January 17, 2010

Haiti

Sunday night, the Washington Post headlines:

Security fears mount in lawless post-earthquake Haiti

I must say, though, that this has to be about the fourth day in a row that I've read headlines like this insisting that absolute dog-eat-dog carnage is about to break out all over Haiti any moment now.

Presumably, it will, sooner or later, or they wouldn't keep printing the same headlines, but as far as I can tell from reading the fine print, as of Sunday night, this hadn't yet gone through the formality of taking place:

There was widespread apprehension that, unless the pace of aid distribution quickens, there could be mass violence as hundreds of thousands of people suddenly lacking food, water and electricity begin to compete for scarce resources.

"We worry," said Laurence Acluche, a Haitian National Police officer. "We are all concerned about food."

There has already been scattered looting in recent days, but so far it has been primarily confined to damaged buildings. Still, Haiti has long lacked a robust security presence, and the earthquake has further eroded what little there had been, meaning violence could quickly escalate once it starts.

It seems like, so far, Haitians have behaved better than the press has expected. Perhaps widespread mourning, people's appreciation of the seriousness of the situation, the lack of stuff worth stealing, and the threat of lynch law in the streets have salutary effects.

In general, how useful was Haiti's government even before the earthquake in preventing crime? Or was the threat of vigilante justice by neighbors or vengeance by local gangs more of a deterrent?

This latest story suggests that future mass violence would be not due to the breakdown of law at preventing criminals from discretionary looting, but due to physical competition over the necessities of life.

If you look at really bad discretionary looting, like LA in 1992, that was just a big drunken debauch set off by news on TV and the LAPD then deciding to go on de facto strike and show people who the bad guys really were. By the way, there was almost no looting in East LA in 1992, because well-established Mexican gangs patrolled in the absence of the cops and kept out black and Central American rioters from South Central.

The 2005 New Orleans hurricane was something of a worse case scenario, where there was advanced warning so the more prudent people run away ahead of time, leaving the imprudent behind. Then the hurricane turned out to be less catastrophic than expected, so relieved imprudent people came out to celebrate afterwards, but, then, there was a delayed punch from the levee breaking, and the prudent people continued to stay away for days.

In contrast, an earthquake is instantly sobering. It hits everybody, imprudent or prudent, out of the blue. It does not put you in a mood to party. If it's a horrific one like in Haiti, it's depressing because everybody knows somebody who has been killed. Earthquakes make you realize how much you need your neighbors and they need you.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

51 comments:

  1. That's a nice cheerful thought, about earthquakes bringing out the best in people, but it just isn't true. The army prevented looting in SF after the 1906 earthquake by shooting looters on sight. There was looting in the MARINA after Loma Prieta. The neighborhood was cordoned off, again by the army, guards were posted, and residents had to show a pass to get in for a good month after the quake. They didn't set that all up for no reason.

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  2. After all,maybe the Haitians have something other than just cool French names... a certain dignity and forbearance.

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  3. Thing is in Haiti, they aren't easily able to leave to get food, water and safety. People without food and water are not going to have the energy to go out and fight.

    In San Francisco, people could just leave if they wanted to.

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  4. Reginald Denny1/18/10, 6:40 AM

    I think Steve has a point here. Adjusted for the opportunities for scott-free mayham, earthquakes are relatively low crime diasters. Everyone is a bit shaken by an unexplainable act of God. Witness the 7.1 in SF in 89 that pancaked double decker elevated highways in Oakland.

    In contrast, things like the LA or 60s riots are the direct result of angry victim ideology created by the elites in academia, the media and government that encourages and justifies outrageous mob behavior.

    Without such elite indoctrination and encouragement, only a handful of sociopaths would be dancing while smashing a cinder block on the head of man prostrate before them. It's just not in the nature of most people (of any color) to harm strangers for no reason or personal gain.

    Unfortunately, angry victim tribalism provide the religious basis the everyman needs for acting like a sociopath in civilized society.

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  5. "Discretionary looting". Classic.

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  6. Why does the media report "fears" rather than facts"? I thought it could happen, but its irresponsible to repeat the story over and over again.

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  7. "Haitians have behaved better than the press has expected. "

    Throwing rocks at aid workers? Setting up road blocks - and demanding payment from aid convoys - in order to protest the slowness of aid? Hospitals being evacuated of doctors because of security concerns and nearby riots? Aid workers unable to deliver aid because it is unsafe? WTF are you smoking man?

