I think Matt Yglesias is right both about allowing for mass emigration from Haiti to first-world countries, and about the wisdom of using French-speaking soldiers and police officers from Canada, Switzerland, and France. He’s also right to start thinking outside the box. This is not your ordinary natural disaster. There is no infrastructure left in Port-au-Prince. There are no government buildings, there are no businesses left, and there is no safe housing. You can’t establish a government or even an economy in these conditions. The city basically needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt, but there is no economic incentive to do that, and money is limited.
It’s probable that Haiti will need to become a protectorate of some sort, if not in letter then in fact. And very clever people will have to devise economically sound plans to rebuild. For example, temporary housing could actually be semi-permanent, with an option to buy equity and have eventual ownership. The Department of Agriculture could encourage the planting of fruit trees rather than attempting reforestation that will be used for timber. Of course, having first-world corporations swoop in and begin making profits off this misery will bring about charges of imperialism and expolitation. But, really, what are the alternatives? Without some profit-motive, there will never be enough aid to keep Haiti at a sustenance level of existence.
Good points. And I don’t think Bill Clinton has a reasonable plan to rebuild Haiti either.
As with other catastrophes like Katrina, its memory will soon wane and and before long we will again be asked to ponder Paris Hilton waist line by the press.
Is there a problem with our school systems that somehow are unable to recognize?
It’s total decimation. And there is no obvious way to fix it.
Just a sampling from the WashP article:
One can only imagine.
It’s so much worse than that. One of the reasons the Haitians have been kept so poor are the outrageous mortgage policies. I was reading in Niall Ferguson’s excellent book The Ascent of Money how while in most countries it takes days or weeks to get a mortgage, in Haiti it can take almost a year. The system is virtually rigged to keep the people there impoverished.
This isn’t about rebuilding the infrastructure. And it isn’t about taking them under our wing, either. It’s about teaching them how to govern, using hopefully the best of modern examples. But they have had literally hundreds of years of colonists trying to show them a better way, all of whom have failed, some more spectacularly than others.
Haiti is a crucible. We can build a real genuine experiment in democracy there if we wanted. But business interests don’t want that. Because if that happened, and it spread, what then?
In the 1930s, certain capitalists tried to associate democracy itself with communism in the hopes of killing it off. That same mindset still permeates, but they’ve gotten more sophisticated about how they discuss it.
think about the clean-up of ground zero. All that heavy equipment, millions of tons of debris, trying to preserve DNA? But imagine no money to pay for it, and no economic incentive to do it at all. And it’s the whole city.
Obviously, we’re going to have to hire companies to go in there and clean it up, but who can pay for a job that big, and especially, who has any incentive to build anything to replace what it lost?
Do you see where I am going with this?
Oh, definitely. Halliburton and Xe are probably salivating now, as is the CIA, for establishing a beachhead so near Cuba.
It all really turns my stomach, to be honest.
This is when we need a PEACE corps of engineers to go in, evaluate NATIVE resources, NATIVE labor, NATIVE options, and really try to help them rebuild themselves. They have rich farmland, or would, if they reforested the place.
But sending in foreign companies to take over the infrastructure needs? I think that’s a really sad proposition. It may be the only one that works, but if I were a Haitian living there, that might be enough to get me to take up arms, honestly.
I see no alternative.
Humanitarian aid has its limits. This is like Pompeii.
It wasn’t much better BEFORE the earthquake. But at least now the world is paying attention.
Yes, I see where you are going. But do you see how far away your analogy is from the reality of Port-au-Prince?
No, I don’t. There is hardly a habitable structure in the city, no jobs, no water, no AIDs medication, no antibiotics, 50,000 unburied bodies in 90 degree heat, no heavy equipment, no police, no ambulances, and no way to feed or house 3 million people.
Every skilled person with resources will leave the country, except those that are patriotic and brave enough to stay.
And the place was near hopeless to begin with. Obama STILL has been able to talk to the president, and he’s already got 8 rescue teams, 2 cutters, and the airport under his control.
I mean, c’mon, Dr. Pangloss. This is not going to be okay.
BooMan, if you knew the history of the country, you’d know that most of those problems existed for a huge number of people there BEFORE the earthquake, including lack of water.
I have a lot more faith in their ability to quickly recover on their own, with money from us, so long as it doesn’t come with untoward strings attached.
what, I don’t know their history now?
there’s an indescribable difference between the hardships they faced last week and what they face now.
