From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 4:43 AM
Subject: [wvns] Over a Million Haitians Still Homeless
To: wvns@yahoogroups.com
Why the U.S. owes Haiti billions: The briefest history
Wed, 01/20/2010
by Bill Quigley
San Francisco Bay View
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/living-black-fantasy-obama-delirium-effect
At every stage in Hait's national existence, she has been drained, squeezed and violated by the United States. "The U.S. has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. This is not charity. This is justice. This is reparations."
"The U.S. owes Haiti Billions – with a big B."
Why does the U.S. owe Haiti billions? Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated his foreign policy view as the "Pottery Barn rule." That is, "If you break it, you own it."
The U.S. has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either – that is Powerball money. The U.S. owes Haiti Billions – with a big B.
The U.S. has worked for centuries to break Haiti. The U.S. has used Haiti like a plantation. The U.S. helped bleed the country economically since it freed itself, repeatedly invaded the country militarily, supported dictators who abused the people, used the country as a dumping ground for our own economic advantage, ruined their roads and agriculture and toppled popularly elected officials. The U.S. has even used Haiti like the old plantation owner and slipped over there repeatedly for sexual recreation.
Here is the briefest history of some of the major U.S. efforts to break Haiti.
In 1804, when Haiti achieved its freedom from France in the world's first successful slave revolution, the United States refused to recognize the country. The U.S. continued to refuse recognition to Haiti for 60 more years. Why? Because the U.S. continued to enslave millions of its own citizens and feared recognizing Haiti would encourage slave revolution in the U.S.
"The current value of the money Haiti was forced to pay to French and U.S. banks is over $20 billion."
After the 1804 revolution, Haiti was the subject of a crippling economic embargo by France and the U.S. U.S. sanctions lasted until 1863. France ultimately used its military power to force Haiti to pay reparations for the slaves who were freed. The reparations were 150 million francs. (France sold the entire Louisiana territory to the U.S. for 80 million francs!)
Haiti was forced to borrow money from banks in France and the U.S. to pay reparations to France. A major loan from the U.S. to pay off the French was finally paid off in 1947. The current value of the money Haiti was forced to pay to French and U.S. banks? Over $20 Billion – with a big B.
The U.S. occupied and ruled Haiti by force from 1915 to 1934. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to invade in 1915. Revolts by Haitians were put down by U.S. military – killing over 2,000 in one skirmish alone. For the next 19 years, the U.S. controlled customs in Haiti, collected taxes and ran many governmental institutions. How many billions were siphoned off by the U.S. during these 19 years?
From 1957 to 1986 Haiti was forced to live under U.S.-backed dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S. supported these dictators economically and militarily because they did what the U.S. wanted and were politically "anti-communist" – now translatable as against human rights for their people. Duvalier stole millions from Haiti and ran up hundreds of millions in debt that Haiti still owes. Ten thousand Haitians lost their lives. Estimates say that Haiti owes $1.3 billion in external debt and that 40 percent of that debt was run up by the U.S.-backed Duvaliers.
"President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to invade in 1915."
Thirty years ago Haiti imported no rice. Today Haiti imports nearly all its rice. Though Haiti was the sugar growing capital of the Caribbean, it now imports sugar as well. Why? The U.S. and the U.S. dominated world financial institutions – the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – forced Haiti to open its markets to the world. Then the U.S. dumped millions of tons of U.S.-subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti – undercutting their farmers and ruining Haitian agriculture. By ruining Haitian agriculture, the U.S. has forced Haiti into becoming the third largest world market for U.S. rice. Good for U.S. farmers, bad for Haiti.
Terrorizing the people into submission was the apparent goal of the U.S. Marines' brutal and bloody occupation of Haiti following the U.S.-backed coup in 2004. As always, the people resisted.
In 2002, the U.S. stopped hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Haiti which were to be used for, among other public projects like education, roads. These are the same roads which relief teams are having so much trouble navigating now!
