[...] Article source. Posted in News. « MPs go easy on embattled Jones · NOAA Will Not List Two SpChile Earthquake Death Toll – Chilean Earthquake Death Toll Climbs Above 700. Posted by admin on March 1st, 2010. Further [...]

The Hatian earthquake came from under ground nuclear bombing that’s why so many lives lost there

theres no need to try and figure out why haiti had more death. haiti has weak buildings. i remember hearing stories of there buildings just grumbling on people and thats with out the earthqake. a few years earlier a school crumble and killed some kids.

The issue is, the lack of a proper Government being allowed to set up and function, largely due to outside meddling from the US and France. in 2008, hurricanes that hit both Haiti and Cuba extremely hard, caused 700 deaths in Haiti, while only 12 in Cuba. Cuba is famous for its disaster preparedness protocol, and is well equipped, logistically and from a infrastructure standpoint to deal with these types of disasters compared to Haiti. Chile is a Government that has practiced responsible fiscal monetary policy for years and as a result, has been able to strengthen the infrastructure, while simultaenously, running a 15billion budget surplus. The aid won’t be as crucially needed there as it was in Haiti. Proof of what can happen, when a country is allowed to govern itself.

I got repotrs that 10000 dead fish showed up on floridas cost and british ships had pulled out from Haiti just before the “earthquake” something they haven’t done since the 1700s

Let me go dig it up and post.

Hugo Chavez Blames U.S. For Earthquake In Haiti, Claims “Tectonic …Just a weapons test? I think we should keep in mind that earthquakes have always been common …. a puppet with the hand of the devil up his a** pulling his strings. …. Isn’t it interesting that the Royal Navy pulled out supply ships in the area that could have helped Haiti only a couple weeks before the event. …www.infowars.com/hugo-chavez-blames-u-s-for-earthquake-in-haiti-claims- tectonic-weapon-was-used/ – Cached7

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLLrvbpnrs&hl=en&gl=US&warned=True&client=mv-google

10,000 dead fish in florida after Haiti Quake

[...] Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

Maatra is right. Why was Caricom denied permission to come help Haiti initially? Also, wow, shocking news. Haiti just so happens to sit on a gas reserve that the earthquake freed up. And people are acting like they didn’t know this. Hmmm, and the US is going to occupy Haiti with a military force.

Comment: The Hate and the Quake

1/19/2010

By Sir Hilary Beckles

The University of the West Indies is in the process of conceiving how best to deliver a major conference on the theme “Rethinking and Rebuilding Haiti”. I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building project, launched on January 1st 1804, has failed on account of mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.

Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti’s independence was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the newly emerging democracy.

Freedom

The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France. The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty years earlier. The Americans declared their Independence and crafted an extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty. In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as the basis of the new nation state. The Founding fathers therefore could not see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation. The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the battle field a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom could not comfortably co-exist in the same place.

The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a tremendous progressive boost by so doing. They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. All were linked in communion over the 500 000 blacks in Haiti, the most populous and prosperous Caribbean colony. As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it. With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over owning it – and the people.

The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared their Independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on slavery. Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic. For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of mass freedom and citizenship in a nation.

Ostracised

The French refused to recognise Haiti’s Independence and declared it an illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in solidarity as their mentor in Independence, refused to recognise them, and offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in solidarity, as did every other nation-state in the western world. Haiti was isolated at birth – ostracised and denied access to world trade, finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of national strangulation recorded in modern history. The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were alone from inception. The crumbling began.

Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of Port-au-Prince. The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The Cabinet took the decision that the state of affairs could not continue. The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy. The French government was invited to a summit.
Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to recognise the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the wall, agreed to pay the French.

Systematic destruction

The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in order to place a value on all lands, all physical, assets, the 500 000 citizens who were formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial properties and services. The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this reparation to France in return for national recognition. The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved persons before Independence.

Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French Government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the Haitian economy and society. Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last instalment was made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to 70% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. Jamaica today pays up to 70% in order to service its international and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into financial and social chaos. The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate, to repay the French government.

Fledgling nation crushed

When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations. The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of freedom and the seed of justice. Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current condition. The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways the quake has been less destructive than the hate. Human life was snuffed out by the quake while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation – a crime against humanity.

Moral obligation

During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong representation was made to the
French government to repay the 150 million francs. The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US $21 billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian people and should be repaid. It is stolen wealth. In so doing France could discharge its moral obligation to the Haitian people. For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy, France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this post modern world, should do the just and legal thing. Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free at last.

(Sir Hilary Beckles is Pro-Vice Chancellor and Principal at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus)

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=letters&NewsID=8490

The long history of troubled ties between Haiti and the US

By Vanessa Buschschluter
BBC News, Washington

When US President Barack Obama announced that one of the biggest relief efforts in US history would be heading for Haiti, he highlighted the close ties between the two nations.

“With just a few hundred miles of ocean between us and a long history that binds us together, Haitians are our neighbours in the Americas and here at home,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have indeed become neighbours of Americans.

