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A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.
Rather than go through the Brooks piece line by line, I figured I’d just excerpt a few bits here and there and provide the Cliff’s Notes translation at the end. It’s really sort of a masterpiece of cultural signaling — if you live anywhere between 59th st and about 105th, you can hear the between-the-lines messages with dog-whistle clarity. Some examples:
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”
TRANSLATION: Don’t bother giving any money, it doesn’t do any good. And feeling guilty about not giving money doesn’t do anyone any good either. In fact, you’re probably helping by not doing anything.
The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.
TRANSLATION: I, David Brooks, am doing my Christian best right here at home. Look, I even used a capital “L” in the word “Lord.” And I wrote that thing about Obama’s Christian Realism a few weeks ago. So I‘m doing my part. Of course I’d volunteer to help, but intellectually I just don’t think volunteering really helps. I mean, there are studies and everything.
Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
TRANSLATION: Although it is true that Haiti was just like five minutes ago a victim of a random earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people, I’m going to skip right past the fake mourning period and point out that Haitians are a bunch of lazy niggers who can’t keep their dongs in their pants and probably wouldn’t be pancaked under fifty tons of rubble if they had spent a little more time over the years listening to the clarion call of white progress, and learning to use a freaking T-square, instead of singing and dancing and dabbling in not-entirely-Christian religions and making babies all the fucking time. I know I’m supposed to respect other cultures and keep my mouth shut about this stuff, but my penis is only four and a third inches long when fully engorged and so I’m kind of at the end of my patience just generally, especially when it comes to “progress-resistant” cultures.
Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.
These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.
It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.
The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.
TRANSLATION: The best thing we can do for the Haitians is let them deal with the earthquake all by themselves and wallow in their own filth and shitty engineering so they can come face to face with how achievement-oriented and middle-class they aren’t. Then when it’s all over we can come in and institute a program making the survivors earn the right to keep their kids by opening their own Checkers’ franchises and completing Associate’s Degrees in marketing at the online University of Phoenix. Maybe then they’ll learn the No Excuses attitude real life demands, so the next time something like this happens they won’t be pulling this “woe is us” act and bawling their fucking eyes out on CNN while begging for fresh water and band-aids and other handouts. Maybe that will happen, or maybe we’ll just keep sending money, fools that we are, so that they can keep making more of those illiterate ambitionless babies we’ll have to pull out of the next disaster wreckage.
p.s. Did I miss anything? Because I think that’s pretty much it. One would have thought a column on the Haitian’s lack of an achievement culture could maybe wait until after the bodies were cold, but… hey, who am I to judge?
p.p.s. I’ve got to put this comment up on the main piece, since so many people seem to have missed my point.
Again, unlike Brooks, I actually lived in the Third World for ten years and I admit it — I’m not exactly in the habit of sending checks to Abkhazian refugees, mainly because I’m not interested in buying some local Russian gangster a new Suzuki Samurai to tool around Sochi in. And I’ve actually seen what happens to the money people think they’re giving to Russian orphanages goes, so no dice there, either.
But you know what? Next time there’s an earthquake in Russia or Georgia, I’m probably going to wait at least until they’re finished pulling the bodies of dead children out of the rubble before I start writing articles blasting a foreign people for being corrupt, lazy drunks with an unsatisfactorily pervasive achievement culture whose child-rearing responsibilities might have to be yanked from them by with-it Whitey for their own good.
An earthquake is nobody’s fault. There’s nothing to do after a deadly earthquake but express remorse and feel sorry. It’s certainly not the time to scoff at all the victim country’s bastard children and put it out there on the Times editorial page that if these goddamned peasants don’t get their act together after a disaster this big, it might just be necessary to start swinging the big stick of Paternalism at them.
I mean, shit, that’s what Brooks is doing here — that last part of the piece is basically a threat, he’s saying that Haiti might have to be FORCED to adopt “middle-class assumptions” and an “achievement ethos” because they’re clearly incapable of Americanizing themselves at a high enough rate of speed to please Brooks. That’s this guy’s immediate reaction to 50,000 people crushed to death in an earthquake. Metaphorically speaking, he’s standing over the rubble and telling the people trapped under there that they need more of a “No Excuses” culture, which is insane on many different levels.
