Why is Haiti so poor? Like Afghanistan, it's a corrupt CIA-backed narco-kleptocracy

[zulchzulu]

Anyone who has been half-awake knows that Haiti has been known as a "parking lot" for the cocaine trade and political maneuvering by the CIA over the years has allowed the country to be (like Afghanistan) a narco-kleptocracy.



Haiti is a perfect location being 500 miles from the Colombian cartels and 700 miles from Florida.

Here is a sample of how it works:

The 1980's CIA collusion with allied drug traffickers lead to the formation of a protected narcotics pipeline, resulting an increase in supply and drop in price. Former DEA agents have repeatedly pointed out that 50%-70% of the cocaine entering the U.S. went via drug cartels that enjoyed CIA protection.

"..Taken alone, one Contra drug ring, that of Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (two Contra supporters based in Guadalajara, Mexico) were known by DEA to be smuggling four tons A MONTH into the U.S. during the early Contra war. Other operations including Manuel Noriega (a CIA asset, strongman leader of Panama), John Hull (ranch owner and CIA asset, Costa Rica), Felix Rodriguez (Contra supporter, El Salvador), Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (Honduran Military, Contra supporter, Honduras) along with other elements of the Guatemalan and Honduran military. Cumulatively, the aforementioned CIA assets were concurrently trafficking close to two hundred tons a year or close to 70% of total U.S. consumption. All of these CIA assets have been ascertained as being connected to CIA via public documentation and testimony."

http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/outline.html

http://www.lessignets.com/signetsdiane/calendrier/images/sept/22/Jean-Claude_Duvalier,1020.jpg

Who can forget Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Duvalier was invested with near-absolute power by the Constitution. He took some steps to blunt the harsher edges of the regime. For instance, he released some political prisoners and eased press censorship. However, there were no substantive changes to the regime's basic character. Opposition was not tolerated, and the legislature remained a rubber stamp.

Much of the Duvaliers' wealth came from the Régie du Tabac (Tobacco Administration). Duvalier used this "nonfiscal account," established decades earlier, as a tobacco monopoly, but he later expanded it to include the proceeds from other government enterprises and used it as a slush fund for which no balance sheets were ever kept.

By neglecting his role in government, Duvalier squandered considerable domestic and foreign goodwill and facilitated the dominance of Haitian affairs by a clique of hardline Duvalierist cronies known as the dinosaurs. The public displayed more affection toward the president than they had displayed for his more formidable father. Foreign officials and observers also seemed more tolerant toward "Baby Doc," in areas such as human-rights monitoring, and foreign countries were more generous to him with economic assistance. The United States restored its aid program for Haiti in 1971.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Jean-Claude_Duvalier

People may remember Jean Betrand Aristide, who was elected President in several terms before various coups took him out of power. This segment illustrates what may have happened in 2004:

In Haiti, the Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People (FRAPH) overthrows the government while Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is on a visit to the UN in New York. The group rules as a repressive military regime until 1994 when a US-led UN intervention puts Aristide back in power (see September 19, 1994-October 15, 1994) The junta is responsible for the massacre of hundreds—or by some estimates, thousands—of dissidents. The leader of the group is Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, who later acknowledges he had support from the CIA. “Emmanuel Constant is widely alleged, and himself claims, to have been in the pay of, and under the orders of, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the coup period,” Amnesty International will later report. The amount paid to Constant by the CIA during this period is $500/month. Second in command is Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who had led death squads during the years of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s dictatorship and who is later convicted and implicated in multiple crimes committed during this period.

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=the_2004_removal_of_jean-bertrand_aristide

Aristide had tried to stop Haiti from being a integral part of the drug trade and here's some information on what he said when he returned to power in 1994:

It was a day before the scheduled return of Haiti’s exiled president Jean Betrand Aristide, and it was clear that the October 30, 1993 deadline for a return to democratic rule in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation could not occur. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest who had been elected nearly three years before with 70 percent of the vote in Haiti’s first free election, was speaking to a packed session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In a dramatic move, Aristide told the diplomats that the military government of Haiti had to yield the power that was to end Haiti’s role in the drug trade, a trade financed by Colombia’s Cali cartel, that had exploded in the months following the coup. Aristide told the UN that each year Haiti is the transit point for nearly 50 tons of cocaine worth more than a billion dollars, providing Haiti’s military rulers with $200 million in profits.