I advise putting on your quartermaster’s hat for fifteen minutes and thinking about who, what, where, and how. Because this is a scale that NGO’s cannot handle and that mere donated money cannot fix.
Not really, for many of them, BooMan. When you’re already starving to death without a job and living in mud, an earthquake doesn’t change things all that much.
And not everyone and everything was hit. The company I work for has offices all over the globe, in many countries, and our Haitian office is okay. All our people are okay. It’s not like EVERYONE is suddenly destitute.
And no, you REALLY don’t know the history, because it isn’t being talked about on TV, or in print. You know, the REAL history.
Here’s some real history for you.
Well of course Booman tthinks that everyone is completely fucked in Haiti.
I mean…isn’t that what CNN is telling him?
The media spin on this is a classic “runup-to”.
Massive media coverage of all of the worst images that they can find.
Soon to be followed by, as I said in my own little diary on a sideshow of this thing. (Sideshows often being where you can see what’s really going on behind the curtain of a circus.):
You and Tarheel Dem have it right.
The sad part?
Unless we hear seriously threatening noises from Cuba, Venezuela and the like…and how would we know what they are really saying or doing through our Pravda-like news system…that is exactly what is going to happen.
Halliburton and Xe.
Halliburton to try and Las Vegas-ize/Bloomberg-ize the country and Xe to keep a vicious quasi-martial law during the process.
I got yer “contractors”. Right HERE!!!
AG
P.S. Ooops!!!
I misspoke.
I said:
Not “any day now”.
Today.
And not “our realpolitik guys”, either.
Mr. Booman hisse’f.
Yes, I do see where you are going with this, Booman.
Deep.
Off the deep end.
Into very hazardous water.
And every time someone tries to talk some anti-economic imperialist sense to you…not in an ideological way, just in terms of how thoroughly fucked every country that has experienced our “good will” has ended up…you spout another raging news story about how bad things are.
You have swallowed the runup, hook, line and stinker.
Step away from the television with your brains in the air, Booman.
Let ask you something..
What do you think the (PermaGov-directed) media spin would be if say China offered (threatened) to step in with massive military and “contractor” aid?
Or how about…ohhh, say Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela?
HOO boy!!!
Another hottest-thing-ever Cuban Missile Crisis, and the hell with the goddamned Haitians.
Bet on it.
Do you see where I am going with this?
I doubt it.
The TV’s probably on too loud for you to think.
Deep.
If for some reason the administration in Washington decided not to do a damn thing for Haiti, the Chinese would be there in a second, only too happy to take their piece of the action and to supplant us as the go-to guys for white-hat imperialism. If not China, then Dubai. I hear they might still be in the market for some ports that need rebuilding despite their recent hiccups.
So, yeah, I agree with you that the PermaGov is making a move, and they aren’t let that shit-heel Hugo Chavez horn in on this action, either.
My point is that Haiti doesn’t have a better option.
I don’t dispute Haiti might not have a better option, and I don’t dispute that Haiti is in crisis, and that America needs to help.
What I want people to understand is that every time we’ve gotten invovled in Haiti in the past, we’ve made the situation there worse, not better. I’d love this to be the exception. But if we send in Halliburton and/or Blackwater/Xe, I think we’ll be following a sadly well-established pattern.
Also, AG, the news sources I posted from? Canadian, British, and Singapore.
PermaGov heap big, Booman.
PermaMoney.
Multinational.
If it appears in the mainstream American media, it’s been okayed.
See any Cuban stories?
Venezuelan?
Chinese?
Nope.
How about al Queda’s take on it?
How about the massive minority prison population of the US? They had an earthquake, too.
For several hundred years.
How do they feel about our care for the poor, misfortunate Haitians?
Sorry, Booman.
Yer livin’ in a dream world.
And it ain’t even your dream.
AG
Whatever I said, I did not say it would be Panglossian OK.
It is not at all like Ground Zero; the aerial views of the near downtown (which is the office and hotel area) show a large number of devastated office buildings and government buildings. Destruction throughout the rest of the city is widespread but not total. The well-to-do residences on the hill, a neighborhood called Petainville, has substantial damage because these were constructed like the downtown office buildings. The shanty towns of much of the city have been flattened, but those timber and sheetmetal structures most likely failed where the timber was joined (the nails) and most of the materials can be recovered and rebuilt in a matter of weeks. This is not Lower Manhattan, and it is not a rubble pile from one side to the other of the residences of 3 million people.
It is not the best of all possible worlds, but the US and outside aid is not going to make it the best of all possible worlds either. It will make it tolerable to begin reconstruction.
