Haiti Border Crossing

mountainannie

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I am up here in LT for a few months (the DRs most fragile border, if you ask me) and do not have regular access to internet but logged on once to read one thread where there were some postings on the border crossing at Dajabon now costing $40 one way for Americans..

There appearred to be a lot of bitching and moaning and some snide comments about
helping out in hell
and cracks about
"their" orphans..

to which I would only say that

if you have no understanding or respect for

the IMMENSE

cultural and historic place which Haiti holds in the hemisphere and in the world

and have not read even .... say...
a very small percentage...

say a mere 400 or 500 pages...
of the material available in ENGLISH ..
then...
well..

stay the hell out of there.


Were it not for Haiti having supported Simon Bolivar... well, who knows?

Haiti... only 15 years younger than the United States
Second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere
First Black Republic in the World

You have no business in a country whose culture and people and history you have no respect for.

You have business interfering

There really are no orphans in Haiti

We are all related

It is a very sad testimony that it is Americans who are now subject to this border toll.

But with out wretched Evangelicals who go about preaching that Haiti was dedicated to Satan

And out Catholic Univerisities from CT who send down priests who diddled the little boys....

and all those truely stupid NGO workers...

well...

GOOD FOR THEM!!!!!!!!
 

AlterEgo

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Gee Annie, tell us how you really feel??!!!!:laugh::laugh:

Seriously though, if you have the time to read through the thread you'll see it's rather spottily enforced, and you must agree that for a one day trip to Haiti - to volunteer - $80 is a hefty price tag. Think how many supplies that $80 could bring there instead.

I was wondering where you'd gotten off to, glad to see your vacation in LT hasn't lessened your sharp wit!

AE

PS - Now, does anyone know where waytogo is?
 

mountainannie

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thought it was going to be a vacation but it has turned into an organizing of the Haitian construction workers to return to Haiti event.. There is no more work for them here.. since the place is built.. And the vast majority of them wish to return. And they are needed now in Haiti since skilled workers are in short supply over there and there are plans to build up other cities outside of PauPrince.. So it has been a working break. But fortunately, my assistant from the Capital came up and assured me that I had not indeed lost my mind with what I was saying now but was only continuing with a project that I have been working on for the last five years... how to get the Haitians back to Haiti...

As for the customs... well... I will have to get back really online before I can find out what the story is.. if it is a policy or just some border guards... but I think that the entire issue of just giving "stuff" has to be re/ examined...

For instance.. about three months after the earthquake, the main public hospital in Haiti.. which was not free but gave services for a nominal fee.. closed... because everyone who was injured went to the free clinics and none of the NGOs or foreign governments thought to put the Haitian doctors and hospital on salary. So all of these "gifts" that we give.. and I know that we MEAN well,, I know that we all so very much WANT to help and that is such a wonderful instinct.. but it is SUCH a very delicate issue... The Haitian rice industry collapsed when US subsidised rice was introduced.. the egg production collapsed during the embargo to restore Aristide when the DR egg produces exported (some Haitians say dumped.. at 2 pesos an egg) their excess eggs into Haiti.. All the used clothing /// yes, it is an industry but it also destroys work for the tailors and sewers... so it is complicated.
 

Linda Stapleton

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I am sure all of what you say is true and I regret some of my whinging about the border crossing charge, although I'm glad to see it doesn't seem to be being enforced. When talking about the conditions in Haiti, I meant it was hell for the people, not hell to be going to help...anyway, apologies if my comment was not clear or offensive. We are very much moving in the direction of working with the orphanage we support to become self-sufficient by encouraging trade etc in place of food runs for the unforeseeable future. There are several groups working in this direction so hopefully a change is coming, here is one I've begun to look into.
 

Hillbilly

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I like reading Annie's posts. She tells it like it is and no bones about it.
After the earthquake I posted here that perhaps many of the 1000s of Haitian construction workers would return to Haiti to rebuild the country. But they seem to be having trouble doing this. For lots of reasons...

HB
 

Linda Stapleton

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Now, I was reading somewhere the other day, can't remember where, that some are returning, although it's hard to notice, but as long as all this aid that was given remains tied up waiting to be used correctly, I expect it will continue to be a long, slow process....
 

Adan

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"...The Haitian rice industry collapsed when US subsidised rice was introduced.. the egg production collapsed during the embargo to restore Aristide when the DR egg produces exported (some Haitians say dumped.. at 2 pesos an egg) their excess eggs into Haiti.. All the used clothing /// yes, it is an industry but it also destroys work for the tailors and sewers... so it is complicated"

French ( their unfair "independence fee" or more exactly compensation to the slave masters and French state which was the first world sugar producer) and Imperialists (specially the US in the 20th century) destroyed Haiti and never forgive them for being the first slaves who emancipated themselves by war and the first black republic. Duvallier or Aristide being the same poison (corruption, stealing etc) and supported by western powers...