Aristide’s electrifying accusations opened the floodgate of even more sinister revelations. Massachusetts senator John Kerry heads a subcommittee concerned with international terrorism and drug trafficking that turned up collusion between the CIA and drug traffickers during the late 1980s’ Iran Contra hearings.

(snip)

The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIE402A.html

Even after Aristide got back in power in 1994, he was (according to many) set up to fall again:

Investigative author Dennis Bernstein's charges that the US government's ongoing relationship with drug-trafficking dictators and their associated henchmen is perhaps one of the most important and under- reported stories of our time.
"President Clinton's continuing silence on the Haitian military's involvement in a one-billion-dollar a year illegal cocaine operation-- and the mainstream media's acceptance of this silence--is causing untold suffering in Haiti and the US," Bernstein said. "In fact," he continued, "it is this silence about the drugs that allows the military to continue to skirt the embargo with massive amounts of drug-money, to torture and assassinate thousands of Haitians, and to wreak havoc in this country by continuing to import tons of cocaine onto US soil. The US created, funded, and trained Haiti's drug-dealing death squad--the National Intelligence Service--which apparently was conceived to destabilize President Aristide.

"Democracy doesn't exist without a free and unfettered press that isn't afraid to ask the difficult questions and then to publish the answers to those questions without checking informally with the state department and the CIA. The press's continuing failure to report adequately on illegal intelligence operations and CIA-sponsored drug-running and assassination coup teams may ultimately lead to the death of democracy, not only in Haiti but in the US.

http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/haiti1.htm

There are many characters that were and continue to be involved in maintaining control of the drug trade, but here's another example of how anti-Aristide pro-drug trade thugs were paid by the CIA:

...Emmanuel Constant, the former leader of Fraph, the paramilitary organization that terrorized Haitians in the years of the illegal junta, described his work as a paid informer for the C.I.A. Mr. Constant is now in a Maryland jail, awaiting deportation hearings, and he has a clear self-interest in invoking the agency. But whatever embellishments he may have added about his association, Government officials confirm he was paid by the agency and kept in close touch with it at a time when he was doing his best to prevent the return to Haiti of its ousted President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/187.html

Let's just say all this would make for a very interesting movie.

Despite all that, contribute to the Quake relief:
www.WorldVision.org
www.MercyCorps.org
www.oxfamamerica.org/Haiti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. They have been having coups in Haiti for over 200 years, long before the CIA existed

[avaistheone1]

2. And the CIA has only made sure to contine these matters and make them worse.

[barb162]

19. link please

[Forkboy]

22. The OP.

[barb162]

23. Not one mainstream link there.

[Forkboy]

24. Ok, try Fox. They're mainstream, so you can trust them.

[barb162]

26. Is MSNBC mainstream to you? Got anything where Olbermann

is blaming the CIA for this country's problems? The Wash Post? NY Times? Any Pulitzer Prize winning reporters blaming this on the CIA?

[zulchzulu]

28. Well, back in the day...

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Date: 11/1/93
Title: "Key Haiti Leaders Said To Have Been in the CIA's Pay"
Author: Tim Weiner

PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Dates: 10/20/93; 11/2/93
Titles: "What's Behind Washington's Silence on Haiti Drug Connection?";
"A Haitian Call to Arms"
Author: Dennis Bernstein

SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
Date: 11/3/93
Title: "The CIA's Haitian Connection"
Authors: Dennis Bernstein and Howard Levine

LOS ANGELES TIMES
Date: 10/31/93
Title: "CIA's Aid Plan Would Have Undercut Aristide in '87-88"
Author: Jim Mann

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~makako/mind/haiti1.htm

[Forkboy]

29. Thank you.

You can lead a horse to water, and all that...

