Submitted by Crusoe (as a comment on the Haiti We Are Sorry blog
You list some good ideas for the structural retransformation of Haiti [Responding to Commenter Dictionary on the Haiti We Are Sorry blog]. Each in of themselves they do not depend on improved education but do depend on improved technical training (farming etc). However, for all, the long-term success of those initiatives individually and collectively leading to a successful Haiti will certainly also depend on improved education, if as we have been informed, the literacy level is so low.
This has two implications.
Firstly, immediately after initial search, rescue, medical, temporary (short and medium term) and security issues have been addressed as priority, the early reformation must include an immediate education programme, for adult and youth, such that the transformation of Haiti can begin with the active participation of her people, not as ‘serfs’ but as active individuals and communities with an understanding of the reasoning behind the methods and the aim of the methods.
I must add, that ‘transformation’ in this context is not meant to refer to bringing Haiti to the same philosophical outlook as anyone other specific group. In this context it is meant to refer to bringing Haiti to a level of self-capability and self-determination. Now, to expect say a three or four year ‘crash course’ in education and technical skills may seem either impossible or unrealistic, but unfortunately, if this is not done as one of the foundations of the rebuilding (in the context of not only structural, but as a nation of people), than all else may eventually prove futile.
This is obviously along the lines of the old phrase of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him the fish. Merely putting up structures, farms etc may certainly alleviate some misery, but while in the short term foreign contractors etc may gain much from the aid given for this purpose, the long-term goal should be to have Haitians and not only elite, but the everyday Haitian, benefit from money flows and thus create an independent people and a vibrant economy.
It is my view therefore Caricom leaders, should address the education of Haiti, as a priority, as much a priority as any other redevelopment effort.
To reinforce a point, the initial effort must not only be to set up an improved schooling system, but implement as an interim measure, an ’emergency education programme’, with the help of international authorities and the Haitian authorities. If one wants a long-term Haiti, this is essential.
We must give thanks yet again, that Errol Barrow saw the necessity of education as a developmental tool. And, we must forever resist ANY attempts to take free education from Barbadians. Indeed, those of us who wish for an improved world, must seek the furtherance of a sound even if basic education, for all peoples, as a necessity for development.
1,421 responses to “The Reconstruction And Transformation Of Haiti: A Global-Moral Imperative”
Explain.
The Chinese exploited its massive work force. Haiti don’t have that amount of people. Low cost means that people worked for low wages and sometimes none. Not that they went hungry or anything like that, it is just that they would have accepted the low wages for the benefit of the country in the long run.
Access to resources is also another factor. Don’t think for one moment that China did not have to spend money to build the factories, etc. The culture of the people too.
You see, if you have 20,000 workers, you can move 20,000 stones in a less than a day, with an orderly procession. Otherwise, get a bobcat and a truck.
Take the example of Cuba. I witnessed the inside walls of a two storey building (a school) plastered between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. They had about six women on each wall. Therefore in one room there were about 25 people including those mixing mortar etc. No company would hire all those people just to plaster. Those people were the people who lived in the community. They built the school and government provided the materials. That is just not our culture.
@ROK
After all the talk what can we as a region do to ensure we play a role to help Haiti to rise up?
Correct ROK
China’s population of one fifth of the world’s population makes trivia of the stats that Mobutu has quoted. China once built product for me. The only way to absolutely ensure that your specs were being followed was to eyeball the process yourself. If you want to see poverty, go to China and make a wrong turn, it’s not good. They had a good thing going but this new breed of politician/businessman/academic advisor will make Mao turn in his grave. They have sold out big time, and as one of their chief economists have stated, China is answering all of the easy questions…! The big ones are still there looming! 8 million Haitians are better off being involved with the South Americans.
@ David
Direct Haiti towards ALBA
As a region? Maybe more as a people. Our leaders are yet to consult with and engage their constituencies.
As a people, we have the solutions. From the perspective of a politician, it becomes, not so much what is right, but what is prudent.
The politicians make the decisions and the people live with them. However, if everybody was made to feel that they were stakeholders, then we would have true development rather than forced development fraught with health, environmental, cultural and social issues among others.
