This morning I had the unfortunate experiance of listening to people who should know better that Haitians themselves are to blame for Hurricane Matthew (and poverty):

1. Because they worship the devil and don't follow Jesus.
2..Because the became independent of France (unlike neighboring Guadeloupe).
3. Because they are corrupt.
4. Because they destroyed their forests/habitat/environment.

Market in Port-Au-Prince Yesterday

Actually this is the American/French/British colonialist, racist propaganda repeated ad nauseum to the point where most people, including people of African origin, believe that its truth.

But any study of Haitian history will show the following:

"The rapid deforestation of Haiti began during the colonial period, and was intensified when coffee was introduced in 1730. Upland forests were cleared and fifty years later, a quarter of the colony’s land was under coffee. The system of plantation monoculture and clean-cultivation between rows of coffee, indigo, tobacco, and sugarcane exhausted soil nutrients and led to rapid erosion (Paskett and Philoctete, 1990). Following the revolution of 1804, the government was forced to export timber throughout the 19th century to pay off a 90 million franc indemnity to France. No longer under colonial rule, land remained unequally distributed nevertheless, and peasants were granted access only to the marginal slopes between 200 and 600 m, above the fertile plains and below the zones of coffee production. These hillside soils were particularly susceptible to erosion when cleared for farming."

"The precarious state of Haiti’s natural resources are by and large a tragic legacy of pre-and post-colonial exploitation, exacerbated not only by the irresponsible mismanagement of the nation’s wealth by a string of opportunistic dictators, but also by crippling debt burdens and the persistent (and repeatedly enacted) threat of military intervention by the US and European governments."

Much of Haiti’s natural resource degradation is symptomatic of the nation’s inability to extricate itself from a paralyzing debt burden and the repercussions of neoliberal economic policy."

And there is this:

"62 percent of Port-au-Prince’s population relies solely on charcoal for cooking and heating, amounting to roughly 0.44 kg per person per day (Michel, 2001)"

Girl waiting to be evacuated yesterday.

This morning we are hoping that Hurricane Matthew will not leave another wake of death and destruction in Haiti.

Space Station view of Hurricane Matthew, yesterday.

Instead of wasting AID MONEY 'comme' Clinton on sweat shops, fancy tourist hotels, rigging elections, and giving away gold mines to American capitalist cronies, some excellent solutions can be found by trusting the Haitian people with community housing projects, land reform, agro-forestry and clean energy. Most NGO's should probably be tossed out on their sorry asses and aid given directly to communities, small farmers and their unions (almost all Haitians are small farmers) and neighborhoods (and their unions).

Agroforestry and Sustainable Resource Conservation in Haiti: A Case Study by Nathan McClintock, North Carolina State University

https://www.ncsu.edu/…/Ag…/PDFfiles/HaitiCaseStudy041903.pdf

17 second of Video on Twitter this morning:

https://twitter.com/mchoulj/status/783312656744591360