[barb162]

30. Haiti has been under UN stewardship since the early 1990s.

Is the UN under CIA control too?

Haiti also has an agriculural subsistence economy since before the CIA was invented.

The titles in that article are so old, they can't be linked.

[zulchzulu]

37. Really? The UN left in 2000 and came back in 2004...

...then were overwhelmed after Aristide was toppled again in 2005...

Here's an article mentioned... also, if links are old, does that make them not true?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BER402A.html

[barb162]

64. The UN left in 2001 and came back in 2004.

That's hardly a long time to be gone.

You never provided the actual links, just story titles with dates and I sure as hell am not going to pay the NY Times, LA Times,etc., to see the old archived article from 15 or so years ago.

[zulchzulu]

27. Exactly!

Do you think Katie Couric or Wolf Blitzer would do a story about the real story behind Haiti's CIA links?

They wouldn't make it home that night.

[barb162]

33. Take a look at Haiti's economy before the CIA was invented.

There's your answer. And the CIA didn't deforest Haiti. Haiti was a catastrophe before this quake catastrophe.
snip
"But what has really left Haiti in such a state today, what makes the country a constant and heart-rending site of ­recurring catastrophe, is its history. In Haiti, the last five centuries have combined to produce a people so poor, an infrastructure so nonexistent and a state so hopelessly ineffectual that whatever natural disaster chooses to strike next, its impact on the population will be magnified many, many times over. Every single factor that international experts look for when trying to measure a nation's vulnerability to natural disasters is, in Haiti, at the very top of the scale. Countries, when it comes to dealing with disaster, do not get worse.

"Haiti has had slavery, revolution, debt, deforestation, corruption, exploitation and violence," says Alex von Tunzelmann, a historian and writer currently working on a book about the country and its near neighbours, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. "Now it has poverty, illiteracy, overcrowding, no infrastructure, environmental disaster and large areas without the rule of law. And that was before the earthquake. It sounds a terrible cliche, but it really is a perfect storm. This is a catastrophe beyond our worst imagination."

It needn't, though, have been like this. In the 18th century, under French rule, Haiti – then called Saint-Domingue – was the Pearl of the Antilles, one of the richest islands in France's empire (though 800,000-odd African slaves who produced that wealth saw precious little of it). In the 1780s, Haiti exported 60% of all the coffee and 40% of all the sugar consumed in Europe: more than all of Britain's West Indian colonies combined. It subsequently became the first independent nation in Latin America, and remains the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the western hemisphere after the United States. So what went wrong?
snip
"The long and the short of it is that Haiti was paying reparations to France from 1825 until 1947," says Von Tunzelmann. "To come up with the money, it took out huge loans from American, German and French banks, at exorbitant rates of interest. By 1900, Haiti was spending about 80% of its national budget on loan repayments. It ­completely wrecked their economy. By the time the original reparations and interest were paid off, the place was basically destitute and trapped in a ­spiral of debt. Plus, a succession of leaders had more or less given up on trying to resolve Haiti's problems, and started looting it instead."
snip
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-history-earthquake-disaster

[avaistheone1]

48. New York Times mainstream enough for you?

The CIA and Haiti
New York Times Editorial, 8 December 1995

The performance of the Central Intelligence Agency in Haiti is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a spy organization loses sight of the clear line between providing neutral intelligence estimates and interfering with the execution of American foreign policy.

In an interview with 60 Minutes last Sunday, Emmanuel Constant, the former leader of Fraph, the paramilitary organization that terrorized Haitians in the years of the illegal junta, described his work as a paid informer for the C.I.A. Mr. Constant is now in a Maryland jail, awaiting deportation hearings, and he has a clear self-interest in invoking the agency. But whatever embellishments he may have added about his association, Government officials confirm he was paid by the agency and kept in close touch with it at atime when he was doing his best to prevent the return to Haiti of its ousted President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Mr. Constant's troubling role and other steps the C.I.A. took on Haiti two years ago leave the disturbing impression that the agency, whether deliberately or carelessly, undermined Clinton Administration plans to get Mr. Aristide back in office. The agency denies this. But looking back on the confused fall of 1993, it is abundantly clear that the C.I.A.. did not play a constructive role in Haiti policy.

