Why Haiti keeps getting hammered by disasters

Associated Press ^ | Thursday, January 24, 2010 | SETH BORENSTEIN

[skeeter]

Haiti is what happened to slaves who were unlucky enough to have not ended up in the US.

[TADSLOS]

I wonder when the left will start crafting tectonics legislation.

I can hear the loon logic whirring already- "There has to be a man made connection caused by mining and drilling operations that irritates the continental plates to shift. The Haiti earthquake is just another man made disaster."

[presidio9]

The remaining population may want to consider moving. Shut the country down and find somewhere else to live.

They could start by moving 20 miles east. The island of Hispaniola includes both Hati and the Dominican Republic. It is roughly the size of Ireland (the Republic, not the Island of Eire). In the two days since this quake happened, I haven't heard one sentence on the news about how bad things have been in the Dominican.

[TigersEye]

It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments, poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to poverty.

That's an extremely ignorant statement. Poverty is not the starting point of any chain of cause and effect. From that ill-chosen list of causes low literacy rates would come before the rest as a root cause.

[Dick Bachert]

Ignorant + poor + no job = sexual promiscuity. I mean, it’s generally the only thing in your life that feels good and the price is right.

Add lousy sanitation and you get all sorts of diseases, including AIDS.

In some African nations a while back, some morons were telling their people that the cure for AIDS was to have sex with TWO YEAR OLDS!!! TWO YEAR OLDS!!!!!!!

It reports of rapes of two year olds went off the chart.

[End Times Sentinel]

"Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty,"

A lot of what ails Haiti is man made.

How's the voodoo working out for you now?

[lafroste]

That was my thought. Maybe its voodoo and witchcraft instead.

[Chi-townChief]

Tornados are the thing here in Chicago (unless you count fires, floods, and shootings.) When I lived in Cleveland, it was just lots and lots of snow.

[Jedidah]

Who is “we”?

A better idea would be for a capitalist or two to just buy the place and turn it into a tourist haven and industrial center, sans our tax and regulatory burdens.

Golden opportunity.

[Dick Bachert]

Thanks to all of you who posted kind words.

And I’m giddy with excitement for November 2 when we will send most of the Obama Dems packing, essentially neutering him and his not so merry band of Chicago thugs.

The it’s on the 2012 when we get to fumigate the White House.

[presidio9]

Isn't Haiti still officially a Roman Catholic country ?

There are no "official" Roman Catholic countries other than the Holy See. You're probably thinking of Islam. Or Judiasm.

[dljordan]

“That figure seems way off.”

Just Google “U.S. aid to Haiti”. It’s MUCH more than that.

[SMARTY]

2 year olds??? Well, if the child survives, you just guaranteed yourself another couple GENERATIONS of the disease!! Brilliant and SOOOO evolved.

Did the multiculturalist Liberal sh^% heads who swear we are ALL THE SAME, have no objection to the abuse of children...AS POLICY? Are any people on earth the same as me or as good as me, if they do what I could NEVER do???

[lafroste]

It isn’t because of Voodoo. We have a state religion (secular humanism/evolutionism) which is stupider than Voodoo and we don’t seem to suffer from repetitive disasters...

Patience. It starts with sowing the proper political atmosphere so that disasters are really disastrous. Oh, wait a minute....

[Fiji Hill]

In his book The Way the World Works (Simon & Schuster, 1978), economist Jude Wanniski compared Jamaica and Bermuda--two island nations with warm climates and populated largely by English-speaking blacks. In terms of economic performance, Jamaica, with its comparatively low population density and considerable arable land would seem to have the advantage over Bermuda, which is densely populated and lacks enough arable land to sustain a single North Dakota wheat farm. Yet Jamaica is mired in Third World poverty, while Bermuda enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world--or at least it did at the time the book was written.

Wanniski noted that Bermuda had extremely low taxes, including no income tax, while Jamaica had high taxes. I don't know anything about Haiti's tax system, but it probably is not as business-friendly as Bermuda's was at the time Wanniski wrote his book.

[Little Ray]

Actually, I was thinking Palestine - and the Palestinians would be re-located to Haiti.
Solves a bunch of problems. The Israelis get (nominally) Christian neighbors, most of whom will happy for an opportunity to work.
The Palis are finally freed of Israeli “oppression” and get their own homeland.
Only downside is a Muslim nation is the Western Hemisphere.

[Petronski]

Isn't Haiti still officially a Roman Catholic country ?

They're nowhere near Rome.

Buy a globe.

[Grizzled Bear]

It's because global warming climate change causes earthquakes. I need 500,000,000 in research grants to prove it.

[Huck]

Just give some lefty “scientists” a big fat gubmint grant—preferably international in origin—and they’ll come up with something. Maybe all the cars, truck, and trains are creating vibrations that are disturbing the plates and causing more earthquakes than normal! Maybe the hotter global temperatures are contributing to the problem. I mean, it’s not that hard. Hell, I’ve got half a mind to apply for the grant myself. I’m not a scientist, but that shouldn’t be a problem. It’s for a good cause.

[ctdonath2]

Interesting. I’ve long puzzled over why such tropical paradises are not home to great wealth. Seems over-wealth of a location collapses into long-term rank poverty.

Now would be a great time for a developer to buy up a large swath of the area and build, in finest capitalistic form, a planned town (possibly as a software development / web services hotspot). Built with hurricane- and earthquake-withstanding quality in mind, one could build a fantastic hotspot for information services.