12240: Re: 12218: Reparations; Dorce to Simidor and others (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LAKAT47@aol.com

In a message dated 6/1/02 6:15:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time,  karioka9@cs.com
writes:

<<  I defy anybody on this list to explain why restitution of the
"independence debt" paid to France by Haiti is not a moral imperative for the
French nation.  As one from the wronged party, I'll put it more bluntly: I
know how the West got all this wealth.  For every dollar lent or given to a
country like Haiti, it easily gets four in return.  On the subject of
responsibility or morality, I say it time for the West to practice what it
preaches: pay back some of the loot you stole from us. >>
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I am with you 100%.  This is not at all the same as the issue of reparations
to slaves in the US, where descendants of slaves want their 40 acres and a
mule from the US government.  Nor is that reparation the same as paid to the
Jews from those who took their property which could be quantified.  Slaves in
the US came with only their bodies which were used unmercifully and
immorally.  There is no way to give back what was taken from these people who
were ripped from their homes and their homeland.   And there is no way to
give back what the Jews, as a people, lost other than their property.  Haiti
was punished for freeing themselves from slavery, by trade embargos (the US
and some of Europe) and by the agreement Boyer signed to pay the French
reparations!  Imagine that!  I would have loved to have seen what Dessalines
would have done with that demand!  Make no mistake....the Western world owes
Haiti much for the cowardly way she has been treated all these years up until
today.  This is no hand out.  No freebie.  I second Simidor's demand.....pay
up. (let the loans happen.....the interest is being paid just to keep the
loan viable!)

Kathy Dorce