All Entries Tagged With: "Haiti"

Haiti cholera epidemic to hit 800,000: study

Up to 800,000 Haitians will contract cholera this year, double the estimates of UN agencies, a report published by The Lancet on Wednesday claimed.

A US team led by Jason Andrews from Harvard School of Public Health also found that a recent dip in reported cases was likely a temporary phase of the epidemic and not related to the intervention efforts.

“Although worldwide estimates of the epidemic at present are based on the assumption that the epidemic will attack four percent of the population, this assumption is essentially a guess,” the report said.

Full Story Here: Haiti cholera epidemic to hit 800,000: study | The Raw Story.

Aristide returning to Haiti in days

Ousted ex-Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will return within days to his homeland ending seven years in exile, a South African official said Friday. The former slum priest remains hugely popular and his return could disrupt elections this month in his earthquake-ravaged country.

In Haiti, an official with Aristide’s party confirmed that his “return is imminent,” but declined to say how or when he’s coming back.

“It’s an important event for the people in Haiti because they have waited so long for this,” said Maryse Narcisse, the head of Lavalas’ executive council. “He will not be traveling incognito. People will know he is coming.”

Full Story Here: The Associated Press: APNewsBreak: Aristide returning to Haiti in days.

One Year After Haiti Earthquake, Corporations Profit While People Suffer

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 nation’s 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 contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies, at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses.

Lewis Lucke, a 27-year veteran of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was named US 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).

Full Story Here: One Year After Haiti Earthquake, Corporations Profit While People Suffer.

Nine Months After the Quake – a Million Haitians Slowly Dying

“If it gets any worse,” said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, “we’re not going to survive.” Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling “tent” with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to 5,000 people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | Nine Months After the Quake – a Million Haitians Slowly Dying.

France urged to repay Haiti billions paid for its independence | World news | The Guardian

Leading activists write to Nicolas Sarzoky urging president to repay more than €17bn to help earthquake-hit country rebuild

A group of international academics and authors has written to Nicolas Sarkozy calling on France to reimburse the crushing “independence debt” it imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago.

The open letter to the French president says the debt, now worth more than €17bn (£14bn), would cover the rebuilding of the country after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people seven months ago.

Its signatories – including Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, Naomi Klein, the Canadian author and activist, Cornel West, the African-American author and civil rights activist, and several renowned French philosophers – say that if France repays the money it would be a solution to the shortfall in international donations promised following the earthquake.

Full Story: France urged to repay Haiti billions paid for its independence | World news | The Guardian.

Monsanto’s 475-ton seed donation challenged by Haitian peasants

Advocates for Haitian peasants said a U.S.-based company’s donation of up to 475 tons of hybrid vegetable seeds to aid Haitian farmers will harm the island-nation’s agriculture.

The advocates contend the donation is being made in an effort to shift farmer dependence from local seed to more expensive hybrid varieties shipped from overseas.

Haitian farmers and small growers traditionally save seed from season to season or buy the seed they desire from traditional seed markets.

However, an official from the St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. told Catholic News Service that the seed is simply a donation to the Haitian government. The first two shipments – 135 tons – of hybrid varieties of corn, cabbage, carrot, eggplant, melon, onion, spinach, tomato and watermelon arrived in Haiti during the first two weeks of May.

Full Story: »The Catholic Review Online | Catholic newspaper, Archdiocese of Baltimore, world and national Archdiocese news, CNS.

Haitians Race To Relocate Ahead Of Flooding, Mudslides

The first of 50,000 earthquake victims that officials fear are most threatened by Haiti’s looming rainy season were relocated Saturday as nonprofit groups scrambled to receive them.

Adults and children living at the Petionville golf course walked up a steep hill with their belongings and climbed into buses that rumbled off to yet another temporary home.

They wore yellow wristbands that indicated their departure time and new neighborhood: Corail-Cesselesse, an extremely dry and dusty area about nine miles (15 kilometers) north of Port-au-Prince.

Full Story: Haitians Race To Relocate Ahead Of Flooding, Mudslides.

Donors pledge 5.3 billion dollars for Haiti

Donor countries attending a major fundraiser for Haiti Wednesday pledged 5.3 billions dollars for the next two years to put the quake-ravaged nation back on its feet, UN chief Ban Ki-moon announced.

The tally far exceeds the target of 3.8 billion dollars over the next 18 months that had been set by organizers of the conference.

“The (UN) member states and international partners have pledged 5.3 billion dollars for the next two years and 9.9 billion dollars in total for the next three years and beyond,” Ban said at a press conference wrapping up the meeting.

“Friends of Haiti have acted far beyond expectations.”

Full Story: Donors pledge 5.3 billion dollars for Haiti – Yahoo! News UK.

What Bill Clinton’s Mea Culpa Should Mean

Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.

As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.

“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton said this month. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.

Full Story: Ruth Messinger: What Bill Clinton’s Mea Culpa Should Mean.

Haiti: Why Ground Reports Still Matter

Haiti is still there. Shattered, starving and suffering, the Haitian people endure despite the media’s most recent retreat in coverage. And slowly, a rebuilt nation is rising from the rubble.

During the next ten weeks, members of the Huffington Post Citizen Reporting unit will chronicle these efforts on this blog. The team includes relief workers both on the ground in Haiti, members of international support teams like UNICEF and Oxfam as well as supporters dispatching help from their hometowns across the country.

It was ten weeks ago to the day that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people in the Caribbean nation. In the days following the initial quake — aftershocks continued for weeks — over a million people were left homeless and hundreds of thousands needed medical treatment. During those days, stories of tragedy and heroism in Haiti blanketed cable news coverage and newspaper front pages. Celebrity anchors like Sanjay Gupta and Anderson Cooper rushed to Port-au-Prince to dive into recovery efforts. At one point, the latter even stole the stage by pulling a blood-covered child out of harm’s way while filming on location.

