Your letter from Aix, my daughter, is droll enough. At least, read your letters over again before
sending them, allow yourself to be surprised by the pretty things that you have put into them and
console yourself by this pleasure for the trouble you have had in writing so many. Then you have
kissed all of Provence, have you? There would be no satisfaction in kissing all Brittany, unless one
liked to smell of wine. . . . Do you wish to hear the news from Rennes? A tax of a hundred
thousand crowns has been imposed upon the citizens; and if this sum is not produced within four-and-twenty hours, it is to be doubled, and collected by the soldiers. They have cleared the houses
and sent away the occupants of one of the great streets and forbidden anybody to receive them on
pain of death; so that the poor wretches (old men, women near their confinement, and children
included) may be seen wandering around and crying on their departure from this city, without
knowing where to go, and without food or a place to lie in. Day before yesterday a fiddler was
broken on the wheel for getting up a dance and stealing some stamped paper. He was quartered
after death, and his limbs exposed at the four corners of the city. Sixty citizens have been thrown
into prison, and the business of punishing them is to begin tomorrow. This province sets a fine
example to the others teaching them above all that of respecting the governors and their wives,
and of never throwing stones into their garden.1
Yesterday, a delightful day, Madame de Tarente visited
these wilds; there is no question about preparing a chamber
or a collation; she comes by the gate, and returns the same
way. . . .
We begin today with new scrutiny Republican candidate Mitt Romney is facing about his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital. The latest controversy surrounding Bain concerns how Romney helped found the company with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40% of Bain's start up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador beginning during the 1980's. The investors include the Salaverria family, whose former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, has previously accused of directly funding the Salvadorian paramilitaries. In his memoir, former Bain executive Harry Strachan writes, "Romney pushed aside his own misgivings about the investors to accept their backing." Strachan writes, "These Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital." For more, we're joined by Ryan Grim, Bureau Chief for The Huffington Post . He's connecting the dots in the latest story headlined, "Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads". Ryan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you could carefully laid out the story, and set the stage in El Salvador in the early 1980's, what was happening there, the carnage.
