"The logic being that planet earth is a wasteland of meaningless fiction, and though the Creator is in submission, not by choice. For he does it so that through his subjection, during that time, full trust in him be established. For then the Creator will be set free from being enslaved by such corruption, and we shall have the liberty and glory of being the children of God.

For it is self-evident that, with all of us, the Creator laments and suffers the same agony to this very day." Romans 8:20

Of course the article doesn't mention that the reason the gov't can respond is because the West - mainly that exceptional agent of good the USA - has for years systematically undermined the gov't of haiti and its basic institutions. That rant aside how is it that the criminal media is there and the pantsuit person can get in for a photo-op but the great West can't get water to the thirsty. It should be really lots of fun as we wait for the next clamity maybe as a result of climate disruption. To finish is there nothing brand Obama will not try to turn into his sickeningly cynical form of politics - Bush & Clinton to the rescue. The drooling beltway pundits love it. The clown is starting to make me puke.

In the last decade alone, the U.S. slashed humanitarian assistance to Haiti, blocked international loans, forced the government of Haiti to downsize, ruined tens of thousands of small farmers, and replaced the government with private non-governmental organizations.

The result? Small farmers are starved out of the countryside and migrate by the tens of thousands to the cities where they built cheap shelters on hills. International funds for roads and education and healthcare are halted by the U.S. The money that does come into the country goes not to the government but to private corporations. Thus the government of Haiti is nearly powerless to provide assistance to its own people on regular days - much less in the face of a real disaster like this one.

In 2004, the U.S. assisted in a coup against the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide. This continues a long tradition of the U.S. deciding who will rule the poorest country in the hemisphere. So now we are "supporting" the existing government!

The CIA and Mr. Obama must "allow" the immensely popular President Jean Bertrand Aristide to come back from Johannesburg, Africa and head the rebuilding efforts. Does anyone besides me believe he is not guilty of the crimes he has been accused of by America?

I saw the very first trickle on Thursday and I said to myself that if the Haitians leave Port-au-Prince it will be very good for them and bad for the giant international corporations (otherwise known as giant leaches). If you look at history, migration is one of the most important things that change the future.

Haiti was historically an agricultural country with most people living in the country and in towns and in very small cities. As has already been reported in Common Dreams comments (thanks, folks) the population of Port-au-Prince was artificially ballooned in the last few decades as a result of the huge international corporations forcing (at gunpoint, basically) the Haitians to lower their import tariffs on sugar cane, coffee, and on other agricultural and other goods. After the tariffs were cut to shreds, the local farmers could no longer compete with the huge international agricultural conglomerates which dumped large quantities of food and other items onto the island, so many of those farmers then moved to Port-au-Prince, where a relatively small subset of them obtained employment in sweatshops and where the majority of them became unemployed and dirt poor.

The interesting thing about devastation is that it completely changes both the physical and the economic landscapes. The massive international corporations are now going to be even more reluctant than they already were to invest in the "poorest country in the Western Hemisphere," In fact, they aren't going to be willing to invest much of anything at all for several years.

At the same time, Haitians are going to be even more poor than they already were (yes, poverty can always get worse) and a much greater percentage of them than before will not be able to afford imported food. When you combine the fact that they are moving back to the country with the changed economic reality, you can deduce that the Haitians will reestablish small farms and then simply use them to feed themselves and their immediate neighbors, thus removing themselves from having to buy imported food.

It is in fact absurd for people in a lush tropical country to have to pay money for imported food, and of course it is absurd for anyone to work in a sweatshop, so a silver lining in this catastrophe is that Haitians who now live away from the corporate and Western-dominated Port-au-Prince will enjoy better lives than before.

Finally, it should be noted that both the Cuban Revolution and the original Haitian Revolution, objectively and obviously speaking two of the most successful revolutions in history, were successfully generated from the rural countryside as opposed to from the main towns which were under foreign control to one extent or another. Since history often does repeat itself, this means that there is a distinct possibility that in the coming years Haitians living outside of Port-au-Prince will form a real resistance to the control of Port-au-Prince by international corporations and by right wing foreigners.

It is interesting to note that shortly after the Revolution in the early 1800’s, Haiti was divided into two: north and south. The north was all country and very small towns. In south Haiti, even after the Revolution, there were political and even small military conflicts between those in control of the small city of Port-au-Prince and those living outside of that destined to be destroyed city.

"and locals said flames seen at the shattered judiciary headquarters on Saturday may have been from some of them trying to burn criminal case records."

Blankfein from Goldman Sachs nods his head in admiration. He is considering a recruitment drive in Haiti (These fellows know how to do God's work, he says).

Cheney notices how resourceful some folks without shredders can be.

Rumsfield worries the Haitians are catching on to WTC7 and the Pentagon accounting procedures.

Rahm Emanuel is considering hiring them for the DLC archives or Fannie and Freddie mac file specialists.

Geithner wonders if these folks are ex-AIG or New York Fed employees.

Holder is initiating an investigation along with the 6,000 or so others he has (with no convictions).

Obama will make the Haitians wait just as long as W. made the New Orleans people wait. Yes, it is Katrina #2.

Such a holocaust! I think the Haitians will be re-allocating their land now. No aristocrat's stiff neck or general's swagger will be strong enough to keep head attached to sholders after this catastrophy.

See also:
US-Haiti
Noam Chomsky
US-Haiti, March 9, 2004

Our fait in about five to ten year, starving and homeless when bank bailouts destroy the economy, unable to afford healthcare when costs triple, and encircled by troops when our rich nobility decide were raving terrorists not fit to live.

Today on PRI they spent only two minutes on Haiti, said nothing new like what might happen next, instead talked only about the blood and guts stuff, a blinding of the mind by burning the emotions. Then came seven minutes of an election in Europe with singing and laughing.

Go to Reuters WEB page and a gigantic column of nothing but mind blinding gutsy bloody stuff, but totally void of enlighten facts or anything resembling news, namely new reality.

Such is all of corporate owned and corporate funded media, such is the absolute darkness our self-absorbed majority suffer because of their faith in the power of corporate wealth.