Full Story: Adam Clark Estes: Haiti: Why Ground Reports Still Matter.

With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can’t Feed Itself

The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.

Decades of inexpensive imports – especially rice from the U.S. – punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

Full Story: With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can’t Feed Itself.

Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath

When the young woman needed to use the toilet, she went out into the darkened tent camp and was attacked by three men.

“They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns,” the slender 21-year-old said, wriggling with discomfort as she nursed her baby girl, born three days before Haiti’s devastating quake.

“I am so ashamed. We’re scared people will find out and shun us,” said the woman, who suffers from abdominal pain and itching, likely from an infection contracted during the attack.

Full Story: Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath – Yahoo! News.

Private Firms Line Up as Haiti Opens for Business

Haiti’s road to recovery took a new twist Wednesday as a trade group representing private security contractors wrapped up a conference on reconstruction in the earthquake-battered nation.

“You don’t want to look like you’re profiteering off situations like these,” Derrell Griffith, project director at Sabre International, said. “But there is a need and the people need it quick.”

The conference was organized by the Association of the Stability Operations Industry, also known as IPOA, representing some 60 companies working in logistics and security, many of them active in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full Story: Private Firms Line Up as Haiti Opens for Business | CommonDreams.org.

Give Haiti control over its recovery

SINCE JANUARY’S devastating earthquake in Haiti, well-meaning experts have proposed an abundance of short-term and long-term recovery solutions. They ask why aid delivery has been so slow, why previous development plans for Haiti have rarely been successful, and why billions of dollars in funding over decades have not improved conditions for the most impoverished people in our hemisphere.

Some blame the government of Haiti, while others, including the organizations we represent, often point fingers at the international community. The simple answer is that those who have the greatest stake in rebuilding Haiti, Haitians themselves, don’t now and never have had a real seat at the table.

While Haitian resilience has been duly recognized around the world, few appear to be interested in talking to Haitians about how to rebuild their communities and how the billions likely to be pledged to their country will be used. And no one is talking about what recourse Haitians will have if promised projects are never completed, or worse, pledged money never arrives. Unfortunately, past failures can be found in every community across Haiti – water projects that were promised but never built, resulting in water-borne illness and death; food aid that was delivered, but spoiled or sold in markets below the prices asked by local farmers; non-government organizations that started educational programs, but then shifted priorities, leaving children without access to schools.

Full Story: Give Haiti control over its recovery – The Boston Globe.

US troops withdrawing en masse from Haiti

U.S. troops are withdrawing from the shattered capital, leaving many Haitians anxious that the most visible portion of international is ending even as the city is still mired in misery and vulnerable to unrest.

As troops packed their duffels and began to fly home this weekend, Haitians and some aid workers wondered whether U.N. peacekeepers and local police are up to the task of maintaining order. More than a half-million people still live in vast encampments that have grown more unpleasant in recent days with the early onset of rainy season.

Some also fear the departure of the American troops is a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people following the catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake.

Full Story: The Associated Press: US troops withdrawing en masse from Haiti.

Rains Threaten More Haiti Misery

The first heavy rains have hit Haiti since last month’s devastating earthquake struck, swamping makeshift camps that house hundreds of thousands of homeless and raising fears of landslides and disease.

The rains late on Thursday came as forecasters warned of a large storm heading in Haiti’s direction that could strike over the weekend.

More than a million people were made homeless by the deadly January 12 quake, many of them now living in flimsy makeshift shelters that offer little protection from heavy rains.

Full Story: Rains Threaten More Haiti Misery | CommonDreams.org.

Forgiveness for Haiti? We should be begging theirs

Naomi Klein  -

The very idea of Haiti as debtor needs to be abandoned. We in the west should pay arrears for years of violations

If we are to believe the G7 finance ministers, Haiti is on its way to getting something it has deserved for a very long time: full “forgiveness” of its foreign debt. In Port-au-Prince, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers has been watching these developments with cautious optimism. Debt cancellation is a good start, he told al-Jazeera English, but: “It’s time to go much further. We have to talk about reparations and restitution for the devastating consequences of debt.” In this telling, the whole idea that Haiti is a debtor needs to be abandoned. Haiti, he argues, is a creditor – and it is we, in the west, who are deeply in arrears.

Our debt to Haiti stems from four main sources: slavery, the US occupation, dictatorship and climate change. These claims are not fantastical, nor merely rhetorical. They rest on multiple violations of legal norms. Here, far too briefly, are highlights of the Haiti case.

The slavery debt. When Haitians won their independence from France in 1804, they had every right to claim reparations from the powers that had profited from three centuries of stolen labour. France, however, was convinced that it was Haitians who had stolen the property of slave owners, by refusing to work for free. So in 1825, with a flotilla of warships stationed off the Haitian coast threatening to re-enslave the former colony, King Charles X came to collect 90m gold francs – 10 times Haiti’s annual revenue at the time. With no way to refuse, and no way to pay, the young nation was shackled to a debt that would take 122 years to pay off.

Full Story: Forgiveness for Haiti? We should be begging theirs | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian.

HAITI: Private Contractors ‘Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot’

- Critics are concerned that private military contractors are positioning themselves at the centre of an emerging “shock doctrine” for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Next month, a prominent umbrella organisation for private military and logistic corporations, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), is co-organising a “Haiti summit” which aims to bring together “leading officials” for “private consultations with attending contractors and investors” in Miami, Florida.

Dubbed the “mercenary trade association” by journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of “Blackwater: the Rise of the World’ Most Powerful Mercenary Army”, the IPOA wasted no time setting up a “Haiti Earthquake Support” page on its website following the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean country.

IPOA’s director Doug Brooks says, “The first contacts we got were journalists looking for security when they went in.” The website of IPOA member company, Hart Security, says they are currently in Haiti “supporting clients from the fields of media, consultancy and medical in their disaster recovery efforts.” Several other IPOA members have either bid on or received contracts for work in Haiti.

via HAITI: Private Contractors ‘Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot’ – IPS ipsnews.net.

