Haitian Journal

Cholera Hits Haitians (video)

2010-10-22T11:46:00.001-07:00

Deadly cholera outbreak hits Haiti - Americas - Al Jazeera English

2010-10-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Deadly cholera outbreak hits Haiti - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Haiti Catastrophe Continues

2010-09-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Five dead as storm hits Haiti camps

Press Association, Saturday September 25 2010

A freak storm has blasted through Haiti's capital, killing at least five earthquake survivors as it tore down trees, billboards and tent homes, authorities said.
Three adults and two children were killed in the tarp, tent and shack camps that still dominate Port-au-Prince more than eight months after the January 12 earthquake, civil protection head Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste told the Associated Press. Several more were injured.
"We are investigating to see how many tents and camps were damaged," Ms Jean-Baptiste said.
The storm passed through the mountain-ringed bowl of the Haitian capital, exposing rubble-filled neighbourhoods to wind and rain at levels far below a sustained tropical storm. But that was enough to provoke panic and chaos, especially in encampments still home to more than 1.3 million people.
Gales sent tarps and poles flying, threw tin roofs into the sky and opened family shacks to falling rain. Wind rattled walls and windows of standing buildings with a clamour reminiscent of the quake itself.
"It was just a storm. Just a wind put us in a corner!" said Bresil Vignion, standing in the wreckage of his family's tin shack in a camp along the Canape-Vert road. "Tonight we don't know where we are going to sleep."
Reports of storm damage and deaths were slow to filter in as mobile phone reception remained degraded hours after the storm passed.
The sudden storm was not associated with any tropical system, Michael Lowry of the US National Hurricane Centre told AP. Meteorologists saw only a low-pressure system move across the Greater Antilles.
But for those living in this ravaged city, where reconstruction has barely begun, it was a forceful reminder of the danger still posed to a vulnerable country by an active Atlantic hurricane season months from being over.
"After what happened today, we hope we don't get a second one like it," said Patricia Pierre-Saint, a 47-year-old phone-card vendor who lost her home, child and husband in the quake.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2010, All Rights Reserved.

The Zombies of Haiti (video)

2010-09-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

How to Make a Zombie, Haiti-Style

Lee Speigel Contributor

(Sept. 21) -- The undead are all around us, and have been for decades.

Zombies are in our mass consciousness, invading art, literature, entertainment and even education. But at the heart of this fear-mongering revolution is a single question: Is it all pure fiction, or are there in fact real zombies?

That depends on your definition of the word "zombie."

Everett Collection

Zombies invade a rural area in the 1968 classic "Night of the Living Dead."

For filmmakers in Hollywood, zombies are half-dead figures that lumber toward you with arms outstretched, stinking of rotting flesh. But in Haiti, could zombies be unfortunate victims who have been forced into slavery while under the influence of highly potent drugs?

While movies depict zombies as flesh eaters who spread their affliction like an illness, the voodoo culture and religion of Haiti has its own recipes for making a zombie -- a term derived from the word "Nzambi," meaning "spirit of a dead person" to the Bacongo people of Angola.

A leading theory holds that a voodoo priest, or bokor, is able to concoct a poison that can render a victim weak and appear dead.

"It's not what we see in Hollywood, of course. Strictly speaking, a zombie is a reanimated corpse that's been brought back to life to serve as a slave for a voodoo priest or priestess," said Brad Steiger, one of the most prolific authors of books dealing with unexplained phenomena.

In his recent book, "Real Zombies, the Living Dead and Creatures of the Apocalypse" (Visible Ink Press), Steiger explores the history of reported zombies in the real world.

"I have an account of a man from Miami who went to Haiti and was dancing with a very lovely Haitian lady, and he felt a little prick on his arm and didn't think anything of it. Next thing he knew, he woke up, was still in his suit and tie, but he was soiled and dirty and was holding a hoe in somebody's field.

"But he regained consciousness and managed to make it back to Miami. But this sort of thing still goes on with unscrupulous priests and priestesses. Generally, we're talking about a religion that is followed by 80 million people worldwide."

One man who took a "hands on" approach to the zombie culture is anthropologist Wade Davis. In 1982, Davis infiltrated the secret societies of Haitian voodoo, resulting in his 1985 eye-opening, international best-selling book (and subsequent movie) "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (Random House).

Davis investigated the most famous documented case of a reported real-world zombie, Clairvius Narcisse, who, in 1962, was pronounced dead in a Haitian hospital and later buried.

After 18 years, Narcisse showed up alive and told his story of having been drugged, buried, removed from a grave and put into slavery on a plantation with other men who allegedly shared the same fate.