After Mr. Aristide was ejected by a military coup in 1991, American policy makers flip-flopped for three years.. Some saw him as a dangerous demagogue, while others thought he represented Haiti's best hope for democracy. When it became obvious that the military junta would not step down, as it had agreed to in July 1993, pressure increased to use force to return Mr. Aristide. …

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/187.html

[barb162]

31. Really? Wonders never cease

snip..."Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti's fortunes did not pick up, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing extra-judicial killings, torture and brutality.

A bloody rebellion, and pressure from the US and France, forced Mr Aristide out of the country in 2004. snip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1202772.stm

[PVnRT]

3. ...and the U.S. has had a hand in plenty of them

whether or not the CIA existed.

[qazplm]

4. ok so what is the point?

We suck. Got it. We are going to help now. Should we do it while groveling the entire time begging for forgiveness?

Is now the time to attempt to link a natural disaster, which would be a natural disaster no matter where it took place, to how bad the US is?

Got it, we are the worst country in the world, we are the cause of all evil and suffering.

So now we are apparently going to try and help, shouldn't getting aid to these folks be the priority?

[PVnRT]

9. Spare me the hystrionics

It is a simple fact that the west, especially the U.S. and France, have kept Haiti in a state of poverty by propping up kleptocrats for years and demanding money from their central bank to pay off debts. That poverty has guaranteed that every natural disaster is going to be even worse there. If you're too blinded by patriotism to see the need to address endemic problems caused by us in that country, that's your problem.

zulchzulu's thread has fuck-all to do with helping people in the short term. Helping them in the long term requires looking at the past to see where they are today and why. Is now the time to link the effects of this disaster towards policy towards Haiti for the past 100+ years? Yeah, it's the best time, as a matter of fact, while it's fresh in people's minds.

[qazplm]

12. patriotism?

no not really. Histronics? Hmmm...think you need to look to yourself on that one.

AGain, why the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? Same Island. Same evil US/West.

The best time, assuming you were correct? Not really. In fact, it's more likely to have the opposite effect.
Particularly when it's a very simplistic approach to the problems Haiti has.

[zulchzulu]

17. Haiti's CIA-appointed/backed narco-kleptocrats have made it where it is today

I have a comparison of the two nations of Hispaniola downthread that illustrates the very simple point that the Dominican Republic has not had the same meddling of appointed, corrupt leaders that Haiti historically has had.

[PVnRT]

35. The difference is stable dictatorships on that side of the island

First Trujillo and then Balaguer. Both of whom, interestingly enough, had a hard-on for killing large numbers of Haitians to keep their island "pure."

[barb162]

20. Correct, Haiti has been a catastrophe for decades and decades

Deforestation, high birth rate, pollution central, illiteracy, it goes on and on. Plus one natural disaster after another.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

21. And there has been terorism long before Al Qaeda. So fucking what?

These things are not mutually exclusive. You sure do like to play dumb a lot though.

[Hippo_Tron]

49. The OP asserts that Haiti is a dysfunctional state because of the CIA

Pointing out that Haiti was a dysfunctional state long before the CIA is relevant to the discussion. Combining these two points might lead us to a better understanding of the issue which is that Haiti has always had serious problems and the CIA has made matters worse. That is what discussion is for.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

50. The poster I replied to has a long history of making simplistic asinine statements whenever

there's a topic that questions the conventional mainstream version of events. He does it all the time. I don't think the idea is to suggest that Haiti is the way it is just because of the CIA. But that they have been part of the problem. I won't pretend to speak for the OP but the way it reads to me is that its dysfunctional corrupt leaders have been assisted by the US. Which is no big secret or conspiracy theory. So yes, that is what discussion is for.

[Hippo_Tron]

51. I take it you're talking about the first reply and not the OP

I think in this case it is important to point out that Haiti has an extremely troubled history and while the US and the CIA may have some degree of involvement in the problem, they are not necessarily the reason that Haiti is poor (which is the OP's assertion).