In 2004, the U.S. again destroyed democracy in Haiti when they supported the coup against Haiti's elected President Aristide.
"The U.S. dumped millions of tons of U.S.-subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti – undercutting their farmers and ruining Haitian agriculture."
Haiti is even used for sexual recreation just like the old time plantations. Check the news carefully and you will find numerous stories of abuse of minors by missionaries, soldiers and charity workers. Plus there are the frequent sexual vacations taken to Haiti by people from the U.S. and elsewhere. What is owed for that? What value would you put on it if it were your sisters and brothers?
U.S.-based corporations have for years been teaming up with Haitian elite to run sweatshops teeming with tens of thousands of Haitians who earn less than $2 a day.
The Haitian people have resisted the economic and military power of the U.S. and others ever since their independence. Like all of us, Haitians made their own mistakes as well. But U.S. power has forced Haitians to pay great prices – deaths, debt and abuse.
It is time for the people of the U.S. to join with Haitians and reverse the course of U.S.-Haitian relations.
This brief history shows why the U.S. owes Haiti Billions – with a big B. This is not charity. This is justice. This is reparations. The current crisis is an opportunity for people in the U.S. to own up to our country's history of dominating Haiti and to make a truly just response.
For more on the history of exploitation of Haiti by the U.S., see Paul Farmer, "The Uses of Haiti"; Peter Hallward, "Damming the Flood"; and Randall Robinson, "An Unbroken Agony."
Bill Quigley is legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights and a long-time Haiti human rights advocate. He can be reached at Quigley77@gmail.com.
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Haiti, Katrina, and Why I Won't Give To Haiti Through the Red Cross
Wed, 01/20/2010
Bruce A. Dixon
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/haiti-katrina-and-why-i-wont-give-haiti-through-red-cross
At Katrina, the Red Cross used funds generously donated by millions of Americans to disperse tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents to the four corners of the continental US, knowing it was very unlkely they would ever be allowed to return. If the Red Cross didn't respect the persons, the families, the communities of black US citizens, do we really imagine it will respect Haitians? And why should we believe Wyclef Jean about much of anything?
What's charitably given isn't always charitably distributed. In 21st century American and its empire, our corporate and military elite wield immense power. Corporate philanthropy serves corporate interests, not human interests, and corporate control over government, culture and media ensure that even funds donated by ordinary citizens can be directed and harvested for elite purposes too.
In the wake of the man-made disaster of Katrina, Americans freely gave tens of millions to the American Red Cross, which used a great deal of it to effectively disperse the population of black New Orleans to the four corners of the continental U.S. Millions more were diverted to their administrative overhead or other projects. But the local Louisiana elites who benefited from the exile of hundreds of thousands of black New Orleans residents were able to use Red Cross funds and personnel to work their will.
I know. I was there. In the days immediately after Katrina in 2005 I made it down to Baton Rouge, where thousands of the evacuees pulled out of the water and scooped off rooftops and overpasses were huddled in shelters at the city's convention center and Southern University. The shelters were hard to miss, because there was a mile long line of buses crawling toward each one. The busiest person in each shelter was the transportation coordinator.
If an evacuee had a high status job, proof of ID and checkable references, I saw them put plane tickets for the whole family in that person's hand, line up a job in Detroit or Los Angeles, and call them a cab to the airport. But for everybody else without a car, they had one solution. Get on the bus. There would be no way back, and no plans to help you go back. There's a bus for you, going to Dallas or Houston or somewhere. Get on it.
Singly and in groups I interviewed just under a hundred evacuees in a day and a half, many still disoriented. They wanted to be reunited with their families. They wondered if they'd be able to go back, or if there would be anything to go back to. But all the Red Cross told them, I heard again and again, was that the shelter is closing in a couple of days, you can't stay here in Baton Rouge, you have to get on a bus to Houston, Dallas, Atlanta or somewhere. Now. Even those who had businesses before the flood --- I talked to the owner of a bakery and a car repair shop who stayed to protect their investment and to look after relatives --- even they were told there's nothing here for you but a bus going out of state.
