By Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom. Posted January 19, 2010.
"In the midst of a colossal human disaster, Washington is promoting unpopular economic policies and extending military and economic control over the Haitian people."
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, "In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists."
Bob Moliere, an organizer within the popular political party Fanmi Lavalas was killed in the earthquake. His wife, Marianne Moliere, told IPS News after burying her husband, "There is no life for me because Bob was everything to me. I lost everything. Everything is destroyed," she said. "I'm sleeping in the street now because I'm homeless. But when I get some water, I share with others. Or if someone gives some spaghetti, I share with my family and others."
It is not this type of solidarity that has emerged in the wake of the crisis - and the delayed and muddled response from the international community - that most corporate media in the US have focused on. Instead, echoing the coverage and calls for militarization of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, major media outlets talk about the looting, and need for security to protect private property.
One request from Erwin Berthold, the owner of Big Star Market in Petionville, Haiti, reflects this concern for profit over people. Berthold told the Washington Post about his supermarket, "We have everything cleaned up inside. We are ready to open. We just need some security. So send in the Marines, okay?"
That militarization is already underway. This week the US is sending thousands of troops and soldiers to the country. The Haitian government has signed over control of its capital airport to the US. Brazil and France have already lodged complaints that US military planes are now being given priority over other flights at the international airport.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez responded to the US troop deployment. "I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that's what the United States should send," Chavez said. "They are occupying Haiti undercover." The Venezuelan President pledged to send any necessary amount of gasoline needed to the country to aid with electricity and transport.
A Heroic History in Washington's Backyard
There is also little mention in the major news outlets' coverage of how the US government and corporations helped impoverish Haiti in the first place, creating the economic poverty that makes disasters like this so extensive. Nor is there mention of the country's heroic struggle against imperialism and slavery. Fidel Castro pointed out in a recent column, "Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. ... Napoleon's most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources."
University professor Peter Hallward, writing in the Guardian Unlimited, criticized Washington for its responsibility in creating the suffering it is now pledging to alleviate in Haiti. "Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) ‘from absolute misery to a dignified poverty' has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies. Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smoldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilization and pacification force in the country."
Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti told Hallward of the root causes for the overpopulation of neighborhoods in the city of Port-au-Prince that were hit so hard by the earthquake. "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labor force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses." Unnatural crises such as this made the earthquake much more devastating.
Disaster Capitalism Comes to Haiti
As Noami Klein thoroughly proved in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, throughout history, "while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times." This push to apply unpopular neoliberal policies began almost immediately after the earthquake in Haiti.
In a talk recorded by Democracy Now!, Klein explained that the disaster in Haiti is created on the one hand by nature, and on the other hand "is worsened by the poverty that our governments have been so complicit in deepening. (***See Neyo's Red Flag Notice at bottom!!!***) Crises-natural disasters are so much worse in countries like Haiti, because you have soil erosion because the poverty means people are building in very, very precarious ways, so houses just slide down because they are built in places where they shouldn't be built. All of this is interconnected. But we have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy, which is part natural, part unnatural, must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti, and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interests of our corporations."
Following the disaster in Haiti, Klein pointed out that the Heritage Foundation, "one of the leading advocates of exploiting disasters to push through their unpopular pro-corporate policies," issued a statement on its website after the earthquake hit: "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in 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."
The mercenary trade group International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) immediately offered their services to provide "security" in Haiti to its member companies, according to Jeremy Scahill. Within hours of the earthquake, Scahill wrote, the IPOA website announced, "In the wake of the tragic events in Haiti, a number of IPOA's member companies are available and prepared to provide a wide variety of critical relief services to the earthquake's victims."
Kathy Robison, a Fortune 500 executive, formerly with Goldman Sachs Companies, wrote of the earthquake disaster in Haiti. "The business leaders I have been meeting with have seen enough disappointment and suffering," she wrote. "What Haiti needs is economic development and the building of a true middle class. ... There is much we are planning as far as creating new and innovative ways of using international aid and government support to promote private investment."
