Posted on 01/17/2010 2:30:27 PM PST by B-Chan
As we look with dismay and growing horror at the apocalypse in Haiti, we can't help but feel sympathy for the people of Port-au-Prince. Having lived through a major quake myself (Northridge '94, 6.6 Richter), I can assure you that their terror is profound, their suffering is real. It goes without saying that you all should give generously to Haitian relief via the charity of your choice.
But aid money isn't going to fix Haiti, because Haiti's problems are not economic in nature. (Nor are they related to a voodoo curse, as TV preacher Pat Robertson claimed last week.) Haiti's primary problem is the Haitian people. It's a hard saying, but I'll say it anyway: the people of Haiti — or, rather, their African/slave-derived culture — is the source of the bulk of the nation's misery and heartache. By clinging to their nation's Revolutionary culture and West African religious tradition, the people of Haiti only prolong the conditions that make their nation a world-class hellhole.
And there's no good reason that Haiti should be a hellhole. Biologically, Haitians are just as capable of building a successful country as anyone else. The country is rich in natural resources. The climate (barring an occasional hurricane) is ideal for productive agriculture. The location of Haiti is well suited for tourism, trade, and doing business in the Americas; and the potential for the growth of both low-wage labor employment and higher-wage manufacturing, technical, and service industries in Haiti is quite high, as is demonstrated by Haiti's relatively prosperous next-door neighbor the Dominican Republic. Given all of these advantages, why does life in Haiti suck so hard?
It's the culture. All the money in the world won't matter to the average Haitian until he or she (and, by extension, the society in which they live) are divorced from the anti-human, anti-freedom culture established by the genocides of the Haitian Revolution. The only way to "fix" Haiti is to effect this divorce, and replace the culture of corruption and superstition with one based upon trust and reason.
But how? History shows us that only by conquest and occupation has a native culture been superseded by an imposed culture. Perhaps Haiti needs to be conquered and rebuilt in the image of its conqueror -- for its own good. A case can be made that the best thing that could happen to Haiti would be an invasion and occupation in the style of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's culturally-transformative occupation of Japan (1945-1952).
Of course, I'm not suggesting that the United States repeat its nation-building Japanese performance in Haiti. France, Haiti's former colonial master, is the actor best suited to assume the role of benign conqueror: to take over the country, establish public order (at gunpoint, if necessary), and to root out the voodoo/slave culture that is poisoning the country. Once order is established and a culture based upon the dignity of the human person takes root (c. 10-30 years), Haitians will be free to succeed as the Dominican Republic has. Until then, Haiti will remain the basket case of the Caribbean, a body politic fatally poisoned by the toxins from an nonviable culture, immune to even heroic doses of foreign aid.
That being said: human life comes before everything, and the lives of the people who survive the quake must be preserved. That's why I ask that everyone donate to Haitian quake relief via the charity of your choice.
No, money won't solve Haiti's problems. Only French paratroopers — or a social and cultural order imposed in some other form — will begin to do that. Until the country is reborn in a form that can survive, the Haitian people will only continue to suffer — victims of a way of life that simply does not work.
Lets not lose sight of the fact that the Richter Scale is base 10 logarithmic. The Richter rating is obtained by calculating the logarithm (base-10) of the combined horizontal amplitude of the largest displacement from zero on a Wood–Anderson torsion seismometer. So an earthquake that measures 7.0 (Haiti 2010) on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude four times larger than one that measures 6.6 (Northridge 1994).
The energy release of an earthquake (which closely correlates to its destructive power) scales with the 3⁄2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus we have a power difference(10^(7.0-6.6))^(3/2)or about 3.98107 or about a 400% increase in power released by the Haiti quake compared to Northridge quake as a baseline. Not really even close to equal.
Regards,
GtG
I’m glad you found our Northridge Earthquake experience funny. I didn’t see much humor in it myself: I was buried in the contents of my office, and my wife sustained third-degree burns during our clamber over the rubble surrounding our building as we ran for our lives through the pre-dawn darkness. We both had to be treated for PTSD later as well. Yeah, what a laff riot that was.
We lived in Sherman Oaks, 6.29 miles from the epicenter, and there were collapsed buildings and dead people all over the neighborhood due to soil liquifaction. I’m happy you had a laugh wherever you were on that day.
We have come to the same conclusion. As I watched the tragedy in Haiti and thought about the many problems of the nation, I began to realive that we are developing our own Haiti in Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans. A large part of the African-American population is rejecting Christian culture and reverting back to African culture. A majority of black kids do not have a father in their lives. You just cannot maintain anything that resembles a normal society under those circumstances but the only thing we get is silence and denial from the liberal leadership. Even conservatives are afraid to say anything.
It’s the culture stupid!
RE: “We ‘lived through” Northridge, too, and it was by no means major. What happened then cannot be compared to what happened in Haiti.”
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I had a condo 2 miles from the epicenter — it was destroyed. Did you never see all the photos of the gas caused fires, explosions, ‘pancaked’ buildings with floors that fell onto each other, killing many and injuring more?
Did you not see the multitudes from various types of housing, displaced and camping out in public parks for WEEKS? I could not get back into my totally rebuilt condo for 1.5 years. It had to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Structures all over the city of L.A. and parts of Ventura County were affected — Brentwood/Santa Monica, Simi Valley, parts of Thousand Oaks, Hollywood and most of the San Fernando Valley suffered damage from ‘cosmetic’ to severe. Stores were trashed; all goods were ruined and on the floor, glass broken everywhere, no electricity and streets lights out for days.
And you think this was NOT major? It WAS major! No one other than you disputes that.
I have been to Haiti — it is a sewer, fraught with problems unfixable by foreign aid unless the entire place is torn down and a decent government installed. There are plenty of good people in Haiti but the government is 100% corrupt and many people are criminals. I have been to the Caribbean some 25 times and visited most islands — Haiti is far and away the worst — and the people/victims there - and their infrastructure - were not prepared for this disaster.
Sounds like pure horshit double talk to me.
It’s nothing to do with religion, and robertson is a fool, yet it’s voodoo that is the problem(which is their religion).
Whatever.
They’re messed up, their economy is pathetic. Their government is a joke. And they worship satan. Why should I listen to this quack that says robertson is a quack?
“Mysterioso” may or may not have been near anything damaged by the Northridge quake but he/she certainly was not paying attention if he/she did not see the horror all around afterwards.
I was 2 miles from the epicenter and lucky to get out of my condo alive. Many in our complex were severely injured. We lost the whole building and were out that day, of course, unable to return for 1.5 years until the entire complex was rebuilt. Yeah, it was a real lark, wasn’t it?
Sounds to me like Mysterioso is one of those who hates CA and wishes we would all crash into the Pacific.
Merely surviving winter is an unattainable feat for some of the less advanced societies. If there were any Haitians left after 10 years I would be surprised.
My interest in earthquakes goes back to the 1952 Kern County event that shook the hell out of us in San Fernando. I've got many books on seismology. I've got the complete report on Northridge. And I say that it was not a major earthquake.
If only I were a rough, tough macho man like your mom is.
She was 84, you schmuck.
I think it is the people....there seems to be some well spoken Haitains but mostly they don’t seem to think beyond what’s for supper.....
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