"We have this case of Narcisse. From all scientific evidence, he was dead, and he came back into the realm of the living," Davis told AOL News. "Precisely because the scientists involved didn't believe in magic, there had to be a material explanation."

Davis explains that the Narcisse incident drew the attention of researchers back to "a series of reports found throughout the popular and academic literature of the reputed existence of a folk poison said to bring on a state of apparent death so profound that it could fool a physician."

Haitian bokors eventually gave Davis samples of the "zombie poison," which led him to zero in on a drug called tetrodotoxin -- the often deadly poison of a puffer fish.

Image by Ricardo Pustanio

This painting depicts a Haitian zombie, based on numerous accounts of people being turned into mindless slaves by voodoo priests.

"Tetrodotoxin turns out to be a very big molecule that blocks sodium channels in the nerves, bringing on peripheral paralysis, dramatically low metabolic rates and yet consciousness is retained until the moment of death," said Davis.

After a bokor has placed the tetrodotoxin into someone's body, and that person is pronounced dead and subsequently buried, the bokor reportedly unearths the body and applies a chemical paste to keep the unfortunate victim in a zombified, trancelike state.

Presumably, this "undead" person is then used as the bokor's slave labor.

Davis suggests it makes sense that some unscrupulous priests in Haiti would take advantage of such a poison.

"They identified in their environment a natural product -- in this case, a fish -- that had the capability of bringing on a state of apparent death.

"When I collected samples of the poison at several locations and found that these fish were the one consistent ingredient, it struck me that there was really something going on here."

That said, Davis doesn't believe there's an assembly line creating zombies in Haiti.

"What I always suggested in my work was that zombies, as an idea, by definition, exist in Haiti.

"All religion is defined by how people deal with the finality of death and the mystery of what lies beyond," said Davis. "Any phenomenon that walks that line and dances along that edge between life and death is fascinating to us."

Kim Paffenroth, a professor of religious studies at Iona College in Rochester, N.Y., has a slightly different perspective on the religious significance of zombies.

"I was 12 years old when the first 'Dawn of the Dead' film came out, so I had that adolescent male fascination with these things," said Paffenroth, the author of several books on the Bible and theology, including "Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero's Visions of Hell on Earth" (Baylor University Press).

"And when, as an adult, I became interested in religious studies, I started looking at how the darker Christian themes of sin and evil are expressed in literature, art, film and television, and then the zombie stuff sort of made sense to me in a new way."

Paffenroth has an interesting take on why many people believe that zombies (among other ghouls, like vampires) signal a coming Armageddon to our world.

"It's a pretty perennial fear of the fragile nature of civilization. Every time there's an oil spill or a stock market crash, people get anxious, and, if anything, I think these more supernatural ways of dealing with it are a little safer outlet."

Paffenroth sees zombie films as a kind of heavy-handed critique of American society.

"I now realize, as I look at some of the fans out there, they look at zombie movies and they see the message as: 'Well, I need to own more guns, because then I'll be safe.' I can see where, on the surface, that's what the movies are saying, but it's kind of a really literal way to read it."

In his investigations, Steiger has come up with a theory about why zombies are generally depicted in end-of-the-world scenarios.

"A lot of people think the Apocalypse is just around the corner and many of us have been brought up to believe that the dead will raise from their graves on Judgment Day, which is why I think the zombie has reached this incredible surge."

Agree or disagree, it's undeniable that zombies are in the midst of a resurgence, the likes of which hasn't been seen since they emerged from the ground in George Romero's classic 1968 black-and-white thriller "Night of the Living Dead."

