Haiti

HAITI?
1/24/2010
A news article written by Romain Raynaldi yesterday from Park City,
Utah tells us that the "catastrophe merchants" are still at it. An outfit called
Sundance Films is going to show a movie made by Michael Nash called
"Climate Refugees".
What motivated the filmmaker appears to be his deeply held belief about
man-made global warming and its so-called inevitable dire consequences for
humanity.
Based on the assumptions made by his frenetic mind he sees millions of
people forced to leave coastal areas because of sea levels rising, while other
millions will be drifting into the US looking for food and water and locals will be
forced to find shelter away from home because of more hurricanes, tornadoes
or mudslides.
Mr. Nash visited the recent Copenhagen conference which he thought
quite frustrating because nobody wanted to listen to his concerns about
migrations. Maybe he was at the wrong conference, because Copenhagen was
dealing with another perceived catastrophe, global warming, which is now
having its own very hard time about being believable.
I am sure Mr. Nash means well by agitating for the creation of yet
another organization, not the UN, to take care of humanitarian needs caused
by environmental disasters. You may well be right in thinking that this all
seems a bit redundant for organizing the distribution of funds directly to people
hurt by a disaster of some kind. The logistics at such a time just aren't very
helpful.
Finally, he condemns humankind in toto for the Haitian calamity
emphasizing that people in Haiti have been living without food for the last 3
years. Shame on us, he says.
One can have deep sympathy for the Haitian people in their utter misery
and hopelessness, yet at the same time insist that the world should help in a
way that will more effectively stop the continuation of poverty, illiteracy and
lack of opportunity in that strange little country.
Apparently, Mr. Nash is totally unaware of the billions of dollars in
contributions and time spent by many thousands of volunteers over a period of
decades, which efforts have never been able to really stabilize the country. But
notwithstanding this international largesse, self-serving activities by outsiders
have often perpetuated local corruption rather than the opposite.
Haiti is indeed a singular tragedy in more ways than one but is not
caused by a cruel world anymore than is Switzerland. It is mostly a self-made
series of tragedies.
One only has to look at the Dominican Republic next door to see what
could be made of Haiti if it decided to accept a strong, capable leader, possibly
educated abroad. The Dominicans also went through a long history of
dictatorships, strongmen, revolutions and annexations and finally put that
chapter behind itself about 30 years ago. But Haiti hasn't learned the same
lesson yet and the results are predictable. It cannot feed itself, support itself or
defend itself. It needs a strong and constructive guiding hand.
In my mind Haiti is currently politically and economically unviable and
really would be better off under another country's disciplined tutelage for a
long period of time. Afterwards and if results are convincingly attractive, give it
a choice of annexation with another country or independence. As a condition of
such long term assistance, most expatriated Haitians need to return home and
commit to rebuilding their country.
Nothing else will work there.
Agitating for the creation of yet another "do-good" organization as
proposed by Mr. Michael Nash just isn't the answer. That's all been done in the
past, many times. Mr. Nash would do the Haitians a real service by not
dramatizing the current tragedy there as a means to make other countries feel
guilty about something over which they have no control while pushing to create
yet another expensive and mostly ineffective bureaucracy onto a selfperpetuating
problem.
Sundance Films isn't helping either. It's time to call a spade a spade