The Forces aligned against Haiti's political, agricultural and economical sovereignty are The Poverty Pimps:
- The Haitian oligarchy and immoral wealthy business class
- United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
- US Embassy cronies, the Breton Woods institutions and their USAID subcontractors
- Charitable NGOs
- Security companies: XE (Blackwater), DYNCORPS and Brown & Root.
The Poverty Pimps are currently being aided and abetted by the new Obama administration and its push for the HOPE act - legislation that will ban trade unions from protecting worker's rights. Activist have maintained that "Enriching the few at [the] expense of the many is not "HOPE" but fueling more despair."
Haitians, represented by the Haitian government do not have a voice or partnership in improving the country in the vital areas that are necessary to pull the general population out of misery; namely:
- food sovereignty (domestic agriculture and food production)
- investment in environmental rehabilitation
- domestic manufacturing and jobs that circulates capital and
investment IN Haiti. - Haiti needs a stop to deforestation
- investment in infrastructure, construction of flood-resistant bridges, roads
- investment in such renewable energy as biofuels, wind turbines, solar, water and micro-hydro.
Most importantly - Haiti needs cash crops, food production and alternative energy (see Ezili Danto's post).
The Poverty Pimps in control of Haiti are responsible for many human rights abuses committed during their reign. Namely, the US sponsored coups, interventions, financial criminality by the world banking institutions and other violations of international law that have kept Haiti's infrastructure underdeveloped and primitive, leading to many deaths and the prevalence of preventable diseases among other dire consequences.
THE POVERTY PIMPS OF HAITI
Human Rights Violations Currently Underway:
- MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION via VACCINATION - The UN, the Rwanda Genocide Model and the Vaccination Campaign (see link)
- Food Crisis (see also Mud Cookie Economics in Haiti)
- GENOCIDE: The Gran Ravine & Soccer Massacre and death squads roaming free in UN-occupied Haiti
- MILITARY OCCUPATION: UN repression and militarization is turning Haiti into a penal colony
- Fair trade with Haiti. Trade that does not further degrade the environment, repress worker's rights or contain Haiti in poverty or ignore Haiti's most essential domestic needs for food production.
- Haiti needs food sovereignty
- Haiti needs the cancellation of its debt to the international financial institutions
- The US should grant Haitians TPS (Temporary Protected Status) and equal immigration treatment
- The US needs to support the release of the political prisoners -- justice not impunity
- The UN military occupation of Haiti should end in order for participatory democracy that means inclusion of the masses in the affairs of their own country.
- The Western countries who control the world banking system are not providing Haiti with authentic assistance in poverty reduction that involve domestic agricultural investments and community policing.
Hinche Haiti Sept. 2008 - Food Crisis in Haiti Agravated
by Successive Hurricanes: Gustav, Hanna, Ike and Fay.
Most of all, Haiti needs a US trade, aid and investment culture that is committed to integrating all levels of corporate responsibility – economic, social and environmental including;
- patronizing the informal sector of local service providers
- generally not exporting all profits and capital but committing to paying equitable custom duties
- not dumping assembly goods for export, or dumping subsidized US foods, but investing in mutually beneficial trade, aid and investment
- And they should be investing a reasonable percentage of their Haiti profits put back into Haiti.
HatTip: Ezili Danto's post:
"Obama's offered HOPE is sweatshop slavery"
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Comments
Country after country after country. If they are strong enough to put up a fight, we have another Iraq or Afghanistan. If they are not, we have another Haiti.
"But we bring you democracy", they babble. They do not know how little democracy means to one dying of hunger, whose children have already died of hunger.
The freedom they bring is false. They will be free to do as they wish; you will be free to do as you are told.
The foreign devil holds a party in your homeland to celebrate how good he has been to you; and what he eats in one minute would have kept your child alive for a week.
And I? I am that foreign devil. Or he is me. My personal tears cannot wash away my guilt.
The appointing of the Susan Rice as UN Ambassador is one sign of this. As a policy maker in Washington during the Clinton administration -- she and others refused to recognize that genocide was underway in Rwanda.
It is also not encouraging that US is again avoiding of the World Conference on Racism.
Ban Ki-Moon's NYT editorial said that, "HOPE II, as the act is known, offers Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to U.S. markets for the next nine years."
