Haiti, A Historical Perspective.....

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by tacmotusn, Feb 21, 2010.


  1. tacmotusn

    tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

    Or another sad and not politically correct title header "Pouring good money down into a stinking outhouse."

    Was not aware of this history regarding Haiti........


    Subject: Quick History of Haiti not a joke



    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]In the 1700's what is now Haiti was called the "Jewel of the

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Caribbean," and supplied about 40% of the world's sugar.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]slavery in its Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]citizenship. Rather than becoming citizens, Haiti's Negro population mass[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]murdered all whites and Mulattoes who could not flee the Island in time. In[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]1804 only full blooded Negros remained and Haiti became the first Negro[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]ruled nation. The Haitian revolution dominated America's debate over[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]slavery. While both the north and the south agreed that slavery should be[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]ended, southerners and a large percentage of northerners universally opposed[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]having a large population of freed slaves living in their midst.. The[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Haitian "Revolution" was fresh in every one's mind.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Flash forward to 1915. The "Jewel of the Caribbean" is now a[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]desolate cesspool, that is exporting almost no sugar. The United States[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]decides to "take up the white man's burden" and send the US Marine Corps to[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]rebuild Haiti's infrastructure and feed it's starving population.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]The United States gave huge amounts of money to Haiti and over-saw[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]the building of 1,000 miles of road, telephone lines, modernized its port,[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]and helped Haiti to start exporting sugar once again. The US also put an end[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]to the thousands of bandits along Haiti's border with the Dominican[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Republic. The US left in 1934 at the request of the then stabilized and very[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]ungrateful Haitian government.[/FONT]


    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Haiti immediately sank straight back into total desolation[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]strife.. In 1973 the United State once again began playing a huge role in[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Haiti, giving the Island huge sums of money in handouts each year.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]In 1994 the Clinton administration once again sent the US military[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]to Haiti to rebuild the Island's infrastructure.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]In 1995 the Peace Corps went to Haiti in large numbers to train[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]the Haitians in job skills. The US government spent almost one Billion[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]providing food and job training to the Haitians between '95 and '99.[/FONT]

    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]So when Obama says that Haiti has our "full, unwavering, support,"[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]they have already had our full support since 1915 and look at the[/FONT]
    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]results...![/FONT]


    [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]It's JMHO, but I am not at all for my Government spending even one more dollar of TAXPAYER CONFISCATED MONEY on Haiti. If anyone anywhere feels secure enough in their own finances to give to Haiti, then so be it. I commend you in your generosity, and I am happy for you that you can afford to give.:rolleyes:.[/FONT]
    Some might want to look at the more in depth Wikipedia take on Haiti's history....
    History of Haiti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Columbus_landing_on_Hispaniola_adj.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Columbus_landing_on_Hispaniola_adj.jpg/220px-Columbus_landing_on_Hispaniola_adj.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/9/9f/Columbus_landing_on_Hispaniola_adj.jpg/220px-Columbus_landing_on_Hispaniola_adj.jpg


    [/FONT]
    [/FONT]
     
  2. Gray Wolf

    Gray Wolf Monkey+++

    The fact is we cannot afford this sort of aid anymore.
    We're not even taking care of our own citizens properly,
    and that should come first, and there should be no foreign aid
    until our own people have received aid.
     
  3. RightHand

    RightHand Been There, Done That RIP 4/15/21 Moderator Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    How much more "aid" can we give US citizens as well as foreign nations? We have created a situation where everyone, US citizens as well as foreign nations, expect the US government to save them from every eventuality. While I am sympathetic to the woes of the world, the more we fund every cause or situation that comes along, the more dependents we create. This is not to say I don't think we should offer assistance for individual catastrophic events, but I reject the concept that our government, as representatives of each of us, should be the assumed rescuer for every world citizen or nation.
     
  4. UGRev

    UGRev Get on with it!

    Pretty much why I want to punch a wall every time I hear people say "send money to Haiti".. I'm sorry they suffered through this tragedy, but I'm also tired of history repeating itself, repeating itself.
     