Haiti Quake More Destructive Than 2004 Tsunami: Study

The scale of devastation in Haiti is far worse than in Asia after the 2004 tsunami, a study has said, estimating the cost of last month's earthquake at up to 14 billion dollars.

The report released yesterday from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) raised the possibility that the quake could be the most destructive disaster in modern history.

Its stark assessment comes with Port-au-Prince still lying in ruins more than one month on, while the bodies of more than 200,000 dead pile up in mass graves outside the capital.

The study’s release coincided with what would normally be Haiti’s annual carnival, an explosion of pulsing music and colorful parades. But this year, the events have been cancelled as no one is in the mood to party.

Full Story Haiti Quake More Destructive Than 2004 Tsunami: Study | CommonDreams.org.

Cuba’s aid ignored by the media?

Among the many donor nations helping Haiti, Cuba and its medical teams have played a major role in treating earthquake victims.

Public health experts say the Cubans were the first to set up medical facilities among the debris and to revamp hospitals immediately after the earthquake struck.

However, their pivotal work in the health sector has received scant media coverage.

“It is striking that there has been virtually no mention in the media of the fact that Cuba had several hundred health personnel on the ground before any other country,” said David Sanders, a professor of public health from Western Cape University in South Africa. The Cuban team coordinator in Haiti, Dr Carlos Alberto Garcia, says the Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel have been working non-stop, day and night, with operating rooms open 18 hours a day.

Full Story Al Jazeera English – Focus – Cuba’s aid ignored by the media?.

Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor

Naomi Klein - The Nation:

If we are to believe the G-7 finance ministers, Haiti is on its way to getting something it has deserved for a very long time: full “forgiveness” of its foreign debt. In Port-au-Prince, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers has been watching these developments with cautious optimism. Debt cancellation is a good start, he told Al Jazeera English, but “It’s time to go much further. We have to talk about reparations and restitution for the devastating consequences of debt.” In this telling, the whole idea that Haiti is a debtor needs to be abandoned. Haiti, he argues, is a creditor–and it is we, in the West, who are deeply in arrears

Our debt to Haiti stems from four main sources: slavery, the US occupation, dictatorship and climate change. These claims are not fantastical, nor are they merely rhetorical. They rest on multiple violations of legal norms and agreements. Here, far too briefly, are highlights of the Haiti case.

§ The Slavery Debt. When Haitians won their independence from France in 1804, they would have had every right to claim reparations from the powers that had profited from three centuries of stolen labor. France, however, was convinced that it was Haitians who had stolen the property of slave owners by refusing to work for free. So in 1825, with a flotilla of war ships stationed off the Haitian coast threatening to re-enslave the former colony, King Charles X came to collect: 90 million gold francs–ten times Haiti’s annual revenue at the time. With no way to refuse, and no way to pay, the young nation was shackled to a debt that would take 122 years to pay off.

Full Story Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor.

Adviser to Detained Americans in Haiti Is Investigated

The police in El Salvador have begun an investigation into whether a man suspected of leading a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls is also a legal adviser to the Americans charged with trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without permission.

When the judge presiding over the Haitian case learned on Thursday of the investigation in El Salvador, he said he would begin his own inquiry of the adviser, a Dominican man who was in the judge’s chambers days before.

The inquiries are the latest twist in a politically charged case that is unfolding in the middle of an earthquake disaster zone. A lawyer for the group has already been dismissed after being accused of trying to offer bribes to get the 10 Americans out of jail.

Full Story Adviser to Detained Americans in Haiti Is Investigated – NYTimes.com.

One Month Later, Haiti’s Humanitarian Crisis Remains

One month ago, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti.

In the hours that followed, President Obama gathered his senior leadership and gave a clear directive: respond quickly and overcome any obstacles that stand in the way. We used the lessons we learned from past disasters, and we did not allow red tape to be an excuse for inaction. With the unparalleled mobility of assets of the U.S. military to support them, countless civilian government agencies began working around the clock through USAID, with the United Nations and in partnership with the Government of Haiti and more than 400 non-governmental organizations to reach as many people as humanly possible with food, water, shelter, and medical help.

The President's mandate has not been easy to fulfill and Haiti 's humanitarian crisis is far from over. The devastation wreaked by the earthquake is horrific. What infrastructure existed before the earthquake has been badly damaged — roads, ports and power grids were either buried or destroyed. The Government of Haiti's capacity, in terms of both human resources and physical infrastructure, cannot be rebuilt over night. Their losses are too great, but in spite of the circumstances they face, Haitians have taken the lead in determining the future of their nation. The greatest loss, the human toll of this disaster, will never leave the memories of the families and aid workers who have struggled to save them.

Full Story Dr. Rajiv Shah: One Month Later, Haiti’s Humanitarian Crisis Remains.

The Earthquake and Haiti’s Hidden Oil

I wrote Part 1 of Oil in Haiti as the economic reasons for the US/UN occupation back in October, 2009. After the earthquake I questioned whether oil drilling could have triggered the earthquake (Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?)

Then suddenly, after spending years hitting myself against Officialdom's colonial rock that kept denying Haiti had significant resources. After being called crazy and un-American for writing that the 2010 earthquake gives the US the perfect disaster-capitalism opportunity to come out from behind the UN and openly occupy Haiti to secure Haiti's oil, strategic location and other riches for the corporatocracy.

Just after I wrote about oil drilling causing earthquakes, on the following Tuesday, a veteran oil company man comes forward in Businessweek to say, and one wonders how he can so authoritatively speculate about the area of the faultline without intimate knowledge of the drillings, explorations, Haiti's wellheads and oil map, et al, but nonetheless his sudden, seemingly unprompted REVELATION, is that Haiti lies in an area that has undiscovered amounts of oil, it must have oil and the earthquake “may have left clues” to petroleum reservoirs!

