kmnupe;

I don't recall exactly where the piccture was taken. We were in Sosua for a DR1 Reunion and this picture was taken at poolside in a hotel just around the corner from Rocky's. The owner was a German.

TexasBill

He should also go back and learn geography, last time I saw, Haiti was another country, independent from the RD.

Is this a Haitian board anyways?

This is not for your typical greedy investors or racist radical minds... But if you are an open minded rational, logical thinking person, please do continue to read.

ARE LATIN-AMERICAN CONTRIES HANDLING, OR BIENG HANDLED?
The Question They Do Not Want You To Ask Or Even Ought To Mention.
Reading Right Through The Half-Hearted Modern Neo-Colonialism.
By Wilgeens "AfroLatino" Rosenberg

In this Case, let us take Haiti ofr example. Even though as it stands right now and always has that Haiti is a virgin market that anything of an investment of any kind will stride and be successful over there because it is indeed a place with all kinds of open aspect grounds and foundation for businesses to prosper is present even with current negative coverage of the impoverish Country which has created this stigma in the minds of many to indicate that Haiti is a too risky and liable kind of Country for businesses which is not at all true regardless of the negativism being portrayed in the World Media about the Nation. Reason that is, there are by far more radical extremist rogue nations that are by far way more dangerous than Haiti could even be...

Truth of the matter is, there are extreme dangerous places in and around the World where businesses do indeed prosper and stride that security issues have never really pose much great threats to their success, if any, in those other rogue dangerous nations. However right now, the Haitian Government havenot done much if at all interms of incetive to attract investors. Thus those investors see, feel and think they have nothing to do in Haiti, at least not right now anyway. It's about survival of some 7 to 9 million human beings, who had the bad luck to be born there in a modern world which chooses to alienate them due or becuase of old resentments. For me the "survival" is the right word for the crisis that takes over this country that Haiti is facing, one of the oldest poorest modern nations and the oldest black republic in the world and its fraudulant foreign made-motivated-manupilated and influenced plights.

Recently a popular TV humorist said that if the Canadian government treated the wild animals the same way as the Haitian government its own people, the politicians in Ottawa would have been sent to jail. There was a laugh while everyone visualized in his mind the Canadian prime minister sitting down in his jail cell. The laughing is better psychologically than crying, but in this case I find crying more appropriate.

Look at the media reports about Haiti; it's nothing short than a fight for biological survival than many observers find on the ground. The country is ravaged by incurable diseases like HIV, by generations of mismanagement and mistreatment; by tortures, corruption and criminal activity of any kind. What is the difference between now and 10 years ago? Then at least the people had hope that democratically elected figures could make a new beginning for Haiti. Now all these hopes have vanished. Now every man, woman and child have one thing to think about: how to escape and how to survive until escape. What the world should do to handle this crisis?

Out of sight, out of mind
The strategy the developed world is exercising now is to do nothing and wait until everything settles down like in a magic show. Or preventing the media from reporting other stories like those of crowded boats trying to reach the US coast. If the Haitian nation is dying, it should do this in silence, these strategists say. In fact, could the Holocaust have been possible if the crew from CNN was present at Auschwitz? Could the Armenian massacres have been possible if there was some instant media coverage? So the strategy is clear, not only to do nothing but to descent media curtain around this country.

Good Guys Versus Bad Guys
If this strategy of total ignorance doesn't work; the migration reaches biblical proportions and the media curtain is broken, then the West will try another well-known cure, i.e. putting the blame for all that happens on some bad guys in the country. There are already some sketches in that direction and the public opinion is ready to meet its new nemesis named Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He will be forced to abandon the power and will be replaced by some good guy. We still don't know his name but it doesn't matter too much. This good fellow will receive some big checks from the donors and other financial institutions, big for his country but just daily allowances for the rich nations. There will be even some international police presence for a limited time. The situation will improve until the new good guy becomes in turn a bad guy.

Is there a real cure?
Thus the Western strategies include doing nothing and doing something that ultimately won't change the situation. Are there any other options? Is the option for this nation only between dying quickly and dying slowly? If the international community cherishes the Haiti sovereignty there are no other options: you could either try to ignore what's going on or try to help by pouring money and providing some security assistance. I stress on the word "assistance", which is different from creating a security dominion dependant on foreign powers like in Kosovo.

The West may opt for importing some of the problems Haiti faces by importing some of its population. Knowing well the public opinion in many western societies I find this option very unlikely. To allow millions of immigrants from a country ravaged by HIV among other illnesses and diseases will be considered as suicide by any western government. Thus the only option remaining is to put the country under international protection, protection not from a foreign power but from its own government. This option sounds false for every human being with some democratic background. It means that the world has taken any credit out from any public figure in Haiti, elected or not. It means that in the name of national salvation this nation should replace its elected government with foreign neo-colonial rule.

