All I know about Haiti is that it’s poor almost beyond words, while the Dominican Republic isn’t. And, I remember the boat people off Florida. And AIDS. I remember Haiti’s association with AIDS. Here’s an example:
“AIDS Virus Traveled to Haiti, Then U.S., Study Says”
Amitabh Avasthi for National Geographic News
October 29, 2007
HIV went directly from Africa to Haiti, then spread to the United States and much of the rest of the world beginning around 1969, suggests an international team of researchers.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071029-aids-haiti.html
“Haiti: The High Price of Stigma”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/countries/ht.html
I hadn’t heard the bit about any pact, so I went hunting. I don’t know much about Haiti, and wondered where Robertson got the information.
“God, Satan, and the Birth of Haiti” October, 2005
Part One Jean R. Gelin, Ph.D.
http://www.blackandchristian.com/articles/academy/gelin-10-05.shtml
“Have you ever heard how some preachers or theologians try to explain the unspeakable misery that is crippling most of Haiti’s population of 8 million? Everywhere you go, from your television screen to the Internet, what you are most likely to find is a reference to a spiritual pact that the fathers of the nation supposedly made with the devil to help them win their freedom from France. As a result of that satanic alliance, as they put it, God has placed a curse on the country some time around its birth, and that divine burden has made it virtually impossible for the vast majority of Haitians to live in peace and prosperity in their land. Surprising, right?
The satanic pact allegedly took place at Bois-Caïman near Cap-Haïtien on August 14, 1791 during a meeting organized by several slave leaders, under [Dutty] Boukman’s leadership, before launching what would become Haiti’s Independence War. This brutal period lasted 13 years until the last survivors of the French expeditionary forces, dispatched to Saint-Domingue with the sole purpose to re-establish slavery, were allowed by Dessalines to leave the island and return to Napoleon. Those who made it safely to France wrote and reported about the utmost bravery and supreme courage of Haiti’s indigenous army.
Obviously, the idea that Haiti was dedicated to Satan prior to its independence is a very serious and profound statement with potentially grave consequences for its people in terms of how they are perceived by others or how the whole nation is understood outside its borders. One would agree that such a strong affirmation should be based on solid historical and scriptural ground. But, although the satanic pact idea is by far the most popular explanation for Haiti’s birth as a free nation, especially among Christian missionaries and some Haitian Church leaders, it is nothing more than a fantasist opinion that ultimately dissipates upon close examination.”
CEREMONY BWA KAYIMAN, PART 1
Marguerite Laurent
“But the Africans who became Haitians in the land of the Taino/Arawak Amerindians had to pull hard for the psychic energy within themselves that would allow them to kill the current of negative European energies swallowing them whole.
And when these Blacks, on a hilltop at a wood clearing called “Bwa Kayiman,” had reached back, past their divisions, past even the God making impulses that creates dictators. Way back. Past self-gratification. Past giving any one particular element - spirit or thought abstraction - omniscient sovereignty; way past these twilights and a thousand eternities. Then this, this spiritual consensus, this, a new psychic wave, was reached. The differing African groups in Haiti were then so quickened, that together as one PSYCHIC FORCE, they had passed Babylon’s babbling towers, setting a new watercourse beyond forever: transmuting mental spasms and a cacophony of noises into ONE TONGUE, one powerful action - swearing to God and the Devil to be free or die.”
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/writings/bwakayiman.html
There’s a whole lot of traffic on this idea, actually:
“a1063: Haiti and the Pact with Satan - Another View (fwd)”
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg10954.html
Gives me fear to think of Obama-style leadership per Haiti's crisis. America on it's ear; thanks to Obama Lefties needing, using crisis to move their agenda forward per their MO. We know too, because Obama spoke to this - and Rev. Wright -that this impoverished country is white America's fault.
That said; how much more money will we now print, on Haiti's behalf. What, beyond America's charity, might be considered.