Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Judi Lynn

(160,501 posts)
Thu May 5, 2016, 04:49 PM May 2016

Small farmers say U.S. trying to sever their ties to Cuban state

Source: EFE (Spain)

Small farmers say U.S. trying to sever their ties to Cuban state

Published May 05, 2016/
EFE

Cuba's National Association of Small Farmers, or ANAP, said Thursday that the U.S. government's announcement last month authorizing independent producers to export coffee and additional textiles was a clear attempt to sever their ties to the state.

The statement by the ANAP, a state-run organization that represents Cuban small farmers, referred to the U.S. State Department's decision on April 22 to add coffee and additional textiles to its Section 515.582 list of allowable imports from "independent Cuban entrepreneurs."

. . .

"We Cuban small farmers are members of socialist civil society and we exist as part of the state and not in opposition to the state, which represents the power of the people," the statement read.

The ANAP said if the U.S. government was truly concerned with contributing to Cubans' wellbeing it would lift the embargo it imposed more than 50 years ago, which is the "main obstacle to the development of Cuba."

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2016/05/05/small-farmers-say-us-trying-to-sever-their-ties-to-cuban-state/



(This article was produced by Spain's news service, E.F.E., not Fox "News.&quot

22 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Small farmers say U.S. trying to sever their ties to Cuban state (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2016 OP
Farmers Denounce US Plan to Break Cubans'' Unity Judi Lynn May 2016 #1
Those small farmers haven't seen anything yet ArizonaLib May 2016 #2
The real small farmers will gladly sell to the US FLPanhandle May 2016 #3
Looks like an attack on Cuban socialism. Redwoods Red May 2016 #4
They are buying directly from the farmers, not from the state FLPanhandle May 2016 #6
Mind your signature Redness May 2016 #13
I am sure you are correct but I remember speaking with jwirr May 2016 #7
+1000. I've always believed this will happen, and I feel terrible for Cuba. nt. polly7 May 2016 #10
Should that come as any surprise? We have ruined the local jwirr May 2016 #5
What products? FLPanhandle May 2016 #8
Food stuff - we still are exporting what our farmers grow. I jwirr May 2016 #9
Actually the US is 2nd in the world in manufacturing output, 2nd only to China. EX500rider May 2016 #15
Akin to what the Clinton Foundation "facilitated" in Haiti Divernan May 2016 #11
JC Penny & WalMart profiteering off workers clearing $1.36 per DAY Divernan May 2016 #12
Thank you so much for these articles... ReRe May 2016 #14
It's called disaster capitalism. Make a fortune off of disasters. Divernan May 2016 #16
And it's also amazing... ReRe May 2016 #18
I have been thinking of Haiti in the last couple of days. Your article tells me a lot. Judi Lynn May 2016 #21
Haiti is the Harvard MBA case study for the Clinton Family Foundation. Divernan May 2016 #22
I had no idea the clinton foundation did this trudyco May 2016 #17
Both Clintons' abuse of Haiti goes back to his presidency/1994 Divernan May 2016 #19
Google Haiti, protest and Hillary. Divernan May 2016 #20

Judi Lynn

(160,501 posts)
1. Farmers Denounce US Plan to Break Cubans'' Unity
Thu May 5, 2016, 04:53 PM
May 2016

Farmers Denounce US Plan to Break Cubans'' Unity

Havana, May 5 (Prensa Latina) The National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) charged that the objective of recent measures taken by the government of the United States regarding trade is to influence Cuban farmers and separate them from the State.
A statement issued here on Thursday insists that if the US government truly wants to contribute to Cubans' welfare, it must lift, once and for all, the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed for more than 50 years, which is the main obstacle to Cuba's development.

Prensa Latina transmits the unabridged text of the statement:

STATEMENT BY THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ANAP ABOUT MEASURES BY THE US GOVERNMENT

Last April 22, the Department of State announced the decision to include coffee in the list of Cuban products produced by the non-state sector that would be allowed being imported in that country. With that action, it was giving continuity to a measure taken by the government of the United States in February 2015, authorizing very limited Cuban exports, which excluded all goods and services produced by state companies.