  5. tacmotusn

    tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

    Exactly!!! I can easily count my blessings and smile, but, even still it is a delicate balance considering what the future may bring. I am trying hard to become totally independent and prepared for the worst, and I am a long ways from that objective. I don't need the government taxing my butt off and throwing the dollars down a toilet!!! Hey, if you are independently wealthy, feel free to spend your bucks where ever makes you happy, and hopefully where it truly does some lasting good. Charity should start at home, and my belt is pulled a little tighter than I like right at this moment. I have plenty of family and friends that are in similiar situations. Sorry I never lost anything in Haiti.
     
  6. Mountainman

    Mountainman Großes Mitglied Site Supporter+++

    Agree with you 100%. Take care of our own first and then worry about the other people. Hell, we are already providing for how many ??? illegal's in this country right now!!!

    I am also really getting sick of hearing the Michelle Zero radio commercials about giving for Haiti relief. I have already gave, who's money do you think .gov has gave and is still giving to them? Surely not money out of their own personal pockets.
     
  7. fortunateson

    fortunateson I hate Illinois Nazis!

  8. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    Want to be shocked...?
    Use Google Maps to zoom in on the Island of Hispanola - Haiti on the West half and the Dominican Republic on the East half.

    The entire Haitian half is nearly devoid of vegetation, and the cities are nearly ALL shantytown rusty tin-roofed shacks. Very few Highways. No visible industry.

    The Dominican Republic side has many modern highways, many modern cities with industry, forests and parks. It is a modern country.

    This is the glaring difference between a dictatorship with total Socialism, and a full democratic nation with modern freedoms.

    Now consider that after the recent earthquake, Haiti is in total ruins, those shanty towns reduced to miles & miles of rusty rubble. The Dominican Republic side is virtually untouched - modern building standards WORK!
     
  9. SLugomist

    SLugomist Monkey++

    Aww I love history.

    When I saw the pictures from the earthquake a friend said, wow that looks bad. I replied, it's pretty much always looked bad there. What's news here?

    OMG Haiti is a dump.

    Heck any place where, if you go there, then you can't give blood, needs Napalm. IMO
    [flm]
     
  10. Tracy

    Tracy Insatiably Curious Moderator Founding Member

    ??? I didn't know that. Do tell.
     
  11. Mountainman

    Mountainman Großes Mitglied Site Supporter+++

    Major country with an AIDS problem and probably don't want to take the risk of taking your blood if you have been there. Sure as hell would NEVER want to receive a blood transfusion from anyone that lives there.
     
  12. Ivan

    Ivan Monkey++

    you've skipped some bits...





    Libertarians and evangelicals explain the problem with Haiti

    <!--post meta info--> By Violet Socks · <!-- The author's name as a link to his archive --> Wednesday, January 13th, 2010<!-- the timestamp --> · <!-- comment number as link to post comments -->
    <!--end .meta-top--> <!--post text with the read more link--> My ex-husband spent some time in Haiti during his brief career as a semi-Marxist semi-revolutionary. He told me that the most shocking thing about the country was the disparity between the visiting rich and the resident poor. In the countryside and on the streets, it was nothing but dirt-eating poverty. But on the beach in Port-au-Prince, huge fancy hotels towered over the landscape, oases for the rich white tourists. It was like seeing a 24th century spaceship inexplicably docked in the slums of Calcutta.

    [​IMG]Haiti in normal, pre-earthquake times.
    Mud cakes for lunch.


