2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: WHOA!!! Harper's -- Clintons’ charitable enterprise is a vehicle to launder money and enrich friends [View all]Divernan
(15,480 posts)Haiti's 2010 earthquake/floods/mudslides are a prime example: The 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed about 316,000 people and affected about 3 million of Haiti's 9 million residents, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). - hundreds of thousands homeless from mudslides. The Clinton Foundation brokered (for a fee) a deal for a $45 million luxury hotel to provide (2 years down the road) 173 new rooms. That is $260,115.60 per room! What percent of that $45 million did slick Willie grift off the top of that for "facilitating"?
Billy Boy brokers construction of a luxury hotel for corporate bigwigs/"potential investors" who visit to learn how they can exploit dirt cheap labor if they build/lease in the corporate "park" Bill also "facilitates".
Two years after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled Haiti's capital, a deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation will add new lodging for aid workers and other travelers to Port-au-Prince -- in the form of a $45 million hotel.
Caribbean cell phone provider Digicel will own the hotel, which will have 173 new rooms and create 175 new jobs. Marriott Hotels and Resorts will operate the hotel upon completion in 2014. Construction is set to begin in 2012.
Clinton praised the project for creating jobs and attracting visitors in a statement from the William J. Clinton Foundation. "My foundation has worked with both Marriott and Digicel, and encouraged them to form this partnership," the president said.
The Clinton Foundation "visited proposed construction sites with the parties and facilitated introductions to the Haitian government and the Haitian Tourism Association," according to Digicel and Marriott.
Digicel claims to be Haiti's largest private investor and cell phone provider and touts its charitable contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Then check out the industrial park where Clinton's corporate buddies are ripping off local workers:
Clintons' Pet Project for Privatized 'Aid' to Haiti Stealing Workers' Wages (headline)
'This calls into question the sustainability and effectiveness of relying on the garment industry to lead Haiti's reconstruction' (subheadline)
Haiti's Caracol Industrial Parkthe U.S. State Department and Clinton Foundation pet project to deliver aid and reconstruction to earthquake-ravaged Haiti in the form of private investmentis systematically stealing its garment workers' wages, paying them 34 percent less than minimum wage set by federal law, a breaking report from the Worker Rights Consortium reveals.
Critics charge that poverty wages illustrate the deep flaws with corporate models of so-called aid. "The failure of the Caracol Industrial Park to comply with minimum wage laws is a stain on the U.S.'s post-earthquake investments in Haiti and calls into question the sustainability and effectiveness of relying on the garment industry to lead Haiti's reconstruction," said Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in an interview with Common Dreams.
Caracol is just one of five garment factories profiled in this damning report, released publicly on Wednesday, which finds that "the majority of Haitian garment workers are being denied nearly a third of the wages they are legally due as a result of the factories theft of their income." This is due to systematic employer cheating on piece-work and overtime, as well as failure to pay employees for hours worked.
WRC charges that the wage theft at these 5 factories is "typical" across the country's garment industry, leading to the suppression of national wages at deep poverty levels. As a result, workers have trouble affording food, shelter, and medical care, the report finds.
Of course the infrastructure projects were built in areas of the island undamaged by the earthquake/floods/landslides.
Awww, but what about those heart-warming pictures of Bill & Chelsea with little girls at a school in some 3rd world African pocket of poverty? Well, see, now those girls will have enough basic education to be literate enough to be the work force for said corporations. Put up a basic health clinic to innoculate them against disease and then teach em birth control so they won't stop working because they're pregnant. Gotta have a dependable source of slave-labor.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/28/world/americas/haiti-hotel-clinton/index.html
There's tons more scandals in Haiti - I'm just giving you the tip of the iceberg here. And that is only ONE of the countries Bill is exploiting under the pretense of philanthropy.
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