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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Haiti 2010: Exploiting disaster - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...68863

earthquake haiti 2010 history haitian news pambazuka

shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Almost every credible observer agreed about many of the most urgent things that needed to happen.[36] The recovery had to be Haitian-led. The priority had to be measures that would empower ordinary Haitian people to regain some control over their lives, to gain or regain access to an education, an income, a place to live, a future for themselves and their families. The internationally-imposed neoliberal policies that for decades have devastated the agrarian economy and reduced the state sector to an impotent façade had to be dropped and then forcefully reversed. There had to be massive and systematic investment in essential public services, in all parts of the country. Genuine Haitian sovereignty, popular, economic and political, had to be restored.
  • The strategic plan drafted in early 2009 by neoliberal 'development' economist Paul Collier and subsequently adopted by the UN's reconstruction team remains geared above all to the exploitation of Haitian poverty, as the most reliable means of generating new profits for the benefit of elite and multinational corporations. The political framework that will force implementation of this plan remains one in which the autonomy of Haiti's people and government is reduced more or less to zero.
  • In early March, Préval called on the United States to 'stop sending food aid' to Haiti 'so that our economy can recover and create jobs.'[41]
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • he key decision, however, involved the creation of a mainly foreign body to decide on the allocation of these promised billions, the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). The commission is jointly chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, and former US President (and former Haiti occupier) Bill Clinton. (Original plans for a 24-member board – 11 Haitians along with 13 foreigners representing international financial institutions and the larger donor nations – had to be revised, in the face of subsequent protests, to allow for numerically equal Haitian/foreign representation). Once plans are approved by this IHRC, another group of foreign technocrats and World Bank officials will then supervise the subsequent spending.[44]
  • Today, Patrick Elie notes, 'Haiti is the most privatized country in the world. Almost everything that could be privatized here has been, and the only reason prisons have not been privatized is because it is not yet profitable for them to do so.'[49]
  • With modest job creation and credit facilities in the countryside, with small amounts of money for seeds and fertiliser, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out in late January, 'Haiti's food production could double or triple in the next few years, sustaining the country and building a new rural economy.'[53] But as usual, Haiti's small farmers received little or nothing. Only a paltry US$23 million of the UN's initial request for emergency funds was intended for the agrarian sector, and by the end of February the UN admitted that even this money still hadn't been received. 'In the countryside', Reed Lindsay observed in early March, 'there is no evidence of any humanitarian aid, much less for agriculture.'[54] As a result, confirms Mark Schuller, 'with no jobs, no aid, no prospects of rural development, nothing to keep people in the provinces, the bulk of this reverse migration was undone, and Port-au-Prince is once again a magnet for those seeking jobs.'[55]
  • In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, up in the higher, wealthier and mostly undamaged parts of Pétionville everyone already knew that it's the local residents 'who through their government connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses' would once again pocket the lion's share of international aid and reconstruction money.[56] At the same time, their counterparts in the US, represented by powerful think tanks and lobbyists like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or the RAND Corporation, were quick to see that (as RAND's James Dobbins, one of Clinton's former special envoys to Haiti, put it) 'this disaster is an opportunity to accelerate oft-delayed reforms', including 'breaking up or at least reorganizing the government-controlled telephone monopoly. The same goes with the Education Ministry, the electric company, the Health Ministry and the courts.'[57]
