The Kidnapping of Haiti

By John Pilger
January 27, 2010 • [print_link]

THE THEFT OF HAITI has been swift and crude. On 22 January, 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 US 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 US 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 militarised 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 US 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 pjamas, for next to nothing. The US 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. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US 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 $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed “tourist playground”.

Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US 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 US-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 US seven military bases to, according to US 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 14 December, 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.

www.johnpilger.com

Middle Eastern and Latin American Media: A Thorn in the Side of the U.S. Military in Haiti

By Nikolas Kozloff

Author, “Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left”

Dateline: January 22, 2010 03:06 PM [print_link]

alJazeera2 You Tube which serves as a fitting antidote to the usual mainstream fare. The report is highly critical of the U.S., which according to the reporter has focused most of its energy on fostering stability and putting boots on the ground as opposed to rebuilding Haitian society.

It’s not the first time that al-Jazeera has taken on the U.S. military. Indeed, the network fell afoul of American authorities as long as seven years ago during the invasion of Iraq. A news organization comprised of many editors, journalists, presenters and technical staff who had formerly worked with the BBC in London, al-Jazeera broadcast shockingly graphic pictures of dead and captured American soldiers.

When the network aired footage of the captured U.S. soldiers, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused al-Jazeera of violating the Geneva conventions. The network, however, was unrepentant. “Look who’s talking about international law and regulations,” said spokesperson Jihad Ballout. “We didn’t make the pictures — the pictures are there. It’s a facet of the war. Our duty is to show the war from all angles,” he added.

Yosri Fouda, al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in London, chimed in. “I can see why American and British politicians and military leaders don’t like us showing these pictures,” he marked. “They show a side of the war that they don’t want projected because it may affect public opinion in their country negatively. In these things, the western media is highly sanitized. You are not seeing what war, this war, is actually like.”

During the short-lived war, al-Jazeera had correspondents posted around Iraq. While the U.S. mainstream media encouraged its own narrative of advancing and triumphant coalition forces, al-Jazeera broadcast horrific images of Iraqi victims of coalition bombing campaigns. One showed the head of a young child that had been split apart, reportedly in a coalition assault on Basra.

Perhaps, the U.S. military was literally gunning for al-Jazeera as a result of the network’s controversial news coverage. During an American air raid and artillery barrage on Baghdad, U.S. forces killed at least one journalist including an al-Jazeera correspondent, Tariq Ayoub. The building was hit by two air-to-surface missiles. At the time, the reporter was standing on the roof of al-Jazeera’s station doing a live broadcast.

U.S. military officials said they regretted the deaths of the journalists and claimed they did not know every place that journalists were operating. Al-Jazeera, however, declared that it had previously informed the Pentagon of the location of its Baghdad office. In fact, in a letter to the Pentagon, the Middle Eastern network gave the exact coordinates of its building.

It wasn’t the first time that al-Jazeera had suffered at the hands of the U.S. military. During the invasion of Afghanistan, the network’s Kabul office was destroyed by U.S. “smart” bombs two hours before the Northern Alliance took over the city. According to one report, President Bush may have even suggested that al-Jazeera offices in Qatar be bombed during a meeting with then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Though al-Jazeera provided critical coverage of the U.S. military, the network has never become a mouthpiece for Arab regimes in the Middle East. Even as many Arabic TV stations (including Iraq’s before the invasion) referred to the U.S. military as “forces of aggression,” al-Jazeera opted for “invading forces.” What’s more, al-Jazeera conducted long interviews with Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and even Ariel Sharon.

In addition, the network has gotten on the wrong side of several Arab governments and reporters have been banned or harassed in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Al-Jazeera was criticized by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain reportedly accused the network of being pro-Zionist. As a result of the network’s impartiality and independence, many Arabs have become subscribers as they believe al-Jazeera sees the world as they do.

In the wake of the tragedy in Haiti, al-Jazeera is now bringing its critical coverage to bear in the Caribbean. While the U.S. military operating in the island nation may not like it, commanders will have to put up with the same kind of close media scrutiny they were placed under in the Middle East. For the U.S. military however, the headache now runs deeper. In addition to al-Jazeera, commanders must now contend with Venezuelan media and Telesur.

Like al-Jazeera, which receives state funding from Qatar’s government, Telesur or “Television of the South” also receives government support, specifically from leftist Latin American and Caribbean governments including Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. And, similarly to al-Jazeera, Telesur is a media enterprise designed to compete with traditional U.S. outlets such as CNN.

When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez helped to found Telesur in 2005 as an affiliate of state TV Venezolana de Television, U.S. conservatives grew concerned. Connie Mack, a Republican Congressman from Florida, remarked that the new network was “patterned after al-Jazeera,” and threatened to spread anti-U.S. ideas across Latin America.

When Telesur announced a content-sharing agreement with al-Jazeera in 2006, Mack went ballistic and declared that the decision was designed to create a “global television network for terrorists.” Adding to conservatives’ ire, Telesur signed an agreement with al-Jazeera whereby Latin personnel would receive training at the hands of the Middle Eastern network.

If al-Jazeera’s trial by fire was Iraq, the crucial test for Telesur was Honduras in 2009. In the wake of the right wing coup d’etat which deposed democratically elected president Jose Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran army cut off Telesur’s local broadcasts. However, the network’s signal was still available on the internet and a local radio station occasionally picked up Telesur audio.

Adriana Sivori, Telesur’s correspondent in Tegucigalpa, was in her hotel room speaking on the telephone to her network when 10 soldiers arrived with rifles drawn. The men unplugged Telesur’s editing equipment in an effort to halt the network’s coverage of protests in support of ousted president Zelaya.

When a soldier lightly slapped Sivori’s hand so she would hang up, the journalist grew alarmed. “They’re taking us prisoner at gunpoint,” she remarked. Sivori, along with producer Maria Jose Diaz and cameraman Larry Sanchez, were taken to an immigration office in a military caravan. There, the authorities beat them and demanded to see their Honduran visas.

Shortly later, the journalists were released and the authorities warned Telesur journalists to cease transmitting images in support of Zelaya or face further detention. Defiantly however, Telesur continued to throw a lot of resources at the Honduras story. Indeed, at times during the first week after the coup Telesur was the only channel with a live feed. In a media scoop, Telesur even broadcast a live telephone interview with Zelaya from his Venezuelan plane when the ousted leader attempted to return to Tegucigalpa.

