The Rag Blog: Haiti

Showing posts with label Haiti. Show all posts

16 January 2011

Jordan Flaherty : Corporate Profiteering One Year After Haiti Earthquake

The Haitian national flag stands at half mast at the National Palace during the one-year anniversary of the 2010 quake in downtown Port-au-Prince, January 12, 2011. Photo by Allison Shelley / Reuters.
One year after Haiti earthquake:
Corporations profit while people suffer

By Jordan Flaherty / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2011

One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.

The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors -- including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction -- have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others' suffering, receiving contracts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies at best. It also demonstrates how charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses.

Lewis Lucke, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Agency for International Development (US AID) was named U.S. special coordinator for relief and reconstruction after the earthquake. He worked this job for a few months, then immediately moved to the private sector, where he could sell his contacts and connections to the highest bidder. He quickly got a $30,000-a-month (plus bonuses) contract with the Haiti Recovery Group (HRG).

HRG had been founded by Ashbritt, Inc., a Florida-based contractor who had received acres of bad press for their post-Katrina contracting. Ashbritt’s partner in HRG is Gilbert Bigio, a wealthy Haitian businessman with close ties to the Israeli military. Bigio made a fortune during the corrupt Duvalier regime, and was a supporter of the right wing coup against Haitian president Aristide.

Although Lucke received $60,000 for two months work, he is suing because he says he is owed an additional $500,000 for the more than 20-million dollars in contracts he helped HRG obtain during that time.

A symbol of political corruption

As Corpwatch has reported, AshBritt “has enjoyed meteoric growth since it won its first big debris removal subcontract from none other than Halliburton, to help clean up after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.” In 1999, the company also faced allegations of double billing for $765,000 from the Broward County, Florida school board for clean-up done in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.

Ashbritt CEO Randal Perkins is a major donor to Republican causes, and hired Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s firm, as well as former U.S. Army Corp Of Engineers official Mike Parker, as lobbyists. As a reward for his political connections, Ashbritt won 900 million dollars in Post-Katrina contracts, helping them to become a symbol of political corruption in the world of disaster profiteering, even triggering a congressional investigation focusing on their buying of influence. MSNBC reported in early 2006 that criticism of Ashbritt “can be heard in virtually every coastal community between Alabama and Texas.”

The contracts given to Bush cronies like Ashbritt resulted in local and minority-owned companies losing out on reconstruction work. As Multinational Monitor noted shortly after Katrina,

...by turning the contracting process over to prime contractors like Ashbritt, the Corps and FEMA have effectively privatized the enforcement of Federal Acquisition Regulations and disaster relief laws such as the Stafford Act, which require contracting officials to prioritize local businesses and give 5 percent of contracts to minority-owned businesses. As a result... early reports suggest that over 90 percent of the $2 billion in initial contracts was awarded to companies based outside of the three primary affected states, and that minority businesses received just 1.5 percent of the first $1.6 billion.

Alex Dupuy, writing in The Washington Post, reported a similar pattern in Haiti, noting that

of the more than 1,500 U.S. contracts doled out worth $267 million, only 20, worth $4.3 million, have gone to Haitian firms. The rest have gone to US firms, which almost exclusively use U.S. suppliers. Although these foreign contractors employ Haitians, mostly on a cash-for-work basis, the bulk of the money and profits are reinvested in the United States.

The same article notes that

less than 10 percent of the $9 billion pledged by foreign donors has been delivered, and not all of that money has been spent. Other than rebuilding the international airport and clearing the principal urban arteries of rubble, no major infrastructure rebuilding -- roads, ports, housing, communications -- has begun.

The disaster profiteering exemplified by Ashbritt is not just the result of quick decision-making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity, and as a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country's economy.

Relief and recovery efforts, led by the U.S. military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Jeremy Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

And it's not just corporations who have been guilty of profiting from Haitian suffering. A recent report from the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) describes a "significant lack of transparency in the disaster-relief/aid community," and finds that many relief organizations have left donations for Haiti in their bank accounts, earning interest rather than helping the people of Haiti.

DAP director Ben Smilowitz notes that "the fact that nearly half of the donated dollars still sit in the bank accounts of relief and aid groups does not match the urgency of their own fundraising and marketing efforts and donors’ intentions, nor does it covey the urgency of the situation on the ground."

Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written,

Haiti's poverty began with a U.S./Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of U.S. foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote U.S. corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d'etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and destroying Haiti's food sovereignty, essentially promoting famine.

Throughout its history, Haiti has been a victim of many of those who have claimed they are there to help. Until we address this fundamental issue of corporate profiteering masquerading as aid and development, the nation will remain mired in poverty. And future disasters, wherever they occur, will lead to similar injustices.

[Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including The New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's Clarin newspaper. His new book is FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org. and more information about his work can be found at floodlines.org. This article was also published at the Monthly Review.]

NEW ORLEANS RESIDENTS: See Jordan Flaherty and Asia Rainey at Maple Street Book Shop on Wednesday, January 19 at 6:00pm. For more info, go to theFacebook event page.

See other articles by Jordan Flaherty on The Rag Blog.

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28 December 2010

Nina Lakhani : Cuban Medics in Haiti Put World to Shame

Cuban medic treats cholera victims in Haiti. Photo from AFP / Getty Images.
Cuban medics in Haiti:
Castro's doctors and nurses are
the backbone of the fight against cholera

By Nina Lakhani / The Independent / December 28, 2010

They are the real heroes of the Haitian earthquake disaster, the human catastrophe on America's doorstep which Barack Obama pledged a monumental U.S. humanitarian mission to alleviate. Except these heroes are from America's arch-enemy Cuba, whose doctors and nurses have put U.S. efforts to shame.

A medical brigade of 1,200 Cubans is operating all over earthquake-torn and cholera-infected Haiti, as part of Fidel Castro's international medical mission which has won the socialist state many friends, but little international recognition.

Observers of the Haiti earthquake could be forgiven for thinking international aid agencies were alone in tackling the devastation that killed 250,000 people and left nearly 1.5 million homeless.

In fact, Cuban healthcare workers have been in Haiti since 1998, so when the earthquake struck the 350-strong team jumped into action. And amid the fanfare and publicity surrounding the arrival of help from the U.S. and the UK, hundreds more Cuban doctors, nurses and therapists arrived with barely a mention.

Most countries were gone within two months, again leaving the Cubans and Médecins Sans Frontières as the principal healthcare providers for the impoverished Caribbean island.

Figures released last week show that Cuban medical personnel, working in 40 centers across Haiti, have treated more than 30,000 cholera patients since October. They are the largest foreign contingent, treating around 40 per cent of all cholera patients. Another batch of medics from the Cuban Henry Reeve Brigade, a disaster and emergency specialist team, arrived recently as it became clear that Haiti was struggling to cope with the epidemic that has already killed hundreds.

Since 1998, Cuba has trained 550 Haitian doctors for free at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina en Cuba (Elam), one of the country's most radical medical ventures. Another 400 are currently being trained at the school, which offers free education -- including free books and a little spending money -- to anyone sufficiently qualified who cannot afford to study medicine in their own country.

John Kirk is a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University in Canada who researches Cuba's international medical teams. He said: "Cuba's contribution in Haiti is like the world's greatest secret. They are barely mentioned, even though they are doing much of the heavy lifting."