  • Foreign investors and foreign NGOs, needless to say, also tend to need foreign protection to guarantee their security. True to form, once the initial wave of foreign troops began to subside, private, neomilitary security companies like Triple Canopy (which took over the Xe/Blackwater security contract in Iraq in 2009 and Overseas Security & Strategic Information began promoting their services.[71] As an Al Jazeera report on a 9-10 March meeting of security companies in Miami explained, firms like GardaWorld, DynCorp and their ilk naturally 'see new disaster areas as emerging markets.'[72]
  • There are currently around 25,000 garment-sector workers in Haiti, making T-shirts and jeans for labels like Gildan, Hanes, Gap and New Balance. Factory profit margins average about 22 per cent.[74] Canadian garment manufacturer Gildan is one of several companies that expanded production in Haiti after the 2004 coup, reassured by a post-democratic regime that promised a tax holiday and a moratorium on wage increases.
  • As some investors and their advisors are candid enough to admit, Haiti's most significant 'comparative advantage' remains the stark fact that its people are so poor and so desperate that they are prepared to work for no more than a twentieth of the money they might receive for comparable employment in the US.[78]
  • Given his commitment to this old agenda, notes Richard Morse, UN envoy Bill Clinton isn't bringing change or hope to Haiti. 'Clinton, along with USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations are bringing more of the same to Haiti: More for the few and less for the many.'[80]
  • as Schwarz demonstrates in convincing detail in his 2008 book ‘Travesty in Haiti’, food aid has been deployed systematically and deliberately, from the beginning of its intensive use in the 1980s, to 'destroy the Haitian economy of small farmers.'
  • Today, Isabeau Doucet writes, 'tens of thousands of families are subject to a relentless cycle of exodus, dispersal, and brutality at the hands of the Haitian National police and privately hired armed groups, in violation of Haitian and international law.' In some places, 'rather than clearing rubble from the streets, bulldozers are plowing over the tents of undesired "squatters" only to resettle IDPs expelled from elsewhere.'[95]
  • As you might expect, there is no such sense of loss among people more directly concerned by the disaster. Perhaps the most striking feature of the whole post-quake period has been the extraordinary hardiness and discipline of the hundreds of thousands people who have lost their relatives, homes and possessions, and who from day one began to organise themselves into new communities.
  • Grassroots organizations still meet regularly to develop their strategies for political change, as they have throughout history. Across the country on any given day, small groups perch on broken chairs under tarps in refugee camps, huddle amidst rubble in the courtyards of earthquake-destroyed schools, or sweat under thatched-roof gazebos […]. They are developing pressure points for housing rights and protection against rape for those in camps. Some plan information campaigns aimed at sweatshop workers, others programs to politicize youth. The agendas are seemingly endless.’[106]
  • In the election year of 2010, as in the previous elections of 2000 and 1990, the key political difference remains the division between (a) critics calling merely for a more efficient deployment of reconstruction resources and more 'reasonable' forms of cooperation with the occupying troops and aid workers, and (b) activists working to rekindle popular mobilisation for fundamental political change as the only viable means of regaining national sovereignty and establishing social justice.
  • Patrick Elie, likewise, stakes everything on a renewal of the popular movement that opened the door to political change in the late 1980s: 'I put all my money on our ability, at the level of the grassroots movement, to remobilise the Haitian people, to make them believe, once more, that they are the key players in politics.'[114]
  • Unfortunately, the main institutional legacy of the Lavalas mobilisation – Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas (FL) party – is itself both divided and largely excluded from the political process. After its landslide election victory in 2000, opposition politicians anticipated that FL might remain hegemonic for 'sixty years'.[115] The second anti-Lavalas coup and its aftermath have helped level the political playing field.
  • The FL leadership has made matters worse by indulging in years of sterile post-Aristide in-fighting.
  • In the election of 2010, as in the last four presidential elections in Haiti, everything will depend on whether this unity and this consciousness are strong enough to prevail over the vast and diverse array of forces drawn up to oppose them. The earthquake has sharpened and accelerated the basic political choice facing Haiti: Either renewal of the popular mobilisation in pursuit of equality and justice, or long-term confirmation of the island's current status as a neocolonial protectorate.
  • Arabica Robusta on 20 Nov 10
     
