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Charlie Rose - Update on Haiti
I would really recommend that you not get your Haiti news from Amy Goodman -- who is an avid supporter of Aristide...I used to be a great fan - thinking that there were some great stories that were not reported in the mainstream press - but on Haiti, Ms Goodman appears to have a very narrow band.
You can read the plan for Haiti from the government of Haiti posted on the website.
It is true that FTZs are part of the plan-- since Haiti qualifies for increased acess to the US market under HOPE2-- and the plant in Ouanaminthe Dajabon qualifies under this one...
And the cost of doing business in Haiti is actually now significantly higher since there is no infrastructure to speak of - in that most plants have to produce their own electricity, lack of roads make shipping expensive, etc etc
Heil America! Haiti?s Redemption?
A failed former power currently in The Greatest DEPRESSION which engineered the global economic implosion starting with the subprime lending and continuing with the bankster bailouts and TARP crap. Currently 1.5 TRILLION deficit, 20% unemployment (official stats do not include those not applying for benefits which have already run out).
BP eco-armageddon -- it it LEAKING again despite the cap -- methane levels in the ocean have increased 1000% inducing hypoxia (lack of oxygen) which will destroy all marine life -- not to mention that the neurotoxin being dispersed in the ocean --COrEXIT -- is a banned poison in the UK. Did I mention that the surrounding sea floor is beginning to buckle?
And America is gonna save Haiti? Just like Katrina, eh? Just like it saved Iraq and Afghanistan? Committing genocide on fictitious enemies to pillage and plunder their valuable oil and mineral deposits.
Yes this is on topic. Before you generals dictate how the world should rotate and hang your soiled flag in yet another foreign occupation -- fix your own pathetic failed country.
A failed former power currently in The Greatest DEPRESSION which engineered the global economic implosion starting with the subprime lending and continuing with the bankster bailouts and TARP crap. Currently 1.5 TRILLION deficit, 20% unemployment (official stats do not include those not applying for benefits which have already run out).
BP eco-armageddon -- it it LEAKING again despite the cap -- methane levels in the ocean have increased 1000% inducing hypoxia (lack of oxygen) which will destroy all marine life -- not to mention that the neurotoxin being dispersed in the ocean --COrEXIT -- is a banned poison in the UK. Did I mention that the surrounding sea floor is beginning to buckle?
And America is gonna save Haiti? Just like Katrina, eh? Just like it saved Iraq and Afghanistan? Committing genocide on fictitious enemies to pillage and plunder their valuable oil and mineral deposits.
Yes this is on topic. Before you generals dictate how the world should rotate and hang your soiled flag in yet another foreign occupation -- fix your own pathetic failed country.
It's good to be king........
World's Most Dangerous Creature (TURN UP SOUND)......GREAT first post apolo, sometimes it's nice not to HOLD BACK (I'm all for the free speech thing) Jealousy and Resentment gets you everywhere on this board. Way to make a great FIRST impression. You make it painfully obvious to all your readers out there that you have read the book "How To Make Friends & Influence people" ( you can def tell.....you carry this book everywhere) Good job apolo. I have to admit the "HEIL AMERICA!!!!" comment conjures up nice and warm fuzzy images ( ahh....kinda reminds me of something) Not gonna go there though (you might wanna let that go apolo. ACCEPTANCE is a good thing. HEIL AMERICA!!! (sorry it just sounds good when I write that) anyway apolo I'm sure that HEIL stuff gets you all excited and you go and rush to put on those big black boots of yours and start bowing up and down to the big NAZI flag that's hanging on your wall............You need a Vacation apolo... (A place to CHILL OUT), The perfect place for you (It's such a natural fit)....... Las Vegas!!!!! LEMME know what you think apolo..............Waiting for your post from Vegas, PS........ Always double down on a 10 or an 11!!!
World's Most Dangerous Creature (TURN UP SOUND)......GREAT first post apolo, sometimes it's nice not to HOLD BACK (I'm all for the free speech thing) Jealousy and Resentment gets you everywhere on this board. Way to make a great FIRST impression. You make it painfully obvious to all your readers out there that you have read the book "How To Make Friends & Influence people" ( you can def tell.....you carry this book everywhere) Good job apolo. I have to admit the "HEIL AMERICA!!!!" comment conjures up nice and warm fuzzy images ( ahh....kinda reminds me of something) Not gonna go there though (you might wanna let that go apolo. ACCEPTANCE is a good thing. HEIL AMERICA!!! (sorry it just sounds good when I write that) anyway apolo I'm sure that HEIL stuff gets you all excited and you go and rush to put on those big black boots of yours and start bowing up and down to the big NAZI flag that's hanging on your wall............You need a Vacation apolo... (A place to CHILL OUT), The perfect place for you (It's such a natural fit)....... Las Vegas!!!!! LEMME know what you think apolo..............Waiting for your post from Vegas, PS........ Always double down on a 10 or an 11!!!