Oil that, uhmmm, “could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, a geologist said.” (Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy by Jim Polson, Jan. 26, 2010, Bloomberg.) Yep, yep he may really mean: “that could aid Haiti's US-occupied economy recover its strategic oil reserves” for the global elite. No? I could be wrong, but I am thinking “and the cover up, starts.” But I won't say so. Let Stephen Pierce tell the story…

Full Story The Earthquake and Haiti’s Hidden Oil.

More Pain for Devastated Haiti: Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation | World | AlterNet

The rapid mobilization of U.S troops in Haiti was not primarily done for humanitarian reasons; we’re likely to see a neoliberal economic plan imposed, at gunpoint if necessary.

Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. While both the Pentagon and the United Nations claimed more troops were needed to provide “security and stability” to bring in aid, according to nearly all independent observers in the field, violence was never an issue. in

Instead, there appears to be cruder motives for the military response. With Haiti’s government “all but invisible” and its repressive security forces collapsed, popular organizations were starting to fill the void. But the Western powers rushing in envision sweatshops and tourism as the foundation of a rebuilt Haiti. This is opposed by the popular organizations, which draw their strength from Haiti’s overwhelmingly poor majority. Thus, if a neoliberal plan is going to be imposed on a devastated Haiti it will be done at gunpoint.

Full Story More Pain for Devastated Haiti: Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation | World | AlterNet.

Haiti Judge To Free U.S. Missionaries, Reuters Reports

The judge weighing whether 10 U.S. missionaries should go on trial for trying to take a busload of children out of Haiti was expected to issue his decision soon, a defense attorney said Wednesday.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil finished questioning the Americans and the next step would be to issue a recommendation to the prosecutor, something that could happen Thursday, lawyer Gary Lassade said.

Reuters is reporting, citing a judicial source, that the judge has decided to release the missionaries:

Full Story Haiti Judge To Free U.S. Missionaries, Reuters Reports.

Battle Begins Over Who’ll Get Lucrative Haiti Cleanup Contracts

As Haiti begins digging out from under 60 million cubic meters of earthquake wreckage, U.S. firms have begun jockeying for a bonanza of cleanup work.

It’s unclear at this point who will be awarding the cleanup contracts, but there is big money to be made in the rubble of some 225,000 collapsed homes and at least 25,000 government and office buildings.

At least two politically connected U.S. firms have enlisted powerful local allies in Haiti to help compete for the high-stakes business.

Full Story Battle Begins Over Who’ll Get Lucrative Haiti Cleanup Contracts | CommonDreams.org.

G7 to cancel Haiti’s debt

The world’s seven most industrialised countries vowed they would each cancel their nation’s remaining bilateral debt with quake-hit Haiti, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said after two days of G7 talks in northern Canada.

Haiti’s debt to Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States is already relatively small after past relief efforts.

It’s foreign debt, however, remains at about US$890 million ($1.2 billion), of which 41 per cent is owed to the InterAmerican Development Bank and a further 27 per cent to the World Bank.

Full Story G7 to cancel Haiti’s debt – World – NZ Herald News.

Missionaries turn on their leader over ‘kidnapping’ of Haiti children

Charity head from Idaho had debt problems and faced legal action

The leader of the Baptist missionaries from Idaho charged with trying to remove 33 Haitian children from the country illegally knew many of the so-called “orphans” still had living parents or other close relatives but tried to move them over the border anyway, her own lawyer, Edwin Coq, has claimed.

Laura Silsby, among the 10 Americans now in custody in Port-au-Prince, where they are accused of “child kidnapping and criminal association,” deliberately ignored the lack of correct paperwork to enable her to bring the youngsters into the Dominican Republic legally, he said.

Ms Silsby’s companions are well-meaning people caught up in a scheme they did not understand, he went on. “They were naïve,” he said of the nine. “They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to get the other nine out,” Mr Coq, who has apparently quarrelled with Ms Silsby, to
ld reporters in Haiti. “I hope they will be released today.”

Full Story Missionaries turn on their leader over ‘kidnapping’ of Haiti children – Americas, World – The Independent.

Media Disinformation regarding Emergency Relief in Haiti

Danny Schechter -

As predicted and feared, the media coverage from Haiti has shrunk at the very time that people there are facing their most serious challenges—how to survive the aftermath of a disaster which has become a permanent feature of their environment.

It’s not just the physical destruction, and rehabilitation challenges for people who have lost family members and limbs. It’s not just the daily challenge of finding food, water and housing. There are deeper problem of finding and nurturing hope in the success of a long term recovery.

We have gone from hearing reports of massive casualties and social needs to a focus on 10 Americans being indicted for child snatching. Once again we have become the story just as the misnamed “We are the World” is revived. It may be another example of what Ishmael Reed calls “fading to white,” a play on the Fade to Black phrase that TV insiders use to end every recorded show.

In a sense, the indictment of the American missionaries by the Haitian government—which has not yet included a charge for child trafficking—is a reassertion at its authorities when we are hearing voices on CNN and in policy circles faulting the devastated government for not doing enough. Not only are they still there, and reasserting but they are launching a high-profile case against Americans, something symbolically important for a retaining the support of Haitians who are furious (but not very vocal for obvious reasons given their situation) with the US response. This case gives them a high profile way of challenging the aid effort.

Full Story Media Disinformation regarding Emergency Relief in Haiti.

Haiti – Still Starving 23 Days Later

You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti.

Twenty-three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.

On February 4, the UN World Food Program reported they had given at least some food, mostly 55 pound bags of rice, to over a million people. The UN acknowledges that it still needs to reach another one million people. The 55 pounds of rice are expected to provide a two week food ration for a family. Beans and cooking oil are scheduled to come later.

Full Story Haiti – Still Starving 23 Days Later | CommonDreams.org.

