So much for our aid being welcome

that's a fact so why is a2k so far to the left, who dedcides these things around here?

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- On January 12, the earth shook here. More than 220,000 people were killed. More than 300,000 people were injured. The city and large stretches of surrounding countryside were devastated.

Six months later, not much appears to have changed. It still looks like a bomb just dropped on this city.

The government has barely begun the cleanup process. Roads in the center of the city are still blocked by debris. And some experts predict that it could take up to 20 years to remove all of it.

Ultimately, we will measure the success of reconstruction efforts not in the number of days that have passed since the earthquake, nor in the dollar amounts pledged, but in tangible results that improve the lives of the Haitian people, so that in the next six months, and in the six months after that, they will be closer to the future they envision for themselves, their children and generations to come

Six Months On, Haiti Aid Push Falters (WSJ - 6/10/2010)
Submitted by Bryan Schaaf on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 20:50.
By José de Córdoba
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Traffic inches past mountains of rubble. Tropical rains pound refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of people huddle amid the stench of excrement. Buildings marked for demolition lean drunkenly against each other. Six months after January's earthquake devastated Haiti, killing some 230,000 people and injuring 300,000, the process of reconstruction appears to have come to a halt.
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Billions of dollars in pledged aid have yet to arrive. Decisions on how to spend the money have not begun to be made. An estimated one million Haitians remain displaced. And everywhere, there is rubble. "After six months, we have not moved an inch," says Jean-Guy Noél, a businessman who runs a money-transfer service. Adds Gérard Brun, a member of a government commission charged with planning the future of the capital, Port-au-Prince: "Everything is stalling." The lines of authority are unclear among the weak Haitian government, the many donor nations and multilateral banks, and myriad government contractors and charitable organizations. Many Haitians complain the government has suffered from a leadership deficit. President René Préval couldn't be reached to comment.

John Holmes, the UN Humanitarian Chief, yesterday expressed frustration with the humanitarian response in Haiti. Holmes stated finding available land for transitional shelters, slow decision-making by the government and new waves of Haitians moving into the settlements (often for services not available in their own neighborhoods) have made responding to the crisis particularly difficult. The Haitian government, responsible for setting priorities and developing plans, lacks staffing and expertise. It is being pulled in many directions at once on issues relating to shelter, hurricane contingency planning, governance reforms, elections, law enforcement, food security, and decentralization.

The Haitian government’s Ministry of Interior’s Department of Civil Protection (DPC) is responsible for the registration of the displaced, but the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and its partners are doing most of the heavy lifting

in this case it is that aid will not fix Haiti,

The government, already weak before the magnitude-7 quake and still hobbled by its aftermath, is trying to build anew in places like Corail-Cesselesse, a nearly empty swath of land that begins about 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the capital. But the effort is paralyzed by disorganization, bitter rivalries and private deals being struck behind its back.


Multiple families claim title to almost every scrap of real estate. Already one reconstruction official has been forced to step down for steering a public project to his company's private land at Corail-Cesselesse. Wealthy landowners vow the "new Haiti" will become yet another vast slum unless the government rebuilds on their terms.

"The Haitian government is not really capable of providing the kind of leadership that is required here, unlike the Indonesian government," said Robert Perito, a Haiti specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

The Tremor Felt Around the World

John Perkins

...

We are encouraged to believe that USAID, the World Bank, and other institutions are truly philanthropic, there to serve the best interests of the people and the country. However, the reality is that, in previous cases -- such as the Asian tsunami -- much of this aid is employed to help huge multinational companies gain a strangle-hold on resources (including cheap labor) and markets. Instead of helping local fisherman, farmers, restaurant, and bed and breakfast owners rebuild their devastated businesses, the money is invested in projects that benefit the Krafts, Chiquitas, Monsantos, Marriotts, and big box restaurant chains of the world.