Brooks’s implication that the Haitians wouldn’t have died in such great numbers had they been Americans is the kind of thing that is going to come back to bite us the next time we have a nuclear accident or a hurricane disaster or a 9/11 and we’re looking to the rest of the world for sympathy and understanding. The notion that these deaths aren’t an accident but someone’s fault, among other things someone’s fault because they practice an unhelpful sort of religion, is beyond offensive.
p.p.p.s And yes, Brooks is Jewish. So let’s say he’s doing his Judeo-Christian best. Again, this guy is saying that Haitians got killed in an earthquake because their religion makes them planning-averse. Are we really to believe that Haitians don’t live in earthquake-proof homes because of their religious beliefs? We have millions of Americans who literally believe the rapture is imminent — would Brooks expect them to blow off flood insurance?
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I usually love your work, Taibbi, but just this once, put a sock in it. He’s fuckin’ right, and you know it, and it doesn’t make any difference at all what temperature the bodies are. Best to make your point quickly while people still remember.
Brooks is a douchebag but in this case you’re playing a very ugly role. What is this, moral high ground? You attack Brooks but what’s your fucking point, that he lacks etiquette?
Aid doesn’t work. We all know that. Poverty killed those Haitians. We all know that too. Their government, culture, and lack of success generally as a country are entirely to blame. Wow, elephant in room time. So are you playing the devil’s advocate role of the morally outraged MSM commentator or something? Doesn’t suit you, man.
Matt,
I have to agree with Sho whole-heartedly. What I enjoy most about your writing is that I can trust you to be intellectually honest despite being left-leaning. This column is a pile of dogshit and is emblematic of the worst that pundits have to offer.
Your basic point? Brooks isn’t wrong or anything–you just think his timing is tacky.
C’mon. If you really think he’s wrong, tackle the issue head-on. If not, leave this kind of whiny drivel to editorial page of the Times.
-Marcus Groff
There’s some truth in both positions. Haiti has been called “The Republic of NGOs” with some 3000 organizations from around the world involved in the country. It has become easy for corruption and walfare to become a way of life. Recently some nations have been looking at ways to change this and allow the Hatians to participate more in the future of their country. I don’t think we can turn our backs on their immediate need for aid. What concerns me is their future. We cannot allow things to return to “business as usual”. This can be an opportunity for everyone to make the changes necessary to allow Haiti to improve itself for the better. If they chose not to, that will be their problem and they should live with the consequences. When someone arrives at a hospital emergency room we don’t care why or how they were injured, we treat them as we would anyone in need. Afterwards we can look at how and why but not while the patient is lying on the stretcher in pain. Haiti is the patient, and right now their in pain and need help. If we call ourselves a Christian Nation how can we turn our backs on them? How?
ONLY Morans blame Haiti’s poverty on the people. Sorry brain dead folk, the poverty in Haiti was created by the I.M.F., the World Bank, and the multinational corporations. All with the approval of the United States. There is a good article on all this in a recent article at:
http://www.thenation.com titled IMF TO HAITI…
Read it, and learn a lot about how the U.S. and the multinational corporations deliberately keep poor countries poor. And please pass the Nations article on to your friends.
It is time to take a good hard look at the facts: The only loyalty large corporations have is to themselves. You will not find the true story on ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX, or PBS. They are all part of the corporate propaganda machine that does not want us to see the truth.
If you start listening to the radio show Democracy Now, and reading the Nation, your worldview will change. This is not about right vs left. Its the people of the world vs greedy, self-serving corporations (that own 90% of the congress that is supposed to represent “We the People”). GET ANGRY, Get involved. We have to be the Change we are waiting for,not some politician or radio or TV pundit. Right and left need to join together and fight the power. And- it aint gonna be easy!
I am in absolute awe to see anyone rising to Brooks’s defense, as if his position would ever be remotely tenable in some distant approximation of the universe. Your explanation for 50,000 people crushed to death is their lack of the right egalitarian values and Protestant work ethic and social responsibility needed to climb out of the smoking crater they call a country and into the bright, gleaming future of American pluralism? Hey, if these dirty brown people don’t want to die they should just drop their fucktard values and wonky religions and get on the right team!