On January 14, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a $100 million loan to Haiti to help with relief efforts. However, Richard Kim at The Nation wrote that this loan was added onto $165 million in debt made up of loans with conditions "including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low." This new $100 million loan has the same conditions. Kim writes, "in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms."
The last thing Haiti needs at this point is more debt; what it needs is grants. As Kim wrote, according to a report from the The Center for International Policy, in 2003 "Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million."
In the midst of the suffering and anguish following the earthquake, many Haitians came together to console and help each other. Journalist David Wilson, in Haiti during the time of the earthquake, wrote of the singing that followed the disaster. "Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o'clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital." A young Haitian American commented to Wilson on the singing, "Haitians are different," he said. "People in other countries wouldn't do this. It's a sense of community."
If these elements of the "relief" efforts continue in this exploitative vein, it is this community that will likely be crushed even further by disaster capitalism and imperialism.
While international leaders and institutions are speaking about how many soldiers and dollars they are committing to Haiti, it is important to note that what Haiti needs is doctors not soldiers, grants not loans, a stronger public sector rather than a wholesale privatization, and critical solidarity with grassroots organizations and people to support the self-determination of the country.
"We don't need soldiers," Patrick Elie, the former Defense Minister under the Aristide government told Al Jazeera. "There is no war here." In addition to critiquing the presence of the soldiers, he commented on the US-control of the main airport. "The choice of what lands and what doesn't land, the priorities of the flight[s], should be determined by the Haitians. Otherwise, it's a takeover and what might happen is that the needs of Haitians are not taken into account, but only either the way a foreign country defines the need of Haiti, or try to push its own agenda."
***
Benjamin Dangl is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press) and Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America(AK Press).
He is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. Email: Bendangl@gmail.com
© 2010 Toward Freedom
Neyo's Red Flag Notice: Democracy Now! headed up by Amy Goodman is a phony left-media outlet that is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Democracy Now! serves as a Gatekeeper of controlled dissent. Democracy Now!, as well as NPR, always tip-toe around pertinent conclusions regarding Israel and the Zionist movement, in general. And it is not surprsing, they are funded by Zionists and are Zionists themselves.
Showing posts with label haiti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label haiti. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Engineered Earthquake? US is Occupying Haiti as Troops Flood In
2010 January 19
by Aislinn Laing, and Tom Leonard in Port-au-Prince
The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to “clarify” the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts.
U.S. Air Force troops patrol downtown Port-au-Prince Monday January 18, 2010. Thousands more U.S. troops will keep order on Haiti’s increasingly lawless streets as tens of thousands of survivors wait desperately for aid. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the airport’s control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight.
“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Mr Joyandet said.
Geneva-based charity Medecins Sans Frontieres backed his calls saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers.
But US commanders insisted their forces’ focus was on humanitarian work and last night agreed to prioritize aid arrivals to the airport over military flights, after the intervention of the UN.
The diplomatic row came amid heightened frustrations that hundreds of tons of aid was still not getting through. Charities reported violence was also worsening as desperate Haitians took matters into their own hands.
The death toll is now estimated at up to 200,000 lives. Around three million Haitians – a third of the country’s population – have been affected by Tuesday’s earthquake and two million require food assistance.
While food and water was gradually arriving at the makeshift camps which have sprung up around the city, riots have broken out in other areas where supplies have still not materialized.
Haiti was occupied by the US between 1915 and 1935, and historical sensitivities together with friction with other countries over the relief effort has made the Americans cautious about their role in the operation.
American military commanders have repeatedly stressed that they are not entering the country as an occupying force.
US soldiers in Port-au-Prince said they had been told to be discreet about how they carry their M4 assault rifles.
A paratrooper sergeant said they were authorized to use “deadly force” if they see anyone’s life in danger but only as a “last resort”.