To be sure, Telesur’s visibility increased as a result of its ground breaking Honduras coverage. However, what has given Telesur most credibility is the station’s willingness to take on other controversial topics, some of which have rattled left-leaning South American governments. One of those issues is Haiti.

Like al-Jazeera, which has pursued independent journalism in the Middle East, Telesur went into Haiti and took a no-holds-barred approach. According to station manager Aram Aharonian, who I interviewed for my book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008), Telesur’s Haiti coverage proved controversial with the Chilean, Argentine, and Uruguayan governments.

One of the first stories that Telesur broadcast from the island nation concerned MINUSTAH, the United Nations’ Stabilization Mission in Haiti. In the report, Haitians said that Latin American peace keeping soldiers deployed to Haiti were repressing the people.

Now, in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, Telesur has joined al-Jazeera in providing critical coverage of events. Moving on from the MINUSTAH mission, Telesur has focused in laser-like on United States’ misplaced priorities in the Caribbean island nation. While most Americans watch the mainstream media and bask in a wave of self-congratulation, Telesur has painted a darker picture of the U.S. response.

In one report for example, Telesur focused on U.S. policy towards Haitian migrants. According to the story, U.S. officials have drawn up plans to house the migrants at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo instead of transferring them to the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. naval vessels including aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson are prepared to intercept Haitian boats and repatriate the desperately needy if necessary.

In another story, Telesur reported on European Union unhappiness about the U.S. relief effort in Haiti. According to the report, the EU seeks more relief coordination and less of a foreign military presence in Haiti. Reed Lindsay, Telesur’s correspondent in Haiti, remarks that it is the U.S. military which decides who goes in and out of the Port-au-Prince airport and what kinds of humanitarian aid gets through. According to Telesur reports, EU concerns are echoed by many Latin American governments who fear that the U.S. is using the crisis in Haiti to launch a military occupation.

Could the U.S. military be running out of patience with foreign media reporting, which has proven much less deferential to Washington when it comes to Haiti coverage? One recent report by Cuba’s Prensa Latina is worth noting. According to the story, U.S. marines recently barred Venezolana de Television journalists from entering Haitian hospitals. At Haiti’s central hospital, Haitians seeking to help their loved ones inside were reportedly mistreated. Those who tried to bring water and food to their relatives were unable to enter the hospital, as the marines stopped them from entering the facilities.

Al-Jazeera has always proven to be a thorn in the side of the U.S. military. Now, Washington must also contend with rising star, Telesur. In the coming days, as the relief effort proceeds in Haiti, relations between the Pentagon and these new media outlets could prove testy.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008). Visit his blog here.

Chile's tilt to the old right–yet another warning for the Democrats

January 19, 2010 [print_link]

Editors’ Note: Rightwinger Sebastian Piñera, a Chilean “Berlusconi”, just won a runoff election against his liberal opponent, a man who represented a dilapidated centrist coalition (“the Concertación”) whose tenure in terms of corruption and betrayal of authentic left measures opened the road to a re-emergence of the Right. This is painfully reminiscent of what’s happening in the US, where the Clinton-Obama regimes, with their opportunistic policies and catering to the plutocracy, are also pushing the U.S. toward the Zombie Right. Incidentally, although we regard this piece as noteworthy, we are somewhat uncomfortable with the author’s characterizations of Pres. Hugo Chavez.

The Future of the South American Left

Chile’s New Right

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Piñera celebrates victory.

For those who believe that South America is in the grip of some kind of left revolutionary fervor, this week’s election in Chile may have come as a surprise. With partial results from 60% of the country’s polling stations now available, it appears that conservative billionaire Sebastian Piñera has ousted the ruling center left Concertación, 52% to 48%. It is a stunning upset in light of the fact that the right has not won an election in Chile for fifty years. It’s an ironic and difficult pill to swallow for the governing coalition, made up of Socialists and Christian Democrats. Current president Michelle Bachelet, herself of the Concertación, is enormously popular. Chile’s first woman president, she enjoys an approval rate of nearly 80%. Unfortunately, Chilean law prevents immediate reelection and so Bachelet will have to wait until 2014 if she wants to run again.

As a result of the legal restrictions, Concertación ran lackluster candidate and former president Eduardo Frei who pledged to uphold modest continuity of Bachelet’s welfare programs. It’s a big setback for the Concertación, which has ruled Chile since the end of the Pinochet military dictatorship in 1990. Despite Bachelet’s personal popularity, the coalition has become synonymous with corruption. Piñera, a kind of Chilean Berlusconi who owns a television channel amongst other business holdings, and who piloted his private helicopter around the country to make campaign stops in isolated regions, is one of the word’s 700 richest people. The politician opposes human rights prosecutions for military and police officers implicated in abuses during the Pinochet military dictatorship, and as such represents a political step backwards for Chile.

Piñera also stands against reform of the Chilean constitution, a relic of the Pinochet era. Moreover, some members of Piñera’s coalition served in General Pinochet’s cabinet, and Piñera’s brother was the general’s labor minister and an architect of the dictator’s neo-liberal economic strategy. A much better electoral outcome for Chile would have brought Marco Enríquez-Ominami to power. An intriguing and novel figure on the Chilean political scene, Ominami is an independent who broke away from the Concertación. A youthful 36-year old filmmaker and son of a leftist revolutionary leader killed by Pinochet’s army during a 1975 firefight, Ominami resigned his position as a socialist congressman to run for president. Memorably, he called his opponents “dinosaurs … who kidnapped democracy” and called for scrapping Chile’s bicameral Congress in favor of a single chamber of parliament elected by proportional representation.

Though Ominami got the endorsement of Chile’s newly formed Ecologist party and benefited from voter fatigue with the Concertación, he was eliminated in the first electoral round after garnering 20% of the vote. Particularly unfortunate was Ominami’s failure to electrify Chilean youth disaffected with the political establishment. In recent years youth has shown some signs of engagement, and could constitute a potent political force for change in future. In 2006 during the so-called “penguin revolution,” tens of thousands of high school students, many wearing uniforms with little dark ties on white shirts, protested throughout Chile to demand educational improvements. Shocked by the protests, Bachelet wound up negotiating with student leaders and actually gave in to most of youth’s demands.

Outgoing president Bachelet remains very popular but cannot run for a consecutive term.

