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**Sir X** · February 21, 2010, 08:12 AM

WHAT THE WORLD OWES HAITI
John Maxwell

Sunday, February 21, 2010
Some of us grow up thinking that being free means that we are at liberty to do whatever we want -- as long as we don't hurt anyone else; that simply by being born, we are entitled to inherit the riches and beauty of nature and to do whatever we think will make us wealthy, healthy and happy.
Most of us grow up in very different circumstances, walking barefoot, wearing cast-off clothing and knowing that we are mostly free to do what we can get away with and knowing that we will probably always have to worry about the next meal.
In places like Jamaica, however, rich and poor tend to believe that there are some basic freedoms we all share: the right to life, to liberty and to say what we want and associate with whomever we choose.
These freedoms are rights for which the human race has been fighting for a long time, and a few hundred years ago certain people believed that because they had acquired the Chinese invention called gunpowder, they owned superior rights to all those who had not got the secret recipe.
Primitive firearms made it possible for long-distance 'impersonal' murder. Until then, if you wanted to kill someone you had to stab him, or to throw a spear or an arrow not much further than the length of a cricket pitch. Blunderbusses and muskets meant that you could remain out of the range of your enemy's arrows and spears and mow him down with invisible darts accompanied by horrendous noises. Primitive firearms meant that men on horses, armed with guns, could round up dozens of fellow humans in a cost-effective time frame and move them like cattle to enormous holding pens where they were selected for desirable qualities and priced accordingly. Upright European merchants would then select those creatures most likely to bring good prices on the other side of the Atlantic, either for breeding purposes or for hard labour growing sugar or cotton.
The slave trade and the plantation system which it supported provided the motive force of the capitalist system and the foundation of Versailles and the Louvre. The extinction of civilisations on both sides of the Atlantic and their replacement by plantation economies provided the capital on which the European empires and social systems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were erected. The empires of Spain, and later France and Britain, were built on the bones of the original inhabitants of the so-called West Indian islands.
The Spanish historian, Gonzalo Oviedo, estimated that of the one million Indians on Ayiti (Hispaniola) when the Spaniards arrived, less than 500 remained half a century later. Toribio Motolina, another Spanish priest, said in some parts of Mexico "more than one-half the population died; in others the proportion was a little less; they died in heaps, like bedbugs." A German missionary, writing in 1699, said the so-called Indians "die so easily that the bare look and smell of a Spaniard causes them to give up the ghost." Then began the wholesale destruction of nations and civilisations in Africa -- some disappearing almost without trace, further impoverishing mankind's cultural diversity and robbing Africa of the populations and skills it needed for its own development.
As Sybille Fischer remarks in her book Modernity Disavowed: "Colonialism in the Caribbean had produced societies where brutality combined with licentiousness in ways unknown in Europe. The sugar plantations in the New World were expanding rapidly and had an apparently limitless hunger for slaves." (Quoted in Common Sense - "Christmas in Hell, Dec 30, 2007)
The whole mad-vampire enterprise seemed destined to continue as long as greed endured, notwithstanding bloody uprisings in every colony, the most dangerous being in Haiti and Jamaica. In Jamaica the slaves and their escaped brethren, the Maroons, fought the British to a standstill, a truce and a land concession. One escapee from the islandwide Taki rebellion went to Haiti and there helped light the spark of revolution.