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engineerfg
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That's some nice historical revisionism. Not that the Haitians are without blame, but every chance possible, the West has diddled Haiti up the HOOHOO. They never had a fair chance. That's life I guess...
Maybe you'll like Naomi Klein
I respect your on the ground perspective, but my armchair wisdom also is based on Naomi Klein's brilliant "The Shock Doctrine" on the rise of Disaster Capitalism. I also have a deep respect for the Haitian nation and its unique culture, and a lifetime of study of the common linkages between slave systems in the Western Hemisphere.
One of my last email exchanges with Lambada concerned antihaitianism in the DR. I suggested she look at
Haiti: Antihaitianismo in Dominican Culture
She wrote back:
Funnily enough I have quoted from it (& others) in my next book which comes out in Sept:
Dominican Republic - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture: Amazon.ca: Ginnie Bedggood, Ilana Benady: Books
Our editor grilled us on whether we were Marxists when he read my analysis...............!!!
As for Democracy Now, the show discussed "The Vultures" who have swooped down on the devastated country, stealing much of the money that has been donated.
Also check out the new Washington Post investigation of the private superstructure created post 9/11.
Any Haitian government will be challenged in the face of these forces. The question is whether the current "government" will ever rise to the challenge.
I respect your on the ground perspective, but my armchair wisdom also is based on Naomi Klein's brilliant "The Shock Doctrine" on the rise of Disaster Capitalism. I also have a deep respect for the Haitian nation and its unique culture, and a lifetime of study of the common linkages between slave systems in the Western Hemisphere.
One of my last email exchanges with Lambada concerned antihaitianism in the DR. I suggested she look at
Haiti: Antihaitianismo in Dominican Culture
She wrote back:
Funnily enough I have quoted from it (& others) in my next book which comes out in Sept:
Dominican Republic - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture: Amazon.ca: Ginnie Bedggood, Ilana Benady: Books
Our editor grilled us on whether we were Marxists when he read my analysis...............!!!
As for Democracy Now, the show discussed "The Vultures" who have swooped down on the devastated country, stealing much of the money that has been donated.
Also check out the new Washington Post investigation of the private superstructure created post 9/11.
Any Haitian government will be challenged in the face of these forces. The question is whether the current "government" will ever rise to the challenge.
Gabriela- you are preaching to the choir....
have you really seen my "on the ground" perspective?
Changing Perspectives: "Colonized"
have you really seen my "on the ground" perspective?
Changing Perspectives: "Colonized"
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Great blog
Not preaching to the choir really. It's a teaching technique I often use--talking to the brightest, most socially aware students in my community college classes (full of refugees from every part of the globe). My hope is that our conversation will convert a few lurkers to the choir.
Not preaching to the choir really. It's a teaching technique I often use--talking to the brightest, most socially aware students in my community college classes (full of refugees from every part of the globe). My hope is that our conversation will convert a few lurkers to the choir.
Charlie Rose comes through once again with this interesting interview with Sean Penn. Hulu - Charlie Rose: Actor Sean Penn On His Work in Haiti - Watch the full episode now.
Not enough but it is happening
2010-07-12
On July 9, journalist Alec Castonguay stated that six months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Canada hasn't disbursed funds to help the Haitian people. We would like to address this and provide an accurate update to Canadians on the support being given to the Haitian people.
The Government of Canada, through CIDA, has disbursed $150.15 million, primarily to Canadian and international humanitarian organizations towards the distribution of food assistance, clean water, shelter, health care, surgical services, rubble removal and security for children in Haiti. Canada has also provided $33 million in debt relief.
Canada will continue to work with its partners and the Government of Haiti to meet the essential basic needs of the victims of the earthquake while addressing the early recovery and reconstruction efforts to rebuild a better future for the Haitian people.
The Haitian government has indicated that a coordinated and managed approach over the long term is as important as short term assistance.
It is important to ensure that Canada's support is provided responsibly. The accountability expected by Canadians means that their support is spent wisely and achieve the results we believe that the people of Haiti deserve.
The Honourable Beverley J. Oda Minister of International Cooperation The Honourable Lawrence Cannon Minister of Foreign Affairs
2010-07-12
On July 9, journalist Alec Castonguay stated that six months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Canada hasn't disbursed funds to help the Haitian people. We would like to address this and provide an accurate update to Canadians on the support being given to the Haitian people.
The Government of Canada, through CIDA, has disbursed $150.15 million, primarily to Canadian and international humanitarian organizations towards the distribution of food assistance, clean water, shelter, health care, surgical services, rubble removal and security for children in Haiti. Canada has also provided $33 million in debt relief.
