CNN, Shocked: There Are No US Troops in Haiti!

[Ron in Regina]

At Least 35 Post have been Unapproved in the last three pages of this
Thread, and At Least one Member has earned themselves a Vacation
from the Forum tonight. How about, in a civil manner, we try and continue
with the Thread On-Topic without personal attacks or insults or name-calling
or any of the other childish nonsense that's happened here tonight.

 

[JBeee]

China

So which country was the first to land there with aid and who were the people?

 

[bennyben]

EL tigre is a player. Pimp of the world! thats what all kids should aspire to become.

 

[bennyben]

I agree I think Canadians need to work in convention with other countries to build a better tomorrow.

 

[Walter]

The evil US is sending thousands of troops to help in the recovery.

 

[Walter]

At Least 35 Post have been Unapproved in the last three pages of this
Thread, and At Least one Member has earned themselves a Vacation
from the Forum tonight. How about, in a civil manner, we try and continue
with the Thread On-Topic without personal attacks or insults or name-calling
or any of the other childish nonsense that's happened here tonight.

Ah, Ron; it was getting very entertaining.

 

[ironsides]

Wonder if Haiti will end up like Montserrat?

MHz, it probably would be the best for the people of Haiti if they moved someplace else. If any land was ever cursed, Haiti is, earthquakes, devistitating hurricanes, poverty with no chance of recovery due to high population and not that much workable land to support them. Only about 8 million people to be absorbed by the world, it would be possible.

 

[ironsides]

A British territory? Closer to Venezuela? What?

No, a deserted country waiting for its final demise.

 

[MHz]

MHz, it probably would be the best for the people of Haiti if they moved someplace else. If any land was ever cursed, Haiti is, earthquakes, devistitating hurricanes, poverty with no chance of recovery due to high population and not that much workable land to support them. Only about 8 million people to be absorbed by the world, it would be possible.

I'm pretty sure you are missing some important contributing factors. It is one thing to stay away because the land is going through deadly changes, quite another when their greatest danger is due to nothing but poverty.

 

[YukonJack]

"Hurricane Katrina proved the nations fundemental hate for it's own citizens. That message was not wasted."

Yeah, Hurricane Katrina proved that Democrats hate Americans. That blacks hate other blacks.

In a natural disaster the Federal Government must wait until help is requested by the Governor. The Democratic Governor sat on her buns, safely far away from New Orleans.

The Democratic (black) Mayor of New Orleans let hundreds of school busses stand idle rather than using them to evacuate (black) people with no transportation.

The idiots who till this day still blame GW Bush never mention this.

 

[lone wolf]

So who was responsible for the dykes?

 

[YukonJack]

"So who was responsible for the dykes?"

Excellent question, lone wolf!

Since Louisiana had been under Democratic Governorship for several years, prior to Katrina, have been warned about the dykes by tha Army Corp of Engineers repeatedly and done nothing, clearly the blame lies directly at the Democrats' feet.

 

[lone wolf]

Funny ... I have never seen a political party do anything more than hold its hand out for more money ... just like a Church or a union. Now, to find the source of the problem, dig a little beneath the cloth.

 

[MHz]

So who was responsible for the dykes?

Didn't the flooding of the Mississippi show that man-made defenses don't work. For all the money spent on the dykes that could have made other allowances. Being able to move perishables above the high water mark. Cabins built on river floodplains float or have deep pilings and then are also cabled to a very big anchor so they stay in place. A flood is no big deal to those styles of buildings. Same thing in a twister, the roof gets lifted off the walls because wind gets under the eves and lifts up. Screws instead of nails migh be all the help it needs to survive. If more is needed the roof could be designed to have flaps that raise up when there is a strong up-draft and lay flat to allow water to fun off is calmer times. Small cables from the roof to screw anchors in the foundation could also help at very little extra cost.

 

[TenPenny]

The tragedy of Katrina was the concept that in the US, nobody can do anything until someone decides which level of government is responsible and who will pay for what. Despite certain posters' best attempts to say so, it's not the fault of a particular political party or race. It was the fault of the structure.

It exposes the true human cost of their political system.

In places like Haiti, other countries are just going ahead to get the job done.

 

[YukonJack]

"Despite certain posters' best attempts to say so, it's not the fault of a particular political party or race. It was the fault of the structure."

That may be so, but GW Bush and the Republican Party paid an unjustified heavy price for the malicious misinformation perpetrated by the Democratic Party and their slaves, the Left-wing media.

 

[lone wolf]

"Despite certain posters' best attempts to say so, it's not the fault of a particular political party or race. It was the fault of the structure."