    Almost every credible observer agreed about many of the most urgent things that needed to happen.[36] The recovery had to be Haitian-led. The priority had to be measures that would empower ordinary Haitian people to regain some control over their lives, to gain or regain access to an education, an income, a place to live, a future for themselves and their families. The internationally-imposed neoliberal policies that for decades have devastated the agrarian economy and reduced the state sector to an impotent façade had to be dropped and then forcefully reversed. There had to be massive and systematic investment in essential public services, in all parts of the country. Genuine Haitian sovereignty, popular, economic and political, had to be restored.
Jessica =D

Haiti - 0 views

I think it's terrible about what happened to the Haitians. It's really sad to see a whole country devastated by a natural disaster, especially if it can't be predicted slightly before hand to preve...

2010 haiti earthquake

started by Jessica =D on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Paul Allison

Amy Goodman: Haiti, Forgive Us - Truthdig - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...haiti_forgive_us_20100209

earthquake AID history responsibility haiti 2010 truthdig exploitation

shared by Paul Allison on 14 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Paul Allison on 14 Feb 10
     
    "Earthquakes alone do not create disasters of the scale now experienced in Haiti. The wealthy nations have for too long exploited Haiti, denying it the right to develop in a secure, sovereign, sustainable way. The global outpouring of support for Haitians must be matched by long-term, unrestricted grants of aid, and immediate forgiveness of all that country's debt. Given their role in Haiti's plight, the United States, France and other industrialized nations should be the ones seeking forgiveness."
Luis EWSIS

Some thoughts about the earthquake - 2 views

The 2010 Haiti Earthquake caused havoc in this small struggling Caribbean nation. I was very shocked by the pictures and videos presented. Death and the face of tragedy was everywhere to be seen. H...

started by Luis EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Nicole EWSIS

Haiti Earthquake 2010 - 0 views

200,000 people dead and more coming in this year's Haiti earthquake. 2010 was devastating for Haitians. When a 7.0 earthquake hit many people were killed, and buried under the rubble of their lost ...

2010 history haiti earthquake opposing newsweek.com latimes.com disaster

started by Nicole EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Arabica Robusta

The Uses of Paul Farmer » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...the-uses-of-paul-farmer

haiti earthquake haitian cholera blacklooks paulfarmer

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 03 Mar 13
     
    I asked Samuel Maxime, editor of Defend Haiti, an online news magazine popular with the Haitian diaspora, what he thinks of Farmer today. He said it's hard to criticize anyone working on health in Haiti because lives are at stake. Indeed, this makes it difficult to subject Farmer or any humanitarian to critique. But meaningful accountability is precisely what's been missing from the aid sector. Farmer himself made the point in our first interview. "Nonetheless, I think Farmer is a large part of the machine that enables corruption in Haiti," Maxime continued. "In the grand scheme of things I believe someone like Farmer, who knows right from wrong, integrity from corruption, and looks the other way as he does - he enables it, in fact, like MLK Jr. would say - they are complicit in it."
paloma rivera

Rebuilding Haiti: Open for business | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/21542407

haiti business reconstruccion reconstruction

shared by paloma rivera on 06 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Electricity costs 23 cents a kilowatt-hour, against 14 cents next door in the Dominican Republic.
  • Mr Martelly is a politically inexperienced populist. He will find it hard to get business-friendly reforms through a legislature in which his party has few seats and which rejected his first two choices for prime minister. The government is dithering over whether to renew the mandate of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, a body set up after the earthquake to co-ordinate foreign aid. Mr Martelly may be right that to attract private investment Haiti needs to change its image of eternal aid supplicant into one of a hard-working place. But it also needs to change realities on the ground, and that may be harder.
Paul Allison

Don't count Haiti out - latimes.com - 1 views

www.latimes.com/...tz15-2010jan15,0,2404187.story

Haiti earthquake 2010 history latimes.com

shared by Paul Allison on 18 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Paul Allison on 18 Jan 10
     
    What an inspiring and historically grounded commentary: "The tragedy is tremendous and the threats to life ongoing in a situation in which the ground is still trembling and disease likely. But the capacity of this people for survival and, indeed, for greatness in the worst of conditions has been demonstrated for more than two centuries. These are the descendants of people who overthrew an indecent, inhuman, overpowering slave system. Many of those still alive grew up under a vicious dynasty and rose up to oust it. It's entirely likely, therefore, that Haitians once again will put together a national coumbite. With a huge humanitarian effort from their friends, they will rebuild the country -- for the better. The will must be there for the world to come to Haiti's aid and work with the millions of surviving Haitians to rebuild this valuable country. So many Haitians, including the president, have nowhere to sleep, but they will sleep and get up again tomorrow to face the troubles. "
Reasat EWSIS

