[sllib]

I just spent six months working on the new US embassy in Haiti. The Haitian people are good people but they have been raped and pillaged by their own leaders and the French. The soil has been exhausted by centuries of farming with little concern for rebuilding. The president, himself a farmer, can't rebuild without a massive influx of money for fertilizer and I don't see that coming soon. The "dirt cookies" seen on the news were, at one time, a nutritional supplement for pregnant women but have now become a staple for people too poor to afford rice. The people who do have money there are either tied to the drug trade or old colonials who will probably leave when the going gets tough enough. Without a miracle, I don't see much future for Haiti.