Of those 50,000 bodies, 7000 have been buried already in a central cemetery. A US helicopter carrier with 19 helicopters (probably cargo class) should be anchored offshore tomorrow. Aid has come in from France, Canada, and Iceland (per video of the airport) and probably others. A number of US churches had folks on mission trips already down there, and those folks are and will be helping. Apparently Albert Schweitzer Hospital was only mildly damaged and is in operation.
People are still walking around dazed or sleeping in the streets. Some people are already scrounging concrete blocks from the rubble, either for sale or reconstruction. Neighbors are beginning to help each other to to assist neighbors in getting to help. Sports fields have become gathering points.
It is most similar in size and fatalities to the Peruvian earthquake of 1970 that took 66,000 lives. The logistics problems in relief in that earthquake are in a lot of respects similar to the problems in Haiti in terms of concentrations of population, poverty (in 1970), mountainous terrain that constrains airborne relief.
Putting the airport under US Air Force air traffic control will improve efficiency because they will bring with them air traffic control systems, runway lighting. Helicopters will quickly establish aid distribution centers throughout the region. But a lot of the schlepping of equipment and supplies will still be by foot.
This is a great report on conditions from the Dominican border crossing all the way into the city and airport.
In business, when a competitor goes down it’s considered wise to buy up its equipment at final auction to help prevent a 2nd startup from stepping in and becoming your next competitor.
Were this the days of the Cold War, Haiti’s proximity to the US would certainly dicate the US covering its behind and building an ownership interest.
Since population is a weighty part of the equation, just getting that sorted out (thank Gawd we don’t have to listen to Reagan’s screed about birth control in 3rd world countries this round) so yes, emmigration is a viable road.
But, I’m also reminded of what has happened to Canada’s health system because of the huge migration of India’s unhealthy population immigrating into the head of the line of their emergency and surgical lines. It’s not discussed enough, but one of the more basic reasons that Canada’s population suffers from long waits for procedures is the fact that their health care system is buried under the burden of immigrants who need immediate care.
And India’s healthy compared to what Haiti will bring.
Mass emigration… um, no. What are you and Matt suggesting? That we boatload a few million island people and house them in FEMA camps in the middle of Nebraska? Plop them down in tent cities wherein they would become — by language and culture — permanant refugees?
Even if you’re suggesting they could be dispersed to other island nations like Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas, etc., this isn’t a litter of kittens being farmed out to loving homes. These are people who must have some sense of self based on staying where they were born. It is not for us to suggest that they be moved about like litter on the wind. It’s dreadfully patronizing to discuss such a solution.
I’m not suggesting anyone be forced to emigrate, merely that we allow for a very large number to emigrate here, and that other nations with capacity do the same.
You have about two million homeless people, maybe three, with no jobs outside of being paid to move rubble and supplies. They can’t earn a living, and we can’t possibly provide for them long-term, and they moved to the city because of impossible farming conditions. They can’t go home again.
There are 350,000 Haitians in Florida. If their relatives want to join them, we should expedite that move.
I certainly agree with the distastefulness of the conversation…not against Booman and Matt, but rather that we have to have the discussion at all.
Almost an entire city needs to be demolished and rebuilt. The city is in the heart of one of the poorest countries out there. Who’s going to pay for it to be rebuilt? Where are the millions of people that have no homes going to stay in the mean time?
It’s not a matter of treating these people like a little of kittens…it’s a matter of figuring out what the hell to do to fix this. We have to look at every angle to figure out the best course of action, and unfortunately some of those angles aren’t flattering.
If I was thinking purely practically, it’s biggest asset is its location. The Caribbean islands are stunning. Dominica, a close neighbor with similar terrain, is a lovely spot, and increasingly, a tourist destination.
Sperm whales migrate near there. I mean, ecotourism would be bountiful. But that means a lot of people have to change everything about their lives. And that’s not simple.
The whole place needs not just infrastructure. It needs psychological aid.
Here’s an example. I talked to a guy recently on a plane who told me about a recent trip to Haiti. He was running for exercise, not wearing anything fancy, no iPod, but people were giving him dirty looks. He asked around, and someone finally explained. It took so much energy for the natives to just live through the day that to see him flaunting his energy by running was considered an insult.
Think about that. That really hit me in the gut when I heard it.
Way back when, when I was in college I used to show up in shorts and sometimes barefoot to my summer courses. One day an East Indian man stopped me and told me that in his country people couldn’t afford to wear shoes and so seeing me flaunt my barefootedness was intensely offensive to him. Never forgotten it.
