Washington dictates terms to devastated Haiti

[Hannah Bell]

Former US presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in advance of a donors’ conference in New York City called to coordinate international aid and investment...

Television coverage showed Bush, who had never before set foot in Haiti, shaking hands with quake survivors with a fixed smile on his face, visibly uncomfortable...

The Miami Herald described the scene as Bush, Clinton and Préval entered the refugee camp: “Quake survivors screamed at the three leaders, shouting details of the losses they suffered…. Others took a moment to criticize their own president’s leadership. ‘President Préval has never come to see us before!’ screamed Myrlande Saint-Louis, who lives in the Place Mosolée camp the presidents visited. ‘Now because Bush is here he comes? Now he wants to see us!’ ”

One of the principal purposes of the Clinton-Bush visit was to prod Préval into taking action on a land ownership dispute that has hamstrung efforts to relocate many of the quake survivors. Private landowners in the Haitian elite have been reluctant to make land available, demanding more compensation than the government was in a position to provide. Restrictions on foreign land ownership, rooted in Haiti’s origins 200 years ago in the slave revolt against French plantation owners, have hampered the activities of both foreign NGOs and multinational corporations...

In the course of their visit, both Bush and Clinton preached capitalism as the solution to the appalling conditions of life in Haiti... Clinton called for revision of the US legislation known as HOPE II to expand duty-free access for Haitian garment manufacturers to the US market, claiming “we can create 100,000 jobs in short order.”

Clinton made it clear that these jobs, if they actually were created, would represent a diversion of production to Haiti from other low-wage countries in Asia and Latin America. In other words, Haitian workers would be employed at the expense of workers in China, Korea, Mexico or Brazil.

While hailing the virtues of free trade and free flow of foreign capital into Haiti, Clinton was compelled to admit earlier this month that much of the current economic paralysis in Haiti stems from past free-trade policies promoted by Washington, especially during his own administration (1993-2001).

At a March 10 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton conceded that the abolition of tariffs on imported rice—carried out by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994-1995 at the urging of the Clinton administration—had destroyed Haitian subsistence agriculture.

“It is unrealistic to expect that a country can totally obliterate its capacity to feed itself and just skip a stage of development,” he said. “I had to live every day with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

More importantly, the people of Haiti have to live with it...Haiti has become the fifth-largest export market for US-produced rice, and the leading company is Riceland Foods, based in Stuttgart, Arkansas, Clinton’s home state...

The donors’ conference in New York City, set for March 31, will set the stage for an effective takeover of Haiti by a consortium of foreign powers. The conference is supposed to approve an $11.5 billion aid package for the country, whose distribution will be overseen by an

Interim Haitian Recovery Commission that will give foreigners a formal, voting role on the use of aid money. Clinton is widely expected to be named co-chair, along with Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/hait-m24.shtml


We had this discussion about the destruction of the Haitian rice industry here at DU: even *Clinton* admits that's what happened: "free trade" destroyed Haitian rice production, not soil depletion.

[EFerrari]

1. What is left to steal in Haiti but labor.

I felt ill when reading about a week ago that the Clinton Bush fund finally got around to naming a board of directors.

[Hannah Bell]

2. *land* for corps & foreign ngo's. i feel ill pretty regularly these days.

[leftstreet]

3. +1

:cry:

[truedelphi]

10. I am so seriously cynical at this point that when I think about

"Clinton Bush Fund" naming a board of directors. my mind's eye pictures both men pointing to the pockets containing their wallets, and saying (but not out loud) "I will show you a board of directors - it is right in here."

[aquart]

11. You mean, provide jobs for people who have absolutely NONE?

WAKE UP! This is going to take decades. Haiti's need will continue long into climate disasters closer to home.

Anything that creates jobs and lessens the need for aid is a necessity. That aid is going to have way too many calls upon it. Wait till Bangladesh starts to drown.

In ancient times, before "social justice," people of every color would sell themselves or their children into slavery to prevent starvation which was considered a bad thing. And you're complaining that the jobs offered will be low paid? Guess what? Every job in Haiti is low paid. It is a dirt poor country.

Making the country attractive to investors willing to build buildings that won't fall is the only hope it has. They cannot do it themselves. Not for lack of will, FOR LACK OF MONEY.

This is not the time to worry about Bush exploitation. The Haitians do know how to rid themselves of egregious oppressors.

[EFerrari]

14. Haiti was the wealthiest colony in the new world before we SACKED it.

Wake up, yourself. This is exactly the time to worry about BIPARTISAN exploitation.

/typo

[Mudoria]

25. Before the French sacked it...

[EFerrari]

26. Oh, we were right there with them, just as we are today:

We occupied Haiti for nearly 20 years.

On November 17, 1915, U.S. Marines captured Fort Riviere, a stronghold of the Cacos rebels.

