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I have friends that went down for the earthquake. They were giving aid and had to be guarded by armed police. People were looting and wrecking everything that was still standing. The country got a lot of aid money, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. No doubt there is a lot of corruption. I doubt conditions in the country will get much better.
Actually the country itself didn't get the money. It went to all those charities who didn't dole it out and still have not doled it all out.
Yes and France as well. The whole situation there is sad but the point was to make an example of Haiti to discourage other colonies from fighting colonial rule.
Usually the main suspect should be the dude who's still standing the next morning and announcing that everything's under control and the Army and police are occupying strategic positions in the country..
The U.S. is not fully to blame for Haiti though. It wasn’t fine. Haità was bankrupted by France, as the only country that had to pay reparations to the slave-owning nation for their freedom. They paid France until 1947, the equivalent of $21 billion. France drained them of funds for development. Then the U.S. and Haiti’s own leaders (i.e. the Duvaliers) placed the nation in a worse condition.
As Stephen Keppel of the Economist Intelligence Unit puts it, Haiti's revolution may have brought it independence but it also "ended up destroying the country's infrastructure and most of its plantations. It wasn't the best of starts for a fledgling republic." Moreover, in exchange for diplomatic recognition from France, the new republic was forced to pay enormous reparations: some 150m francs, in gold. It was an immense sum, and even reduced by more than half in 1830, far more than Haiti could afford.
"The long and the short of it is that Haiti was paying reparations to France from 1825 until 1947," says Von Tunzelmann. "To come up with the money, it took out huge loans from American, German and French banks, at exorbitant rates of interest. By 1900, Haiti was spending about 80% of its national budget on loan repayments. It *completely wrecked their economy. By the time the original reparations and interest were paid off, the place was basically destitute and trapped in a *spiral of debt. Plus, a succession of leaders had more or less given up on trying to resolve Haiti's problems, and started looting it instead."
Out of curiosity, how much of our debt is going to loan repayment?
Yes and France as well. The whole situation there is sad but the point was to make an example of Haiti to discourage other colonies from fighting colonial rule.
The US also tried to do that with Cuba and failed.
I admit I don't know enough about this subject or Haiti in general to make an informed post. I don't know if he was a bad guy that had it coming for mistreating people or what it was.
On the flip side you have people that are trying to legitimately make improvements in the citizens lives and they gets taken out by people that want to keep the status quo, so it can go both ways.
The PM announced that he is in charge now. He was just appointed PM in April.
Not much is known about this guy but he spent a lot of time in the US and earned his doctorate from "The New School" in NY..a progressive think tank school.
The PM announced that he is in charge now. He was just appointed PM in April.
Not much is known about this guy but he spent a lot of time in the US and earned his doctorate from "The New School" in NY..a progressive think tank school.
Well, we all know what good Progessives do to the cities, states and countries they infect
Well, we all know what good Progessives do to the cities, states and countries they infect
Remember Teresa Ghilarducci ? She came from The New School and tried to convince Congress that the government should take over IRA/401K accounts because us peons didn't know how to manage our money.
3 days of hearings but thank the stars that our laws were not so easy to change.
After that she got labeled "the Most Dangerous Woman in America" by US News and World Report.
I followed that one closely, very closely and was preparing "First National Bank of the Mattress" for a big deposit should Congress make any move to implement that.
Gee will Biden do as Clinton did in 1994 and Bush in 2004 and send American troops in ??? Good bye Afghanistan...hello Haiti??? Let the Caribbean states/UN (minus the French)deal with it America has its own serious internal problems that need cleaning up.
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