    The media is covering it up, just like they covered it up in New Orleans. Y' know, it's not like the whole island was devastated, only a small part of it (albeit with the biggest city). The rest of the country it is business as usual and they're not even bothering to help their own countrymen.

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  8. A little off-topic, but not by much:

    Now the French Must Prove They're French
    By Bruce Crumley / Paris
    Mon Jan 18, 4:55 am ET
    news.yahoo.com/s/time/

    ...Why is this happening? For years, applicants for new passports and ID cards relied on their expiring documents to prove their identities and French nationality. But in the mid-1990s, the country started strengthening the verification requirements on suspicions that significant numbers of foreigners had made bogus claims of citizenship to obtain French passports. In the past few years, the rules have become even more stringent. According to the Justice Ministry, about 18,000 people, or 12% of all those who tried to renew their passports or ID cards, were rebuffed in 2007 because they didn't have irrefutable proof of nationality - up from 8,000 people, or 5%, in 2002...

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  9. Edger Hoover1/18/10, 8:28 AM

    Happy MLK Day Steve! How are you celebrating today?

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  10. I vividly recall San Francisco KCBS radio news anchors talking to LA reporters the afternoon of April 29, 1992. The LA reporters were told the protests\riots would begin once the verdict was turned in and network news replayed the footage of King being beaten over and over again the days leading up to that afternoon.

    News reporters expectations of the riots were palpable as news crews circulated through blacks neighborhoods. The unasked question, "Why aren't they rioting? was clearly expected from reporters by the listening audience.

    The riot was obviously media instigated. I only wish I had had the foresight to record the radio news reports that afternoon.

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  11. I noticed that there were different approaches being taken to the Haiti affair by segments of the media early on, by the second day. I speak only of radio, not TV. I have no idea how TV is handling things.

    There was the NPR, pity, pity, pity stories. There was the WBAI approach that offered the inevitable faulting of the U.S. as responsible for Haiti's lack of preparedness, since we're responsible for the loss of the savior Aristide. And then there was what I call the ABC-CBS approach, which focused, right from the jump, on the scariness of violent gangs who would set upon the hapless population. I thought this was absurd, even when talking of Haiti, since thugs, too, are in shock and some of them are likely to be under rubble.

    When newsmen, who had been on the ground in Haiti long before the earthquake, would be questioned by these idiot reporters about violence, they unanimously said that they had seen no signs of this, yet the ABC-CBS types just kept leading their stories with this theme anyway. Let's face it, it's kinkier and more fun to hear about dog-eating-dog stores, than hearing about cooperation during a crisis.

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  12. "the lack of stuff worth stealing, and the threat of lynch law in the streets (enforced by local gangs) have salutary effects"


    Do they even have Walmarts to loot down there? I know there probably aren't any high-end shopping areas.


    One of the features of Google-street-view is that you can literally see an area for yourself. Ive noticed Google did NOT send its cars into some of the world's more notorious ghettos. I wished that they would have, people need to see them for educational purposes.

    We need the eyes of the enlightened to be set on the life of the underclasses (sister is a prostitute, brother is a gang member, daddy is long-gone, momma is juggling men, nobody graduated high-school, and mommy and sis are pregnant again) so that our elite can be disabused of any romantic illusions instilled within them by their (mis)educations.

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  13. I think violence will become more likely as the shock wears off. Hopefully whoever is in charge of the security situation can get enough troops on the ground in time to effectively stamp out any unrest.

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  14. According to the wiki article for IQ and Global Inequality the people of Haiti have an estimated IQ of 67.

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  15. HAITI EXPOSES WESTERN STUPIDITY OOOPS IDEALISM Chris Brand

    As much-indebted and newly (12 i) earthquake-ravaged Haiti, IQ <72 and 100%-believing in voodoo, a Black republic since its 1804 rebellion against French rule, sought multi-billion dollar help from the rest of the world, the West showed its ignorance of the problems of African peoples by despatching vast quantities of aid (which would be promptly seized by Haitian criminals) and failing to issue such elementary instructions as ‘Men: clear crucial rubble from roads and extricate all viable survivors. Women: form human chains to bring water. Adolescents: bury the dead. Looters: you will be shot on sight by GIs. Everyone: rice is being airlifted to you, but there will be no other food till your tasks are completed.’