I'm not sure how that would be a bad deal. I understand that the multinationals aren't about helping Haitians. Of course it's exploitation, but that exploitation can bring development of the means of production that leads to a higher standard of living, and eventually could give Haitians the power to push for higher wages.
Even Marx recognized that the capitalist masters of industry can be useful for underdeveloped nations. Tell me where I'm wrong.
BTW. Last night's Law and Order was about a NY slave trade of Haitian children. Very disturbing.
May I reply to shmadoff?
The access to US markets will be great for those very few who own damn nearly everthing in Haiti. Please tell me how this is of any value to the average, starving Haitian. Or do you think that the fat-cat masters of Haiti somehow have the interests of the Hatian people at heart, will employ them and pay fair wages?
Sort of like the fat-cat masters of America have the interests of the American people at heart; and the fat-cat masters of my own Canada have Canadians at heart?
What planet did you say you were from?
I am fully aware that the fat cats in Haiti do not have the people's best interests in mind. Neither did the fat cats in Dickensian England, or America in the early stages of industrialization.
But England an America are different now, no?
I recommend reading Das Kapital. Most Haitians now live by subsistence farming (from the stats I've seen). Industrialization eliminates the old-world problem of scarcity, while enriching the few from the toil of the many. I know that the sweat-shop owners will not "give" Haitians anything. But the means of production inadvertently gives them a potential source of power that they would otherwise not have.
If your sanctimony cannot even dry your guilty tears, it likely will not be of much help to Haitians.
Haitians of all people should be benefiting from their successful revolution which ended in 1804 with Dessalines declaring Haiti a free republic -- signaling the end of slavery in the Western Hemisphere.
I don't disregard that. I absolutely believe in the rights of Haitians to organize, now. I believe in union rights here, there, and everywhere. Does HOPEII actually ban trade unions?
If it does, than I oppose it.
BTW, I do believe that something very shameful is going on in Haiti. Why else would a leader be deposed, then restored, then deposed again? I still don't feel that I can gain a good understanding for what it is actually that is being gained from the suppression of Haitian democracy, but I do smell a rat, and I will continue to follow your blogs.
An article called "Haiti: HOPE: A FALSE HOPE from Haiti Liberte in 2006 explains pretty succinctly The Uses of Haiti and what the American Plan for Haiti is:
"One is justified in wondering, 22 years after the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship, how it is that the current government's economic policy is that of Jean-Claude Duvalier? Here's what the Duvalierist newspaper "Le Nouveau Monde" wrote in 1984: "All the conditions are right for the country to become a platform for exports to the American market. Haiti has a workforce that is disciplined and accustomed to hard work since independence, a young and intelligent force, which provides labor at a cost well below its productivity." After 22 years, Alexis [Jacques Edouard Alexis -Haiti's Prime Minister in 2006] has learned nothing or, rather, does not want to understand.
This policy of the United States, called two decades ago the "American Plan" for Haiti, was in reality emptying the countryside of its people, who migrate to the capital to form a sub-proletariat, ready to be exploited by the subcontracting bourgeoisie, thus destroying agricultural production. Indeed, even the few jobs created remains very precarious because they depend totally on demand in the United States, which, as it so happens, is entering a recession, even if Alexis and his government seem to ignore that or continue to believe that Haiti is on another planet.
Let us note that the population is not very excited about or interested in HOPE. Some criticism, however, have been raised. Camille Chalmers, speaking on Radio Caraibes during the show "Ranmase" of February 9, denounced the lack of vision of Haitian authorities, who chose to liquidate public enterprises and lay-off thousands of 'employees. Professor Robert Fatton of the University of Virginia, for his part, said that the priority at this time should be an agrarian reform to boost investment in rural areas in order to increase agricultural production and rural incomes.
In fact, for the Preval-Alexis government, "increasing national production" means reviving the assembly industry while agriculture is abandoned, even though famine is already raging in many parts of the country. Can subcontracting replace an agricultural policy? Obviously not, and HOPE 1 and 2 should not be used as a substitute for a development plan and development of the country."
