[News] Haiti - Racism and Poverty

[Anti-Imperialist News]

JOHN MAXWELL: Racism and Poverty

<http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/afrikan-world-news>http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/afrikan-world-news 
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34606-john-maxwell-racism-poverty.html

The people of Haiti are as poor as human beings can be.

According to the statisticians of the World Bank 
and others who speculate about how many Anglos 
can dance on the head of a peon, Haiti may either 
be the second, third or fourth poorest country in the world.

In Haiti’s case, statistics are irrelevant.

When large numbers of people are reduced to 
eating dirt – earth, clay – it is impossible to 
imagine poverty any more absolute, any more 
desperate, any more inhuman and degrading.

The chairman of the World Bank visited Haiti this 
past week. This man, Robert Zoellick, is an 
expert finance-capitalist, a former partner in 
the investment bankers Goldman Sachs, whose 
22,000 ‘traders” last year averaged bonuses of more than $600,000 each.

Goldman Sachs paid out over & 18 billion in 
bonuses to its traders last year, about 50% more 
than the GDP of Haiti’s 8 million people.

The chairman of Goldman took home more than $70 
million and his lieutenants – as Zoellick once was – $40 million or more, each.

It should be clear that someone like Robert 
Zoellick is likely to be totally bemused by Haiti 
when his entertainment allowance could probably 
feed the entire population for a day or two. It 
is not hard to understand that Mr Zoellick cannot 
understand why Haiti needs debt relief.

Haiti is now forced by the World Bank and Its 
bloodsucking siblings like the IMF, to pay more 
than $1 million a week to satisfy debts incurred 
by the Duvaliers and the post-Duvalier tyrannies. 
Haiti must repay this debt to prove its fitness 
for ‘help’ from the Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFI).

One million dollars a week would feed everybody 
in Haiti even if only at a very basic level – at 
least they would not have to eat earth patties. 
Instead the Haitians export this money to pay the salaries of such as Zoellick
But Zoellick doesn’t see it that way. According 
to the World Bank’s website the bank is in the 
business of eradicating poverty. At the rate it 
does that in Haiti the Bank, I estimate, will be 
in the poverty eradication business for another 18,000 years.

The reason Haiti is in its present state is 
pretty simple. Canada, the United States and 
France, all of whom consider themselves civilised 
nations, colluded in the overthrow of the 
democratic government of Haiti four years ago. 
They did this for several excellent reasons:

• Haiti 200 years ago defeated the world’s then 
major powers, France (twice) Britain and Spain, 
to establish its independence and to abolish 
plantation slavery. This was unforgivable.

• Despite being bombed, strafed and occupied by 
the United States early in the past century, and 
despite the American endowment of a tyrannical 
and brutal Haitian army designed to keep the 
natives in their place, the Haitians insisted on 
re-establishing their independence. Having 
overthrown the Duvaliers and their successors, 
the Haitians proceeded to elect as president a 
little black parish priest who had become their 
hero by defying the forces of evil and tyranny.

• The new president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand 
Aristide refused to sell out (privatise) the few 
assets owned by the government (the public utilities mainly);

• Aristide also insisted that France owed Haiti 
more than $25 billion in repayment of blood money 
extorted from Haiti in the 19th century, as 
alleged compensation for France’s loss of its 
richest colony and to allow Haiti to gain admission to world trade;

• Aristide threatened the hegemony of a largely 
expatriate ruling class of so-called ‘elites’ 
whose American connections allowed them to 
continue the parasitic exploitation and economic 
strip mining of Haiti following the American occupation.

• Haiti, like Cuba, is believed to have in its 
exclusive economic zone, huge submarine oil 
reserves, greater than the present reserves of the United States

• Haiti would make a superb base from which to attack Cuba.

The American attitude to Haiti was historically 
based on American disapproval of a free black 
state just off the coast of their slave-based 
plantation economy. This attitude was pithily 
expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s idea that a black 
man was equivalent to three fifths of a white 
man. It was further apotheosized by Woodrow 
Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings 
Bryan who expostulated to Wilson: “Imagine! Niggers speaking French!”

The Haitians clearly did not know their place. In 
February 2004, Mr John McCain’s International 
Republican Institute, assisted by Secretary of 
State Colin Powell, USAID and the CIA, kidnapped 
Aristide and his wife and transported them to the 
Central African Republic as ‘cargo’ in a plane 
normally used to ‘render’ terrorists for torture 
outsourced by the US to Egypt, Morocco and Uzbekistan.