    Thus, instead of busy scenes of essential activity, TV reportage showed festering bodies lying in the streets, people screaming for water, and young Black men armed with machetes prowling through mounds of dead bodies seeking jewellery. Seldom had the delusions of the multiculti West been so dramatically exposed...


    Fox News observed (14 i): “Haiti has gotten more [charitable] funds than just about any other nation but that has not been enough.”

    The UN’s World Food Programme said that its warehouses in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince had been looted {as had predictably happened to many supermarkets in the absence of helicoptered American grunts} and that it would have to restock in order to provide urgent food aid for the two million people affected by the deadly earthquake, thought to have killed 100,000 thousand Haitians (Daily Telegraph, 15 i).

    "Our biggest problem is insecurity," Delfin Antonio Rodriguez, the rescue commander from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, told AFP news agency, 15 i. "Yesterday they tried to hijack some of our trucks. Today we were barely able to work in some places because of that." Piles of dead bodies and rocks were being used to block roads so that aid convoys – if they ever made it out of the airport – could be hijacked.

    Faced with the disaster, the incompetent US President Obarmy, rather than take the decisive military action necessary, despatched a mere 6,000 troops (mainly in boats and fewer in number than the 9,000 UN peacekeeping troops who had already made no mark at all), said he would tolerate all Haiti’s 100K illegal migrants in the USA for eighteen months and announced he would call a leisurely shindig ooops ‘conference’ of countries in the Americas to discuss how to unload the maximum White guilt money into the pockets of Haiti’s...

    Britain, too, preferred issuing promises of cash to providing the armed men, helicopters, leafletting and organization that were immediately necessary to help the Haitian Blacks to help themselves: Pa Broon offered £6M of taxpayers’ dosh, and idealistic ignoracist Brits volunteered a further £2M within 36 hours of phone lines opening.

    ...The Washington Times located the blame for Haiti more precisely (15 i): “Denis Paradis, parliamentary secretary for the Canadian foreign affairs minister, said after a visit to Haiti in 2001: "If the Canadians treated their animals the way the Haitian authorities treat their citizens, they would be put in prison."”

    Haiti’s problems were worsened by the complete destruction of Port-au-Prince's main prison, where almost all of the 4,000 seriously criminal inmates survived the earthquake and were roaming the streets. Rescuers were told to stop work when it got dark because of fears they would be attacked.

    By 17 i, the Times reported looting and gunfights in Port-au-Prince as “widespread.”

    http://gfactor.blogspot.com/

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  16. Chief Seattle1/18/10, 12:01 PM

    One thing I've noticed about the coverage is that very few of the photo captions list names. So I get the strong impression that whatever version of creole the locals speak, it's unintelligible to Western Journalists. That may explain the boilerplate reporting as well - if you can't talk to the locals you're stuck interviewing the limited number of aid workers and educated locals working for the government.

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  17. Yes I too was surprised by all the mainstream media stories anticipating violence and then being surprised by the lack of violence.

    The answer - racial prejudice! Racial prejudice created by years of living in denial about racial differences.

    Most readers of this blog became accustomed years ago to the idea that blacks have lower IQs. Similarly they are familiar with the notion that blacks have a violent crime rate about six times that of whites. We know these things to be true and we discuss the implications on this blog.

    But the mainstream media pretends not only that these facts are not true but also that they have never even considered that they could be true. They are lying.

    When there is civil unrest among a black population people who have accepted HBD expect lower levels of organization. But people who have been denying HBD all along seem to be subject to wild fears.

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  18. Harry Baldwin1/18/10, 1:30 PM

    There was an odd scene shown on Anderson Cooper's show the other night. A truck was distributing foil-wrapped high energy biscuits to a crowd. Suddenly, a man in the crowd began shouting "The biscuits are bad! The biscuits are bad!" and the people began tossing them on the ground where they were trampled underfoot.

    Apparently, the biscuits were marked with a date of manufacture, November 2008, and an expiration date, November 2010. The shouting man mistook the manufacturing date for the expiration date and created a panic.

    The scene was odd to me because, if I were starving, I would not throw away food that had passed its expiration date unless it was moldy or showed some other sign that it shouldn't be eaten. To be given food by a relief agency and almost immediately decide it is dangerous to eat indicates a remarkable level of distrust. Did these people assume it was just as likely that an agency would be sent to poison them as to feed them? How could one man have enough credibility to persuade a crowd of his suspicions unless that level of social distrust was rampant?

    Reporting the incident, Cooper seemed to find it exasperating but drew no inferences from it.

