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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/22/10

Haiti: The Poverty Pimps' Masturbating on Black Pain - Their silent violence and corruption

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The Poverty Pimps' Masturbating on Black Pain: Their silent but ever-present violence and corruption
*
Monsanto joins the pack

Poverty Pimps in Haiti
Haiti Connect charity workers, who on the way to Haiti, stopped off for a week in Florida for team meetings...in topless bars and by the pool (published May 15, 2010, in an Irish, Sunday Mail news paper; written by Warren Swords and Valerie Harley. The article is not online but there is a scan available here.) Here's a discussion with, Evert Bopp, the head of Haiti Connect on the Sunday Mail article. See also Evert Bopp's story ; the post entitled: Why I don't agree with Haiti Connect and, With Haiti in Ruins, Some U.N. Relief Workers Live Large on 'Love Boat'.)

The corruption and violence to Haiti, to Africa, to most parts of Asia, to Australia's autochthones, et al..., are structural, not perpetrated just by the large NGOS and charity organizations, the elite corportocracy and imperialist powers that backs them up. No. It's as structural as white privilege. An inheritance some bear the brunt of on this planet while others profit.

No paradigm change may come about if this is ignored. Haiti's majority starve, suffer, grieve and die, while thrill seekers, disaster tourists and the various "missionaries", "non-for-profits (NPOs)" and "peacekeepers" sunbath, swim at the beaches, at Labadie on vacation, on salary or hourly rate for a "charity" or, for taking pictures of us crushed, grieving , deprived and dead for international photo contests to "help us." That some good is done by some charity workers doesn't justify the horror of the poverty pimping system whatsoever. (Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking ; Travesty in Haiti - Reviewed by Ezili Dantà ²/HLLN ; The Slavery the Media Won't Expose.)

The majority of humanity continues to be enslaved by a dominant system that thrives on poverty.

Haiti's founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines (Janjak Desalin), said, "I Want the Assets of the Country to be Equitably Divided" and for that he was assassinated. That was the first coup d'etat, the Haitian holocaust - organized exclusion of the masses, misery, poverty and the impunity of the economic elite - continues (with Feb. 29, 2004 marking the 33rd coup d'etat). (Haiti and the Aid Racket : How NGOs are Profiting Off a Grave Situation ; The Two most common neocolonial storylines about Haiti .)

The Violence and Corruption is Structural, Global

CBS News investigated the 5 major Haiti charities - CARE, the American Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund - and found that they had collected vast amounts of monies for the emergency in Haiti but did not use but a fraction of it to ease the people's emergency sufferings, claiming the 80 to over 90% emergency monies still in their coffers, four months after the earthquake, were for "future projects." Thing is, many Haitians will have no future. When you're having a heart attack, it's an emergency and if the ambulance gets there months in the future, you're dead already. These folks know this. That's why we say they're letting the people die.

That's part of what Ezili's HLLN means when we write about the "poverty pimps masturbating on Black pain."

The charity industry and USAID's money pool is for its cronies and the elite corporatocracy. It's their corporate welfare - bourgeoisie freedom. What Haitian-Africans have been struggling against since 1503. The good-hearted public can't absorb such evil, so they generally prefer not to know. And those of us who pour our life-force out, no matter the repercussions and marginalization, to expose how these evil folks make a living from letting the poor die or get sicker and uses disasters as an opportunity to sell their pesticides, herbicides, nutritional supplements, vitamins, vaccines, guns, weapons, security services, construction services, consultancy services, hybrid seeds or to take over their lands and silence the poor into accepting even more lower wage jobs and sub-standard living, seem to be the ones who are labeled "not constructive." This disaster capitalism is practiced on the poor, black and the brown all over the world, including New Orleans USA with Katrina. ( Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert ; Lessons for Haiti from the Asian Tsunami; Saving Haiti from disaster capitalism ; Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism in Haiti ; Profiting From Haiti's Crisis: Disaster Capitalism in Washington's Backyard.)

In 2008, four back-to-back- hurricanes hit Haiti, a million people were left homeless and 1,000 died in Gonaives Haiti, alone. USAID and the NGO industry in Haiti collected over $3billion donor dollars on the pains of Haitians from the 2004 and 2008 Gonaives hurricanes and storms. They said the same thing as they're saying now about why once the cameras where gone, even the food, water and medicine dried up, much less any "future projects" were ever undertaken. Gonaives Haiti is still devastated from the floods of 2004 and 2008. The people have not gotten any major help in rebuilding their lives, major roads, bridges, flood barriers, even though the good public coughed up hundreds of millions of dollars for this.

Miami Herald photographer Patrick Farrell won a Pulitzer for his harrowing images of the Haiti victims of the storms and hurricanes that ravaged Haiti in 2008. Mr. Farrell did an excellent job and we at HLLN followed his work with great interests because he and his crew dropped the camera many times to help save a life or ease the of a suffering, sentient being. But, did the pictures push the large NGOs or USAID that collected vast sums of monies in the name of the Haiti storm victims to give a check to the Gonaives victims so they could rebuild their lives, or were the monies used to rebuild their houses or to build flood barriers to protect the lives of these Haitians from the next hurricane? No. The prizes to come from the epic horror of the earthquake photographers will soon be announced. Meanwhile the people shall continue to die. (See also, Alice Meets' UNICEF 2008 Photos of the Year - Walking Barefoot in Misery.)