US Quake Test Goes “Horribly Wrong”, Leaves 500,000 Dead In Haiti
A grim report prepared by the Russian Northern Fleet for Prime Minister Putin is stating today that the catastrophic earthquake that has devastated the Island of Haiti was the ‘clear result’ of a United States Navy test of one of its ‘earthquake weapons’ planned to be used by the Americans upon the Persian Nation of Iran but had gone ‘horribly wrong’.
The Northern Fleet has been monitoring US Naval movements and activities in the Caribbean since 2008 when the Americans announced their intention to re-establish their Forth Fleet that had been disbanded in 1950, and which was responded to by the Motherland when later that year a Russian flotilla led by nuclear powered cruiser Peter the Great began their first exercises in this region since the ending of the Cold War.
Though virtually unknown to the American people, the use, and perfection, of earthquake weapon technology has a decade’s long history that began with the former Soviet Unions exploding of a 10 megaton nuclear bomb in September, 1978 and then ‘redirecting’ its shockwave towards Iran where it resulted in a catastrophic 7.4 magnitude earthquake, an event which hastened the downfall of the US backed regime headed by the Shah.
This attack upon Iran by the Soviets was countered by the Americans in April, 1979 when they unleashed one of their newly developed ‘atomic powered’ earthquake weapons against the former communist Nation of Yugoslavia which resulted in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
Since the late 1970’s, the United States has ‘greatly advanced’ the state of its earthquake weapons and, according to these reports, now employees devices employing a Tesla Electromagnetic Pulse, Plasma and Sonic technology, along with ‘shockwave bombs’ they have previously been accused by Russia of employing in their war against the Afghan peoples when one of these ‘devices’ was exploded in Afghanistan in March, 2002 triggering a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
Interesting to note in these reports are their stating that the earthquake weapons test conducted by the US Navy this week in the Caribbean that destroyed Haiti was ‘most probably’ based upon the same type of Tesla technology held responsible for the catastrophic January17, 1995, 6.8 magnitude earthquake that laid to waste the Japanese city of Kobe, and which the mysterious Aum Shinrikyo cult had warned 9 days prior was going to occur, and as we can read:
“Aum’s charismatic guru, Shoko Asahara, predicted the Kobe quake nine days before the event. In an 8 January 1995 radio broadcast, Asahara stated “Japan will be attacked by an earthquake in 1995. The most likely place is Kobe.” Hideo Murai, the late Science and Technology minister for Aum Shinrikyo also adhered to this view. Murai – said to have been the most intelligent Japanese who ever lived – was murdered in a Yakuza orchestrated assassination shortly after speaking on the record to foreign news correspondents.
“Murai presented his allegation in an April 7 1995 news conference at the Foreign Correspondent Club in Japan. In answer to questions about the Kobe quake, Murai said “There is a strong possibility of the activation of an earthquake using electromagnetic power, or somebody may have used a device that applied force inside the Earth.” The Aum leadership believed the Kobe quake an act of war: “The City of Kobe was hit by a surprise attack…” they claimed, adding the City was an “…appropriate guinea pig.”
Note: The Aum Shinrikyo religious order was destroyed shortly after their releasing of this information to the public when blamed for the March 20, 1995 sarin gas attack upon the Tokyo subway system which resulted in 11 of their members, including their leader, being sentenced to death. FSB reports on Aum Shinrikyo further state that their knowledge of the planned use of these ‘doomsday’ devices was gained from the US computer hackers belonging to the Branch Davidian religious order who had penetrated some of the American defense establishments most secret files and resulted in their, likewise, being completely destroyed in what is now known as the Waco Siege ordered by then US District Attorney, and currently Obama’s US Attorney General, Eric Holder.
The Tesla weapons being developed by the United States are based upon the research of Nikola Tesla who was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He was one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Tesla is also credited as the inventor of modern radio by the US Supreme Court.
To Tesla’s earthquake weapons research conducted in the early 20th century we can further read:
“He put his little vibrator in his coat-pocket and went out to hunt a half-erected steel building. Down in the Wall Street district, he found one; ten stories of steel framework without a brick or a stone laid around it. He clamped the vibrator to one of the beams, and fussed with the adjustment until he got it.