This tradition can be traced back to 1960, when Cuba sent a handful of doctors to Chile, hit by a powerful earthquake, followed by a team of 50 to Algeria in 1963. This was four years after the revolution, which saw nearly half the country's 7,000 doctors voting with their feet and leaving for the U.S.

Jacklin Anore, 24, a cholera patient at the Cuban-run Nicolas Armand hospital in Arcahaie, north of Port-au-Prince. Photo from APF / Getty Images.
The traveling doctors have served as an extremely useful arm of the government's foreign and economic policy, winning them friends and favors across the globe. The best-known program is Operation Miracle, which began with ophthalmologists treating cataract sufferers in impoverished Venezuelan villages in exchange for oil. This initiative has restored the eyesight of 1.8 million people in 35 countries, including that of Mario Teran, the Bolivian sergeant who killed Che Guevara in 1967.

The Henry Reeve Brigade, rebuffed by the Americans after Hurricane Katrina, was the first team to arrive in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, and the last to leave six months later.

Cuba's constitution lays out an obligation to help the worst-off countries when possible, but international solidarity isn't the only reason, according to Professor Kirk. "It allows Cuban doctors, who are frightfully underpaid, to earn extra money abroad and learn about diseases and conditions they have only read about. It is also an obsession of Fidel's and it wins him votes in the UN."

A third of Cuba's 75,000 doctors, along with 10,000 other health workers, are currently working in 77 poor countries, including El Salvador, Mali and East Timor. This still leaves one doctor for every 220 people at home, one of the highest ratios in the world, compared with one for every 370 in England.

Wherever they are invited, Cubans implement their prevention-focused holistic model, visiting families at home, proactively monitoring maternal and child health. This has produced "stunning results" in parts of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, lowering infant and maternal mortality rates, reducing infectious diseases and leaving behind better trained local health workers, according to Professor Kirk's research.

Medical training in Cuba lasts six years -- a year longer than in the UK -- after which every graduate works as a family doctor for three years minimum. Working alongside a nurse, the family doctor looks after 150 to 200 families in the community in which they live.

This model has helped Cuba to achieve some of the world's most enviable health improvements, despite spending only $400 per person last year compared with $3,000 in the UK and $7,500 in the U.S., according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development figures.

Infant mortality rates, one of the most reliable measures of a nation's healthcare, are 4.8 per 1,000 live births -- comparable with Britain and lower than the US. Only 5 per cent of babies are born with a low birth weight, a crucial factor in long-term health, and maternal mortality is the lowest in Latin America, World Health Organization figures show.

Cuba's polyclinics, open 24 hours a day for emergencies and specialist care, are a step up from the family doctors. Each provides for 15,000 to 35,000 patients via a group of full-time consultants as well as visiting doctors, ensuring that most medical care is provided in the community.

Imti Choonara, a pediatrician from Derby, leads a delegation of international health professionals at annual workshops in Cuba's third city, Camaguey. "Healthcare in Cuba is phenomenal, and the key is the family doctor, who is much more proactive, and whose focus is on prevention... The irony is that Cubans came to the UK after the revolution to see how the NHS worked. They took back what they saw, refined it and developed it further; meanwhile we are moving towards the U.S. model," Professor Choonara said.

Politics, inevitably, penetrates many aspects of Cuban healthcare. Every year hospitals produce a list of drugs and equipment they have been unable to access because of the American embargo which prevents many U.S. companies from trading with Cuba, and persuades other countries to follow suit.

The 2009/10 report includes drugs for childhood cancers, HIV, and arthritis, some anaesthetics, as well as chemicals needed to diagnose infections and store organs. Pharmacies in Cuba are characterized by long queues and sparsely stacked shelves, though in part this is because they stock only generic brands.

A member of Cuba's medical brigade working in Haiti. Photo from Getty Images.
Antonio Fernandez, from the Ministry of Public Health, said: "We make 80 per cent of the drugs we use. The rest we import from China, former Soviet countries, Europe -- anyone who will sell to us -- but this makes it very expensive because of the distances."

On the whole, Cubans are immensely proud and supportive of their contribution in Haiti and other poor countries, delighted to be punching above their weight on the international scene. However, some people complain of longer waits to see their doctor because so many are working abroad. And, like all commodities in Cuba, medicines are available on the black market for those willing to risk large fines if caught buying or selling.

International travel is beyond the reach of most Cubans, but qualified nurses and doctors are among those forbidden from leaving the country for five years after graduation, unless as part of an official medical team.

Like everyone else, health professionals earn paltry salaries of around $20 a month. So, contrary to official accounts, bribery exists in the hospital system, which means some doctors, and even hospitals, are off-limits unless patients can offer a little something, maybe lunch or a few pesos, for preferential treatment.

Cuba's international ventures in healthcare are becoming increasingly strategic. Last month, officials held talks with Brazil about developing Haiti's public health system, which Brazil and Venezuela have both agreed to help finance.

Medical training is another example. There are currently 8,281 students from more than 30 countries enrolled at Elam, which last month celebrated its 11th anniversary. The government hopes to inculcate a sense of social responsibly into the students in the hope that they will work within their own poor communities for at least five years.

Damien Joel Suarez, 27, a second year student from New Jersey, is one of 171 American students; 47 have already graduated. He dismisses allegations that Elam is part of the Cuban propaganda machine. "Of course, Che is a hero here but he isn't forced down your neck."

Another 49,000 students are enrolled in El Nuevo Programa de Formacion de Medicos Latinoamericanos, the brainchild of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, who pledged in 2005 to train 100,000 doctors for the continent. The course is much more hands-on, and critics question the quality of the training.

Professor Kirk disagrees: "The hi-tech approach to health needed in London and Toronto is irrelevant for millions of people in the Third World who are living in poverty. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize the quality, but if you were living somewhere with no doctors, then you'd be happy to get anyone."

There are nine million Haitians who would probably agree.

[This article was first published in the British daily, The Independent.]

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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19 November 2010

Ansel Herz : Behind the Barricades in Haiti

Coffins used as street barricades in Cap-Haiten, Haiti. Photo by Ansel Herz / Mediahacker / The Rag Blog.
Streets barricaded in Cap-Haitien:
Protests in Haiti have popular support

By Ansel Herz / November 19, 2010

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti -- The first barricade looked harmless enough. Foot-long rocks piled next to each other in a line.

But as the bus driver slowed down, flying rocks landed in the street -- thrown by youths crouching in the bushes up the hill.

“We don’t really have a country! The police don’t do anything!” a nun sitting across from me complained after the bus driver negotiated, with a little cash, our way past.

The man next to her said the country will always be mired in problems until a leader like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro takes power.

We must have passed a dozen more barricades, most unmanned.

After Limbe, where cholera has killed at least 100 people, we came to the biggest “barikad” yet in the highway. Thick trees lay across the road and hundreds of people, a few holding machetes, blocked the way.

The bus driver once again descended to negotiate, but didn’t appear to be making any progress. Most passengers grabbed their belongings and got out.

I decided to go too. As I gathered my things, there was a debate among the remaining passengers:

“He’s a blan (foreigner), he’s going to get hurt.”

“No no no, he speaks Creole, he’ll be fine.”

“They’re going to think he’s MINUSTAH. They’re not logical.”

