Posted on 07/25/2013 8:13:10 PM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
MIAMI (AP) — Leaders of more than a dozen Caribbean countries are launching a united effort to seek compensation from three European nations for what they say is the lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade.
The Caribbean Community, a regional organization that typically focuses on rather dry issues such as economic integration, has taken up the cause of compensation for slavery and the genocide of native peoples and is preparing for what would likely be a drawn-out battle with the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands.
Caricom, as the organization is known, has enlisted the help of a prominent British human rights law firm and is creating a Reparations Commission to press the issue, said Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, who has been leading the effort.
The legacy of slavery includes widespread poverty and the lack of development that characterizes most of the region, Gonsalves said, adding that any settlement should include a formal apology, but contrition alone would not be sufficient.
"The apology is important but that is wholly insufficient," he said in a phone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. "We have to have appropriate recompense."
The notion of forcing the countries that benefited from slavery to pay reparations has been a decades-long quest. Individual countries including Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda already had existing national commissions. Earlier this month, leaders from the 14 Caricom nations voted unanimously at a meeting in Trinidad to wage a joint campaign that those involved say would be more ambitious than any previous effort.
Each nation that does not have a national reparations commission agreed to set one up, sending a representative to the regional commission, which would be overseen by prime ministers.
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
LOL
Unless they live in a hotel I wouldn’t say they have air conditioning and I can think of a famous bar on the backside of Martinique.(can’t recall the name but, I know him to get there, b-cuz, like, there is this one road that circles the island )
Anyway, no airconditioning, no electricity. Just a generator for the ice machine and blender.
You want fresh fish? OMG!!! They catch it all day long.
Man. I gotta get back there.
Interesting and sketchy main town they have but, it was fun to laugh with the locals and some hot chick took me to the other port and we had lunch .
Great day.
Oh, and the port had plenty of Martinique”sometime” electricity.
Awesome place and glad I ran into that gal. She wa fun. wish I could have stayed one more day.
OK: You reparations putzes all have to give up everything you own now, your citizenship in your respective nations, and you must move to the part of Africa that represents your tribal homeland. You will then be in the same position you would have been in but for slavery. The USA will pay to send you over there. Any takers?
Portugal were transporters,
“Haiti is the clearest example of why those islands could not successfully manage a real government.
Haiti went from an agricultural success under the French to a barren wasteland under black governments.
Europe had nothing to do with their present degraded status. They Pogo’d themselves.”
I don’ believe that. The Europeans had horrific dictatorial regimes in the slave islands of the Caribbean. When the former slaves came to power, they merely continued the same form of government, often refusing to make the former slaves free land holders and continuing the rule of an “elite”. The least worst of these were the British, but even in Jamaica, Barbados, and the other British isles, the Brits maintained their large estates. In the other islands, either the Euro-Caribbeans kept their big estates, or, as in Haiti, the big estates were taken over by the same kind of elites. Cuba is a great example. There are almost no descendants of slaves in power positions.
If you keep the focus on Haiti, I think you will find a successful French colony, with Christianity as an imposed cultural value being part of the reason for the success. Then, there was a slave revolt tied in with the values of the French revolution. The Europeans lost their power, Haiti became independent, blacks achieved positions of power, and Christianity went into decline while voodoo became a surprisingly powerful force on the island.
Hasn’t worked out well. Blacks have been screwing up blacks on Haiti for over 200 years. They were much better off when France had control. Legacy of slavery? That’s hardly their problem.
“Haiti went from an agricultural success under the French to a barren wasteland under black governments.”
Haiti is the second oldest independent country in our hemisphere (1804); it was formed when the slaves revolted against the French. As such, it has no claim on white peoples’ money (though they may dispute the “agricultural success” analysis). It became a barren wasteland because it basically was an African country in the Caribbean in 1804.
“They were much better off when France had control.”
The country may have functioned better before as a white colony with black slaves; blacks were certainly not better off under the French. Today, in all of their misery, they can still leave for NY or Montreal; they couldn’t do that as slaves.
“The famous “Gimme, gimme, gimme” campaign. I’m sure it will be a resounding success.”
The intended targets of the scam have no money to give them, and their own share of blacks with their hands out for freebies. Is there anywhere on this Earth that blacks don’t have their hands out to whites for money? The conference is in Trinidad (an oil-producing country); black countries have oil, gold, and minerals. Yet, I don’t doubt that in 2000 years the same nonsense will be carried on...
How about giving them a dollar and call it a day....
They don’t seem to be particularly worse off than the citizens of the modern-day African nations their ancestors came from.
I posted:
“Haiti is the clearest example of why those islands could not successfully manage a real government.
Haiti went from an agricultural success under the French to a barren wasteland under black governments.
Europe had nothing to do with their present degraded status. They Pogo’d themselves.”
Your reply:
I don’ believe that. The Europeans had horrific dictatorial regimes in the slave islands of the Caribbean. When the former slaves came to power, they merely continued the same form of government, often refusing to make the former slaves free land holders and continuing the rule of an “elite”.
Thanks for making my point. Had they just adopted the American governmental form, they would not be the tribal wasteland they now are. Tribal societies are savage and destructive, whether in Haiti or Detroit.
The Haitians are their own worst enemies. They really have Pogo’d themselves.
“The least worst of these were the British, but even in Jamaica, Barbados, and the other British isles, the Brits maintained their large estates. In the other islands, either the Euro-Caribbeans kept their big estates, or, as in Haiti, the big estates were taken over by the same kind of elites. Cuba is a great example. There are almost no descendants of slaves in power positions.”
The above proves my point. Once the colonial governments were removed, those tribes could have adopted a national model based on the most successful nation state - America.
But - they wanted to remain true to their “culture”. They chose to remain tribal/black and the rest followed.
To borrow a phrase from the ‘black activists, Once you go tribal, you’ll never go back.
Pogo’d, Pogo’d, Pogo’d Po........
Their economic decline, overwhelming corruption and iron-fisted oppression of the general population in the modern era generally starts with Duvalier.
When we lived there in the 80's and Baby Doc was still President-a-vie (!) we were given accounts by Haitians that pre-Papa, the country was "prosperous" for most throughout the country...meaning, people in the cities and in the rural areas had food and shelter and went about their daily lives without fear.
Not so, once Papa Doc was elected and then declared himself president for life...
“I wasn’t aware of any Portuguese colonies in the
Caribbean.”
I thought the topic was the slave trade, in which the Portugese were among the first, if not the first. They had established an active and lucrative business supplying slaves to South America, and no doubt Caribbean islanders as well.
The first African slaves landed at the Jamestown colony were brought by a Portugese slaver bound for South America but blown off course by a storm.
According to Guy Priddell, “We began at Jamestown ...
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