Brooks and his shrieking acolytes above seem to gripped by the type of post-9/11 knee-jerk aversion to cultural relativism this country so desperately depends on to ease the oh-so-heavy burden of white guilt. This is the same fantasy the shrinking middle class clings to as they lose their homes, die of preventable diseases, and their kids come home from Iraq and Afghanistan in body bags, yet all they can do is cry to the sky “why can’t those dirty savages just accept our way of life?” as we deliver it to them with cluster bombs.
I think the problem, Matt, is that to puncture the Great White Fairytale about what’s wrong with stinky third worlders scrambling in the rubble is too taboo for even so-called progressives. Our cultural arrogance and hypocrisy is so great that having any meaningful discussion over poverty, much less human suffering in general, is totally impossible as long as sniveling pricks like Brooks are encouraged to spew this filth in a forum as prominent as the NY Times.
Is there ANYTHING we well-groomed white folks can’t explain away? How do you people actually believe this tripe? “Achievement ethos” and “tough, measurable demands” and “middle class assumptions” (sweet fucking christ) don’t feed your children, much less pull them out from under 20 tons of concrete! 50,000 people dead in an earthquake is an event that should transcend all considerations of cultural identity, but oh no, it’s their “government, culture, and lack of success generally as a country” that did them in! If they would only stop boinking their fellow Haitians and place their faith in white progress, our Judeo-Christian god would finally smile down on them! Brooks and his defenders are just proof that the spirit of colonialism, and hey, let’s call it what it really is, white supremacism, is alive and kicking.
This is complex stuff goes without saying. Look at what evidentially in terms of health and education are the 2 highest rated countries in the region Costa Rica no army Cuba large army. Compare Brooks with Fidel’s ‘reflections’ of 15 January on the ‘Granma’ site.
Personal responsibility is something all of us must take up if only to ensure collective responsibility. Prejudice is the failure to recognize the individual and seeing that can help focus where our responsibilities lie. Sending 4000 troops who refuse to act under unified international commnand and hang about the airport until the first big move is to take over the wrecked presidential palace while the port is blocked and there are no forklifts is a bit sad.
All this game playing while not 50 but 250,000 lie dead and 1.5m more lie wounded and or hungry is a pathetic world response especially for me when I pick up blogs of ‘christian messengers’ quoting the ‘good[?] book’ and flooding their sites with pictures taken with a fancy digital camera; doing what?
Culture or no I hope we can attach outcomes expectations to everything we do in terms of quality adjusted life years gained and adjust our input targeting for those results to make friends and influence people to live together longer and happier as individuals not culture bound tribes
Thanks for the link Kim. I had no idea that Haiti was in such debt from its very inception.
And thanks Matt, for calling David Brooks out. Here is my idea. Drop David in one of these “poorest of nations” and see how far his can-do work ethic gets him.
Jesus. The lies people tell themselves so that they can ignore inequality never ceases to amaze me.
And frankly, I am so tired of the phrase “throwing money at the problem”. It is always followed up by “doesn’t work”. Yet, I imagine these people do “throw money” at every problem that arises in their life. And they are usually happy with the results.
Ahh…KIM & Chris B…a little late to the party, but I knew you were out there…
I’ll begin with KIM: why don’t you give me the Cliff Notes version? Just tell me why we spend millions each year to keep Haiti poor? I agree that corporations are out for themselves and that you’ll miss alot if you trust the MSM as your news source. That said, I still don’t see how keeping Haiti poor benefits us in any way at all (and more to the point, why we would *spend* millions to keep them poor).
Chris B.: Where do I begin? You touched upon so many seemingly unrelated subjects… Ultimately, I think you’ve taken great liberty in assigning motives to large classes of people. I imagine you could agree with that assessment even if you stand by your conclusions. However, the context of the discussion we’re having now is fairly narrow: it pertains specifically to the question of America’s role in “helping” Haiti. We’ve been “helping” Haiti for many years now and I believe that Brooks’ core point is that we might not have been “helping” them at all…
There is a fairly simply litmus test for this. If you think you’re helping someone by giving them handouts in perpetuity without asking anything in return, then you probably believe we’ve been truly helpful to Haiti (and you’re also probably a big fan of welfare). But, if you think that handouts merely create dependency, then you probably believe we may have sent the wrong message. More specifically, you might come to the conclusion that by trying to care for the Haitian people, we might have precluded them learning how to care for themselves.
