Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?

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Did the mining of Haiti's riches since 2004 GW Bush regime change cause the earthquake? Listen to Ezili Dantò on mining Haiti's riches and concern for environmental degradation by the foreign companies. (Read the transcript with reference links.)

"The idea that human activity can cause seismic activity is widely accepted in the scientific community ...the connection between oil production and earthquakes dates back to at least the 1920s, when geologists in South Texas noted faulting near the Goose Creek oil field...A 1967 human-triggered earthquake in western India linked to the Koyna Dam registered a 7.0 earthquake."

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Since the earthquake, I've had occasion to ponder, like many others, about what may have caused this heretofore-unknown natural disaster in Haiti? Was it a natural occurrence or man-made? Haiti has not had an earthquake in 270 years. Why now? The nation of Haiti is only 206 years old, so Haitians have no experience with earthquakes whatsoever. Did not know that for an earthquake you run away from the house. So, when the trembling started they did the worst possible thing - ran into their houses as they are used to, for protection, with hurricanes. The houses all collapsed on them.

The devastation is heartwrenching. 200,000 dead in the capital alone, devastation in the South also, in Leogane, Les Cayes, Jacmel. In Port Au Prince everything collapsed, 400,000 to be relocated, millions homeless, untold numbers with amputated limbs, hundreds of thousands right now dying without access to water, food, shelter and medical treatment.

Since the 2004 Bush regime change, Ezili's HLLN has been concerned about the digging up of Haiti without any regards to environmental degradation.

In an April 29, 2009 interview with Chris Scott of CKUT (90.3 FM) in Montreal, entitled Haiti's Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti, I expressed concerned that under the UN occupation which made the Haitian goverment a puppet government, Haitian lives and welfare were not priorities just corporate exploitation of Haiti's resources and cheap labor. Haiti's emergency civil preparedness agency was destroyed during the Bush regime change and never rebuilt. (See, Earthquake in Haiti: Under Aristide, Haitians were prepared for disaster.) We've had severe hurricanes in 2004, 2005 and then the four back-to-back hurricanes of 2008. The people's living conditions has not improved in the 6-years the U.S., France and Canada have controlled Haiti through the U.N. proxy occupation. In fact, with clorox hunger, food riots, no money to send children to school, high food and fuel prices, no development, things had gotten much worse since the coup against President Aristide. The people were simply slowly dying as UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton waxed on about the "good business climate" in Haiti prior to the earthquake. They died and there was no rebuilding of the institutions the Bush coup d'etat had helped destroy. But there were 9,000 UN troops in Haiti -- doing what?

In the Mining Haiti's Riches interview, I recount how there were areas in Haiti hidden behind UN guns, fenced off where Haitians knew nothing about what these soldiers were doing.
Then the earthquake hit. What remains is unimaginable. The rescue and recovery process was and is inhumane. The relief from pain and hunger is still not in place. And, as I think about the process of rebuilding, I started checking whether digging for gold, iridium, copper, uranium, coal, marble, diamonds, oil and gas could trigger an earthquake. And the answer I found sent chills up my spine. Made me sick to my stomach. Can this really be?

From what I've read, drilling deep into the earth, digging and mining may trigger earthquakes.
And, drilling either for fossil fuels or renewable energy exploration may cause earthquakes. Both geophysicists and oilmen agree that natural-gas drilling trigger earthquakes. One oilman stated that "there is not the slightest doubt" that gas production caused the temblors." (See, At Fault: Does Drilling Cause Earthquakes?).

A New York Times report confirmed drilling for oil sets off earthquakes and detailed how a drilling project near San Francisco and a similar project in Basel, Switzerland were shut down over concerns they triggered damaging earthquakes. Both diggings involved fracturing hard rock more than two miles deep.

...large earthquakes tend to originate at great depths, breaking rock that far down carries more serious risk, seismologists say. Seismologists have long known that human activities can trigger quakes, but they say the science is not developed enough to say for certain what will or will not set off a major temblor. (Geothermal energy and Quake Threat Leads Swiss to Close Geothermal Project.)

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Haitians have been under occupation by the US through the proxy UN mission since the 2004 Bush regime change/coup d'etat.

Before the earthquake, Rene Preval, the president of Haiti answered to Washington not the people of Haiti. I've written extensively about this and that information is readily available. The mining in Haiti and the digging up of Haiti was going on without any oversight. (See, Recommended HLLN Links (Energy and Mining in Haiti): The wealthy, powerful and well-armed are robbing the Haitian people blind and, Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation and Oil in Haiti by Dr. Georges Michel; See also, Fayed's Forgotten Years: The Conman, The Dictator and the CIA Files.)