HAITI: U.S. Lawmakers, NGOs Call for Debt Cancellation

Three weeks after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, nearly 100 U.S. lawmakers joined with key civil society groups here Thursday to urge the Group of Seven (G7) leading western nations to commit to cancelling all of the Caribbean country’s multilateral debt.

On the eve of Friday’s meeting by G7 finance ministers in Iqaluit, Canada, 94 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that also called for “the provision of assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that the country does not accumulate additional debts.”

That call was echoed by a several non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Oxfam, Jubilee USA, and Avaaz, which said they plan to deliver hundreds of thousands of individual signatures on petitions appealing for debt cancellation from across the world to this weekend’s ministerial meeting.

Full Story HAITI: U.S. Lawmakers, NGOs Call for Debt Cancellation.

Missionaries charged with kidnapping Haitian children

Ten Americans missionaries detained in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after the 12 January earthquake have been charged with child kidnapping.

Edwin Coq, an attorney in Haiti says the Americans also are charged with criminal association.

The ten appeared in court Thursday before being taken to a jail in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince.

Just minutes earlier, an attorney for the Americans in the neighbouring Dominican Republic had said he expected nine of the ten members of an Idaho-based church group were going to be released.

“We expect God’s will be done and we will be released,” mission organizer Laura Silsby had told reporters before she entered the closed-door session.

Full Story Missionaries charged with kidnapping Haitian children – World – NZ Herald News.

Danger of another big earthquake in Haiti is a real threat

The danger of another earthquake in Haiti is high enough that scientists are suggesting people sleep in tents.

The chance of another big earthquake in Haiti in the near future is great enough that people in Port-au-Prince should sleep in tents — not even in buildings that survived the Jan. 12 quake apparently unscathed, geologists said Monday.

A report by the United States Geological Survey says the probability of an aftershock of magnitude 7 or greater in Haiti in the next 30 days is 3 percent, the probability of one magnitude 6 or greater is 25 percent, and of one magnitude 5 or greater is about 90 percent.

“Three percent may not sound big, but it is pretty big in terms of what we might have expected after a standard earthquake,” said Dr. Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami.

In a typical earthquake, the probability of another quake of the same magnitude that soon would be “vanishingly small, close to 0,” he said.

Full Story Danger of another big earthquake in Haiti is a real threat – South Florida – MiamiHerald.com.

As food distribution improves, Haitians want U.S to ‘take over’

International relief organizations backed by American soldiers delivered hundreds of tons of rice to homeless residents of the Haitian capital Sunday, laboring to ease a food shortage that has left countless thousands struggling to find enough to eat.

But even as food-aid workers enjoyed their most successful day since the Jan. 12 earthquake, the increasingly prominent role of U.S. troops and civilians in the capital is creating high expectations that the Obama administration is struggling to contain.

The needs are extraordinary, and the common refrain is that the Americans will provide.

“I want the Americans to take over the country. The Haitian government can’t do anything for us,” said Jean-Louis Geffrard, a laborer who lives under a tarp in the crowded square. “When we tell the government we’re hungry, the government says, ‘We’re hungry, too.’ ”

Full Story As food distribution improves, Haitians want U.S to ‘take over’ – washingtonpost.com.

HAITI: Local Leaders Shut Out of Military-Run Relief Efforts

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 centre, 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 kilometres 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.

Full Story HAITI: Local Leaders Shut Out of Military-Run Relief Efforts.

Americans arrested taking children out of Haiti

Haitian police have arrested 10 U.S. citizens caught trying to take 33 children out of the earthquake-stricken country in a suspected illicit adoption scheme, authorities said on Saturday.

The five men and five women were in custody in the capital, Port-au-Prince after their arrests on Friday night. There are fears that traffickers could try to exploit the chaos and turmoil following Haiti's January 12 earthquake quake to engage in illegal adoptions.

One of the suspects, who says she is leader of an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children’s Refuge, denied they had done anything wrong.

Full Story Americans arrested taking children out of Haiti – Yahoo! News.

In Cost Dispute, U.S. Halts Airlift of Haiti Quake Victims

The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.

The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.

Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs. Other states have taken patients, too, and those flights have been suspended as well, the officials said.

Full Story In Cost Dispute, U.S. Halts Airlift of Haiti Quake Victims – NYTimes.com.

What was the 4th largest US embassy doing in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world?

The US State Department has been unusually productive of late in implementing the reconstruction of most of its foreign mission buildings under a “New Initiatives Division” of the Overseas Buildings Operations Bureau (OBO). It’s certainly understandable, given the realities of the Post 9/11 era, that the Department should rethink its ability to secure the safety of the diplomatic corp and maintain consular services for US citizens abroad. What has now provoked controversy, however, is the scale of some of the “New Embassy Compounds” (NEC). Most notable, for us, is the imperious NEC-Port au Prince, Haiti.

How large does an embassy that, ostensibly, exists to maintain diplomatic relations with a foreign power need to be? And, in particular, why does the U.S. need such a behemoth emblem of its interest in such a small, beleaguered and impoverished nation as Haiti?

The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings of Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, pre-staged the new era. Just last week, Belgrade once again showed that when the US actions provoke local populations the highest profile symbol of the United States government (USG) – the Embassy – becomes an easy target in the center of the capital. It is understandable that when you have a government in power that wishes to maintain a public profile that insists it doesn’t need to negotiate US foreign policy or sit down to listen to its opponents, then turning the foreign mission into a fortress is imperative.

Full Story What was the 4th largest US embassy doing in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world? — Signs of the Times News.

Human Organs Are Being Trafficked In Aftermath Of Quake (VIDEO)

On CNN last night Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive talked to the network’s Christiane Amanpour about the unsettling reality of trafficking of human organs from victims in the wake of the earthquake that struck a few weeks ago.

“A lot of organizations – they come and they say there were children on the streets,” Bellerive said. “They are going to bring them to the States — we have already reports of trafficking, even of organ trafficking.”