Before Mr Zoellick went to Haiti last week, the 
World Bank announced that Mr. Zoellick’s visit 
would “emphasize the Bank's strong support for 
the country.” Mr. Zoellick added: "Haiti must be 
given a chance. The international community needs 
to step up to the challenge and support the 
efforts of the Haitian government and its people."

“If Robert Zoellick wants to give Haiti a chance, 
he should start by unconditionally cancelling 
Haiti’s debt,” says Brian Concannon of the 
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. 
“Instead the World Bank- which was established to 
fight poverty- continues to insist on debt 
payments when Haitians are starving to death and literally mired in mud.”

“After four hurricanes in a month and an 
escalating food crisis it is outrageous that 
Haiti is being told it must wait six more months 
for debt relief,” said Neil Watkins, National 
Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network.

“Haiti’s debt is both onerous and odious”, added 
Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners In Health. “The 
payments are literally killing people, as every 
dollar sent to Washington is a dollar Haiti could 
spend on healthcare, nutrition and feeding 
programs, desperately needed infrastructure and 
clean water. Half of the loans were given to the 
Duvaliers and other dictatorships, and spent on 
Presidential luxuries, not development programs 
for the poor. Mr. Zoellick should step up and 
support the Haitian government by cancelling the debt now.”

“Unconditional debt cancellation is the first 
step in addressing the humanitarian crisis in 
Haiti,” according to Nicole Lee, Executive 
Director of TransAfrica Forum. “There is also an 
urgent need for U.S. policy towards Haiti to 
shift from entrenching the country in future debt 
to supporting sustainable, domestic solutions for development.”
The above quotations are taken from an appeal by 
the organisations represented above.

Further comment is superfluous.

Poverty and Globalisation

President Jean Bertrand Aristide, now in enforced 
exile in South Africa, might be sardonically 
entertained by a new report just published by the 
world’s Club of the Rich, the OECD –Organisation 
for Economic Cooperation and Development.

This report, titled “Growing Unequal” examines 
the accelerating trend toward economic inequality 
in the societies of the world’s richest countries.
The report contains several mind-blowing 
discoveries which will, no doubt, amaze 
journalists and policy-makers in the Western 
hemisphere and keep them entertained for many years.

The major finding is that globalisation and free 
trade have hurt millions of people, particularly the poorest.

Another ground-breaking discovery is that “work reduces poverty”.
One of these days Jamaicans and other Caribbean 
people may decide to find out whether these 
theses are true and whether if they are, we 
should have signed on to the new EPA with the European Union.

If our ginnigogs were able and willing to read 
they might become aware of a phenomenon called 
the “resource curse’ which appears to condemn 
developing countries with enormous mineral wealth 
to misery, war, corruption and destitution.
If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might 
find it useful to discover whether an acre of 
land under citrus or pumpkins is not more 
productive, sustainable and valuable than that same acre destroyed for bauxite.

If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might 
become aware of the fate of the island of Nauru, 
‘discovered’ less than two hundred years ago, 
mined for phosphate, returning a per capita 
national income rivaling Saudi Arabia’s two and 
three decades ago and now to be abandoned because 
the land has been mined to death and is destined 
to disappear shortly beneath the waves of global warming.
Softly, softly, catchee monkee

If our ginnigogs were able to read and willing 
and able to defend the interests of Jamaica and 
the Jamaican people they might discover that 
bauxite mining will, within a relatively short 
time, contaminate all the water resources of 
Jamaica, destroy our cultural heritage, wipe out 
our priceless biological diversity, deprave our 
landscape and reduce those of us who survive to a 
state of penury and hopelessness. Goodbye 
tourism, goodbye farming, welcome hunger, welcome clay patties.

According to the experts if you drop a live 
lobster into a pot of boiling water the creature 
will make frenzied efforts to escape. If, on the 
other hand, you put him in a pot of cold water 
and bring it slowly to the boil, the lobster will perish without a struggle.

Jamaica, on the atlas, is shaped a bit like a lobster.

Bon appetit.

Copyright © 2008 John Maxwell
<mailto:%20jankunnu at gmail.com>jankunnu at gmail.com



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