The earthquake in Haiti - 0 views

The earthquake in Haiti is a tragic disaster that devastated hundreds of thousands. Many people have taken action to aid the people of Haitian. Even celebrities and big name figures have taken ac...

earthquake haiti 2010 history haitian opposing news latimes.com npr newsweek.com NBA donation money recover

started by Reasat EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
MelissaB EWSIS

2010 Haiti Earthquake - 1 views

I think that the earthquake in Haiti is something that was unexpected by many people and it is a great tragedy that there should be more help than there is right now. But there is one thing that mo...

started by MelissaB EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Andrea. C

2010 Haiti questions - 1 views

I think everyone is still devastated and there is still aftershocks because the earthquake killed more than 100,000 people. Everyone is putting in effort to save Haiti and many countries are giving...

2010 earthquake haiti history news

started by Andrea. C on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Haiti 2010: Exploiting disaster - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...68623

earthquake haiti 2010 history haitian news pambazuka

shared by Arabica Robusta on 20 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • If the 1980s were marked by the rising flood that became Lavalas, by an unprecedented popular mobilisation that overcame dictatorship and raised the prospect of modest yet revolutionary social change, then the period that began with the military coup of September 1991 is best described as one of the most prolonged and intense periods of counter-revolution anywhere in the world. For the last twenty years, the most powerful political and economic interests in and around Haiti have waged a systematic campaign designed to stifle the popular movement and deprive it of its principal weapons, resources and leaders. The January earthquake triggered reactions that carried and that are still carrying such measures to entirely new levels.
  • For the time being, at least, it looks as if the threatening prospect of meaningful democracy in Haiti has been well and truly contained.
  • When Aristide then won a second overwhelming mandate in the elections of 2000, the resounding victory of his Fanmi Lavalas party at all levels of government raised the prospect, for the first time in Haitian history, of genuine significant political change in a context in which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism – no army – to prevent it. In order to avoid this outcome, the main strategy of Haiti's little ruling class all through the past decade has been to redefine political questions in terms of 'stability' and 'security', i.e. the security of the wealthy, their property and their investments.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • During these years, the UN authorities behind this extraordinary 'stabilisation mission' have resorted to levels of violent coercion without parallel in UN operations anywhere else in the world. They have been reinforced by thousands of re-armed and re-trained Haitian police, along with thousands more private security guards hired to protect wealthy families, their businesses, and the foreign contractors and NGOs they do business with. Dozens of anti-occupation demonstrations held on the streets of Port-au-Prince during these years have had little or no political effect.
  • In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, few tried to counter arguments in favour of allowing the US military, with its 'unrivalled logistical capability', to take de facto control of the relief operation. Weary of bad press in Iraq and Afghanistan, US commanders also seemed glad of this unexpected opportunity to rebrand their armed forces as angels of mercy. As usual, the Haitian government was instructed to be grateful for whatever help it could get. That was before US commanders actively began, the day after the earthquake struck, to divert aid away from the disaster zone.
  • The earthquake took place on Tuesday; among many others, World Food Program flights were turned away by US commanders on Thursday and Friday, the New York Times reported, 'so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.'[7] Many similar flights met a similar fate, right through to the end of the week. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) alone had to watch at least five planeloads of its medical supplies be turned away.[8] Late on Monday 18 January, MSF 'complained that one of its cargo planes carrying 12 tonnes of medical equipment had been turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday,' despite receiving 'repeated assurances they could land.' By that stage one group of MSF doctors in Port-au-Prince had been 'forced to buy a saw in the market to continue the amputations' upon which the lives of their patients depended.[9]
  • 'Together with geopolitical control', observed Camille Chalmers a few weeks later, 'we believe that the militarization of Haiti responds to what Bush called a "preventive war" logic. The U.S. fears a popular uprising, because the living standards in Haiti have for so long been intolerable, and this is even more so the case now; they are inhumane. So the troops are getting ready for when the time comes to suppress the people.'[17]
  • No foreign rescue workers, for instance, were dispatched to the site with perhaps the single highest number of casualties, the Carrefour Palm Apparel factory contracted to the Canadian company Gildan Activewear, which collapsed with hundreds of workers still inside.[22] (Gildan responded to the disaster, within hours, with a reassuring announcement that it would be shifting production to alternative sewing facilities in neighbouring countries.[23]).
  • Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself staggering.'[28] As anyone can see, however, dignity and decency are no substitute for security. No amount of weapons will ever suffice to reassure those 'fortunate few' whose fortunes isolate them from the people they exploit.
  • 'We see throughout Haiti the population themselves organizing themselves into popular committees to clean up, to pull out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to set up their security for the refugee camps. This is a population which is self-sufficient, and it has been self-sufficient for many years.'
  • While Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade offered 'voluntary repatriation to any Haitian that wants to return to [the land of] their origin', American officials confirmed that they would continue to apply their long-standing (and thoroughly illegal) policy with respect to all Haitian refugees and asylum seekers – to intercept and repatriate them automatically, regardless of the circumstances.[31]
  • When US ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten paid a visit to Washington in mid February he declared himself satisfied with the work in progress. 'I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we've been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake.'[35]
Paul Allison

With Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated Port-au-Prince General Hospital Struggl... - 15 views

www.democracynow.org/...t_au_prince_hospital_struggles

shared by Paul Allison on 21 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Paul Allison on 21 Jan 10
     
    Amy Goodman in Haiti. Hospital.
Helen EWSIS

The right testicle of hell: History of a Haitian holocaust | San Francisco Bay View - 19 views

www.sfbayview.com/...history-of-a-haitian-holocaust

shared by Helen EWSIS on 18 Jan 10 - Cached
  • 11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off? Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80 percent of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity of the U.S. government happy to have the Duvaliers and their militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
    • Paul Allison
      Paul Allison on 18 Jan 10
       
      This is part of the important history that we need to remember now.
  • 4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. U.S. bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
    • AndreaLee EWSIS
      AndreaLee EWSIS on 20 Jan 10
       
      Great job, United States!
    • Jose EWSIS
      Jose EWSIS on 20 Jan 10
       
      Holy Moly! That is just plain sad. It amazes me how just when you thought things can't go any more unbelieveable you read things like this.
    • Helen EWSIS
      Helen EWSIS on 21 Jan 10
       
      I remember watching a report on this on TV. [Chinese TV that is...]
  • 8. But don’t worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with 10 metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They’re from Iceland.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Send in the Marines. That’s America’s response. That’s what we’re good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed – without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
  • Gates wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no “structure … to provide security.” For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it’s security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina.
    • Luis EWSIS
      Luis EWSIS on 20 Jan 10
       
      it seems that the United States is incompetent or it just dont want to help
    • Helen EWSIS
      Helen EWSIS on 21 Jan 10
       
      Agreed. We lack effort.
  • Alexis EWSIS on 20 Jan 10
     
    This article makes me hate being an American even more than I usually do D=
Dylan EWSIS

First Natural Disaster of the New Year - 3 views

When I think of the people in Haiti I think about how fortunate I am to live in a society where opportunities are thrown at me everyday. The things people take for granted in my society are the sam...

2010 Haiti Earthquake Natural Disaster

started by Dylan EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
Alexis EWSIS

2010 Haiti Earthquake - 0 views

Right now I feel a little sad for the Haitians, but not overcome by emotions. I feel angered that it is taking so long for help to reach there, shouldn't countries have some type of earthquake sup...

2010 earthquake haiti people news

started by Alexis EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
AndreaLee EWSIS

Thoughts and Questions - 1 views

A week has passed since the recent earthquake attack at Haiti, and it still number one news. How do I feel? I feel sympathetic, horrible, shocked, and most of all, a little tired of hearing the new...

2010 history haiti earthquake

started by AndreaLee EWSIS on 20 Jan 10 no follow-up yet
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