Full Story Haitian PM: Human Organs Are Being Trafficked In Aftermath Of Quake (VIDEO).

‘She’s alive!’ Haitian girl saved after 15 days

“She has her whole life ahead of her,” exclaimed an emotional rescuer after 16-year-old Darlene Etienne was dragged from the wreckage of Haiti’s quake after 15 days buried alive.

A French search team pulled the desperately dehydrated girl from a collapsed building in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince after neighbours searching in the debris heard a faint voice in the rubble.

Dazed rescuers spoke of a miracle as they rested at the field hospital in the capital’s Lycee Francais where Etienne was taken for emergency treatment after being slowly extracted from the ruins on a stretcher.

“She just said ‘thank you,’ she’s very weak, which suggests that she’s been there for 15 days,” rescue team spokesman Commander Samuel Bernes told AFP.

“She was in a pocket surrounded by concrete, completely dehydrated,” he added.

Full Story ‘She’s alive!’ Haitian girl saved after 15 days – Yahoo! News.

There is no help. We need food and water. Urgently

In front of the presidential palace, its roof folded in like a collapsed soufflé, Marcellus Samuel, a Haitian preacher, grabs my notebook and scribbles frantically on to the page.

“There is no help. Everybody is sleeping in the streets. We need food, water and clothes,” he writes. “URGENTLY!”

Around him, hundreds of Haitians left homeless by the recent earthquake crowd into a rag-tag refugee camp cobbled together from black tarpaulins, filthy carpets and branches, and erected in the square in front of the palace’s wreckage.

Even before the earthquake, life was seldom easy in the slums of Port-au-Prince, some of the poorest areas of the poorest country in the Americas. World Bank statistics show that life expectancy here is 57, against an average of 69 in Latin and Central America. More than 80% of the population of Haiti survives on less than the equivalent of £2 a day, while HIV and unemployment rates are staggeringly high.

The latest catastrophe, however, has taken the city to a new level of hellishness.

Full Story There is no help. We need food and water. Urgently – Herald Scotland | News | World News.

Haiti officials say efforts continue to find survivors

Haitian government officials say they are still looking for earthquake survivors, despite earlier reports that they had called off search and rescue efforts.

“There has been a misinterpretation of the president’s declaration,” Haitian Minister of Communications Marie Laurence Lassegue told The Miami Herald.

Before making a final decision on future search and rescue efforts, Haitian officials are waiting for operators on the ground to give President Rene Preval their recommendation.

Full Story Haiti officials say efforts continue to find survivors | McClatchy.

Amy Goodman on Haiti – The army should bring gauze not guns

Thom Hartmann

Revisiting The Shock Doctrine in the Wake of Haiti Disaster | CommonDreams.org

Naomi Klein

Editor’s note: In the aftermath of the January 12th earthquake that ravaged (and continues to ravage) Haiti, as we witness the bravery and dignity of survivors and relief workers, we are wise to examine the deeper outlines of the historical roots that created the conditions for such a massive loss of life. We must simultaneously, however, begin to ponder what lies ahead for the people of Haiti as they emerge from the immediate calamity of the quake. As Naomi Klein meticulously revealed in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, we understand that disasters of this kind can be moments of great upheaval and uncertainty, and that in these moments space is created that paves the way for new policies and new realities to emerge. In the following excerpt from her book, Klein explores those who were able to resist the worst inclinations of “disaster capitalism” – in this case Thai villagers whose homes were decimated by the India Ocean tsunami – by harnessing the power of community and solidarity to supplant the role that financial interests and neo-liberal elites sought to play in the aftermath of crisis:

Despite all the successful attempts to exploit the 2004 tsunami, memory also proved to be an effective tool of resistance in some areas where it struck, particularly in Thailand. Dozens of coastal villages were flattened by the wave, but unlike in Sri Lanka, many Thai settlements were successfully rebuilt within months. The difference did not come from the government. Thailand’s politicians were just as eager as those elsewhere to use the storm as an excuse to evict fishing people and hand over land tenure to large resorts. Yet what set Thailand apart was that villagers approached all government promises with intense skepticism and refused to wait patiently in camps for an official reconstruction plan. Instead, within weeks, hundreds of villagers engaged in what they called land “reinvasions.”

Full Story Revisiting The Shock Doctrine in the Wake of Haiti Disaster | CommonDreams.org.

A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Was Envisaged by the US Military One Day Before the Earthquake

A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the earthquake.

The holding of pre-disaster simulations pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 11. (Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com, complete text of article is contained in Annex)

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of US Southern Command.(SOUTHCOM).

Defined as a “Combat Support Agency”, DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the US military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency).

On the day prior to the earthquake, “on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.” (Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)

Full Story A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Was Envisaged by the US Military One Day Before the Earthquake.

The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?

Haiti has a longstanding history of US military intervention and occupation going back to the beginning of the 20th Century. US interventionism has contributed to the destruction of Haiti’s national economy and the impoverishment of its population.

The devastating earthquake is presented to World public opinion as the sole cause of the country’s predicament.

A country has been destroyed, its infrastructure demolished. Its people precipitated into abysmal poverty and despair.

Haiti’s history, its colonial past have been erased.

The US military has come to the rescue of an impoverished Nation. What is its Mandate?

Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?

The main actors in America’s “humanitarian operation” are the Department of Defense, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (See USAID Speeches: On-The-Record Briefing on the Situation in Haiti, 01/13/10). USAID has also been entrusted in channelling food aid to Haiti, which is distributed by the World Food Program. (See USAID Press Release: USAID to Provide Emergency Food Aid for Haiti Earthquake Victims, January 13, 2010)

Full Story The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is it a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?.

How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation

Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!