So, did that cause an earthquake? Of course not! But, when a catastrophe of that scale strikes, waiting for the US government to save you is a lousy option (just ask Katrina victims). Were it the case that Haiti’s infrastructure and public services were more robust, more lives would have been saved. I think that is the point–and the question is: given the amount of money spent on Haiti, why isn’t the infrastructure in better shape?
For those that think its tawdry to discuss such things given the timing, I fully understand your perspective. But, the cat’s out of the bag at this point…
Marcus,
Why don’t you actually read the article that Kim linked to before condemning it? Your characterization is incorrect.
Ummm…I didn’t condemn the article. I merely asked KIM to distill the finer points of the article into something easy to digest. I don’t care particularly about the article. I’m trying to understand another person’s perspective…
Anyway…you’ll be pleased to learn the IMF has clarified the terms of the loan:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/519364/imf_clarifies_terms_of_haiti_s_loan
Its now a interest free loan which they hope to roll into a grant (ie, a $100 million dollar gift).
So again, I’ll ask: just *why* are we conspiring to keep Haiti poor?
-Marcus
Marcus, I’m afraid Kim is quite right. Try reading “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and you’ll understand how the US, through the CIA, has systematically infiltrated foreign nations and laid groundwork so that the IMF and the World Bank can economically enslave them, then turn over that country’s most valuable resources to our corporations for exploitation.
http://books.google.com/books?id=nJFFrLX-924C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Confessions+of+an+Economic+Hitman&source=bl&ots=fyoGGmcf5g&sig=KrwScMsiVfc9Tdk1wZThXZfKw7A&hl=en&ei=OJFYS-bjGInS8Aba9KG4Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Skip,
John Perkins has been largely discredited. I’ll make a huge leap of faith and concede for the sake of argument that some of what he has written (or even the general thesis of the book) *could* be true. But, unfortunately, so much of what Perkins wrote is demonstrably false that I can’t believe anything he writes. So, we’re kind of back where we started…
You’re essentially laying down a very serious indictment, but no one on this thread has offered a motive.
Haiti’s GDP is 6.95 billion est. US (To offer some perspective, Mexico’s GDP is over 1 trillion). 52% of that comes from the Services industry w/ Agriculture coming in 2nd at 28%. They are not fortunate in terms of natural resources, the island is largely deforested already and the Mining industry brings in a paltry 13 million (US) anually.
Prior to the earthquake, Haitian external debt was ~$169 per capita, while that of the US is $40,000. As of Sept. 2009, Haiti qualified for debt forgiveness per the IMF.
Meanwhile, Haiti was receiving close to 1 billion in foreign aid annually.
So, my question for you is the same as for KIM. Explain to me how we benefit in this situation? *Why* do you believe there is a conspiracy to keep Haiti poor?
-Marcus
As far as the IMF’s generous loan, you have some initial reports that it came with a condition of freezing wages for government officials. Now you have them saying it’s an interest free loan (failing to mention that it’s interest free for two years only). Also, it’s a loan and not a grant, because they can disperse that money more quickly as a loan instead of a grant. Which may well be true, but are they outright guaranteeing it will become a grant? Of course not. So essentially you have the IMF alluding to this wonderful altruistic gift of money, without any guarantee that it will actually be so. By the time it’s finalized, will anyone be paying attention?
Why a ‘conspiracy’ to keep a country impoverished? Incredibly cheap labor leads to enormous profit margins. For instance you have a Royal Carribean resort, staffed and worked by Haitians but patronized by the comparatively wealthy. So all that cheap labor, probably combined with a very inexpensive lease on that land, and people paying normal “first-world” prices for it, and it becomes a very profitable venture. Of course you also have the sweat-shops, and all those other lovely forms of exploitation that coincide with an impoverished nation.