Canada will continue to work with its partners and the Government of Haiti to meet the essential basic needs of the victims of the earthquake while addressing the early recovery and reconstruction efforts to rebuild a better future for the Haitian people.
The Haitian government has indicated that a coordinated and managed approach over the long term is as important as short term assistance.
It is important to ensure that Canada's support is provided responsibly. The accountability expected by Canadians means that their support is spent wisely and achieve the results we believe that the people of Haiti deserve.
The Honourable Beverley J. Oda Minister of International Cooperation The Honourable Lawrence Cannon Minister of Foreign Affairs
this is only available in the US - we cannot see it here in the DR.
I have great admiration for Sean Penn and how he is putting himself out for Haiti. Some report have it that he has essentially moved there.
And we will be able to watch him watch the continuing disaster unfold - his growing and amazed frustration with both aid work and the Haitian government - and his awe at the strength of the Haitian people.
Anyway - if there is a link to a transcript, Ron, please post it. And thanks for keeping another candle lit.
It is pouring rain here today in SD and I am sure that there are millions of people here who are thinking about all the Haitians who will be flooded out. Grace a Dieu, this is not a hurricane and the winds are light.
This is just the sort of phrasing that the rep at the US Embassy in Haiti used when I met with him. But I really question if USAID money is spent very wisely. They take on little projects for a couple of years, and require meticulous accounting measures but there is NO review of the effects of the project.
And once the money goes through the layers of people who have to be paid for the accounting and administration, there is very little money on the ground.
I have heard this about USAID, OXFAM, and the aid from the Spanish government -- in fact I have actually never heard anything different about ANY foreign aid money.
The books by William Easterly - who was with the World Bank- and Joseph Stigliz- a Nobel prize winner - who have both observed foreign aid on the ground, explain the pitfalls far better than any one else.
NGOs are notoriously non transparent. They usually have foreigners at the top of their food chain - who are paid at a completely different scale than the "locals"... They do not publish their salary scale.
Even before the Quake, Conor Bohan of the HELP (which provides scholarships for Haitians to study at Haitian universities) reported that a job with an NGO was the best that a college grad in Haiti could hope for - and that those paid about $600 a month.
One man I know who worked for a big foreign NGO in Haiti said that the expression used in Haiti for working for a foreign NGO was "Ah good, you have got your own white man"
If you go to the Democracy Now website, you can probably find the interview Amy Goodman did with Sean Penn after 6 months since the earthquake. He has been in Haiti since the quake except for about a month.
Pedro, I don't know what you have been smoking as of lately but whatever it is, please put it down boy!
Are you insane?!?! Haiti has not known what the meaning of "stability" refers to since 1804...
Let me give ya' all a brief history of what Haiti is and still remains today:
Haiti pre-1804:
A very, very, very profitable French owned territory (since it never was to be a colony itself) that was called Saint Domingue (as to differentiate the already established Spanish colony to the east "Santo Domingo" from their holdings), whose "richness" and "pearl of the Antilles" value was based on nothing more than the most cruel and cost effective slave-labored industry known at the time.
For the French masters, unlike those same type of masters across the sea in the former English colonies, the use of slaves was nothing more than another type of instrument at their disposal to exploit. Exploit it they did, with unmatched cost effectiveness and savagery, unknown to slave-run industries at the time.
The French system in Saint Domingue consisted of using the freshly bought blacks from the African horn, to work the fields/farms until their death. They found out how much (or little as it was the case) was needed to keep them alive for about a year, providing the least quantity of nutrition possible (to save on costs deferred to sustaining the labor force in place) and working for the longest hours per day the body could resist. They found the right levels to that formula by trial and error, which meant a lot of tests subjects biting their tongues in order to escape their hell on earth. After the French instituted the iron tongues (which first was thought to be a device for punishment, as it heated on the part facing the Caribbean Sun as they worked the fields with them on) on the selected test subjects, they got the formula they wanted.
That's to say that slaves were classified on arrival onto what they would be employed on, which labor intensive placements were allotted to which groups and what lesser efforts needed for others.
They used even pregnant women in different stages into their pregnancies and variables of workloads, to find out how long and what it was going to take, in order to get maximum yield per slave number bought.
Formula in hands, the French instituted one of the most formidable slave-run industries in the world then. The ouput was never matched by any other slave master in the world, which served the powerful superpowers of the era.
Haiti's wealth was nothing more than the slave themselves, working Sun up till there was a hint of twilight or Moon streaks on the horizon. Slaves rejoiced when bad weather came about and spoiled the days, making that pure torture last only so long for that short period.