Life In Devastated Haiti

2010-09-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

Life In Devastated Haiti
By Stephen Lendman
9-18-10

Nine months after the January 12 earthquake, Haitians still have little relief. Over one and a half million left homeless continue struggling to survive, despite billions in aid raised or pledged. It's for development, predatory NGOs, not them. That's the problem, and they suffering as a result, little media attention paid to their plight. On September 15, Los Angeles Times writer Joe Mozingo headlined, "No plan in sight for Haiti's homeless," saying: Where to put them is contentious, reconstruction "hang(ing) on the potentially explosive issue" of who owns the land. For example, pre-quake, tenant farmers used to plant corn and sugar cane on a wealthy family's 20-acre parcel "below the city's main transmission lines of the Delmas 33 road." "Now an estimated 25,000 people call it home," living in one of many temporary camps, poorly protected against heavy rain, severe weather or hurricanes. When security men try to evict them, they're chased off with "rocks, sticks and machetes." "It's not like we're comfortable here," says Katlyne Camean. "Last night when it rained, I filled three buckets of water from my house. But no one is telling us where they want us to go. I don't want to go somewhere worse." They're pitted against an indifferent government, woefully little aid, and conditions unacceptable for anyone, including inadequate food, poor sanitation, little safe drinking water, weather-beaten makeshift shelters, too little of everything needed, no resolution of their homelessness, and the world community turning a blind eye to their plight. Rubble is everywhere, only 2% of it removed. On September 11, AP's Tamara Lush reported that Port-au-Prince is strewn with "cracked slabs, busted-up cinder blocks, half-destroyed buildings," demolished homes, and "pulverized concrete" on streets and sidewalks. "By some estimates, the quake left about 33 million cubic yards of debris in Port-au-Prince - more than seven times the amount of concrete" used for Hoover Dam. Overall, it's little different from nine months ago, authorities offering excuses that don't hold water, including little heavy equipment, problems navigating some roads, and few dump sites to put rubble collected. There's no master plan, says Eric Overvest, the UN Development Program's country director. Also, no one's in charge, Haitian architect Leslie Voltaire saying: "Everybody is passing the blame on why things haven't happened yet. There should be one person in charge. Resettlement has not even begun yet, and it can't until the city has been cleared." Allocating funding for other purposes and bureaucratic delays complicate things. Most of all, it's Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, exploited ruthlessly for centuries. If a comparable quake struck San Francisco, restoration would begin at once. It takes time, money and commitment, available to well-off White communities, not poor Black ones. Katrina-ravaged New Orleans residents understand, facing dire conditions five years later, those in Black communities on their own like millions of other poor Americans unaffected by natural disasters. In many respects, their lives are little different, given little aid during dire economic times. Refugee International (RI) on Haiti RI "advocates for lifesaving assistance and protection for displaced people and promotes solutions to displacement crises." Its challenge is helping 41 million world refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), living in limbo without citizenship rights. Emilie Parry and Melanie Teff just returned from Haiti after conducting RI's second field assessment "of the humanitarian response and related protection issues..." Parry's September 13 article titled, "Haiti: Emergency Paralysis" describes what she calls: Haitians "caught up in a protracted state of emergency. In the way that a spinal cord injury's paralysis leads to bedsores, atrophy, and skin rot in the patient, the (poor) humanitarian response in Haiti feels paralyzed. The local community networks and linkages are atrophying, the spontaneous camps are developing bedsores, and the momentum, the window of opportunity within this emergency, may be turning to rot." Why? Because of world indifference. Planned reconstruction is for profit, leaving poor Haitians on their own to survive, the world community indifferent to their plight. RI spent time in Haiti shortly after the quake, reporting on March 2 "From the Ground Up," explaining the toll on survivors, their desperate need for everything, including "food, water, shelter and protection from abuse and exploitation." They need an enormous amount of humanitarian aid. It's pledged but not provided. RI recommended linking humanitarian efforts to Haiti's civil society network, comprised of grassroots community-based organizations plus the well-established internal NGOs. Most, however, are more self-serving than for poor Haitians, a topic a previous article addressed, accessed through the following link: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/haiti-is-open-for-business.html RI said few needs so far were addressed, including little or no "coordination and communication between Haitian civil society and UN and international NGOs...." Grassroots locals were mostly shut out to give corporate and well-connected NGOs free reign to profit from the vast human misery. Locals had "a hard time accessing meetings at the UN compound in Port-au-Prince" to be part of a coordinated response. RI also interviewed displaced Haitians "who expressed concern about security," especially women and children vulnerable to rape other violence, and abuse. Then and now, they also lacked minimal amounts of everything, RI saying: "Most people who lost their homes sleep under makeshift dwellings of sheets and sticks providing little protection from rain," and none from hurricanes. "The sanitation in the camps does not meet minimal international standards. The need for shelter poses immense logistical challenges....intrinsically linked to land ownership and property rights," an issue the Preval government is doing nothing to resolve. Affected Haitians then and now need everything they're not getting, receiving pathetically little of the pledged aid. "By all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual. Following the earthquake, it took three weeks for the Humanitarian Coordinator to call a meeting with aid organizations." Damage to affected and surrounding areas "have far-reaching implications that go beyond" reconstructing Port-au-Prince. The entire country needs help, mostly for its deeply impoverished, neglected and exploited people, the quake affected ones desperate for help, so far not forthcoming. In her September 13 article, Parry said: "....in every part, semi-open space or crossroads in Port-au-Prince and the environs, we see a gathering of quake-displaced persons, make-shift lean-tos (few donated), tents....packed closely together, filling every space. There are no latrines, no showers, no (minimal) SPHERE standards observed, and no communications with international or local agencies responding to the emergency." Chaotic conditions have risen to "extreme heights." Everything needed is in short supply or not provided. Security is lacking, forcing women to sleep in shifts to protect them and others from rape and abuse. The problem for thousands of unaccompanied children is enormous. Present day Haiti is like January's, except for "the overwhelming stench of sewage and garbage," and the toll on Haitians after months of neglect. "Children and adults have developed skin rashes and infections due to the poor water and sanitary conditions in the camps. The tents and lean-tos are tattered and torn; hundreds blew away in the recent storms, none remain dry (when it) rains, and it is the middle of hurricane season." Across the city and surrounding areas, grassroots networks "are weakening," without enough resources, support, or ability to work with established NGOs or world humanitarian organizations. Of the 1,000 - 1,300 camps, only six are policed by UNPOL/MINISTAH - there but doing little besides writing up incidences of rapes, other crimes, and botched "street abortions" for girls as young as 10. Camp Coordination and Management, under the leadership of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) "is a confused and contradictory mess, with an overwhelming number of cases where local camp groups have no idea" who's in charge or what needs to be done to help. "The numbers in the camps have grown," some displaced people having returned to Port-au-Prince from rural areas. Nothing is being done to help them. Little coordinated aid is provided, many camp residents saying "they feel they are being left to rot, left in the camps to die." Scheduled November Elections On November 28, first round legislative and presidential elections will be held. Democracy, however, will be absent because the nation's most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas, and 13 others are excluded, the system rigged to "elect" Washington friendly candidates. Lawyer Ira Kurzban, an immigration and employment law expert and former legal counsel to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, calls the process "unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic." Haitians know a charade is planned. Many will opt out, their choice in April 2009 for the sham process to fill 12 open Senate seats that saw an estimated 5 - 10% turnout. Why bother this time when virtually no one running gives a damn about ordinary Haitians. It makes a mockery of real elections - illegitimate, farcical, and little more than bad theater. Nonetheless, unless the fluid date is changed, it'll be hailed as democracy in action. Millions of Haitians know better. A Final Comment Haiti remains in emergency. For growing numbers, aid is "too little, too late." It presents an enormous challenge for those who care, to "do better, in order to support the possibility of hope, the possibility of recovery, and the opportunity to build back better." So far, it's planned only for the privileged, ordinary Haitians are on their own to survive. Other generations faced it earlier for centuries, helped only by the brief interregnum under Aristide, why millions in the country so badly want him back. His presence alone would make a world of difference, helping and providing many with what's now fading - hope. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Former Haiti president Aristide ready to return