Though disappointing, the electoral turn of events in Chile should not come as an incredible shocker. With the exception of students and Mapuche Indians who have been fighting for land rights, Chile has not seen the emergence of dynamic social forces in recent years which could move the political agenda forward. It’s a reality sorely bemoaned by veterans of Chile’s historic political struggles. Manuel Cabieses is a journalist who I interviewed in Santiago for my book Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008). During the 1960s, Cabieses was a reporter with the Communist party paper and was picked up the military two days after General Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup d’etat. Cabieses was later imprisoned but made his way to Cuba after being released. Astonishingly, he later returned to Chile and worked with the underground Revolutionary Leftist Movement (known by its Spanish acronym MIR) against Pinochet. Today, he publishes a political magazine called Punto Final.

The media environment in Chile has proven challenging for the likes of Cabieses. Unlike Venezuela for example, Chile has no television station that espouses the views of the left. There are two left-wing bi-monthlies, El Siglo of the Communist Party and Punto Final. Both have notoriously low circulation. The Communist Party owns a radio station, and there are a few other progressive leaning stations. On the internet there is more political diversity than in TV and print, but digital media is still incipient in Chile where most people lack internet access. Without a vibrant progressive media, progressive forces have had difficulty getting off the ground. The Mapuches, Cabieses said, were “atomized” just like the rest of society and the most radical Indians had been beaten back and repressed by the police. Labor unions meanwhile had suffered a severe decline since the 1970s. “The dictatorship,” Cabieses remarked, “through repression and imposition of its economic model, were able to fracture social movements and almost succeeded in liquidating any kind of left political movement.”

***

Just a few years ago it seemed as if the left was sweeping across South America, but the question on many observers’ minds right now is whether this tide may be turning. Already, the mainstream media is salivating over the prospect that Hugo Chávez and his ilk may have hit a road block. In a recent Newsweek feature entitled “Latin America isn’t tilting left, it’s tilting right,” Mac Margolis writes that many voters throughout the region are experiencing incumbent fatigue coupled with the fallout of the economic downturn. In this sense, what is happening politically in South America might bear some resemblance to the United States where voters have become dissatisfied with Obama and the Democrats in Washington.

“Another explanation,” Margolis writes, “might be that the Latin American left is no longer what it used to be. Or rather, it was never what it was made out to be.” “Make no mistake,” he writes. “Beating the gringo devil and bashing capitalism can still make pulses race in much of the hemisphere, but, when it comes to casting ballots, what appears to move the majority is pragmatism.” Juan Forero, no friend of the Chávez regime in Venezuela, has also chimed in. Writing in the Washington Post, he remarks that while the right is not making a comeback pragmatists are on the upswing. “Voters,” he says, “are showing a preference for moderates rather than firebrand nationalists who preach class warfare and state intervention in the economy.”

There’s a bit of smug self satisfaction here though Forero’s argument is worth considering. Take a look at Chile’s major political figures and it’s clear they hardly differ in the nature of their proposals. Bachelet has pumped money into social programs and publically criticizes neo-liberal economics and the Washington Consensus. Fundamentally however she never rocked the broad consensus around free trade and Chile’s fiscal conservatism. So ingrained is free trade in Chile that even had the Concertación won, the country would not have shifted its adherence to this underlying economic ideology.

***

Such pragmatism and political conservatism is bad enough in Chile, but what is really distressing is the possibility that such a trend could spread into neighboring countries and thereby derail the left within the wider region. Indeed, 2010 is fast shaping into an anti-incumbent year which could water down and dilute many recent political gains.

Take for example the case of Brazil. Though Lula of the Workers’ Party has promoted important anti-poverty programs, Brazil boasts one of the most conservative monetary policies on earth. After he rattled financial markets during his first presidential campaign in 2002, Lula won over skeptical investors by embracing economic pragmatism. Brazilian labor may not care for such economic policies, but the fact is that Lula, like fellow pragmatist Bachelet, is enormously popular. But now the Brazilian left, such as it is, may be headed on a similar collision course to Chile. Like Bachelet, Lula is barred by law from running for a third consecutive term. He has backed his chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, to be his presidential successor and to run in the October, 2010 election. However, Rousseff has little political savvy and none of Lula’s charm and charisma. In polls, she trails centrist São Paulo governor José Serra of the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party or PSDB.

Regardless of who wins, neither candidate is expected to undertake dramatic changes to Lula’s market friendly policies. Investors meanwhile are enchanted by a race between two mainstream candidates. For its part, the left is placing its hope in either Ciro Gomes, a former governor of the state of Ceara, or Marina Silva. Lula’s former minister of the environment, Silva has said she might run on the green party ticket. A remarkable woman whose personal story I recount in great detail in my upcoming book, No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2010), Silva could appeal to women voters, amongst others. However, she trails in popularity and polls show that voters are more interested in jobs, crime and other concerns more than the environment — Silva’s signature issue. Moreover, the green party has little clout and is viewed as fringy.

Piñera striking a "man of the people" posture. The Right's victory underscores the short memory of peoples and the eroding effect of pseudo left governments.

With pragmatism on the rise, South America needs to foster the creation of a solid bloc of left leaning countries that can counter Brazil’s huge political influence throughout the region. The problem however is that within the immediate neighborhood there are very few candidates which could fill this void. Across the border from Chile in Argentina, the Peronist party stands for the political and social status quo and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s political fortunes have waned as of late. Uruguay and Paraguay have progressive leaders but have been rather centrist and politically quiet. In any case, neither country carries much economic weight. That leaves the perpetually convoluted Andean region. The problem here however is that Colombia and Peru still have right wing, pro-U.S. regimes in power and the future does not bode well for the left.

“To the Latin left,” remarks Mac Margolis of Newsweek, “there is no leader more reviled than the Colombian president [Álvaro Uribe].” Nevertheless, there is no denying that Uribe, who has clamped down on FARC guerrillas and revamped bullet-ridden cities like Bogotá, Medellín and Cali, enjoys huge popularity.

If Colombia’s constitutional court rules that he can run for a third term in the May, 2010 election Uribe would probably win. Even if the change is not put into place, experts anticipate that Uribe’s handpicked successor Juan Manuel Santos would prevail in the election. In Peru meanwhile, disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori’s daughter Keiko is a political frontrunner for the 2011 election and wants to pardon her father for past human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. Ollanta Humala, a dubious left populist, trails in polls.

At least Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia don’t seem to be moving towards pragmatism. But more than ten years on, Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution remains a bundle of social and political contradictions. The ALBA barter program, creation of an alternative Sucre currency and Bank of the South are all positive and innovative initiatives which stand to foster alternative economic development. If they are designed in such a way as to encourage radical democracy and not top-down decision making, the communal councils ought to continue and to be strengthened. In other ways however Chávez has conducted himself as a rather conventional populist advocating for classic resource nationalism. There may be a ceiling on the Chávez model, however: if oil prices surge again expect Venezuela to gain new adherents. Otherwise, one might expect the Bolivarian alliance to lose traction. If the opposition can unite for legislative elections in December, 2010, it could win a majority as recession, inflation and mismanagement erode Chávez’s support.