Is the goal to keep Haiti poor just because a few rich guys feel like it? Of course not, there’s nothing to gain in that. However creating a situation like Haiti’s allows for all kinds of exploitation by individuals, banks, corporations, etc.. because it becomes very easy to acquire a cheap labor force, land-rights, mineral rights, and so on.
As for why people ‘believe there is a conspiracy to keep Haiti poor’, learn about the history of Haiti and it becomes hard to deny that there isn’t a conspiracy to control aspects of it, and in that way they are ‘kept poor’.
Can you justify the US’s involvement in the 2004 coup that removed Aristide from power? More importantly are you even aware of the US’s involvement?
To your credit, you seem like a reasonable and discerning fellow capable of thoughtful debate. Wish there were more of that going on.
Good answer. There is no real conspiracy of course, just consequences of policies.
MK,
Thanks for the response. Many people seem to have concluded that Haiti has been terribly maligned and mistreated, but you are the first to explain why you think this has happened. And, your explanation makes perfect sense to me… Though, I tend to agree with Kellie that there is no conspiracy per se, but rather a simple cause and effect relationship at work (and I don’t mean to suggest that you necessarily think there is a conspiracy–just enunciating my own perspective w/ this comment).
INRE the IMF: I’m still trying to determine what a genuinely fair assessment would be. Now, before the firing squad is assembled, let me begin by stating that I am absolutely not an IMF apologist. That said, my understanding is that they are one of very few organizations that provide loans to “distressed” nations. And just like it works in the private sector in the US, the worse your credit, the higher the cost of borrowing (and, often, the worse the terms). There is no arguing that this mechanism perpetuates debt and is most detrimental to those most in need, but I’m not sure what the [better] alternative is. The IMF is essentially a bunch of bankers–I trust that people who are following Taibbi’s blog appreciate that they aren’t the most altruistic bunch. But, are they evil incarnate as everyone seems to believe? I’m not so sure about that (though I certainly don’t think they’re just trying to help). Regardless, what if there was no IMF (or any organizations like them)? This question ignores the moral proposition and is strictly pragmatic. How do poor nations acquire funding at that point?
I’m not making an argument here, btw–I’m sincerely asking a question. And I think its the same question I have regarding this entire discussion. It seems to me that part and parcel of the problem is heavy handed international intervention. Of course, said international involvement is conducted ostensibly to “help” Haiti. Keep in mind here, I’m not commenting on the quake–they’ll need all the financial aid, etc. that the international community can provide to help them recover from that–I’m referring to all the “help” we’ve given Haiti over the last two decades and the dismal result.
It begs the question: *should* we help (again, in general–not inre the earthquake). Ie, is our involvement with a foreign nation’s affairs the root of the problem, or do we need to get even more involved? If we should be involved, how do we help? Ie, what does “help” mean within their cultural context. As an example, say you decided that you wanted to “help” a tribe of indigenous people who lived in the jungle and had no previous contact with anyone outside of their tribe. Obviously, money would be of no use to them, but to your average Westerner, providing them technology which makes their basic sustenance easier would be considered an inherently good thing. But, in fact, the introduction of technology could potentially destroy their culture. I’m not sure the analogy fits that well, but you get the point. As the old expression goes: “the road to hell is paved w/ good intentions”.
BTW, I was aware of Aristide’s removal by the US, but admit to having been lazy and merely accepting the MSM’s analysis of the situation. To wit, that there was a coup in Haiti, we sent in the Marines to restore order and saved Aristide from being ripped to pieces in the streets. I don’t recall hearing that we instigated the coup…
I subsequently did a little research on this, and was reminded that we had essentially taken the same action to help bring Aristide *in* to power. Clinton had sent the Marines in to Haiti in 1994 to restore Aristide to power after having been removed via a coup. More interestingly, Preval was a political ally of Aristide and was elected by a massive majority. Thus, I need you to “connect the dots” for me (I’m not sure what significance you assign to our involvement in the ‘04 coup?).
As to your question regarding our involvment: if we instigated the coup, I am categorically opposed to the US government’s involvement. Alternatively, were it the case that we acted after the fact, I have to attach a contingency to my answer: it depends how involved one thinks we should be in the first place (my question above).