MINUSTAH is the acronym for the UN peacekeeping mission. As I stepped off the bus, people standing at the road called me over and urged me not to go. It was the third day of so-called “cholera riots” against foreign troops blamed for introducing the disease into the country.

Someone said the protesters are violent “chimere,” a word for political gangs. I explained that it’s my job as a journalist to go talk to them.

Then two Haitian journalists who were on the bus pushed their way through the crowd and wrapped their arms around me. Everyone agreed, finally, that together with the two guys I could get through the barricades.

Elizer and Duval were coming back home to Cap-Haitien. They were scared for me, saying under no circumstances should I talk with protesters or take photos. I reluctantly agreed to follow their instructions.

I wondered if perhaps the UN peacekeeping mission was right in saying these protests were organized by a politician or gang. “Enemies of stability and democracy,” MINUSTAH mission head Edmond Mulet called them. So far, I’d only seen young men in the street.

But as we passed through each barricade, everyone -- young girls and rotund market women mingling with demonstrators -- yelled out, “MINUSTAH ou ye?”

I yelled back, “Non, mwen se yon journalis Amerikan.” The suspicious stares softened into smiles and understanding looks. After passing the third barricade that way, we started laughing.

One teenager who threw a rock at us as we approached on motorcycle said, “pa gen pwoblem” -- no problem -- after I held out my press badge.

As we arrived on the outskirts of Cap-Haitien proper, the streets were deserted except for people gathered around barricades. One was still flaming. At another, dozens of men milled around a burnt out car.

“Press! Press!” I called out, and they beckoned me through the crowd, many hands pushing me forward until I was through.

I was glad when an elderly man walking in the street stopped me. I finally had a chance to do an interview, against the advice of my companions. I whipped out my audio recorder. He was Amos Ordena, the local section’s elected Kazek -- an official dispute mediator.

“The population has information that MINUSTAH introduced cholera,” he told me. “So many people have died. They’re obligated to hold fast, to demonstrate, so that the authorities will take responsibility. They’re asking MINUSTAH to leave the country.”

Haitian street demonstrators want the UN's MINUSTUH troops to leave. Photo by Ansel Herz / Mediahacker / The Rag Blog.
Asked if the protests are by a single group or the general population, he said all elements of society are participating in “the movement.” He said MINUSTAH are not firing weapons in self-defense, in the air to disperse protesters, but firing at people. He heard that at least one person had died earlier in the day.

We finally turned off the main road and walked into an alleyway. Elizer’s modest home was at the end (he lost his wife, children, and house in the capital in the earthquake). One of his brothers, blind and handicapped, lay on the floor beneath a television showing a soccer match. He smiled and introduced himself when I walked in.

Elizer reminded me to use hand sanitizer. Then his frail mother, beaming at us, served us fresh mais moule (corn) and papaya juice.

A neighbor of Elizer called up TV reporter Johnny Joseph, who came to meet me and help me get to the house where I was planning to stay. Elizer refused to accept any money for all his trouble.

Before leaving with Johnny, I spoke to Aristil Frito, a 24-year-old student standing outside talking with his neighbors. “The objective of the movement is clear: they’re asking for the departure of MINUSTAH.”

He said irresponsibility by the leaders of the country had led to this situation. In a more developed country, without so many young unemployed people in the street, the protests might have been more peaceful, he said.

“But the real solution is for people to live in a climate of peace, in dialogue. Today all Haitians should work together finish with hunger and poverty,” he said. “The best solution is the promotion of social dialogue.”

Johnny and I hopped on a motorcycle taxi, taking backstreets to bypass the barricades. We passed a five-foot deep trench dug in a narrow dirt road. Johnny said a MINUSTAH vehicle fell into the trench Wednesday and people threw bottles at them. The troops opened fire, killing an innocent bystander whose body was taken downtown, he said.

MINUSTAH blamed the death on local gangs.

At one junction, a young man in a purple shirt and black cap blocked our path and stuck out a knife as his friends looked on. I realized my press badge was tucked into my shirt. I pulled it out as Johnny talked the man down.

“You need to have your badge out,” the young man told me, glaring. “It’s a principle.” That’s been the only instance of serious hostility directed at me since I arrived in Cap Haitien.

So it’s bewildering to read the reporting of CNN’s Ivan Watson, who claimed that armed rioters control the city. He told viewers while being filmed on the back of a fast-moving motorcycle that it’s only way to move about the city amidst “violent protests.”

He doesn’t use that adjective to describe the actions of UN troops, accused of killing at least three demonstrators since Monday.

“They shot many people. We took them to the hospital. We’re asking MINUSTAH to leave the country,” a middle-aged man who declined to give his name told me.

He stopped bicycling past an intersection barricaded with coffins to stop and share his anger. “We have bottles, we don’t have guns to shoot them, but they’re shooting us. We have to defend our rights, MINUSTAH is a thing that doesn’t work in this country.”

Another of Watson’s reports claimed that Christian missionaries were forced to speed on a bus away from out-of-control-mobs, like in a Hollywood-style chase scene.

High drama = high ratings.

As I walked towards the downtown’s central public square on Wednesday, finally nearing the house, I saw several dozen people facing Haitian police in full riot gear standing in their way.

They said they had no beef with foreigners generally -- only MINUSTAH.

Theodore Joel said they respected the Haitian police, because they’re brothers and family -- though two police stations were reportedly set on fire during the first day of protests.

“Those soldiers are tourists! The money that’s invested in MINUSTAH -- they could invest that money in education. They could invest in constructing hospitals, in cleaning up the country. but they’re paying those soldiers instead. We don’t have guns like in 1803... but each time we put our heads together, we’re marked in history.”

Thursday marked 203 years since the Battle of Vertières, where Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the final major assault on French armies to drive them off Haitian soil. They renamed the city: from Cap Francois to Cap-Haitien.

While many expected demonstrations to continue in commemoration of Haiti’s independence struggle, the streets were quiet. No further confrontations were reported. I walked around downtown Cap on my own, trying to find an Internet connection to send out a radio story.

I’m asking everyone I meet here -- from local journalists, vendors, men at the barricades, to a local magistrate -- if these protests were organized by a gang or political group.

The unanimous answer is no -- people are fed up with UN peacekeepers and the cholera outbreak is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The magistrate said he understands and respects the people demonstrating, but he wishes the barricades weren’t impeding the transportation of medical supplies to fight cholera in his commune, where people are dying in the street.

As the head of MINUSTAH warned that “every second lost” because of protests means more suffering and death from cholera, the anti-UN demonstrations continued in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

CNN’s Watson led his report this way: “Like cholera itself, Haiti’s protests against the United Nations spread Thursday to the capital, Port-au-Prince, as angry people took to the streets demanding the global body get out of their country.”

Seems that for Watson, these protests are like a disease. It continues: “a planned protest began peacefully in the center of the city but turned violent as it moved toward the presidential palace, with one woman overcome by tear gas, witnesses said.”

Again, the protesters are the ones implicated in the violence. But a timeline report released by International Action Ties, an independent human rights monitoring group, said the demonstrations were largely peaceful after returning to Champs de Mars plaza.

UN troops and Haitian police fired at least 30 tear gas canisters into the Faculty of Ethnologie and surrounding tent camps, the report said, sending children and old women fleeing into the streets. Police ignored the group’s pleas to stop firing.