It is worth noting that in its announcement, the Department of State made it clear that in order to do so, "Cuban entrepreneurs have to prove their independence from the State" and pointed out that this is another measure aimed at "supporting the Cuban people's capacity to achieve more control over their own lives and determine their country's future".

What the Department of State did not say is that due to the fact that Cuba was stripped unilaterally, after the blockade was decreed, of the treatment as a most-favored nation, to which we are entitled as a Founding State of the World Trade Organization, all Cuban products to be exported to the United States have to pay the highest customs tariffs, so it is practically impossible to import them in that country.

More:
http://www.plenglish.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4852831&Itemid=1

ArizonaLib

(1,242 posts)
2. Those small farmers haven't seen anything yet
Thu May 5, 2016, 04:57 PM
May 2016

Part of the plan is that the food in all of the restaurants needs to be 'sourced' in order for the restaurant food to be considered 'safe'. This sourcing will put most of those farmers out of business unless they form cooperatives. I know the corporations are going in organized. Are there any social groups going over there to advise all of these family owned operations? I hope so.

FLPanhandle

(7,107 posts)
3. The real small farmers will gladly sell to the US
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:01 PM
May 2016

Their government leadership organization can say what they want, but the farmers will gladly take the dollars.

 

Redwoods Red

(137 posts)
4. Looks like an attack on Cuban socialism.
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:08 PM
May 2016

The US will only allow non-socialist-produced exports. Why is that?

FLPanhandle

(7,107 posts)
6. They are buying directly from the farmers, not from the state
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:17 PM
May 2016

That way the farmers get the proceeds.

Good idea. Let the farmers benefit from their work not government organization. No wonder the state run organization is upset, their officials want that money instead.

Redness

(18 posts)
13. Mind your signature
Thu May 5, 2016, 07:07 PM
May 2016

Just as a house is nothing without a planet to put it on, farm work is nothing without a farm to perform it on. And who do you think broke up the big plantations so that we may speak of small farmers in the first place? The revolutionary government, of course, which continues to assist them.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
7. I am sure you are correct but I remember speaking with
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:23 PM
May 2016

students from Nigeria about the plantations there and how they displaced people. The idea was that they bought up small farms that actually were able to produce enough for the family that farmed it so that the corporations could replace them with exportable crops. Things like peanuts.

The small farmer was told that it he moved into Lagos there would be work for him and his family. Instead what they found was no jobs, deep poverty and hopelessness. Nigeria has never recovered from that experience.

I predict that Cuba will not recover either.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
5. Should that come as any surprise? We have ruined the local
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:14 PM
May 2016

farmers in every developing country we have ever gone into. After all we need them to buy our products.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)
9. Food stuff - we still are exporting what our farmers grow. I
Thu May 5, 2016, 05:43 PM
May 2016

also talked about what big private owners will do with the land when they manage to get it in their hands.

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
11. Akin to what the Clinton Foundation "facilitated" in Haiti
Thu May 5, 2016, 06:37 PM
May 2016

JudiLynn, take a look at this extremely detailed report of what happened in Haiti, with joint efforts led by the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's State Department re the Caracol Industrial Park - how it displaced farmers with false promises of new land/jobs for small farm owners and laborers, and how it destroyed sources of food for Haitians. Farmland asphalted over, replaced by largely empty buildings.


The Haitian government requisitioned the land in November 2011, covered it with asphalt and fill, and put up giant hangers for the factories. The Technical and Execution Unit (Unité Technique d’Exécution - UTE), an agency of the Ministry of Finances, has been charged with the task of relocating of the farmers, and also with paying them damages to cover the cost of every harvest lost until they receive new lands.

According to the UTE, each farmer is getting US$1,450 per hectare to make up for the lost cash revenue, as well as an additional US$1,000 per hectare to account for the food that the family would have eaten from its own plot(s). (HGW could not determine if the agricultural workers also received payments.)

In January 2013, the UTE told HGW that the state had paid out to the farmers on two occasions, because the farmers had lost two harvests thus far.

