Schoolgirl looter shot in Haiti

I have more sympathy for the guy arrested in Haiti for stealing one carton of Milk he needed.

there will be many western reputable companies that will make money from this disaster.
there will be many rich people who will get richer on the back of this.
all amounts to the same crime.
this girls crime was her colour and her poverty and the natural disaster that happened around her.

What's her colour got to do with it? What colour do you think the police are in Haiti?

Haiti police are white shirts and navu blue trousers imo

Don't know what to say, sickening, very sad.

she stole a few photos.
i dont know the girl or anything about her , i will surmise however that in normal circumstances she would never dream of doing anything like theft. she works hard in school and tries through education to better herself and provide for her future family, she has been demeaned to theft through desperation.
she has paid the highest price.
yet the white man will benefit from the disaster , that's the colour angle i refer to.
governments that initially helped will make financially from this, perhaps a uk construction firm offered a deal to rebuild there etc.
as far as im concerned the governments and politicians and money men who firstly refuse to offer aid and the those who look upon this as an avenue for future money should be shot for their crimes.
maybe im a bit far out here.
but the poverty that exists there now and in most of the world wouldnt be such of not for the exploitation of the white man.

the exploitation of the white man

Of?

Following the arrival of Europeans, Haiti's indigenous population suffered near-extinction, in possibly the worst case of depopulation in the Americas.

back to the 1st recorded occupation of haiti.
columbus discovers it and wipes out the indigenous people.

would be a case there for the white man perhaps being a bit ignorant and selfish when he wipes out an entire population?

or maybe the slavery a couple of centuries later?

Fair enough stevie_p, I apologise for the insult, but urge you not to assimilate a few paragraphs from Wiki and proffer it as an example of exploitation World wide, and what about Papa doc??

Yes, but they do it so well, look at Terry Thomas.

Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA
Why the Blood Is on Our Hands

by Ted Rall
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.

How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince.

"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."

When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long. Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital--or doctor to treat you once you get there.

Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.

So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

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. 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. 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. Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoutes paramilitary goon squads murdered at least 30,000 Haitians and drove educated people to flee into exile. But think of the cup as half-full: fewer people in the population means fewer people competing for the same jobs!

Upon Papa Doc's death in 1971, the torch passed to his even more dissolute 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S., cool to Papa Doc in his later years, quickly warmed back up to his kleptomaniacal playboy heir. As the U.S. poured in arms and trained his army as a supposed anti-communist bulwark against Castro's Cuba, Baby Doc stole an estimated $300 to $800 million from the national treasury, according to Transparency International. The money was placed in personal accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Under U.S. influence, Baby Doc virtually eliminated import tariffs for U.S. goods. Soon Haiti was awash predatory agricultural imports dumped by American firms. Domestic rice farmers went bankrupt. A nation that had been agriculturally self-sustaining collapsed. Farms were abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of farmers migrated to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince.

The Duvalier era, 29 years in all, came to an end in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. forces to whisk Baby Doc to exile in France, saving him from a popular uprising.

Once again, Haitians should thank Americans. Duvalierism was "tough love." Forcing Haitians to make do without their national treasury was our nice way or encouraging them to work harder, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Or, in this case, flipflops.
Anyway.

The U.S. has been all about tough love ever since. We twice deposed the populist and popular democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The second time, in 2004, we even gave him a free flight to the Central African Republic! (He says the CIA kidnapped him, but whatever.) Hey, he needed a rest. And it was kind of us to support a new government formed by former Tonton Macoutes.

Yet, despite everything we've done for Haiti, they're still a fourth-world failed state on a fault line.

And still, we haven't given up. American companies like Disney generously pay wages to their sweatshop workers of 28 cents an hour.

What more do these ingrates want?

how did you know she tried hard at school to better herself and was not an inveterate shoplifter?

One of the best books I have read is the one about the black slave who
did a "Spartacus" and raised the slaves up to rebel up against their French
oppressors .The only succesful Slave revolt in History .

Correct again BillKiller, they called their Tonton Macoute the B Specials!!

ohh begorrah , open up yer purse there Mrs Murphy and take out your last 2 coppers to be sure the Father is here with his hand out again ...

Her father Osam, sister Samantha and brother Jeff had watched as she was felled by a bullet in the ruins of Marthely Seiee Street. There was nothing they could do.

They could have said ' Don't nick that stuff or you'll be shot.'

For stevie_P a taster of what you don't know, from ....To Hell or Barbados - The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland

O, butt out. please I was addressing Stevie_P

Your point would be better made if you avoided referencing revolting sites like Stormfront.

Remember, I'm a wishy washy liberal.

Yeah, RUN!