Are protests against the UN meant to destabilize the country? Are Haitians who’ve taken to the streets being used, like puppets, by powerful politicians for their own ends? Are the protests violent?

The foreigners I’ve talked to say yes. A few American liberals living in Haiti tell me they fear the protests are violent and meant to cause chaos, echoing the statements of MINUSTAH and reporters like Watson. Some Haitians in the professional middle class don’t want to participate.

But most Haitians I’ve spoken with say no. They say this is the inevitable outcome when troops who operate in Haiti with seeming impunity may have introduced a deadly, misery-multiplying disease into the country. It’s an angry, popular movement -- protesting however they can, emotions running high -- against a five-year-old foreign occupation.

What do you think? We’ll see how this plays out in the next nine days, ahead of the Nov. 28 election. Stay tuned.

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. This article first appeared on Ansel's blog, Mediahacker.]

Source / Mediahacker

Listen to Ansel Herz speaking about the protests on Democracy Now! and Flashpoints Radio.
Read Landon Yarrington’s account of how the protests began, which the magistrate disputes.
See more pictures from the Cap Haitien anti-MINUSTAH movement series on Mediahacker's photostream on Flicker
And see Ansel Herz's earlier posts from Haiti on The Rag Blog.

Video posted by Pierre Durohito De Venchy of the first three days of protests:

The Rag Blog

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24 October 2010

Ansel Herz : Cholera Spreads in Haiti

Above, MINUSTAH soldier points his gun at former Austin activist/independent journalist Ansel Herz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 15, 2010, at a demonstration against the renewal of MINUSTAH, the UN peackeeping mission. Photo from Gaentantguevara / Flickr.

For more about photo see sidebar story below.

Port-au-Prince fears the worst
as cholera spreads in Haiti

By Ansel Herz / The Rag Blog / October 24, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Days after an outbreak of cholera began in Haiti’s rural Artibonite region [see story below], killing at least 200 people, there are now five confirmed cases of cholera in the busy capital city.

The cases “do not represent spread of the epidemic” because they originated in central Haiti, according to a bulletin circulated by Haiti’s UN peacekeeping mission with the heading “Key Messaging,” obtained by IPS.

“The fact that these cases were picked up and responded to so fast demonstrates that the reporting systems for epidemic management we have put in place are functioning,” it concludes.

Residents of the capital city are not so confident. “It’s killing people -- of course, I’m scared. We’re in the mouth of death,” 25-year-old Boudou Lunis, one of 1.3 million made homeless by the quake living in temporary settlements, told the Miami Herald.

Radio Boukman lies at the heart of Cite Soleil, an impoverished slum crisscrossed by foul trash-filled canals where cholera could be devastating. The station has received no public health messages for broadcast from authorities, producer Edwine Adrien told IPS on Saturday, four days after reports of cholera-related deaths first emerged.

At a small, desolate camp of torn tents nearby, a gleaming water tank is propped up on bricks. Camp-dwellers said it was installed by the International Organization for Migration last week, more than nine months after the January earthquake damaged their homes.

But it’s empty because no organization has filled it with water. “We need treated water to drink,” a young man named Charlot told IPS matter-of-factly.

Cholera, transmissible by contaminated water and food, could be reaching far beyond the capital city. There are suspected cases of the disease in Haiti’s North and South departments, according to the Pan-American Health Organization, as well as confirmed cases in Gonaives, the country’s third largest city.

In Lafiteau, a 30-minute drive from Port-au-Prince, Dr. Pierre Duval said he had stabilized two cholera-infected men in the town’s single hospital, but could not handle more than six more patients. One died yesterday. All of them came from St. Marc, near the epicenter of the epidemic.

The main hospital in St. Marc is crowded with the infected. Supplies of oral rehydration salts were spotty when he arrived Friday after rushing from Port-au-Prince, American medic Riaan Roberts told IPS.

“We first talked to some lady from the UN who told us, ‘Oh I have to go to a meeting, I’ll mention your names, but just come back tomorrow,’” he said. “These microcosms of operational logistics are just beyond them.”

Roberts said a Doctors Without Borders team quickly put his skills to use, adding, “[The UN] is so top-heavy with bureaucracy that they can’t effectively react to these small outbreaks which quickly snowball and spread across an area.”

Buses and tap-taps filled with people speed in both directions on the dusty highway connecting the Haiti’s stricken central region to Port-au-Prince. There are no signs of travel restrictions or checkpoints near the city.

At a Friday meeting convened by the Haitian government’s Ministry of Water and Sanitation, “there were conversations around shutting down schools and transportation routes,” said Nick Preneta, Deputy Director of SOIL, a group that installs composting toilets in displacement camps.

“But if that’s the conversation now, however many hours after the first confirmed case, it’s already too late,” he continued. “One of the recommendations was to concentrate public health education at traffic centers... there were a lot of no-brainers at the meeting.”

Cholera bacteria can cause fatal diarrhea and vomiting after incubating for up to five days, allowing people who appear healthy to travel and infect others. The medical organization Partners In Health calls it “a disease of poverty” caused by lack of access to clean water.

The Artibonite river, running through an area of central Haiti known as “the breadbasket” for its rice farmers, is considered the likely source of the epidemic after recent heavy rains and flooding. Analysts say the regional agrarian economy has been devastated by years of cheap American imports of rice to Haiti.

Be sure to check the Haiti Documents Index for the latest internal reports, (mostly) free of spin, from officials.

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. This article also appears on Ansel's blog, Mediahacker, and was distributed by IPS.]

Relatives of Haitians struck by cholera, outside a local hospital in Saint Marc, Haiti, October 22, 2010. St-Felix Evens / Reuters.

Health workers scramble to keep
cholera out of crowded camps

Some 1.3 million people have lived in makeshift camps throughout Port-au-Prince since the January earthquake devastated the city. Living conditions are "appalling," according a recent report by Refugees International.

But one bright spot of the multi-billion-dollar relief effort, touted by the United Nations and Haitian President Rene Preval, has been the prevention of the spread of a highly infectious, catastrophic disease.

Until now.

At least 160 people have died this week [the number has now passed 200] from an outbreak of cholera in the central Artibonite region, according to Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian arm of renowned health organization Partners in Health.

The fear now is that the disease will reach Port-au-Prince [see story above] and wreak havoc in the crowded camps by contaminating the water.

There are already six suspected cases of the illness in the capital city, Monica Ferreira, a Portuguese medic, told IPS on Friday. Her team has operated a health clinic for quake victims since January.

"All defensive countermeasures should immediately focus on Cite Soleil and Lafiteau if they want to save Port-au- Prince," said Dr. James Wilson of the Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS).

A HEAS partner reported that a market woman and child died from cholera in the small town of Lafiteau, just 25 kilometres from the capital.

Melinda Miles, director of the Haitian organization KONPAY, told IPS she witnessed a man die of cholera Friday afternoon at the Hospital Centre of the Haitian Academy in Lafiteau. Doctors at the hospital could not be reached for comment before publication.

"We went into the room and he died right in front of us," she said. "He came from St. Marc. The doctor said there are a lot more patients on their way with cholera."

"If a case from St. Marc has had time to arrive in Lafiteau, then it's had time to arrive in Port-au-Prince. So I'm really scared," she added.