It was the Haitian revolution that destroyed slavery and the slave trade forever.
It was the Haitians alone of all of history's enslaved peoples who defeated the system, destroyed the institutions of slavery and legislated that thenceforth, all men, women and children of whatever colour or station or nationality were, in Ayiti, full and free human beings. It drove the Americans mad.
It was the Haitians alone of all of history's enslaved peoples who defeated the system, destroyed the institutions of slavery and legislated that thenceforth, all men, women and children of whatever colour or station or nationality were, in Ayiti, full and free human beings. It drove the Americans mad.
That declaration anticipated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by 144 years and should be recognised for what it is: the single most important definition of humanity ever implemented. The world owes Haiti an unpayable debt.
At this moment apparatchiks of various ideologies are busy racing around in Washington and similar places, like scarab beetles marking out territory on a fresh deposit of excrement.
It is clear that the peoples of the world are minded to help Haiti recover from the most punishing natural disaster of modern times. The scarab beetles -- with grand names and even grander résumés -- intend to be first in line as was Cheney's Halliburton in Iraq -- to milk the system and suck as much Haitian blood as possible.
People have already stopped speaking to me -- I'm anti-American or I'm anti-Haitian -- because I believe that we need to assemble all those who want to work for Haiti to work for Haiti in exclusion to working for anyone else.
There are two huge problems: On one side are Haitians, jealous of their liberty and suspicious of any and every one who offers to help. They have been had so often that they expect treachery as a given.
People like Clinton and Patterson do not impress them. On the other side, the American/French/Canadian side, while there is knowledge of the grievous harm these countries have wreaked and are wreaking on Haiti, there is no understanding of the need -- the absolutely essential requirement -- that Haiti belongs to the Haitians and it is they alone who must decide what they want. They may ask for help, but the US, France and Canada must have the grace to apologise and atone for the heinous crimes they have committed in Haiti. If the Haitians want Aristide back, simple human decency should inform the Americans, the French and the Canadians that they have a duty to help the Haitians get back their president and a responsibility to protect him and the constitutional integrity of Haiti. The Haitians have the brains, the genius and the skills to manage their own country, if they are only left alone.
Haiti is a charter member of the United Nations and its various organs. Haiti has, however, been cheated, blackmailed, double-crossed and screwed by big powers in the IDB and IMF, for example. Haiti needs to be able to summon the collective wisdom and skills of the General Assembly, to get rid of the so-called UN peacekeepers -- a bunch of bandits and rapists -and to assemble a force to keep the peace and help train a civil guard -- as in Costa Rica -- or whatever mechanism the Haitians prefer.
The United Nations General Assembly is the proper organ for the people-to-people assistance Haiti may require. The Security Council knows nothing about land reform, cooperatives or community development.
Finally, the General Assembly must find some way to organise an endowment fund for Haiti from the enormous sums she is owed by France and the United States. This fund should be for the development of Haiti, not Halliburton or Bechtel. The $24 billion that Haiti paid to France and the United States in a brute-force extortion scheme was the single resource whose absence made Port-au-Prince so vulnerable to the earthquake. Generations of capital investment were lost because they were never installed. Simple justice and human decency require they be returned.
Copyright©2010 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com