I talked to some of the Red Cross people who ran the shelter too, especially at Southern University. I asked how they knew evacuees had nothing in New Orleans to go back to. They were white, of course and most of the sheltered evacuees were black. "Look at them," was the stock answer from several. "What could they possibly have worth going back to? They are better off starting new lives somewhere else," they rationalized.
The places they came from were cesspools anyway, some of the good white Red Cross folks helpfully told me, citing news stories in wide circulation about New Orleans residents firing on helicopters and boats that were rescuing people. Had I ever actually been to some of those neighborhoods, they asked? Of course the crap about shooting at copters and rescue boats turned out to be false, and I told them it was likely nonsense. But they seemed to need to believe the madness, and did.
I recall pointing out that if they were dispersed far out of state many would have no way back. This too had little effect on them. One or two seemed to struggle a bit with what I told them, saying they hoped it was not true, but said they were just doing their jobs.
My point here is that in a society controlled by an elite with often questionable motives, the charities this corporate elite and their media promote have to be questioned too. I won't give a nickel through the Red Cross because they are no more likely to recognize the viability and full humanity of Haitians and their communities than did on the Gulf Coast. The Red Cross isn't alone in this.
The US government, as Glen Ford points out, has thoroughly militarized US aid to Haiti, and the same US corporate media that painted New Orleans as a cesspool of violence and despair are bringing us images and impressions of Haiti that match their twisted vision. Food and water cannot be distributed until "order" is restored.
Corporate media manufacture "celebrities" all the time, people who are famous for being well known. We know more about the lives, tatoos and and personal business of celebrities than we know about the public affairs in our own cities and towns and school boards. Haitian musician Wyclef Jean used his celebrity, and the earthquake, to raise millions for his own Haitian charity.
We make no judgment on the allegations that its bookkeeping may be irregular. But it's worth noting that Wyclef Jean has family ties to the group of gangsters and thugs that the Clinton-era CIA installed in office when it removed Haiti's elected president, Jean-Betrand Aristide from office in the 1990s. Wyclef Jean has repeated the contemptible lie all over black radio that Aristide skipped the country with $900 million stolen from Haitians. We understand where this comes from. Wyclef's uncle was the Washington DC representative of the short-lived 1990s un-elected gangster government of Haiti. He runs a right wing rag of a Haitian newspaper dedicated to spreading outrageous and self-serving falsehoods against Lavalas, the only Haitian party capable of winning free elections in that unhappy country. If Wyclef will lie about that, we wonder what else he'd lie about, and why we should trust him with our money.
Wyclef's problems aside, one way to ensure your donations are deployed and used in a manner faithful to your intent, and respectful of the Haitian rights to community, humanity and agency, is to send them to efforts managed in whole or in part by responsible Haitians, and members of the Haitian diaspora.
Here are a few of the places to donate that we recommend, people whom we and those close to us can vouch for personally. Give generously, as we understand aftershocks are continuing to occur. There are many others. But not the Red Cross. Probably not anybody whose name you see on CNN. Or on BET. Our apologies to the great people we haven't mentioned. Use the comments to add more recommendations of authentic, grassroots, responsible places for people to donate. Our comments are moderated, of course.
Scattering Resouces
Scattering Resources is working in cooperation with Fondation Avenir in on-the-ground relief efforts in Haiti. Members of Scattering Resources help comprise a team that delivering supplies and assessing the situation in local communities inside Port-au-Prince and Jacmel.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
HLLN is connected with networks of Haitian doctors and others abroad, and with care providers on the ground in Haiti.
And of course the National Nurses Organization will let you volunteer (if you're an RN) to go yourself, or donate to sponsor an RN. Check them out at http://www.sendanurse.org
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U.S. Brags Haiti Response is a "Model" While
More Than a Million Remain Homeless
Tue, 02/16/2010
Bill Quigley
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/us-brags-haiti-response-%E2%80%9Cmodel%E2%80%9D-while-more-million-remain-homeless
U.S. officials are full of themselves, hawking their military expeditionary mission to Haiti as the future of humanitarian crisis response. Meanwhile, Partners in Health director Dr. Louise Ivers reports "'there is more and more misery' in Port au Prince as fears of typhoid and dysentery haunt the camps as the rainy season looms."