The Haitian government says the disease is cholera, a waterborne bacterium that can incubate in bodies for days and suddenly cause death by dehydration. Officials from the Pan American Health Organization, the regional arm of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, said Friday that laboratory tests had confirmed the outbreak.

Authorities have rushed medical resources to St. Marc, about 70 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, where a single hospital is overcrowded with patients. Villagers who traveled from far away are lying on the floors, hooked up to IV drips, while lines amass outside the gate.

Attempting to cope with the overwhelming patient load, a Doctors Without Borders team has moved from the hospital to construct their own treatment center, spokesperson Petra Becker told IPS.

Other medical teams are gathering information from rural villages to isolate areas where the illness is concentrated and discourage people from moving, she said.

In a blog post on Partners in Health's website, Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee called cholera "a disease of poverty". She wrote that loans from the Inter-American Development Bank meant for the development of a public water supply in the Artibonite region were blocked on political grounds during the tenure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"The international community's failure to assist the government of Haiti in developing a safe water supply has been violation of this basic right," Muhkerjee continued.

If the disease reaches Port-au-Prince, the number of victims is likely to skyrocket.

The New York Times reported Friday that cholera cases are surfacing on the island of La Gonave, as well as the areas of Arcahaie and Croix-des Bouquets closer to the capital.

The United Nations and Haitian government are holding emergency meetings in Port-au-Prince to counter the cholera outbreak. Daily truckloads of water delivered by relief group Pure Water for the World to the seaside slum of Cite Soleil have received double the usual chlorination, said Noelle Thabault, the group's deputy director.

Nesly Louissaint, who lives in Camp Carradeux, an officially recognized camp for thousands of quake victims, received a short text message on his cell phone alerting him to the outbreak of the disease. But no authorities have visited the camp with further information, he said.

It's not clear what prevention measures have been taken in the capital city. Traffic, schools, businesses and markets were open Friday and the streets appeared to be bustling as usual.

"I have not seen any general information distributed in the streets or camps at this time. I don't see relief groups out here," Mark Snyder, a development worker with International Action Ties, told IPS.

"I do see U.N. peacekeeping trucks full of troops, but they are not being utilized to spread information," he continued. "They're doing security patrols, which seems like a waste of resources."

Earlier this week, at least 12 people died when heavy rains flooded some of Port-au-Prince’s displacement camps. Dr. Wilson warns that October is the peak of Haiti's rainy season, making any further outbreak of the disease more difficult to contain.

-- Ansel Herz / Oct. 22, 2010

MINUSTAH peacekeeper guards food in Haiti, January 17. Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images.

UN peacekeeper to photographer:
'Shoot me and I'll shoot you'

By Mac McClelland / October 21, 2010

SEE PHOTO AT TOP OF POST

When I showed this amazing picture [at top of post] to my friend, after she registered what she was looking at, her eyes went huge while she exclaimed, "Oh my god!" with her hand over her mouth.

The scene is a protest last week in Port-au-Prince. The guy on the left is a clearly unarmed and videotaping journalist from Texas named Ansel Herz, whom I happened to work with when I was in Haiti last month. The uniformed fellow pointing a gun directly at his face is a United Nations peacekeeper.

I didn't meet many (okay, any) Haitian fans of MINUSTAH, the UN stabilization force that's been in the country since 2004. I have, for the record, met some MINUSTAH who are definitely good guys and have, for example, helped a woman in labor get to the hospital, and helped stop a man who was trying to kill his wife for refusing to have sex with him.

But the force has also shot civilians. It's had to have meetings about how not to sexually abuse the Haitian population. In fact, last week's protest erupted after the UN officially renewed MINUSTAH's mandate.

Some of the protesters' complaints, which echo those I heard while in-country, are that MINUSTAH doesn't actually do anything to protect civilians living in filthy, violent, rape-infested displacement camps, and that the money could be better spent dealing with those issues.

I asked Ansel how he ended up on the business end of a UN gun, just in case there was any kind of conflict or missing context surrounding this photo. Not so much, he says: "Maybe they felt threatened by my camera."

--Mac McClelland / Mother Jones

Also see:

Citizen Protests, Government Repression Mount in Haiti by Beverly Bell / Oct. 18, 2010 / CommonDreams.
Previous posts from Haiti by Ansel Herz on The Rag Blog.

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31 March 2010

Ansel Herz : Haiti Looking More Like a War Zone

Woman walks along hurricane-devastated street in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Photo by Jorge Saenz / AP.
Haiti today:
Looking more and more like a war zone

"The U.N. is a big, huge, heavy bureaucracy. And bureaucracies do not work well in places that need flexibility and adaptation." -- Jean Luc "Djaloki" Dessables, Haiti Response Coalition

By Ansel Herz / March 31, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- On an empty road in Cite Militaire, an industrial zone across from the slums of Cite Soleil, a group of women are gathered around a single white sack of U.S. rice. The rice was handed out Monday morning at a food distribution center by the Christian relief group World Vision.

According to witnesses, during the distribution U.N. peacekeeping troops sprayed tear gas on the crowd.

"Haitians know that's the way they act with us. They treat us like animals," said Lourette Elris, as she divided the rice amongst the women. "They gave us the food, we were on our way home, then the troops threw tear gas at us. We finished receiving the food, we weren't disorderly. "

Some 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers, known by the acronym MINUSTAH, have occupied Haiti since 2004, including 7,000 soldiers of which the majority are Brazilian. The mission has been dogged by accusations of human rights violations.

"It's time to begin thinking about changing the nature of MINUSTAH's mission," Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told the Brazilian newspaper O Estado after the January earthquake struck Haiti.

"MINUSTAH's mandate is to maintain the peace, that is, security, but the U.N. needs to realise that its mission is no longer solely to strengthen security but also to build the infrastructure," he said.

So far, there's no evidence of a shift in policy.

"Red zones are no-go zones, you're not supposed to be there whatsoever," said Regine Zamor, a Haitian-American who arrived days after the earthquake to find her family. She's been coordinating among NGOs to distribute aid in Carrefour Feille, one of the hardest-hit areas of the city.

"We only found out for folks in our community that it was a red zone because we weren't getting any help," she said. "That green, yellow, and red zoning actually comes from maps when there's war, but there's no war here in Haiti."

Even the famous Oloffson Hotel in downtown Port-Au-Prince is part of the red zone, according to Zamor and the hotel's outspoken owner, Richard Morse.

U.N. spokesperson George Ola-Davies provided IPS with a copy of a security zoning map, showing red zones only over the slum areas of Cite Soleil and Bel Air.

"Security measures start with oneself, so everyone's been advised to be cautious," he said. "Kidnapping is not a new phenomenon in Haiti. It was at a peak at one time, then it went down. Now it's starting again."

Two Doctors Without Borders staff members were kidnapped this month in Petionville, an upscale district zoned as green on the security map -- then released for a ransom.

Meanwhile at the U.N. headquarters near the airport, Haitians looking to coordinate relief efforts with aid agencies are routinely turned away at the gate, if they don't possess U.N. passes.

The mayor of Cite Soleil and a camp committee member from Leogane were nearly blocked from entering the base, according to Emilie Parry, co-author of a Refugees International report blasting the U.N. for not involving Haitian community-based organizations in the relief effort.

