I’m only saying that it isn’t colonialism. That’s why I don’t want to listen to people blaming Haiti’s problems on “colonialism”, which is what you and several others did.
206 years. It ain’t fucking colonialism.
Okay, so what’s your theory? Mine is that the French colonial experience made it very unlikely for the initial post-independence government to be any good, and that successive bad governments dug the country further and further into the hole of poverty and weak (or non-existent) civil institutions. What’s yours?
Wins the thread.
My compassion is fatigued out, too. I think it’s a symptom of globalization; we hear all the time about everything bad going on in the world. I can’t care about everyone, or constantly compare my luxurious Canadian lifestyle to desperately poor people, because I’d go crazy. I donate to charities, local and abroad. I do Kiva loans. I volunteer to help local people. I have to call that enough.
Regardless of the causes of Haitian problems, how is it relevant to the current situation? Because to me it seems like you’re advocating a position of;
“No money for you earthquake victims, your country was already a toilet. Sorry.”
But if we care and help it makes an awful situation less awful, provides an objectively better quality of life, for example;
“Oxfam has a 100-strong team working in Haiti and links with a large network of community volunteers who can get aid to affected people quickly. Our response will include providing clean water, shelter and sanitation.”
All this stuff costs money (and requires empathy despite the state of the country). So I’m really struggling to see the big problem here.
Pat Robertson has thrown his tiny brain into determining the causes of this disaster, and he has come up with the reason: SATAN.
Odd that the earthquake also destroyed the cathedral and killed the Archbishop in Port-au-Prince. It never fails to sicken me how these idiots will exploit natural disasters to promote dogma.
The colonialists (traditional & neo-) hated the very idea of a country founded on a slave rebellion & determined that Haiti must not prosper. The rebels were sometimes a very cruel & unsophisticated lot, too. Their Founding Fathers included no highly civilized intellectuals who studied the classics & composed deathless prose about Liberty–while living off slavery. They were the slaves–or, in some cases, free people of color.
Fight your ignorance–learn some history.
No, you fucking cretin, that isn’t the point. The point is you seem to be assigning blame on current generation “stupid Haitians” for a country that’s been fucked up since the devil was in Underroos.
And you really think that another revolution will accomplish what that one didn’t? A Communist revolution won’t get rid of corruption. It didn’t in the Soviet Union, China, or Cuba.
As far as ending food shortages, Communist governments didn’t do such a good job of that in the Soviet Union or China or Cambodia or North Korea. War, rebellion, and political instability are generally bad, not good, for growing and distributing food.
Pat Robertson has the answer.
http://www.breitbart.tv/they-have-been-cursed-pat-robertson-says-haiti-swore-a-pact-to-the-devil/
Well presumably that was a Catholic cathedral and archbishop, which doesn’t negate Pat Robertson’s viewpoint at all.
You’d be amazed at how stupid I am. But that’s neither here nor there.
Two hundred years is not a long time when you consider that each successive generation builds upon the success and infrastructure established by the previous ones. This is not only physical infrastructure such as roads and sewage systems, but social infrastructure, the basics of good government and social interaction that foster the creation of wealth.
So no, I don’t think colonialism is the sole cause of Haiti’s problems, but i think it’s a major one, perhaps THE major one.
What’s he talking about?! The voodoo?!
Still, you’d think the man upstairs would at least have thrown them a bone before wiping them out.
That Pat Robertson has all the answers, the video would be a real knee-slapper if not for the tragic circumstances. How does an entire nation of people pledge a deal with the Devil? Charlie Daniels already told us the Devil went down to Georgia, not Haiti.
He works in mysterious ways.
And by the way, I appreciated the Heroes joke earlier…
How long do you bet it will take someone on this MB to use this tragedy to take a partisan swipe at FoxNews? I guess not very long…
I’m not playing a game, I’m trying to genuinely understand where you’re coming from. I’ll ask more directly:
Do you think that people who suffered from a natural disaster are less deserving of sympathy if they have done little to improve their economic lot? And if so, why?
Daniels got it wrong. It was Jamaica.
Haiti is a disaster waiting to happen. I saw that the presidential palace (built ca. 1920) had collapsed-so even well-constructed buildings were destroyed. God only knows how many were killed in the jerry-built structures that were build from junk and without building codes. You cannot blame the USA occupation (1915-1935)-in that period, practically the ONLY decent roads and buildings were put up.
Unfortunately, the country shows no sign of any reforms-the small rich class steals everything.