Posted on 01/15/2010 6:44:53 PM PST by Rhonda Robinson
It only took a few days for the Left to come crawling out from under the rubble and blame the U.S. for Haiti’s suffering. Stopping just short of blaming U.S. policies for the actual earthquake, Bill Quigley, in The Huffington Post portrays America as the evil master that holds the life of the poorest countries in the palm of its hand and squeezes.
“Part of the suffering of Haiti is indeed “Made in the USA.” While the earthquake would harm any country, actions by the United States have absolutely magnified the harm from the earthquake in Haiti.”
“How? In the last decade alone, the U.S. slashed humanitarian assistance to Haiti, blocked international loans, forced the government of Haiti to downsize, ruined tens of thousands of small farmers, and replaced the government with private non-governmental organizations.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
France’s fault.
The United States as a whole obviously isn’t to blame, however we do accede to a political system that is captured by special interests. Fighting these special interests is one of the main tenants of the Tea Party movement.
Special interests in the United States agribusiness community have captured the US policy on subsidizing US agrobusiness. For the several billions a year in direct subsidies that US agrobusiness have bought from Congress from the pockets of US taxpayers, the US taxpayers are also footing the secondary and tertiary consequences of the skewed laws and market subsidies of the United States agro marketplace.
The United States passed laws that totally f****d over, and in the last 20 years starved to death, several million in Haiti, Burkina Faso, Benin, huge swathes of Central and sub-Saharan Africa, rural and frontier Brazil, and many other areas of the world.
The taxpayers of the OECD countries are getting f****d on both sides of the equation and the peasants of the third world are dying from destroyed domestic economies.
The US laws on agriculture commidity subsidies plus the strong arming of Haiti’s corrupt elite by American agrobusinesses’ financial elites is utterly insane and IS directly responsible for the collapse of Haiti’s domestic agricultural industry in the last 20 years. Take more than a cursory look at the situation... and try to come around to a different conclusion, I don’t think it’s possible.
Republicans are not free of blame here. Much of the collapse of Haiti’s domestic economy is a direct result of farm state Republicans’ plundering of the US treasury and outright tragedy of the commons stealing of marketshare through subsidies from Haiti’s domestic agro commodity.
And the Faustian deal that Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon made with Papa Doc Duvalier in order to gain his support against Castro, while Duvalier decimated Haiti’s producer class.
No good deed goes unpunished. You should know that by now.
I'm all for defunding them, and for getting out of their little communist sewing circle, but most of the countries they have helped make into third-world hellholes would be moving way up the technological spectrum to keep that bunch pumping something so advanced as a septic tank.
Let’s quote Steyn on this; I like his “take”. From a recent interview:
HH: Mark Steyn, I know, I assume, and I think I’m right about this that you’ll agree with me in rejecting Pat Robertson’s analysis of why this happened. But why is it that Haiti is such a basket case?
MS: Well, for a start, it was a French colony rather than a British colony. I mean, we can make that comparison almost anywhere in the world. I’m a bit of an old school British imperialist, and I know obviously the majority of your listeners for very good historical reasons will have a different view on that, but generally, and it’s a good guide in the world, even in the worst parts of the world, that if you’re trying to do business, it’s easier to do business in Malaysia, say, than Indonesia. And if you’re trying to do business, obviously, you’re better off in Jamaica than Cuba, and you’re certainly better off in Jamaica than in Haiti. And I think what it is, is that no nation was ever really built there. It’s always very moving to me when you go to the British Caribbean, if you go to Barbados or the Bahamas, or wherever, and you go into those little parliaments, which are like little, mini Westminsters, you see the speaker with his wig, and the mace, and hansard, just like in London or Ottawa or Canberra, whatever one feels about imperialism, functioning societies were built there. There has never been a functioning civil society or public infrastructure in Haiti. And so when a natural phenomenon strikes, it’s devastating there, not just by comparison with an earthquake in California, but even by the standards of an earthquake in Iran, for example.
HH: I am hopeful that, when we come back, I’ll talk more about the relief effort in Haiti, but I’m hopeful maybe we can get the British imperialists to take over Chicago for a while, and introduce some semblance of civilized government there.
From here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2428872/posts
“I don’t know how much money the US has given Haiti freely over the past 2 decades, but I believe in the past 2 years alone we’ve given over a billions dollars to Haiti. Not a million, but a Billion with a B.”
Actually NINE BILLION in the last 10 years. (figure was referenced last night on FR) Not to mention the 200,000 illegal haitians and the 800,000 legal ones we’ve given a home and endless contributions to.
“For FY 2009 the USG is
providing over $142.7 million,”
http://www.usaid.gov/ht/docs/iip/investing_in_people_one_page.pdf
BTW, Haiti’s debt to the USA and others, 1.2 Billion $$$ has been cancelled.
http://us.oneworld.net/article/365154-haiti-secures-billion-dollar-debt-cancellation
I do know that but I still get ticked off. We are always the bad guy and even when we do good they find something to twist in their own nasty ways.
Reads as though their credit report might be better than ours.
“Reads as though their credit report might be better than ours.”
Well, you can bet no one is going to forgive any USA debt.
The real problem here is that Haitians would rather indulge in magical thinking than do the tough work of organizing a civil society.
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