Making slaves buy their own Freedom!

[Contessa_Sharra]

Haiti: the land where children eat mud - Times Online

From the article:

Just why is Haiti in such a dire situation, so much worse than any other country in the Americas, and as bad as anywhere on Earth? Some blame the United Nations. Some blame the Americans. Some have theories about the collision of global warming with global capitalism. All are careful to point out that the Haitian elite deserves its reputation for being greedy, negligent and kleptocratic. “I think the Haitian people have been made to suffer by God,” Wilbert, a teacher, tells me, “but the time will come soon when we will be rewarded with Heaven.”

History tells a different story. The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Hard to imagine the concept, making the former slaves who were being worked to death anyway BUY/PAY for freedom that they won in battle...


I also saw up here on other threads some comments about looting.

This morning I saw on one news show that what is being taken is food, and MATTRESSES......

Really shitty, that, stealing a mattress so someone you care about doesn't have to die lying on bare dirt!

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Acutally, it is not as far out as you think.

When serfdom was abolished in 1867, it was done on the installment plan. and like with Haiti, it was done will outlandish interest. One of the big reforms after the revolution of 1905 was the reduction in the interest rate on the manumission of 40 years before.

Also, in the US south, manumission was accompanied with expensive conditions. Robert E Lee's father in law directed that after the estate was settled, the slaves be free. They never were because the estate couldn't afford the state mandated fees on manumission.

General Grant was given a slave by his father in law. It cost 800 for him to buy the manumission on this guy, and while he paid the state of MO the fee, he still owed money for it until after Donaldson.

Slavery people are very ___________ I can't think of a word vile enough.

 

[Yukon]

Americans at one time enshrined in the Constipatiion that Negros were not completely human. You are in no position to comment on people in any country, when you live in a glass-house, dont throw stones.

 

[Anguille]

Acutally, it is not as far out as you think.

When serfdom was abolished in 1867, it was done on the installment plan. and like with Haiti, it was done will outlandish interest. One of the big reforms after the revolution of 1905 was the reduction in the interest rate on the manumission of 40 years before.

Also, in the US south, manumission was accompanied with expensive conditions. Robert E Lee's father in law directed that after the estate was settled, the slaves be free. They never were because the estate couldn't afford the state mandated fees on manumission.

General Grant was given a slave by his father in law. It cost 800 for him to buy the manumission on this guy, and while he paid the state of MO the fee, he still owed money for it until after Donaldson.

Slavery people are very ___________ I can't think of a word vile enough.

Interesting.
Slavery lives on under different names.

 

[Anguille]

Americans at one time enshrined in the Constipatiion that Negros were not completely human. You are in no position to comment on people in any country, when you live in a glass-house, dont throw stones.

And if you live in an igloo, you are no one to throw anti-freeze.

 

[Contessa_Sharra]

Acutally, it is not as far out as you think.

When serfdom was abolished in 1867, it was done on the installment plan. and like with Haiti, it was done will outlandish interest. One of the big reforms after the revolution of 1905 was the reduction in the interest rate on the manumission of 40 years before.

Also, in the US south, manumission was accompanied with expensive conditions. Robert E Lee's father in law directed that after the estate was settled, the slaves be free. They never were because the estate couldn't afford the state mandated fees on manumission.

General Grant was given a slave by his father in law. It cost 800 for him to buy the manumission on this guy, and while he paid the state of MO the fee, he still owed money for it until after Donaldson.

Slavery people are very ___________ I can't think of a word vile enough.

There is a case in Tennessee that made it all the way to the State Supreme Court where one Lloyd (or Loyd) Ford willed his land to his Black children so that they could be free and not forced to leave either the state or the land they had actually worked for him. The Court cases took place in about 1843.

Twenty years before the Civil War, the freed family won the case, got both their land and their freedom.

TN Encyclopedia: FORD V. FORD

This is my family this case is about.

Justice Green wrote this:

"A slave is not in the condition of a horse or an ox. His liberty is restrained, it is true. . . . But he is made after the image of the Creator. He has mental capacities, and an immortal principle in his nature, that constitute him equal to his owner but for the accidental position in which fortune has placed him. . . . [T]he laws under which he is held as a slave have not and cannot extinguish his high-born nature nor deprive him of his many rights which are inherent in man."

