Conan O'Brien's visit to Haiti

[Caonabo]

What do you see as outside influences?

You may start with your choice of the so called Not-for-Profit Organizations (NFPOs), Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs). All disgraceful ruses aimed at lining the pockets of others. For Haiti to begin to succeed, all these smokescreens need to be removed.

 

[ROLLOUT]

Interesting conversation with many valid points being made here. However, most seem to not want to mention or only timidly suggest the other main culprit to Haiti's current state: It's own people.

Let's all be honest and agree that not all cultures are equal and some are superior to others due to many factors such as customs, mannerisms, way of life, culture, religious beliefs (in some cases). With those things in mind, it is not difficult to see that Haitians and mainly Haitians are the main culprit behind their own misery. It started with racially cleansing their population of anyone who was not black, prohibiting them from owning property, businesses and creating an ethnostate. Add to that backwards customs such as spreading disease by openly defecating in public (which many Haitians also like to do in the DR), the ruthless pillaging of their environment by cutting down all vegetation to turn into coal, their strong attachment to voodoo, the brain drain that others mentioned here and the subsequent effects of those ppl never returning to Haiti, etc., the list goes on. It is disingenous to gloss over these things and focus solely on what the French and Americans did years ago. All of the Caribbean islands were colonized/occupied at some point in their history and none today are in the dire situation that Haiti is in. And regarding the sense of entitlement that Melphis mentioned earlier, correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that he was referring to the Haitians in DR which do, in fact, feel entitled to be in DR as the prevailing attitude amongst many Haitians to this day is that the DR rightfully belongs to them and the smear campaigns that many of them have engaged in against the DR when the government doesn't bend to their every whim regarding who is entitled to Dominican citizenship.

Fatfingered the dislike button.

 

[the gorgon]

Without scripting a manifesto that most would not be interested in, the significance of the Haitian passport scam is that it is just one more example of the exploitation of the Haitian people, by people that they are asked to place trust in. You are correct in your declaration that Haiti has been a "basket case" for more than two years, and I find it ironic that "basket case" is an acceptable term, but sh*thole is not.

if you cannot understand the difference between calling a country a basket case, and calling it a sh!thole, ther is no further value to debating you.

 

[the gorgon]

....being American and having ancestors that are both European and native American...I am on both sides of the fence, and not feeling conflicted at all...the plight of native Americans,that live on reservations in the USA in most cases are terrible...high use of drugs,alcohol. rate of suicide and all that goes with those things...almost a hopeless situation .....Doc........

and do you think that the conditions they endured at the hands of the settlers from Europe has any bearing on their condition today? i have to ask these questions, because i am reluctant to joing the crowd that believes that some people are inferior, and therefore the outcomes in their communities are less optimal than those in the better populations.

 

[the gorgon]

Interesting conversation with many valid points being made here. However, most seem to not want to mention or only timidly suggest the other main culprit to Haiti's current state: It's own people.

Let's all be honest and agree that not all cultures are equal and some are superior to others due to many factors such as customs, mannerisms, way of life, culture, religious beliefs (in some cases). With those things in mind, it is not difficult to see that Haitians and mainly Haitians are the main culprit behind their own misery. It started with racially cleansing their population of anyone who was not black, prohibiting them from owning property, businesses and creating an ethnostate. Add to that backwards customs such as spreading disease by openly defecating in public (which many Haitians also like to do in the DR), the ruthless pillaging of their environment by cutting down all vegetation to turn into coal, their strong attachment to voodoo, the brain drain that others mentioned here and the subsequent effects of those ppl never returning to Haiti, etc., the list goes on. It is disingenous to gloss over these things and focus solely on what the French and Americans did years ago. All of the Caribbean islands were colonized/occupied at some point in their history and none today are in the dire situation that Haiti is in. And regarding the sense of entitlement that Melphis mentioned earlier, correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that he was referring to the Haitians in DR which do, in fact, feel entitled to be in DR as the prevailing attitude amongst many Haitians to this day is that the DR rightfully belongs to them and the smear campaigns that many of them have engaged in against the DR when the government doesn't bend to their every whim regarding who is entitled to Dominican citizenship.

two quick observations..

firstly, you state that the racial purge by the revolutionaries, designed to make the country a black republic, is in part to blame for its demise. i have difficulty accepting that, because i would have to concede that only white people can run countries, and i am not prepared to do that.


secondly, i do not think Haitians, who insinuate themselves into the Dominican countryside, looking to eke out an existence, have a greater sense of entitlement than foreigners in this country, who have lived here for decades, and have no legal documentation to do so.