In any case, Chávez has already lost some ground in Central America with the toppling of ally Manuel Zelaya. In El Salvador, the new left under Mauricio Funes seems more partial to Brazilian pragmatism than any kind of populist, Chávez-style populism. Chávez himself meanwhile seems to have become mentally unhinged and recently remarked that former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was a “patriot.” Such comments suggest that the South American left should look elsewhere for a new standard bearer. Andean populists confront other contradictions and problems, chief amongst them the extractive model of development. Across the region, leaders have been pushing boondoggle infrastructure projects in order to facilitate the export of raw resources. Historically, this extractive model has not fostered equitable economic development let alone social harmony.

As I’ve been writing on my blog Senor Chichero, Ecuador is enmeshed in oil extraction and this has sparked deep social and environmental unrest. Apprehensive about oil development proceeding on their lands, Indians recently protested the Correa regime by blocking Amazonian roads. Condescendingly, Correa called Indians “infantile” for objecting to legislation which would deny them consultation on mining and oil drilling projects.

Tragically, protests along the blocked roads led to violence. The Indians claimed that 500 police attacked them which resulted in two deaths and nine wounded by gunshots. The Correa government, the Indians declared, had “blood on its hands” and pledged to carry out international legal action over violations of their collective and human rights. Because of these inherent contradictions, the most politically and socially hopeful country right now in the Andean region is not Venezuela or Ecuador but Bolivia. That’s not too surprising given the nation’s long tradition of grass roots indigenous mobilization. Indeed, it was the Indians who propelled Evo Morales to his recent and second electoral victory which has solidified the president’s desire to proceed with his socialist program.

Less messianic than Chávez, Morales has also pursued resource nationalism and has a compelling vision of Bolivia as a “plurinational,” multi-ethnic state. However, unless electric cars take off and Bolivia becomes an energy powerhouse by developing its lithium deposits, Morales won’t have nearly as much cash to throw around as Chávez.

***

South America is no longer following a right wing political trajectory or extreme economic neo-liberalism. However, as Chile demonstrates, the region could easily fall into uninspiring pragmatic leadership. From the United States, it’s easy to romanticize South America as being in the throes of dramatic political upheaval and a move towards some kind of radical left. The reality however is that right now social movements, with the possible exception of Bolivia, are not powerful enough to truly effect deep seated change or to transform the intrinsic, fundamental structures of society. If Chile becomes a trend and Brazil elects more uninspiring pragmatic leadership, the South American left will have to reinvent itself if it wants to remain relevant in future.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of the upcoming No Rain In the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects The Entire Planet (Palgrave Macmillan, April 2010). Visit his website, senorchichero.

Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2010

Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti

Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti – by Stephen Lendman

In her book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” Naomi Klein explores the myth of free market democracy, explaining how neoliberalism dominates the world with America its main exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere.

As a result, wars are waged, social services cut, public ones privatized, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or in duress to object. Disaster capitalism is triumphant everywhere from post-Soviet Russia to post-apartheid South Africa, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, Honduras before and after the US-instigated coup, post-tsunami Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, New Orleans post-Katrina, and now heading to Haiti full-throttle after its greatest ever catastrophe. The same scheme always repeats, exploiting people for profits, the prevailing neoliberal idea that “there is no alternative” so grab all you can.

On Her web site, Klein headlines a “Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again,” then quotes the extremist Heritage Foundation saying:

“In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the US response to the tragic Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.”

Heritage notes “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti,” itemized briefly below:

— be bold and decisive;

— mobilize US civilian and military capabilities “for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform;”

— US military forces should play an active role interdicting “cocaine to Haiti and Dominican Republic from the Venezuelan coast and counter ongoing efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to destabilize the island of Hispaniola;”

— US Coast Guard vessels should stop Haitians from trying “to enter the US illegally;”

— Congress should authorize “assistance, trade and reconstruction efforts;” and

— US diplomacy should “counter the negative propaganda certain to emanate from the Castro-Chavez camp (to) demonstrate that the US’s involvement in the Caribbean remains a powerful force for good in the Americas and around the globe.”

Heritage is an imperial tool advocating predation, exploitation, and Haitian redevelopment for profit, not for desperate people to repair their lives. It disdains democratic freedoms, social justice, and envisions a global economy “where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish” solely for the privileged, the chosen few, not the disadvantaged or greater majority.

It’s for free market plunder, regulatory freedom, tax cuts for the rich, exploiting the majority, corporate handouts, and militarized control for enforcement. It supports the Bilderberg idea of a global classless society – a New World Order with rulers and serfs, no middle class, no unions, no democracy, no equity or justice, just empowered oligarchs, freed to do as they please under a universal legal system benefitting them.

For the moment, their focus is Haiti, ripe for plunder, like the second tsunami that hit coastal Sri Lankans. The December 2004 one took 250,000 lives and left 2.5 million homeless throughout the region. Klein explained the aftermath at Arugam Bay, “a fishing and faded resort village” on Sri Lanka’s east coast that was showcased to “build back better.” Not for villagers, for developers, hoteliers, and other business interests to exploit. After the disaster, they had a blank slate for what the tourist industry long wanted – “a pristine beach (on prime real estate), scrubbed clean of all the messy signs of people working, a vacation Eden. It was the same up and down the coast once rubble was cleared….paradise” given the profit potential.

New rules forbade coastal homes, so a buffer zone was imposed to insure it. Beaches were off-limits. Displaced Sri Lankans were shoved into grim barracks, and “menacing, machine-gun-wielding soldiers” patrolled to keep them there.

Tourist operators, however, were welcomed and encouraged to build on oceanfront land – to transform the former fishing village into a “high-end boutique tourism destination (with) five-star resorts, luxury chalets, (and even a) floatplane pier and helipad.”

It was to be a model for transforming around 30 similar zones into a South Asian Riviera to let Sri Lanka reenter the world economy as one of the last remaining uncolonized places globalization hadn’t touched. High-end tourism was the ticket – to provide a luxury destination for the rich once a few changes were made. Government land was opened to private buyers. Labor laws were relaxed or eliminated. Modern infrastructure would be built, and public opposition suppressed to let plans proceed unimpeded.