In addition to the money spent to reimburse the farmers – a total of about US$1.2 million, Haiti has also twice lost 1,400 metric tons (MT) of agricultural products, or 2,800 MT of food produced in Haiti for Haitian consumption. It takes over 100,000 bushels of dried beans to make up 2,800 MT. Finally, the UTE itself has an operating budget of about US$1 million. [See also Caracol By The Numbers]

Verly Davilmar will be getting 35,000 gourdes, or about US$833, for the most recent harvest lost. Before, he worked a half-hectare of land, growing yams, manioc and spinach. No longer. No land. He sits at home. A family of ten. “What they gave me is gone in a flash,” he told HGW. “There’s no other revenue. You don’t have any land so you have to make do with nothing.”


http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/3/7/the-caracol-industrial-park-worth-the-risk.html

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
12. JC Penny & WalMart profiteering off workers clearing $1.36 per DAY
Thu May 5, 2016, 06:41 PM
May 2016

HGW interviewed 15 workers, men and women, employed at the South Korean factory employing most of the PIC’s workers. This assembly factory – S & H Global – is a subsidiary of SAE-A Trading. It puts together clothing for some of the biggest US-based companies, including JC Penny and WalMart.

All of the workers – most of them women, as in assembly factories the world over – confirmed that they received the minimum wage of 200 gourdes (US$4.75) per day. Among the workers questioned, 11 said that they spent on average 61 gourdes on transportation each day, and another 82 gourdes on the midday meal and a drink. That left only 57 gourdes or about US$1.36, for all the additional expenses: water, electricity, food for the family, clothing, school fees, etc. [See also HGW Dossier 11 #1]

“I can’t live on this salary. It doesn’t do anything for me,” Annette* told HGW.

Before the PIC, this mother of ten worked at the CODEVI industrial park in Ouanaminthe. She lives near the border town and gets up early every day to come to the PIC. Annette left her job for the new position in the hope that conditions would be better, she said. She was wrong.

“What I found is not worth if,” she explained, but she doesn’t know what else to do. Annette is in the same position as the thousands of Haitians who agree to work for a 200-gourde daily salary.

http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/3/7/the-caracol-industrial-park-worth-the-risk.html

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
14. Thank you so much for these articles...
Thu May 5, 2016, 07:32 PM
May 2016

.... reports from HGW (HaitiGrassrootsWatch.squarespace.com). How can we think this is good for those poor people? If they don't have it bad enough, we come in and just make everything worse. Shame on the Clinton Foundation or any other foundation that does these things. What is their MO, Diverman? Why do seemingly good people do this to the people of the third world, knowing full well that they are not doing any such good at all. Why are they taking advantage of them? Money? Cheat them out of their little plot of land they live on where they can raise their own food?

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
16. It's called disaster capitalism. Make a fortune off of disasters.
Thu May 5, 2016, 07:47 PM
May 2016

You and I hear of some horrible happening - Fukushima, tidal waves, earthquakes, and we think of the people who desperately need help. The One Percenters and wanna-be One Percenters hear of the same nightmarish occurrences and their first thought is "How can I (or my faux charitable foundation) profit off of this.

The Clinton Foundation "facilitates", i.e., skims a healthy percentage off the top. Bill Clinton always makes me think of this character/song from Les Miz:
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=adk&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&p=Master+of+the+House+lyrics&type=appfocus29_ma_ff¶m1=20160417¶m2=f97e2dda-5a2b-4eda-b4b6-53c3714bd2df¶m3=maps_3.1.2~US~appfocus29¶m4=5502-dq8mtlmumtdmndtmw1-bb8~firefox
Thenardier greets a new customer.]



Thenardier:
Welcome, M'sieur
Sit yourself down
And meet the best
Innkeeper in town
As for the rest
All of 'em crooks
Rooking their guests
And cooking the books
Seldom do you see
Honest men like me
A gent of good intent
Who's content to be

Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm
Tells a saucy tale
Makes a little stir
Customers appreciate a bon-viveur
Glad to do a friend a favor
Doesn't cost me to be nice
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!

Master of the house
Keeper of the zoo
Ready to relieve 'em
Of a sou or two
Watering the wine
Making up the weight
Pickin' up their knick-knacks
When they can't see straight
Everybody loves a landlord
Everybody's bosom friend
I do whatever pleases Jesus!
Won't I bleed 'em in the end!