2010-09-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

The Return of Aristide

2010-09-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

The kidnapping and exile of the duly elected President of Haiti Jean-
Bertrand Aristide may rank as the most blatant crime of the last century. Could you imagine the President of the United States kidnapped and exiled in a foreign country and told that he would be shot on sight if he dared to return to comfort those who elected him during the greatest earthquake on record? That is part of the tragedy of Haiti. Part of what it will take to restore Haiti is the return of Aristide.

Johann Hari: Suffocating the poor: a modern parable

They democratically elected a president to stand up to the rich and multinational corporations - so our governments have him kidnapped

Today, I want to tell you the story of how our governments have been torturing and tormenting an island in the Caribbean – but it is a much bigger story than that. It's a parable explaining one of the main reasons how and why, across the world, the poor are kept poor, so the rich can be kept rich. If you grasp this situation, you will see some of the ugliest forces in the world laid out before you – so we can figure out how to stop them.

The rubble-strewn island of Haiti is now in the middle of an election campaign that will climax this November. So far, the world has noticed it solely because the Haitian-American musician Wyclef Jean wanted to run for President, only to be blocked because he hasn't lived in the country since he was a kid. But there is a much bigger hole in the election: the most popular politician in Haiti by far, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He's not there because, after winning a landslide election, he followed the will of the Haitian people who demanded he take on the multinational corporations and redistribute enough money that their children wouldn't starve – so our governments had him kidnapped him at gunpoint and refuse to let him back.

But we have to start a little earlier if this is going to make sense. For over two centuries, Haiti has been effectively controlled from outside. The French enslaved the entire island in the eighteenth century and worked much of the population to death, turning it into the sugar and coffee plantation for the world. By this century, Western governments were arming, funding and fuelling the psychopathic dictatorship of the Duvalier family – who slaughtered 50,000 people – supposedly because they were "our friends" in the fight against communism.

All this left Haiti the most unequal country in the world. A tiny elite lives in vast villas in the hills, while below and all around them, the overwhelming majority of the population live in tiny tin shacks with no water or electricity, crammed six-to-a-room. Just 1 per cent own 50 per cent of the wealth and 75 per cent of the arable land. Once the Haitian people were finally able to rise up in 1986 to demand democracy, they obviously wanted the country's wealth to be shared more fairly. They began to organize into a political movement called Lavalas – the flood – to demand higher wages and higher taxes on the rich to build schools and hospitals and subsidies for the half-starved poor. This panicked the elite.