The same scheme followed Hurricane Mitch in October 1998 when Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua were hardest hit. In Sri Lanka, Washington took the Mitch model to the next level – beyond individuals to corporate control over reconstruction. Business ran everything. Affected people were shut out. Klein called it a new type corporate coup mother nature made possible. Now again in Haiti with an idea of what’s coming.

Powerful business interests constructed a blueprint from housing to hotels to highways and other needed infrastructure. Disaster relief went for development. Victims got nothing and were consigned to permanent shantytowns like the kinds in most Global South cities and Global North inner ones. Aceh and other affected areas adopted the same model.

A year after the tsunami, the NGO Action Aid surveyed the results in five Asian countries and found the same pattern – residents barred from rebuilding and living in militarized camps, while developers were given generous incentives. Lost was their way of life forever.

The same scheme played out in New Orleans with unfettered capitalism given free reign. With considerable Bush administration help, mother nature gave corporate predators a golden opportunity for plunder. Prevailing wage rates for federally funded or assisted construction projects were suspended. So were environmental regulations in an already polluted area, enough to be designated a superfund site or toxic waste dump. Instead, redevelopment was planned.

As a previous article explained, New Orleans had ample warning but was unprepared. The city is shaped like a bowl, lies below sea level, and its Gulf coast is vulnerable. As a result, the inevitable happened, affecting the city’s least advantaged – the majority black population targeted for removal and needing only an excuse to do it. The storm wiped out public housing and erased communities, letting developers build upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land.

It was right out of the Chicago School’s play book, what economist Milton Friedman articulated in his 1962 book, “Capitalism and Freedom.” His thesis:

“only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When a crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around…our basic function (is) to develop alternatives to existing policies (and be ready to roll them out when the) impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Friedman believed that government’s sole function is “to protect our freedom from (outside) enemies (and) our fellow-citizens. (It’s to) preserve law and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard private property and) foster competitive markets.”

Everything else in public hands is socialism, an ideology he called blasphemous. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, “entrenched interests” and human interference, and the best government is practically none – the wild west because, in his view, anything government does business does better so let it. Ideas about democracy, social justice, and a caring society were verboten because they interfere with free-wheeling capitalism.

He said public wealth should be in private hands, profit accumulation unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services curtailed or ended. He believed “economic freedom is an end to itself (and) an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom.” He opposed the minimum wage, unions, market interference, an egalitarian society, and called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth.” He supported a flat tax favoring the rich, and believed everyone should have to rely on their own resources to get by.

In a word, Friedmanomics preaches unrestrained market fundamentalism. “Free to choose,” he said with no regard for human needs and rights. For him and his followers, economic freedom is the be-all-and-end-all under limited government, the marketplace being the master.

Applied to New Orleans, it meant permanent changes, including removing public housing, developing upscale properties in its place, privatizing schools, and destroying a way of life for thousands of disadvantaged blacks expelled from their communities and not allowed back.

Klein called Friedman’s thesis “the shock doctrine.” Applied to Russia, Eastern Europe and other developing states, it was shock therapy. For affected people, it was economic and social disaster under Friedman’s prescription for mass-privatizations, deregulation, unrestricted free market predation, deep social spending cuts, and harsh crackdowns against resisters. It’s disaster capitalism, business is booming, and Haitians will soon feel its full fury under military occupation.

Haiti – Beleaguered, Occupied, and Stricken by a Disaster of Biblical Proportions

Since the 19th century, America dominated Haiti. Before the quake, a proxy paramilitary Blue Helmet force occupied the country, dispatched not for peacekeeping but iron-grip control. Worse still, it was the first time ever that UN forces supported a coup d’etat government, the one Washington installed after US Marines kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, forcibly exiled him to Africa, and ended the political, economic and social reforms he instituted – in areas of health, education, justice and human rights. Ever since, conditions for Haitians have been nightmarish, and now the quake and further misery ahead from the Pentagon’s iron fist and greater than ever exploitation.

Obama’s top priority is control, underway immediately after the Pentagon took over the Port-au-Prince airport, reopened it after its brief closure, and set up a temporary air traffic control center. Military personnel now decide what gets in or out, what’s delivered, how fast, and according to unconfirmed reports, they slowed arriving search and rescue equipment, supplies, and personnel, except for what other countries managed to send in types and amounts way short of what’s needed. As a result, trapped Haitians perished, whereas a concentrated, sustained airlift, including heavy earthmoving and other equipment, might have saved hundreds or thousands more lives.

The 1948 – 49 Berlin airlift showed how. For nearly 11 months, western allies delivered what rose to a daily average of 5,500 tons, providing vital supplies for the city’s two million people. Today, the Pentagon has far greater capabilities. If ordered, massive amounts of virtually everything could be expedited, including heavy earthmoving equipment and teams of experts for every imaginable need. The result would have been vast numbers more lives saved, now perished because little was done to help, except for heroic volunteers providing food, water, and medical care, and Haitians who dug out survivors with small implements and their bare hands.

On January 15, Reuters reported that the Port-au-Prince 9,000-foot runway escaped serious damage and could handle big cargo planes easily. Immediately, food, water, medicine, rescue crews, and other specialists began arriving from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, and elsewhere, but very little from America, including vitally needed heavy equipment. Haiti has very little of what’s needed.

Instead, the Pentagon sent in thousands of Marines and 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers (a 10,000 force contingent once in place), armed killers, not humanitarian personnel and regular supplies to sustain them. Larger numbers may follow to be supplemented by UN Blue Helmets and Haitian National Police under Pentagon command. A long-term commitment for militarized control is planned, not humanitarian relief, reminiscent of the 20-year 1915 – 1934 period when US Marines occupied and ravaged Haiti.

Throughout the country, the lives of nine million people are at stake. Of immediate concern, are the three million in Port-au-Prince and surroundings, devastated by the quake and unable to sustain themselves without substantial outside help.

Central also is Haiti’s government, now crippled, including one report saying the senate building collapsed with most of the lawmakers inside. It’s not clear who’s alive or dead in either National Assembly chamber, the cabinet, or other government posts. It hardly matters, however, under US military control leaving President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive mere figureheads.

Once full control is established, the immediate shock subsides, and the media lose interest, reconstruction will be implemented for profit, not poor Haitians left on their own in communities like Cite Soleil and Bel Air or permanently displaced for what developers have in mind.