Sorry, my last post was in response to David.
@David
Your question deserves a better answer. It is a very important question. The one thing I would say is that the voices of the people of Haiti ought to be heard and that all the solutions should come from them and they should implement them.
Our role has to be a supportive one. What can we do to ensure we can play a role? That is a good one. The topic needs discussion. I am sure that my suggestions will not be accepted but it has to start with a will on the part of our politicians to put the people first.
Any arrangement where the use of US dollar is not a requirement for trade between two sovereign states is an arrangement with a distinct advantage. Haiti has an existing parasitic class that is poised to benefit greatly from the type of support that the Americans will be delivering.
ROK
Let’s talk expansionism. The fact is that the more Haitians die, the more that will benefit the USA, because with a depleted population, especially the intelligensia; teachers, lawyers, engineers, civil servants, etc. in a country where there is virtually no education system replenishing the stock of professionals and workers, the word will be that Haiti needs a lot of workers, not because they don’t have people but because they are not trained.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How do you see a population of 9 million getting depleted?
Since 1791, Haiti’s population has grown by a factor of 18, ours by a factor of 4.
Haiti’s population is about twice that of the rest of Caricom put together.
When it comes to land, only Guyana and Surname compare.
Barbados can physically fit into Haiti 700 times!!!
We need to sit and comprehend the differences in scale and determine exactly where we can be of assistance before we play we are going helping Haiti.
No doubt Caricm has a role to play, but it is bound to be a secondary one.
Like it or not, Haiti needs America bad bad bad!!
@David
The ball is in the haitians court.Theworld
have seen and now the world is listening
with a sympathetic ear to wat they have to say. Only they can decide what is best for them and this apristine oportunity for
them to do so. If they dont don’t do so now and quickly america would make the choice for them.
@John
It seems whenever we have to deal with issues which involve race you always trivialize the situation. We are all agreed that an abundance of financial and other resources is required for Haiti. What you refuse to grasp is the need for Haiti; a Black country, to participate in the process of shaping its destiny.
ac
how will it be known what is the collective will of 9 million Haitians? Do you know what all (or even most) 270 000 Bajans want?
@Anonymous
we humans have several ways of letting
our feelings known and when they are not content with a situation we make it known. Case and point the haitian people
are already finding a way to have shelter
I know they can’t be happy with theway their govenment has ignored them.
Would You?
@ All ah wunna
Being ignored is nothing new for me, but cu’dear do any of you actually have an opinion on the South American alternative? When the last three or four commentators refuse to mention that it has been introduced to the discussion, I am confident that it has nothing to do with me…!
You see unlike the English speaking Caribbean, Haiti could better identify with her sisters in South America all of whom actually shed blood to be free of the colonialist powers! Progressives from that part of the world can help, but the cowards of the English speaking Caribbean including comrades on this blog, lack the gumption to move ahead with an agenda that is independent of the US/EU.
I know wunna ain’ ignoring me, but I hear dat someone plan to import Spine Supports soon ‘cause there is a huge market for them ‘bout hey..!
@John
The last thing Haiti needs is America. Right now, America with its broke self is a threat to world peace and security because it is looking to steal.
The USA is like a gangster looking to raise money by any means possible. You don’t put a thief to watch your property.
By the standard of any society, the USA represents a jail bird, only there is no prison large enough. If the USA was put on trial for the crimes it has committed to date, it would get several life sentences. What america what?
Next thing, get your facts straight, Haiti’s population is not twice that of the rest of CARICOM put together. The rest of CARICOM is somewhere between 7 and 8 million.
Finally, John. The way to deplete a population is to kill them out or ship them out… but even more relevant is the loss of its intelligensia because it is like having a body without a head.
From all reports, Haiti has lost some key leaders and resource persons. I saw a photo of Haitian “refugees” disembarking from a military plane in USA and certainly these were not grassroots people, looked more like much of the intelligensia and their families.
By depleted therefore, I mean that the best parts are taken away, one way or another.
David:
I passed by, and saw the onward development.