**Sir X** · February 21, 2010, 08:13 AM

FRANCE IN HAITI: A FRESH START BY SARKOZY?
Sir Ronald Sanders

Sunday, February 21, 2010
At last a French president visited Haiti -- a country that contributed greatly to France's accumulation of wealth in the 18th Century and which France impoverished for a century after that.
Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in devastated Haiti on February 17, a month and five days after a massive earthquake ravaged the capital, Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people, maiming tens of thousands of others, and wreaking billions of dollars in damage.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy (second from right) walks with Haiti's President René Préval (third from right) inside the national palace in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, February 17, 2010. Sarkozy promised euro230 million, some $400 million, in aid for quake-stricken Haiti. (Photo: AP)
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The extent of the damage and loss of life in Haiti were undoubtedly due to the country's lack of physical infrastructure and its poor building standards, neither of which could be accomplished in a situation where 70 per cent of its gross domestic product was paid over to France for over a century.
This is not to ignore the excesses of Haitian governments, particularly under the Duvaliers, which also deprived the country of monies that should have been pumped into constructing infrastructure, providing education and health facilities, and establishing regulatory bodies to ensure higher standards across a range of activities, including the construction of buildings.
The harsh imposition by France of a levy of 90 million gold francs, which Haiti did not finish repaying until 1947, also does not excuse recent Haitian governments and political parties for failing to spend aid funds on an agreed and countrywide development programme instead of on narrow political interests.
Indeed, on any programme for constructing a new Haiti -- both in a physical and societal sense - Haitian governments should be mindful that not only the Haitian people but the entire international community will want guaranteed machinery to ensure that aid money is spent on sustainable development.
The challenge is huge. Taking Haiti off the world's "sick man" list is not a short-term or cheap affair. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has calculated that the rebuilding programme will cost US$14 billion and will take at least 10 years.
And while there have been mountainous pledges of assistance from many governments as television images riveted the eyes of the world on Haiti, experience from previous disasters elsewhere in the world teaches that pledges often fall by the wayside as soon as the cameras leave.
Acknowledging "the wounds of colonisation" and saying that he knows well "the story of our countries on the question of debt", President Sarkozy, in addition to cancelling all of Haiti's US$77-million debt to France, also promised to provide aid of US$400 million over the next two years. Included in the aid package is US$40 million in support of the Haitian government's budget.
This latter commitment was warmly welcomed by Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive who described it as "crucial" and added: "It means we are going to use it the way we want." The prime minister's statement is understandable given that the government has to try to provide some basic services, such as policing, to the country in circumstances where government revenues must be very little.
But the question still arises as to whether the French government's pledge to Haiti is enough.
Haiti's exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had calculated the sum that France extracted from Haiti -- the price for recognising its participation in the international community in 1825 - as US$21 billion in today's values.
As Sarkozy was entering Haiti, Professor Norman Girvan of the University of the West Indies, and former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States, in a comment to the Associated Press, was pretty clear about France's obligation to Haiti and what Sarkozy should do.
He declared: "If President Sarkozy were to make restitution in the name of all the decent people of the French Republic for the historic wrong; and support the efforts of the Haitian people to rebuild their shattered lives and their economy with the resources thereby provided, he would undoubtedly gain the respect of the entire world and be a prime candidate for the award of the Nobel Prize for 2010."
Somehow, I don't believe that President Sarkozy will be a Nobel Prize recipient for returning to Haiti what was so callously extracted from it, and which is the underlying basis for its persistent poverty and underdevelopment. And, it is instructive that the Haitian government is not pushing it. Millien Romage, a legislator for Aristide's party, also told the Associated Press: "This is not a time to be making loud demands. We don't want to fight. But perhaps the French could recognise their debt by helping us to get out of poverty. They can help build roads, houses, schools."
Sarkozy has at least made a start and it is to be hoped that when France joins other nations at a high-level international donors' conference for Haiti, which will be held in New York next month, the French government will open its cheque book more generously to a country that it exploited and impoverished.
Canada, which has no history of exploitation of Haiti (or any other country for that matter) has been far more generous than France. Even before the calamitous January earthquake, Canada had pledged more than US$500 million to Haiti over the next five years.
And in a visit that preceded Sarkozy's, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed with Haitian President René Préval the creation of a common fund for Haiti's recovery to be managed jointly by the Haitian government and donors.
A partnership between the Haitian government and the international community is crucial to the successful construction of Haiti and to the restoration of its society.
Calls for the Haitian government to be "masters of their own development" should be tempered with realism. Governance in Haiti was fractious before the earthquake, the government is now in tatters, and many who were leaders in Haitian society were victims of the earthquake. In this connection, Haiti needs a lot of help including help in the governance of the country over the next few years.
The representative of the 14 governments of the Caribbean Community, former Jamaican Prime Minister P J Patterson, put the task ahead in clear terms at the Ministerial Conference on Haiti held in Canada on January 25 when he said: "Reconstructing Haiti needs to encompass more than replacing destroyed buildings and infrastructure and eviscerated institutions, and must include a developmental dimension. Rebuilding should therefore also include the empowerment of the Haitians by the teaching of new skills".
Responses and previous commentaries at: www.sirronaldsanders.com
http://www.sirronaldsanders.com/
Sir Ronald Sanders is a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat.

**Rockman** · February 21, 2010, 02:40 PM

Another good article by Maxwell,indeed the greatest thing the devil ever did is to convince the World he does not exist, perhaps we will hear the role the IMF played in the demise of that great nation, no stone should be left...as the IMF is not only guilty of past sins but current ones too.
I am mindful of Obama's campaign speech whe he suggested we should not ask the person that drove the bus into the ditch how to get it out, the exact thing is now happening. A president that tries to make a case for racial equality in his country is everything but a cosmopolitan.