I know what the readers are thinking about this idea, that in the name of freedom it is better to make sacrifices, that the freedom is better than the life itself. "Better dead than red", I read somewhere these words studying American history. Okay, that's fine but why do you think right now Haiti enjoys the freedom? Is it a freedom to be prosecuted by your own government, to be treated like animal, to be killed by mobsters with no police around to help? Is this the freedom to die for? I agree that putting Haiti and some other countries like it under new colonial rule will be the last measure, but please agree with me that just ignoring this crisis or trying to heal it with more conventional therapy will bring no lasting solution.

P.S: (Please people, both Haitians and Dominicans... understand that in no way am I saying Haiti is a disease Country. Before the average racist Dominican start trying to use this to their advantage to win their hatred and resentful arguments and ideologies against Haiti or Haitians and even that statment is not applied implied for all Dominicans. So chillax... This statement is not meant to be in any defaming and condescending way that is to indicate in no way that Haiti is a Country of such stigmatism of diseases, but only in terms of factual high rates of those illnesses that have been surveyed and reported alone for a small Country such as Haiti to have).

Three to five years ago, both the International bodies, the Neo's along with many of us around the world have described the situation in Haiti as catastrophic. We urged the international community to intervene on a massive scale to stop the humanitarian crisis. We even suggested that the country is to be placed under international protection, a situation that from the exterior may look like neo-colonialism, but in fact being the only way to restore law and order and to guarantee basic rights and freedoms until democratically elected authorities are established. Three years later we can conclude that the international community has since tried to do exactly this, but unfortunately its willingness to help has recently decreased substantially. What we may predict is that Haiti will return to its common circle of violence and political anarchy, until a new major humanitarian crisis forces the international community to intervene again.

The last time we looked at Haiti in 2003, the former regime of President Jean-Betrand Aristide was agonizing. Only months later, in a midst of armed and civilian rebellion, he ran away from the country. A wave of refugees from Haiti started to bother all neighboring countries, thus making their intervention more than necessary. The international community, a nebulous term, usually including the richer countries plus some regional powers, pledged to provide more than $1 billion for economic reconstruction and development. In the years that followed no more than half of this pledge was honored. An international police force was sent to the country, having as a main task guaranteeing law and order and making sure that the new democratically elected public authorities can start working efficiently.

In fact the world has listened to the voice of reason, forced to apply some neo-colonial schemes in order to save thousands of lives, and perhaps more importantly, to save itself from millions of new unwelcome refugees. These two basic tasks were accomplished, especially the second. Thousands of Haitian refugees continued storming the shores of the neighboring islands, but nothing of the proportions most analysts feared two-three years ago. Which actually led some major countries concluding that Haiti could be transferred from the group of 'urgent' to 'enduring' problems. Once the threat of massive refugee crisis was eliminated, Haiti became much less interesting to many who switched their attention to other regions and subjects, e.g. Middle East, oil prices, North Korea, illegal aliens, rising China, etc.

In the meantime Haiti desperately needs substantial economic aid. Without it, the newly elected politicians will soon lose most of their public credibility, and the world will have again to send 'firefighters' instead of bankers. The real miscommunication between Haiti and the world comes from the unclear meaning of the word 'aid'. Webster dictionary gives several closely related definitions to this word. For the purpose of our analysis we will limit ourselves to two, assistance and a gift. Haiti understands the aid as a gift, meaning the country should develop economically by mainly receiving gifts from the rest of the world. The long-term list of wishes is already measured at $7 billion, that is $693 Billion less than what the US will be issuing to bail out those major US profit finacial institution. Point is, the rest of the world, on the other hand, looks at the 'aids' as miracles and not knowing how those aids are actually given out to those poor Countries why those aids never actually do help those Countries in any major institutionalized, infrastructural and fundamental ways for real.

Anyway, more often than not, those aids do not even come or serve as helpful; not even temporarily and as secondary assistance often those aid money go to NGO institutions woh gets to decide how to allocate and appropriate those funds if they even really truly do so an dnot supplying thier own pockets, riding nice cars and living in nice quaters in Haiti as though it is just another vacation to them. Meaning the main task should be accomplished by Haiti itself and the Haitian government has got to do a wayyyyyyyyy better job stepping up and start to doing for Haiti and not for NGO and foreign influences, but then again... that would have been the right way to do businesses and as we all know the words RIght Way does not apply in Haitian politics.

Thus, with such miscommunication my prediction is that Haiti will soon return to the circle of violence and the West will have again to deal with it as an 'urgent' problem since in reality, the stability of that Country among other nations are discreetly bieng manipulated by those foreign influences who are calling all the shots and actually not the actual Sovereign Governments of those small poor nations.

GO READ HIS BOOKS & MATERIALS.
© 2006, IRED.Com, Inc., Simeon Mitropolitski

YOUR OPINIONS ON THIS BELLOW...