In the case of Haiti, we also must not forget history. In the early 1800s the country declared its independence from France and proclaimed itself "slave-free." The French sued the new nation, stating that the loss of the slaves had negatively impacted the French economy. It was just one in a series of actions taken by foreign powers to subjugate Haiti. US Marines invaded in 1915 and occupied the nation for 19 years; ever since Haiti has been the haunt of corporate executives and government officials who have corrupted one leader after another.

While the earthquake happened in an instant, it took years of corporatocracy actions to create such a poverty-ridden country. There was no way Haiti could respond to a 7.0 earthquake because the misguided policies and interventions stripped it of any potential it might have had for surviving such a major traumatic event.

In Hoodwinked, I talk about how debt, the IMF and the World Bank create economies in poor countries that can then be corrupted and exploited. What the corporatocracy and the major media would have you believe is that we're the heroes; we're the ones who are contributing to the rebuilding of the country. The truth is that we provided the economic tectonic shift for decades that ensured that when Haiti was hit by a terrible earthquake it would find itself without infrastructure, without food, without water, without good leadership, and without hope.

The pictures of collapsed buildings in Haiti are a visual metaphor for how the aid, the loans, and policies that promote what amounts to slave labor to benefit foreign industrialists can so quickly bring a country to rubble. Many of the new manufacturing plants and other "modernization" projects established by US and European businesses in fact created an economic earthquake long before the Richter scale hit 7.0.

In the aftershock, the very best thing we can do is to finally rise up against this type of predatory capitalism, tell the bankers to forgive the unfair debts, and the aid agencies to invest in projects that will help the poorest of the poor pull themselves out of poverty and degradation.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-perkins/the-tremor-felt-round-the_b_431894.html

Ever wonder why? If you had a group of thieves constantly relieving you and your wife of your monthly incomes, renting out a few bedrooms in your house to friends, tricking you into taking big loans on your possessions, you'd soon be an economic basket case too.

The United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915, when 330 US Marines landed at Port-au-Prince on the authority of then President of the United States Woodrow Wilson to "protect American and foreign" interests. It ended on August 1, 1934, after Franklin D. Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of U.S. Marines departed on August 15, 1934 after a formal transfer of authority to the Garde.

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The U.S. retained influence on Haiti's external finances until 1947.[18]

Jubilee USA, Jubilee Debt Campaign (UK)[3] and others, called for the immediate cancellation of Haiti's debt to multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-American Development Bank, based on the argument that this debt is unjust (under a legal term called odious debt) and that Haiti could better use the funds going towards debt service for education, health care, and basic infrastructure.[4] (In fact, Haiti's current debts are not odious because they were all contracted by Haiti's democratic government after 2004. Older debts were already canceled under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program and the related Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative[5].)

Americans have nothing to feel guilty about.

There's no reason to feel guilty about your country's sordid history in dealing with its neighbors. What's 5 or 6 million people murdered, numerous third world nations pillaged, terrorized, innocents raped, tortured, brutalized

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Protesters angry over the government's handling of the cholera outbreak clashed Monday with peacekeepers in Cap Haitien, residents and officials in the northern coastal city told CNN.

Schools and banks were closed, and gunfire ricocheted through the streets, they said.

Vincenzo Pugliese, a spokesman for MINUSTAH, the United Nations' stabilization mission in Haiti, said anti-riot police were coping with the demonstrations, which he said began in the morning in at least two separate locations and had not caused any fatalities among peacekeepers or the population. "Apparently, some people were injured by bottles or stones," he said.

"We are facing the consequences of a cholera epidemic and in two weeks the elections, so the population is scared," he said. "It's a volatile situation."

She said that the Haitians where very friendly as they stood around and watched them work. Occasionally the children even helped.
It was a nice snapshot of why all effort to help Haiti is wasted effort.

Haitians and even once had one as my direct superior and had never taken note that the Haitian culture produce people who are not as hard working as anyone else.

The never ending misery that is Haiti continues as normal

The never ending misery that is Haiti was caused in great measure by the USA and European countries who pillaged their resources