 

[Baruch Menachem]

That is so cool. Thanks for that.

I think I should note here that TN was an outlier in this regard. Most states required that upon manumission, the former slave had to pay a huge bond (In the case of MO it was $800, in VA it would have been a similar price) that would be forfeit if the former slave committed an offense, and if the former slave didn't have the funds to renew the bond, he could be sold by the state to satisfy it.

I am a bit of an ACW buff, and how Lee and Grant handled the issue of slavery themselves has been a point of hot discussion on the interwebs.

 

[Contessa_Sharra]

That is so cool. Thanks for that.

I think I should note here that TN was an outlier in this regard. Most states required that upon manumission, the former slave had to pay a huge bond (In the case of MO it was $800, in VA it would have been a similar price) that would be forfeit if the former slave committed an offense, and if the former slave didn't have the funds to renew the bond, he could be sold by the state to satisfy it.

I am a bit of an ACW buff, and how Lee and Grant handled the issue of slavery themselves has been a point of hot discussion on the interwebs.

Our outlook has changed, mostly, but there are still some areas of this slavery business that we have to look at, even now.

Me, I find it generally offensive that there were ever those who thought it OK to steal another human, and then force their labor for life. Horrid people that think others who have less power owe them riches. There are still some of those around. Even now there are those who do not get that the relationship between worker and business is symbotic, not slave to master/owner.

I think that the whole collection of humanity needs to really look at and see the truths of what we have done to each other.

 

[garyd]

The practice has been around for nearly as long as there have been human being. It has always been an ugly practice and slaves have always been required to purchase their freedom. From at least 1948 onward however I am sure that the masters of Hiti could had they so chosen managed to take their case before the united Nations and go those illigitmate reparations set aside but as near as I can tell they never even tried. By then it had become little more than a convenient excuse for the Duvaliers et al to rip off those they ruled over.

This however is a debt that the French government should long ago have renounced and had they any sort of soul remand the money they had already stolen plus interest to the haitian people.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

We are talking of the french here.

 

[garyd]

Nope just the French government.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

The french are far superior to their government... But still.... This is the French we are talking of.

 

[garyd]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

 

[Avatar4321]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

Eh... im not so sure that always true with the French involved...

 

[Anguille]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

Eh... im not so sure that always true with the French involved...

To be fair, the US has much to answer for as well.

From the article:

"Papa Doc himself affected the style of Baron Samedi, the spirit of the dead, appearing in a black top hat and pinstriped suit. Reports from Haiti brought forth disgust from the developed world, but the protests did not turn into action. Instead of moving to condemn and remove these dictators, the world’s richest countries opened their chequebooks. In 1967, American-owned plantations in the Dominican Republic paid Papa Doc directly for rounding up 20,000 Haitians to work on their lands. In 1972, his son and heir, Baby Doc’s minister of the interior, was exposed for literally selling Haitian blood to private American hospitals: $3 a litre, no questions asked. During the Duvaliers’ combined 28 years in power, up to 60,000 Haitians were “disappeared” by the regime. The Duvaliers swindled international creditors and aid agencies for enormous sums. The American government, via various agencies and banks, lent millions to both dictators.
Though there was anger in Washington about the Duvaliers and their 80% rate of aid embezzlement, no action was taken to remove them until 1986. The Duvaliers were always happy to sign up to new loans, and to give lucrative contracts to American corporations. Most of the projects went nowhere. Haiti is littered with half-built and abandoned schools, hospitals, bridges and roads.
Most of the money lent to the Duvaliers found its way into private bank accounts. When Baby Doc fled, he took millions with him: estimates go as high as $900m. The debts incurred by the Duvaliers make up 45% of Haiti’s total current debt. None of the creditors finds the fact of their complicity a compelling argument for cancellation. Those creditors include the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the IMF and the governments of the US and France.

 

[California Girl]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

Eh... im not so sure that always true with the French involved...