Blessed

**Sir X** · February 22, 2010, 08:44 AM

Lets Hope

PREVAL SEEKS HELP FROM LAC
AFP
Monday, February 22, 2010
CANCUN, Mexico (AFP) - Haitian President René Préval arrived in the Mexican resort city of Cancun yesterday to seek help from Latin American and Caribbean leaders to rebuild his quake-shattered Caribbean nation.
Haiti's President René Préval, centre, talks with the media upon his arrival at the international airport in Cancun, Mexico, yesterday. He is in Mexico to attend the Rio Group Summit February 22-23. (AP Photo)
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"I do not have the words to thank all Mexicans, and the entire world, for all their help. I feel so grateful with my whole heart," Préval told reporters at Cancun's airport.
Préval was meeting with Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders on that organisation's strategy for Haiti.
Leaders at the Rio Group summit will discuss today how to help Haiti rebuild after the January 12 earthquake that killed more than 217,000 people in one of the worst natural disasters of modern times.

**Sir X** · February 22, 2010, 08:45 AM

HAITIANS CALL FOR RETURN OF ARISTIDE
AFP
Monday, February 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — The burntout church where he once preached to the poor in a Port-au-Prince slum is in ruins, but the graffiti on its stone walls is defiant: “Titid come back,” it says, “quick, quick.”
Titid — known to the rest of the world as Jean-Bertrand Aristide — was forced out of Haiti six years ago, but the suffering wrought by last month’s devastating earthquake has intensified calls for the return of the Catholic priest who became the country’s first democratically elected president.
ARISTIDE… once a passionate advocate for Haiti’s downtrodden
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Such calls are due in part to frustration with President Rene Preval over his low-key response to the disaster, but also to an enduring allegiance among many of the poor to the hope Aristide once represented.
“He should have come back already,” said Joseph Wilfred, a 48-year-old father of three now sleeping on the streets near the Saint Jean Bosco church, where Aristide gave fiery, politically tinged sermons.
“If he were here for this catastrophe, he would have handled it better.”
Aristide, once a passionate advocate for Haiti’s downtrodden who many accused of having grown hugely corrupt by the time he was forced from power in 2004, now lives in exile in South Africa.
Aristide has made no secret of his want to return to his country.
Three days after the massive quake hit, killing 217,000 people and leaving more than a million homeless, he told reporters he was ready to help. It was not the first time he raised the possibility.
Protests have broken out in the capital since the January 12 earthquake over the lack of food and shelter, with a number of demonstrators urging the diminutive figure (his nickname means Little Aristide) to come to their rescue.
Graffiti throughout the capital — and even on a rock at a mass grave for quake victims outside Port-au-Prince — calls on Aristide to come back, while support runs deep in the slums surrounding his former church.
“If he were here, we wouldn’t be in this terrible situation,” said Wesline St Hilaire, a 32-year-old mother of seven who lives in a tent in front of the nuns’ convent at Saint Jean Bosco.
She spoke as she sat on the ground cutting chicken parts covered with flies and tossing them into a pot, while a church mass was being held under tents a short walk away.
There was misery all around her, with buildings up and down the street crumbled and people taking up residence on the filthy ground. A child urinated on the roadside.
“President Preval cannot visit poor neighbourhoods without MINUSTAH and the police,” said Peter Lealis John, a 56-year-old living in a tent near the church. MINUSTAH is the name of the UN mission in Haiti.
Aristide rose to prominence by railing against Haiti’s dictators in sermons, including the infamous Duvaliers, who held power from 1957 until 1986.
In 1988, his church was attacked and burned as he held mass, killing several people. Aristide went into hiding.
Only the shell of the building remains now, and the earthquake appears to have caused further damage.
Aristide was elected in 1991, but was overthrown in a coup the same year.
He returned to office in 1994 with backing from the United States, but fell out of favour with Washington amid claims of vote-rigging in the 2000 elections and political violence.
An armed rebellion in 2004 led to his exit. He has maintained ever since that the United States and France forced him to leave.
Father Wim Boksebeld, a priest at Saint Jean Bosco, said though he admired Aristide’s fight for the poor, he did not think he should return.
“The Americans don’t want him to come back,” he said.

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