Efforts will focus on upscale areas and facilities for the Pentagon, US officials and selected bureaucrats. Before the quake, the Preval government was weak, ineffective, and uncaring about Haiti’s vast needs. He effectively ceded power to Washington, the UN, and the large imperial-chosen NGO presence in the country.

In addition, Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party was banned from the scheduled February 2010 parliamentary elections (now cancelled or postponed), and was earlier excluded from the 2009 April and June process to fill 12 open senate seats, resulting in a turnout below 10%, and mocking a true democratic process.

Now, millions of Haitians hang by a thread. As one of them put it, “tout ayiti kraze,” the whole country is no more. The government is inoperative. Port-au-Prince is in shambles. People are struggling to survive, 100,000 or more likely dead, a toll sure to rise as disease and depravation claim more. Those in poor communities are on their own. Rescuers are concentrating on high-profile, well-off areas, but without earthmoving equipment can do little to save victims. The problem – Washington obstructionism and indifference to human suffering and need.

On January 15, Al Jazeera reported that aid agencies are struggling under difficult conditions and inadequate supplies, let alone how to distribute them throughout the capital. As a result, frustration is growing with little help, no shelter, decaying bodies still unburied, the threat of disease, and the stench of death everywhere with no power, phones, clean water, food, and everything millions need.

Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera’s Port-au-Prince correspondent said:

“A lot of people have simply grown tired of waiting for those emergency workers to get to them. Thousands of people are streaming out of the city towards the provinces to try to find supplies of food and water, supplies that are running out in the city.”

On January 16, Al Jazeera headlined “Haiti: UP to 200,000 feared dead.” About 50,000 bodies have been collected, according to Haiti’s interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, and he anticipates “between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number,” nor how many more will expire in the weeks and months ahead, unnoticed and unreported.

On January 17, Al Jazeera headlined, “Aid teams struggle to help Haitians….amid difficulties in distributing relief supplies to those who need it most.

Sebastian Walker said delivering supplies stacking up at the airport has been extremely problematic:

“This comes down to the complex issue of who is in charge here. The US military has a great deal of control over the number of flights that are landing here. We heard that a UN flight carrying aid equipment had to be diverted because the US was landing its own aircraft there. The question of just who makes the decision over how to distribute the aid seems to be what is holding up the supplies.”

The Pentagon decides, of course, and that’s the problem. Obama also urges “patience,” saying “many difficult days (are) ahead,” without explaining his obstructionist uncaring role.

The result is reports like this:

— from Canada’s CBC As It Happens broadcast interview with an ICRC spokesperson saying he spent the morning of January 15 touring one of the hardest hit areas, and “In three hours, I didn’t see a single rescue team;”

— a same day BBC interview with an American Red Cross spokesperson complained about aid delivery – that arriving planes carried people, not supplies, and amounts at the airpot weren’t being delivered;

– the Canada Haiti Action Network calls Port-au-Prince a city largely without aid because areas most in need aren’t getting it; further, in nicer neighborhoods, dogs and extraction units arrived, but 90% of them are just sitting around, perhaps because of no earthmoving equipment to reach victims;

— another report said a French plane carrying a field hospital was turned away, then later allowed in; meanwhile, Israel got carte blanche for its own field hospital, able to handle 500 casualties daily, so it begs the question – why praise Israel for (selectively) helping Haitians when it murders Palestinians daily, keeps the West Bank isolated and locked down, Gaza under siege, and denies critically ill residents exit permission for treatment unavailable from Strip facilities, leaving them to perish; and

— various reports say US forces are preventing flights from landing; prioritized are landing US troops, repatriating American nationals, and perhaps starving poor Haitians to death; dozens of French citizens and dual Haitian-French nationals couldn’t leave when their scheduled flight to Guadeloupe couldn’t land; an angry French Secretary of State for Cooperation, Alain Joyandet, told reporters that he “made an official complaint to the Americans through the US embassy.”

UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Report on Haiti Relief

On January 15, OCHA reported as follows:

“Logistics and the lack of transport remain the key constraints to the delivery of aid. Needs are still being identified as access becomes possible and as assessments begin to take place.

Displaced populations are currently scattered across multiple locations where there is open space. Temporary shelters urgently need to be established.

Fifteen sites have been identified for distribution of relief items. World Food Program reached 13,000 people today with food, jerry cans and water purification tablets.”

OCHA continued, saying:

“A total of (only) 180 tons of relief supplies have arrived in-country so far. Operations are heavily constrained due to the lack of fuel, transport, communications and handling capacity at the airport. Some flights are being re-routed through Santo Domingo airport (far from Port-au-Prince in the Dominican Republic) which is also becoming congested.”

In its latest January 16 report, OCHA repeated that airport logistics remain a challenge, the result of re-routed flights, congestion, lengthy offloading times, the lack of transport and fuel, no storage facility, and the airport “now packed with goods and teams” not being delivered.

Three million Haitians need help, but the World Food Program distributed high energy biscuits only to 50,000. Around 50,000 are getting hot meals.

Major health concerns include untreated trauma wounds, infections, infectious diseases, diarrhea, lack of safe drinking water and sanitation, and Haitians with pre-existing condition like HIV/AIDS, diabetes and cancer aren’t being treated.

Up to a million people need immediate shelter and non-food aid, including clean water, blankets, kitchen and hygiene kits, plastic sheeting and tents.

“As of 16 January it is estimated that fuel for humanitarian operations will only last 2 to 3 more days before operations will be forced to cease.”

There have only been 58 live rescues so far among the many thousands trapped beneath or behind rubble. OCHA launched a Flash Appeal for $575 million “to cover 3 million people severely affected for six months.”

Sixteen EU nations are providing aid but not enough. America is doing practically nothing.

One nation delivering heroic help is Cuba, but little about it is reported. Despite its own constraints, it’s operated in Haiti for years, and now has over 400 doctors and healthcare experts delivering free services. They work every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. In addition, Cuban medical schools trained over 400 Haitian doctors, now working to save lives during the country’s gravest crisis. It’s no small achievement that Cuba, blockaded and constrained, is responsible for nearly 1,000 doctors and healthcare providers, all of whom work tirelessly to save lives and rehabilitate the injured.

According to China’s Xinhua News Agency:

“Cuban aid workers have taken charge of (Haiti’s) De la Paz Hospital, since its doctors have not appeared after the quake,” perhaps because many perished, are wounded, or are trapped beneath or behind rubble themselves.

Cubans are working despite a lack of everything needed to provide care except for what its government managed to deliver. Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, coordinator of its medical brigade, said Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel are working non-stop, day and night. Operating rooms are open 18 hours a day.