Plus English, US and Spain (in Santo Domingo) helped the slave revolt and the destroy of the French in Saint Domingue :

"...The fear that France would use Negro Troops from St Domingo to liberate the slaves in the United States, and in the British West Indies, and then annex the latter, if no more, was an important factor behind American and British diplomacy, particulary in 1799. A belief that a St Domingo politically independent of France, but economically dependent upon Great Britain and the United States, would be less dangerous to the slave holdings of both was vital in bringing those two nations to the support of Toussaint...In June 1799 the 3 powers signed an agreement giving english and American ships exclusive trading privileges..."

"American Negro Slave Revolts" by Herbert Aptheker p 43

Toussaint agreed to protect English ( whom he kicked out from Saint Domingue before the French arrived with Leclerc) and the US interests in the region (i.e not spread the slave rebellion in Jamaica and the US) and help them against the French if they attacked Jamaica or the southern part of the US.

Most of Haiti problems for those who had done their analysis can be explained by the "invisible hand" (in a negative sense) of the imperialists, only a revenge, they dared freed themselves from slavery...
 
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Jumbo

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Annie, the only problem i see is the ignorance of the Haitian people. And some people bad mouthing those who are donating time and energy trying to help. After reading your rant i refuse to donate any of my time, money or energy to help any orphan, cripple or homeless Haitian because it seems you have it covered. So all NGO workers pack it up because the country is in good hands now.
 

pedrochemical

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So all NGO workers pack it up

That would be a start.

There are the occasional NGOs that do good stuff but most of what is on the ground in Haiti is purely an industry taking advantage of a bad situation - and making the situation worse. After all it is in their interests to do so otherwise they put themselves out of business.

This is not a conspiracy theory.
I have seen it with my own eyes very clearly.

NGOs have been in Haiti for 80 years.
It does not seem to be working out well for most Haitians.
 

Tom F.

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I was able to cross into Quanamente last Friday on market day and spend the day and didn't pay anything.
 

bob saunders

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The past history of Haiti is an important consideration but you can only blame the imperialists, and the Europeans for so long before you ( the Haitian people) have to take responsibility. I have no problem with the Haitian government imposing a fee for those coming in to their country, but to only charge Americans is wrongheaded.
It's not really relevant that Haiti was the first Black republic, it wasn't democratic and still isn't. I applaude your efforts MA, but what is important is the here and now, not the past from 250 years ago.
 

mountainannie

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yea bob.. start out a slave revolution in a sea of slave countries with a completely uneducated population on a pile of mountains one third of a little desert island where all the plantation heads have been lobbed off and the lands cut up into ittty bitty farms and handed out to the army for their pay.... and of course you have NO consensus on where the hell you are going.. since the French have barely had a revolution and the US is only 15 years old.....


and you struggle along for 100 years


and then have a couple of US occupations and embargos and a really awful dictator....

but by 1979 you have more tourists that the DR and good law and order and you are supporting your population in food.. not progress but not so bad

then you lose all your pigs to the swine flu... under orders from the US to slaughter them to reduce the risk of the spread.. then the US introduces the IOWA pig which eats more than 13 Haitians

Then the US introduces cheap US rice.... heavily subsidized... after forcing you to reduce your protective tarriffs in return for aid

and then a lefist priest with the support of the international left and all my well meaning friends//// talked about nationalizing the banks and stoked a class war so the US withheld funding and the factories withdrew and folks started burning the remaining middle class homes and everyone who could leave.. and who had not left because of Duvalier, left then

and do not forget the cocaine cartels who are running 15 percent of the US coke through there


lest we forget

the hurricanes
the floods

the earthquakes
the

complete lack of infrastructure

AND

WOW

you wonder that it is a not a DEMOCRACY?

and just WHO is to blame?

Shall we just agree that

Mistakes were made

and

we start from where we are

(besides, I think the jury is still out on this democracy stuff.. I am not so keen on how the US is turning out and that is the oldest one that we have.. .. ok.. a republic.. and perhaps it may turn out to be one yet/
 

mountainannie

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Adan is completely right about the trees... when the French demanded payment.. and ALL the other imperial powers insisted on it... and all Haiti was the Mahagony.. so they cut it to sell it..

there is lots of info on the mahagony as a canopy tree in the rain forests.. about how when you cut that tree, the whole forest goes.. and i know that Haiti was never really a rain forest but I think that tree was a really important one..