From my perspective, one has to answer that fundamental question: should the US be involved in the internal politics of foreign nations. Prior to WWI, I think a commanding majority would have easily answered “NO”. These days, its not quite so straightforward… But, I don’t understand those who believe that we should both intervene, but also that the US is evil and acting merely to exploit and control other nations. You can’t have it both ways–either it is acceptable to insert yourself into the situation or it is not.
-Marcus
All I can say is that there are a lot of stingy people thinking up rationalizations for not helping someone who is being raked over the coals. Call me old-fashioned but I believe in something called “mankind” and right now some of its representatives are on the ropes. I am not particularly religious, I think life is a bit of joke, and we’re all going to die someday. But instead of indulging myself in one more whim, I’m going to go to someone’s aid, just because I really don’t like to see people dying of broken arms and to hear “bring out your dead” as the phrase that pays.
We’ll work out our hierarchical relations after they get some help. Being a superior snob can wait a few years, huh? God, I am sick of the right wing.
Marcus,
I tend to agree regarding ‘conspiracy’. I believe for many it’s simply a battle of ideologies. ‘Capitalism’ and ‘free market’ ideals versus ’socialism’ and ‘communism’. Right versus Left. The struggle between the two and the demonizing that takes place as a result. Thus it tends to end with each extremist side thinking the other evil, with very little middle ground. I don’t think the US is inherently evil at all, but reprehensible and amoral actions have taken and do take place. The sort of win at all costs attitude, because the alternative of “leftist” (socialism, marxist, communist, and so on) is always worse. So doing the lesser evil to accomplish the greater good becomes justified. Though I believe many of the ideologues are so entrenched and insulated from reality, that they completely lose sight of the humanity that can get lost in that process.
I’m no expert on the IMF or the World Bank, and I won’t claim to be. No firing squads from me! However from what I’ve seen and read about them, they seem to fall into what I described in the first paragraph. So their efforts, loans, mostly all the work they do with poor countries is to push the sort of capitalistic reforms they believe in. At the same time they have to profit somewhere down the line. I really need to do more research on their whole financial workings, though I have the impression that it’s not very well disclosed. However one method they utilize that I am aware of, is a conditional loan. Said country shall receive X amount dependent on their adopting such and such policies.
While there is an incredibly lengthy history of our involvement with Haiti, for the purposes of our discussion I’ll try to constrain it to the period of 1990-2004.
December of 1990: Aristide wins the presidential election out of 11 candidates. ‘Father Aristide, a 37-year-old Roman Catholic priest, led his nearest rival, Marc L. Bazin, a former World Bank economist, by as much as 30 percentage points.’ HOWARD W. FRENCH, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/18/world/haitians-overwhelmingly-elect-populist-priest-to-the-presidency.html?pagewanted=all
The World Bank makes regular appearances in their political system, one should note.
October 31, 1991: While at the UN in New York, Aristide is overthrown in a coup by FRAPH (the Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People) led by Emmanuel “Toto” Constant. Constant was allegedly in the pay, and under orders by the CIA. He himself later made the same claim.
‘ The New York Times reported last year that leading figures in the Haitian military and police were on the C.I.A. payroll, and Government officials acknowledged then that the Haitian intelligence service, which had been trained by the agency, had turned to drug running and political violence.
The C.I.A. routinely relies on informers inside the leadership of unsavory groups, and, over the years, it has had on its payroll drug dealers, corrupt politicians and military officers who abuse their countrymen.
Veteran intelligence officers defend this practice as the only reliable means of gathering information, and draw a distinction between paying for information from individuals and financing particular groups or parties. Direct financial support to a group like Fraph requires a Presidential order, or finding, and American officials said no such instruction has ever been issued. ‘ Stephen Engelberg, New York Times 1994
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/08/world/a-haitian-leader-of-paramilitaries-was-paid-by-cia.html
Upon the reinstatement of Aristide by the US and the UN, Constant flees to the US. After outrage at his presence in New York, he is arrested by the INS and held for a year. Then in 1996, despite requests for extradition to Haiti to put him on trial, he is released.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/13/nyregion/haitians-cry-assassin-outside-queens-home.html
The US led force to reinstate Aristide searched FRAPH offices, confiscating tens of thousands of documents, giving them to the US. These documents were later requested by victims of FRAPH, and to use as evidence against leaders of the regime. The Pentagon denied the requests saying the documents were classified and needed to be reviewed before they could release them. They were later released to the Haitian government, who denied them claiming they were incomplete.