Independent reports now say Washington is trying to block Cuban and Venezuelan aid workers by refusing them landing permission in Port-au-Prince. The Caribbean Community’s emergency aid mission is also blocked. On January 15, the US State Department confirmed that it signed two Memoranda of Understanding with the remnants of Haiti’s government putting Washington in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid offloading in the country.

For years, Cuba has sent doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers to countries in need worldwide, winning hearts and minds for its free highly professional services. It provides national healthcare for all its people, and now has about 25,000 doctors in 68 countries. In addition, over 1,800 doctors from 47 developing states graduate annually from Cuban medical schools, return home, and provide quality care for their people.

Major Media Misreporting

Ignoring Haiti’s long history as a de facto US colony, the major media report a sanitized version of today’s catastrophe. For example on January 14, The New York Times cynically editorialized: “Once again, the world weeps for Haiti.” This is the same paper that lied in a March 1, 2004 editorial after US Marines forcibly exiled Aristide, saying:

— he resigned;

— sending in Marines “was the right thing to do;” and

— they only arrived after “Mr. Aristide yielded power.”

It also blamed him for “contribut(ing) significantly to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless rule,” and accused him of manipulating the 2000 legislative elections and not “deliver(ing) the democracy he promised.”

In fact, other than a brief period after its liberating revolution (1791 – January 1, 2004), the only time Haiti was democratically governed was under Aristide and during Rene Preval’s first term. Aristide, in fact, was so beloved, he was overwhelmingly reelected in 2000 with a 92% majority and would be equally supported today if allowed to run. In fact, when he’s most needed and wanted, Washington won’t let him return.

In media coverage of Haiti’s disaster, the greater story is suppressed, the one that matters, that puts today’s tragedy in context:

— 500 years of repression; slavery under the Spanish, then French, and since the 19th century as a de facto US colony;

— deep poverty and human misery, the worst in the hemisphere;

— despotic rule, occupation, exploitation, starvation, disease and low life expectancy; and

— now now a disaster of biblical proportions getting Times headlines like:

“In Show of Support, Clinton Goes to Haiti”

Omitted was that it was for a brief airport photo op, America’s usual show of indifference to human suffering, in this case, the result of US imperialism, not as a benefactor the way The Times and other major media portray.

“Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises”

In fact, Haitians have been remarkably calm, no thanks to Washington that’s slowing aid delivery, providing very little of its own, and offers little more than militarized occupation, armed killers, including Xe (formerly Blackwater Worldwide) mercenaries, notoriously savage brutes.

“Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down”

Looting? People are suffering, starving, dying, desperate because America sends fighters, not food; Marines, not medical aid; combat killers, not compassion, caring, and kindness; and diplomats, not doctors or human decency.

“Government Struggles to Exhume Itself”

Calling it “comparatively stable” ignores that Preval’s government is a proxy for US interests and no longer functioning. Pentagon killers are now in charge.

“Bush, Clinton and Obama Unite to Raise Money for Haiti”

After the December 2004 tsunami struck East Asia, the Bush administration spearheaded a similar campaign, raised over $1 billion, and used it for corporate development, not people needs. Obama backs a similar scheme (Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund) in a show of contemptible indifference to human misery and chose two co-conspirators for his plan.

The Bush administration engineered the February 2004 coup ousting Aristide, established police state rule, and immiserated nine million Haitians. For his part, Clinton kept an iron grip throughout his presidency instead of supporting Aristide’s political, economic and social reforms.

He’s now UN Special Envoy to Haiti heading an Obama administration neoliberal scheme featuring tourism, textile sweatshops, sweeping privatizations and deregulation for greater cheap labor exploitation at the expense of providing essential needs. He orchestrated a plan to turn northern Haiti into a tourist playground and got Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to invest $55 million for a pier in Labadee where the company operates a private resort and has contributed the largest amount of tourist revenue to the country since 1986.

More still is planned, including a new international airport in the north, an expanded free trade zone, a new one in Port-au-Prince, now delayed, various infrastructure projects, and an alliance with George Soros’ Open Society Institute for a $50 million partnership with Haitian shipper Gregory Mevs to build a free-trade zone for clothing sweatshops.

In addition, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has $258 million in commitments, including the Better Work Haiti and HOPE II projects, taking advantage of duty-free Haitian apparel exports to America to encourage greater sweatshop proliferation.

According to TransAfrica’s founder Randall Robinson:

“That isn’t the kind of investment that Haiti needs. It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient. It needs investment so that it can feed itself.” It also needs debt relief, not another $100 million the IMF just announced adding more to a $1.2 billion burden.

Above all, Haiti needs democratic governance freed from US control, military occupation, and the kind of oppression it’s endured for centuries so its people can breathe free.

It doesn’t need two past and a current US president allied with Haiti’s elites, ignoring economic justice, exploiting Haitian labor, ignoring overwhelming human desperation, militarizing the country, crushing resistance if it arises, and implementing a disaster capitalism agenda at the expense of essential human needs, rights and freedoms.

The only good new is that the Obama administration granted undocumented Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months. They can now work legally and send remittances to family members. It affects 30,000 ordered deported and all non-US citizens.

During the Bush administration and throughout Obama’s first year in office, repeated calls for it were refused. Now after 80 representatives and 18 senators, Republicans and Democrats, and the conference of Roman Catholic bishops sent appeals, Obama relented for Haitians in America as of January 12. New arrivals will be deported unlike Cubans under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (as amended), a “wet foot/dry foot” policy under which those interdicted at sea are returned home, but others reaching shore are inspected for entry, then nearly always allowed to stay.

TPS aside, Haiti faces crushing burdens – deep poverty, vast unemployment, overwhelming human needs, severe repression, poor governance, Washington dominance, a burdensome debt, and much more before the January 12 quake. Now the disaster, militarization by the Pentagon, and disaster capitalism soon arriving besides what’s already profiteering. It’s been Haiti’s plight for generations, the poorest hemispheric nation in the area most under Washington’s iron grip and paying dearly for the privilege.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/Lendman

MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2010 [print_link]

A rapacious US-led international Capitalism has sunk its claws deep into Haiti, and that condition will not be shaken off by a mere earthquake

By Stephen Lendman

Russian rescuer gives water to his canine search teammate.

Powerful business interests constructed a blueprint from housing to hotels to highways and other needed infrastructure. Disaster relief went for development. Victims got nothing and were consigned to permanent shantytowns like the kinds in most Global South cities and Global North inner ones. Aceh and other affected areas adopted the same model.

