As for Haiti, the historical precedent is this: in the late 1800s the British refused to help millions of starving Indians during a horrible famine, because to do so would interfere with the "free market".  Or look at Darfur and Chinese petroleum contracts: Empires are pretty much sociopathological.

The only way to reign back in the imperial tendencies of the U.S. power elite is to slash the military budget, by at least 80%.  Laurence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, has called for 50% cuts, which is the most radical I've heard of from a respected source.

Empires don't think about the ecological crises that they cause (read Clive Pontig's "A new green history of theh world").  And the American one won't care either.  (putting up a post about american foreign policy for me is like waving chocolate chip cookies in front of my children).

http://adbusters.org/media/flash/hope_and_memory/flash.ht ...

When pressed by Bill Maher on his show, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said that they were calling for a military budget of $400 billion, about a $150 billion cut.

The current (non-Iraq war) military budget was always justified as a way to counter the Soviets.  Now here's an interesting fact: The Soviet Union no longer exists.  So -- we don't need the Cold War budget...er...or is that really an empire-based budget?

And ids, a little money goes a long way in very poor countries.  Which is why it can be to an empire's advantage to keep the country poor -- one of the main reasons to be so "anti-government", as Gar brought up in the post, is to keep the country poor, as the government has usually been the main instrument used by a society to develop its economy (in conjunction with the "market", usually).

Why did Aristide agree to give so much for so little? Because every day he was out of office the Haitian military trained, and long funded by the U.S. was out murdering Haitians, many of them children. So the lever the U.S. used to force him to sign was that if he didn't we would  Haitian children continue to be murdered.

So once the Haitian market was opened there was no way Haitian farmers could compete with U.S. subsidized ones. Part of this was U.S. agricultural subsidies. Part of it was simple economy of scale and access to capital. At any rate, the entire Haitain rice industry was soon out of business, and Haitian went from importing 10% of its rice to importing nearly 100% of its rice. So when various factors (including but not limited to biofuels and climate chaos) drove grain prices up worldwide, Haiti no longer had a rice industry.

It is not just biofuels, increased meat demand, and climate chaos that is causing Haitian starvation. Rich nation political and economic power grabs play a large role as well.

Although the long term solution is political, immediately  Oxfam is one of the more trustworthy groups taking immediate action:

https://donate.oxfamamerica.org/02/donate_090707

By the way, for a more extensive analysis of food and empire, there's an interesting article here.

They knew that France and Britain would try to play one state off the other, in order to keep the states divided.  "divide and conquer" has been a basic imperial strategy for thousands of years, unfortunately.

is someone working on it?

Her own account is of an attack on a Catholic high school, Jean XXIII, run by priests of the Montfortain order; the school is adjacent to her own community's house, and she was a witness:

<<
On Thursday morning the students from the public high school led a demonstration about rising food prices but they came to Jean XXIII which was in session with over 500 high school students and three classes of Pre-K and demanded that the students join the demonstration.  The demonstrators broke the front gate of the school and hurled rocks at the students and staff.  A group went to the generator building and set fires to the generator and stole the battery.  (The students need the generator for internet access and their computer courses.)

[A paragraph about the sisters' garden being trampled by rock-wielding students trying to enter the high school from the back.  Then:]

At the school a number of students were hit with rocks, the women who prepare lunch were hit by rocks.  (Fr. Nesly scraps together enough food so that each day two classes have food.)  The expensive lights on the basketball court were demolished.  The court/stadium serves not just the school but the town and often hosts teams from Gonaives, Cap-Haitien and Port de Paix.

Fr. Nesly tried the best he could, while rocks were coming down around him, to protect and calm his students.  He never threw a rock at those pelting them.  But this is the really terrible part.  The public school people are saying it was all Fr. Nesly's fault because he wouldn't let the students out and that the public school had a duty to give an example of how to make their voices heard by the government.

What several people told us that afternoon and afterwards is that the attack on Jean XXIII had been planned and there were adults involved and that at the base of it was jealousy.  Fr. Nesly is very discouraged by what happened to his students and staff, the destruction of school property after he has received so many donations to make a fitting atmosphere for the students for academic excellence and sports -- which is a wonderful outlet for the teens since they don't have movies, home computers, pizza shops, cars, etc.  Most students don't have electricity in their homes!

When the police finally came (another story [!]), the riot ended.  Fr. Nesly left town Thursday afternoon.  The Jean XXIII students are very much behind Fr. Nesly and are very much afraid he will not return.

At our house after things seemed to calm down, we were in our dining room and Christie noticed flames.  Someone or more had set fire to our covering of leaves in the parish garden behind the high school.  Our community poured water and stamped out the fires.

I work with Fr. Nesly at the Formation Center in Grepin where we have a large tree nursery, gardens, meeting and sleeping space for workshops and the Jean-Marie Vincent Mini-Forest nearby ...

>>

In response to Shmooth's hopeful suggestion, this woman and her colleagues are evidently doing work in gardening, orchards and forest conservation.  How extensive it is, and how many other groups are doing similar work in Haiti, and how effective their activities have been, are all unknown.  But at least the idea, that these are good things to do, are out there.

But a principal lesson of her story is that in times like these, an impoverished society in its frustration can destroy even the few good things that they have.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I found them at the American Forest website; it appears they partnered with Operation Greenleaves, through their Global Releaf program, in 2005.