Some 420,000 live in the US legally, according to census figures. Estimates of the number of Haitians in the country illegally vary wildly, from some 30,000 to 125,000.

It is a sizeable diaspora which wants to see quick and decisive action from its adopted homeland.

Desperate to see aid getting through to friends and relatives, many expatriate Haitians have welcomed President Obama’s decision to send up to 10,000 troops to help rescue efforts.

Historically though, US military deployments to Haiti have been controversial to say the least, and ties have often suffered.

Shared history

Both countries were born out of a struggle against European colonisers.

The US declared independence from Britain in 1776 – the first to do so in the Western Hemisphere – followed by Haiti, which broke away from France in 1804.

But there the similarities end. While the American War of Independence was driven by a white elite unwilling to – among other things – continue paying taxes to its colonial masters, the Haitian revolution was led by a freed slave, Toussaint Louverture.

The existence of a nation of freed slaves to the south became an inspiration for slaves in the US, and a thorn in the side of many Southerners who relied on slavery for their economy.

The animosity of some of the Southern states towards Haiti soured relations between the two nations for decades and played a big part in delaying its official recognition by the US until 1862, 58 years after its independence.

But Haiti’s geographical proximity to the US and its strategic location in the Caribbean sparked the interest of American administrations.

Strategic interest

In the 19th Century, it was eyed as the location for a potential naval base.

US leaders also feared foreign occupation of the island at a time when European powers were trying to expand their sphere of influence.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson suggested the annexation of the whole island of Hispaniola – present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic – to secure a US presence in the Caribbean.

His suggestion was not followed, but American warships were active in Haitian waters 17 times between 1862 – when the US finally recognised Haiti’s independence – and 1915, when it occupied the country.

Assistant Secretary of State Alvey Adee summed up the US view of Haiti in 1888 when he called it “a public nuisance at our door”.

Tumultuous history

In the following decades, Haiti would only become more of a headache to its big neighbour.

Between 1888 and 1915, no Haitian president completed his seven-year term.

Ten were killed or overthrown, including seven in the four years to the US invasion of 1915. Only one died of natural causes.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson took control of the Haitian National Bank by sending in marines, who removed $500,000 of its reserves “for safe-keeping” in New York.

The assassination of the Haitian president a year later finally prompted President Wilson to invade Haiti with the aim of protecting US assets and preventing the further strengthening of German influence in the region.

After failing to make the new Haitian legislature adopt a constitution which would allow foreign land ownership, the Wilson administration forced the legislature to dissolve in 1917. It would not meet again until 1929.

The US finally withdrew from Haiti in 1934 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbour Policy”, which stressed co-operation and trade over military force to maintain stability in the Americas.

Duvalier era

Many Haitians fled to the US during the political repression under Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

At first, the US government welcomed the refugees, but as the numbers swelled and boatloads of Haitians arrived on the South Florida coast in the 1970s and 1980s, this attitude changed to a policy of intercepting boats at sea and returning those on board to Haiti.

After decades dominated by dictatorships and coups, democracy was restored in 1990 when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in a popular vote.

The ousting of President Aristide by a military regime in 1991 led to a new wave of Haitians headed for the US.

Military deployments

Faced with increasing chaos just south of its shores and an ever-growing stream of refugees arriving on – and often sinking off – Florida’s shores, President Bill Clinton sent a US-led intervention force to Haiti in 1994.

A last-minute deal brokered by former President Jimmy Carter allowed the troops to go ashore unopposed by the Haitian military and police.

Constitutional government was restored and Mr Aristide returned to power.

US troops left after two years – too soon, some experts argue, to ensure the stability of Haiti’s democratic institutions.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide stayed in power until 1996, and was re-elected in 2000.

While he enjoyed the support of the Clinton administration during his first term of office, allegations of corruption and links to the drugs trade during President Aristide’s second term made for a rocky relationship with Washington.

After an uprising against President Aristide in 2004, US forces returned to Haiti, this time to airlift him out of the country.

Mr Aristide accused the US of forcing him out – an accusation the US rejected as “absurd”.

With the crisis averted, US interest in Haiti lessened. A UN-led mission took over from US troops in June 2004 and continues to be present there.

‘American leadership’

The election of President Obama and the nomination of Bill Clinton to the post of UN envoy to Haiti, combined with a period of relative political stability, led to a strengthening of US-Haitian ties.

Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spent their honeymoon in Haiti, have long taken an interest in the country.

President Obama has enlisted their help, alongside that of former President George W Bush, to help drive fundraising for Haiti.

Speaking on Thursday, President Obama said that this was “one of those moments that calls out for American leadership”.

This US intervention, he stressed, would be “for the sake of our common humanity”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8460185.stm

[...] RELATED: Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] RELATED: Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] RELATED: Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] RELATED: Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

[...] RELATED: Why Haiti’s Earthquake Death Toll Exceeds Chile’s [...]

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