Now if the OP had posted, for example, that Nicaragua is poor because of the US and CIA intervention and this person had posted something to the effect of minimizing US and CIA involvement I would agree that such a statement would be simplistic and asinine. In this particular case, though, the statement is simplistic but not asinine.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

52. My mistake I meant poster above. You do make a good point. I was reacting

more out of habit. I think if someone else had posted something similar i may not have reacted the same way.

[zulchzulu]

54. I don't think the CIA is the ONLY reason why Haiti is poor

There are a lot of other issues regarding why Haiti is poor.

Overpopulation, a destroyed infrastructure and corrupt narco-kleptocracy that went into full mode with the Devalier regimes, illiteracy due to a oligarchic social caste system and even the fact that Haiti geographically is the more mountainous arid portion of the island of Hispanolea make for just some of the reasons.

But the inane rejection of obvious evidence that the CIA, the NIS and other groups have been part of torture, drug and weapons running and coups to install puppets to keep Haiti poor and powerless is feckless and ignorant.

Ever heard of United Fruit Company? That's another story.

[blm]

42. They had problems in EVERY nation before the CIA existed, doesn't mean the CIA hasn't been involved

in serious drugrunning around the globe over the last few decades now, does it?

Ever hear of narco-terrorism or CIA's involvement in drugrunning for Poppy Bush and his pals?

[Kingofalldems]

46. Sounds like Hyman Roth in The Godfather--

You just know everything. Wow!

[jaksavage]

5. Funny how P Robertson has it backwards.

Haiti overthrew the french , in a slave revolt. Our beloved USA has been making them pay for that ever since. So we install corrupt leaders and overthrow democratic ones, as long as we can use them for government sponsered drug importing.

We are the devil.

[no limit]

6. So afghanistan and haiti are poor not because of a lack of natural resources

but because of the evil CIA. Thanks for that tid-bit.

[arcadian]

7. Sant Domingue was the leading sugar producer in the Caribbean under th French

So it's not because of lack of natural resources.

[qazplm]

8. sugar production patterns

have kinda changed since then dontcha think?

Why do you think the Dominican Republic is doing better?

Same Island. Same evil US.

[PVnRT]

10. You're right! Colonialism has no effect on things now!

Your brilliant response has convinced me! :eyes:

[no limit]

11. The CIA is engaged in colonialism of Haiti? Holy shit! who needs CNN when you got DU for news

[zulchzulu]

13. The CIA was never involved in Haiti and never helped kill off leaders democratically elected

So says Beck... and you.

:crazy:

[no limit]

14. The CIA has had its hands in a lot of things

how much of a hand it had in Haiti I honestly don't know. But I do know that there are still people dying a slow and painful death under rubble in that country. And I find if amazing that hours after this tragedy you see thread after thread here about who is to blame for this, wether it be the CIA, George W Bush, or the deal Haiti made with the Devil a couple hundred years back (oh wait that last one wasn't posted here? might as well have been).

[barb162]

25. The Chinese have their hands in it.. A lot of Chinese nationals were there

Any comments on that?

[no limit]

40. The fuck you talking about?

[PVnRT]

34. Colonialism, imperialism....pretty much the same thing

And our involvement with Haiti stretches back to the Jefferson presidency, who feared that Haiti would inspire his own slaves to revolt. He initially offered aid to Napoleon to re-conquer the island, until he learned that Napoleon also wanted to seize New Orleans and start a North American empire.

Continue believing what you want, though. The U.S. has never done anything wrong.

[no limit]

39. Continue to use hundreds of thousands of dead as a political prop agains the US

Along with nice little strawmen. What I find funny is you think you're actually better than Pat Robertson or Rush Limpballs when in reality you really aren't.

[Igel]

56. Question

Why would Napoleon want to seize French territory? He was already in charge of France and its colonies. He's the one that then sold New Orleans to us.

[zulchzulu]

58. One of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans is Napoleon House

It was a residence back then that was supposed to be where Napoleon might have lived when he took over Louisiana. Jefferson was not really into having that happen.