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  19. I think this is a pretty good take; lynch mobs and self-policing would be the norm for a population that is both homogeneous and unhampered by liberalism.

    Also, are Haitians different from African-Americans? I think they are on both a cultural and biological level. My own observations and those of others who get to rub shoulders with both communities here in America is yes. Haitians are to African-Americans what the Swedes are to the Irish.

    An anecdote. My sister's manager at the chain restaurant she works at is a Haitian man. She had met his wife and newborn baby a few months ago; the wife decided to go back to Haiti where their families and support system were. The day after the earthquake struck, this man got a call, while at work, telling him that both his wife and child had perished along with his parents as well as other family members. My sister said he hung up the phone and went and sat in an empty booth and stayed in a catatonic state for a couple of hours. The owner came and drove him home as he was in shock and could not drive himself. My sister and many others offered condolences and all he could do was nod his head.
    When she told me about this later, I half expected to hear her say, "He went ballistic". When it was the opposite, I admonished myself for this error and thought, "Of course, he's Haitian". I'm not making a judgement about the way to grieve, but pointing out that the two groups are different.

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  20. Why don't we allow some Haitians to immigrate to the USA as a way to help Haiti?

    I think the easiest way to help Haitians is to allow some of the now homeless (especially the children) to immigrate here.

    It is a hell of a lot easier than flying food, water, medical supplies, troops, etc. down to Haiti.

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  21. If it is a raw survival situation and if , say, with a national IQ of 72, you have 80% of the populaton operating subnormal and a majority of it within the range of mental retardation,IF the top 15%--dull normals on our Bell Curve--have a "fighting chance" to survive based on emergency alliances and cooperation within their own strata, how in raw reality can these less unfortunate Haitians be expected to do otherwise than either (a) disregard the "deadweight" of the lower part of the populaton or (b) actually disposses it to give themselves better odds of surviving. To speak of lawlessness in the context of a civil government Haiti has not really ever attained is an odd distraction from obedience to a natural law of survival. The whole thing has "an IQ-shaped vacuum" at its heart but it doesn't require faith to sense this---just facts and reason and a personal addiction to telling the truth.

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  22. The scene was odd to me because, if I were starving, I would not throw away food that had passed its expiration date unless it was moldy or showed some other sign that it shouldn't be eaten.

    If you were really starving to death, then you'd eat it even if it were covered in mold.

    Heck, you'd eat it even if it were covered in maggots [apparently maggots and other insects/invertebrates - such as lice and spiders and cockroaches - are excellent sources of protein for people who are starving to death in prison camps].

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  23. Why don't you adopt some Haitian orphans, Truth?

    I just heard that there are moves afoot to foster thousands of Haitian orphans in the US. Just what America needs! Social services in Florida are agreeable apparently.

    I wonder what kind of families are going to be doing the fostering?

    'Fostered' hmmmm. Wonder how many of those children would go back home?

    Perhaps a cheaper option would be to pay some other Caibbean islands to take them, ones with demographics more like Haiti. How about Cuba, they could use the cash.

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  24. Captain Jack Aubrey1/18/10, 6:12 PM

    How could one man have enough credibility to persuade a crowd of his suspicions unless that level of social distrust was rampant?

    Odd that they trusted the stranger telling them not to trust the aid workers.

    The biscuits are bad!" and the people began tossing them on the ground where they were trampled underfoot.

    Solution for aid worker: take some of the biscuits you're distributing and conspicuously eat them yourself. Wonder if/how they solved that problem.

    I think the easiest way to help Haitians is to allow some of the now homeless (especially the children) to immigrate here. It is a hell of a lot easier than flying food, water, medical supplies, troops, etc. down to Haiti.

    Actually, no. Aid goes a lot farther in a poor country than in a rich country. This country has to rebuild, whether its children are there or not. Bringing children here will only strengthen the attitude that emigration (legal or otherwise) is the proper way to save your family.

    And personally I am tired of every real or alleged international disaster being used as an excuse to bring more foreigners here, now to the tune of about 2 million per year.

    If you were really starving to death, then you'd eat it even if it were covered in mold.

    These people are hungry, not starving.

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  25. "And personally I am tired of every real or alleged international disaster being used as an excuse to bring more foreigners here, now to the tune of about 2 million per year."

    Oh, I bet you would be all for bringing orphans into the USA if they were white orphans from a disaster area in, let's say, Eastern Europe.