Tesla said finally the structure began to creak and weave and the steel-workers came to the ground panic-stricken, believing that there had been an earthquake. Police were called out. Tesla put the vibrator in his pocket and went away. Ten minutes more and he could have laid the building in the street. And, with the same vibrator he could have dropped the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River in less than an hour.
Tesla claimed the device, properly modified, could be used to map underground deposits of oil. A vibration sent through the earth returns an “echo signature” using the same principle as sonar. This idea was actually adapted for use by the petroleum industry, and is used today in a modified form with devices used to locate objects at archaeological digs.”
Important to note at this point are that modern day experiments seeking to discredit Tesla’s earthquake weapons technology have been directed against structures designed to withstand the effects of earthquakes, buildings which in the early 20th century, like those in Haiti today, were not built to withstand such resonance. A most critical difference when viewed in the light of the US Navy’s testing of 2 of these earthquake weapons this past week and where in their Pacific test it resulted in a 6.5 magnitude earthquake hitting the area around the Northern California city of Eureka causing no deaths, their Caribbean test has caused an estimated 500,000 innocents to die.
Equally important to note are these reports stating that ‘more than likely’ the US Navy had ‘full knowledge’ of the catastrophic damage this earthquake weapons test could potentially have upon Haiti and had pre-positioned their Deputy Commander of their Southern Command, General P.K. Keen, on the island to oversee relief efforts if needed.
To the end result of these weapons being tested by the United States, these reports warn, are for the Americans planned destruction of Iran through a series of catastrophic earthquakes designed to bring down their present Islamic regime.
Most unfortunately in all of these events are the peoples of Haiti, who are suffering under conditions so horrible, that even in the best of scenarios, their functioning as a viable Nation has completely come to an end, and for reasons and purposes they have no comprehension of at all as they have become just the latest victim in the New Great Game that will decide the winners and losers of this 21st Century.
Source: PakAlert Press
by Aislinn Laing, and Tom Leonard in Port-au-Prince
The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to “clarify” the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts.
U.S. Air Force troops patrol downtown Port-au-Prince Monday January 18, 2010. Thousands more U.S. troops will keep order on Haiti’s increasingly lawless streets as tens of thousands of survivors wait desperately for aid. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the airport’s control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight.
“This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Mr Joyandet said.
Geneva-based charity Medecins Sans Frontieres backed his calls saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers.
But US commanders insisted their forces’ focus was on humanitarian work and last night agreed to prioritize aid arrivals to the airport over military flights, after the intervention of the UN.
The diplomatic row came amid heightened frustrations that hundreds of tons of aid was still not getting through. Charities reported violence was also worsening as desperate Haitians took matters into their own hands.
The death toll is now estimated at up to 200,000 lives. Around three million Haitians – a third of the country’s population – have been affected by Tuesday’s earthquake and two million require food assistance.
While food and water was gradually arriving at the makeshift camps which have sprung up around the city, riots have broken out in other areas where supplies have still not materialized.
Haiti was occupied by the US between 1915 and 1935, and historical sensitivities together with friction with other countries over the relief effort has made the Americans cautious about their role in the operation.
American military commanders have repeatedly stressed that they are not entering the country as an occupying force.
US soldiers in Port-au-Prince said they had been told to be discreet about how they carry their M4 assault rifles.
A paratrooper sergeant said they were authorized to use “deadly force” if they see anyone’s life in danger but only as a “last resort”.
US Quake Test Goes “Horribly Wrong”, Leaves 500,000 Dead In Haiti
A grim report prepared by the Russian Northern Fleet for Prime Minister Putin is stating today that the catastrophic earthquake that has devastated the Island of Haiti was the ‘clear result’ of a United States Navy test of one of its ‘earthquake weapons’ planned to be used by the Americans upon the Persian Nation of Iran but had gone ‘horribly wrong’.