Exactly. We take so much for granted, but they are in a different space.
What I REALLY hope we do is find some local activists who truly understand Haiti’s history and needs and let them help draft the future. The last thing that sorry half-island nation needs is more businessmen looking for more spoils to ravage.
Are there any local activists there? Wouldn’t they almost by necessity be tied to the elites in the first place?
Frankly I don’t support any kind of US protectorate. We simply don’t have the resources to do it.
Oh no – we HAVE to help. It’s how we help that matters though, not if we should.
I read on the web site of one of the aid organizations (can’t remember which) that this guy took his truck and tried to pick up the elderly and injured. It took him two hours to drive one mile because absolutely everyone stopped him asking for help. Because, the very fact that he had access to a vehicle meant he was better off than they were.
In these situations you end up with sort of a Cargo Cult mentality. The poor see the immense wealth that the OTHERS have, and can’t really believe that is beyond their power to just swoop in and solve all problems – if they wanted to.
I can hardly get my head around the fact that what we just spent on a blender (a really good one) would pay someone else’s wages for a year. How much harder would it be to be on the other end of the equation and to see someone like myself as “just getting by” within my own economy.
I’m not saying that impoverished people don’t want to work for themselves, but rather that the power of money – and their lack of it – leads to the sense that their contributions are of little or no value and meaningful inputs can only come from without (from people and countries with real value, i.e. money).
It’s a central tenet of our economy that “interest accrues”, so does disinterest.
I haven’t heard someone put it this way before – well said, Keres:
Well, contractors here in the US certainly are hurting for some work. How about the Government sends aid by way of paying US contractors to travel to Haiti and build a bunch of low income housing and infrastructure?
See my comment above. I think this is a horrible idea, even if it ends up being the “best” idea.
more like no-income housing.
.
29 December 2009 – Five years after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami, which left a devastating trail of death and destruction, millions of people have benefited from the influx of aid by rebuilding stronger infrastructure, social services and disaster warning systems than existed before the catastrophe, according to the United Nations agencies at the core of the recovery effort.
The largest emergency relief response in history was prompted by the earthquake off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on 26 December 2004, which sent waves as high as 30 metres crashing into 14 countries, claiming nearly 230,000 lives and leaving around 2 million people homeless.
The international community pledged over $14 billion in aid for the overall emergency relief and recovery operations, according to a recent UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report summarizing the results of its programmes, which have received almost $700 million to date.
The report noted that communities whose livelihoods, homes, schools and heath facilities were destroyed have had opportunities to build back better health, education, water and sanitation services, as well as improve the security of areas vulnerable to natural disaster or violent conflict, and provide safer environments for vulnerable children.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."BooMan,
It may sound corny, but the most important resource in any community is its people — the community itself. Haiti’s problems stem largely from decades of brutal exploitation by con artists, psychopathic dictators and their police-state goons suppressing the positive energies of that community. First-world corporations “begin” making profits out of all this misery? There has already been no lack of misery in Haiti, and few corporations have gone there with any idea other than rampant exploitation. This is a job for NGOs and grassroots organizers.
It is only the wealthier Haitians that can emigrate and start new lives elsewhere.
As for planting trees, why fruit trees instead of timber? Both are needed. Reforestation means restoring diversified forest ecologies. Much of the ecology of Haiti was already devastated long before this earthquake, it has to be restored. Nature is the basic engine of food production and productivity.
Money obviously has to come from outside, but the ideas need to come mainly from local communities, with NGOs helping Haitians achieve the goals they set for themselves. This is the well-tested experience of grassroots community organizing.
I should have provided links.
http://www.unep.org/ourplanet/imgversn/151/wirth.html
http://www.eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2009/11/09/1
(first in a six-part series — you can access the rest of the parts simply by altering the last digit of the URL to 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6).
Excellent – I just made a similar comment above before I saw this.
Exactly right. Work with local activists. They have the BEST knowledge, the trust of the locals, and the good hearts to do this right.
It’s interesting how many people know what Haiti should become and do that in abstraction from conversations with the Haitian people.
The devastation looks great because of our assumptions of what must have been there. My daughter has pictures from 16 years ago (when the US military restored Aristide) and she went on a mission trip to an AIDS hospice in Cite Soleil. It is difficult to see what has happened to that community because the media is focused on the affluent downtown area and the Presidential Palace.
The city actually is in better shape that it appears on TV in terms of being able to reconstruct it. The Haitian people are innovative and experienced with using the materials at hand. The idea that it needs to be bulldozed is a US fantasy based on images of devastation and recovery in US cities.