 

[Caonabo]

Conan O'Brien.....

A: Has a current net worth of $85 million dollars, and earns $12 million per year from the US cable channel TBS.

B: In 2009, O'Brien purchased a $10.5-million mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.

C: On October 21, 2011, O'Brien was ordained as a minister by the Universal Life Church Monastery, allowing him to perform a same-sex marriage while back in New York, then one of the few states in the US where gay marriage was legal, to tape a week's worth of shows. The wedding, between a member of O'Brien's staff and his partner, was held on the stage of the Beacon Theatre on November 3, 2011, and broadcast on Conan.

D: With thanks to the website, tvbythenumbers, let us take a peek at the mathematics which guide the North American television entertainment industry. Ratings or shares of a particular audience, which help create advertising revenue, and thereby reflect their successes or downfalls. Not good news for Mr. O'Brien.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/weekly-ratings/late-night-ratings-jan-1-5-2018/

It seems Mr. O'Brien will do anything to try and increase his ratings in order to keep himself pertinent in the entertainment industry. Even if that includes exploiting Haiti, and it's populace for his own personal gain. Shameless.

 

[Caonabo]

if you cannot understand the difference between calling a country a basket case, and calling it a sh!thole, ther is no further value to debating you.

It is called being forthright, and I was not debating you. Not every discussion is a debate.

 

[Caonabo]

I presume Mr. O'Brien grew tired of waiting for Pootie Tang 2 to be scripted.

 

[Naked_Snake]

two quick observations..

firstly, you state that the racial purge by the revolutionaries, designed to make the country a black republic, is in part to blame for its demise. i have difficulty accepting that, because i would have to concede that only white people can run countries, and i am not prepared to do that.

Them whites might not be the only ones capable to run countries successfully, but at the time and that specific scenario, they were the only capable ones to run that colony, cuz the mulattoes (and the occasional black caudillo, f.ex.: Riché, Guerrier, Soulouque, Salomon, etc.) that ended up substituting them at the top of the totem pole simply proved not to be up to the task, as events would show. For that reason alone is that many historians don't blame Toussaint for not wanting to declare independence (or kill/force the whites to emigrate) once he found himself the sole ruler of the island, at least not before creating a capable administrator class among his brethen that would be up to the challenge of substituting the colonial bureaucracy once the time came. Sadly, his successor at the helm (Dessalines) had no such compulsions...

 

[Caonabo]

I am off to conference in Madrid, and then on to an art symposium in Florence. I highly doubt much will change in my absence. Whether it be reality, or opinions.

 

[Naked_Snake]

Interesting conversation with many valid points being made here. However, most seem to not want to mention or only timidly suggest the other main culprit to Haiti's current state: It's own people.

Let's all be honest and agree that not all cultures are equal and some are superior to others due to many factors such as customs, mannerisms, way of life, culture, religious beliefs (in some cases). With those things in mind, it is not difficult to see that Haitians and mainly Haitians are the main culprit behind their own misery. It started with racially cleansing their population of anyone who was not black, prohibiting them from owning property, businesses and creating an ethnostate. Add to that backwards customs such as spreading disease by openly defecating in public (which many Haitians also like to do in the DR), the ruthless pillaging of their environment by cutting down all vegetation to turn into coal, their strong attachment to voodoo, the brain drain that others mentioned here and the subsequent effects of those ppl never returning to Haiti, etc., the list goes on. It is disingenous to gloss over these things and focus solely on what the French and Americans did years ago. All of the Caribbean islands were colonized/occupied at some point in their history and none today are in the dire situation that Haiti is in. And regarding the sense of entitlement that Melphis mentioned earlier, correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that he was referring to the Haitians in DR which do, in fact, feel entitled to be in DR as the prevailing attitude amongst many Haitians to this day is that the DR rightfully belongs to them and the smear campaigns that many of them have engaged in against the DR when the government doesn't bend to their every whim regarding who is entitled to Dominican citizenship.

Another thing that killed them in the water was the extreme division of the land that Petion and his successors enacted in favor of the large peasantry once they found themselves as masters of the majority of the plantations. The peasants preferred simply to practice subsistence farming in their little plots instead of attaching themselves to a planter working on an export crop, which killed any chance at them competing successfully on the international markets. Even on the sole crop that managed to survive the fires of the revolution (coffee) they would be eventually outmatched by Brazilian and Colombian competitors, specially since most of the coffee they exported they simply picked up from which nature itself afforded to them, instead of using the elaborate methods of cultivation the competition used.

