Breaking News: Haiti hit by a 7.0 quake

[Surlethe]

I'd understood (heard on NPR - TOTN - yesterday, actually) that most of Haiti's employed work for the government, which sounds socialist, in the older sense of the word, to me. But calling it "socialist" is neither here nor there: Haiti's fucked-up economy is more neatly explained by its complete lack of institutional soundness. The government (what little of it existed) was a corrupt, twisted nightmare of a bureaucracy; the lack of stability prevented any significant long-term growth.

PS- here is a ... different ... perspective on Haiti's problems from two of my professors. The image they reference is here.

[Surlethe]

Here is a blog post with a perspective on the effect Haiti will have on Obama's political prospects:

Maybe you thought Obama was the "health care President" or perhaps the "Afghanistan President", but to my eyes right now he looks like the "Haiti President." I predict we'll have over a million Haitians living in refugee camps for the foreseeable future. (It depends how many of the homeless of those can be absorbed by northern Haiti.) If people don't make it into camps they will be sleeping on the street with little or no means of food or water or employment.

It's a mistake to think there's any brick-by-brick way out of that predicament. It's not like the earthquake in Armenia or for that matter eighteenth century Lisbon. Haiti has no functioning government, no working legal system, and very little remaining infrastructure. There's no formal means to make decisions about reconstruction and no capital to clear away the mess. As I've written, the country as we know simply doesn't exist any more (view the second video or try these photos). Port-Au-Prince is destroyed and the city was the heart of the country, economically, politically, and otherwise. Léogâne, Jacmel, and other significant locales are mostly destroyed as well and they're not receiving much assistance.

Obama will (and should) do something about this situation. First, I believe he sincerely wants to help but also he cannot ignore his African-American constituency, especially after former President Clinton devoted so much attention to Haiti and especially if health care reform doesn't go through as planned. Yet he will have a festering situation on his hands for the rest of his term. If "looting" (a bad word in this context) increases or continues, how quickly will the American people lose sympathy with the Haitians? How can the "reconstruction" possibly go well? Ugly gang rule isn't even the worst case scenario.

Obama now stands a higher chance of being a one-term President. Foreign aid programs are especially unpopular, especially relative to their small fiscal cost. Have you noticed how Rush Limbaugh and others are already making their rhetoric uglier than usual? It will be a test of the American populace; at what point will people start whispering that he is "favoring the other blacks"?

Just as it's not easy to pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan, it won't be easy to pull out of Haiti.

Maybe you thought health care was a hard problem. Maybe you thought that cap and trade would make health care look easy. This may be the hardest problem yet and it wasn't on anybody's planning ledger. Obama won't have many allies in this fight either. A lot of Democratic interest groups might, silently, wish he would forget about the whole thing.

Mass starvation wouldn't look good on the evening news either. What does it mean to preside over the collapse of a country of more than nine million people? It's Obama who's about to find out, not the increasingly irrelevant Rene Preval. Everyone in Haiti is looking to President Obama.

My wife and I were wondering yesterday if this is Obama's Katrina. It shouldn't be, since dealing with Katrina was more directly the responsibility of the US federal government and without a single agency in "charge" of Haiti it will be practically impossible to coordinate aid coming in from all over the world. But this might not make any difference in popular perception.

[[R_H]]

French minister criticizes US aid role in Haiti

PARIS – The United Nations must investigate and clarify the dominant U.S. role in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, a French minister said Monday, claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not "occupying" it.

U.S. forces last week turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, prompting a complaint from French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet. The plane landed safely the following day.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.

"People always want it to be their plane ... that lands," Kouchner said Monday. "(But) what's important is the fate of the Haitians."

But Joyandet persisted.

"This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Joyandet, in Brussels for an EU meeting on Haiti, said on French radio.

In another weekend incident, some 250 Americans were flown to New Jersey's McGuire Air Force Base on three military planes from Haiti. U.S. forces initially blocked French and Canadians nationals from boarding the planes, but the cordon was lifted after protests from French and Canadian officials.