The same scheme played out in New Orleans with unfettered capitalism given free reign. With considerable Bush administration help, mother nature gave corporate predators a golden opportunity for plunder. Prevailing wage rates for federally funded or assisted construction projects were suspended. So were environmental regulations in an already polluted area, enough to be designated a superfund site or toxic waste dump. Instead, redevelopment was planned.

Applied to New Orleans, it meant permanent changes, including removing public housing, developing upscale properties in its place, privatizing schools, and destroying a way of life for thousands of disadvantaged blacks expelled from their communities and not allowed back.

Throughout the country, the lives of nine million people are at stake. Of immediate concern, are the three million in Port-au-Prince and surroundings, devastated by the quake and unable to sustain themselves without substantial outside help.

Once full control is established, the immediate shock subsides, and the media lose interest, reconstruction will be implemented for profit, not poor Haitians left on their own in communities like Cite Soleil and Bel Air or permanently displaced for what developers have in mind.

On January 15, Al Jazeera reported that aid agencies are struggling under difficult conditions and inadequate supplies, let alone how to distribute them throughout the capital. As a result, frustration is growing with little help, no shelter, decaying bodies still unburied, the threat of disease, and the stench of death everywhere with no power, phones, clean water, food, and everything millions need.

Sebastian Walker said delivering supplies stacking up at the airport has been extremely problematic:

The result is reports like this:

UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Report on Haiti Relief

On January 15, OCHA reported as follows:

Displaced populations are currently scattered across multiple locations where there is open space. Temporary shelters urgently need to be established.

OCHA continued, saying:

Three million Haitians need help, but the World Food Program distributed high energy biscuits only to 50,000. Around 50,000 are getting hot meals.

Up to a million people need immediate shelter and non-food aid, including clean water, blankets, kitchen and hygiene kits, plastic sheeting and tents.

Sixteen EU nations are providing aid but not enough. America is doing practically nothing.

Cubans are working despite a lack of everything needed to provide care except for what its government managed to deliver. Dr. Carlos Alberto Garcia, coordinator of its medical brigade, said Cuban doctors, nurses and other health personnel are working non-stop, day and night. Operating rooms are open 18 hours a day.

For years, Cuba has sent doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers to countries in need worldwide, winning hearts and minds for its free highly professional services. It provides national healthcare for all its people, and now has about 25,000 doctors in 68 countries. In addition, over 1,800 doctors from 47 developing states graduate annually from Cuban medical schools, return home, and provide quality care for their people.

Major Media Misreporting

After the December 2004 tsunami struck East Asia, the Bush administration spearheaded a similar campaign, raised over $1 billion, and used it for corporate development, not people needs. Obama backs a similar scheme (Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund) in a show of contemptible indifference to human misery and chose two co-conspirators for his plan.

In addition, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has $258 million in commitments, including the Better Work Haiti and HOPE II projects, taking advantage of duty-free Haitian apparel exports to America to encourage greater sweatshop proliferation.

The only good new is that the Obama administration granted undocumented Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months. They can now work legally and send remittances to family members. It affects 30,000 ordered deported and all non-US citizens.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Related link: http://republicbroadcasting.org/Lendman

Students at Cuba’s School of Medicine Ask Raul for Opportunity to Go to Haiti to Help

SPECIAL—

Students at Cuba’s School of Medicine Ask Raul for Opportunity to Go to Haiti to Help

2010 JANUARY 15

tags: Haiti, Latin American School of Medicine, Raul Castro,solidarity, students

by magbana

Students from Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine Request to Succor Haitians

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 15 (acn) Students from Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM)

requested on Friday, in a letter addressed to Cuban President Raul Castro, to have the

opportunity of helping the Haitian people.

These youngsters are from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela,

Bolivia Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Paraguay and other nations, and, acting on their own

initiative, created the 12 de Enero Internationalist Brigade of Solidarity with the Peoples.

The date recalls the recent day (January 12) in which a violent earthquake hit the

Caribbean nation, leaving behind incalculable human and material damages.

“We feel the moral duty, internationalist and in solidarity, of devoting ourselves entirely

to the urgent needs of the Haitian population”, reads the message addressed to Cuban President

Raul Castro.

The letter explains that the aforementioned brigade would provide immediate help in the

devastated areas, “following the ideal with which we’ve been educated as an army of health

guardians at the service of our people and of mankind.”

“This is the moment in which the ideal for which our project was created is reflected at

the service of this noble cause”, stresses the letter.

“Committed to this idea, and aware of the fact that our actions will help the victims of

the disaster, we request to be given the opportunity of contributing to that revolutionary

duty”, expressed the group of students from ELAM willing to travel to Haiti.

“In the words of Revolution leader Fidel Castro, we’re fulfilling a fundamental

internationalist duty when we help the Haitian people”, concludes the letter addressed to Raul.

Following the initiative, the members of the 12 de Enero Internationalist Brigade of

Solidarity with the Peoples toured on Friday the faculties of medicine of Havana’s University

of Medical Sciences to incorporate more students to the project, as Cosme More, head of the

institution’s Department for Promotion and Information, explained to ACN.

Dateline: 2010 JANUARY 15 [print_link]

By magbana

Students from Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine Request to Succor Haitians

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 15 (acn) Students from Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) requested on Friday, in a letter addressed to Cuban President Raul Castro, to have the opportunity of helping the Haitian people. These youngsters are from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Bolivia Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Paraguay and other nations, and, acting on their own initiative, created the 12 de Enero Internationalist Brigade of Solidarity with the Peoples.

The date recalls the recent day (January 12) in which a violent earthquake hit the Caribbean nation, leaving behind incalculable human and material damages. “We feel the moral duty, internationalist and in solidarity, of devoting ourselves entirely to the urgent needs of the Haitian population”, reads the message addressed to Cuban President Raul Castro.

The letter explains that the aforementioned brigade would provide immediate help in the devastated areas, “following the ideal with which we’ve been educated as an army of health guardians at the service of our people and of mankind.”

“In the words of Revolution leader Fidel Castro, we’re fulfilling a fundamental internationalist duty when we help the Haitian people”, concludes the letter addressed to Raul. Following the initiative, the members of the 12 de Enero Internationalist Brigade of Solidarity with the Peoples toured on Friday the faculties of medicine of Havana’s University of Medical Sciences to incorporate more students to the project, as Cosme More, head of the institution’s Department for Promotion and Information, explained to ACN.