While it is a welcome shift in focus, I have no further intention of discussing Haiti etc at length at BU, for reasons inter alia tied to an uncivil and deteriorating ill-disciplined tone involving slander and recently a call to arson by people who seem to have unlimited and irrational hostility to the Christian Faith.
I simply note that I have long since put up — and repeatedly linked — a proposal here (based on early comments in the Sorry thread), and note to Crusoe that it EMPHASISES education as the gateway to transformation, including advocating strongly a new approach to education, constructivism using ICTs (esp the OLPC XO-1 PC family) as a breakthrough technology. As well as the much needed transformation of the region’s construction industry.
So, while I am happy to see — at length — a positive response on ways forward for Haiti, it will proceed without my participation.
Any further public remarks on Haiti reconstruction and redevelopment I make — as I noted earlier — will be at my personal blog.
G’day.
D
Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA)
David // January 24, 2010 at 11:52 PM
@John
What you refuse to grasp is the need for Haiti; a Black country, to participate in the process of shaping its destiny.
++++++++++++++++++++
David
I thought that what I was saying is precisely that …..
….. and that for Caricom to presume to be seeking a leadership role in reconstructing Haiti is ridiculous.
It has not got the resources to back up such a position but it can certainly help.
For the moment, Haiti needs America bad bad bad.
First, there is the Geographical imperative, it is on its doorstep.
China is half a world away.
Believe it or not a monstrous Russian Transport plane with supplies for Haiti overnighted at Miami International Airport a week ago.
I guess it either offloaded, or continued on there …. or to the Dominican Republic …. or Guantanamo Bay (yup, chech it out) with the supplies.
Neither Cuba nor the Dominican Republic are members of Caricom.
Broke or not, the US has the resources to backup any words it utters.
It is a known fact that Haitians risk their lives to get to the US by sea.
There is a sizeable Haitian population in the US.
In fact, the 100,000 to 200,000 there illegally were recently accommodated by President Obama.
This is not the first earthquake Haiti has suffered and in all probability, it won’t be the last.
Haiti needs America bad, bad bad.
ROK // January 25, 2010 at 5:58 AM
@John
Next thing, get your facts straight, Haiti’s population is not twice that of the rest of CARICOM put together. The rest of CARICOM is somewhere between 7 and 8 million
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Figured that would arouse you.
In fact the population of Caricom is just under 7 million, Jamaica nd Trinidad contributing about 4 million of that figure.
…. and you are right, 9 million is not twice 7 million.
Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA
Dick is something else….all that above to really say what?!?
This man just cant help himself!
@ John…
It is a known fact that Haitians risk their lives to get to the US by sea.
Can you state for the record, what happens to Haitians when they get to the US mainland by this method as compared to ….say ….Cubans?
There is a sizeable Haitian population in the US.
Noted, but are they as recognizable or vociferous as the other minorities?
In fact, the 100,000 to 200,000 there illegally were recently accommodated by President Obama.
What do you call accommodated John, are you referring to the 18 months stay on deportation?
Have they been granted permanent status ?
Can they go on welfare?
Haiti needs EVERYONE bad bad, but not at the exploitation of their people. What they need right now is sincerity and respect as an independent democratic nation, even in the midst of all the suffering and chaos .
In all fairness, the US very well might be (I personally doubt it) but given their track record in recent years, don’t expect people to be naive.
Which is worse To be “exploited” as low-wage labour. Or to be without a job, pitied for being hopelessly poor, and die an early death when an earthquake destroys your slum dwelling. Semi-literate Haitians can only compete in the current global economy as cheap factory and farm workers.
On another matter, there is talk at the Montreal Conference for Haiti about moving the capital from Port au Prince, since the city lies directly on a major fault line and can expect additional earthquakes from time to time.
@Mobutu
“Which is worse To be “exploited” as low-wage labour. Or to be without a job, pitied for being hopelessly poor, and die an early death when an earthquake destroys your slum dwelling.”
Is there any difference between the two?
I can’t believe Mobutu even asked that question *sigh*.
