- -> Sup****t for subsidies granted to food growers in the US cuts across
party lines. <----
30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
http://www.counterpunch.org/
By BILL QUIGLEY
Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives
of six people. There
have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote
d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea,
Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, re****ts
that last year wheat
prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen
141%. The reasons
include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China
and India, as well as
the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.
Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of ****t au Prince, told
journalist Nick Whalen
that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough
nourishment. Before, if you
had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10
cents of charcoal and a
little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents,
and is not good rice
at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar
twenty-five, you can’t even
make a plate of rice for one child.”
The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of
****t au Prince, serves
1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children -- five times a week
in partner****p with
the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to
walk the five miles to
the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat,
spices, cooking oil,
propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in
the cost of food, the
****tions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more
children come for the
free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once
all the children were
fed, but now there are few leftovers.
The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its
agriculture industry in
shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did
not talk at all about
one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and
other international
financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market
for the heavily
subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger
in Haiti and other
poor countries, but it is a major force.
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What
happened?
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 U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less
than two years, it
became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called
‘Miami rice.’ The whole
local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice,
some of it in the form of
‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and
lives were lost.”
“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading
rice grower in Haiti
in an interview with the Wa****ngton Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988,
there was so much rice
coming into the country that many stopped working the land.
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St.
Claire and an outspoken
human rights advocate, agrees. “In the 1980s, im****ted rice poured into
Haiti, below the cost
of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses.
People from the
countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a
few years of cheap
im****ted rice, local production went way down.”
Still the international business community was not satisfied. In 1994,
as a condition for U.S.
assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his elected Presidency,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
forced by the U.S., the IMF, and the World Bank to open up the markets in
Haiti even more.
But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what reason
could the U.S. have in
destroying the rice market of this tiny country?
Haiti is definitely poor. The U.S. Agency for International Development
re****ts the annual per
capita income is less than $400. The United Nations re****ts life
expectancy in Haiti is 59,
while in the US it is 78. Over 78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a
day, more than half live
on less than $1 a day.
Yet Haiti has become one of the very top im****ters of rice from the U.S.
The U.S. Department
of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third largest im****ter of
US rice - at over
240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).
Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the U.S. Rice subsidies in the
U.S. totaled $11
billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods Inc of
Stuttgart Arkansas,
received over $500 million dollars in rice subsidies between 1995 and
2006.
The Cato Institute recently re****ted that rice is one of the most heavily
sup****ted commodities
in the U.S. -- with three different subsidies together averaging over $1
billion a year since
1998 and projected to average over $700 million a year through 2015. The
result? “Tens of
millions of rice farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their
families out of poverty
because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist
policies of other
countries.”
In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the U.S.,
there are also direct
tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, re****ts Daniel Griswold of the Cato
Institute -- the exact
same type of protections, though much higher, that the U.S. and the IMF
required Haiti to
eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.
U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in the
Wa****ngton Post found
that the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies
for rice and other
crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all; including
$490,000 to a Houston
surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice.
And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.
Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well. “Haiti, once the
world's largest
ex****ter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began im****ting
even sugar-- from U.S.
controlled sugar production in the Dominican Republic and Florida. It
was terrible to see
Haitian farmers put out of work. All this sped up the downward spiral
that led to this month's
food riots.”
After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed to
reduce the price of
rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound bag, to $43 dollars for
the next month. No
one thinks a one month fix will do anything but delay the severe hunger
pains a few weeks.
Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The Economist re****ts a billion
people worldwide live
on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of America re****ts about 850 million
people were suffering
from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases.
Thirty three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising
food prices, World Bank
President Robert Zoellick told the Wall Street Journal. When countries
have many people who
spend half to three-quarters of their daily income on food, “there is no
margin of survival.”
In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide problems at the gas pump
and in the grocery.
Middle class people may cut back on extra trips or on high price cuts of
meat. The number of
people on food stamps in the US is at an all-time high. But in poor
countries, where
malnutrition and hunger were widespread before the rise in prices, there
is nothing to cut back
on except eating. That leads to hunger riots.
In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to Haiti.
Venezuela sent 350
tons of food. The US just pledged $200 million extra for worldwide
hunger relief. The UN is
committed to distributing more food.
What can be done in the medium term? The US provides much of the world’s
food aid, but does it
in such a way that only half of the dollars spent actually reach hungry
people. US law
requires that food aid be purchased from US farmers, processed and bagged
in the US and ****pped
on US vessels -- which cost 50% of the money allocated. A simple change
in US law to allow
some local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and
sup****t local farm markets.
In the long run, what is to be done? The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio
Lula da Silva, who
visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms
subsidies and trade barriers
to allow poor countries to generate income with food ex****ts. Either
the world solves the
unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt
emergency measures
and send a little bit of food to tem****arily ease hunger."
Citizens of the USA know very little about the role of their government
in helping create the
hunger problems in Haiti or other countries. But there is much that
individuals can do.
People can donate to help feed individual hungry people and participate
with advocacy
organizations like Bread for the World or Oxfam to help change the U.S.
and global rules which
favor the rich countries. This advocacy can help countries have a better
chance to feed
themselves.
Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in
****t-au-Prince told journalist
Wadner Pierre "...people can’t buy food. Gasoline prices are going up. It
is very hard for us
over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us, no peace in
stomach means no peace
in the mind…I wonder if others will be able to survive the days ahead
because things are
very, very hard."
“On the ground, people are very hungry,” re****ted Fr. Jean-Juste. “Our
country must
immediately open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until we can get
them jobs. For the
long run, we need to invest in irrigation, trans****tation, and other
assistance for our farmers
and workers.”
In ****t au Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days. A school in
Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish
received several bags of rice. They had raw rice for 1000 children, but
the principal still
had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for help. There was no money for
charcoal, or oil.
Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood in a
long line Saturday in
****t au Prince to get UN donated rice and beans. When Rodman got the
small bags, he told Ben
Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might last four days. The rice
will be gone as soon as
I get home.”
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola
University New Orleans. He
can be reached at quigley77@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
People interested in donating to
feed children in Haiti
should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/
People who want to help change U.S. policy on agriculture to help combat
world-wide hunger
should go to:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
or http://www.bread.org/
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * *
____________________________________________________________________________________
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + +
Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
- - - - - -> More political discussion continues at
http://www.politicsusaweb.com/
----------------------
This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in
my efforts to advance
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any
such copyrighted
material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational
purposes.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.
If you
wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond 'fair
use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