And nobody panicked them more than a thin, softly-spoken, intellectual slum-priest named Aristide who found himself at the crest of this wave. He was born into a bitingly poor family and became a brilliant student. As a priest he soon became one of the leading exponents of Liberation Theology, the left-wing Catholicism that says people shouldn't wait passively for justice in the Kingdom of Heaven, but must demand it here and now. (The current Pope tried desperately to stamp out this "heresy".) Aristide explained: "The rich of my country, a tiny percentage, sit at a vast table overflowing with good food, while the rest of my countrymen are crowded under that table, hunched in the dirt and starving. One day the people under the table will rise up in righteousness."

On this platform, he was elected in 1990 in a landslide in the country's first free and fair election, taking 64 per cent of the vote. He kept his promise to the Haitian people: he increased the minimum wage from 38 cents a day to $1, demanding the multinational corporations pay a less insulting wage. He trebled the number of free secondary schools. He disbanded the murderous national army that had terrorized the population. Even the International Monetary Fund had to admit that over the Aristide period and just after, Haiti's Human Poverty Indicator – a measure of how likely your kids are to die, starve or go uneducated – dropped dramatically from 46.2 per cent to 31.8 per cent.

But why would foreign governments care about a small country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere, with only ten million inhabitants? Ira Kurzban, an American lawyer based in Haiti, explains: "Aristide represented a threat to [foreign powers] because he spoke for the 85 per cent of his population who had never been heard. If that can happen in Haiti, it can happen anywhere, including in countries where the [US and Europe] have huge economic interests and extract natural resources. They don't want real popular democracies to spread because they know it will confront US economic interests." Oxfam called this phenomenon "the threat of a good example."

So after Haiti had experienced seven months of democracy, the US toppled Aristide. Ordinary Haitians surrounded his home

In 1994, the Clinton administration agreed to return Aristide to power – provided he castrate his own political program and ignore the demands of his people. They made him agree to privatize almost everything, freeze wages, and sack half the civil service. Through gritted teeth, he agreed, and for the remainder of his time in office tried to smuggle through what little progress he could. He was re-elected in an even bigger landslide in 2000 – but even his tiny shuffles towards redistribution were too much. The US and French governments had Aristide kidnapped at gunpoint and dumped him in the Central African Republic. They said he was a "dictator", even though the last Gallup poll in a free Haiti found 60 per cent supported him, compared to just 3 per cent backing the alternative imposed on the country by the US.

The human rights situation in Haiti then dramatically deteriorated, with a massive campaign of terror and repression. The Lavalas Party was banned from running again, with most of the country's democracy activists jailed. There were huge military assaults on the slums which demanded Aristide's return. A US Army Psychological Operations official explained the mission was to ensure Haitians "don't get the idea they can do whatever they want."

The next President, Rene Preval, learned his lesson: he has done everything he was told to by corporations and governments, privatizing the last remaining scraps owned by the state, and using tear gas to break up strikes for higher wages. The Haitian people rejected the whole rigged electoral process, with turn-out falling to just 11 per cent. Today, Aristide is a broken man, living in exile in South Africa, studying for a PhD in linguistics, banned from going home.

This is part of a plain pattern. When poor countries get uppity and tried to ask for basic justice, our governments have toppled them, from Iran wanting to control its own oil in 1953 to Honduras wanting its workers to be treated decently in 2009. You don't have to overthrow many to terrify the rest.

It doesn't have to be this way. This is not the will of the people, in the US or Europe: on the contrary, ordinary citizens are horrified when the propaganda is stripped away and they see the truth. It only happens because a tiny wealthy elite dominates our foreign policy, and uses it to serve their purposes – low wages and control of other people's economies and resources. The people of Haiti, who have nothing, were bold and brave enough to campaign and organize to take power back from their undemocratic elites. Are we?

j.hari@independent.co.uk; twitter.com/johannhari101

For further reading

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward (Verso, 2007)

ZERO: Percent of Pledged US Aid to Haiti That Has Been Given

2010-07-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

The US has some things in common with the other nations who have pledged to help Haiti in the wake of the January 12th Earthquake that has left more than 300,000 dead and millions homeless and destitute with no jobs, food, shelter, health care or much hope for a better future. What, pray tell, is that? Despite all the big talk and big crocodile tears, the US has delivered zero dollars, zip, nada! Empty promises don't fill empty stomachs. This is even worse when one looks into the possibility that the quake itself was manufactured by the US military to take down the Haitian government and to seize the newly discovered oil, gold and other riches in Haiti. Not to mention Obama's 'Special Envoy to Haiti', the corrupt Bill Clinton, who has angled his way into control of the Haitian telephone system.