The immediate need is for medical care for the injured, rescued for those still trapped, and relief shelter, food and sanitation. There are numerous NGOs working on this, and militaries from the OAS most likely will cooperate on the logistics of handling this aid which will be coming from countries in the region and not just the US.
The rebuilding of the internationally important business area will occur quickly because there really is not that much that will have to be rebuilt.
Kreyol is French-based but it is not French, and French speakers have as much difficulty with Kreyol as English speakers have with some of the Pacific Island pidgins based on English. You gain a little, but not a lot from having folks from Canada, Switzerland, and France. Even more important, there is a large Haitian-American community in the US, who speak both languages fluently and can be hired as interpreters.
Looking at Haiti through affluent American eyes causes the arrogance that the US has become world-renowned for. A protectorate? That is loony. Haiti has a functioning government that needs on the office space to operate. The US would not become a protectorate if Washington DC was devastated by a natural disaster. If outside assistance were needed, it would provide temporary office space, the military would set up secure field communications, and the government would operate.
The issue with deforestation is that timber is the sole fuel source for cooking in the rural areas. Planting fruit trees would not last long unless some alternative source of fuel were provided.
The very clever people who will devise Haiti’s future are the Haitians themselves, not some outside aid organization.
And this:
This is baffling. Aid does not depend on profit; investment does. Haiti’s economic problem is that it has nothing to export except labor. The mineral resources are negligible; agricultural land is limited by the topology of a mountainous island country; there have been experiments with coffee and fruit export, which could be continued and expanded if there were “fair trade” buyers. The aid that Haiti needs is healthcare and education.
As for money, it will not be limited. Every aid organization will be hiring Haitians as outreach workers and guides and paying them with dollars. The street vendors will be recovering what souvenirs they can and making others from the debris, and aid workers will be buying them to take home as gifts and momentoes of this difficult time.
Should first-world countries allow mass emigration from Haiti. Yes. The US policy on Haitian immigration as compared to Cuban immigration has been demonstrably racist. There is still a substantial number of undocumented Haitians who get overlooked in the assumption that Hispanics are the only undocumented workers. Providing opportunities in the US will finance Haitian development through the relatives of folks who come to the US (or other first world countries).
Excellent. Thanks so much. I totally agree re American arrogance thinking we know best, with our limited info.
I’m working on a piece re our rejection, support and rejection of Aristide in alternating administrations, and our role in their continuing misery. What’s clear is that this is not ours to fix. That’s been our problem all along. It’s not ours to fix in Iraq. It’s not ours to fix in Afghanistan. And it’s not ours to fix in Haiti.
Send them supplies? Medical aid? Relief packages? Absolutely.
Send them blueprints? Only if asked.
Send them advice? NO. Listen to THEIR advice. That’s what is most needed.
This goes to the heart of the matter:
http://www.echoditto.com/node/4009
Like I said – when you don’t have much to lose, an earthquake isn’t that devastating. And I’m not trying at all to downplay the extensive damage or tragedy. I’m just trying to play up the fact that the country has been so hurt and broken for so long that this seems a more extreme version of the same, rather than a complete upending of a situation.
Maybe this photo gallery can shake you out of this curious mindset you’ve adopted tonight.
.
Military branches:
no regular military forces – small Coast Guard; the regular Haitian Armed Forces (FAdH) – Army, Navy, and Air Force – have been demobilized but still exist on paper until or unless they are constitutionally abolished (2009)
Impression of the Island, Haiti before the quake …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Airlifted”? That’s a nice way to put kidnapping and deposing someone in absentia.
He was saved later through the – never mind. I need to write it up, first!
There’s a good entry at Wikipedia about the Humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Give it a read if you want to see how another natural disaster played out in terms of short- and long-term aid.
It was right on Australia’s doorstep and probably had much more of a visceral impact here than in the US, whereas it’s probably visa versa with Haiti.
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The U.S. Air Force is in control of the Port-au-Prince airport, the function of control tower, runway lights and basic logistics have been restored. Difficulty is to priortize incoming flights. An aircraft with international journalists and television crews was able to land, a plane with 8 rescue teams from The Netherlands totaling 60 persons, fully self-supporting, was diverted to Curacao, a nearby Caribbean island of The Netherlands north of Venezuela. After a one day delay, the group have been rescheduled for landing early Friday morning. Their estimate is the rescue mission wll continue for 7 more days with a chance of locating survivors. USAR
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."