21-01-2010, 01:27 AM
Former Clinton Official Says The Plan is to Create a “New Haiti”
Posted on January 20, 2010 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
The truth is out there but you won’t find it on Fox or MSNBC. The corporate media is busily conveying the Washington Consensus talking point that looting and violence in Haiti demands the Obama administration put military ”boots on the ground”. But if you take a little time, if you really listen to what Obama and Hillary are saying, then you start to see that this is becoming another blatant example of disaster capitalism at it’s worst.
The plan is to create a “new Haiti” out of the ashes of the old one. A new Haiti that will open up its markets for U.S. corporations, privatize all remaining public services, and allow for the long-term deployment of U.S. troops who will be used to pacify the general population. In remarkably candid language a former Clinton administration official also suggests a correlation between the final civilian death toll in Haiti and the size of the U.S. aid package to be allocated for reconstruction.
In an interview published on the Council on Foreign Relations website, Mark L. Schneider makes it very clear; like Condi Rice’s “new Middle East” before them, the plan this administration is adopting is to create a “new Haiti”.
A ”bureaucratic system” to these guys means a public sector (government) looking out for public interests to the detriment of big business. So fixing a “bureaucratic system” is kinda like the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that removed the “bureaucratic” regulations that kept big banking in check for 6 decades. We see how well that worked out. It didn’t work out so well for 90% of the population but it worked wonderfully for the Wall Street investment banks like Goldman-Sachs.
Fixing the “bureaucratic system” in Haiti means simply “deregulation”.
“decent public services” is code for the privitization of the public sector.
“strengthening private investment” is code for the opening up of Haitian markets and removing limitations on foreign investors buying Haitian companies for pennies on the dollar.
In order to create a “new Haiti” you have to suppress dissent. This won’t be easy in Haiti. Expect to hear terms like “extremists” and even perhaps “terrorists” being bounced around the corporate media in the next few weeks referring to large sections of the population who resist these changes.
In the long term these reforms will produce a great deal of money for the corporate and banking elites in this nation. But the short term rebuilding prospects also look promising. You see, it takes a lot of money to create a “new Haiti” from the ashes of the old one. Just like with any war, the true wealth potential lies not so much in the skimming off of the public sector money poured feverishly into a few private hands, but in the debt created by that rebuilding process. And the potential debt base this disaster will create promises to be one of record proportions.
The heavy toll of death and human suffering has a fixed multiplier equation already formulated for these people. The higher the pile of bodies, the bigger the interest payments we will have to make to the Federal Reserve banks. It’s almost like a CDO or other kinds of derivatives which are designed to profit from failure. The only difference is that these write-downs are meassured by the size of the mass graves. The bigger the hole, the bigger the profit. Therefore these banks actually benefit from higher fatality numbers that can be used later to beef up aid requests, just like this guy is already talking about. Might explain why relief aid is so slow getting to the people of Haiti. Might explain why doctors and hospitals are being forced to land in the Dominican Republic. Might explain a lot of things.
If you think this is an isolated opinion held by some fringe republican talking head, think again. Not only is Mark L. Schneider a Democrat formerly with the Clinton administration, but during that time he served as the “assistant administrator for Latin America at the U.S. Agency for International Development in November 1993 directing U.S. foreign assistance programs in this hemisphere”. In short, he was one of the key architects of Clinton’s neoliberal assault on Latin America for years. He now serves as Vice President of the International Crisis Group, an organization created by… the World Bank.
But Mark isn’t the only globalist out there pressing for a new Haiti.
As Naomi Klein pointed out on her website, the Heritage Foundation jumped right on board the new Haitian gravy-train while the glasses on the shelves were still rattling in Port-au-Prince. People were literally still gasping and clawing through the rubble trying to escape their concrete tombs while the Heritage Foundation was posting their neoliberal to-do list proudly on their website. Naomi pointed out that as soon as she made mention of their article, they took it off their site. She was partially correct; they simply took it off the front page. These are people whose suggestions have been followed almost to the letter by an opposing political party’s president; the president of “change”. I don’t think they are all that concerned about what negative publicity Naomi Klein might generate.
The truth is, this is a bipartisan effort to finally subjugate the proud people of a torn nation in order to provide the highest profit margins for a few corporate and banking elites. The plan is to create a “new Haiti”. For those of you with a slightly better than average memory language like this should sound chillingly familiar to that of another globalist secretary of state not that long ago.
There is a refrain from a classic Warren Zevon song that goes like this “Send lawyers, guns and money,… the shit has hit the fan”.