The U.S. military controls the Port-au-Prince airport where only one runway is functioning and has been effectively running aid operations. However, the United Nations has stepped forward to take the lead in the critical task of coordinating aid.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday the U.S. government had no intention of taking power from Haitian officials. "We are working to back them up, but not to supplant them," she said.

Joyandet said he expects a U.N. decision on how governments should work together in Haiti.

"The U.N. is working on it," Joyandet said, adding that he hopes "things will be clarified concerning the role of the United States."

Both nations have occupied Haiti in the past.

France occupied Haiti for more than 100 years, from 1697 to independence in 1804 after the world's first successful slave uprising. More recently, U.S. Marines occupied the country from 1915 to 1934 to quiet political turmoil.

The article isn't that clearly written, but it is Alain Joyandet and not Kouchner is throwing a hissy fit about the US. Amusingly enough, Chavez said something similar, that the "gringos" were there to occupy Haiti.

[K. A. Pital]

I'd understood (heard on NPR - TOTN - yesterday, actually) that most of Haiti's employed work for the government, which sounds socialist, in the older sense of the word, to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of ... ic_history

Haiti continues to suffer the consequences of the 1991 coup and the irresponsible economic and financial policies of the de facto authorities greatly accelerated Haiti's economic decline. Following the coup, the United States adopted mandatory sanctions, and the OAS instituted voluntary sanctions aimed at restoring constitutional government. International sanctions culminated in the May 1994 United Nations embargo of all goods entering Haiti except humanitarian supplies, such as food and medicine. The assembly sector, heavily dependent on U.S. markets for its products, employed nearly 80,000 workers in the mid-1980s. During the embargo, employment fell from 33,000 workers in 1991 to 400 in October 1994. Private domestic and foreign investment has been slow to return to Haiti. Since the return of constitutional rule, assembly sector employment has gradually recovered with over 20,000 now employed, but further growth has been stalled by investor concerns over safety and supply reliability.

It's ridiculous to call Haiti socialist, and I don't believe the "majority" of it's workforce is government-employed.

The nation has a GDP of $11.59 billion, right, but it's yearly budget expense is $965.2 million

The actual problem is that most of Haiti is unemployed, which is completely anti-socialist since even the poorest socialist regimes always pursue a policy of 100% eployment. The Haitian "economy" which is a market economy and most people are actually lumpenized do-whatevers, cannot even employ it's people. Or, rather, it can - as petty traders, and other forms of "informal" economy including crime.

Man, I can't believe anyone has the gall to call Haiti "socialist".

To blame capitalist institutions for something that happens when the defining characteristic of capitalism is lacking is disingenuous at best, ignorant at worst.

Cuba is nearby and it's like, several times better than this shithole whilst having about 0,0X percent of "capitalism". In fact, Haiti's porous nature and the government's inability to enforce anything should serve as a perfect foundation for a market anarchy. Like Somalia.

As for deforestation, how is that relevant to "socialism"?

Deforestation accelerated after Hurricane Hazel downed trees throughout the island in 1954. Beginning in about 1954, concessionaires stepped up their logging operations, in response to Port-au-Prince's intensified demand for charcoal, thus accelerating deforestation, which had already become a problem because of environmentally unsound agricultural practices, rapid population growth, and increased competition over scarce land

They are simply dirt-poor and destitute. And concessionaires deforesting thanks to charcoal demand - that's awesome. Market at work.

Amusingly enough, Chavez said something similar, that the "gringos" were there to occupy Haiti

Considering that the US actually occupied it before in history with very bad results, I can't see what's funny or amusing about that. Want to see the US botch up another humanitarian mission?

[Lonestar]

Considering that the US actually occupied it before in history with very bad results, I can't see what's funny or amusing about that. Want to see the US botch up another humanitarian mission?

What were the "very bad results"? The eradication of graft by sticking Marines in customs offices instead of corrupt officials? Providing a stable government for 2 decades instead of the routine violent government changes brought about by racism(lighter skin aristocracy vs. Darker skins)? Or is the complaint that a counter-insurgency campaign was run(I guess security is NOT the responsibility of the occupying force)?

