The New Dark Age

30 March, 2010 — HLLN

Recommended HLLN Link:
MARCH 12th, 2010- Address to the Camps, Bataye Ouvriye
www.batayouvriye.org/English/Welcome.html

What’s Clinton’s empty apology worth to Haitians living under tents, sheets, old cardboards or tarps… bit.ly/ajOWWB

The U.S.-promoted agricultural policies, such as forcing Haitian rice farmers to compete against U.S.-subsidized agribusiness, cost an estimated 830,000 rural jobs. bit.ly/clXFeC. Real jobs where the people of Haiti actually made more, relatively speaking than .38 cents an hour, owned more land, had better shelter and security in the countryside and ate food from the land that was non-cancerous unlike Arkansas nutrition-less rice and other US food imports. It’s no secret that US food is full of pesticides/harmful hormones and the most cancerous food on the planet, which is why HLLN has noted that US health care reform must also integrate US food system reform. (Healthcare reform also requires food system reform by Ezili Dant of HLLN
bit.ly/QDm9N)

The Sweatshop Hoax
bit.ly/a7TtCs

Haiti and the Aid Racket
How NGOs are Profiting Off a Grave Situation
bit.ly/cuPYdo

Changing Haiti’s Paradigm: Haitians must rebuild Haiti not the failed Internationals (UN/USAID/Clinton/IFIs/NGO poverty pimp industry in Haiti)
bit.ly/9lXlRF

Photos: Ezili Dant Vodun Remembrance to Honor Quake Victims
www.margueritelaurent.com/photogallery/JeteDlo/1.html

In this post

Haiti: Stuck in a Trap
By Richard Morse, Huffington Post, March 28, 2010
huff.to/beAmXJ

Ruth Messinger: What Bill Clinton’s Mea Culpa Should Mean
huff.to/cHEToS

Haiti: Stuck in a Trap by Richard Morse, March 28, 2010
huff.to/beAmXJ

I don’t mean to dwell on certain issues but until there’s some solid change in Haiti, things are going to remain: Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere. I was reading this Reuters article and if i didn’t know better, I would think that Haiti was so incapable of producing its own food that they had to start importing it. Well, that’s not the case. Importing cheap rice and sugar were concepts sold to Haitians by Haitian Economist Leslie Delatour during the mid to late 1980’s. It was called Chicago economics: free markets. The concept destroyed rural production and incentives in Haiti and sent an additional 2 million people to go live in Port au Prince not to mention how many boat people were sent by this plan to Miami and the Bahamas or how many cane cutters are now in the Dominican Republic, simply because the demand to produce off the land has declined.

Lobbying is still taken care of by a Delatour, Leslie’s younger brother Lionel. Right now the younger Mr. Delatour is looking to attract more people out of the countryside and into the city with his HOPE2 garment bill, which is the crux of Haiti’s economic future if Mevs, Soros, Boulos, Ban Ki Moon and Bill Clinton get their way. Mr Delatour is also busy trying to funnel reconstruction monies to brother Patrick Delatour, Minister of Tourism and reconstruction “expert”, and sister-in-law Elizabeth Delatour Preval who has helped turn the Haitian government, led by husband President Rene Preval, into a lobby machine for Haiti’s elite families.

In Haiti we’ve always taken a look and addressed the players out front: Cedras, Aristide, The Haitian Army, the Police, the Parliament.. but we’ve never addressed the behind the scene folks who control the contacts to Washington, finance the local operations and control the monopolies that keep Haiti as the Poorest Nation in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, there are people who profit greatly by living in and taking advantage of the Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere.

The Haitian people, aside from the loss of life and the shock of such a tragic event, haven’t had that much of a change in their lives since the January 12 earthquake (that I still call SAMSON). Yes, schools are closed and many businesses and homes were lost, but the homes of the Haitian masses, like their tents, didn’t have running water, they didn’t have stoves and refrigerators and they didn’t have toilets. People are fundamentally living now, in these tent and bed sheet cities, the way they did before the quake, except that suddenly the foreigners are aghast! Suddenly the foreigners insist that water be distributed and Porta Potties be placed near the new residential districts. There were no portapotties before and Haitian People are used to going to get water somewhere within walking distance in 5 gallon plastic buckets. This is the lifestyle one has to get used to when the Haitian elites are running the economy along with the Delatour/Preval lobby machine. This is Haitian reality. It’s not new. Haitians aren’t living like this because there was an earthquake on January 12.

Expect more of the same when the Haitian Elites and their lobbyists get their reconstruction plans approved. Bill Clinton isn’t bringing hope to Haiti. Bill Clinton isn’t bringing change to Haiti. Bill Clinton, along with USAID, the World Bank, the Inter Development Bank and the United Nations are bringing more of the same to Haiti: more for the few and less for the many. Why, you ask? Because no one is lobbying for the Haitian people. The Haitian elites have a lobbyist in Washington, but the Haitian people don’t.

What Bill Clinton’s Mea Culpa Should Mean

by Ruth Messinger, President and Executive Director, American Jewish World Service, March 29, 2010 | Huffington Post

As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.

“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton said this month. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

Sadly, he’s right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can’t.

Prior to the era of so-called “free trade”, Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.

It is especially fitting that President Clinton’s mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.

Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country’s nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.

Is the international community getting the message? It’s hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food – but for decades we’ve used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that’s the point. Maintaining the developing world’s cycle of dependence is profitable business.

The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.

Each year, during Passover, we say “let all who are hungry, come and eat.” Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors — at least metaphorically — and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.

Recommended Links

Oil in Haiti, reasons for the US occupation, Part 2
bit.ly/d7f8Cw

Part 1 of Oil in Haiti as the economic reasons for the US/UN
bit.ly/IausQ

Haiti’s Riches
bit.ly/l960t

BIG OIL BEHIND HAITI QUAKE?
By Victor Thorn | www.americanfreepress.net/html/haiti_oil__210.html

Oil, gas, gold, copper, etc., in Haiti equals US occupation By Jerry Mazza | Online Journal Associate Editor
onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5558.shtml

Interview with Ezili Dant on Mining in Haiti
bit.ly/viqxn

Audio: Interview on mining in Haiti
bit.ly/r6Iei

Answers to media questions about Haiti
bit.ly/bxJcRK

THE SLAVERY IN HAITI THE MEDIA WON’T EXPOSE
bit.ly/1zFCt

Changing Haiti’s Paradigm
HLLN 14-points to Return Haiti’s Sovereignty and Mobilize For Conscious Relief and Rebuilding with Human Rights, Healing and Dignity
bit.ly/9lXlRF

Tell the Truth About Haiti Forum with Ezili Danto of HLLN
bit.ly/cSpvDp

A message to Paul Farmer, the Senate, Dobbins & Francois
bit.ly/dbjfio

U.S. AID go home!
bit.ly/b2UE1z

Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network