    Haiti is an open running sore on the conscience of Western civilization. The people there are so poor they eat dirt. Literally: they eat dirt. And that’s during normal times. God only knows what’s going to happen now.
    Pat Robertson, good evangelical Christian that he is, explains that the Haitians’ problem is the pact they made with the devil. Tyler Cowen, good liberatarian economist that he is, wonders aloud if voodoo or polygamy is the source of their ills. It’s true that Cowen is a more reputable figure than Pat Robertson, but his reasoning is frankly not much more informed. What could possibly be the problem down there? he asks, as the heads of Haitian historians everywhere explode in simultaneous apoplexy. Maybe, he suggests, they cut their colonial ties too soon.
    Why is Haiti so poor? Because it has been victimized and persecuted and robbed for two ****ing centuries by France and the United States and the other Western powers, that’s why.
    The Haitian Revolution was the third great republican rebellion of the late 18th century, or at least that’s how the Haitians saw it. Hi, France and the United States! There are three of us now! Isn’t it great? Heh. The French thought it was cool for about ten seconds; then they remembered that they needed to keep their sugar plantations going to prop up the economy. Whoops! Forget what we said about all that liberté, égalité, fraternité stuff; we were just talking about white men.
    A similar thing happened with the Americans. The U.S. was friendly to the Haitian rebellion for a little while — John Adams was into it, and Alexander Hamilton helped draft the Haitian constitution — but all that changed when the Sage (and Slaveowner) of Monticello became president. Jefferson reneged on Adams’s deal with Toussaint L’Ouverture, cut off trade and contact, and offered Napoleon help in putting down the revolt. We can’t possibly have a black republic down in the Caribbean, he wrote. What will our slaves think? They might get ideas!
    The French poured thousands of soldiers into Haiti in an attempt to re-establish control, but damn near all of them died from yellow fever. The Haitians cut down the rest. By 1804 the French were sick of it and Haiti declared its independence. It was the first black republic in the modern world.
    And everybody ignored them. Haitian independence was an offense to the status quo: a free black republic of former slaves who had successfully thrown off their masters. Dear god. Black people? A black republic? Former slaves? No ****ing way.
    So Haiti was isolated: no diplomatic recognition, official embargoes on trade. “You don’t really exist,” said the French. And the Americans. And the British. And the Spanish. The economy foundered. Then the Bourbons started making noises about re-conquering the island. Finally, in 1825, the Haitians signed a deal with France: recognize us diplomatically, call off the gunboats, and in return we will reimburse you for the loss of us as your slaves. The price? One hundred and fifty million francs.
    Haiti spent the next 122 years paying off that indemnity. The final installment was in 1947. Nineteen forty-****ing-seven. The entire history of modern Haiti is about paying off that goddamn debt. They borrowed money from European and American bankers to make the installments, took out more loans to pay the interest, and the whole thing turned into a century-long bankrupting of the country. Imagine a giant straw jammed into the Haitian economy, with white bankers sucking hard on the other end for a hundred-plus years, and that’s the story of Haiti. The U.S. even occupied the country for awhile to make sure the goddamn money kept coming. Gotta make those debt payments. By the time Papa Doc Duvalier came to power in 1957, Haiti was a hollowed-out mess.
    You’d think a libertarian economist like Tyler Cowen would understand how a crushing debt load might inhibit economic growth and the development of a robust democracy. But as usual, the “libertarian” part seems to have canceled out the “economist” part. Easier to just blame it on voodoo.
     
  13. tacmotusn

    tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

    Ivan, I really hate to disagree pretty much across the board, but what I hear you saying is French colonialism and American efforts to stablize a chaotic cesspool never in any way had any benefits for the peoples of Haiti, and that I am in someway responsible. You completely forgive the locals there for the killing of anyone with non-black blood in them. Did I say locals.... my bad, there were NO LOCALS LEFT by the infamous 1791 Slave revolt and take over. The locals were long dead from diseases introduced by the Spanish and French explorers and colonists. I ain't Spanish or French. My people came to America in the early 1800's from Ireland. Working people, no Slave owners in the bunch. Damn Yankees no less. As far as I am concerned they fought on the wrong side in the War for States Rights. Your attempt to create a quilt trip for my position on Haiti falls on deaf ears. I am in no way responsible for the rise or fall of Haiti. You at 21 years of age have a long way to go to convince me of anything at all. America needs to pull back from many money drains overseas and concentrate on fixing our own economic ills. At least on a national level. I encourage all wealthy Americans who are financially secure to give to charities of their choice both here in the USA and abroad if they want to. My government doesn't need to confiscate my hard earned tax dollars and squander them.
     