[K. A. Pital]

What were the "very bad results"?

The US directly occupied Haiti in 1915-1934 for what, 20 years? And Haiti ended up the poorest state in the region post-occupation (though the difference was not that large between all Latin American shitholes in the fifties).

You would think a territory occupied by the US would do better. But there are two types of territories which the US occupies: which they care about as bastions of their political influence in the world, and would support financially to make First World enclaves out of them, and then there is the second type - territories which the USA doesn't give two shits about. It just occupies them, without doing shit.

Haiti clearly falls in the latter category, or am I wrong?

[Surlethe]

Judging the how well the US did during its tenure as Haiti's administrators by how well Haiti has done since the US left is a post hoc fallacy.
[line 2]

[SAMAS]

French minister criticizes US aid role in Haiti

The article isn't that clearly written, but it is Alain Joyandet and not Kouchner is throwing a hissy fit about the US. Amusingly enough, Chavez said something similar, that the "gringos" were there to occupy Haiti.

Of course the US is taking the biggest role. We're right there. Everybody else has to fly across a damn ocean. We're pretty much jumping over.

[Lonestar]

The US directly occupied Haiti in 1915-1934 for what, 20 years? And Haiti ended up the poorest state in the region post-occupation (though the difference was not that large between all Latin American shitholes in the fifties).

You would think a territory occupied by the US would do better. But there are two types of territories which the US occupies: which they care about as bastions of their political influence in the world, and would support financially to make First World enclaves out of them, and then there is the second type - territories which the USA doesn't give two shits about. It just occupies them, without doing shit.

Haiti clearly falls in the latter category, or am I wrong?

(1)Was Haiti the poorest State when the USA left in 1934?
(2)If not, when did it decline to become the poorest state in the Western Hemisphere?(by the way, the book Collapse has a rather different theory then you do as to how Haiti became a shithole and why the Dominican Republic didn't...as much).
(3)Even if Haiti was the poorest state in the region after the US left...was it the poorest before? How did the quality of life, material conditions in the country and economy change since 1914? Did they still get better? Get worse? remain the same?

[K. A. Pital]

Judging the how well the US did during its tenure as Haiti's administrators by how well Haiti has done since the US left is a post hoc fallacy.

Pardon me.

I honestly don't know how good Haiti was when during under direct U.S. control. However, something tells me that it was not much better than surrounding states. In 1945, which is the earliest year I have data for, it was one of the worst on par with El Salvador.

I wonder which Latin American nation other than Haiti enjoyed such a long period of direct control by the USA? And what were the consequences?

It is well know that some historians consider that U.S. meddling planted the seeds of extreme corruption in another place the US intervened in, Cuba. Why would it not be logical to assume that Haiti suffered the same fate?

After all, the US didn't make it an industrialized (even moderately) nation, that's for sure. And I would sure love to see any statistics on Haiti from 192X-193X. *goes digging* I will come back And lastly, yes, 1945 is 10 years away from 1934, but I have to see some evidence that in this time Haiti's rulers actively worked to decline it's GDP or worsen it's life conditions (if they were better at the time Americans left). After all, there is no data suggesting U.S. administration made Haiti better than it's neighbors (whereas such data, for example, exist for Puerto Rico).

[Ryan Thunder]

Dropping supplies out of an airplane will always have to be done at a higher speed, otherwise the airplane stops flying and you have even more problems on your hand.

I was actually thinking of small, individually light packages with chutes.

[Lonestar]

not be logical to assume that Haiti suffered the same fate?

After all, the US didn't make it an industrialized (even moderately) nation, that's for sure.

I strongly suspect it's much hard to industrialize a country with a cash-crop economy, shitty literacy rates, and shitty infastructure to start with. It;s even harder when it (1)isn't your own country to start with (2)wasn't previously industrialized and (3)isn't a country that needs to be propped up less it falls to the Red Horde.

[Mayabird]

Dropping supplies out of an airplane will always have to be done at a higher speed, otherwise the airplane stops flying and you have even more problems on your hand.

I was actually thinking of small, individually light packages with chutes.

