Everybody singing “Haiti, I’m sorry.” Miss Thing want to know, “What they sorry for? They didn’t cause the earthquake.” I shame to say she don’t know the history, apart from the fact that Haiti kick out the French a couple hundred years ago and catching their skin ever since. She don’t know the details about Papa Doc and Baby Doc, and what a mess Haitian politics was just in my lifetime alone. This country that could have been the brightest light for post-colonial society anywhere in the world instead come like a joke: Haiti was the first country in the Western Hemisphere to prove that black people couldn’t build a country on their own, just destroy one. Of course, to say that is to blind yourself to the fact that Haiti had plenty help in flushing itself down the toilet.

Huffington Post blogger Bill Quigley write on Thursday on huffingtonpost.com, “In the last decade alone, the US slashed humanitarian assistance to Haiti, blocked international loans, forced the government of Haiti to downsize, ruined tens of thousands of small farmers, and replaced the government with private non-governmental organisations.” That is only part of the story. Quigley, a lawyer who is the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights in the US, explain how his government had a history of manipulating Haiti politics. Is only US-approved leaders Haiti had, and aid money could only go through NGOs, not the Haitian Government, he say. “The fact is that many of Haiti's problems today stem from the response of nations that saw its insurrection as a threat or a taunt,” say another writer in a story in Thursday Seattle Times.

Richard H Watts, a Caribbean studies specialist from the University of Washington, write, “In 1825 the French engaged in a bit of gunboat diplomacy and demanded that Haiti pay compensation of some 150 million francs—a sum derived by figuring the value of the property, in the form of slaves and land, that French planters had lost—or face a total economic blockade. This amount was roughly equal to ten years’ worth of total revenue in Haiti. “By the end of the 19th century, Haiti’s payments to France still consumed around 80 per cent of the national budget. One generation of Haitians had bought its freedom with its blood, and the generations that followed had to pay cash.” How you go run a country with no money, when you so deep in debt your children children children go still be paying it off? And that debt continue up to today with loans from the IMF and World Bank.

Another Huff Post writer, political commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, say, “Haiti is compelled to shell out nearly US$1 million a week to pay off its debt to the World Bank and the IMF; debt incurred by the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes and their successor military governments in the early 1990s propped up by the US. Half of the loans were given to the Duvaliers and the other dictatorships. They squandered the cash on presidential luxuries with barely a cent going to development programs for the poor.” On a good day, Haiti had electricity, water, housing, medical and food shortages, and bad roads. Now? Blood flowing like water. If allyuh feel the Boxing Day tsunami and Hurricane Katrina was pressure, you ent see nothing yet. All that food and water we sending to Port-au-Prince by the planeload have nowhere to land, because the airport barely functioning.

If they manage to get the thing in, the roads gone through so they could hardly pass with it. The people who survive going to be in a mess, and the hospital and all fall down. Even if the Government was in good shape, even if the National Palace and parliament building didn’t collapse, they still wouldn’t of be in any condition to manage to collect and hand out the aid. But of course that don’t mean we shouldn’t send, and send until we can’t send no more. T&T, for all the shame in we eye from the gun crime and corruption, is a paradise. When last we had a natural disaster that kill over 500 people, like Haiti had when Hurricane Hanna hit in 2008? When last we children eat mud, like some children in Haiti does have to do? Counting we blessings is not enough; giving to we brothers and sisters have to be high up on we agenda or we can’t call weself humans.

I would say something about “Christian charity,” but I fraid for buss head. Pat Robertson, that jacka--, make all Christians look bad when he talk so much rubbish on the TV about how Haiti make a deal with the devil and that is why it always have so much suffering there. I can’t believe that is true. For one, the devil like he people to be fat and happy, not scrunting and hungry-looking. That is just good business sense. You want to advertise so more people could flock to you. If Haiti did make a deal with the devil in truth, it would of throw off the French like a dirty Jockey shorts and never look back. It might have the highest rate of obesity in the world, have food like food going out of style, have all the conveniences and idleness you could want, with just as much spiritual emptiness. In fact, it might look a lot like America… But that is another story.

Earthquake don’t kill people. Falling buildings and thing like that is what does kill you, not the earthquake itself. This disaster wouldn’t of be so grim if Haiti had the infrastructure to withstand it. When Haiti get over this, the latest hurdle in the way of development, all of we have to make sure in whatever way we could that Haiti come out of the hole it in. Lobby for international lending agencies to forgive that debt. Lobby for aid agencies to give subsidies to Haitian agriculture and manufacturing so the country could get on its feet. Haiti have a long and proud heritage. Let this be the last time she have to be on she knees.