In 2005, Mark L. Schneider wrote the following about the deteriorating situation in Haiti;
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/01/...#more-8458
Posted on January 20, 2010 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
The truth is out there but you won’t find it on Fox or MSNBC. The corporate media is busily conveying the Washington Consensus talking point that looting and violence in Haiti demands the Obama administration put military ”boots on the ground”. But if you take a little time, if you really listen to what Obama and Hillary are saying, then you start to see that this is becoming another blatant example of disaster capitalism at it’s worst.
The plan is to create a “new Haiti” out of the ashes of the old one. A new Haiti that will open up its markets for U.S. corporations, privatize all remaining public services, and allow for the long-term deployment of U.S. troops who will be used to pacify the general population. In remarkably candid language a former Clinton administration official also suggests a correlation between the final civilian death toll in Haiti and the size of the U.S. aid package to be allocated for reconstruction.
In an interview published on the Council on Foreign Relations website, Mark L. Schneider makes it very clear; like Condi Rice’s “new Middle East” before them, the plan this administration is adopting is to create a “new Haiti”.
A: One thing that’s clear is that there will not be the same Haitian fixed bureaucratic system. They will have to come up with a new system, and hopefully in the process they will incorporate accountability mechanisms that will give you a better shot at getting decent public services as well as strengthening private investment.
You have to look for the key-words in the coded messages that the business elites think only they will understand.A ”bureaucratic system” to these guys means a public sector (government) looking out for public interests to the detriment of big business. So fixing a “bureaucratic system” is kinda like the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that removed the “bureaucratic” regulations that kept big banking in check for 6 decades. We see how well that worked out. It didn’t work out so well for 90% of the population but it worked wonderfully for the Wall Street investment banks like Goldman-Sachs.
Fixing the “bureaucratic system” in Haiti means simply “deregulation”.
“decent public services” is code for the privitization of the public sector.
“strengthening private investment” is code for the opening up of Haitian markets and removing limitations on foreign investors buying Haitian companies for pennies on the dollar.
Q: You mean from this disaster to produce “a New Haiti”?
A: Exactly. A year ago there was an agreement about poverty reduction strategy. Now you have to amend that and say we have to first put down a foundation for economic investment, job creation, and recreation of public services.
The kinds of jobs they have created in the past were mainly in the garment industry. Sweat-shops created under Bill Clinton’s guidance that paid approximately $1.70 per day. The imposition of previous free-market reforms pushed by the IMF and the World Bank decimated the agricultural sectors in Haiti forcing many of their rural populations to migrate to the capital where the only work they could find were in these “free-market zone” starvation wage factories. That’s why you have millions of shanties spread throughout the city. But extreme poverty and congested living arrangements has a funny way of breeding dissent. In the hundreds of shanty towns spread throughout Port-Au-Prince, support for the twice ousted President Aristide has risen to remarkably high levels. That’s why the UN “peacekeepers” and the National Police of Haiti have been cracking down in these areas over the past few years.A: Exactly. A year ago there was an agreement about poverty reduction strategy. Now you have to amend that and say we have to first put down a foundation for economic investment, job creation, and recreation of public services.
In order to create a “new Haiti” you have to suppress dissent. This won’t be easy in Haiti. Expect to hear terms like “extremists” and even perhaps “terrorists” being bounced around the corporate media in the next few weeks referring to large sections of the population who resist these changes.
In the long term these reforms will produce a great deal of money for the corporate and banking elites in this nation. But the short term rebuilding prospects also look promising. You see, it takes a lot of money to create a “new Haiti” from the ashes of the old one. Just like with any war, the true wealth potential lies not so much in the skimming off of the public sector money poured feverishly into a few private hands, but in the debt created by that rebuilding process. And the potential debt base this disaster will create promises to be one of record proportions.
Q: How much do you think this will cost the United States?
A: This assessment hasn’t been completed yet. The United Nations and the World Bank will do an assessment. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept Central America. There was an assessment of damage of $6 billion. The international community came up with about $4 billion and the United States provided about $2 billion of that. There were only nine thousand people who died in Hurricane Mitch. We’re talking about one hundred thousand people who have died here, and we’re talking about a multiple of the estimate of that $6 billion in terms of an estimate of the damage. I guess it will be a multiple of the $6 billion in what it will cost over the next five years to begin to reconstruct and give Haiti some hope for the future.
