Media images appear to be prime motivation this week in a collective, mobilized response underscored by Western guilt. Bombarded with dust-covered corpses, blood and broken bones, and bodies rotting in the hot sun, millions around the world have donated their money to various relief organizations in support of Haiti. The United States has even organized a text message campaign which allows cell phone users to donate as little as ten dollars by texting the word "Haiti" to a central national phone line.

However, this feel-good effort fails to address the circumstances which created this catastrophe. Haiti cannot afford to the typical, Western, Bono-style activism: here today and gone tomorrow, even as its citizens continue to endure the effects of enormous national debt and unfair trading practices which have historically impoverished the nation.

France considered Haiti to be the pearl of the Caribbean and set about stealing both its natural and human resources at will. The average lifespan of a slave in Haiti was a scant twenty-one years, due to harsh living conditions and limited supplies of food. Instead of recognizing the Haitian struggle as akin to that engaged in by Americans against British tyranny, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson gave foreign aid to the supposedly beleaguered French slave owners. Haitians won their freedom from France through armed conflict, defeating Napoleon Bonaparte and the most powerful army in Europe - this is the history that most outside students are familiar with. But what most miss was a move that cannot be considered anything but extortion.

France demanded the sum of 150 million francs in payment for the freedom of the Haitian people. What France could not hold through force, it did through economic colonialism; by 1900, over 80% of Haiti's annual budget was directed at paying this spurious debt.

This form of neo-colonialism would serve as a model for the impoverishment of much of the Global South. Under the crushing weight of such debt, Haiti was unable to ensure its citizens a descent standard of living, forced to take loans from France, America and Germany to service the debt. It was not until 1947 that Haiti managed to pay off the debt it incurred to achieve its freedom.

http://globalcomment.com/2010/after-the-earthquake-haiti-needs-more-than-your-latte-money/

and to help things in perspective, whilst you watch the George Clooney fundraising telethon, reflect that ....

- the NBA has donated US$1Million

- Sydney's New Year's Eve fireworks cost A$5Million

- a 1931 Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe was sold for US$8.7Million in 1987

- the Australian government has donated A$10Million

- corporations have donated US$21Million

- the US government has promised US$100Million in investment funds

- the world's largest lottery prize was US$390Million

- the worlds most expensive home cost US$1Billion

- in 2009, the US government gave Israel aid of US$5Billion

- the cost to-date of the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars is US$947Billion