NEW YORK--As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."
Gee, I wonder how that happened?
You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich...
The story begins in 1910, when a U.S. State Department-National City Bank of New York (now called Citibank) consortium bought the Banque National d'Haïti--Haiti's only commercial bank and its national treasury--in effect transferring Haiti's debts to the Americans.(1)
Five years later, President Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to occupy the country in order to keep tabs on "our" investment.
From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. Marines imposed harsh military occupation, murdered Haitians patriots and diverted 40 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product to U.S. bankers.(2) Haitians were banned from government jobs. Ambitious Haitians were shunted into the puppet military, setting the stage for a half-century of U.S.-backed military dictatorship.
The U.S. kept control of Haiti's finances until 1947...
Still--why should Haitians complain? Sure, we stole 40 percent of Haiti's national wealth for 32 years. But we let them keep 60 percent.
Whiners.
Despite having been bled dry by American bankers and generals, civil disorder prevailed until 1957, when the CIA installed President-for-Life François "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/. MY NOTES:
(1) National City Bank, which became Citibank, was controlled by the Rockefellers & their associates at this time. In this summary from 1918:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NwMCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA607&lpg=PA607&dq=%22national+city+co%22+%22new+york%22+rockefeller&source=bl&ots=ogY0pqLCfl&sig=K31Ud7kVjjafB4CvIMZYBD-uSpU&hl=en&ei=xvVPS5n5LJLIsAPTpqX9Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22national%20city%20co%22%20%22new%20york%22%20stillman%20rockefeller&f=falseP.A. Rockefeller = Percy Avery Rockefeller, son of William:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Avery_RockefellerJames A. Stillman = James Alexander Stillman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._StillmanHis sisters Sarah & Isabel married Percy Avery & William Goodsell Rockefeller.
James Stillman = his father, a Rockefeller associate who helped overthrow Diaz in Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jewett_Stillman Stillman Sr's grandson James Stillman Rockefeller headed National City/Citi (Chair/Director) 1952-1967, & married a Carnegie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stillman_RockefellerFrank Vanderlip = Asst. Sec of the Treasury before going to Citi, a Wm. Rockefeller associate, & one of the creators of the Federal Reserve:
http://books.google.com/books?id=KwgLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=frank+vanderlip+standard+oil&source=bl&ots=gel04tzTui&sig=G5aw5nb73RZG9Kb4mL6CEceJoR8&hl=en&ei=uSJQS637O42OswP8zPyDCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=frank%20vanderlip%20standard%20oil&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_VanderlipPlus many other Rockefeller associates on the list.
(2) Through US corporate control of the Central Bank, the money supply & mint, the national debt payments and national bonds, the customs, the railroad, most significant agriculture & industry, & major landholdings. A fantastic volume of wealth.
****
The National City folks essentially precipitated the 1915 invasion & long occupation of Haiti:
In 1825 Haiti was forced to borrow 24 million francs from private French banks to begin paying off the crippling indemnity debt (from their revolution). Haiti only acknowledged this debt in exchange for French recognition of her independence, a principle that would continue to characterize Haiti's international relationships.
These indemnity payments caused continual financial emergencies and political upheavals...
Nevertheless, Haiti always made the indemnity payments - and, following those, the bank loan payments - on time. The 1915 intervention by the Marines on behalf of U.S. financial interests changed all of that, however.
The prelude to the 1915 U.S. intervention began in 1910 when the National Bank of Haiti, founded in 1881 with French capital and entrusted from the start with the administration of the Haitian treasury, disappeared. It was replaced by the financial institution known as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti.
Part of the capital of the new national bank was subscribed by the National City Bank of New York, signaling, for the first time, U.S. interest in the financial affairs of Haiti.
(Part of) The motivation for the original U.S. financial interest in Haiti was the schemes of several U.S. corporations with ties to the National City Bank to build a railroad system there. In order for these corporations - including the W.R. Grace Corp. - to protect their investments, they pressured President Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, to find ways to stabilize the Haitian economy, namely by taking a controlling interest in the Haitian custom houses, the main source of revenue for the government.
