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Sorry to upset your sensibilities, but you are all more gracious to others than I. I have the disadvantage of a hardened world view that allows a heavy dose of reality and a small dose of misplaced sympathy. I live in the real world, where there is success and failure, intelligence and stupidity. Haiti is a monumental failure.

I have seen enough and while some of these people are probably fine, as a society, they have managed to do little but create squalor and disease. Haiti's only notable export has been AIDS, and even that did not begin there...

The fine people of Singapore have built a sparkling jewel of a city in a mere 50 years with a similar population and starting point. The people of Singapore were brought as Coolie labor from China, India and other places in the British empire to work plantations. The Japanese devastated the city/state during WWII, but the Singaporeans rebuilt... and rebuilt... and rebuilt... and they did not whine about how whitey kept them down. They did not murder all the whites when they got independence... they got busy building an awesome city/state.

Haiti's story was a bit different. Sort of like if Al Sharpton suddenly found himself in charge... The Haitians went on a rampage and murdered nearly all of the whites in 1805 and have reaped what they have sown. A turd-world African failed state in an otherwise largely prosperous hemisphere - every single nation in our hemisphere - except Communist Cuba - is far more prosperous than anything Africa can claim - except Haiti. 200 years after the butchering of the white French, Port Au Prince is still a sewer.

I hope the people do not suffer needlessly, they are fellow human beings. However, Haiti is reaping what it has sown. Nothing good will ever come out of Haiti. Nothing good ever has.

The problem is not the geography, but the people.
Very un-PC, but the truth, like it or not.

Thanks for your comments and analysis. I found them honest and refreshing. The pictures are incredibly instructive.

Some readers will interpret your remarks as racist. I did not find them so. The problem is the society. The people of Haiti are free to create whatever kind of society they want. They can copy the surceases of their island neighbor if they choose to.

When you say "Haiti is reaping what it has sown" I did not interpret that to mean the earthquake but rather the poverty.

The Haitian slaves were treated horribly by the French. Unfortunately, any civilization possessed by captured slaves was systematically eradicated. Also most slaves were captured in rural undeveloped areas, not from the major old cities of Africa. My brother traveled across Africa 35 years ago and said it was amazing how there would be areas well developed and civilized, and then areas very primative.

The Trujillo brothers dictatorship in the Dominican Republic had strict laws about cutting down trees. When they were gone there was some deforestation. Glad to see that it was stopped again.