Since the earthquake hit, it's been clear that the power-brokers who control the US military, the free marketeers, are exploiting this Haiti earthquake shock, when the Haitian people are hurt, in pain, disorientated and horrifically more defenseless than usual, to impose their privatization and further entrench their corporate domination in Haiti. (Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again.)

I know some folks are saying there are sophisticated equipment ( HAARP and Tesla) that are used to deliberately set off weather anomalies such as earthquakes, but I'm wondering whether the drilling, possibly for oil and gas in Haiti behind the UN guns - offshore at the Gulf of La Gonave and at the Island of La Gonave and around the bay of Port-au-Prince fairly near the epicenter of the earthquake - exacerbated the fault line in Haiti, causing the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake as an unattended consequence? (At Fault: Does Drilling Cause Earthquakes? See also, the map showing where the oil sites of Haiti are located.)

Scientists Ginette and Daniel Mathurin say that Haiti is filled with hydrocarbons and that they have identified 20 oil sites in Haiti. Five of them are considered of great importance by specialists and politicians. There's oil in Haiti's Central Plateau, including the region of Thomonde, the plain of the cul-de-sac and the bay of Port-au-Prince, they say. In fact, Daniel Mathurin says that "the oil reserves of Haiti are more important than those of Venezuela. An olympic pool compared to a glass of water that is the comparison to illustrate the importance of Haitian oil compared with those of Venezuela," he explains...The specialists contend that the government of Jean Claude Duvalier had verified the existence of a major oil field in the Bay of Port-au-Prince shortly before his downfall. (See, Haiti is full of oil say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin: Haiti has larger oil reserves than Venezuela says scientists, [French Original], Radio Metropole, Jan 28, 2008.)

And if, as the oilman said, there's not the "slightest doubt natural-gas drilling causes earthquakes" and there was drilling in addition to the mining of gold, copper, coal, uranium and iridium, stealthy going on behind the UN guns, then the question becomes, which of the coup detat countries - US, France, Canada - using the UN proxy occupation to drill for oil, gas and to dig for gold, iridium, marble, granite, et al, helped cause the earthquake?"

Was that the reason for the US delay in getting to the survivors?
Was there more pressing concerns of cover-up to attend to, before the modern world and the all-seeing cameras headed to Haiti, got to Haiti? What were the thousands upon thousands of UN soldiers, from the 9,000 in Haiti, posted outside of Port-au-Prince doing that they did not appear on the scene to help with the rescue? Where were they?

These soldiers get paid and tell all and sundry they are in Haiti to "help" Haitians and have been paid billions of dollars in five years, over $600 million per year for the "help." Where was this help?

We seem to always be "helped" to death while the private sector uses the military to secure profit. Isn't everyone thinking about this? We are watching earthquake survivors die, as the US tells the world that its priority after the earthquake is security. Whose security? (See, Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation; and Haiti is full of oil say Daniel & Ginette Mathurin: Haiti has larger oil reserves than Venezuela says scientists.)

A map showing the mining resources in Haiti shows five oil/gas sites in Haiti. Notice how most of the Haiti oil is located at and around the waters, land, and on the island and shores of the Gulf of La Gonave, Port au Prince where there was drilling before the earthquake? Recently the President of France asked Haiti for a long-term lease to the Island of La Gonave. Moreover, it was at a secret meeting in Ottawa, in 2003, that foreign officials from the OAS, France, Canada and the United States initiated the planning for the military ouster of democratically elected Haiti President, Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Since the regime change, the UN has been warehousing young Haitian men and moving them, through criminalization and indefinite detention in prison for years, out of the area in Site Soley where access to oil deposit are noted on the map below. ( Map of mining resources in Haiti and showing five oil/gas sites in Haiti.)

The idea that human activity can cause seismic activity is widely accepted in the scientific community ...the connection between oil production and earthquakes dates back to at least the 1920s, when geologists in South Texas noted faulting near the Goose Creek oil field...A 1967 human-triggered earthquake in western India linked to the Koyna Dam registered a 7.0 earthquake.

Disaster capitalism is under way. For, it seems clear, since the earthquake, that Haitian life is not as valuable as securing the corporatocracy, foreign life and interest in Haiti's soil and mineral resources. A pharmaceutical company was even excavating a microbe discovered in Haitian soil that would be used to develop a super-antibiotic drug. Up in the North and in the Central Plateau, with the price of gold doubling and fuel skyrocketing in the last five years, the Canadians, US and others were digging deep into the Haitian mountains for gold, copper, granite, chalk, coal, limestone/aggregate quarries and mining Haiti lignite/coal and building power plants and dams to service their greedy excavations. (See, Digging up Haiti.)

