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Official infection figures number 150,000, but true totals are likely four times that amount, perhaps heading toward or surpassing one million or over 10% of the population. On June 28, 2010, the US Census Bureau estimated Haiti's population at 9.6 million and America's at over 310 million. Thus, a comparable US infection rate would be over 31 million, an epidemic of biblical proportions.
In contrast, major media sources ignore Haiti's crisis, a nation out of sight and mind to US news consumers the way other important issues are sanitized, distorted or suppressed. It leaves Americans the most over-entertained, under-informed people anywhere, even about their own country.
As for Haitians, centuries of injustice continue, compounded by electoral fraud, raging cholera, deep poverty, appalling deprivation, starvation, and exposure for 1.5 million IDPs made homeless by January's quake.
Ricardo Seitenfus, author of "Haiti: Sovereignty of the Dictators," was Special (OAS Haiti) Representative of the Secretary General until fired in late December for speaking truth. In an interview with the Swiss journal "Le Temps," he gave an incisively frank assessment of conditions on the ground in response to questions posed.
He explained that UN Blue Helmets "transform(ed) the Haitians into prisoners on their own island." That for over two centuries, "foreign troops....alternated with dictators....Haiti's original sin (was) liberation" in 1804. Washington denied recognition until 1865, fearing its own slave population would demand freedom and citizenship like Haitians and other Americans. For its part, France demanded ransom paid for liberation. "Right from the beginning, independence was compromised and the country's development was road-blocked."
Nothing thereafter was solved. Today it's worse with Haiti turned "into a capitalist country, an export platform for the American market, it is absurd" and deeply exploitive. "More than 90% of the education and health systems are in private hands. The country has no public resources for the functioning of an official system even in a minimal fashion....When the unemployment (underemployment) rate is at 80%, deploying a stabilizing mission is intolerable. There is nothing to stabilize....Its mandate in Haiti is to keep peace of the cemetery."
Predatory NGOs make it worse, exploiting vulnerable Haitians for profit. "There is an evil or perverse relationship between the NGOs' strength and the Haitian State's weakness. Some NGOs exists only because of the Haitian misfortune," yet do little to relieve it. A few other comments included:
-- it's "unacceptable from the moral point of view to (use) Haiti as a laboratory;"
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