Also.. was it not part of the first takeover of the DR.. that payment of the reparations? Didn't the US use part of those customs to help pay the debt to France? I do not think that the entire debt was paid off until 1947 or so.

Haiti was the ONLY colony that EVER had to pay reparations/./


not that I am blaming

just observing
 

Adan

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True democracy (i.e power to people ) doesn't exist in this world. In US the true power is within The Militaro-complex industry, Multinationals and few private banks (JP Morgan, FED which is not a federal bank, Citibank, Citigroup etc)

They're the true powers who elect the president of the US ( this is why a social worker of Chicago is now the president of the united states) and if they'e not pleased with your policy, you're fired (Nixon) or even worse ( JFK)

American people has never been free, all power and money is concentrated within few families hands and their satellites. The founding fathers being for the majority freemasons and high skilled lawyers wrote a constitution which favored their own interests.

They also organised American revolution against the motherland (Great Britain) to free themselves from British imperialism ( high taxes, power of money creation, US was also the dupping grown for English convicts or jailbirds after 1776 English turned to Australia)...They worked for the King/Queen of England's prosperity...Founding Fathers declared that all men were free but forgot all the slaves ( Indentured Servants, Indians, Africans: George Washington had white and african slaves...) and the new country called USA grown out of imperialism and conquest [ huge importation of slaves (whites and blacks), of poor immigrants, conquest of territories : mexico and indian lands]

Everybody can read Pr Howard Zinn's " A People's History of the United States", a masterpiece.

So Imperialism is oppression for all mankind and not a matter of color, because as human beings we all suffered (suffer) from imperialists in different ways: child workers in US and London in the 19th century, repressions in the US against the population from the 18th to the 20th century (those against the war in vietnam, those in 1968 etc), imperialists wars for oil in Irak ( not for nuclear weapons as we all know) or in Africa ( Darfur is only a oil matter)
 

bob saunders

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Taking a negative view of the book, Harvard University historian Oscar Handlin wrote in a review in The American Scholar:

Hence the deranged quality of this fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history. It may be unfair to expose to critical scrutiny a work patched together from secondary sources, many used uncritically (Jennings, Williams), others ravaged for material torn out of context (Young, Pike). Any careful reader will perceive that Zinn is a stranger to evidence bearing upon the people about whom he purports to write. But only critics who know the sources will recognize the complex array of devices that pervert his pages... On the other hand, the book conveniently omits whatever does not fit its overriding thesis... It would be a mistake, however, to regard Zinn as merely Anti-American. Brendan Behan once observed that whoever hated America hated mankind, and hatred of mankind is the dominant tone of Zinn's book... He lavishes indiscriminate condemnation upon all the works of man — that is, upon civilization, a word he usually encloses in quotation marks.[15]
Funny how with all it's faults most people still want to go to the USA.
 

Adan

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I'd suggest people to read the book first. Zinn doesn't beat around the bush, the plain truth..So it may annoy some people (who founded Harvard and who finances it ?) And if you cross check with others books you'll find out BY YOURSELF.

Now this scholar from Harvard has his point of view and Zinn was a scholar too. Thanks GOD scholars disagree too.

Zinn's biggest achievement as a master scientist and historian , was to explain every really decision of American Policy from the Founding Fathers until recent years. Very educative/informative/entertaining for people who haven't identify the system (yet)
 

bob saunders

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Taking a negative view of the book, Harvard University historian Oscar Handlin wrote in a review in The American Scholar:

Hence the deranged quality of this fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history. It may be unfair to expose to critical scrutiny a work patched together from secondary sources, many used uncritically (Jennings, Williams), others ravaged for material torn out of context (Young, Pike). Any careful reader will perceive that Zinn is a stranger to evidence bearing upon the people about whom he purports to write. But only critics who know the sources will recognize the complex array of devices that pervert his pages... On the other hand, the book conveniently omits whatever does not fit its overriding thesis... It would be a mistake, however, to regard Zinn as merely Anti-American. Brendan Behan once observed that whoever hated America hated mankind, and hatred of mankind is the dominant tone of Zinn's book... He lavishes indiscriminate condemnation upon all the works of man ? that is, upon civilization, a word he usually encloses in quotation marks.[15]
Funny how with all it's faults most people still want to go to the USA.
 

greydread

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Adan

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Bob

May I ask you which part of Pr Zinn you don't agree ? Then we could open a new thread , Thanks
 

Adan

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I meant :

May I ask you which part of Pr Zinn's BOOK you don't agree ? Then we could open a new thread , Thanks