Thenardier & Drinkers:
Master of the house
Quick to catch yer eye
Never wants a passerby
To pass him by
Servant to the poor
Butler to the great
Comforter, philosopher,
And lifelong mate!
Everybody's boon companion
Everybody's chaperone

Thenardier:
But lock up your valises
Jesus! Won't I skin you to the bone!

[To another new customer...]

Enter M'sieur
Lay down your load
Unlace your boots
And rest from the road
This weighs a ton
Travel's a curse
But here we strive
To lighten your purse
Here the goose is cooked
Here the fat is fried
And nothing's overlooked
Till I'm satisfied

Food beyond compare
Food beyond belief
Mix it in a mincer
And pretend it's beef
Kidney of a horse
Liver of a cat
Filling up the sausages
With this and that

Residents are more than welcome
Bridal suite is occupied
Reasonable charges
Plus some little extras on the side!
Charge 'em for the lice
Extra for the mice
Two percent for looking in the mirror twice
Here a little slice
There a little cut
Three percent for sleeping with the window shut
When it comes to fixing prices
There are a lot of tricks he knows
How it all increases
All those bits and pieces
Jesus! It's amazing how it grows!

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
18. And it's also amazing...
Thu May 5, 2016, 08:20 PM
May 2016

... I don't know how long that would have taken me to figure out. Sometimes things are right under my nose and I can't see them. Neoliberalism & shock doctrine caspitalism. You know, right after I read that book a few years ago, I thought of it every time there was a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, auto pile-up on the freeway. Another thing has happened to me since I read that book... I've aged a bit and honestly, I think I'm slipping a little. Thanks for leading me back to reality, where I left off. I needed this more than I knew.

Judi Lynn

(160,501 posts)
21. I have been thinking of Haiti in the last couple of days. Your article tells me a lot.
Thu May 5, 2016, 08:38 PM
May 2016

Had not heard about this new industrial park they built on land taken from poor Haitian very small landowners. Each step in this story is hideous for the people who live there.

When you see how much they have to spend just to get to work, to have a drink and a meal and return home, and the shocking amount of money they have gained from working so hard, so long, in appalling, health-destructive circumstances with no benefits whatsoever, it breaks the heart of anyone who has a heart.

I wish Haiti could move and not let the Clintons know where Haiti went. They have caused so much suffering to this tiny nation.

I have read about what has happened after they lost their original ways of making money for years, and about the fact poor Haitian mothers have had to take raw soil, add some flavoring, and oil, and cook these things which resemble cookies merely to make the stomachs of their little children feel fuller for the moment, and ward off some kinds of pains of hunger. I posted articles on that years ago.

Here's a quick look which might refresh memories regarding what catastrophes have befallen Haitian people struggling to live from day to day:


Exporting Misery to Haiti: How Pigs, Rice and US Policy Undermined the Haitian Economy

By James Ridgeway, Reader Supported News
Monday, 18 January 2010 15:20

Reader Supported News | Perspective

Lè ou malere, tout bagay samble ou, says one of the Creole proverbs that are a staple of Haitian popular culture. When you are poor, everything can be blamed on you. It’s a truth we can see played out in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. While many Americans are reacting to the disaster with genuine compassion and generosity, there’s another kind of response afoot as well – one that extends well beyond the sickening remarks made by Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh.

Why can’t the Haitians ever seem to take care of themselves? ask the denizens of web chat rooms and radio call-in shows. The place was a mess before the earthquake, and nothing we do ever seems to help – so why bother? In more elevated circles, the comments are more subtle: “Development efforts have failed there, decade after decade,” noted a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, “leaving Haitians with a dysfunctional government, a high crime rate and incomes averaging a dollar a day.” With rescue efforts still underway, it said, “policymakers in Washington and around the world are grappling with how a destitute, corrupt and now devastated country might be transformed into a self-sustaining nation.”

You’d never guess, from this discourse, how much US policy has actually undermined Haiti’s ability to be a “self-sustaining nation,” especially its ability to feed itself. America’s history of invasion, occupation, and intervention into Haiti’s political and economic life stretches back two centuries, with plenty of help from homegrown Haitian despots. But since the 1980s, in particular, the United States has helped turn a nation of low-tech subsistence farmers into a dumping ground for American agribusiness.