Well, a 3.7 magnitude quake just hit Washington today.

Maybe somebody is playing tit for tat.

Here are several videos on the situation in Haiti:

click here :http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/07/14/haiti.donations/index.html?hpt=

(CNN) -- Six months after a devastating earthT1quake struck Haiti, most governments that promised money to help rebuild the country have not delivered any funds at all, a CNN investigation has found.
Donors promised $5.3 billion at an aid conference in March, about two months after the earthquake -- but less than 2 percent of that money has been handed over so far to the United Nations-backed body set up to handle it.
Only four countries have paid anything at all: Brazil, Norway, Estonia and Australia.
The United States pledged $1.15 billion. It has paid nothing, with the money tied up in the congressional appropriations process.
Venezuela promised even more -- $1.32 billion. It has also paid nothing, although it has written off some of Haiti's debt.
Former President Bill Clinton, a U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said he plans to put pressure on governments that have been slow to deliver on their promises.
"I'm going to call all those governments and say, the ones who said they'll give money to support the Haitian government, I want to try to get them to give the money, and I'm trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they'll release it," Clinton told CNN's Anderson Cooper earlier this week.
He said the worldwide economic crisis was at least partly to blame.
Accidents and Disasters
"I think that they're all having economic trouble, and they want to hold their money as long as possible," Clinton said.
Altogether, about $506 million has been disbursed to Haiti since the donors' conference in March, said Jehane Sedky of the U.N. Development Program.
That's about 9 percent of the money that was pledged. But about $200 million was money that had been in the pipeline for aid work before the earthquake, and about another $200 million went directly to the government of Haiti to help it get back on its feet, Sedky explained.
That has left the commission with about $90 million in donations since the conference, Sedky said.
There is some dispute about the World Bank's contribution
The bank says it has made available $479 million dollars, and of that $56.6 million has "already been used" for different government-led projects. The World Bank says that this money was provided directly to the Haitian government and did not go into the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.
CNN compiled the information for this report by reviewing commission figures and surveying the donors that had made pledges to determine the disposition of those pledges.
Spain, France and Canada are also among the countries that have not yet followed through on their pledges, CNN found.
No countries told CNN they do not plan to deliver the money eventually.
The pledges are for fiscal year 2010-2011, so the donors have until the middle of next year to get the funds to the Haiti recovery commission, Sedky said.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Wednesday that aid delivery to Haiti is going relatively well compared to other disaster relief efforts the world body has been involved in.
"Compared with other disasters, coordination systems in Haiti have actually functioned reasonably well," he said, adding that there was no requirement for aid efforts to work within systems.
"But within that constraint, what we've been trying to do is coordinate the aid responses as best as we can, and we are trying to provide food as quickly as possible," he said.
Some charities, meanwhile, are spending money as fast as they get it, while others are planning long-term projects.
Doctors Without Borders -- primarily a disaster-relief organization -- has received $112 million and spent $65 million, it says. The group plans to spend more than $109 million by the end of the year, spokesman Michael Goldfarb told CNN.
The Red Cross has spent $148 million of the $468 million it has taken in, and is holding some money in reserve for more permanent projects such as shelter and water.
Private money has also come in from the Clinton Foundation, from Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim Helu and Canadian mining investor Frank Giustra, but that's not part of the $5.3 billion pledged by countries at the conference in March.
The January 12 quake left more than 220,000 dead, 300,000-plus injured and more than 1 million homeless. According to recent U.N. reports, the quake destroyed 60 percent of government infrastructure and left more than 180,000 homes uninhabitable.
Six months later, more than 1.5 million remain in overcrowded displacement camps.
According to the United Nations, 1,300 camping sites and 11,000 latrines have been built, and thousands of kilos of food and humanitarian resources have been delivered to those in need.
CNN'S Richard Roth at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Heavy Rain Destroys Haitian Camp (video)

2010-07-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

Six months after the devastating Haitian earthquake that evidence shows was man-made, life for most people in Haiti is still a nightmare. Here is what happens in a tent city when a sudden storm arises.

The Haitian Disaster Aid Disaster

2010-06-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

The following article details the disaster on top of the disaster - the failure of the nations of the World to adequately deliver promised aid to the people of Haiti. As Haiti has faded off the headlines, so has the commitment to provide life-saving aid. The worst offenders seem to be the largest governmental donors. They are using aid schemes that basically route all aid back to themselves through multinational corporations who are making a literal killing at the expense of Haiti. Read the details here.