"We were concerned they would be kicked out," Parry said. "So we walked with them to try and identify agencies and people working in their communities -- there weren't many. Like most others, they were turned away and went home empty-handed."

U.N. spokesperson Ola-Davies said any Haitian who has an appointment can enter the base. Dozens of shining white Toyota and Nissan sport utility vehicles shuttling aid workers around the city enter and exit the base each day.

"The U.N. is a big, huge, heavy bureaucracy. And bureaucracies do not work well in places that need flexibility and adaptation. Haiti is one of those places," said Jean Luc "Djaloki" Dessables, co-coordinator of the Haiti Response Coalition, a group that includes small Haitian organisations.

The Haiti donors' conference begins Wednesday at U.N. headquarters in New York City. The Haitian government estimates 11.5 billion dollars are required to recover from the quake.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission spends 700 million dollars annually. A new Brazilian force commander was appointed this month, while the number of U.S. soldiers on the island dwindles further.

In Potay, a neighborhood near downtown Port-Au-Prince, a dozen U.S. soldiers toting automatic weapons walked past men drinking beer on a stoop.

Wearing jeans and a black vest, Brital, one of Haiti's most well-known rappers with the Barikad Crew, watched them go past his collapsed home.

"I don't think we need soldiers with guns. We need engineers the most," he said. "I'd prefer to see soldiers who could educate instead of those with guns. Soldiers that can come and build roads, bridges, universities and hospitals."

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd proposed Monday placing Haiti under a trusteeship system and broadening the U.N. mission in the country. He wrote in the Miami Herald that Haiti should not be occupied by foreign powers, but that the country is incapable of leading its own reconstruction.

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. He blogs at Mediahacker. This article was distributed by IPS.]

Thanks to David Holmes Morris / The Rag Blog

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20 February 2010

Leonardo Boff: Haiti : A Test for Humanity

"Village," acrylic on canvas by Haitian artist Hilome Jose.
Haiti: A test for humanity

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone.

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2010

The disaster that devastated Haiti, demolishing Port au Prince, killing thousands, and depriving the people of the minimum infrastructure needed for survival, is a test for humanity.

According to the predictions of those who systematically follow the state of the Earth, it will not be long before we confront several Haitis, with millions and millions of climate-change refugees, provoked by extreme events that could cause true ecological devastation and destroy countless human lives.

Two virtues, linked to the essence of being human, should have special relevance in this context: hospitality and solidarity.

Hospitalidad, as philosopher Kant saw it, is the right and duty of all, because all of us are inhabitants, or better, sons and daughters, of the same Earth. We have the right to move freely, to receive and to offer hospitality. Will the world's nations be prepared to attend to this basic right of the multitudes who will no longer be able to live in their over heated regions, without water or harvests?

The survival instinct does not respect the borders of nation states. The barbarians of yesteryear destroyed empires and the new "barbarians" of today will not do otherwise, unless they are exterminated by those who usurped the Earth for themselves. I will stop here because the probable, and the not impossible, scenarios are Dantesque.

The second virtue is solidarity. Solidarity is inherent in the social essence of the human being. The classics of the study of solidarity, such as Renouvier, Durkheim, Bourgeois, and Sorel, emphasize the fact that a society does not exist without the solidarity of one for the others. It presupposes a collective consciousness and the sense of belonging to the whole. Everyone accepts living together naturally, so that together we can realize the goal, namely, the search for the well being of all.

We must critique the concept of modernity that begins with the absolute autonomy of the subject in the solitude of its freedom. It is said: we should all attend to our own needs, without needing anyone else. For such solitary human beings to be able to live together requires a social contract, such as was elaborated by Rousseau, Locke, and Kant.

But that kind of individualism is false and illusory. We must acknowledge the undeniable fact that the human being is always a being in relationships, a-being-with-the-others, always intertwined in a tapestry of innumerable connections. Never alone. The social contract does not create society, it only organizes it juridically.

Moreover, solidarity has a cosmological background. All beings, from the topquarks, but particularly living organisms, are beings of relationships, and no one lives outside of the net of inter-retro-connections.

Therefore, all beings are reciprocally solidarian. Each helps the other to survive -- that is the meaning of biodiversity -- and thus do not necessarily fall victim to natural selection. At the human level, instead of natural selection, due to solidarity, we introduced caring, especially for the most vulnerable. This way they do not succumb to the selfish interests of groups or a kind of ferocious culture that puts ambition above life and dignity.

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone. The tragedies of a people are our tragedies, their tears are our tears; their progress is our progress. Their dreams are our dreams.

Che Guevara put it well: "Solidarity is the tenderness of the people." It is the tenderness that we must give to our suffering brothers and sisters of Haiti.

Translated from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

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14 February 2010

Messina Earthquake of 1909 : The U.S. and the 'Great White Fleet'

"The Great White Fleet" Comes to the rescue in Italy, 1909.
American ships, sailors and soldiers:
A history of sea power and disaster relief

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / February 14, 2010

America's leading role in emergency assistance following last month's devastating earthquake in Haiti and the huge numbers of U.S. Navy ships, sailors, and soldiers sent to help has been lauded worldwide.

But there is always one critical jackass who gets it all wrong and tries to take the good guys to task.

The jackass in this case is a well known Italian politician, Guido Bertolaso. He is Italy's national civil defense director and their special envoy to Haiti. A few days after the Haiti quake Mr. Bertolaso made a quick visit and immediately issued scathing criticism of the effectiveness of the entire relief effort to the international press before his superiors could call him quickly back home.

He particularly singled out the U.S.-led efforts calling them a "pathetic" failure. His blistering remarks included an observation that America, "... when confronted by a situation of chaos, tends to confuse military intervention with what should be an emergency operation, which cannot be entrusted to the armed forces."

You bet Guido. You seem to know even less about your own country's history than many politicians your age here in America know about ours. The irony is that you must have missed reading about the big historic commemoration in Italy in 2009 recognizing relief efforts for a terrible Italian earthquake in 1909.

The huge celebration singled out America and its military for our help and generosity in Messina 100 years ago. You know, Messina, Guido, down in Southern Italy? Coverage of the celebration was in all the Italian newspapers.

So, here's a quick history lesson for everyone about the effectiveness of the American military in earthquakes. I found a scholarly article by Prof. Jeff Matthews, an expat scholar, historian and teacher who has lived with his wife in Naples, Italy for decades. His English language, web based, "Around Naples Encyclopedia," has a worldwide following.

His latest article, reprinted below, spurred me to report on this historic connection between today's American military help in Haiti and our much earlier help in Italy.

Mr. Bertolaso's own government has loudly denounced his wrong-headed criticisms of the USA. Perhaps they can get him to bone up on things like the history below. . . before he heads out again as their international envoy, civil defense expert and spokesperson.

American relief troops in Messina, Italy, 1908.

The Great White Fleet and the Messina earthquake

On July 27, 1909, the New York Times reported that “The first baby born in a new house in Messina was named Theodore Roosevelt Lloyd Belknap Palmieri!" This was Mr. & Mrs. Palmieri's tribute to those American politicians and diplomats who had organized the relief effort in aid of the city of Messina, Italy, devastated by a powerful earthquake on the morning of December 28, 1908.