How much time have you spent in France? If the answer is none, then your opinion is based on shit.... shit in, shit out.

 

[Contessa_Sharra]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

Eh... im not so sure that always true with the French involved...

To be fair, the US has much to answer for as well.

From the article:

"Papa Doc himself affected the style of Baron Samedi, the spirit of the dead, appearing in a black top hat and pinstriped suit. Reports from Haiti brought forth disgust from the developed world, but the protests did not turn into action. Instead of moving to condemn and remove these dictators, the world’s richest countries opened their chequebooks. In 1967, American-owned plantations in the Dominican Republic paid Papa Doc directly for rounding up 20,000 Haitians to work on their lands. In 1972, his son and heir, Baby Doc’s minister of the interior, was exposed for literally selling Haitian blood to private American hospitals: $3 a litre, no questions asked. During the Duvaliers’ combined 28 years in power, up to 60,000 Haitians were “disappeared” by the regime. The Duvaliers swindled international creditors and aid agencies for enormous sums. The American government, via various agencies and banks, lent millions to both dictators.

Though there was anger in Washington about the Duvaliers and their 80% rate of aid embezzlement, no action was taken to remove them until 1986. The Duvaliers were always happy to sign up to new loans, and to give lucrative contracts to American corporations. Most of the projects went nowhere. Haiti is littered with half-built and abandoned schools, hospitals, bridges and roads.

Most of the money lent to the Duvaliers found its way into private bank accounts. When Baby Doc fled, he took millions with him: estimates go as high as $900m. The debts incurred by the Duvaliers make up 45% of Haiti’s total current debt. None of the creditors finds the fact of their complicity a compelling argument for cancellation. Those creditors include the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the IMF and the governments of the US and France.

Cancel Haiti's debt

Posted By Annie Lowrey

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - 7:04 PM


Haiti, as a nation, has suffered violence, unrest, juntas, and natural disasters. One thing it need not suffer anymore, given the earthquake? Its debt obligations. This Times of London article explains how Haiti became so indebted in the first place.

This September, Haiti qualified for the cancellation of $1.2 billion of its $1.9 billion in external debt. To ensure the recovery of the nation and the livelihoods of its 9 million citizens, the IDB and any other lenders should fully cancel any remaining debt obligations.

------------------------------------------------​

It is so "interesting," there are those who go absolutely livid, nearly murderously angry, at the thought of families of the former "slaves" getting reparations, for all tose years of stolen lives and stolen labor, abuse, and all the rest, but are just fine with "reparations" to France, and the debt to be paid in gold, yet!

Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out -- mostly from the United States, Germany and France. - from the Times article

------------------------------------------------
Cancel Haiti's debt | FP Passport​

As for the debt repayment, as relates to the Duvaliers, it is a supersized equivalent of having your credit card stolen, a huge bill run up, and you have to pay for even what was stolen from you... The Haitian people have been crapped on by everyone!

 

[Contessa_Sharra]

Any people are generally vastly superior to the government under which they labor.

Eh... im not so sure that always true with the French involved...

How much time have you spent in France? If the answer is none, then your opinion is based on shit.... shit in, shit out.

It isn't how much time any of us have spent in France, but how France has spent its time outside of its own borders and what it did there. I guess you don't know any of the history of "French Indo-China" A.K.A. VIET NAM, and all the shit THAT caused. As for the what they did to the Haitians after independence, they were in a word, ASSHOLES. Il faut bien reconnaitre que c'est la merde totale, la France, comme votre avis!

Who forced the Haitians to pay? The French Navy.
While Haitians efforts, in combination with the wars in Europe, convinced the French to abandon Haiti, the Haitians did not have the strength to resist extortion.

From:
http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitimakescaseforreparations.htm

Finally in 1825, France, which was being encouraged by former plantation owners to invade Haiti and re-enslave the Blacks, issued the Royal Ordinance of 1825, which called for the massive indemnity payments. In addition to the 150 million franc payment, France decreed that French ships and commercial goods entering and leaving Haiti would be discounted at 50 percent, thereby further weakening Haiti's ability to pay.