The Haitian government had been receiving large loans from both American and French banks over the past few decades and was growing increasingly incapable in fulfilling their debt repayment. If an anti-American government prevailed under the leadership of Rosalvo Bobo, there would be no promise of any debt repayment, and the refusal of American investments would have been assured. Within six weeks of the occupation, representatives from the United States controlled Haitian customs houses and administrative institutions such as banks and the national treasury. Through American manipulation, 40% of the national income was used to alleviate the debt repayment to both American and French banks.<9>Despite the large sums due to overseas banks, this economic decision ignored the interests of the majority of the Haitian population and froze the economic growth the country needed. For the next nineteen years, advisers of the United States governed the country, enforced by the United States Marine Corps.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Haiti

[Hannah Bell]

19. "investors" = LOL. FUCK "INVESTORS".

FUCKING LOCUSTS.

[Wilms]

4. .

[upi402]

6. oh gawd

:puke: I'm with Hannahbell now:puke:

[leftstreet]

8. No kidding. I can't even finish my sandwich now

:puke:

[upi402]

9. I'm eating seawed of all things!

Seriously, and I never eat this stuff:rofl: :popcorn:

[Solly Mack]

5. k/r

[aquart]

7. Fine. What do YOU all propose?

The place is rubble. Businesses that did exist are rubble. There is NOTHING.

So what's your plan? And be prepared to implement it more than once. This isn't the last deadly disaster we are going to see.

[EFerrari]

12. Well, let's see. As far as I can tell from reading

the reason PaP was so over built and built badly is because the Clinton Administration killed the ag sector in Haiti so people who wanted to eat migrated to the cities. Plus, we keep taking out any leader who won't play ball with the corporati, so there is no viable government to oversee details like building codes. Puppets only have so many hours in a day.

I would suggest that instead of moving this mass of money through either Clinton or BushCo with their sweatshop plans, those funds be administered by an entity that hasn't PREYED upon Haiti, which immediately lets us, Canada and France out of the running. Then, that money needs to be put into as many HAITIAN hands as possible. Oh, and I'd also suggest not replacing three thousand of our troops with mercs -- mercs who had a convention in Las Vegas a coupla weeks ago, to sign up for this latest SACKING of Haiti.

And, lastly, I'd let Aristide come back and allow Haiti to run their own damn elections. Because slavery is against US law and because this hemisphere does not belong to the United States.

Am I leaving any thing out?

[David__77]

16. Rustification.

Self-reliance in food. Strong ties with fellow developing countries. The enforcement of order through organic progressive organization. This of course is not going to happen.

[sabrina 1]

13. I am sick and tired of Clinton's apologies, always after the fact,

for his policies. Rwanda, Haiti. His 'regrets' for being responsible for the media conglomerations and on and on. His promise of 'fixing' the Welfare Bill.

How about we get leaders who get it right the first time, for a change? They think they do whatever they want while in office, and then apologize later to save their legacies or whatever. Millions of dead people later!

It makes me ill to see him dragging that war criminal around the globe, following the money donated by good people in every disaster.

Why is he allowed to be involved in managing that money? All the U.S. has ever done for Haiti is to oppress it and destroy it and support its dictators and overthrow its elected leaders.

I didn't even want to read this OP because I knew it would be more heart-break for Haiti, having the stupid morans who have destroyed this country have the gall to go there with the blatant goal of getting their hands on money that was meant for the people of Haiti

They did the same thing in NOLA. They are beginning to look like a pair of ghouls, jumping on planes to get to every disaster area and grab the money. Disaster Capitalists is all they are.

Who has actually really helped Haiti in the past? Venezuela and other Carribean nations, who have a close attachment to the country.

These two are there because they know we are losing our hold on South America as that region of the world is successfully struggling to get out from under our oppressive and deadly influence.

S. American countries are Haiti's only hope for the future.

Just go home, both of you. Let people who really care about those poor people take care of the situation. You don't belong there.

To see Bush have the nerve to go there after orchestrating the coup against Aristedes!!! And for Clinton to think he could rehabilitate that moron by dragging him around with him!!

To think I used to fight with rightwingers over Clinton.

[Wilms]

15. Clinton doesn't think he could rehabilitate that moron by dragging him around with him.

Clinton thinks he can rehabilitate himself by dragging that moron around with him.

ANYONE looks good compared to a Bush.

:shrug:

[EFerrari]

17. LOL. I never thought of that. You're right.

Oh, geeze.

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. K&R

[maryf]

20. K&Rnt

[blindpig]

21. I'm shocked.

no, not really.

k&r

[madrchsod]

22. maybe clinton should eat a baked mud if he`s that fucking sorry....

[malaise]

23. Watch both of Matthew's lectures on Haiti

http://library.gameology.org/2010/01/20/haiti-history-matthew-smith/

[EFerrari]

24. Thenks for that link. Will do!

[EFerrari]

27. That link went somewhere else

but here's the one for Part 1 and the other three are in the box on the right (More from UF Libraries).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8rttnVwgJE&feature=channel