There is no claim or evidence that Haitian immigrants in Ohio ate their white neighbors’ pets, a false rumor spread by presidential candidate Donald Trump and supported by the entire media network promoting the former president’s campaign. There is a possibility of losing your pet within Haiti. According to the World Food Program’s latest report, 5.4 million people struggle to feed themselves and their families every day, making them the most people facing severe food insecurity amid the global crisis. This accounts for a high proportion. Two million of these people face extreme food insecurity, malnutrition and disease.
Haiti is in turmoil and subject to armed violence, resulting in 4,789 murders and 2,490 kidnappings so far this year. There are no weapons or ammunition factories on the island, so all weapons available to these gangs come from the United States, especially Florida. International organizations have called on the United States to stop this trafficking, but nothing appears to be being done, at least not effectively. Thus, although Haitian immigrants living in the United States do not eat their neighbors’ pets, some American arms dealers are flooding Haiti with thousands of guns and automatic weapons, which can lead to thousands of people eating their neighbors’ pets instead of their pets. People are being killed person by person.
Relations between the United States and Haiti have always been unhappy. In 2010, former US President Bill Clinton took an unusual step. He apologized for forcing Haiti to lower tariffs on imported American rice that received subsidies from the U.S. government and destroyed domestic production. “It may have been good for some rice farmers in Arkansas, but it didn’t work out. It was a mistake.” So it was. Haiti has lost the ability to produce one of its most important crops to feed its people. It was simply because the President of the United States wanted to help Arkansas farmers get rid of their surplus. “I have to live with the consequences of what I did,” Bill Clinton said with regret, but the millions of people he put into misery have lived with the consequences. Most of them were Haitians. The same Clinton helped restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a politician and cleric who had been ousted from power by a military coup, to the democratic office of Haiti’s president. Clinton knew this country well. When he married Hillary Rodham in 1975 (at the time, the son of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was in power), he spent part of his honeymoon there. But nothing prevented him from destroying its agricultural capabilities in one fell swoop.
Things quickly went very wrong for the United States. In 1914, Washington sent a gunboat filled with Marines solely to steal money from the National Bank of Haiti. Eight Marines broke into the bank’s headquarters, stole gold worth $500,000 at the time, returned to the United States, and deposited the gold at National City Bank. The National Bank of Haiti was owned by American shareholders, so when they needed money they simply turned to the gunboats. Relations between Haiti and France have not deteriorated either. As the BBC reports, 220 years ago Haiti became the first independent nation in Latin America, the world’s oldest black republic, and the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. All of this was accomplished after the only successful slave revolt in human history. However, in order for Haiti to be granted independence, it had to pay France 150 million francs (approximately $21 billion in today’s dollars) in compensation for lost property (and slaves!). A unique case where a colonized person does not receive compensation, but rather the opposite. One might think that the United Nations and the international community would compensate for such failures. However, the bloody dictator Duvalier Sr. remained in power for 14 years until his death in 1971, unmolested, as everyone seemed to be pleased with his reign of terror against communism in the Caribbean. continued to remain in the position. After the 2010 earthquake, the United Nations tried to help the country rebuild, but it got off to a very wrong start. The Blue Helmets caused a severe cholera epidemic and were accused of rape and abuse.
So, in retrospect, it wasn’t the Haitians who ate someone’s pet, it was everyone else who ate their resources.
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