After the slave revolt, Haiti became a free nation. Born out of rejection of the slave masters, whites, and forced labor. The birth of the nation also did away with 99% of the wealth it was estimated to have at the time, both for the colonial powers and for the region.
Since it was born out of rejection to all those mentioned, Haitians didn't allow for being willingly placed on the land, under any pretext.
People went their own ways, forming clans (just like they were when kidnapped into slavery in Africa) and communities that supported each other. Still today that system is present in many remote areas of the country.
The real wish of those first Haitians was to return home to Africa. Their lack of education/world knowledge made them unable to even find the continent, let alone the town they came from in Africa. No large ships or any of sea worthiness, in order to transverse the large ocean to speak off.
Faced with the reality of not being able to ever go back, they settled for good and made the best of it, each to its own clan/community.
Haiti was a divided country on birth and still remains a divided country to this day, for the same reason it came to be: Rejection!
Give 100% of Haitians an option to live elsewhere but with the condition to never return there, 99.99% would opt for leaving (pre-quake). Give Haitians (after-quake) the same option and the number would be more like 99.9999999999, etc...
Haiti is the country that never was supposed to be, let alone still remain today. Each nation under the Sun today, no matter how poor/wealthy, should open a slot to receive and award citizens from Haiti a home for good.
That's the ONLY way to right the wrong left behind after 200 years by the French. That's the only way to eliminate this sorry excuse for a country we have in the western Hemisphere today, in the doorstep of the 21st century.
Tainos were assimilated into the colonos in Santo Domingo, they never left home. Hispaniola should go back to being a one nation island with a mixed race, as it is and was since the first few years of conquest and colonization.
Anything built in Haiti will not last the times of havoc and unrest, sure to come again in the near future. We are seeing a calmness brought over under the shadow of UN guns. The question is how long the UN troops will be able to keep from firing into the crowds or flee the sea of rushing people, before the situation changes in a country that hasn't changed much since it was born in 1804.
Dude,
It was a joke!
Quite obviously a joke.
Not even requiring a British sense of humour - even NALS got that one!
If you genuinely did not see that and felt inspired to write your opinion piece then you need help.
People - did anyone else not figure that I was joking?
Pichardo - you are one of the few people who would not pass a Turing test.
LMAFO & ROFLMAO
:bunny::bunny::bunny::bunny:
As a Dominican born American Canadian, I believe the Canadian model of Confederation has promise for Hispaniola. We now honour the fathers of Confederation who hammered out a workable system of government for French and English Canada. There were many difficult years before today's two official language, multicultural political entity started working smoothly, and ignorant Prime Ministers can make a mess out of the system, but the democratic system works well with two major powers within. Our current Governor General, Michaelle Jean, was even born in Haiti.
Provocative. Picardo - but not going to happen... You seem to think that Haiti has no national identity - no sense of pride of itself as a nation- no right to exist.
I would suggest that on the other hand, Haitians are the nost fiercely loyal of all citizens. Yes - it is true that most would escape the land now - as it is
but that does not mean that they would willingly stand by for the destruction of their nation.
Do you not think that 80% (or therabouts) of Dominicans would not emigrate if they were offerred a visa to the US or Canada or Spain?
We are dealing now with the roots of slavery - the dark legacy of the colonial past of this hemisphere.
And we are just going to have to press on
And your borrowed synopsis of Haiti is flawed.
Read CLR JAmes' book - The Black Jacobins for a slightly left leaning but interesting revelation.
Another little anecdote - 24 soccer players and coaches from a local Cap Haitian team went on a tour of the USA to play soccer.
Only 6 of them came back - even the coaches went AWOL.
So that is around 75%. Not enough data points to form a convincing view but I can assure you than 99.99999% is nonsense.
And from the years I have spent in the D.R. I get the impression that the average less wealthy Dominican would love nothing more than to leave the island.
You just cannot bear it when somebody says something positive about Haiti.
It is just childish - the country that never should have been???
The ignorance and the arrogance - this is the country from who you won independence - really dumb post Pichardo!!!!
Read CLR JAmes' book - The Black Jacobins for a slightly left leaning but interesting revelation.
Another little anecdote - 24 soccer players and coaches from a local Cap Haitian team went on a tour of the USA to play soccer.
Only 6 of them came back - even the coaches went AWOL.
So that is around 75%. Not enough data points to form a convincing view but I can assure you than 99.99999% is nonsense.
And from the years I have spent in the D.R. I get the impression that the average less wealthy Dominican would love nothing more than to leave the island.
You just cannot bear it when somebody says something positive about Haiti.
It is just childish - the country that never should have been???
The ignorance and the arrogance - this is the country from who you won independence - really dumb post Pichardo!!!!
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