HOW CAN THE MEDIA CONTRIBUTE TO PEACE IN HAITI?
By Gotson Pierre.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
June 2008

In Haiti, today, it is no longer a question of informing or communicating in a context of civil or military dictatorship, of armed confrontation or open conflict. Instead, a situation of peace reigns, made fragile by dithering on the political calendar, institutional weaknesses, insecurity, impunity and mass poverty.

Since 2006 Haiti has entered into a period of peace, or at least of minor turbulence, following the last presidential elections which enabled René Préval to come back to power. During those two years, despite the persistence of huge economic and social challenges, political violence has decreased and the perspective of authoritarian power has changed.
Journalists question the Minister for Women's Affairs, Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

This marks a break with the crisis period of the early part of the decade, which saw the fall of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (February 2004) under pressure from internal and external forces, followed by the arrival of international forces, relieved in June 2004 by the United Nations? Mission for Stabilisation in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

The Haitian situation has developed over the last four years in the context of a multinational military presence, seen by many as a necessary condition for building peace, but by others as useless, expensive and an infringement of the country?s sovereignty.

This context obviously conditions how the media work, the mass media serving as intermediaries not only between national actors but also between national and international protagonists all the while taking into account changes in the socio-political reality.

Long history of media involvement in the nation's future.

From the middle of the 1970s the media were traditionally implicated in the defence of rights. At that time, peace under the Duvalier dictatorship was thought of as a ?cemetery peace?. The media set themselves the task of overcoming freedom of opinion and expression at the cost of blood and extensive damage to technical installations.

Numerous journalists have met a tragic fate in Haiti over the past 30 years or more, because of their recklessness, their belief in the cause of democracy, progress and social justice. They did, however, succeed in revolutionising the press and changing its connection with day-to-day reality in a period marked by a succession of volatile situations and moments of stability.

Under the Duvalier dictatorship, what was known as the ?independent press?, led by the private radio station Radio Haiti Inter, developed a tendency to counter power by providing, in addition to information on the socio-political reality of the country, a space for critical reflection and denunciation of authoritarian and corrupt practices.

This work was carried hand-in-hand with the promotion of national and universal cultural values, in particular the promotion of Créole, the spoken language understood by all Haitians, which until then had been excluded from the media sphere, intellectual circles and political discourse. The ?independent? journalists and media of the time in this way contributed to bringing the majority of the Haitian population out of silence, encouraging citizens? expression and action which led to the fall of the dictatorship in 1986 and paved the way for democracy, development and peace.

Authoritarian traditions are hardy and the Haitian press has had to face the repeated attacks from military and civil powers which punctuated subsequent years characterised by instability. Every time the nightmare would begin again, without being able to erase freedom of opinion and expression considered as givens, even during the bloody military coup d?état 1991 to 1994, during which many people were killed. We then saw the installation of community radio networks throughout the country developing participatory and neighbourhood communication experiences.

The regime of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (2001-04), who reinstated the authoritarian practices of the past, was crushed by an armed rebellion accompanied by mediated social mobilisation. The media and journalists were conscious of playing a major part in searching for peace without authoritarianism. But this situation also showed that, in some cases, the media could go too far in directly intervening in favour of one sector or the other in strongly polarised situations, affecting their capacity as credible intermediaries.

At the same time, changes in the media environment have not been without consequences. Apart from the media explosion at the beginning of the 1990s, mass media ownership has witnessed important changes with the expansion of business logic at the level of media structures and the beginnings of media concentration.

Media in the face of the conflict/peace problem

In 2008, the media find themselves at the centre of a very complicated Haitian problem, made up of liberating spirits at the same time as all kinds of weighty issues based on multiple interests, national as well as international. In the general situation of the country, which presents big economic and social challenges, they are heavily courted by various actors and must therefore respond to contradictory demands.

The social sectors want to become stronger as actors and develop their capacity to speak in the construction of a different society. The business sectors as well as the political sectors will not relinquish their control of public life and capacity to impose their thinking on the construction of the future. The same is even truer of the international sectors on the ground.

In this complex situation, playing a role in favour of peace requires capacity and efforts from the media and journalists which exceed the demands they have faced in previous years. They ought to be able to cultivate and reaffirm their editorial independence, articulated in the public and collective interest and not in defence of individual interests; give value to the social context when the neoliberal context stresses the economy in a society in which the State does not fulfill its role in providing social services; adopt a humble attitude and accept questioning of their practices in the light of communication rights.

At the same time, communication practitioners should understand that they cannot take the place of the economic, political and social actors and that the latter have the capacity to fully meet their commitments, leaving the media to accomplish their mission freely and responsibly.

Gotson Pierre is a professional journalist, editor of the online agency AlterPress
(www.alterpresse.org) and former president of WACC-Caribe.