I thought you guys would like an update on Haiti. Today’s Montreal Donor Conference was attended by Haiti’s prime minister (instead of President Preval), and foreign ministers from Canada, Brazil, France and the USA, plus representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank. All we know so far is that Haiti asked for 200,000 tents for Port au Prince.
As many of you know, Haiti’s private sector is dominated by five or six white families (the Mevs, the Bigios, the Brandts, the Madsens and the Acras), who helped overthrow Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and generally dislike populist politicians. The Mevs have emerged as the biggest dogs of the bunch, and since the earthquake they have been on American TV promoting their current business project, which is a collaboration with Bill Clinton and the George Soros Economic Development Fund (a non profit) to develop a $50 million industrial park outside Port au Prince to employ about 25,000 Haitians in 40 manufacturing plants and warehouses. The park is to be part of a tax-free export zone, and will depend on cheap labour to produce for the U.S. market.
Last year, President Preval, who is a friend of the Mevs, vetoed legislation that would have increased the minimum wage in Haiti to 200 gourdes a day (US$5) from the current rate of 70 gourdes a day. The United Nations is currently paying Haitians about US$3/day to clear rubble from Port au prince.
The Mevs family are merchants of German extraction who own all the petroleum storage facilities in Haiti, as well as about 50 warehouses of goods imported from abroad for distribution in Haiti.
Correction: President Preval signed an increase in the daily minimum wage from 70 gourdes to 125 gourdes (just over $3), after rejecting the proposal for 200 gourdes.
This means the UN is paying the minimum wage.
@Mobutu…
Many are *very* interested in your immediate above claims.
Can you please provide collaborative claims supporting your above by way of URLs we all can review?
Thanks and regards.
Christopher,
I am the final authority, but do your own research if you want to. You have access to the Internet, and you know how to use a search engine.
@Mobutu: “I am the final authority…
Incorrect answer.
@Mobutu: …but do your own research if you want to. You have access to the Internet, and you know how to use a search engine.
I do.
And I couldn’t find anything which could possibly support your claims.
@All…
Why do you think I asked Mobutu for supporting evidence?
http://www.ww4report.com/node/7820
What is so hard about providing a link Mobutu?
On BU, it gives “credibility”.
What I find hilarious is that, a one president Mobutu, did the same to his country (Zaire) as The Duvalier guys did to Haiti.
What an interesting handle to choose…hmmm.
@Technician…
Thanks for your link. I found that, but the dates were wrong.
Could you tell us what the situation is post earthquakes?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aKoksDOhY_Bg
Christopher,
We have established that you are a dunce. You obviously don’t know how to do basic research, but that is hardly surprising since you didn’t know until I told you a few days ago that coal is used to make coke, and coke is used to make iron and steel. I thought everybody who had been to primary school knew that!
Op-Ed Contributor
To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature
By MARK DANNER
Published: January 21, 2010
HAITI is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and chain: Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. One of the poorest on earth. For decades Haiti’s formidable immiseration has made it among outsiders an object of fascination, wonder and awe. Sometimes the pity that is attached to the land — and we see this increasingly in the news coverage this past week — attains a tone almost sacred, as if Haiti has taken its place as a kind of sacrificial victim among nations, nailed in its bloody suffering to the cross of unending destitution.
And yet there is nothing mystical in Haiti’s pain, no inescapable curse that haunts the land. From independence and before, Haiti’s harms have been caused by men, not demons. Act of nature that it was, the earthquake last week was able to kill so many because of the corruption and weakness of the Haitian state, a state built for predation and plunder. Recovery can come only with vital, even heroic, outside help; but such help, no matter how inspiring the generosity it embodies, will do little to restore Haiti unless it addresses, as countless prior interventions built on transports of sympathy have not, the man-made causes that lie beneath the Haitian malady.
In 1804 the free Republic of Haiti was declared in almost unimaginable triumph: hard to exaggerate the glory of that birth. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans had labored to make Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then known, the richest colony on earth, a vastly productive slave-powered factory producing tons upon tons of sugar cane, the 18th-century’s great cash crop. For pre-Revolutionary France, Haiti was an inexhaustible cash cow, floating much of its economy. Generation after generation, the second sons of the great French families took ship for Saint-Domingue to preside over the sugar plantations, enjoy the favors of enslaved African women and make their fortunes.