The quake killed about 60,000 people and destroyed much of the city. (Some estimates of the number of dead are as high as 200,000.) In the months following the quake, U.S. aid was considerable and -- to explain the “new house” in the above quote -- included the building of 1,500 frame houses. The rest of the name: Teddy Roosevelt was U.S. president at the time of the quake; Lloyd C. Griscom was the U.S. ambassador to Italy; and Reginald Rowan Belknap was the US Naval Attaché in Italy. [See American House Building In Messina And Reggio: An Account Of The American Naval And Red Cross Combined Expedition (1910) by Reginald Rowen Belknap, pub. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London.]

One of 1,500 sturdy wooden frame homes built in Messina with U.S. aid.
The early aid was immediate and direct. It came in the form of ships from the U.S. Great White Fleet, which was circumnavigating the globe and, at the time of the quake, found itself in the “home stretch,” as it were, of a cruise of 43,000 miles -- 16 modern warships, employing 15,000 men -- in a brash display of young U.S. sea power.

The cruise lasted from December 1907 through February 1909 and was under the command of Admiral Charles S. Sperry. The Great White Fleet went from Hampton Roads, Virgina, around South America and up to San Francisco; then, across the Pacific to Australia, the Philippines and Japan, and then across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, west across the Mediterranean, through the Straits of Gibraltar and back home across the Atlantic.

The fleet was in Egypt when it received news of the Messina earthquake. The flagship, Connecticut, with support vessels, arrived in Messina on January 9, 1909, with thousands of pounds of food, medicine and temporary shelters for survivors. About 17,000 persons were pulled from the rubble, their lives saved by the heroic efforts of the combined search and rescue crews of the U.S. ships and of vessels of other nations that were near Messina at the time of the quake.

The U.S. ships docked at the port of Naples during operations, and their presence is noted in the January issues of il Mattino, the Naples daily newspaper. The fleet stayed until late January and then left for home. In January, 2009, 100 years after the fact, ceremonies were held in Messina to commemorate the international effort that helped the city through the tragedy. I really do wonder what happened to Theodore Roosevelt Lloyd Belknap Palmieri. I hope he had a fine life.

-- Jeff Matthews / Around Naples Encyclopedia

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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05 February 2010

COMIC / Tom Keough : Baseball's Handout to Haiti

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Political cartoon by Tom Keough / The Rag Blog / February 5, 2010

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01 February 2010

John Pilger : The Kidnapping of Haiti

U.S. Navy helicopter in front of the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 19, 2010. Photo by Ramon Espinosa / AP.
U.S. troops take control:
The kidnapping of Haiti

By John Pilger / February 1, 2010

[In this article, which originally appeared in the British New Statesman on January 28, 2010, John Pilger describes the "swift and crude" appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarized Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the "relief effort" and Bill Clinton the UN's man, The Comedians, Graham Greene's dark novel about exploited Haiti comes to mind.]

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On January 22, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the U.S. Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.

The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security."

In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.”

Thus, a history of unerring U.S. violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East... is now increasingly tied up with military power.”

In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarized by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W. Bush’s policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700 billion. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup.

For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With U.S. troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the “relief effort”: a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. As president, Bush’s relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans’ black population.

In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti’s sweatshops.

When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pajamas, for next to nothing.

The U.S. controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite, and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Year after year, Haiti was invaded by U.S. marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN’s man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as “Mr. Nice Guy... bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land," Clinton is Haiti’s most notorious privateer, demanding de-regulation of the economy for the benefit of the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55 million deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed “tourist playground."

Not for tourists is the U.S. building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the U.S. has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington’s “rollback” plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by U.S.-sponsored regimes.

The first rollback success came last year with the coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama’s secret support for the illegal regime carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the U.S. seven military bases to, according to U.S. air force documents, “combat anti-US governments in the region”.

Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama’s next war. On December 14, researchers at the University of West England published first findings of a ten-year study of the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of the Chavez government, while the majority denigrated Chavez’s extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler.

Such distortion and its attendant servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American corporate media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support.

[Australian-born John Pilger is a renowned journalist, author and Academy award-winning documentary filmmaker who lives in London. He was a front-line war correspondent in Vietnam, and his writing has appeared in newspapers around the world. He has twice won British journalism's top award and in 2009 he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, Australia's international human rights award.]

Source / johnpilger.com

Thanks to Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog

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29 January 2010

Ansel Herz in Haiti : U.S. Military Brings Little Relief

Marines carry cartons of bottled water from Black Hawk helicopters after landing in a rural area outside Port-au-Prince on Jan. 19. Photo by St Felix Evens / Reuters / Christian Science Monitor.
From the tent cities of Haiti:
Relief efforts frustrate neighborhood leaders

By Ansel Herz / January 29, 2010

GRAND GOAVE, Haiti -- Two gray 23-million-dollar hovercrafts sitting in the middle of a sandy tropical beach look like they are from another world. A pair of 15-foot-wide propeller fans sticks out from the back of each behemoth.

Along the narrow dirt road to this seaside town’s center, families live under blankets stretched over sticks.

A tent city occupies the town’s main square, surrounded by crumbling buildings. Joseph Jean-Pierre Salam, the mayor of Grand Goave, about 15 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, estimated that some 70 percent of the city’s important structures fell during the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12.

“They have made many promises, but we don’t see the action yet,” Salam said, referring to the international community. “We have a lot of people suffering. There is an expectation that help will come.”

Little food and water has been distributed by the dozens of U.S. troops milling about the beach since the earthquake, according to local leaders.

“I went there to talk to them,” said Jean-Jacob Renee, an English teacher. “They said they are there to set up some tents for themselves, but they did not come with food or water -- anything for the people.”

He said the only aid the military brought to Grand Goave was distributed by Catholic Relief Services, an international NGO. “When they are in the town, we don’t know. We don’t have their phone number,” he said. “Nobody has helped us.”

U.S. military personnel on the beach were busy unloading construction material and heavy equipment from cargo boats. Senior Chief Petty Officer Steve Krutky told IPS his disaster recovery team cleared a rockslide out of the road and worked to repair local orphanages run by evangelical missions.

The U.S. military did not respond to IPS requests for further clarification of the Navy’s role in Grand Goave.

An analysis by the Associated Press on Wednesday found that 33 cents of every dollar towards emergency aid in Haiti goes to military aid, more than three times the nine cents spent on food.

Residents of Grand Goave said there is a network of seven neighborhood leaders for each section of the city that has not been tapped in the relief effort. Friends are pooling resources to purchase rice when possible, but family after family living outside the rubble of their homes told IPS they have received no assistance.

The roof of Rinvil Jean Weldy’s modest one-story brick house is broken off, resting at an angle on top of a kitchen table covered in dust. The rear wall crumbled, spilling onto the cracked ground. His wife remains at a nearby hospital nursing an injury from the quake.

“We need a tent, we need food and water, all the normal things,” Weldy said, pointing at his sons, who were hammering together scraps of wood to build the frame of a tent. “To the U.N., I say, I need help now.”

Weldy has been expecting compensation from the U.N. since November 10, when he and numerous witnesses say part of a bullet fired by U.N. peacekeeping troops hit his shoulder. Four days before the earthquake, the U.N. said an internal investigation into the incident cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing.