The most glaring example of this trend is rice, which was once a staple crop. Today, little rice is grown in Haiti; instead, the nation is a market for the subsidized rice crop grown in the United States. Human Rights lawyer Bill Quigley, now at the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote about this trend in the spring of 2008, as food riots shook Haiti and other parts of the developing world:

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The US has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF. “American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti, in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.

Quigley interviewed Father Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest and human rights advocate. “In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it,” Fr. Jean-Juste said. “Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down.” By 2008, Haiti was the world’s third largest importer of US rice, receiving some 240,000 tons that year alone.

US rice growers are heavily subsidized by the government. Between 1995-2006 they received $11 billion. The American rice industry is also protected by tariffs – the same sorts of tariffs the IMF demanded Haiti remove. With the average family income standing at about $400 a year, most Haitians couldn’t afford to pay international prices for a product they once grew for themselves – so they had to have aid. The US sponsored the aid, but half the money didn’t go to buy the food; it went to US farmers, to processors and to shipping companies, because the food had to be transported in US ships. A good part of the so-called handout to Haiti actually went to US agribusiness, which needed markets for its overflowing bins of farm products.

More:
https://hondurasoye.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/exporting-misery-to-haiti-how-pigs-rice-and-us-policy-undermined-the-haitian-economy/

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Thank you for the important information on the latest money-making enterprise (for the OWNERS) which has been created in Haiti. I am grateful to learn about it. It sounds very much as if they really aren't going to improve a thing at all if they can get the workers to still struggle to work and home daily, it really does mean "mo' money, mo' money" for those who are all too happy to stuff their pockets at the grotesque expense of helpless, desperate people.

Haiti still, at least, has the distinction of being the little nation which DID remove the power of the evil overlords, and make itself an eternal enemy of the murderous greedy scum of the world as long as murderous greedy scum will live. Haitians have descended from very brave, righteous people. Those who use, abuse Haiti have not.

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
22. Haiti is the Harvard MBA case study for the Clinton Family Foundation.
Thu May 5, 2016, 10:10 PM
May 2016

Descend on an impoverished country or area and invest the money "donated" by corporations into building up the necessary infrastructure to subsidize slave-labor wage employment. In Haiti, that included building 5 industrial parks in areas which had NOT been damaged by the earthquake/flooding, building a new harbor to handle commercial shipping (delivering raw materials, exporting finished products), making sure sufficient electricity is generated/provided to the commercial enterprises, even building a 5 star hotel compound for the comfort of visiting corporate execs., and good roads from the industrial parks to the harbor.

Gotta give it to the Clinton Foundation - truly a full service corporate exploitation enabler. See, ya need workers who can read and write - read instructions, write up reports, etc., and also healthy enough to show up regularly. So let's throw in some de minimis schools and health clinics - with lots of PR and Chelsea photographed next to cute little girls in pigtails and uniforms. All of these projects/investments tax deductible as being charitable of course, for those corporate donors.

Getting back to that hotel . . . Initially, Clinton touted this hotel as providing housing for emergency workers. Right! At a cost of over $260,000 per room, and with it's stunning collection of private art - that's just what all emergency workers need. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Haitians remain to this day living rough or in patched together sheds with no electricity, no water and no sewers. So now Bill is touting this hotel as looking forward to Haiti's halcyon future as a tourist mecca. Like it's a real tourist attraction to visit an island drowning in squalor.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/19/emails-clinton-foundation-donor-lobbied-state-department-for-haiti-hotels.html


A donor to the Clinton Foundation reached out to Hillary Clinton’s office to promote a Haiti hotel project that later received support from the U.S. government and Bill Clinton, according to emails released by the Department of State.

Richard L. Friedman, a Boston hotel developer emailed Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, to tout the project on May 17, 2011.

“We had a good meeting with Jean-Louis, Marriott executives, [the Overseas Private Investment Corporation], etc regarding building hotels in Haiti—I am pursuing this vigorously and hope to be able to develop 2 to 3 hotels with Marriott as manager,” wrote Friedman. “I am talking with Commerce and Export/Import Bank today.”


