Racism
and Poverty
John
Maxwell
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