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Haiti: Why the poverty? Why eat mud cakes?

Henk Ruyssenaars + Fwd. & links. | 15.01.2010 16:42 | Globalisation | Repression | Social Struggles

The deep misery and devastating poverty of the people living in Haiti, was already man-made, before the earthquake hit. Man-made by the global banksters who bleed countries to death. And an earthquake with so many dead and injured people doesn't matter to the profiteers of massacres: money will be made out of it, one way or another.


HAITI: WHY THE POVERTY? WHY EAT MUD CAKES?

Henk Ruyssenaars

January 15th 2010 - It maybe is better - for those who don't know yet how the world turns - to read this first, because that's where the root of all evil is: Rothschild's BIS, the 'Central Bank' to ALL 'Central banks" in Basel, Switzerland. Here's also your 'department' or so called 'ministry of finances' where all the 'central bank'-liars from so many countries and the financiers and profiteers of the mostly by themselves orchestrated armed conflicts gather. Here the global monetary flow is controlled. And here's also decided upon the possible 'value' of what you think is your 'money'.

US lawyer and economist Ellen Brown did a very good article on this 8 decades old, globally controlling nazi bank, Rothschild's BIS: "The Tower of Basel" - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/dj34rr

And, as here and there described: Rothschild's BIS bank's usury controls the world's money supply, and is as always killing too, for the financial criminal cartel's own Power and Profit - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/c7xh99

Strongly related to the above is the "Unbridled Monster: the global monetary system" which the 'central' banksters also work for and Haiti always has been a victim of. - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/kk86q7

The latter too is what people are dying for: unbridled and totalitarian greed by the warmongers. Greed which according to the warmongers and money lenders/changers is 'good' for power and profit. For them human beings never count. Nowhere and never!

This is what Violet Socks wrote: "Libertarians and evangelicals explain the problem with Haiti.

January 13th, 2010 - My ex-husband spent some time in Haiti during his brief career as a semi-Marxist semi-revolutionary. He told me that the most shocking thing about the country was the disparity between the visiting rich and the resident poor. In the countryside and on the streets, it was nothing but dirt-eating poverty. But on the beach in Port-au-Prince, huge fancy hotels towered over the landscape, oases for the rich white tourists. It was like seeing a 24th century spaceship inexplicably docked in the slums of Calcutta.

Haiti in normal, pre-earthquake times. & Mud cakes for lunch.

Haiti is an open running sore on the conscience of Western civilization. The people there are so poor they eat dirt. Literally: they eat dirt. And that’s during normal times. God only knows what’s going to happen now.

Pat Robertson, good evangelical Christian that he is, explains that the Haitians’ problem is the pact they made with the devil.

Tyler Cowen, good liberatarian economist that he is, wonders aloud if voodoo or polygamy is the source of their ills. It’s true that Cowen is a more reputable figure than Pat Robertson, but his reasoning is frankly not much more informed. What could possibly be the problem down there? he asks, as the heads of Haitian historians everywhere explode in simultaneous apoplexy. Maybe, he suggests, they cut their colonial ties too soon.

Why is Haiti so poor? Because it has been victimized and persecuted and robbed for two fucking centuries by France and the United States and the other Western powers, that’s why.

The Haitian Revolution was the third great republican rebellion of the late 18th century, or at least that’s how the Haitians saw it. Hi, France and the United States! There are three of us now! Isn’t it great? Heh. The French thought it was cool for about ten seconds; then they remembered that they needed to keep their sugar plantations going to prop up the economy. Whoops! Forget what we said about all that liberté, égalité, fraternité stuff; we were just talking about white men.

A similar thing happened with the Americans. The U.S. was friendly to the Haitian rebellion for a little while — John Adams was into it, and Alexander Hamilton helped draft the Haitian constitution — but all that changed when the Sage (and Slaveowner) of Monticello became president. Jefferson reneged on Adams’s deal with Toussaint L’Ouverture, cut off trade and contact, and offered Napoleon help in putting down the revolt. We can’t possibly have a black republic down in the Caribbean, he wrote. What will our slaves think? They might get ideas!

The French poured thousands of soldiers into Haiti in an attempt to re-establish control, but damn near all of them died from yellow fever. The Haitians cut down the rest. By 1804 the French were sick of it and Haiti declared its independence. It was the first black republic in the modern world.

And everybody ignored them. Haitian independence was an offense to the status quo: a free black republic of former slaves who had successfully thrown off their masters. Dear god. Black people? A black republic? Former slaves? No fucking way.