The Northern Fleet has been monitoring US Naval movements and activities in the Caribbean since 2008 when the Americans announced their intention to re-establish their Forth Fleet that had been disbanded in 1950, and which was responded to by the Motherland when later that year a Russian flotilla led by nuclear powered cruiser Peter the Great began their first exercises in this region since the ending of the Cold War.
Though virtually unknown to the American people, the use, and perfection, of earthquake weapon technology has a decade’s long history that began with the former Soviet Unions exploding of a 10 megaton nuclear bomb in September, 1978 and then ‘redirecting’ its shockwave towards Iran where it resulted in a catastrophic 7.4 magnitude earthquake, an event which hastened the downfall of the US backed regime headed by the Shah.
This attack upon Iran by the Soviets was countered by the Americans in April, 1979 when they unleashed one of their newly developed ‘atomic powered’ earthquake weapons against the former communist Nation of Yugoslavia which resulted in a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
Since the late 1970’s, the United States has ‘greatly advanced’ the state of its earthquake weapons and, according to these reports, now employees devices employing a Tesla Electromagnetic Pulse, Plasma and Sonic technology, along with ‘shockwave bombs’ they have previously been accused by Russia of employing in their war against the Afghan peoples when one of these ‘devices’ was exploded in Afghanistan in March, 2002 triggering a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake.
Interesting to note in these reports are their stating that the earthquake weapons test conducted by the US Navy this week in the Caribbean that destroyed Haiti was ‘most probably’ based upon the same type of Tesla technology held responsible for the catastrophic January17, 1995, 6.8 magnitude earthquake that laid to waste the Japanese city of Kobe, and which the mysterious Aum Shinrikyo cult had warned 9 days prior was going to occur, and as we can read:
“Aum’s charismatic guru, Shoko Asahara, predicted the Kobe quake nine days before the event. In an 8 January 1995 radio broadcast, Asahara stated “Japan will be attacked by an earthquake in 1995. The most likely place is Kobe.” Hideo Murai, the late Science and Technology minister for Aum Shinrikyo also adhered to this view. Murai – said to have been the most intelligent Japanese who ever lived – was murdered in a Yakuza orchestrated assassination shortly after speaking on the record to foreign news correspondents.
“Murai presented his allegation in an April 7 1995 news conference at the Foreign Correspondent Club in Japan. In answer to questions about the Kobe quake, Murai said “There is a strong possibility of the activation of an earthquake using electromagnetic power, or somebody may have used a device that applied force inside the Earth.” The Aum leadership believed the Kobe quake an act of war: “The City of Kobe was hit by a surprise attack…” they claimed, adding the City was an “…appropriate guinea pig.”
Note: The Aum Shinrikyo religious order was destroyed shortly after their releasing of this information to the public when blamed for the March 20, 1995 sarin gas attack upon the Tokyo subway system which resulted in 11 of their members, including their leader, being sentenced to death. FSB reports on Aum Shinrikyo further state that their knowledge of the planned use of these ‘doomsday’ devices was gained from the US computer hackers belonging to the Branch Davidian religious order who had penetrated some of the American defense establishments most secret files and resulted in their, likewise, being completely destroyed in what is now known as the Waco Siege ordered by then US District Attorney, and currently Obama’s US Attorney General, Eric Holder.
The Tesla weapons being developed by the United States are based upon the research of Nikola Tesla who was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He was one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Tesla is also credited as the inventor of modern radio by the US Supreme Court.
To Tesla’s earthquake weapons research conducted in the early 20th century we can further read:
“He put his little vibrator in his coat-pocket and went out to hunt a half-erected steel building. Down in the Wall Street district, he found one; ten stories of steel framework without a brick or a stone laid around it. He clamped the vibrator to one of the beams, and fussed with the adjustment until he got it.
Tesla said finally the structure began to creak and weave and the steel-workers came to the ground panic-stricken, believing that there had been an earthquake. Police were called out. Tesla put the vibrator in his pocket and went away. Ten minutes more and he could have laid the building in the street. And, with the same vibrator he could have dropped the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River in less than an hour.