Even by the standards of the day, conditions in Saint-Domingue’s cane fields were grisly and brutal; slaves died young, and in droves; they had few children. As exports of sugar and coffee boomed, imports of fresh Africans boomed with them. So by the time the slaves launched their great revolt in 1791, most of those half-million blacks had been born in Africa, spoke African languages, worshipped African gods.
In an immensely complex decade-long conflict, these African slave-soldiers, commanded by legendary leaders like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, defeated three Western armies, including the unstoppable superpower of the day, Napoleonic France. In an increasingly savage war — “Burn houses! Cut off heads!” was the slogan of Dessalines — the slaves murdered their white masters, or drove them from the land.
On Jan. 1, 1804, when Dessalines created the Haitian flag by tearing the white middle from the French tricolor, he achieved what even Spartacus could not: he had led to triumph the only successful slave revolt in history. Haiti became the world’s first independent black republic and the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Alas, the first such republic, the United States, despite its revolutionary creed that “all men are created equal,” looked upon these self-freed men with shock, contempt and fear. Indeed, to all the great Western trading powers of the day — much of whose wealth was built on the labor of enslaved Africans — Haiti stood as a frightful example of freedom carried too far. American slaveholders desperately feared that Haiti’s fires of revolt would overleap those few hundred miles of sea and inflame their own human chattel.
For this reason, the United States refused for nearly six decades even to recognize Haiti. (Abraham Lincoln finally did so in 1862.) Along with the great colonial powers, America instead rewarded Haiti’s triumphant slaves with a suffocating trade embargo — and a demand that in exchange for peace the fledgling country pay enormous reparations to its former colonial overseer. Having won their freedom by force of arms, Haiti’s former slaves would be made to purchase it with treasure.
The new nation, its fields burned, its plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by apocalyptic war, was crushed by the burden of these astronomical reparations, payments that, in one form or another, strangled its economy for more than a century. It was in this dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti’s peculiar political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, like a wax model placed too close to the fire, the slave society of colonial times.
At its apex, the white colonists were supplanted by a new ruling class, made up largely of black and mulatto officers. Though these groups soon became bitter political rivals, they were as one in their determination to maintain in independent Haiti the cardinal principle of governance inherited from Saint-Domingue: the brutal predatory extraction of the country’s wealth by a chosen powerful few.
The whites on their plantations had done this directly, exploiting the land they owned with the forced labor of their slaves. But the slaves had become soldiers in a victorious revolution, and those who survived demanded as their reward a part of the rich land on which they had labored and suffered. Soon after independence most of the great plantations were broken up, given over to the former slaves, establishing Haiti as a nation of small landowners, one whose isolated countryside remained, in language, religion and culture, largely African.
Unable to replace the whites in their plantation manors, Haiti’s new elite moved from owning the land to fighting to control the one institution that could tax its products: the government. While the freed slaves worked their small fields, the powerful drew off the fruits of their labor through taxes. In this disfigured form the colonial philosophy endured: ruling had to do not with building or developing the country but with extracting its wealth. “Pluck the chicken,” proclaimed Dessalines — now Emperor Jacques I — “but don’t make it scream.”
In 1806, two years after independence, the emperor was bayoneted by a mostly mulatto cabal of officers. Haitian history became the immensely complex tale of factional struggles to control the state, with factions often defined by an intricate politics of skin color. There was no method of succession ultimately recognized as legitimate, no tradition of loyal opposition. Politics was murderous, operatic, improvisational. Instability alternated with autocracy. The state was battled over and won; Haiti’s wealth, once seized, purchased allegiance — but only for a time. Fragility of rule and uncertainty of tenure multiplied the imperative to plunder. Unseated rulers were sometimes killed, more often exiled, but always their wealth — that part of it not sent out of the country — was pillaged in its turn.