No one knows how many Haitian earthquake victims - already exploited, denied the profits from their own country's mineral riches, summarily disenfranchised through regime change and impoverished by horrid Western cruelty - could have lived or been rescued from under the rubble if emergency first responders - airplane loads of them, filled with doctors, field hospitals, water, food, medical supplies, were not turned back and prevented by the US from landing. We know people died unnecessarily and are still dying.

It seems that what the US is doing is securing the land for itself, preferably without the presence of black Haitians. (Travesty in Haiti - False aid, false charity, false orphanages, false benevolence and The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose.)

The land is more valuable than the human beings suffering and dying so horribly. Haiti, with 27,560 sq km of land mass, is the 3rd largest nation in the Caribbean. Haiti is a big country for the Caribbean. In a power-point presentation to attract "smart, optimistic business partners and investors," one of the mining companies currently digging quarries in Haiti, wrote:

Haitian quarries can...
Dominate this industry in northern Caribbean
Provide a springboard to Cuba when timing is right
Most promising quarry areas in Cuba"
"are on SE coast, adjacent to NW Haiti

Haiti is built of...
High-grade limestone, still rising from the Caribbean seafloor
Plus other important rock types
"old African' crustal rock, like Colorado Rockies
later volcanic rocks, basalts and granites
in great demand for US and Caribbean engineering projects

"Remarkably Pure"
Famous American geologist Wendell Woodring, USGS
surveyed Haiti in 1923-24 on foot and with donkeys
wrote most authoritative study to date on geology of Haiti
described certain Haitian limestone as "remarkably pure."
Sent lignite samples to US for testing

Limestone?
Basic industrial commodity
Construction aggregates
Cement production
Industrial and agricultural minerals
Virtually inelastic demand, even during recessions
Demand is function of population: ~9 tons/person/year in USA (according to USGS)
Steady increase due to new industrial, agricultural, medical uses
China growth affecting all commodities markets; commodities prices rising
Important for infrastructure development in Haiti and elsewhere in Caribbean

Haiti has formidable advantages:

Proximity to dynamic markets
Hard-working, tenacious people anxious for jobs
Special US legal and tax considerations under CBERA/CBI, new HERO act

Haiti: 38% more coastline than Dominican Republic
Haiti has 1,771 km of coastline vs. DR's 1,288 *

Haiti's 2nd most important resource: Location
Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, DR, Cayman Islands, Lesser Antilles
Cuba in a few more years?
Most comparable US location: Chicago
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False Stereotype 1: "tiny island nation'
Reality: Haiti, with 27,560 sq km of land mass, is 3rd largest nation in the Caribbean

Haiti: Big Country for the Caribbean
La Selle massif rises 2700 meters above sea level Port-au-Prince
(almost 9000 feet)
Compares to 14,300 ft Mt. Evans above "mile-high' Denver
(~ 9000 ft)
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False Stereotype 2: "Haiti is so overcrowded'
Reality: Low population density compared to her crowded neighbors
Large rural areas are virtually unpopulated "Haitian Outback'
Neither barren nor lifeless as hysterical news stories claim!
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False Stereotype 3: "Haiti has no resources'
Truth: Important natural resources are largely undeveloped:

Facts: Haiti has better long-term prospects than much of the West Indies"
where over-dependence on tourism limits opportunity
Strong opportunities for diversified natural resource development"
"and modern, environmentally sound, industrialization
Local value-add, e.g. precast & prestress concrete
Agro-chemicals and industrial minerals manufacture. (See, Matraco-Colorado Haiti Venture -A Power-Point Presentation.)

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In fact, before the earthquake, the former president of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (REFIDOMSA), Leopoldo Espaillat Nanita, even said, "there is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people. In addition, there are more charitable organizations in Haiti - over 10,000 NGOs - than practically anywhere else in the world. But the people are poorer and more abused than before the democratically elected government was removed and these organizations landed to benefit from the US invasion. (See, Haiti's riches, Haiti's Oligarchy and Travesty in Haiti - False aid, false charity, false orphanages, false benevolence.)

Since the 2004 US/UN, Canada, France occupation, drug-trafficking, human trafficking, indefinite detentions without charge, trial or hearing; rape of Haitian women and children by soldiers, charity workers and pedophile priest were running rampant. Much more so than when Haiti had a democratically elected government.

With the earthquake, while there is a huge, huge outpouring of help from wonderful human beings from all over the world, we've still gotten reports that these predators have not stopped their masturbating on Black pain. Since the earthquake Haiti children are disappearing, more so than before in UN occupied Haiti where they routinely got raped, abused and/or molested by either charity workers or UN soldiers. For, child traffickers activated immediately to take advantage of the earthquake chaos. There's a report that fifteen children simply disappeared from a hospital. There's no prioritizing security for fragile and wounded Haitian children.