According to French officials at the time, the terms of the edict were non-negotiable. And to impress the seriousness of the situation upon the Haitians, France delivered the demands by 12 warships armed with 500 canons.

The 150-million-franc indemnity was based on profits earned by the colonists, according to a memorandum prepared by their lawyers. In 1789, Saint Domingue - all of Haiti and Santo Domingo - exported 150 million francs worth of products to France. In 1823 Haitian exports to France totaled 8.5 million francs, exports to England totaled 8.4 million francs, and exports to the United States totaled 13.1 million francs, for a total of 30 million francs.

The lawyers then claimed that one half of the 30 million francs went toward the costs of production, leaving 15 million francs as profit. The 15 million franc balance was multiplied by 10 (10 years of lost revenues for the French colonists due to the war for liberation), which coincidentally totals 150 million francs, the value of exports in 1789.

To make matters worse for Haiti, the French anticipated and planned for Haiti to secure a loan to pay the first installment on the indemnity. Haiti was forced to borrow the 30 million francs from a French bank that then deducted the management fees from the face value of the loan and charged interest rates so exorbitant that after payment was completed, Haiti was still 6 million francs short.

The 150-million-franc indemnity represented France's annual budget and 10 years of revenue for Haiti. One study estimates the indemnity was 55 million more francs than was needed to restore the 793 sugar plantations, 3,117 coffee estates and 3,906 indigo, cotton and other crop plantations destroyed during the war for independence.

By contrast, when it became clear France would no longer be in a position to capitalize on further westward expansion in the Western hemisphere, they agreed to sell the Louisiana Territory, an area 74 times the surface area of Haiti, to the U.S. for just 60 million francs, less than half the Haitian indemnity.

Even though France later lowered the indemnity payment to 90 million francs, the cycle of forcing Haiti to borrow from French banks to make the payments chained the Black nation to perpetual poverty. Haiti did not finish paying her indemnity debt until 1947!

See also
http://www.ijdh.org/articles/article_recent_news_8-2-06.html

 

[Gunny]

Haiti: the land where children eat mud - Times Online

From the article:

Just why is Haiti in such a dire situation, so much worse than any other country in the Americas, and as bad as anywhere on Earth? Some blame the United Nations. Some blame the Americans. Some have theories about the collision of global warming with global capitalism. All are careful to point out that the Haitian elite deserves its reputation for being greedy, negligent and kleptocratic. “I think the Haitian people have been made to suffer by God,” Wilbert, a teacher, tells me, “but the time will come soon when we will be rewarded with Heaven.”

History tells a different story. The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Hard to imagine the concept, making the former slaves who were being worked to death anyway BUY/PAY for freedom that they won in battle...


I also saw up here on other threads some comments about looting.

This morning I saw on one news show that what is being taken is food, and MATTRESSES......

Really shitty, that, stealing a mattress so someone you care about doesn't have to die lying on bare dirt!

*yawn* What a retarded thread.

 

[California Girl]

Haiti: the land where children eat mud - Times Online

From the article:

Just why is Haiti in such a dire situation, so much worse than any other country in the Americas, and as bad as anywhere on Earth? Some blame the United Nations. Some blame the Americans. Some have theories about the collision of global warming with global capitalism. All are careful to point out that the Haitian elite deserves its reputation for being greedy, negligent and kleptocratic. “I think the Haitian people have been made to suffer by God,” Wilbert, a teacher, tells me, “but the time will come soon when we will be rewarded with Heaven.”

History tells a different story. The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

Hard to imagine the concept, making the former slaves who were being worked to death anyway BUY/PAY for freedom that they won in battle...


I also saw up here on other threads some comments about looting.

This morning I saw on one news show that what is being taken is food, and MATTRESSES......

Really shitty, that, stealing a mattress so someone you care about doesn't have to die lying on bare dirt!

*yawn* What a retarded thread.

I have learned it is better not to waste valuable seconds of my life reading the Contessa's crap. I never read anything that contains colored texts (because serial killersuse colored text) or overly large text. Just a principle - it's like they are whining for attention. I always ignore that behavior. And of course, the Contessa never writes anything worth reading.