"Barely one in five of the people in camps have received tents or tarps."
Despite the fact that over a million people remained homeless in Haiti one month after the earthquake, the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Ken Merten, is quoted at a State Department briefing on February 12, saying "In terms of humanitarian aid delivery…frankly, it's working really well, and I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we've been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake."
What? Haiti is a model of how the international government and donor community should respond to an earthquake? The Ambassador must be overworked and need some R&R. Look at the facts.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported February 11 there are still 1.2 million people living in "spontaneous settlements" in and around Port au Prince as a result of the January 12 earthquake. These spontaneous settlements are sprawling camps of homeless Haitian children and families living on the ground under sheets.
Over 300,000 are in camps in Carrefour, nearly 200,000 in Port au Prince, and over 100,000 each in Delmas, Petitionville and Leogane according to the UN.
About 25,000 people are camped out on one golf course in Petionville. Hundreds of thousands of others are living in soccer fields, churchyards, on hillsides, in gullies, and even on the strips of land in the middle of the street. The UN has identified over 300 such spontaneous settlements. The Red Cross reports there are over 700.
"There are still 1.2 million people living in "spontaneous settlements" in and around Port au Prince."
The UN reported that barely one in five of the people in camps have received tents or tarps as of February 11. Eighty percent of the hundreds of thousands of children and families still live on the ground under sheets.
Many of these camps are huge. Nineteen of these homeless camps in the Port au Prince area together house 180,000 people. More than half of these camps are so spontaneous that there is no organization in the camp to even comprehensively report their needs.
Another half a million people have left Port au Prince, most to the countryside. As a result there are significant food problems in the countryside. About 168,000 internally displaced people are living along the border with the Dominican Republic. Many are with families. Others are in "spontaneous settlements" of up to a 1000 people.
People living in these densely populated camps will be asked to move to more organized settlements outside the city. Relocation, says the UN, will be on a voluntary basis.
The U.S. Ambassador knows full well there are 900 or so aid agencies are on the ground in Haiti. Coordination and communication between those agencies and between them and the Haitian government continues to be a very serious challenge.
"About 168,000 internally displaced people are living along the border with the Dominican Republic."
Though many people are trying hard to meet the survival needs Haiti, no one besides the Ambassador dares say that it is a model of how to respond. Partners in Health director Dr. Louise Ivers reported on the very same day that "there is more and more misery" in Port au Prince as fears of typhoid and dysentery haunt the camps as the rainy season looms.
But still the Haitian spirit prevails. Everyone who has been to Haiti since the earthquake reports inspiring stories of Haitians helping Haitians despite the tragically inadequate response of the Haitian government and the international community. That spirit is something people should admire. Let me finish with a story that illustrates.
One orphanage outside of Port au Prince, home to 57 children, was promised a big tent so the children would no longer have to sleep under the stars. The tent arrived but without poles to hold it up. The same group was promised food from UNICEF. Twelve days later, no food had arrived. They improvised and constructed scaffolding to create an awning over the mattresses lying on the dirt. They are finding food from anywhere they can. "We're holding on," said the Haitian director Etienne Bruny, "We're used to difficult times."
Haitians are holding on despite the inadequate humanitarian response. They are the model.
Bill Quigley is the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a frequent visitor to Haiti for human rights work over the past decade. You can reach him at Quigley77@gmail.com
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No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!
Wed, 01/20/2010
by John Maxwell
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/no-mister-you-cannot-share-my-pain
French and Americans have conspired to humiliate and exploit Haiti throughout the history of the world's first Black republic. Now, in this time of catastrophe, they claim special relationships based on shared history. What outrageous, profane nonsense – as if the victim and perpetrator of atrocity share some bond that should be treasured.
