MIT TechTV – Haiti: The Plan for Reconstruction

_{Source: MIT TechTV}

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MIT Committee on Race and Diversity join Haiti Coordination Committee to sponsor a talk on Haiti reconstruction with Patrick Delatour, Minister of Tourism/Committee of Reconstruction, and Frantz Verella, Former Minister of Public Works, Transportation and Communications.

"Why Haiti?...

--"Would you build wealth and power on the tears of a child?" -- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

--Do the goal of socialism justify crushing the bones of peasants?”--Georg Lukacs ask Lenin

…Just like the Capitalist, the Soviets believe that the ends justify the means.

The spotlight turned on Haiti on January 12th of this year pose this same question anew. Why is Haiti so poor and vulnerable, perched next to such a rich and comfortable world power?

The answer, I think, is that we accomplished our own ends in the United States on the tears of Haitian children. We wanted to help farmers in the US, so we dump subsidized rice onto Haiti (destroying Haiti's agriculture.) We want to protect pigs from disease in the US so we push Haiti to butcher all their pigs to eliminate any threat of contamination in this country. We want to isolate Cuba and keep the Soviets out of the Caribbean, so we supported brutal dictatorships in Haiti for their pledge of allegiance to the United States. In short, wrecking Haiti's economy and democracy was a means for our national ends.

Martin Luther King , Jr, who we celebrate here each year, believed that how we treat people, the means of how we attend to our end, is just as important as the ends themselves. We cannot achieve good ends by bad means. Because the process of this kind of development corrupts us and undermines our ends no matter how virtuous we think they are. For this reason Reverend King said the fight against racism, poverty and militarism was actually the same fight. It's a fight about how we treat each other. It's a fight about putting our national ambitions and personal ambition in a lesser place and putting the tears of children in the first place...Are we doing the RIGHT THING with our talent and resources?" --Part of the intro of the panelists at this MIT presentation.

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(For a sampling of Ezili Dantò essays on the United States' use of quake relief to extract wealth and power for the NGOs, Haiti Oligarchy and US big business on the death, suffering and tears of Haiti children, go to: Colonization of Haiti's food and seeds is not earthquake relief; The Poverty Pimps' Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto joins the pack and Vision of Plantation Haiti - A White Pearl, Again! and The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid and, Tell The Truth About Haiti Forum with Ezili Dantò of HLLN.)