Multiples of 6 billion dollars over the next 5 years created out of thin air by the privately owned Federal Reserve banking system and loaned to the people of the United States, at interest.A: This assessment hasn’t been completed yet. The United Nations and the World Bank will do an assessment. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept Central America. There was an assessment of damage of $6 billion. The international community came up with about $4 billion and the United States provided about $2 billion of that. There were only nine thousand people who died in Hurricane Mitch. We’re talking about one hundred thousand people who have died here, and we’re talking about a multiple of the estimate of that $6 billion in terms of an estimate of the damage. I guess it will be a multiple of the $6 billion in what it will cost over the next five years to begin to reconstruct and give Haiti some hope for the future.
The heavy toll of death and human suffering has a fixed multiplier equation already formulated for these people. The higher the pile of bodies, the bigger the interest payments we will have to make to the Federal Reserve banks. It’s almost like a CDO or other kinds of derivatives which are designed to profit from failure. The only difference is that these write-downs are meassured by the size of the mass graves. The bigger the hole, the bigger the profit. Therefore these banks actually benefit from higher fatality numbers that can be used later to beef up aid requests, just like this guy is already talking about. Might explain why relief aid is so slow getting to the people of Haiti. Might explain why doctors and hospitals are being forced to land in the Dominican Republic. Might explain a lot of things.
If you think this is an isolated opinion held by some fringe republican talking head, think again. Not only is Mark L. Schneider a Democrat formerly with the Clinton administration, but during that time he served as the “assistant administrator for Latin America at the U.S. Agency for International Development in November 1993 directing U.S. foreign assistance programs in this hemisphere”. In short, he was one of the key architects of Clinton’s neoliberal assault on Latin America for years. He now serves as Vice President of the International Crisis Group, an organization created by… the World Bank.
But Mark isn’t the only globalist out there pressing for a new Haiti.
As Naomi Klein pointed out on her website, the Heritage Foundation jumped right on board the new Haitian gravy-train while the glasses on the shelves were still rattling in Port-au-Prince. People were literally still gasping and clawing through the rubble trying to escape their concrete tombs while the Heritage Foundation was posting their neoliberal to-do list proudly on their website. Naomi pointed out that as soon as she made mention of their article, they took it off their site. She was partially correct; they simply took it off the front page. These are people whose suggestions have been followed almost to the letter by an opposing political party’s president; the president of “change”. I don’t think they are all that concerned about what negative publicity Naomi Klein might generate.
Congress should immediately expand U.S. trade preferences for Haiti. The 2006 Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, and an extension approved in 2008, helped to create jobs and boost apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to the U.S. market. The apparel sector represents about two-thirds of Haitian exports and nearly one-tenth of Haiti’s GDP.
The U.S. should also establish trade preferences for other manufactures and agriculture commodity exports from Haiti to the U.S. Benefits for both Haitian and American importers and exporters…
The U.S. should therefore do the following:
Keep in mind that what you read above was written and posted on the Heritage Foundation’s website on the 13th of January this year. The earthquake happened on Jan. 12th and President Obama announced the Clinton/Bush team on Jan. 14th.The U.S. should also establish trade preferences for other manufactures and agriculture commodity exports from Haiti to the U.S. Benefits for both Haitian and American importers and exporters…
The U.S. should therefore do the following:
- President Obama should tap high-level, bipartisan leadership. Clearly former President Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, is a logical choice and is already coordinating the international responses with the U.N. President Obama should also reach out to a senior Republican figure, perhaps former President George W. Bush, to lead the bipartisan effort for the Republicans.
- Congress should begin work on a package of assistance, trade, and reconstruction efforts needed to put Haiti on its feet and open the way for deep and lasting democratic reforms.
The truth is, this is a bipartisan effort to finally subjugate the proud people of a torn nation in order to provide the highest profit margins for a few corporate and banking elites. The plan is to create a “new Haiti”. For those of you with a slightly better than average memory language like this should sound chillingly familiar to that of another globalist secretary of state not that long ago.
Her description of the conflagration in Lebanon as the “birthpangs of a new Middle East” was about as callous as it gets, matched only by Bush’s remark that the conflict represents “a moment of opportunity.” The Progressive 2006
Opportunity indeed.There is a refrain from a classic Warren Zevon song that goes like this “Send lawyers, guns and money,… the shit has hit the fan”.
In 2005, Mark L. Schneider wrote the following about the deteriorating situation in Haiti;
It’s two minutes to midnight in Haiti. When the clock strikes, the country will implode and become a permanent failed state, right on our doorstep. About the only thing that can stop the clock, let alone start winding it back some, is if the Bush administration commits Marines, money, and diplomatic muscle to help the United Nations Mission there. Mark L. Schneider
Indeed the shit has hit the fan. Send lawyers, guns, and money. It’s always been our plan.http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/01/...#more-8458
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"