That seems like an awful lot of work and waste of supplies (for mini-chutes) for not very much gain, plus there would be no way to make sure the supplies were properly distributed, instead of just grabbed by the strongest/most heavily armed. Gang warfare has been picking up in Haiti since that prison collapsed and so many police have died in the earthquake.

[Darth Wong]

PS- here is a ... different ... perspective on Haiti's problems from two of my professors. The image they reference is here.

According to that article, the massive deforestation of Haiti is ... proof that all of the forested land in Haiti should have been privately owned? That's a pretty bizarre theory; while it's true that private ownership will create private incentive to preserve the property in question, it is incredibly perverse to suggest that the solution to environmentally unsustainable practices is to get rid of all publicly owned land and have rich people owning it all. Why does that work better than strict environmental regulations?

The author also goes into an extended rant about how the very word "sustainability" is a rhetorical ploy, even though it is a precisely accurate description of the problem. That article reads like a businessdouche editorial.

[Lonestar]

According to that article, the massive deforestation of Haiti is ... proof that all of the forested land in Haiti should have been privately owned?

Even better, next-door neighbor Dominican Republic had a Dictator who enjoyed the woods so he had the state create vast preserves to protect the watershed, wildlife, etc. In other words, massive government intervention.

[Aaron]

I was actually thinking of small, individually light packages with chutes.

Let me tell you exactly what is going to happen in this case:

1. Someone is the first there, gets clobbered by the next guy.
2. Second guy gets clobbered by the third
3. Fourth guy gets there, rinse and repeat
4. Now you have a mob killing each other over it.

Why do you think we're not allowed to toss packages, toys, clothes, food out of the vehicles to the Afghans anymore?

This is why aid is distributed by convoys under armed guard, and why aid agencies will usually not operate without armed escort. Otherwise they get mobbed and killed, to answer the bitching from a page or so back.

[Lonestar]

Let me tell you exactly what is going to happen in this case:

1. Someone is the first there, gets clobbered by the next guy.
2. Second guy gets clobbered by the third
3. Fourth guy gets there, rinse and repeat
4. Now you have a mob killing each other over it.

Why do you think we're not allowed to toss packages, toys, clothes, food out of the vehicles to the Afghans anymore?

This is why aid is distributed by convoys under armed guard, and why aid agencies will usually not operate without armed escort. Otherwise they get mobbed and killed, to answer the bitching from a page or so back.

Well, yeah. Some people are forgettign that this is not Sumatra in '04-05, where the Indonesian Police and Army was still functional enough to maintain order(at least, when they weren't killing the locals for the hell of it).

Hell, just to so how broken a state Haiti is, Hamlets out in the Jungle in Sumatra where the only thing approaching civil government is the headman were distinctly more orderly than what I'm seeing in the media and elsewhere in Haiti.

[Vendetta]

According to that article, the massive deforestation of Haiti is ... proof that all of the forested land in Haiti should have been privately owned?

Even better, next-door neighbor Dominican Republic had a Dictator who enjoyed the woods so he had the state create vast preserves to protect the watershed, wildlife, etc. In other words, massive government intervention.

And used the army to raid illegal logging camps and summarily shoot anyone logging without permission.

[Ryan Thunder]

Dropping supplies out of an airplane will always have to be done at a higher speed, otherwise the airplane stops flying and you have even more problems on your hand.

I was actually thinking of small, individually light packages with chutes.

That seems like an awful lot of work and waste of supplies (for mini-chutes) for not very much gain,

We do it for bombs and shells. I have trouble imagining it would be much more of a waste than that.

plus there would be no way to make sure the supplies were properly distributed, instead of just grabbed by the strongest/most heavily armed. Gang warfare has been picking up in Haiti since that prison collapsed and so many police have died in the earthquake.

I thought we were already "air-dropping" supplies via helicopter.

EDIT: will read rest of thread next time.

I meant *large numbers* of these small packages. But okay.

[Broomstick]

The United Nations must investigate and clarify the dominant U.S. role in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, a French minister said Monday, claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not "occupying" it.

