Posted on 01/13/2012 7:07:17 AM PST by C19fan
Two years after a devastating earthquake, Haiti is struggling to rebuild its ravaged buildings and hundreds of thousands of victims remain homeless. The 7.0 magnitude quake on January 12, 2010, lasted only a few seconds but killed around 300,000 people and left more than 1.5million without homes. Since then, however, reconstruction has been painfully slow, with squalid tent camps housing more than a half a million people in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Haiti was a shattered wreck before the earthquake.
Years ago, 1982 or so, I needed to hire someone to caulk around the windows and doors in a hirise condo building under construction. I asked the labor foreman for the contractor to find me someone. He did.
The man was a 30 something Haitian. He worked like hell and said almost nothing. His English was barely passable.
As I reflect today, he would likely be illegal, but that was not on the radar at the time.
A black man with some authority and power and certainly with influence in the vast black community of Rivera Beach Florida by passed locals in favor of a man he knew could and would work every day.
Wrong question! The right one is: What difference does a culture make?
POST-WWII GERMANY: With most German men dead or POWs,
women clear and salvage rubble and then begin the rebuilding.
Its in the bank accounts of greedy politicians and other assorted thieves.
The UN and other NGOs had to get their cut, which is around 99%.
I kinda agree, but these are primitive people used to being ruled and who always end up being ruled by ruthless dictators who live high on the hog and heartlessly deny their people.
All the money good-hearted people gave to help Haitans ended up in the hands of these dictators.
I don’t want to sound ‘heartless,’ but there’s really nothing much other people and countries can do for these people.
When it comes to countries with lazy cultures, I've heard many of their immigrants observe that the hardworking ones come to the US and the lazy ones stay home.
In a SWAG on another thread this week I guesstimated Haiti can support about 3 million people. There’s 10 million.
Haiti: Where did the money go?
But the economy of rice in Haiti says everything about the condition the country is in. The U.S. government subsidizes and donates ton after ton of rice in Haiti and in so doing has through the last several decades completely undercut Haitian rice farmers and left them destitute and migrating into cities where they live in hovels that were destroyed by the quake.
As recently as the early 1980s, Haiti was producing just about all of its own rice. Now more than 60 percent is imported from the U.S., making it the fourth largest recipient of American rice exports in the world. That was before the quake and now with donated rice coming in as well, Haiti is even more awash in rice while American agribusiness makes billions of dollars every year through generous government subsidies.
There is perhaps some bitter irony here that the subsidies were promoted in large part by President Clinton to help his home state of Arkansas, the largest rice producing state in the U.S., thereby crippling a sector of the economy in Haiti where Clinton has worked so tirelessly to help with the recovery.
You might say it is a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with aid to Haiti, says Marc Cohen, a senior researcher for Oxfam, one of the largest non-government organizations (NGOs) in the world, which raised approximately $106 million for a three-year response in Haiti and finds itself struggling to deliver the aid effectively.
Instead of bringing subsidized rice in on ships from Miami, we could be helping Haiti grow rice in its own fields, adds Cohen, who worked for many years in Haiti with the International Food Policy Research Institute and studied the broad economic impact of U.S. rice subsidies, or Miami rice, as it is known here.
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Worse. They both will neither govern themselves, nor allow any outsider to govern them. They both will remain a running sore on the surface of the Earth. It seems like the only cure is excision or cauterization.
Outside aid just gets stolen by the elite kleptocracy and allows the parasites to persist. The only solution is to eliminate ALL outside aid. At that point, the only targets of the kleptocrats would be the Haitians themselves, who have nothing to steal, and an incentive to kill parasites who want to feed on them.
That having been said, a buddy of mine said that Haiti and New Orleans have a lot in common. He went to NO to help during Katrina. He and his crew were really working up a sweat, unloading water and supplies while a few dozen (male, able bodied locals) sat in the shade and watched.
Buddy wandered over to them and asked for a hand. They all laughed at him. Buddy said "No, really, all this stuff is for you guys. Give us a hand." They told him to do something that was anatomically impossible.
Buddy finished out the day, packed up himself and his crew, and moved east to Mississippi (where specifically, I don't know). He said that the damage there was exponentially worse, and the people were exponentially more helpful.
ML/NJ
Yep, probably stored away to be pulled out to institute the one world government and army. Of course, those who are behind it all personally benefit vastly too.
The port looks strange: very little cargo traffic -- but with a pristine cruise ship -- complete with tables with chairs for four, deck lounges, and swimming pool anchored out at the end of the quay.
I also thought it odd that, around the northern part of the harbor, there are at least twenty sunken ship hulks visible. (The characteristic dark, rusty discoloration of the water around them makes them "stand out".) There is even with one big hulk with several vessels moored right atop of -- and even tied to -- it. And there is a smaller, beached hulk farther south down the shore with people apparently living on it (superstructure rain-covered with the ubiquitous blue plastic tarps...)
There are a only a handful of planes at the airport -- including one twin-engine airliner parked "out in the dirt"...
I see zero signs of current agriculture; no one even seems to be trying to grow their own food. And the entire rest of the Haitian end of the island appears to be a depopulated, deforested wasteland.
Looks to me as if the Haitians have simply "given up" and are waiting for handouts...
And this was and still is under Obama's watch. Vast difference from the way things were handled after the tsunami under Bush's watch. Money was raised and used to help those who needed a hand up. Things got done and done right.
If I had given a bunch of money to Haitian relief, I'd be nighty PO'd.
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