 

[jenmar237]

two quick observations..

firstly, you state that the racial purge by the revolutionaries, designed to make the country a black republic, is in part to blame for its demise. i have difficulty accepting that, because i would have to concede that only white people can run countries, and i am not prepared to do that. .

I didn't say only white ppl can run countries that is your (mis)interpretation. However, it is an undisputable fact that whites did run Haiti better and that all of the Caribbean and dare I say even African countries that remained under colonial rule for longer periods are to this day outperforming the islands and countries that have not. You not being prepared to accept this reality does not change the fact that it is true.

secondly, i do not think Haitians, who insinuate themselves into the Dominican countryside, looking to eke out an existence, have a greater sense of entitlement than foreigners in this country, who have lived here for decades, and have no legal documentation to do so.

Haitians DO have a sense of entitlement with regard to being allowed to stay in the DR regardless of their immigration status and obtain citizenship in violation of our laws. Anyone who knows and understands the history between the two countries know this. Haitians feel the DR is really their land that belongs to them and will fight tooth and nail as they have shown with their smear campaigns to defamate the DR, even though they keep coming to the DR in hordes and it is Haitians by far who comprise the largest population of 'foreigners' in the DR without legal documentation.

 

[bob saunders]

I researched on google and read a few dozen articles on what is the most successful black majority country- most say Gabon, and a couple mention the Bahamas. I guess it comes down to how you define success. I worked for a black officer from Madagascar. Highly educated and intelligent. I met several of his nieces , who were educated in France and Sweden. These people would be capable of running a country well, given their education and intelligence. I will stick to my theory that the best and brightest leave these countries, never to return. The brain drain is large enough that it affects the ability of these countries to develop properly. That plus greedy and corrupt leaders that have no moral barriers to stop them from slaughtering anyone that gets in their way.

 

[cobraboy]

I researched on google and read a few dozen articles on what is the most successful black majority country- most say Gabon, and a couple mention the Bahamas. I guess it comes down to how you define success. I worked for a black officer from Madagascar. Highly educated and intelligent. I met several of his nieces , who were educated in France and Sweden. These people would be capable of running a country well, given their education and intelligence. I will stick to my theory that the best and brightest leave these countries, never to return. The brain drain is large enough that it affects the ability of these countries to develop properly. That plus greedy and corrupt leaders that have no moral barriers to stop them from slaughtering anyone that gets in their way.

There is a brain drain from the DR also...

 

[mofongoloco]

How much time, effort, and money have you personally contributed to helping the Haitians here in the DR. It's nice to sit back and criticise and tell everyone to give more.
It's another thing to get off your butt and help out for a few years and see your efforts are a waste of time as these people have a sense of entitlement that puts Paris Hilton to shame.
But your point of "screw them and let them rot" has some validity to it.

Haitians have a sense of entitlement?  What planet?  The average Pierre on the street expects nothing from their government. They know that if they don’t work they don’t eat.  Diaspora Haitians in dr expect nothing more than a few pesos at the end of a hard day laboring under the sun. 

Diaspora Haitians in the USA...you got a valid point. Very similar to the diaspora Dominicans in the USA.  Tío/Oncle Sam and our weak willed politicians of both stripes have created this immigration problem.  

Just got back from Haiti. 

I was disgusted by all the volunteers “helping” poor Haiti.  Missionaries spending thousands of dollars to travel to Haiti to paint a wall in a school. Nothing more than Instagram moment.  

NGO and UN types were staying at my hotel.  I could overhear their conversations about various projects.   The lunch they were chomping down on their per diems cost more than a day’s wage for the average Haitian. 

Haiti’s most valuable resource has always been its human capital.  It has always been squandered.  First by the French and next by elite Haitians who consider the,selves a breed apart.  

 

[mofongoloco]

an appointed administrative entity?

appointed by whom?

and exactly who is going to decide on the development parameters?

foreigners?

do you not think that a vast portion of the problems in Haiti have been occasioned by foreigners?

does anybody here who blames the Haitians for the disaster they find themselves in understand that in 1805 France demanded that the Haitian government pay them a compensation package of 20 billion dollars, in today's money? in order to come up with that money, Haiti had top borrow it from whom? ahh..you guessed it...French banks....with onerous interest payments. the last payment was made in 1947!

as i said, there is enough blame to go around.

FRance don’t demand payment. It was more like...if you wanna play with the big boys you gotta pay up.  International trade is done by mutual agreement of sovereign nations.  Well now it does.  Back then the prevailing economic model was mercantilism usually based on the use of slave/indentured servant/serf labor depending on geographic location and century. 