So Haiti was isolated: no diplomatic recognition, official embargoes on trade. “You don’t really exist,” said the French. And the Americans. And the British. And the Spanish. The economy foundered. Then the Bourbons started making noises about re-conquering the island.

Finally, in 1825, the Haitians signed a deal with France: recognize us diplomatically, call off the gunboats, and in return we will reimburse you for the loss of us as your slaves. The price? One hundred and fifty million francs.

Haiti spent the next 122 years paying off that indemnity. The final installment was in 1947. Nineteen forty-fucking-seven. The entire history of modern Haiti is about paying off that goddamn debt. They borrowed money from European and American bankers to make the installments, took out more loans to pay the interest, and the whole thing turned into a century-long bankrupting of the country. - [Guess who profited? - HR]

Imagine a giant straw jammed into the Haitian economy, with white bankers sucking hard on the other end for a hundred-plus years, and that’s the story of Haiti. The U.S. even occupied the country for awhile to make sure the goddamn money kept coming. Gotta make those debt payments. By the time Papa Doc Duvalier came to power in 1957, Haiti was a hollowed-out mess.

You’d think a libertarian economist like Tyler Cowen would understand how a crushing debt load might inhibit economic growth and the development of a robust democracy. But as usual, the “libertarian” part seems to have canceled out the “economist” part.

Easier to just blame it on voodoo."

***

You can read more about the history of Haiti here, via the link to the original story. - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/yhswxbt

The Haitian Revolution: A Victory With No Success
How the U.S. impoverished Haiti
Haiti: A Slave Revolution — U.S. embargoes against Haiti from 1806 to 2003

-0-

And even if I don't like the gatekeeping DemocracyNow! nor Amy Goodman and her cronies, this might be interesting:

Democracy Now: Haiti's History of Military Coups and Reasons for Extreme Poverty.

By Heather Thursday Jan 14 2010

Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous discuss Haiti's history of military coups and other reasons for the extreme poverty that has savaged that country with their guests Kim Ives and Edwidge Danticat. This is the type of discussion you surely won't hear on our mainstream media which is busy ambulance chasing instead of looking at the root causes of the poverty that have made this horrible natural disaster even worse.

Here's inserted the video with the conversation. Which you can watch via the link below the article.

You can watch the entire segment at Democracy Now's site. - Haiti Devastated by Largest Earthquake in 200 Years, Thousands Feared Dead - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/y8jovro

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And can you explain why are there UN peacekeepers deployed on the ground? Explain for people. We had the ouster of the democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Where does it stand politically right now in Haiti?

KIM IVES: Well, the UN occupation is extremely unpopular. This was sent in after Aristide was removed by a plot essentially by the US, France and Canada on February 29, 2004.

US, France and Canada sent in occupation troops, which remained there for three months. And then they handed off the mission to the UN, as they’ve done in the past—in 1995, in particular—to the UN to carry out. That’s mainly done by the Brazilians, are heading that.

But it’s extremely unwelcome. People are sick and tired of the millions being spent, having guys riding around in giant tanks pointing guns at them. And, you know, essentially, this is a force to keep the country bottled up.

THE DOGS OF MADNESS

And I don’t know what’s going to happen now, because the dogs of madness have really—are going to be unleashed by this catastrophe.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: I want to read a statement that was just released by the former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He said:

“My wife and I stand with the people of our country and mourn the death and destruction that has befallen Haiti. It is a tragedy that defies expression; a tragedy that compels all people to the highest levels of human compassion and solidarity. From Africa, the ancestral home of Haiti, we send our profoundest condolences and love to the thousands of children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters worst affected.”

Where in Africa right now is he speaking from, Kim?

KIM IVES: He’s in South Africa, in Johannesburg. And this is one of the things. Aristide is being kept in exile, even now under the Obama administration, being kept out of the hemisphere. Apparently he’s gotten tremendous pressure since he went on the radio on November 25th and spoke out against the exclusionary elections that the Haitian government is trying to carry out, where the Lavalas Family party, the country’s largest, the party he founded, has been excluded from those elections, along with fourteen other parties.

And now he’s stuck in South Africa.

He has no passport, which has long since expired. He has no laissez-passer, which he asked for explicitly in that radio address. And he should be invited. In fact, he should be brought back to help heal the country. I mean, the Haitian ambassador to the US, Ray Joseph, who was a participant in the coup d’état, has called for unity.

I think if ever there was a moment when the Haitian government could now demonstrate unity, it would be now in allowing Aristide to come back, which has been one of the principal demands of the Haitian people over these past five years.