U.S. forces last week turned back a French aid plane carrying a field hospital from the damaged, congested airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, prompting a complaint from French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet. The plane landed safely the following day.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned governments and aid groups not to squabble as they try to get their aid into Haiti.

"People always want it to be their plane ... that lands," Kouchner said Monday. "(But) what's important is the fate of the Haitians."

It's more bitching about that damn airport.

Let me explain something about the Port-au-Prince airport. It's Haiti's biggest and best airport, and in most of the industrialized world it would be considered adequate for general aviation at best. The runway is under 10,000 feet - as a small airplane pilot, I have been based at "small" airports with longer runways than that. There are no taxiways - well, OK, a few spurs off the runway (and there is only one - again, of the 5 US general aviation airports I've been based at 3 have had multiple runways) but no system for airplanes to move from one end of the airport to the other other than the runway. This requires "back taxi" operations to position airplanes for take-off, which hog up the runway while they're occuring and slow down operations. Unlike the usual system, where an airplane lands and pulls off the active runway immediately, at this airport the plane has to go to the end of the runway, turn around, and drive back on the runway to get to the ramp/plane storage areas. Obviously, while that is happening other airplanes can't be landing or taking off. That's why the ends of the runway are sort of bulbous, to provide enough pavement to allow airplanes to turn around. It really slows things down. This is considered potentially hazardous even for small, GA airplanes at low-traffic airports - they running freakin' passenger jets out of there at high volume.

Although it does have an ILS (instrument landing system) it won't be operating without power, and even if it did have power the earthquake might have rendered it unsafe to use. There is a VOR and NDB approaches (more navigational equipment stuff), but again that is dependent on the beacons having power - which they likely don't, if the airport doesn't, as the beacons are on the field.

This is Toussaint Loverture airport in Port-au-Prince from the air - it's the best picture I could find, but it's huge so I'll just link to it instead of posting it in-line. I wish I could find a good picture to post in the thread.

This is Gary, Indiana regional airport, from the air:

Note the taxiways running parallel to the runways (the taxiways are thinner) to allow use of the runways while repositioning airplanes - you can't do that at the Haiti airport. The longer runway is slightly shorter than L'overture's, but there's actually more ramp space on which to actually put airplanes.

In other words - a general aviation airport in a highly depressed area of the US actually has more capacity than Haiti's biggest airport, and can certainly run more operations per hour. That's sad.

So - what it comes down to is that people are bitching because THEIR airplane full of Precious Cargo has to wait in line. I'm sorry. If you don't take turns there WILL be an accident. We don't need any more Bad Stuff happening in Haiti right now.

[[R_H]]

Amusingly enough, Chavez said something similar, that the "gringos" were there to occupy Haiti

Considering that the US actually occupied it before in history with very bad results, I can't see what's funny or amusing about that. Want to see the US botch up another humanitarian mission?

He's equating the Americans deploying troops now in order to improve security while they and others are trying to provide the Haitians with aid, with occuping the nation because they're a bunch of imperialists or whatever he thinks they are.

Chavez Seeks Improved Relations with US

But he also criticized U.S. humanitarian efforts in Haiti.

"It appears the gringos are militarily occupying Haiti," Chavez said. "Obama, send medicine, doctors and water --- not more Soldiers."

[Lonestar]

I thought we were already "air-dropping" supplies via helicopter.

EDIT: will read rest of thread next time.

I meant *large numbers* of these small packages. But okay.

We are only "directly dropping" in supplies to a limited degree. Supplies coming in by helo are mostly going to areas already cleared out by UN Forces, the DA, The Chinese, Marines and 82nd, etc...

[wautd]

I found this quote about the medical team evac. I can't guarantee it's accuracy but it seems to be a believable presentation about the other side of the story, not just the one reported by CNN.