Witnesses told IPS the troops fired into the ground in an attempt to control a curious crowd, not into the air, as the U.N. maintains.

The U.N. peacekeepers are roundly dismissed by many Haitians as a source for relief in the country. “We have been living with the U.N. for many years, but now we see them very little,” Mayor Salam said matter-of-factly.

In Leogane, on the route back from Grand Goave to Port-Au-Prince, 500 families from a tent city in a field lined up in an orderly queue to receive food packages, in contrast to chaotic aid dispersals seen in Port-Au-Prince. Individuals walked into a clearing to grab a box each time a young Haitian man called out numbers through a megaphone.

“For us, it was very important to do this without military,” said Dolores Rescheleit, an aid worker with a German NGO called Arche Nova that provided the food. “Because the people in the camp are very strong. When you give the responsibility to the people in the camp, they will do it better than we will with the military.”

A committee of Haitians, with subcommittees to handle security, hygiene, and aid distribution, is governing the camp without problems, Rescheleit said. Women smiled as they walked back to their tents, balancing boxes of food on their heads.

I spoke to the New York Times Lede Blog yesterday about what I’ve seen in Haiti over the past few days -- chaotic food distributions, pros and cons of the U.S. military’s presence, and the politics surrounding the question of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return. I’m disappointed that their writers went for the most sensational angle and highlighted the first subject, leaving the others in separate, less prominent audio embeds

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. He blogs at Mediahacker. This article was distributed by IPS.]

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25 January 2010

Robert Jensen : How the Media Has Failed Us on Haiti

CNN's Anderson Cooper helps child hurt in rare incidence of violence in aftermath of Haitian earthquake.
Great television/bad journalism:
Media failures in Haiti coverage

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / January 25, 2010

CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.

“We don’t know what happened to that little boy,” Cooper says in his report. “All we know now is, there’s blood in the streets.” (View video below or go here.)

This is great television, but it’s not great journalism. In fact, it’s irresponsible journalism.

Cooper goes on to point out there is no widespread looting in the city and that the violence in the scene that viewers have just witnessed appears to be idiosyncratic. The obvious question: If it’s not representative of what’s happening, why did CNN put it on the air? Given that Haitians generally have been organizing themselves into neighborhood committees to take care of each other in the absence a functioning central government, isn’t that violent scene an isolated incident that distorts the larger reality?

Cooper tries to rescue the piece by pointing out that while such violence is not common, if it were to become common, well, that would be bad -- “it is a fear of what might come.” But people are more likely to remember the dramatic images than his fumbling attempt to put the images in context.

Unfortunately, CNN and Cooper’s combination of great TV and bad journalism are not idiosyncratic; television news routinely falls into the trap of emphasizing visually compelling and dramatic stories at the expense of important information that is crucial but more complex.

The absence of crucial historical and political context describes the print coverage as well; the facts, analysis, and opinion that U.S. citizens need to understand these events are rarely provided. For example, in the past week we’ve heard journalists repeat endlessly the observation that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Did it ever occur to editors to assign reporters to ask why?

The immediate suffering in Haiti is the result of a natural disaster, but that suffering is compounded by political disasters of the past two centuries, and considerable responsibility for those disasters lies not only with Haitian elites but also with U.S. policymakers.

Journalists have noted that a slave revolt led to the founding of an independent Haiti in 1804 and have made passing reference to how France’s subsequent demand for “reparations” (to compensate the French for their lost property, the slaves) crippled Haiti economically for more than a century.

Some journalists have even pointed out that while it was a slave society, the United States backed France in that cruel policy and didn’t recognize Haitian independence until the Civil War. Occasional references also have been made to the 1915 U.S. invasion under the “liberal” Woodrow Wilson and an occupation that lasted until 1934, and to the support the U.S. government gave to the two brutal Duvalier dictatorships (the infamous “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc”) that ravaged the country from 1957-86.

But there’s little discussion of how the problems of contemporary Haiti can be traced to those policies.

Even more glaring is the absence of discussion of more recent Haiti-U.S. relations, especially U.S. support for the two coups (1991 and 2004) against a democratically elected president. Jean-Bertrand Aristide won a stunning victory in 1990 by articulating the aspirations of Haiti’s poorest citizens, and his populist economic program irritated both Haitian elites and U.S. policy-makers.

The first Bush administration nominally condemned the 1991 military coup but gave tacit support to the generals. President Clinton eventually helped Artistide return to power in Haiti in 1994, but not until the Haitian leader had been forced to capitulate to business-friendly economic policies demanded by the United States. When Aristide won another election in 2000 and continued to advocate for ordinary Haitians, the second Bush administration blocked crucial loans to his government and supported the violent reactionary forces attacking Aristide’s party.

The sad conclusion to that policy came in 2004, when the U.S. military effectively kidnapped Aristide and flew him out of the country. Aristide today lives in South Africa, blocked by the United States from returning to his country, where he still has many supporters and could help with relief efforts.

How many people watching Cooper’s mass-mediated heroism on CNN know that U.S. policy makers have actively undermined Haitian democracy and opposed that country’s most successful grassroots political movement? During the first days of coverage of the earthquake, it’s understandable that news organizations focused on the immediate crisis. But more than a week later, what excuse do journalists have?

Shouldn’t TV pundits demand that the United States accept responsibility for our contribution to this state of affairs? As politicians express concern about Haitian poverty and bemoan the lack of a competent Haitian government to mobilize during the disaster, shouldn’t journalists ask why they have not supported the Haitian people in the past? When Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are appointed to head up the humanitarian effort, should not journalists ask the obvious, if impolite, questions about those former presidents’ contributions to Haitian suffering?

When mainstream journalists dare to mention this political history, they tend to scrub clean the uglier aspects of U.S. policy, absolving U.S. policymakers of responsibility in “the star-crossed relationship” between the two nations, as a Washington Post reporter put it.

When news reporters explain away Haiti’s problems as a result of some kind of intrinsic “political dysfunction,” as the Post reporter termed it, then readers are more likely to accept the overtly reactionary arguments of op/ed writers who blame Haiti’s problems of its “poverty culture” (Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times) or “progress-resistant cultural influences” rooted in voodoo (David Brooks, New York Times).

One can learn more by monitoring the independent media in the United States ("Democracy Now!," for example, has done extensive reporting, ) or reading the foreign press (such as this political analysis by Peter Hallward in the British daily The Guardian). When will journalists in the U.S. corporate commercial media provide the same kind of honest accounting?

The news media, of course, have a right to make their own choices about what to cover. But we citizens have a right to expect more.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at Source and on The Rag Blog.]

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Jordan Flaherty : Corporate Profiteering One Year After Haiti Earthquake

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19 November 2010

Ansel Herz : Behind the Barricades in Haiti

24 October 2010

Ansel Herz : Cholera Spreads in Haiti

31 March 2010

Ansel Herz : Haiti Looking More Like a War Zone

20 February 2010

Leonardo Boff: Haiti : A Test for Humanity

14 February 2010

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05 February 2010

COMIC / Tom Keough : Baseball's Handout to Haiti

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John Pilger : The Kidnapping of Haiti

29 January 2010

Ansel Herz in Haiti : U.S. Military Brings Little Relief

25 January 2010

Robert Jensen : How the Media Has Failed Us on Haiti

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