But the US military is busy landing at the airport, deploying its power to the hotels, and places where the wealthier live. The UN troops are busy going to banks to secure the bags of money underneath the rubble. (See Soledad Obrien's CNN report.)

Ezili's HLLN was practically the lone international voice clamoring for the world to look beyond the racist mainstream headlines that Haiti was poor because its people were innately violent and corrupt. The myth of "the violent Haitians" causes death, depravation and sets the stage for perennial Haiti exploitation. CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta reported, for instance, that a group of Belgian doctors simply left their critically ill earthquake patients in the hospital alone because the authorities feared rumors of riots.

Earthquake victims, writhing in pain and grasping at life, watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after a Belgian medical team evacuated the area, saying it was concerned about security. (See, Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims.)

We know the digging of Haiti's mountains that is going on in the North of Haiti, if not the drilling for oil and gas we suspect that is also happening, may have triggered this massive holocaust in Haiti. But the US has no remorse. France and Canada have no accountability for orchestrating the regime change that disenfranchised Haiti's people in order to plunder Haiti. No.

Rumor has it, as the capital area is being depopulated, as the people suffer and die, France, US and Canada are haggling over divvying up "zones of protection" so they can help Haitians some more.
Canada wants the North of Haiti. The US wants Port-au-Prince and the Island of La Gonave and is willing to give France something, how about Jacmel in the South? It's artistic. France ain't hearing it. France wants the oil and gas rich Island of La Gonave. The tussle even made it on the public stage because since France isn't getting the part of Haiti it wants, it openly accused the US of occupying Haiti. Something must have been resolved because France soon retracted. China, the sleeping giant with UN veto power, is a problem for all of them, because it wants to know, what is its share? Meanwhile Haitians continue to be helped to suffer and die to accommodate.
Ezili Dantò of HLLN
January, 2010

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For 500 years the whites (settlers/colonists) have tried to erase us. Today they want us to believe they're the only ones who can save us" --- Edike from Daniel 'Dadi' Beaubrun's Lataye (buy album)
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Recommended HLLN Links (Energy and Mining in Haiti): The wealthy, powerful and well-armed are robbing the Haitian people blind

Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation

Oil in Haiti by Dr. Georges Michel

See also, Fayed's Forgotten Years: The Conman, The Dictator and the CIA Files

- Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin, [French Original], Radio Metropole, Jan 28, 2008

Why Bill Clinton as UN Envoy, the UN occupation and another reasons for being in Haiti: Deep Water Ports -(Daulphin Dunn)

Haiti's Riches

Haiti Riches: Listen to CKUT Interview (in English - 34:03) with Ezili Dantò on Mining of Haiti Resources and Riches by Chris Scott for CKUT (90.3 FM) in Montreal, April 29, 2009

Haiti Riches: Lakounewyork (Kreyòl) Interview with Ezili Dantò on environmental degradation concerns of gold/copper mining in Haiti, May 6, 2009

Haiti's Oligarchy
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- A map of some of Haiti's mining resources

- Gilbert Bigio's new oil/gas contract with Chevron for Haiti - Chevron to Sell Fuels Marketing Businesses in Haiti, 02 Jun 2, 2009

- Digicel Haiti Celebrates Third Anniversary With 2.1 Million Customers, May 5, 2009
-Gold and copper exploration in Haiti, April 29, 2009
- Majescor to Acquire Interest in a Strategic Gold-Copper Property in Haiti, April 23, 2009

-Canadian company to explore for gold in Haiti
- Eurasian Minerals Discovers Two New High-Grade Copper-Silver-Gold Prospects at Treuil Property, Haiti, April 22, 2009
- Eurasian Minerals Inc. Acquires Grand Bois Gold Deposit Property, Haiti, Jan. 26, 2009
- Eurasian Minerals Inc. Acquires 27 Exploration Licenses in Haiti and the
Historic Meme Copper-Gold Mine, Dec 17, 2008
- Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin, [French Original], Radio Metropole, Jan 28, 2008
Expose the lies about Haiti, its people, culture, Vodun spirituality and unique resources
1. Stealing Haiti's Gold, Copper and Uranium under cover of regime change - The Exploitation of Gold and Copper in Trou Du Nord

-Gold and Copper Exploitation Resumes in the North and Northeast Departments of Haiti

- Eurasian Minerals Acquires Two Gold Projects in Haiti

- Haiti's Future Glitters with Gold

2. Plundering Haiti's Under Water Treasures
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/waterplunder.html

Preval Government in Haiti denounces Heritage Looting

Authorities in Florida are opening an investigation into the origins of emeralds stolen from an interim Haitian dignitary's home

Robbing Haiti blind: pillage and plunder - Iles-à-Vaches: Bronze Cannons, gold and emerald pieces stolen

Microbe discovered in Haitian soil may develop super-antibiotic drug