    But, since they are black...well, let's just let those little bastards fend for themselves on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

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  26. "Truth said...

    Why don't we allow some Haitians to immigrate to the USA as a way to help Haiti?"

    Why don't we encourage you to emigrate to Haiti? As a bullshit artist, you'll have a much wider canvas to work with there.

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  27. "Truth said...

    Oh, I bet you would be all for bringing orphans into the USA if they were white orphans from a disaster area in, let's say, Eastern Europe."

    And why not? Which country is better? Ukraine or Haiti? I'd much rather have people from the Ukraine emrigrating here than Haitians. Callous? You bet it's callous. Don't like it? Screw you - who cares what you think.

    Whites are beginning to figure out that we should want what's good for OUR people, not what's good for YOURS.

    1965 is over and done with. Deal with it.

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  28. I vividly recall San Francisco KCBS radio news anchors talking to LA reporters the afternoon of April 29, 1992. The LA reporters were told the protests\riots would begin once the verdict was turned in and network news replayed the footage of King being beaten over and over again the days leading up to that afternoon.

    News reporters expectations of the riots were palpable as news crews circulated through blacks neighborhoods. The unasked question, "Why aren't they rioting? was clearly expected from reporters by the listening audience.

    The riot was obviously media instigated. I only wish I had had the foresight to record the radio news reports that afternoon.


    Well *I* vividly remember being IN SF in 1992, and I vividly remember the police cordoning off whole blocks in the Mission, doing sweeps, and taking everybody to Santa Rita. It happened to someone I knew; he was held overnight. There was a curfew in force in the whole city. That's a lot of police manhours for "media instigation."

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  29. Just a lot of ignorant posters. Haiti has suffered because the island nation was quarantined from international capital because they freed themselves from savage French slavery through force of arms.

    A lot of poster are just foolishly chattering on about IQ scores--which are mainly bogus qualifiers of innate cognitive skills. LOL, if Haitians were that dumb then hwo could they defeated Napoleon's armies--all things being equal.

    And there are a lot of silly comments about the Dominican Republic. What is known for other prostitutes and comfort girls for the likes of genuine oafs like Rush Limbaugh.

    In fact, in terms of literature ouput and artwork Haiti by far outdoes the DR. Just google and you will see.

    It is just pure racial spite that has kept these valiant people down. And imagine the gall of the French(backed by the Tonton Sam) demanding reparations for the wages of lost captive labor.

    These French are just too much. How about their stupidly hypocritical ditty about "Liberte, Fraternite et Egalite".

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  30. "A lot of poster are just foolishly chattering on about IQ scores--which are mainly bogus qualifiers of innate cognitive skills. LOL, if Haitians were that dumb then hwo could they defeated Napoleon's armies--all things being equal."

    I don't know chief, maybe the Haitians won because the French were decimated by Tropical diseases and the British supported the Haitians by attacking French supply convoys.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution

    http://www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1800s/yr00/fhaiti1802.htm

    See the interesting thing about war is that things are rarely equal. Otherwise you get a stalemate like in WWI, and that just tends to lead to another war.

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  31. How did Germans in Dresden behave after the carpet bombing? Or Japanese in Tokyo after the massive firebombing? I could be wrong but their recovery efforts--even in the midst of a world war--were probably better coordinated and sober than anything going on in Haiti.

    Where is the Haitian government? What's with the Haitian people asking 'where is the world?' to come and rescue them? They wanted black rule and independence. Well, live with it. And prepare better for the next disaster.

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  32. "Just a lot of ignorant posters. Haiti has suffered because the island nation was quarantined from international capital because they freed themselves from savage French slavery through force of arms."

    Let me get this straight. Haitians overthrew the yoke of Western imperialism, and that was a good thing. OK. But, then you complain that Western imperialists didn't do business with Haitians, and that was a bad thing. Will you make up your mind? Is Western Imperialism good or bad?

    Well, the whole world is willing to do business with South Africa. Let's see what happens, and what excuse you come up with next.

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  33. MANSA :
    You remind of my older relatives. As i said earlier, haiti has always been poor but it was at one time less poor ( could pretty much feed itself). At that time dominicans were mostly known in haiti for their women who came in to work as prostitutes (tough the enslaving of haitians in dominican plantations was also going on at the time). The problem with foolish old haitians is that they don't realize that times have changed.
    Mansa :
    Read on IQ. Read about it seriously. Understand that IQ is real. IQ is not *everything* but it's real and it matters a lot. Learn and ponder the FACT of low black IQ. Think about the consequences of that. Understand things that were previously mysterious. Try it.
    You will understand, among other things, that the human capital deficit in haiti is the #1 reason we suck and that french hostility is completely secondary. Oh also, stop using the word "ignorant" in that annoying way which means "you say things i don't like". It means "not knowledgeable about a given topic".