"If you share their pain, why don't you stop causing it?"
If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.
Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations.
It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the President of Haiti and his wife.
The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for "renditions" of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers. The plane, on which the Aristides are listed as "cargo," flew to Antigua – an hour away – and remained on the ground in Antigua while Colin Powell's State Department and the CIA tried to blackmail and bribe various African countries to accept ("give asylum to") the kidnapped President and his wife. The Central African Republic – one of George W. Bush's "Dark Corners of the World" – agreed, for an undisclosed sum, to give the Aristides temporary asylum.
Before any credible plot can be designed and paid for – for the disappearance of the Aristides – they are rescued by friends, flown to temporary asylum in Jamaica where the government cravenly yielded to the blackmail of Condoleezza Rice to deny them the permanent asylum to which they were entitled and which most Jamaicans had hoped for.
"The Marines were replaced by foreign troops paid by the United Nations."
Meanwhile in Haiti the US Marines protected an undisciplined ragbag of rapists and murderers to allow them entry to the capital. The Marines chased the medical students out of the new Medical School established by Aristide with Cuban help and teachers. The Marines bivouac in the school, going out on nightly raids, trailed by fleets of ambulances with body bags, hunting down Fanmi Lavalas activists described as "chimeres" – terrorists.
The real terrorists, led by two convicted murderers, Chamblain and Philippe, assisted the Marines in the eradication of "chimeres" until the Marines were replaced by foreign troops paid by the United Nations who took up the hunt on behalf of the civilized world – France, Canada, the US and Brazil.
The terrorists and the remains of the Duvalier tontons and the CIA-bred FRAPF declared open season on the remnants of Aristide's programs to build democracy. They burnt down the new museum of Haitian Culture, destroyed the Children's television station and generally laid waste to anything and everything which could remind Haitians of their glorious history.
Haitians don't know that without their help Latin America might still be part of the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar a brief historical footnote.
Imagine, Niggers Speaking French!
About ninety years ago when Professor Woodrow Wilson was President of the USA his Secretary of State was a fundamentalist lawyer named William Jennings Bryan who had three times run unsuccessfully, for President.
The Americans had decided to invade Haiti to collect debts owed by Haiti to Citibank.
General Smedley Butler, the only American soldier to have twice won the Congressional Medal of Honor, described his role in the US Army:
"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long."
General Butler said: "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. … My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical in the military service." Butler compared himself unfavorably to Al Capone. He said his official racketeering made Capone look like an amateur.
Secretary Bryan was dumfounded by the Haitians; "Imagine" he said, "Niggers speaking French."
Smedley Butler and Bryan were involved in Haiti because of something that happened nearly a hundred years before. The French slave-masters, expelled from Haiti and defeated again when they tried to re-enslave the Haitians, connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo. With no sale for Haitian sugar, the country was weak and rundown when a French fleet arrived bearing a demand for reparations. Having bought their freedom in blood, the Haitians were to be oblige to purchase it again in gold.
The French demanded, essentially, that the Haitians pay France an amount equivalent to 90 percent of the entire Haitian budget for the foreseeable future. When this commitment proved too arduous to honor, the City Bank offered the Haitians a "debt exchange" paying off the French in exchange for a lower interest longer term debt. The terms may have seemed better but were just as usurious and it was not paid off until 1947.
"The French slave-masters connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo."
Because of the debt the Americas invaded Haiti, seized the Treasury, exiled the President, their Jim Crow policies were used to divide the society, to harass the poor and finally provoked a second struggle for freedom which was one of the most brutal episodes in colonial history.
Long before Franco bombed Guernica, exciting the horror and revulsion of civilized people, the Americans perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants many of whom had never seen aircraft before.
The Americans set up a Haitian Army in the image of their Jim Crow Marines and it was these people and the alien and alienated Élite who with some conscripted blacks like the Duvaliers have ruled Haiti for most of the last century.