Shortly after Haiti was hit by a 6.1 aftershock earlier today, Amy Goodman and Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté report from the Port-au-Prince airport. Amy and Kim discuss how centuries of Western domination of Haiti has worsened the impact of the devastating earthquake, from the harsh reaction to Haiti’s independence as a republic of free slaves in 1804 to the US-backed overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Ives says, “This quake was precipitated by a political earthquake—with an epicenter in Washington, DC.”

ANJALI KAMAT: We’re going to go back to Amy Goodman in Port-au-Prince. We reached her just before the broadcast. She was in an open field right next to the airport, where hundreds of relief and rescue workers have set up camp.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m standing here near the airport in Port-au-Prince. I can’t exactly say my feet are firmly planted on the ground, because this morning, just about 6:00, here in Port-au-Prince, we were in our room and just getting ready to leave for this broadcast, and the earth started to tremble. The floor, the walls, you feel the shake. It is that moment of just extreme panic when everyone in the house, everyone, starts running for their lives out of the house, making their way through rooms, jumping over—holding whatever it was you were holding at that moment. Outside, people hold each other, they weep, or they just breathe a sigh of relief. Although, not really, because you never know when the next aftershock will happen.

Full Story Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation.

Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis

US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, “In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren’t seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists.”

Bob Moliere, an organizer within the popular political party Fanmi Lavalas was killed in the earthquake. His wife, Marianne Moliere, told IPS News after burying her husband, “There is no life for me because Bob was everything to me. I lost everything. Everything is destroyed,” she said. “I’m sleeping in the street now because I’m homeless. But when I get some water, I share with others. Or if someone gives some spaghetti, I share with my family and others.”

Full Story Toward Freedom – Profiting From Haiti’s Crisis.

Haiti earthquake survivors face growing disease threat

Health experts warn of threats from tetanus and gangrene, and spread of measles and meningitis as aid effort continues

The spread of disease has become a major concern in Haiti, medical experts said today, as relief groups struggled to speed up the delivery of supplies to hungry and thirsty earthquake survivors.

While a slight return to normality street vendors emerging to offer fruit and vegetables, rescue teams from around the world continued to search for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings. More successful rescues were being reported six days after the disaster but tens of thousands are still believed to be buried.

Medical experts said many survivors had multiple fractures and internal injuries. Medical teams at mobile hospitals that have been overwhelmed by the casualties warned of the immediate threats of tetanus and gangrene and the spread of measles, meningitis and other infections.

Full Story Haiti earthquake survivors face growing disease threat | World news | guardian.co.uk.

Haiti Journal: Hacksaws and Vodka — Resurrecting Port-au-Prince’s Largest Hospital from the Rubble

The country has one doctor for 11,000 people. Electricity and running water are available in Port-au-Prince for two hours — on a good day. The chief surgeon at the General Hospital (the largest public national hospital) told me that patients often die in the operating room because the generator fails — on a good day. Under these circumstances, a small group from Partners in Health, led by Paul Farmer, is trying to resurrect the city's most important hospital from the rubble.

I have been there with a small group of seven surgeons, doctors and nurses who performed the first surgery. That was four days after the quake shook for 15 seconds — flattening the city and over half of the buildings, including the hospital where 150 nurses remain buried in the nursing school. The sickly, sweet stench of death and rotting flesh fills the air as I walk by.

Two orthopedic surgeons, my wife and father in-law, started the first amputation without water, electricity, or disinfectant. They used a rusty hacksaw we washed with vodka, lit by camping headlamps in an empty room with a few boxes of supplies we had packed into our plane. Over the last two days, we created five operating areas to care for the 1,200 patients who are still lying on the ground outside in the hospital's courtyard. They desperately need surgery to repair their crushed and broken bones, now festering and infected in the humidity and sweltering Haitian sun. The nurses and hospital staff are either dead or at home caring for their families. In the United States we have ten staff for every patient at most hospitals. There now are only a few local staff left for thousands of patients. They, too, are dead. They, too, have lost their homes. Today some began to return to work, their families gone or injured, their homes in piles of rock and debris.

Full Story Mark Hyman, MD: Haiti Journal: Hacksaws and Vodka — Resurrecting Port-au-Prince’s Largest Hospital from the Rubble.

What Bush did to Haiti

The February 29, 2004 Coup D’ Etat instigated by the Bush Administration

by David Swanson -

If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress, one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed form, might have read something like this:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution  “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison, intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States statutes, to wit:

a. The President, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, prevented the security contractors working for Haiti’s elected, constitutional government led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from receiving reinforcements at a time when Haiti’s constitutional government was under attack. The removal of the security contractors facilitated the kidnapping of President Aristide:

Full Story What Bush did to Haiti.

US general: 200,000 dead Haitians just a ’start point’

Haitians sought comfort in their faith Sunday, flocking to pray in church ruins as rescue teams raced against time to pull out any final survivors five days after a devastating earthquake.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon flew in to assess what he called the “most serious humanitarian disaster in decades,” while security degenerated in the capital with police killing a man as they fired on looters ransacking a market.

The leading US general on the ground warned that 200,000 might be a reasonable “start point” for the eventual toll, but said it was still too early to predict a figure that might never be accurately known.

Full Story US general: 200,000 dead Haitians just a ’start point’ | Raw Story.

IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages

Richard Kim, The Nation -

Since a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti on Tuesday–killing tens of thousands of people–there’s been a lot of well-intentioned chatter and twitter about how to help Haiti. Folks have been donating millions of dollars to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti (by texting “YELE” to 501501) or to the Red Cross (by texting “HAITI” to 90999) or to Paul Farmer’s extraordinary Partners in Health, among other organizations. I hope these donations continue to pour in, along with more money, food, water, medicine, equipment and doctors and nurses from nations around the world. The Obama administration has pledged at least $100 million in aid and has already sent thousands of soldiers and relief workers. That’s a decent start.

But it’s also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice–about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor–by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Full Story IMF to Haiti: Freeze Public Wages.