    Dahlia :
    Interesting comment. I wonder how much this man's reaction is a function of him being a man of a certain social class in haitian society. Any idea ? I must admit that I don't rub shoulders that much with haitians besides family so a lot of my knowledge is kind of...academic.

    Chris brand's comment was interesting but there's no way in hell brutal methods of control, even if necessary, will be used. The whole world is watching.

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  34. Re Mansa--72 IQ doesn't look like
    chatter when you see the footage
    of how relief supplies are "allocated" by those Haitians grabbing at the boxes with no self-ordering or social sense. The pervasive voodoo systemitized misperception of reality is fully congruent with a national IQ mean in the Mentally Retarded range.

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  35. if Haitians were that dumb then hwo could they defeated Napoleon's armies--all things being equal.

    Thanks for the compliment - "ignorance" - MANSA. They defeated Napoleon in part because Napoleon couldn't get reinforcments to Haiti thanks to the British blockade of France.

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  36. Oh, I bet you would be all for bringing orphans into the USA if they were white orphans from a disaster area in, let's say, Eastern Europe.

    But, since they are black...well, let's just let those little bastards fend for themselves on the streets of Port-au-Prince.



    Well yeah, coz the East-Europeans will most likely grow up to be productive citizens and not gangsters or welfare parasites. But then the only reason you want Haitians in the US is coz they are black. I'm pretty sure you would oppose bringing in say Italians from the recent earthquake disaster in Italy. So who's the racist?

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  37. Senegal is offering take Haitians and give them land. In effect they would be returning to their ancestral homeland.

    I would support the US giving aid money to Senegal to make this happen.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100116/ap_on_re_af/af_senegal_haiti

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  38. A groups of grade 12 students from a small town in British Columbia arrived in Haiti on a long planned mission trip 45 minutes before the earth quake struck. They finally made it back to Canada today, rescued by Canadian armed forces. While there they were robbed of $10,000 they had brought to start a goat farm. I'm not sure if it was before or after they were robbed, but the students pooled their money and bought $2,500 worth of rice and gave it to local people.

    The students speak fondly of the Haitian people they were staying with, despite being robbed. I think they are all just very thankful to be alive and to be back in Canada.


    'Tears and a lot of joy' as B.C. students return from Haitireturn from Haiti

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  39. Well *I* vividly remember being IN SF in 1992, and I vividly remember the police cordoning off whole blocks in the Mission, doing sweeps, and taking everybody to Santa Rita. It happened to someone I knew; he was held overnight. There was a curfew in force in the whole city. That's a lot of police manhours for "media instigation."

    Well luckily for us the Western Addition and Mission didn't burn down that April, much to the frustration of the anarchistic members of 'Food Not Bombs' in 'The City'.

    The curfew was planned by Frank Jordan's administration. He served as the Mayor of San Francisco, California from January 1992 until January 1996. Before becoming mayor, Jordan served as the Chief of the San Francisco Police Department from 1986 until 1990. He joined the force in 1957 and was named Chief of Police by then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1986.

    Care to speculate what would have happened in the Western Addition had Willie Brown been major at that time?

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  40. http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

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  41. Couple of months back an earthquake hit an Italian town. Local services took care of things quickly enough so that there was no time for thumb-sucking outfits like Wapo or NYT to start blaring out horror stories made to paper over the obvious inability of Haitians to organize their state.

    I'm still trying to remember troof or mansa going ape about how the poor Italians were suppressed by Saudi or Jewish or International capital or some shit.

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  42. Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form1/19/10, 8:54 AM

    Hey, MANSA,

    You new here? I don't recognize your handle.

    Welcome!

    We "ignorant posters" here can see you've got a lot to learn. That's okay. We remember being where you are.

    Begin by reading
    The Race FAQ
    http://vdare.com/Sailer/071216_race_faq.htm

    and

    How to Help the Left Half of the Bell Curve
    http://www.isteve.com/How_to_Help_the_Left_Half_of_the_Bell_Curve.htm

    Then read at least 50-100 of Steve's other archived blog posts and articles.