Just as individuals do, nations have karma, too, which should be a scary thought to all Americans. Our nation has had many opportunites to do good, to do the right thing, but has usually failed. Instead, we've usually made things worse, creating hatred towards us....but hey, that's the point isn't, it? Hatred=more war=more weapons= a bigger military-corporate complex=a larger Pentagon budget=more profit for wealthy Republican investors, etc., etc.
Hello Shmadoff
Under President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas governments, the life, liberty and property of the Haitian masses were elevated and more valued than at any other time since the first coup d'etat in 1806 where the sons of France assassinated Haiti’s founding father. For, the minimum wage was raised, more Haitian schools were built in Haiti than in the entire previous 200 years of Haitian history, the people were educated by the Liv Blan as to the resources of Haiti and their right to this property and mineral riches and oil, (See Haiti's Riches being fleece under cover of this UN occupation and puppet Haitian government by foreign companies - http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/sfbayview.html#riches) Also, under Pres. Aristide, the language of Haitians, the Kreyòl language was made an official language of the Haitian state, Vodun was made an official religion, France was asked to pay back the Independence Debt and literacy rates went up by more than 30%. To take and control Haiti's life, liberty and property are the reasons for the Bush 2004 coup d'etat/UN occupation. The Bush 2004 coup d'etat/Regime change and subsequent UN occupation is based on enslavement (taking of Haitian life and labor), murder (rule by force, incarceration, endless debt and degrading the environment) and theft (stealing the people of Haiti's mineral/gold/copper/ coal/oil and other riches).
See the map from the "Liv Ban" from Pres. Aristide political party which catalogues Haiti's riches. President Aristide’s political party, put together in this “Liv Blan” book a plan of public/private partnership to lift Haiti out of poverty using Haiti's own natural resources - Go to: A map of some of Haiti's mining resources
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/miningresources.html
However, the idea of the people of Haiti benefiting from the resources of their county didn’t sit well with the Bush administration and thus the global elite refused to allow Haiti to use its resources for its own people. Under the 2004 Bush Regime change and subsequent occupation foreign multinational corporations are digging Haiti's mountains, using toxic chemicals to mine for Haiti's gold, copper and exploiting Haiti's oil. Meanwhile the people are dying of hunger and starvation. To give you an idea of the stealing, the IMF just published figures indicating Haiti just MOVED up a slot from the bottom and is no longer the poorest in the Western Hemisphere- Nicaragua is! How could this be? In 2008, the people are still under occupation, have no liberty, Haiti suffered a food and fuel crisis because of the high prices, remittances from the Diaspora went down by 1/3rd and four hurricanes caused one billion in damages, left a whole city -Gonaives- under water! Yet, the World Bank/IMF internationals are very happy with Haiti’s PROGRESS!! To such an extent the IMF has moved Haiti UP a slot. Certainly its not because Haitian living standards have move UP! No it’s because the Bush Regime change beneficiaries - foreign companies and the Haitian Oligarchy, Haiti's poverty pimps are raking in the dollars while the people die of hunger, disease, and environmental degradation and have lost their sovereignty and liberty to UN/US/Western guns and NGOs.
Ezili Dantò
It is progress in their eyes. Whenever they can get control of a nation's resources, economy, goods and hold the reigns of power. They consider the cost to the people to be "colateral damage" -- this is part of the budget calculations for every such *operation.* As it was with Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) -- quickly changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom! LOL!
In Iraq they had to destroy the lives of millions of people to do it. Destruction of the people of Haiti is moving along at a slower pace, yet the resulting destruction will be massive (the Lancet estimates 8000 deaths, but that is in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince alone. Many put the death toll much higher).
They've built the most expensive and expansive U.S embassy ever in Iraq; "Fortress America," the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, is the largest, most expensive in the world." - Estimated cost of over $1 billion.
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti is described as a "behemoth" costing 75 million to build in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The compound, finished in 2007 is the fourth largest in cost -- coming in first is the U.S. embassy in Iraq. It is located on 10 acres and is entirely self-sufficient -- boasting a large interior atrium in the main building, state-of-the-art climate control, a water treatment plant and extensive landscaping. - THB.com
The cost to occupy nations and hoard and exploit their resources is effectively bankrupting the whole of humanity. Humanity is paying the cost, while the bankers and multi-nationals laugh all the way to the bank (for now).