344 Cuban Medics Treat Earthquake Victims

There are 344 Cuban medics working in Haiti today, they have two improvised hospitals where they are providing services to the earthquake victims. Only two of them were injured in the earthquake, both of whom have received treatment for minor injuries and remain there to assist the disaster victims.

Cuban doctors are working in all 10 “departments” (administrative regions) of Haiti. They are assisted by approximately 400 Haitian medical interns who have completed medical degrees on full scholarships in Cuba.

Cuba has provided free public health care to the poor of Haiti since 1989 – the only public medicine available in that country. During the recent coup and subsequent US/French/Canadian invasion which deposed the Aristide presidency, Cuban doctors continued to provide medical care when other hospitals closed down and other doctors fled the country.

Full Story 344 Cuban Medics Treat Earthquake Victims.

On rebuilding Haiti: What Can And Ought To Be Done

The New Yorker -

The night after the earthquake, Haitians who had lost their homes, or who feared that their houses might collapse, slept outdoors, in the streets and parks of Port-au-Prince. In Place Saint-Pierre, across the street from the Kinam Hotel, in the suburb of Pétionville, hundreds of people lay under the sky, and many of them sang hymns: “God, you are the one who gave me life. Why are we suffering?” In Jacmel, a coastal town south of the capital, where the destruction was also great, a woman who had already seen the body of one of her children removed from a building learned that her second child was dead, too, and wailed, “God! I can’t take this anymore!” A man named Lionel Gaedi went to the Port-au-Prince morgue in search of his brother, Josef, but was unable to find his body among the piles of corpses that had been left there. “I don’t see him—it’s a catastrophe,” Gaedi said. “God gives, God takes.” Chris Rolling, an American missionary and aid worker, tried to extricate a girl named Jacqueline from a collapsed school using nothing more than a hammer. He urged her to be calm and pray, and as night fell he promised that he would return with help. When he came back the next morning, Jacqueline was dead. “The bodies stopped bothering me after a while, but I think what I will always carry with me is the conversation I had with Jacqueline before I left her,” Rolling wrote afterward on his blog. “How could I leave someone who was dying, trapped in a building! . . . She seemed so brave when I left! I told her I was going to get help, but I didn’t tell her I would be gone until morning. I think this is going to trouble me for a long time.” Dozens of readers wrote to comfort Rolling with the view that his story was evidence of divine wisdom and mercy.

Full Story On rebuilding Haiti : The New Yorker.

Haiti Earthquake: Breaking News, Updates (VIDEO)

Why it’s so hard to get relief into Haiti — Simply landing at the airport is a major logistical challenge, the AP says:

U.S. military air traffic controllers are scrambling to keep earthquake aid flowing into the Haitian capital without the use of a control tower or radar, and amid struggles over fuel, tarmac space and even staircases to access planes.

With all the hurdles facing rescue and relief efforts in this shattered city, it appears the first to overcome are at its major entry point for supplies. U.S. federal officials halted nonmilitary flights for eight hours Thursday at the request of the Haitian government, leaving dozens of planes circling.

10:55 AM ET: U.S. troops arriving — AP has some raw video of US troops arriving in Haiti this morning, as well as footage of them helping those who are injured.

Full Story Haiti Earthquake: Breaking News, Updates (VIDEO).

Bill Fletcher, The Black Commentator on Haiti

Thom Hartmann

Haiti’s political history

Thom Hartmann and  Max Blumenthal

What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)

In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses “built on top of each other” and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country’s many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.

True enough. But that’s not the whole story. What’s missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat’s testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince’s overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.

It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.

Full Story What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be) | CommonDreams.org.

Haiti Earthquake Relief: How You Can Help

A comprehensive list of links and ways to get involved in relief efforts, detailed below.

An earthquake centered near the impoverished Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince caused the collapse of several buildings and an unknown number of fatalities Tuesday. The quake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale and at least 1.8 million people live within the area where the earthquake had its highest intensity.

President Obama said on Tuesday that his “thoughts and prayers” were with the people of Haiti. “We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti,” Obama said in a statement. The Obama administration said that the State Department, USAID and the U.S. military were working to coordinate an assessment of the situation and any possible assistance.

Huffington Post Impact is working to collect a comprehensive list of links and ways to get involved in relief efforts, detailed below.

Full Story Haiti Earthquake Relief: How You Can Help.

The Disaster of the Century: How to Help Haiti

A guide to the best ways your aid can go to use immediately to help save lives, protect the survivors and rebuild from Haiti’s ruins.

It is hard to imagine the enormity of the pain and tragedy caused by the earthquake in Haiti,which has left the capital city of Port-au-Prince in ruins. The damage is catastrophic; more than two million people have been affected, tens of thousands have died, and uncountable people injured. It is truly the disaster of the century.

We at AlterNet want to do all we can to assist in the saving of lives, the protection of the survivors and the rebuilding of a safe environment for all the people of Haiti. At this point, making financial contributions to the groups with strong track records seems the best avenue to take. From our earned advertising revenue in 2009, AlterNet will make a contribution of $250 to each of the groups listed below, totaling $2,000. Of course we need the money, but the people of Haiti are in such dire straits. They need it far more. We hope you can join us in making a contribution, even a small one, since literally in this case every dollar helps save lives.

There is also an important political action you can take by very strongly urging President Obama to Grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the US. (See more details below)

Full Story The Disaster of the Century: How to Help Haiti | World | AlterNet.

Quake-stunned Haitians pile bodies by fallen homes

Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after the strongest earthquake hit the poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

The devastation was so complete that it seemed likely the death toll from Tuesday afternoon’s magnitude-7.0 quake would run into the thousands. France’s foreign minister said the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was apparently among the dead.

International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said an estimated 3 million people may have been affected by the quake and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.

Full Story Quake-stunned Haitians pile bodies by fallen homes – Yahoo! News.