Disaster Aid, or Aid Disaster?

The international community (here referring to nations and international organizations) has pledged or given $9.9 billion in relief and reconstruction aid to Haiti, since the earthquake on January 12, 2010. Citizens and non-profit agencies of foreign countries have provided billions more. The aid is many times the size of Haiti's annual budget, which was $1.97 billion for the 2009-10 fiscal year. [1]If one looks close to the ground, in certain refugee camps and community organizations, one can see the donations of citizens and non-profits at work, supplying tents, food and medical aid. A handful of progressive foundations are funding community, peasant and advocacy organizations as they work for an alternative rebuilding process, based on economic justice and the fulfillment of social needs. Social assistance and rebuilding projects are working best when communities are engaged in the planning and implementation.Yet, for the most part, the impact of the dollars is imperceptible. Where is it going?Much of the aid pledged has not yet arrived, and may never. A lot of it has gone straight back to donor nations, as with the $.40 on every US government aid dollar that paid for the US military presence in Haiti for, at least, the first two months after the quake. [2] Untold dollars more go to US firms, like the agribusiness corporations whose surplus rice is being purchased by USAID to deliver as aid. Then there are fees and expenses paid to a small army of consultants working for foreign governments and international agencies. Many UN consultants, for example, slept until mid-March in a luxury cruise ship (the Love Boat), which the UN rented. Then, there is graft, corruption and poor planning, all of which further redirects aid dollars away from desperate earthquake survivors, up to 1.9 million of whom are left homeless, hungry and wet in tents during the rainy season.
What would Haitians like to see happen with the aid? We asked for opinions; here are a few.Christine Miradieu is an unemployed mother of nine who lost her husband, one of her children, and her home in the earthquake. She now lives with six of her children in two tents in a field outside of the town of Gressier. They tell me the international community gave $2 million dollars in aid. Where is it? [We suggest the figure is actually $9.9 billion.]What? [Turns to her family behind her.] You hear? Nine point nine billion in aid. Now, who's getting that? We haven't seen any of it.Lucien St. Louis is an agronomist by training who worked for many years with farmers through the Ministry of Agriculture. Now, he is employed by a European NGO, helping to direct disaster responses in several earthquake-impacted towns to those who most need them.
First, we want to say how much we appreciate all the citizens of the world who have paid attention to Haiti after January 12 and who have given whatever they could, whether money or solidarity. They make us know we're not alone in this fight to reclaim our lives and rebuild our country.This aid could be a marvelous thing, giving us the assistance we need to get back on our feet. It could help us build a different country, a country where everyone is recognized as a human being, a country where all children go to school, and no one dies for lack of decent medical care. It could help strengthen peasant agriculture, so farmers could stay in the countryside, where they could have work and feed the nation, instead of having to migrate to Port-au-Prince. It could help women do marketing and form cooperatives, so they could have an income for their family. It could provide decent housing for all, especially those who lost their homes in the earthquake, in communities that are close to all the services people need to live. It could strengthen the people's institutions that are trying to build a new society and economy.We haven't seen any of this yet. But, we're going to keep on fighting for it.Ghislene Deloné (a pseudonym used at her request) is a health promoter at the clinic of the Center for the Promotion of Women Workers (CPFO). Prior to this job, she worked for eleven years as a seamstress in a multinational textile factory.
Now, we have the international community which came to Haiti, which is helping workers and CPFO get medicines. They're distributing medicines; they're doing free exams for the women at CPFO. Workers can now come and get the medical care they need, without having to pay anything. We are satisfied.Marlène Jean-Pierre lives in Cité Soleil. She is a student in civil engineering and an organizer with women's and youth grassroots groups in Cité Soleil.
We don't need more than social support. We need collaboration with all the foreign citizens who want to come help us Haitians, who want to give their support. We don't need money coming into the country to create huge projects to bring about change, no. When that money comes, the population itself doesn't receive it. It doesn't ever get to the community. They should find people within the community and divide it among them. But, the foreigners who came after the earthquake, they don't know a single person. They come to this country and want to take action. They say, "I've brought you water! I've brought you food! Look at all I've brought for you!" But, they don't know who to contact. So, they work through the government, or else, they choose someone to work with them, and that person gets to direct the aid whatever way they want. But, with someone who knows the country well, that work would be better supervised, they'd be able to see that the population is really receiving the aid directly. We know there are billions of dollars coming to the NGOs now. It's from that money the NGOs are paying their employees, that they're buying gas for their cars; it's with that money that they're paying for their own security. The only thing we ask is that, whatever is left for us, that the work they do with it is done well. That's all we ask for.Carolle Pierre-Paul Jacob is a coordinator of Solidarity Among Haitian Women (SOFA). Among other things, SOFA provides health care and anti-violence support to women now living in refugee camps.
