Last Straw

This might sound a strange thing to say but let’s not delude ourselves, the dis­aster in Haiti is largely a man-made one. And it’s down to the usual sus­pects:

Haiti is routinely described as the “poorest coun­try in the west­ern hemi­sphere”. This poverty is the dir­ect leg­acy of per­haps the most bru­tal sys­tem of colo­nial exploit­a­tion in world his­tory, com­poun­ded by dec­ades of sys­tem­atic post­co­lo­nial oppression.

Dec­ades of neo­lib­eral “adjust­ment” and neo-imperial inter­ven­tion have robbed its gov­ern­ment of any sig­ni­fic­ant capa­city to invest in its people or to reg­u­late its economy.

It is this poverty and power­less­ness that account for the full scale of the hor­ror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relent­less neo­lib­eral assault on Haiti’s agrarian eco­nomy has forced tens of thou­sands of small farm­ers into over­crowded urban slums.

As one com­menter notes:

Now is exactly the time to inject some real­ism into the dis­course. I’ve been reading/listening to reports from the West­ern media, and they are full of revi­sions and dis­tor­tions con­cern­ing our his­tor­ical role there. ‘Haiti is a failed state,’ ‘Aristide ‘fled,’ was ‘forced out by a rebel­lion,’ etc., ignor­ing the delib­er­ate cam­paign of destabil­isa­tion and coup d’etat against the demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted gov­ern­ment in 2004.

Religion-free ways to donate to the relief effort:

To donate to the relief effort in a religion-free way and help counter the scan­dal­ous myth that only the reli­gious care about their fellow-humans you can donate at SHARE or Non-Believers Giv­ing Aid.