It is not just the Haitian government that behaves in this...

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Reply to Msg 19845

It is not just the Haitian government that behaves in this manner.

The Katrina fiasco is a similar example of the corruption in the US government.

Ay yay yay....it is overwhelming.

Despite all the craziness, I sit in amazement at the strength of the homeless in Haiti.

If the US gets its shit together and opens up its borders, I'll take in the poorest of the poor. We really should be temporarily evacuating Haiti.

Here are some thoughts of one of my friends:

It's stating the obvious to say that Preval's declaration that the emergency is over is the height of absurdity and cruelty.

Imposing taxes and customs fees on relief supplies is extortion, plain and simple.

On a much smaller scale, a Cobb County, GA official, who stood to personally profit, attempted to do this to relief organizations helping evacuees in the Atlanta area after Katrina.

And, while stopping the provision of assistance, he publicly screamed about how the organizations were doing nothing to help the evacuees.

The other motivator for the Haitian government is that the command and control approach of the premature "rebuilders" (US and other governments; contractors of US and other governments; nation-building NGOs) threaten to make Haiti even more of a second-class world citizen and "51st state" than it already is.

The Bush admin tried to apply this model to Louisiana, at one point refusing the bulk of federal assistance (and blocking access to the disaster zone for "security" reasons) unless Gov Blanco turned the state over to the U.S. Army for an indefinite period.

Had Blanco agreed, Lousiana might still be under federal martial law. Blanco didn't blink, and the aid eventually got through.

These kinds of devil's deals were not imposed on Republican-led states.

In fact, many unaffected areas of these states got federal assistance, while heavily damaged areas of Louisiana did not. Besides being unfair on the face of it, this forced assistance organizations mandated to serve these undamaged "federal disaster areas" to spread scarce resources and volunteer efforts even more thinly.

Elizabeth Faraone, February 26 2010, 8:18 AM

Topic: Eviction - Saint-Louis de Gonzague

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