http://www.williambowles.info/haiti-news/archives/fraph_101095.html
There are many reports of torture and murder being committed by Constant’s regime during this time, with estimates between hundreds and thousands killed. To my knowledge no very accurate figure is known. I can provide examples if you feel you need them, but otherwise I’ll try to keep this as short as possible.
Prior to Aristide’s return to power, and likely part of the conditions of that return was a promise to implement certain changes. This includes the privatization of several state-owned enterprises, the removal of import controls, reforming of customs, and the elimination of limits on interest rates.
”The international financial institutions would be willing to allow up to five thousand million gourdes if the government complies with the reform programme of the IMF. Otherwise we won’t have a cent from the international institutions,” said one official who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity. Ives Marie Chanel, InterPress service
http://www.williambowles.info/haiti-news/archives/structural_adj_280995.html
During the implementation of these reforms, there was much public opposition and demonstration. Aristide began to move away from the full implementation. As a result, the program was incomplete.
This is the period of attempts to gain the economic reforms requested by the IMF/World Bank. It’s all pretty muddled, with a lot of back and forth inside Haiti’s government, public outcry, and international pressure. I’ll happily discuss it, but will end this part of the post here to keep it from being too terrible wrong.
Much of this information and sourcing is derived using google news search tool and a site historycommons.org, which from what I can tell seems to do a pretty good job. I wish I had access to professional news archives; it’s really hard to get 10-15 year old articles without paying a ton of fees for individual sites.
Okay, taking a little break from this. I’ll try to piece together the build-up toward the 2004 coup in a coherent manner a little later today. I hope this was helpful, and I welcome any questions and criticisms.
-MK
MK,
It looks like the moderator did a bit of cleanup and your post made it through. Thanks for the response–very helpful and informative!
I think we probably agree that the US has, at times, taken action with is both amoral, but also unjustified and overreaching. That is why I posed the question regarding the US inserting itself into the internal politics of foreign nations…
One of the things I didn’t explicitly state is that I think if one answers “yes” to that question, that opens the door for the kind of abuse we’ve seen with Haiti. I don’t think the US is evil–far from it–but I just don’t see any historical precedent that suggests a nation can both meddle in the affairs of another while at the same time respect the sovereignty of the other nation.
The problem is that ignoring the rest of the world isn’t an option either (another lesson from WWI, and more recently 9/11). I just wish we had more conviction regarding how we should live our lives here at home and much less confidence regarding how we think those abroad should live. I’ve really no idea what “the answer” is, but it seems the degree to which we feel righteous in our involvement [in the affairs of others] is the degree to which we are likely to violate the rights of others.
INRE the IMF, I see your point about conditional loans. Its not very palatable to me either and I don’t care for it. But I don’t know that its morally reprehensible as others claim. The Federal government uses this for grants with the States all the time (for example: if you want X dollars in grant money, then you must have a seatbelt law). Its kind of back-handed, but the element of choice is still present–even if they’ve made the choice artificially difficult. However, what would, absolutely, be morally reprehensible is if the CIA (or any other organization, US or otherwise) forced a nation to do business with the IMF (and thusly accept the political conditions of a loan). I gather that is the gist of what has happened in Haiti? The point of the IMF is not to keep them poor at all, but rather to keep them tethered to our agenda?
I can tell you one thing: I concur that I wish I knew more about the IMF. My first real intro was the riots in Seattle… My take-away was that anarchists were against global banking organizations (obviously true, but perhaps missing the point). Either way, it had always been my perception that the IMF truly was an international organization–and it was that very fact that people objected to (they saw the danger in global currency control / manipulation). Only recently have I seen it reported that the IMF conspires with the US government to push a capitalist agenda. That is an interesting new twist, but certainly one that warrants further investigation.
-Marcus