B-fast is a team of medical volunteers and rescue workers. They have worked from Iran to Sumatra. No journalists, just regular voluteering people who happen to work in medical and rescuer jobs. Every major disaster in the last few years we have been present on the spot in some of the most troubled areas around the world, we have never experienced such a total breakdown of local authority and supply lines as in Haiti. We are not military personel. We had a military contingent of 36 paratroopers sent with us by the Belgian government to protect the hospital. They were however not on the same flight (9 hours to get to Haiti from Belgium) B-Fast have their own plane (supplied by the Belgian military) at their disposal for these interventions. The security detail plane was diverted by the control tower at Port au Prince airport to Dominican Republic. (May i add that the control tower is in hands of the US military who provide security and decide who can land and who cant.) The security personel are travelling by road to get to the Hospital which took them untill sunday. Untill then security could not be guaranteed at the hospital.

B-fast was one of the first teams to set up their hospital, together with the israelis and the canadians. Way ahead of the US-medical teams i may add. They set up their field hospital together with the Canadians and during the day had security from the security detail of the Canadians. During the night the Canadians packed up and left to spend the night at their embassy and their security detail had to leave aswell to protect the embassy.
The Belgians were told by local security that the situation during the night might turn dangerous as there were rumours of raiding the hospital for supplies food and water.
Also we were told not to expect any help if things went bad during the night.
Basically the medical team would be on their own if anything went wrong.
So the Belgian doctor in charge of the operation decided to head back to the airport were security was provided by US forces. However no HAitian patients were allowed on the airport. So basically it was American security concerns that prevented the belgian doctors to take the patients with them for the night.
The medical team left enough supplies in the hospital to care for the people during the night and would return as soon as possible the next morning.
There also was more then enough fuel to keep the generators going during the night.
The reason the generators stoped working during the night IS because people took fuel with them from the camp.

[Simon_Jester]

So with respect to the Belgian medical team, they did arrange for their own security, but it was scheduled to arrive the next day? That seems like an ethically sound reason for the situation: they were trying to help as much as possible by arriving as fast as they could, and they outran their logistics.

I thought we were already "air-dropping" supplies via helicopter.
EDIT: will read rest of thread next time.
I meant *large numbers* of these small packages. But okay.

The problem is that even when you drop hundreds or thousands of them in one place, there's still the impulse to hoard: who knows when the next airdrop will come over? Even if there's 5000 meals for 500 people, if there's no armed presence on the ground to secure order, people may well start fighting because they, personally, want more than 10 meals in their larder.

The only way to get around this that I can see is to drop enough food for everyone to eat themselves sick for weeks, so that food becomes cheap as dirt and, like dirt, not worth fighting over. But that requires that you drop an enormous surplus of food... in a country where people in the next valley over are probably starving because you didn't drop food on them. That may not cause local infighting, but it sounds to me like a recipe for small-scale civil wars between communities that are getting all this food and ones that aren't.

[phongn]

We do it for bombs and shells. I have trouble imagining it would be much more of a waste than that.

Parachute-retarded bombs are fairly rare, actually, and they don't have to slow down the weapons as much.

Let me explain something about the Port-au-Prince airport. It's Haiti's biggest and best airport, and in most of the industrialized world it would be considered adequate for general aviation at best. The runway is under 10,000 feet - as a small airplane pilot, I have been based at "small" airports with longer runways than that. There are no taxiways - well, OK, a few spurs off the runway (and there is only one - again, of the 5 US general aviation airports I've been based at 3 have had multiple runways) but no system for airplanes to move from one end of the airport to the other other than the runway. This requires "back taxi" operations to position airplanes for take-off, which hog up the runway while they're occuring and slow down operations. Unlike the usual system, where an airplane lands and pulls off the active runway immediately, at this airport the plane has to go to the end of the runway, turn around, and drive back on the runway to get to the ramp/plane storage areas. Obviously, while that is happening other airplanes can't be landing or taking off. That's why the ends of the runway are sort of bulbous, to provide enough pavement to allow airplanes to turn around. It really slows things down. This is considered potentially hazardous even for small, GA airplanes at low-traffic airports - they running freakin' passenger jets out of there at high volume.

I had actually wondered why things were limited to 100 flights/day - even with limited ramp space I thought more could be operated. Then I saw that same picture (the one you linked to on Wikipedia) yesterday and found out why.