That may be so, but GW Bush and the Republican Party paid an unjustified heavy price for the malicious misinformation perpetrated by the Democratic Party and their slaves, the Left-wing media.

...as you and yours do to them. Pot? Kettle?

 

[MHz]

From another thread

"

Quoting Risus What is it with those people?? They complain that aid is not arriving fast enough so they make roadblocks with corpses to slow things down even more. Makes you wonder if the effort is even worth while.



​

The sad fact of disaster relief is everybody wants to be first in line"

Perhaps if the West had not been so 'helpful' in the past the loss of life might not have been so great. Unfortunately their situation that existed just before the quake had roots that go back.

"Haitian Earthquake:

Why the Blood Is on Our Hands

By Ted Rall

January 14, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich.

How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince.

"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."

When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long. Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital--or doctor to treat you once you get there.

Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.

So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

The story begins in 1910, when a U.S. State Department-National City Bank of New York (now called Citibank) consortium bought the Banque National d'Haïti--Haiti's only commercial bank and its national treasury--in effect transferring Haiti's debts to the Americans. Five years later, President Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to occupy the country in order to keep tabs on "our" investment.

From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. Marines imposed harsh military occupation, murdered Haitians patriots and diverted 40 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product to U.S. bankers. Haitians were banned from government jobs. Ambitious Haitians were shunted into the puppet military, setting the stage for a half-century of U.S.-backed military dictatorship.

The U.S. kept control of Haiti's finances until 1947.

Still--why should Haitians complain? Sure, we stole 40 percent of Haiti's national wealth for 32 years. But we let them keep 60 percent.

Whiners.

Despite having been bled dry by American bankers and generals, civil disorder prevailed until 1957, when the CIA installed President-for-Life François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoutes paramilitary goon squads murdered at least 30,000 Haitians and drove educated people to flee into exile. But think of the cup as half-full: fewer people in the population means fewer people competing for the same jobs!

Upon Papa Doc's death in 1971, the torch passed to his even more dissolute 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S., cool to Papa Doc in his later years, quickly warmed back up to his kleptomaniacal playboy heir. As the U.S. poured in arms and trained his army as a supposed anti-communist bulwark against Castro's Cuba, Baby Doc stole an estimated $300 to $800 million from the national treasury, according to Transparency International. The money was placed in personal accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Under U.S. influence, Baby Doc virtually eliminated import tariffs for U.S. goods. Soon Haiti was awash predatory agricultural imports dumped by American firms. Domestic rice farmers went bankrupt. A nation that had been agriculturally self-sustaining collapsed. Farms were abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of farmers migrated to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince.

The Duvalier era, 29 years in all, came to an end in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. forces to whisk Baby Doc to exile in France, saving him from a popular uprising.

Once again, Haitians should thank Americans. Duvalierism was "tough love." Forcing Haitians to make do without their national treasury was our nice way or encouraging them to work harder, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Or, in this case, flipflops.
Anyway.

The U.S. has been all about tough love ever since. We twice deposed the populist and popular democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The second time, in 2004, we even gave him a free flight to the Central African Republic! (He says the CIA kidnapped him, but whatever.) Hey, he needed a rest. And it was kind of us to support a new government formed by former Tonton Macoutes.

Yet, despite everything we've done for Haiti, they're still a fourth-world failed state on a fault line.

And still, we haven't given up. American companies like Disney generously pay wages to their sweatshop workers of 28 cents an hour.

What more do these ingrates want? "

 

[AnnaG]

Didn't the flooding of the Mississippi show that man-made defenses don't work. For all the money spent on the dykes that could have made other allowances. Being able to move perishables above the high water mark. Cabins built on river floodplains float or have deep pilings and then are also cabled to a very big anchor so they stay in place. A flood is no big deal to those styles of buildings. Same thing in a twister, the roof gets lifted off the walls because wind gets under the eves and lifts up. Screws instead of nails migh be all the help it needs to survive. If more is needed the roof could be designed to have flaps that raise up when there is a strong up-draft and lay flat to allow water to fun off is calmer times. Small cables from the roof to screw anchors in the foundation could also help at very little extra cost.

Someone posted a link about floating houses in the New Orleans thread already. It's being done.
However, the measures that they had to keep New Orleans safe from a flooding Mississippi were shown to be inferior and the info was ignored.

 

[AnnaG]

The tragedy of Katrina was the concept that in the US, nobody can do anything until someone decides which level of government is responsible and who will pay for what. Despite certain posters' best attempts to say so, it's not the fault of a particular political party or race. It was the fault of the structure.

It exposes the true human cost of their political system.

In places like Haiti, other countries are just going ahead to get the job done.

Pretty much.