When I flew over Haiti for the first time in 1959 en route from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I saw for the first time the border between the green Dominican Republic and brown Haiti.
First world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible.
Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation?
Haiti's Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any color. All such people of whatever color were deemed "black" and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified "blacks" could own land in Haiti.
The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The Assistant Secretary of the US Navy, one Franklin D. Roosevelt was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti.
"The Americans perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants."
This constitution meant foreigners could own land. Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth Mahogany and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany speedboats, boardroom tables seating forty etc. The devastated land was put to produce rubber, sisal for ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations.
When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica fifty years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation. But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover.
As Marguerite Laurent (Ezili Danto) writes: Don't expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete - the violent anti-Vodun crusade - gather whole communities at gun point into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the "houses of Satan."
In partnership with the US, the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the US could take their lands for US agribusiness.
After the Flood
Norman Manley used to say "River come Down" when his party seemed likely to prevail. The Kreyol word Lavalas conveys the same meaning.
Since the Haitian people's decisive rejection of the Duvalier dictatorships in the early 90s, their spark and leader has been Jean Bertrand Aristide whose bona fides may be assessed from the fact that the CIA and conservative Americans have been trying to discredit him almost from the word go.
As he put it in one of his books, his intention has been to build a paradise on the garbage heap bequeathed to Haiti by the US and the Elite.
The bill of particulars is too long to go into here, but the destruction of the new museum of Culture, the breaking up of the medical school, the destruction of the children's television gives you the flavor. But the essence is captured in the brutal attempt to obliterate the spirit of Haitian community; the attempt to destroy Lavalas by murdering its men and raping its women, the American directed subversion of a real police force, the attacks on education and the obliteration of the community self-help systems which meant that when Hurricane Jeanne and all the other weather systems since have struck Haiti many more have died than in any other country similarly stricken. In an earthquake, totally unpredictable, every bad factor is multiplied.
The American blocking of international aid means that there is no modern water supply anywhere, no town planning, no safe roads, none of the ordinary infrastructure of any other Caribbean state. There are no building standards, no emergency shelters, no parks
So, when I write about mothers unwittingly walking on dead babies in the mud, when I write about people so poor they must eat patties made of clay and shortening, when I write about people with their faces "chopped off" or about any of 8 million horror stories from the crime scene that is Haiti, please don't tell me you share their pain or mine.
Tell me where is Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and ten thousand like him?
If you share my pain and their pain, why don't you stop causing it? Why don't you stop the torture?
If you want to understand me, look at the woman in the picture, and the children half buried with her. You cannot hear their screams because they know there is no point in screaming. It will do no more good than voting.
What is she thinking: perhaps it is something like this – No mister! You cannot share my pain!
Sometime perhaps, after the camera is gone people will return to dig us out with their bare hands.
But not you.
John Maxwell is a veteran Jamaican journalist. He has covered Caribbean affairs for more than 40 years and is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer. He can be contacted at jankunnu@gmail.com.
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Untold Stories:
Haiti, White Supremacy, US Foreign Policy and Corporate Media
Wed, 01/20/2010
Solomon Comissiong
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/untold-stories-haiti-white-supremacy-us-foreign-policy-and-corporate-media
The U.S. corporate media have a difficult time covering the Haiti catastrophe. "Haiti's poverty and economic desolation were largely made-in-America," an inconvenient fact to transmit to American audiences. Corporate media's "job is to invoke pity, confusion, and ignorance, as well as to uphold the benevolence of white supremacy."
"All major networks described Haiti and its people as if they were pathetic little children incapable of self rule or self determination."
On January 12 the people of Haiti were devastated by an uncontrollable force of nature, a massive earthquake. There is untold loss of life. The infrastructural destruction is enormous. People from all walks of life and from all corners of the globe are responding with aid relief as part of their humanitarian duty.
Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and China were among the first to respond to the catastrophic scene in and around Port Au Prince, Haiti. An earthquake of that magnitude (7.0 on the Richter scale) would cause significant damage to any nation; however in a country as economically poor as Haiti the impact is drastically worse. Despite being resource rich, Haiti is a nation that is home to many of the most impoverished people within the Western Hemisphere. The Western corporate media often discuss Haiti's poverty without context, without background or explanation as to how they came to be so economically impoverished. Viewers are prevented from connecting with Haitians beyond a misguided paternalistic sentiment. This type of half-assed "journalism" is beyond unprofessional; it is rooted in racism and white supremacy. Such "coverage" robs the people of Haiti of an identity as well as a history, while the US government's nefarious foreign policies continue unchallenged by the corporate "news."
I have been overcome with a number of emotions since first learning of the tremendous carnage and irreplaceable loss of life throughout Haiti. My initial emotions and feelings consisted of: hurt, pain, grief, and helplessness. However, as I began to watch the mainstream media's coverage of the disaster in Haiti, the emotion of anger began to surface. Consistently, anchormen/women, from all major networks described Haiti and its people as if they were pathetic little children incapable of self rule or self determination, or as savages destined for poverty and plight. As if Haitians, when left to their own devices, chose lawlessness and governmental chaos.
"The Western corporate media often discuss Haiti's poverty without context, without background or explanation."
Just 24 hours after the earthquake hit these "descriptions" could be found everywhere from the racist Fox News Channel to the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. However, shame on me for briefly expecting more. I should have known better – that the role of the corporate media is not to provide critical analysis of important issues and events; it is to obfuscate and uphold the status quo. Far be it from the US corporate media to provide its audiences with insight and perspective as to why and how the people of Haiti got so poor. They clearly don't have the morality or ethics to elucidate to their audiences why the Haitians have very little infrastructure (outside of Port Au Prince) or rudimentary disaster relief services throughout the country. They don't have the thoroughness and professionalism to explain to audiences why the Haitians have no 911 emergency services whatsoever. Corporate media's objective is not to move their viewers towards understanding the root causes of Haiti's poverty and why it exacerbates the effects of the earthquake. Their job is, unfortunately, not to explain how the Haitians have been catching hell from the likes of France and the US for centuries. Their job is to invoke pity, confusion, and ignorance, as well as to uphold the benevolence of white supremacy.
Americans have been so dumbed down over the years that they don't even ask themselves the question of how and why the Haitian people have been so impoverished for so long.
"Haiti became the first nation where former slaves were expected to pay reparations for their liberty."
Haitians of African ancestry have been catching hell dating back to their abduction by Europeans (Spanish and then French), forced transfer to the western part of Hispaniola, and their subsequent brutal enslavement. After the Spanish murdered the entire Arawak population enslaved Africans became increasingly valuable to the shiftless and amoral Europeans. The resilient black Africans ultimately rebelled, led by the likes of Toussaint-Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and gained their independence from the French in 1804. Throughout its history Haiti has stood as a partner in freedom to many oppressed nations. Haiti played a considerable role in assisting countries like Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador in gaining their independence from Spain. Haiti became the first independent nation founded and established by formerly enslaved Africans. Haiti also became the first nation where former slaves were expected to pay reparations for their liberty.France demanded Haiti pay over 160 million francs for defeating Napoleon's "mighty" military, as well as contributing to France's subsequent loss of slave labor. The unwarranted debt, reduced to 60 million francs (plus interest), was finally paid off in 1947. This crime, in and of itself left Haiti and its people impoverished. Having to use close to 80 percent of its national budget on so-called reparations repayments crippled Haiti, as it would any country of that size.
One of the reasons which made it virtually impossible for Haiti to fully recover was the continued illegal occupation by the US government by way of its imperialist military. For over a century the US has invaded, occupied, and supported coups throughout Haiti, in order to make it easier for the Americans to exploit the country.
"The US has imposed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) as a pretext to flood Haiti with cheap American rice, thus preventing Haitian farmers from being able to compete in their own country."