The Haiti-led, Haiti-capacity-building solution denied

The most direct and sustainable aid to Haiti's masses - Ti pà ¨p la - comes from the Haiti Diaspora's remittances and from Haitians in Haiti saving themselves, not from the NGO/NPOs, the UN, the ruling Haiti Oligarchy and certainly not from the coup-detat-and-death -squad-creating USAID/US Embassy. Yet, those who want to change the world's system in Haiti mostly refuse to listen but to these anti-Haiti- people voices. They prefer not to support conscious disaster relief with human rights, healing and dignity.

For an exemplary Haiti-led development model, see Brother Francklin Armand's artificial lakes and model settlement at Pandiassou, founded 32-years ago:

"The ... first challenge was to help the peasants feed themselves, and later on to get away from the traditional practice of food aid...There are two seasons in the Central Plateau: the rainy season and the dry season. Traditionally, the farmers of the region would work the land during the rainy season, reap their harvest, and then wait out the dry season until the rains came back. This system became too precarious to sustain as the deforestation problem worsened. The artificial lakes hold water that enables the farmers to irrigate the fields with electric pumps. In this way the long waiting period during the dry season is eliminated and the farmers can have up to three harvests per year instead of one. This has improved their material condition immensely...The lakes are stocked with thousands of fish... and the cooperative invested in a freezer facility to store freshly caught fish to sell to the surrounding communities. Pandiassou has become one of the most important sources of agricultural products and fish for the markets of Hinche." See also: Ezili HLLN's 14-Points for the Voiceless in Haiti: For a Return of Haiti's Sovereignty and for Disaster relief, Rebuilding with Human Rights, Healing and Dignity ; The Plantation Called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid ; Vision of Plantation Haiti - A White Pearl, Again! ; Sarkozy's visit to Haiti: A Buzzard Looking For a Free Meal? and Haiti has its own rebuilding plans: The US/UN Stop blocking Haitian Relief.)
***

Going shopping in Haiti:
"It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom." --Emma Goldman

Though they exist and form the exception to the rule, there are very few Paul Farmers, Margaret Trosts or Bill Quigleys in the Haitian world. And even amongst "the exceptions," the number whittles down to almost zero in terms of foreign heroes who can be expected to go the lifetime-distance without making "unusual alliances" or joining the status quo that vies for the soul of Black folks. Few who would HEAR, Lila Watson who said, "If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." This sort of thinking that inspires self-reliance not dependency and provide the respectful conditions for those in great need to, in liberty, dignity and identify, realize their own needs is not what compels the International Community in Haiti right now.

For, in the age of humanitarian imperialism, globalization, financial colonialism and neocolonial-violence obfuscated behind forced assimilation and cultural imperialism, what exactly do some whites or modern missionaries go shopping in Haiti for: sex, self-esteem, adulation, fun, challenge, adventure, the boost in serotonin-consumption, to exploit cheap labor, plunder Haiti's natural resources, for self-improvement, recovery, to use Haiti as in excuse to raise funds for their salaries and living expenses to live the old Dixie's planters' life with exploitation black sex on tap, or as an easy way to gain international expert credentials in any field and move up the socio-economic ladder at home and/or for securing the good tropical lifestyle with mountain and oceanfront houses, the waiters, maids, gardeners and seafood they couldn't obtain as easily in their Euro/US countries where they are the majority, ordinary, can't use the white privilege inheritance without some scrutiny and are not as exotic and special as in neocolonial devastated Haiti. It's all hidden, of course, behind the mask of being good humanitarians, altruistic charity workers and helping Haitians. (See also, Ezili Dantà ² Reviews Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking (a book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D.); The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose ; Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues; UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children; The-To-Tell-The-Truth-About -Haiti Forum 2009 and 2010; I am the History of Rape: HLLN Letter to UN asking for investigative reports on UN soldier's rapes in Haiti; and, Proposed solutions to create a new paradigm.)

Excerpt of Going Shopping In Haiti is taken from Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation by Ezili Dantà ²
USAID's Monsanto Mutations: Perpetual Debt and Mortally Lethal

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Human Rights Lawyer, Èzili Dantò is dedicated to correcting the media lies and colonial narratives about Haiti. An award winning playwright, a performance poet, author and lawyer, Èzili Dantò is founder of the Haitian (more...)
 

Related Topic(s): Disaster Capitalism; Disaster Relief Agencies; Ezili Danto; HLLN; Haitian Earthquake Crisis; Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network; Marguerite Laurent; Monsanto; NGOs; Ngo False Charity In Haiti; (more...) Poverty; Shock Doctrine; USAID; Us False Benevolence; Western Imperialism, Add Tags  (less...)
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