    Enjoy your education!

    (And when you've finished your reading assignment, you'll be better prepared to make intelligent comments, instead of resorting to spewing meaning-deficient lefty-created cliches like "ignorant.")

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  43. "MANSA said...

    LOL, if Haitians were that dumb then hwo could they defeated Napoleon's armies--all things being equal."

    Yellow fever probably killed more french soldiers than the Haitians did.

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  44. "Yellow fever probably killed more french soldiers than the Haitians did."
    No "probably" about it. Disease was so dangerous to European troops stationed to the Caribbean that the British postings there in the 18th and 19th Centuries were often punitive - a way of punishing soldiers who misbehaved in other theaters.

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  45. "Yellow fever probably killed more french soldiers than the Haitians did."
    No "probably" about it. Disease was so dangerous to European troops stationed to the Caribbean that the British postings there in the 18th and 19th Centuries were often punitive - a way of punishing soldiers who misbehaved in other theaters.


    It's also why the West Indies are almost all black now. Lots of Irish and Scots got shipped there too, but they vanished because they couldn't stand the heat. Meanwhile, the opposite happened when slave merchants tried to sell slaves in New England. In the South, meanwhile, whichever race became dominant depended upon the elevation.

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  46. "I'm still trying to remember troof or mansa going ape about how the poor Italians were suppressed by Saudi or Jewish or International capital or some shit."

    You know Doofus, I have no problem arguing white vs. black but let's just keep it to apples vs. oranges huh?

    The L'Aquilla, Italy earthquake was a 6.3 (some say 5.8) richter in a bustling metropolis of 73,000 people. A whopping total of 286 people died in this quake.

    The Haitian quake occoured ground zero in a Metropolitan area of up to 3 million people and was measured at a 7.0. The latest estimates are 200,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless. You put that on an Italian scale and it works out to roughly 1.6 million deaths and TWELVE MILLION homeless Italians.

    Now keep in mind that earthquakes are measured on a logarithmic scale. Ergo a 7.0 earthquake is not 7% more powerful than a 6.3 quake, it is SEVEN TIMES more powerful.

    Glad that I could be of service.

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  47. Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form1/20/10, 7:49 AM

    "Yes, and smallpox killed more Indians than European weapons, so you're saying that without that advantage the Indians would still run America?"

    Who knows? If the Indians were carriers of some contagious disease which Europeans had no resistance to, then likely none of the Mayflower Pilgrims would have survived the winter. More colonists would likely have come. If they, too, and all the colonists after, had been wiped out by disease, then Whites would have likely
    eventually given up coming -- at least until vaccines / antibiotics / public sanitation / mosquito control were developed in Europe. Could be we'd be fighting the Indian Wars right now.

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  48. Truth, you are thinking of the Richter scale which has been phased out of use and was not used to measure the strength of the Haitian earthquake. The old Richter scale used base 10 logarithms and the new one has a different base, so different numbers are separated by more than just a power of ten.

    The new scale is the Moment Magnitude Scale.

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  49. "Yes, and smallpox killed more Indians than European weapons, so you're saying that without that advantage the Indians would still run America?"
    Probably not - but the fact that Native Americans had little resistance to smallpox, measles, and other Old World diseases is arguably the most important factor in the conquest of the New World. The population of the Americas crashed 80%-90% within a century of Columbus; little of that loss can be attributed to direct violence on the part of Europeans. There's only so much conquistadors with swords and matchlocks can do, no matter how mean they are. I'd guess that disease played a greater role in the European conquest of the Americas than it did in the Haitian war of independence.
    Keep in mind that the first verified attempt by Europeans to colonize the Americas was a failure. The main reason the Norse sagas gave was the hostility of the natives.

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  50. Read on IQ. Read about it seriously. Understand that IQ is real. IQ is not *everything* but it's real and it matters a lot.

    If you read about IQ seriously, the very first thing you will discover is that it is not real. It's a social science construct that differs from test to test. Like other personality test results. I'm sure it does correlate with something real in the brain (again, like other personality test results), but what that thing is is not understood.

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  51. "Yellow fever probably killed more french soldiers than the Haitians did."

    Sure, but disease killed more soldiers than fighting, in any European war too. WWII was the first war where battle casualties exceeded disease casualties.

    Of couse the force who had sailed across the Atlantic in cramped quarters would get sick easier, but the Haitians had made that trip and paid their dues for it earlier on. So they were surely right to press their advantage.

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