AMY GOODMAN: When we asked about the history—1915 to ‘34, 1991, explain the significance of these dates.

KIM IVES: Nineteen fifteen to 1934 was the first US Marine occupation, carried out under Woodrow Wilson, and finally, during the administration of FDR, it was ended. In ’91, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated and—

AMY GOODMAN: As the first elected president.

KIM IVES: As, yes, the first democratically elected president. Eight months later, he was overthrown by a US CIA-backed coup.

He remained three years in exile. They thought the coup could be somehow consolidated. It wasn’t. The resistance to it continued during that period. Finally, Clinton was forced to bring in 20,000 US troops, not to stop the coup, really, but to stop a revolution, which was in the making because of that coup.

AMY GOODMAN: Which would lead to immigrants coming into the United States.

KIM IVES: Possibly, yeah. I mean, the immigrants were being forced out by the coup. If there were a revolution in Haiti, maybe the flow would reverse. But the fact is the Clinton administration brought Aristide back as a sort of hostage on the shoulders of 20,000 US troops, and they remained until about 1999.

He was reelected in 2000. They again immediately started a coup when he was inaugurated on February 7, 2001, involving Contras based in the Dominican Republic and diplomatic and economic embargos, and all the—the whole works. They forced him out at gunpoint, essentially.

A team of US Navy Seals came in and kidnapped him from his home in Tabarre on February 29th, 2004. And he’s been in exile ever since. - [...]

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And also, Kim Ives, the issue of food. We saw last year a food crisis around the world in early 2009. Haiti was one of the worst hit by that food crisis. There were reports of people eating mud for—because of starvation. Explain the issue of food and also how the United States affected the food supply in Haiti.

KIM IVES: Well, yeah. Essentially, Haiti was self-sufficient thirty years ago in its production of food, particularly rice. And since the fall of the Duvalier regime, it has really been opened up. The neoliberal regime, one of its principal demands is the lowering of tariff barriers, so that rice grown in Arkansas and Texas and Louisiana can be dumped on the country, which has effectively destroyed the rice farmers of the Artibonite Valley, leaving Haiti now required to import almost 80 percent of its food. So foreign aid has essentially destroyed Haitian food self-sufficiency.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the poverty that that leads to, the deforestation of the mountains. Having spent—gone to Haiti a number of times, people going up into the mountains to make charcoal, to burn whatever wood they can get, and that leads to the precarious natural situation, where you have an earthquake or a hurricane and the mudslides that—from Pétionville down, right?

KIM IVES: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: That make the crisis much worse.

KIM IVES: Exactly. And, Amy, just in the days before this, there was a lot of rain. So a lot of this is mudslides. I mean, the ground was already saturated with water, so it was extremely unstable.

And I think that made the collapses even more terrible." - [and end]

Tags: Amy Goodman, CIA, Democracy Now, Edwidge Danticat, haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Kim Ives, military coup, Poverty, Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ydjbovj

Related:

Google search for Haiti +earthquake - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/y8szaun

* "New World Rebels - 'Through The Eyes Of A Slave..." - You Tube - Url.:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz_7m_C_Aqc&feature=channel_page

* Or: "New World Rebels - 'Through The Eyes Of Your Controllers..." - YouTube - Url.:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eYDA8qLb_4

* This is what I last December 2009 wrote about it: "Al-Qaeda jet attack: 'False flag' again by CIA/Mossad" - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/yj732dt

* Comments: Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/ycx7xmc

* Read the stories that TV news networks forget to report! - Url.:  http://tvnewslies.org/html/lapdog_press.html

* Pentagon used psychological operation on US public, documents show - Url.:  http://rawstory.com/2009/10/bryan-whitman-2/

* TV News and which lies? - Url.:  http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/

* THE SORRY STATE OF WORLD AFFAIRS - Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/5tz8uz

* THE LATEST ARTICLES PUBLISHED ON THE APFN WEB SITE: JUST TYPE MY NAME INTO THE 'SEARCH' FIELD ON THE SITE, CLICK, AND THERE YOU ARE. - URL.:  http://disc.yourwebapps.com/indices/234999.html

* IT'S DANGEROUS TO BE RIGHT, WHEN YOUR GOVERNMENT IS WRONG - VOLTAIRE

* COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.:  http://tinyurl.com/3z3r6

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor: Henk Ruyssenaars
 http://tinyurl.com/mnbcdd
The Netherlands
 fpf@chello.nl

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Henk Ruyssenaars + Fwd. & links.
- e-mail: fpf@chello.nl
- Homepage: http://tinyurl.com/mnbcdd

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