  14. Ivan

    Ivan Monkey++

    american efforts to stabalize haiti have generally consisted of backing military regimes and occupying the place to keep money flowing to creditors. if a certain other debt saddled nation was occupied to be forced to pay at gunpoint, would you be so quick to defend it as stabilization? [dunno]

    insofar as any citizen of a nation is responsible for the actions of said nation. the extent to which this is true varies wildly from country to country of course, but in the US you *can* vote and it does *sometimes* matter so we bear some.

    id be pretty angry too if i had been made to toil in a field as a slave for all my life. id damn sure want to kill my former masters were the gun in my hands.
     
  15. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    "History written by a liberal with an axe to grind" is even worse than "History written by the Victor"......... [dunno]

    No guilt here - I have NO sympathy for Haiti. maddd
     
  16. tacmotusn

    tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

    Okay Ivan, I will cut it to bare bones. Haiti was populated by 500,000 African Slaves, most of which were 1st generation because of the atrocities heaped upon them by the French pirates, mulatos (half pirate/half slave) and sympathizers and supporters of the pirates totalling maybe 70,000 at best. The African slaves revolted upon hearing of pending release from slavery and killed or sent packing all non pure blacks......... after that Haiti was understandably pretty much on their own completely. All of this happened long long before me and mine. Aid and rebuilding efforts have gone on for centuries with little to show for it for anyone. Maybe there is something to say about religion in it all. Those of you who study various religions will know what I am saying. Does it look to anyone like Voodoo is working for them?seesaw and, you don't want me to say what I believe would be going on down there if this were another peaceful Muslim stronghold....
     
  17. Clyde

    Clyde Jet Set Tourer Administrator Founding Member

    Former french colony. That says it all. Look at the mess the rest of the french colonies.
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  18. SemperDoc

    SemperDoc Monkey+

    Good 'Ol Pastor Pat Robertson summed the situation in Haiti up, "a worthless dump ground that sold it's collective soul to get rid of the French." In doing so, Haiti only has two contributions to the world today. Numero UNO is a refueling stop for drug smugglers from South America and Number TWO is the ability to mass produce illegal boat people.
    Haiti producesd no crops, is a stink hole of a cesspool to be in, reeks of poverty, ia a lawless place since the 1700's and the US needs to end support in Haiti because we're just wasting tax dollars for nothing.
     
  19. kevin

    kevin Monkey+

    Ivan is pretty much correct, however, the reference to hotels towering over Port au Prince is simply not true. There may have been some isolated Club med style retreats outside Port au Prince 10-15 years ago, but there is nothing like that in modern history. There are few buildings in the country standing above 10 stories in any of Haiti’s cities, the ‘beach’ is where the poor people live. They are littered with trash and populated with feral pigs, goats and chickens.

    I’m afraid Ivan touts political fact not simple liberal axe grinding with regard to explaining the last couple of hundred years of poverty there.. blaming the poor b*stards who were unfortunate enough to be born there for the condition of the country, is misguided.

    Alas, Haiti is a vast toxic waste site, devoid of vegetation, violent, corrupt and disease ridden.. it’s become so bad that even fomenting a revolution there is almost impossible.. I mean, who wants to take the mess over? There is no infrastructure, no industry and no resources. It’s pretty bleak.

    The country was in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis before the quake, the earthquake was basically an acute event on a chronic condition. Should we pull out? Dunno, but leaving it as it is seems inhumane.

    As for not being able to donate blood after travel there, it’s not because of the HIV, it’s because of the endemic malaria and you are not eligible to donate for 12 months after travel to a malaria area, like Haiti.

    Kev<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com<img src=" />
     
  20. fortunateson

    fortunateson I hate Illinois Nazis!

    [lolol]
    Really? You think your vote counts for anything?
    You're right about one thing - banking institutions in collusion with government have wrought havoc throughout the world. Might as well make Haiti a victim too.
    But if our vote mattered, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in and half the members of this board would probably be elsewhere instead of trying to figure out how to survive this crap.
    So no. I'm not responsible and neither is anyone else who voted for what they were deceived into believing was anything less than a corrupt government run by a tyrannical financial system.

    But hey man. I give the liberal press credit. They know that guilt sells. The irreligious seek self flagellation as a means to penance and they provide it. Nothing like good salesmanship even if it sacrifices the truth.
     
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