As I posted earlier:
Thank god Clinton Foundation "facilitated" a $45 million luxury hotel in Haiti

so potential corporate investors cough/boodsuckers looking to take advantage of cheap labor could visit in comfort. Those damned ungrateful, greedy Haitians (do I need a sarcasm emoticon?) expected the Clinton Foundation to direct the "donations" cough/bribes/cough to replace housing destroyed by the earthquake. But that $45 million was used to build a 173 room hotel. That works out to $260,000 per room. Way to go, Clinton Foundation! ! ! Five star all the way for corporate investors & your next glittery gathering in Haiti for photo ops.

Once all of the carnage was assessed, more than 100,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people were left without homes and Haiti's government put the death toll at 316,000, according to ABC News.

Five years later, after billions of dollars of aid and donations, many are still living in abject poverty created by the earthquake. NBC News notes that while some $13 billion went to the country, more than "85,000 people still live in crude displacement camps and many more in deplorable conditions."

NBC News does note that while many of the roads destroyed by the earthquake have been repaired and some businesses have been rebuilt, very few people displaced by the massive quake have acquired permanent housing.


http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/_5_years_after_massive_earthquake_where_is_haiti_now.html

Two years after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled Haiti's capital, a deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation will add new lodging for aid workers and other travelers to Port-au-Prince -- in the form of a $45 million hotel.

With only about 500 operable hotel rooms, the city has limited space to house aid workers, potential investors and other visitors, according to a news release Monday by the future hotel's owner and its operator.

Caribbean cell phone provider Digicel will own the hotel, which will have 173 new rooms and create 175 new jobs. Marriott Hotels and Resorts will operate the hotel upon completion in 2014. Construction is set to begin in 2012.

trudyco

(1,258 posts)
17. I had no idea the clinton foundation did this
Thu May 5, 2016, 08:06 PM
May 2016

How can anybody on DU support the Clintons? I was fooled twice. My first shocker was when the Clintons put out an appeal that they were broke from being persecuted by the Republicans ... and then shortly after it was announced they were buying a multi-million dollar home. Plus I think Bill set up some digs in Harlem. So much for broke. Not fooled anymore. I just feel like the Trump/Clinton line up has been planned from the beginning with Trump making sure to screw up in the GE or run out of funding, etc. to pave the way to a plausible coronation of a Republican Empress Hillary dressed in Democrat clothes.

Divernan

(15,480 posts)
19. Both Clintons' abuse of Haiti goes back to his presidency/1994
Thu May 5, 2016, 08:22 PM
May 2016
Mr. Clinton's decision added a cruel irony to the process. He already was holding the refugees to a higher standard of proof than Mr. Bush did. Mr. Bush wanted a "credible" fear of persecution, perhaps because some relatives or friends were beaten or killed. Mr. Clinton wanted a "well-founded fear" that they would be direct targets of repression.

The math worked out even. Even though Haiti's violence and misery were rising fast, Mr. Clinton was allowing in only the same percentage of refugees that Mr. Bush allowed in, 30 percent.

The rejection rate of 70 percent was hideous compared with the complete welcome mat for refugees from Cuba and other nations. While the U.S. Embassy in Haiti approved only 4,000 of 58,000 applicants for political asylum over the last 2 1/2 years, the United States last year alone let in nearly 50,000 people from the former Soviet Union and 31,000 from Vietnam.

"Haitians are being treated like savages," said Steve Forester of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami. "It is because they are black. We're the ones who've let the military destroy the country and destroy the jobs, then we turn around and call most of the people in boats 'economic' refugees and send them back. If we were honest about our role in making them so miserable that they would risk dying at sea to get to the United States, we would be accepting 90 percent of them."

Mr. Clinton's refugee shuffle is more noteworthy for its doublespeak than its humanitarianism. The Coast Guard operations are called "rescues." The people from the INS who review refugee claims are called "quality assurance officers." Reporters are asked to view barbed wire as a white picket fence.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-07-14/news/1994195180_1_refugees-haiti-clinton
Latest Discussions»Latest Breaking News»Small farmers say U.S. tr...