Tesla claimed the device, properly modified, could be used to map underground deposits of oil. A vibration sent through the earth returns an “echo signature” using the same principle as sonar. This idea was actually adapted for use by the petroleum industry, and is used today in a modified form with devices used to locate objects at archaeological digs.”
Important to note at this point are that modern day experiments seeking to discredit Tesla’s earthquake weapons technology have been directed against structures designed to withstand the effects of earthquakes, buildings which in the early 20th century, like those in Haiti today, were not built to withstand such resonance. A most critical difference when viewed in the light of the US Navy’s testing of 2 of these earthquake weapons this past week and where in their Pacific test it resulted in a 6.5 magnitude earthquake hitting the area around the Northern California city of Eureka causing no deaths, their Caribbean test has caused an estimated 500,000 innocents to die.
Equally important to note are these reports stating that ‘more than likely’ the US Navy had ‘full knowledge’ of the catastrophic damage this earthquake weapons test could potentially have upon Haiti and had pre-positioned their Deputy Commander of their Southern Command, General P.K. Keen, on the island to oversee relief efforts if needed.
To the end result of these weapons being tested by the United States, these reports warn, are for the Americans planned destruction of Iran through a series of catastrophic earthquakes designed to bring down their present Islamic regime.
Most unfortunately in all of these events are the peoples of Haiti, who are suffering under conditions so horrible, that even in the best of scenarios, their functioning as a viable Nation has completely come to an end, and for reasons and purposes they have no comprehension of at all as they have become just the latest victim in the New Great Game that will decide the winners and losers of this 21st Century.
Source: PakAlert Press
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
2010 January 16
by Carl Lindskoog
In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses “built on top of each other” and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country’s many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.
True enough. But that’s not the whole story. What’s missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat’s testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince’s overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.
It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.
From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti’s capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.
After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.” This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.
From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.
But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti’s cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.
This “aid” from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren’t nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right “on top of each other.”
Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn’t work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however.
When on the afternoon and evening of January 12, 2010 Haiti experienced that horrible earthquake and round after round of aftershock the destruction was, no doubt, greatly worsened by the very real over-crowding and poverty of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas. But shocked Americans can do more than shake their heads and, with pity, make a donation. They can confront their own country’s responsibility for the conditions in Port-au-Prince that magnified the earthquake’s impact, and they can acknowledge America’s role in keeping Haiti from achieving meaningful development. To accept the incomplete story of Haiti offered by CNN and the New York Times is to blame Haitians for being the victims of a scheme that was not of their own making. As John Milton wrote, “they who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness.”
Carl Lindskoog is a New York City-based activist and historian completing a doctoral degree at the City University of New York. You can contact him at cskoog79@yahoo.com
Source: PakAlert Press
by Carl Lindskoog
In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses “built on top of each other” and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country’s many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.
True enough. But that’s not the whole story. What’s missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat’s testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince’s overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.
It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.
From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti’s capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.
After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.” This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.
From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.
But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti’s cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.
This “aid” from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren’t nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right “on top of each other.”
Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn’t work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however.
When on the afternoon and evening of January 12, 2010 Haiti experienced that horrible earthquake and round after round of aftershock the destruction was, no doubt, greatly worsened by the very real over-crowding and poverty of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas. But shocked Americans can do more than shake their heads and, with pity, make a donation. They can confront their own country’s responsibility for the conditions in Port-au-Prince that magnified the earthquake’s impact, and they can acknowledge America’s role in keeping Haiti from achieving meaningful development. To accept the incomplete story of Haiti offered by CNN and the New York Times is to blame Haitians for being the victims of a scheme that was not of their own making. As John Milton wrote, “they who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness.”
Carl Lindskoog is a New York City-based activist and historian completing a doctoral degree at the City University of New York. You can contact him at cskoog79@yahoo.com
Source: PakAlert Press
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