In 1915 the whites returned: the United States Marines disembarked to enforce continued repayment of the original debt and to put an end to an especially violent struggle for power that, in the shadow of World War I and German machinations in the Caribbean, suddenly seemed to threaten American interests. During their nearly two decades of rule, the Americans built roads and bridges, centralized the Haitian state — setting the stage for the vast conurbation of greater Port-au-Prince that we see today in all its devastation — and sent Haitians abroad to be educated as agronomists and doctors in the hope of building a more stable middle class.
Still, by the time they finally left, little in the original system had fundamentally changed. Haitian nationalism, piqued by the reappearance of white masters who had forced Haitians to work in road gangs, produced the noiriste movement that finally brought to power in 1957 François Duvalier, the most brilliant and bloody of Haiti’s dictators, who murdered tens of thousands while playing adroitly on cold-war America’s fear of communism to win American acceptance.
Duvalier’s epoch, which ended with the overthrow of his son Jean-Claude in 1986, ushered in Haiti’s latest era of instability, which has seen, in barely a quarter-century, several coups and revolutions, a handful of elections (aborted, rigged and, occasionally, fair), a second American occupation (whose accomplishments were even more ephemeral than the first) and, all told, a dozen Haitian rulers. Less and less money now comes from the land, for Haiti’s topsoil has grown enfeebled from overproduction and lack of investment. Aid from foreigners, nations or private organizations, has largely supplanted it: under the Duvaliers Haiti became the great petri dish of foreign aid. A handful of projects have done lasting good; many have been self-serving and even counterproductive. All have helped make it possible, by lifting basic burdens of governance from Haiti’s powerful, for the predatory state to endure.
The struggle for power has not ended. Nor has Haiti’s historic proclivity for drama and disaster. Undertaken in their wake, the world’s interventions — military and civilian, and accompanied as often as not by a grand missionary determination to “rebuild Haiti” — have had as their single unitary principle their failure to alter what is most basic in the country, the reality of a corrupt state and the role, inadvertent or not, of outsiders in collaborating with it.
The sound of Haiti’s suffering is deafening now but behind it one can hear already a familiar music begin to play. Haiti must be made new. This kind of suffering so close to American shores cannot be countenanced. The other evening I watched a television correspondent shake his head over what he movingly described as a “stupid death” — a death that, but for the right medical care, could have been prevented. “It doesn’t have to happen,” he told viewers. “People died today who did not need to die.” He did not say what any Haitian could have told him: that the day before, and the day before that, Haiti had seen hundreds of such “stupid deaths,” and, over the centuries, thousands more. What has changed, once again, and only for a time, is the light shone on them, and the volume of the voices demanding that a “new Haiti” must now be built so they never happen again.
Whether they can read or not, Haiti’s people walk in history, and live in politics. They are independent, proud, fiercely aware of their own singularity. What distinguishes them is a tradition of heroism and a conviction that they are and will remain something distinct, apart — something you can hear in the Creole spoken in the countryside, or the voodoo practiced there, traces of the Africa that the first generation of revolutionaries brought with them on the middle passage.
Haitians have grown up in a certain kind of struggle for individuality and for power, and the country has proved itself able to absorb the ardent attentions of outsiders who, as often as not, remain blissfully unaware of their own contributions to what Haiti is. Like the ruined bridges strewn across the countryside — one of the few traces of the Marines and their occupation nearly a century ago — these attentions tend to begin in evangelical zeal and to leave little lasting behind.
What might, then? America could start by throwing open its markets to Haitian agricultural produce and manufactured goods, broadening and making permanent the provisions of a promising trade bill negotiated in 2008. Such a step would not be glamorous; it would not “remake Haiti.” But it would require a lasting commitment by American farmers and manufacturers and, as the country heals, it would actually bring permanent jobs, investment and income to Haiti.
Second, the United States and other donors could make a formal undertaking to ensure that the vast amounts that will soon pour into the country for reconstruction go not to foreigners but to Haitians — and not only to Haitian contractors and builders but to Haitian workers, at reasonable wages. This would put real money in the hands of many Haitians, not just a few, and begin to shift power away from both the rapacious government and the well-meaning and too often ineffectual charities that seek to circumvent it. The world’s greatest gift would be to make it possible, and necessary, for Haitians — all Haitians — to rebuild Haiti.