Haiti needed customers for its sugar.  

That said...Haiti is the only country that I know of which defeated its enemy and then paid reparations to its enemy. 

France needs to either cut a big fat check for the value of their “property” aka human souls or take it in as a client state. France doesn’t have the excuse of not knowing better.  They were fully enlightened when they made that decision.  The enlightenment and all being French. Les droits d’homme and all that stuff. 

We did the same thing with Haiti.  But that’s international trade for ya.  


I read an essay years ago which hinted that it was the treatment of slaves as less than human which led to notions of individual liberty in the USA. Helped inch us toward throwing off the yoke of tyranny, supposedly.

Of course, British North America was already treated better than most of the other colonials.  We reluctantly rebelled against England. Well, by that time it was uk. But th USA was mostly English, not British or other European. Right up to the 1830’s. 

 

[mofongoloco]

Haitians #1 mistake was not killing all the French on the island 200+ years ago. Certainly they had the army and will to do so, and still pose a fearsome, significant threat to any invaders trying to re-shackle what they fought for: Freedom.

Instead, they allowed themselves, once again, to be sold into virtual slavery. That was just dumb. Thay got snookered.

They have no one to blame but themselves. They made a choice and have never been able to recover.

I doubt Haiti can be fixed.

Excuse my ignorance, but I thought they did kill or kick out whites and gen de colour.  It was so complicated with free blacks, petit blancs, etc.  I thought that the white equivalent people picked up and escaped to New Orleans, giving that city its unique cultural flair. The French went back to France. 

The kingdom in the north and the republic in the south in the decades after the revolution developed along different lines. The north continued with large plantations and forced labor, no different than slavery to the person cutting th cane. The south parcelled up the land to individuals and it didn’t develop as well. 

 

[cobraboy]

Excuse my ignorance, but I thought they did kill or kick out whites and gen de colour.  It was so complicated with free blacks, petit blancs, etc.  I thought that the white equivalent people picked up and escaped to New Orleans, giving that city its unique cultural flair. The French went back to France. 

The kingdom in the north and the republic in the south in the decades after the revolution developed along different lines. The north continued with large plantations and forced labor, no different than slavery to the person cutting th cane. The south parcelled up the land to individuals and it didn’t develop as well. 

I refer to the slave rebellion when the French cut their deal than has damned Haiti to this day. They should have killed the French instead of going into their deep debt.

There have been other purges, yes.

But one cannot only look at outsiders as causing Haiti's problems. Fact is Haitians were not prepared to govern themselves when they "won" their "freedom" from the Freench slavemasters.

 

[mofongoloco]

help me out, please, by explaining the significance of the Haitian passport scam, insofar as it has a determining effect on Haiti today. if i read it right, it happened maybe 2 years ago. Haiti was a basket case long ago.

let us get some perspective here. the Duvalier mob was a gang of thieves, but they did not clean out the treasury, because ther wasn't much to steal. the Haitian government was working with the Swiss government , trying to get them to pressure the banks who were holding 6 million dollars deposited there by the entire Duvalier family. six million is peanuts...

just remember who backed them in power...they used to use USAID trucks to ferry their supporters for political rallies.

I REMember annarticle featuring michelle Duvalier. Maybe a decade after she and baby doc escaped in that white Mercedes and michelle dressed head to toe in white. Probably Vanityfair. Man, she looked good.  She feigned surprise that she was being compared to Imelda Marcos.  I got the sense that it kinda thrilled her.

Dang, she did look good that night. 

 

[the gorgon]

I didn't say only white ppl can run countries that is your (mis)interpretation. However, it is an undisputable fact that whites did run Haiti better and that all of the Caribbean and dare I say even African countries that remained under colonial rule for longer periods are to this day outperforming the islands and countries that have not. You not being prepared to accept this reality does not change the fact that it is true.



Haitians DO have a sense of entitlement with regard to being allowed to stay in the DR regardless of their immigration status and obtain citizenship in violation of our laws. Anyone who knows and understands the history between the two countries know this. Haitians feel the DR is really their land that belongs to them and will fight tooth and nail as they have shown with their smear campaigns to defamate the DR, even though they keep coming to the DR in hordes and it is Haitians by far who comprise the largest population of 'foreigners' in the DR without legal documentation.

now that you have taken the scenic route to reiterating that white people are better able to run countries, i am prepared to hear you attempt to offer some reasons why this is a reality, in your assessment.