulous source of wealth” for white planters and investors, transformed African slaves into “sugar machines.” Slaves survived on average only seven years while working on the plantations. The sugar was “literally polluted with the blood of slaves.”

This taste for sugar (for money) leads to abuses of power. It resembles a fable by La Fontaine, in which the sheep (the average citizen) systematically appears as the butt of the joke, devoured by the sharks of high finance. These white-collar crooks who set up the political puppets, those who, like parrots, repeat the "lies" and spiels they suggest whispering into the sheep's ears, so that they agree to be sheared, then sent to the slaughterhouse to be bled dry.

Remember the "All vaccinated, all protected" message from Olivier Véran, then Minister of Health, which allowed one to be labeled a good citizen. Sugar to the labs and the many affiliated individuals, tears to the families of victims of side effects! And, of course, the voice of his master declaring with a smile: "Do as I say, not as I do!" Everything is fine, Madame la Marquise.

These shepherds, traitors to the flock, easily succumb to the taste of sugar. However, it remains possible that one day, the sheep will suddenly have a taste of blood in their mouths. It might well be that they remind these gentlemen and ladies, and their watchdogs, that the sugar craze is only temporary...

Yes indeed! Sugar, the real thing, may be one of the worst products for health, but in a democracy, it soothes minds and extinguishes the legitimate desire for revolt of sleeping peoples. However, history has shown time and again that sometimes people wake up. And it never ends in a bath of sugar.

But in a way, isn't that fair?

(1) VAT, the most unfair tax there is: we will return to this in a future editorial.

editorial originally published on February 24th, 2024 in french.