Putting money in people’s hands will not make Haiti’s predatory state disappear. But in time, with rising incomes and a concomitant decentralization of power, it might evolve. In coming days much grander ambitions are sure to be declared, just as more scenes of disaster and disorder will transfix us, more stunning and colorful images of irresistible calamity. We will see if the present catastrophe, on a scale that dwarfs all that have come before, can do anything truly to alter the reality of Haiti.
********************************
@BU Trinity…….All Hail the Black Gods. BLACK POWER!
Ra!
Technician,
Do you know that Francois Duvalier was elected president of Haiti in 1957 with over 600,000 votes, and that he was demonised by Haiti’s merchant and landed elite because he was a full-blooded Negro who drew his support from the peasants. Do you know that the crimes of his dictatorship, which formally began when he declared himself President-for-Life in 1964, have been exaggerated by white people as a way of insulting black Haitians, and more generally people of African descent. And do you know most black people join in full-throated condemnation of the Duvaliers without fully realising that part of the joke is on them.
@Mobutu…
Did you not say that “…coal is an element of iron and steel
…over on the other thread (an obvious incorrect statement)?
I’ll shut up now, and let the “adults” talk up their serious agendas….
Christopher,
Coal IS an element of iron and steel, a CONSTITUENT ELEMENT. It is the source of the carbon in steel, you moron.
@Mobutu
Stick to reporting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/25/haiti-earthquake-relief-effort-summit
@Mobutu: “Coal IS an element of iron and steel, a CONSTITUENT ELEMENT.
You’ve just added the modifier “constituent” to your statement.
And coal is not the only option for sourcing carbon (or carbon monoxide) for this basic chemical process….
@ Mobutu…
You are preaching to the choir here!!
BUT….blacks have a way of destroying themselves without any help from whitey too, dont you agree?
They have adopted the ways of the oppressors to a T. So much so that they themselves forgot where they came from.
Mobutu in Zaire and the Duvaliers in Haiti proves this.
What we need are people who are for the people….but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Christopher,
Did they teach you English in school? The (nontechnical) dictionary definition of theword ‘element’ IS constituent, component, raw material. The word may–or may not–also be used in the more precise technical sense of a pure chemical substance.
I only added “constituent” to help you understand the dictionary definition you are obviously ignorant of. Did you pass “O” Level English?
@Mobutu… Terribly sorry if I misunderstood your meaning of the word Element.
I have been taught to be *very* precise in my language — both the talking and the listening.
This is why I questioned your above when you talked about the past in terms which could be interpretable as being the present (and/or future).
My humble apologies for my misinterpretation of what you so clearly believe you said….
It is not what I believe I said. It is what I said, whether you want to be a chemistry professor or not. Coal is reduced to a pure form of carbon and combined with the iron in iron ore to make iron and steel which are 1% or 2% carbon. So don’t give me any stuff about being precise. You are wrong, period!
Anytime you thinking evil –
You thinking about the blues
I’d Rather Go Blind
How Many More Years
You Can’t Loose What Your Never Had
@Mobutu: “Coal is reduced to a pure form of carbon…
Care to explain how this is done?
Care to explain the by-products of this process, and what happens to them?
@Mobutu: “…and combined with the iron in iron ore to make iron and steel
So the Iron Oxide is combined with Carbon Oxide (and Carbon, and Oxygen) to produce more Carbon Oxide and Iron because the latter is more valuable than the costs of the former…
Hmmm….
Poor Man Story
Natty chat up the amharic language
Christopher,
Stop covering up!
To Whome It May Concern:
Some of you will have heard that Israel set up the first field hospital in Port au Prince before any other nation. Their work was featured prominently on CNN and other American TV networks.
How did Israel get involved? The Bigios, one of the five dominant families of Haiti’s elite I listed previously (they own a Haitian conglomerate called the GB Group) is headed by Gilbert Bigio, ethnically a Syrian Jew, who serves as the honorary consul for Israel in Haiti. Gilbert Bigio arranged with the Israeli government to fly their emergency team in, and made all the local arrangements for them.