Due to the near total ignorance at the State Department and in Washington generally about Haiti, Bryan was forced to rely on...Roger L. Farnham...
Farnham was thoroughly familiar with Haitian affairs because he was vice-president of the National City Bank of New York and of the new National Bank of the Republic of Haiti and president of the National Railway of Haiti... Farnham played a cat and mouse game with the Haitian legislature and president. Alternately, he would threaten direct U.S. intervention or to withhold government funds if they did not turn over control of the Haitian custom houses to National City Bank. In defense of Haitian independence, lawmakers refused at every juncture.
Finally, in 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Farnham was able to convince Washington that France and Germany posed direct threats to the U.S. by their presence in Haiti. Each had a small colony of business people there.
In December of 1914, Farnham arranged for the U.S. Marines to come ashore at Port Au Prince, march into the new National Bank of Haiti and steal two strongboxes containing $500,000 (3) in Haitian currency and sail to New York, where the money was placed in New York City Bank. This made the Haitian government totally dependent on Farnham for finances with which to operate...
For the next 19 years, the U.S. Marine Corps wielded supreme authority throughout Haiti...Within several years, however, charges of massacres of Haitian peasants were made against the military as Haitians revolted...
In one such incident at Fort Reviere, the Marines killed 51 Haitians without sustaining any casualties themselves. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Major Smedley D. Butler the Congressional Medal of Honor...(4)
Reports of U.S. military abuses against the Haitians became so widespread that NAACP official James Weldon Johnson (5) headed a delegation to investigate the charges, which they deemed to be true.
...For the entire 19-year duration of the intervention, maximum attention was given to paying off Haiti's U.S. creditors, with little to no attention given to developing the economy.
In 1922 former Marine Brigade Commander John Russell was named as High Commissioner of Haiti, a post he held until the final days of the occupation. Under Russell's influence, all political dissent was stifled and revenue from the custom houses was turned over, often months ahead of schedule, to Haiti's U.S. bond creditors, who had assumed loans originally extended to Haiti to pay off the French plantation owners' reparations.
By 1929, however...Washington decided it was time to end the military occupation. When then President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Haiti in 1934 to announce the pullout, he was the first head of a foreign nation in Haiti's history to extend a visit.
Despite the American military pullout, U.S. financial administrators continued to dominate the Haitian economy until the final debt on the earlier loans was retired in 1947.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/JD/9_28_3.html.MY NOTES:
(3) The National City men essentially stole the Haitian Treasury (the money) & took it to New York to coerce the Haitians.
(4) Butler's oft-cited quote from "War is a Racket" is the unvarnished truth: "I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler(5) Weldon Johnson's 1920 essay, "Self-Determining Haiti," from The Nation, is here:
http://haitiforever.com/windowsonhaiti/haiti_occupation_series_03.shtml"To know the reasons for the present political situation in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to know that the National City Bank of New York is very much interested in Haiti.
It is necessary to know that the National City Bank controls the National Bank of Haiti and is the depository for all of the Haitian national funds that are being collected by American officials, and that Mr. R. L. Farnham, vice-president of the National City Bank, is virtually the representative of the State Department in matters relating to the island republic...
Most Americans have the opinion -- if they have any opinion at all on the subject -- that the United States was forced, on purely humane grounds, to intervene...The fact is that for nearly a year before forcible intervention on the part of the United States this government was seeking to compel Haiti to submit to "peaceable" intervention..."
The US has been the controlling power in Haiti since the dawn of the 20th Century. US = financial vampire, Haiti = blood donor.
And this history, the poverty & corruption it created, is the main reason for the magnitude of the present crisis.
And this history, & other histories like it, is how the super-rich get rich enough to buy their stately homes & pretend they're superior, stately people who don't have blood on their hands.
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