The Louisiana Purchase was pretty much done in 1803 by Jefferson because he didn't want the French to own the foot of the Mississippi and New Orleans. Napoleon was faced with the slave uprising in what's now called Haiti as well as was ramping up on going to war with Britain. Getting a ton of cash from Jefferson for his new war ventures was coupled with him not feeling like Louisiana was worth keeping.

Napoleon needed the cash and Jefferson wanted to start the move westward and protect the Mississippi River from foreign control.

Napoleon lost out with Haiti and Britain kicked his ass. Jefferson fought with the Federalists and got what he wanted.

[vaberella]

65. You know nothing about Haiti if you make such an absurd claim. Absolutely nothing. n/t

[PatSeg]

15. The IMF has contributed to the growing poverty

of Haiti, as well as other 3rd world countries.

<The increased dependence on food imports that SAPs create places countries in an extremely vulnerable position because they lack the foreign exchange to import enough food, given falls in export prices and the need to repay debt. It should come as no surprise therefore that 80 percent of all malnourished children in the developing world live in countries where farmers have been forced to shift from food production for local consumption to the production of crops for export to the industrialized world. Furthermore, as Davison Budhoo, a former IMF economist, notes, export orientation "has led to the devastation of traditional agriculture and the emergence of hordes of landless farmers in nearly every country in which the Fund operates."

Hunger and farmer bankruptcy is also a product of budget cutting under IMF programs, often leading to the removal of price supports for essential items, including food and farm inputs such as fertilizer, whose prices then rise dramatically. This problem is compounded by IMF-inspired currency devaluation, making these imports more expensive. In Caracas in 1989, for example, following a 200 percent increase in the price of bread, riots ensued in which the army responded by firing upon and killing l,000 people. In addition, higher interest rates often prevent small farmers from obtaining the capital needed to stay afloat, forcing them to sell their land, work as tenants, or move to the slums of large cities.>

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/IMF_Formula_PrescripPover.html

<There’s another reason for the food riots in Haiti -- highly subsidized US rice that flooded the country in exchange for loans from the International Monetary Fund. The US cereal put Haitian rice farmers out of business and destroyed the ability of the poor country to feed itself with domestically grown food.>

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view/20080503-134390/US%2C_IMF_role_in_Haiti%92s_food_riots

[zulchzulu]

16. Comparison of Haiti with the Dominican Republic

Meddling in Haitian coups and the utter destruction by the Devalier family (backed by the CIA) have made Haiti, which is about one-third of the island of Hispaniola, a tragedy of epic proportions.

Here's an interesting comparison:

The beautiful Caribbean island of Hispaniola is shared by two increasingly disparate nations – Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Haiti, which occupies the western one-third of the island, is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

(snip)

The Dominican Republic, on the eastern side of Hispaniola, is a rapidly developing democracy. It's hardly a rich country; one-quarter of Dominicans live below the poverty line and the nation is plagued with extremely high levels of income inequality. But it has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean, and this fact -- along with productive agriculture, telecommunications, and manufacturing sectors -- is bringing consistent GDP growth.





The sizable differences are the culmination of political and social trends that stretch back decades, even centuries.

In Haiti, chronic political instability and corruption have combined with poverty, illiteracy, and racial discrimination to pose insurmountable barriers to modernization.

Dominicans have also experienced a great deal of corruption and instability, but since 1970 the country has maintained the transition of power through peaceful elections. The continuity of the Dominican government made possible a set of economic reforms in 1990 that led to a decade of steady growth.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/26614/island-divide-haiti-vs-dominican-republic.aspx

[vaberella]

66. When you use Duvalier family be clear and push Jean-Claude.

Historically---under Papa Doc, ou Francois Duvalier, irrespective of the tonton macouts, Haiti was actually one of the richest Caribbean nations if not the richest. It as post Francois Duvalier's death and the rise of Jean-Claude Duvalier do we see an almost systemic destruction of Haiti.

[elleng]

70. Would you discuss this, please?

We could benefit, I'm sure, from an informed discussion.

