22158: Esser: Re: 22139: Vedrine: RE: 22111: Esser: Hispaniola's forest tragedy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Very valid points that underscore the foolishness of summarily
dismissing reparations as done by La Tortue. The periods of direct
colonialism as well as the post-colonial and neo-colonial times did,
and are doing,  tremendous damage, to the Haitian people but also to
the environment. A credit as compensation is, moral obligation or
not, a farce, as Haiti suffered documented harm and France still
reaps the benefits.

Because Haiti had such a good and clear-cut case in asking for
reparations, not only France but also other former and current
colonial powers became quickly indignant and Aristide had to go.
Funny that France developed a distaste for reparations, it didn't
have a problem accepting money from Haiti as reparations for "harm
suffered" or from Germany after World War I when it hauled everything
home that wasn't nailed down and extracted coal and the like.

There might be even a case to draw the circle wider, for example
during King Leopold's brutal oppression of the people of Congo,
Belgium was helped every step of the way by countries such as
Germany, that even though not the actual colonizer, got to make use
of the Congolese raw materials for their growing economies. In the
case of Haiti, there were also many European countries that aided and
abetted France during and after the colonial period.

The article by the BBC brought up another interesting possible aspect
of environmental degradation: global warming. Since a handful of
developed nations use up the fast bulk of all energy consumed world
wide, they create immense amounts of gases contributing to global
warming, from which the least developed nations stand to suffer
disproportionately. The same way that deforestation effects a place
like Haiti much worse than areas with moderate climate.

Another interesting problem to consider is the fact that the most
developed nations control the price and to some extent the
distribution of commodities. That has as an effect that Haitian
farmers don't receive a livable wage from growing rice or coffee and
Haiti cannot afford to purchase energy on the world market to get
people to stop cutting wood for fuel. Since the USA mainly control
the commodities, they have to be paid in U.S. dollars and as has
Aristide's cutting back of subsidies for gasoline shown, (to which he
was pressured by international institutions) in this environment of
total control it is nearly impossible to make cheap sources of energy
available. Iraq also paid a price for trying to side step the system:
the Iraqi oil ministry had stopped selling oil for dollars and used
euros instead. To great benefit for Iraq but ultimately the price
that had to be paid for it seems somewhat high... So in essence: it
is also the domination of the world markets by the U.S. and a few
lesser players, that make catastrophes, such as in Mapou, possible.

It is rather difficult to envision how reparations would be used, but
that shouldn't stop Haitians from pursuing it and using the money for
environmental damage control, reforestation and restoration of marine
life, would be a great use. I can also envision programs to make use
of renewable energy as a great use for reparations -- natural
disasters and famines are hardly solely natural and with the proper
amount of money flowing into Haiti, there won't have to be many more
Mapous. With La Tortues embrace of neo-liberalism and asking for
crumbs from the descendants of the colonial masters, it is hard to be
optimistic at least until Haiti can return to the democracy the man
from Boca Raton came to replace.
.