The US government has functioned like a loan shark to nations like Haiti, the world over. Washington uses the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to "strong arm" impoverished nations to stay in debt in perpetuity, all the while plundering their resources and cheap labor. The US has imposed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) as a pretext to flood Haiti with cheap American rice, thus preventing Haitian farmers from being able to compete in their own country. These SAPs are similar to corrupt credit card policies with exorbitant interest rates and multiple strings attached.
SAP's "strings" prevent developing nations from using much of their revenue to build schools, hospitals and to invest in education. The World Bank and IMF are designed to promote unfettered capitalism and manipulate the resources of developing nations – America's
capitalistic idea of a "free market."
In a sick twist of irony the 42nd and 43rd US presidents (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) have been asked by current US president Barack Obama to play high-profile roles in Haitian relief efforts, when in fact both men are hugely complicit in the destabilization of Haiti.
No one could have prevented last week's earthquake, however, Haiti's poverty and economic desolation were largely made-in-America.
Haitians are not cursed by the devil or God, despite what the morally challenged and demented televangelist, Pat Robertson, said. If there is a hell, the likes of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, will have one-way tickets there upon leaving this earth. The only curses that have afflicted Haiti are the same ones that have afflicted most countries with people of color, and that is the curse and inherent evil of white supremacy, imperialism and neocolonialism.
May we all have the courage to finally put an end to America's nefarious foreign polices.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News radio program (www.blogtalkradio.com/Your-World-News). He may be reached at: sunderland77@hotmail.com.
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Islamic Relief opens camp for homeless quake victims; Aid shipment arrives
160,000 pounds of much-needed aid and supplies arrived in Haiti this past weekend and is beginning to be allocated and distributed.
The aid was trucked from the Dominican Republic to the Delmas 33 neighborhood of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where Islamic Relief has set up one of the first camps for homeless quake victims.
Each of the 50 families living at the Islamic Relief-administered camp received a 13 x 13 sq. ft. tent, a kitchen set and a hygiene kit.
A senior IR-USA staff member, Anwar Khan, accompanied the aid
shipment and is now helping pitch tents and administer aid.
"We're only getting started," Khan says, explaining Islamic Relief's plans for long-term development.
"The Haitian people need real solutions to get their lives back to normal, and Islamic Relief is trying to help."
Please donate today to help make sure Islamic Relief can help earthquake-affected Haitians.
Officials estimate that 1.5 million people are homeless and 300,000 children under the age of two need nutritional support after a 7.0-magnitude quake rocked Haiti on January 12.
Islamic Relief teams have distributed food and clean drinking water in some of the most-affected areas of Port-au-Prince, but your continued support is needed.
Time is critical. Donate today.
www.irw.org
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Haitian quake victims still homeless, hungry
"When we came we saw chaos and misery," said Anwar Khan, Islamic Relief USA's VP of Fund Development, who is in Haiti helping assist quake victims.
"Now people are laughing and hopeful because they have food and a roof over their heads," Khan added, referring to those who received aid, but he acknowledged that many more still need help.
Of the 1.5 million homeless earthquake victims sleeping in Haiti's streets, parks and pavilions, an estimated one million of them still need temporary shelter.
Adding to the despair, an estimated 2 million Haitians are also in dire need for food aid. Only 400,000 of them are receiving the proper nutrition.
Rush your donations to help Islamic Relief reach those still in need.
Islamic Relief has established a camp that is housing over 1,000 people and is providing them with vital services, shelter, food and water.
Each family staying at the camp received a 13 x 13 sq. ft. tent, a kitchen set and a hygiene kit, but there are thousands of people who still need help to survive.
Click here to read more about Islamic Relief's response in Haiti.
A 160,000 pound aid shipment that Islamic Relief USA coordinated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also arrived in Haiti earlier this week.
The shipment included medical equipment, blankets, first-aid kits, water filtration bottles, wheelchairs, and other much-needed aid.
Help make sure Islamic Relief can continue to serve Haiti's earthquake victims.
Donate today.
www.irw.org
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WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
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Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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