Thanks.

[vaberella]

72. Discuss the history of Haiti...Ahhh...int he GDP section?

Ahhh....I'll see what I can do. Currenty my net is crap and I'm still waiting on news about my family in Haiti. However, I'll do what I can. I think a lot of people assume when they speak of Duvalier that al the Duvalier's were hated. That's far from the case....there was a massive support for Francois Duvalier---however admittedly with him there was the introduction of US interests---but also with him there was a removal of US abuse tactics---after a revolt. In any event...I'll see what I can do.

[elleng]

73. Maybe in the History section?

People really do need to hear facts here.

BEST to you and yours.

[blm]

18. And why the RW fascists here are so keenly interested in keeping Haiti's govt under THEIR

thumb and out of the Haitian peoples' control.

Don't trust ANY of BushInc's hired hands on Haiti. Bill Clinton is GREAT at directing emergency response missions....I wish him success for this event, but, I also know how much he has invested in protecting Poppy and his cronies over the last two decades.

[barb162]

32. Is the current 100 million in US aid by Obama a CIA plot too?

And is the donation I made for Haiti disaster a relief a CIA plot?

[PVnRT]

36. Yes, that's exactly what this thread is about

Good grief.

[barb162]

68. Obama is involved in a CIA plot? That is TOO bizarre.

Really, I can't believe you would even believe such trash.

:eyes:

[timeforpeace]

75. Shh! He hasn't been told. Deniable plausibility.

[Forkboy]

44. ....

:eyes:

[zulchzulu]

45. Ferchrissakes...

Listen to Fixed Noise. They'll comfort you.

[barb162]

63. And you just keep listening to yourself.

I suspect not many others are.

[grantcart]

38. and yet in the 80s Thailand had much more drugs than Afghanistan or Haiti

And yet it eliminated Heroin and has sutained a positive GNP growth for 50 years.


Thailand, unlike Haiti or Mexico (why didn't you include Mexico in your grand conspiracy?) actually lowered their birth rate.


The number one cause of systemic poverty in underdeveloped countries is whether or not they have accepted national birth control or not.

That is why Mexico, Haiti and other Roman Catholic countries, as well as poor Islamic countries that discourage birth control will never emerge from poverty until they have left the middle ages of family planning.

The Catholic Church has a much greater impact on poverty in these countries than the CIA.

[snooper2]

41. +1,000,000,000

nt

[zulchzulu]

47. Discouraging birth control in countries certainly leads to poverty

As for the CIA meddling with Haiti, I'd love to see proof that they haven't. It's not a "grand conspiracy".

:hi:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

62. The CIA has meddled damn near everywhere south of the North Pole.

I don't think that's the point.

I think the "grand conspiracy" part is the notion that the CIA is intentionally holding Haiti down or the part where Haiti is utterly helpless against it.

[naaman fletcher]

43. Screw the war on drugs..

Haiti, Mexico, Colombia, etc. should stop cracking down on the drug trade. Why are they doing the bidding of the US? It's the US's problem. When drugs are illegal, the drug dealers need to by the governments, then you wind up with countries like Mexico.

All of south and central america should give the US the finger, and tell the cartels that they can do what they want so long as they leave the government and regular citizens alone.

And of course the US needs to legalize all of it.

[Mimosa]

53. Overpopulation has hurt Haiti too. N/T

[branders seine]

55. Just like the US will be

in another couple of generations.

[elleng]

57. History of Haiti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti

[vaberella]

67. You think Wiki can decribe 200 years of complex history? n/t

[elleng]

69. No, ma'am.

Can you?

[boppers]

71. Wikipedia can do it better than a DU thread can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Haitian_history has hundreds of relevant articles, as well.

It's not complete, of course, and never will be, but it's an ongoing project.

[Vidar]

59. K&R.

[inthebrain]

60. Capitalism

That's the way the system works.

It's not supposed to create wealth for everyone.

[Overseas]

61. K&R. //nt

[flamingdem]

74. Thank you, this is required reading nt