This is an international parade. The aid has been given in total chaos. The way it's been run represents economic and political domination. It's being done in a context where the symbols of state power are gone, and the government is basically nonexistent. There are lots of ways we could have taken advantage of this moment, to create a minimum of social, economic, and political transformation. But, we haven't had that chance, because of the domination of the foreigners.Josette Pérard is the director of Fon Lambi, the Haitian-run branch of the Lambi Fund of Haiti. Josette has a long history of providing funding and technical support to women and peasant groups in Haiti and, prior to that, in the Congo.
The people want another system, so they can be treated as citizens in a country that belongs to them. They want their rights as human beings to be respected. But, with all the aid and programs, they're treating people like children. It's not possible. Who knows better than the people? They want to make decisions with themselves; they don't want anyone to make those decisions for them.What plan does the country have five months after the earthquake? People can't sit in the mud in the camps all day; they can't live like that. Now, they're kicking people out of the tents to send them to other tents, without water or shade. There are no changes. The government is totally irresponsible.We're very happy that people are coming to help us, but there is no one to sit down with them to coordinate. This is because the state is inexistent. It doesn't take its responsibility. People are saying, "Here's what we need in the way of aid; here's what we want to happen so we can have results." But, each group comes up with its own program for reconstruction. If no one sits down together and comes up with one coordinated program, will there be one? What makes me most angry is to see people sitting under the hot sun to get a half-sack of rice and a bottle of oil. Where are they going to cook food? They don't have a stove to cook food with, and they can't eat rice and oil only. They're saying that aid recipients are selling the food, in order to buy a piece of bread with peanut butter, because they don't have any way to cook the rice. People are very dissatisfied. For weeks, there have been demonstrations in the streets against Préval.Presto Deroncil has lived in Cité Soleil since 1977, where he is an informal (unelected) community leader.
Cité Soleil is a place where lots of money is spent, but nothing ever happens. It's the place where everyone comes to make money, to get rich. After January 12, it got even worse. After January 12, everyone mobilized, the international community mobilized. Me, I thought that things were finally going to change. No way! I see things getting more difficult. I see there's a lot of food distribution happening. At the beginning, it went well, but after a while things started getting looser, people started making money off it. What hurts the most is that people from Cité Soleil have been working to have political representation, to have people who will represent them in the government. But, now, it's those same people who are making a business [out of aid]. Imagine, really imagine - when a person is the leader in a community, there are a lot of things that person shouldn't do. But, there are people who take those cards [aid vouchers] and make a fortune with them. They buy cars with them; they buy motorcycles. Something that was meant to help the people, and now they're selling them. I think this has to change.People are sleeping in the mud; they're sleeping in garbage. When it rains, they don't have anywhere to sleep. I think that the most important thing now is a public housing project within Cité Soleil. I think that everyone, the international community that wants to help Cité Soleil, they must sit with the community leaders, with the population of this community. First off, they should listen to people, so that they know what they should work on. We know what we need.Jacqueline Cherilus is a fourth-year medical student at Université Lumière in Port-au-Prince. On January 12, her school collapsed, killing many of her professors and classmates. Her home was damaged, and now she and her family sleep under a tarp, because they are afraid to be inside.
Americans and everyone who've sent tents, we're tired of that stuff, those same tents and tarps. We need construction. You see how strong the rains are becoming? Tents can't resist that rain. How long can we live in tents and tarps? You can't live for two or three years under a tarp. We need houses. We're going to have hurricanes soon and flooding. The aid is poorly organized and poorly divided. There are lots of people who don't receive anything. To have real aid, we need social change. Right now, they're just giving us tarps, tents, and food. We need health care. You see, in Briztou [a tent community in Pétion-ville] they only have one doctor for 25,000 people? And, there's no educational reform. Children are still paying to go to school. Like my little brother, who still has to pay. How can other children, the ones who lost their parents in the earthquake, pay for school?
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[1] Matthew Bigg, "UPDATE 2-Haiti GDP to shrink but govt says revenue recovering," Reuters, March 4, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0417117420100304[2] Jonathan Katz, "Billions for Haiti, A Criticism for Every Dollar," Associated Press, March 5, 2010. Sources taken from USAID and the U.N. See http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/haitiaid.jpg

Micro Lending Helps Haitian Women (video)

2010-06-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

Able to quickly reach a well-developed network of women throughout the country, an alternative banking system performs while the Haitian economy is in shambles.
A micro-credit program and banking system for more than 200,000 women in Haiti has come to the rescue of the overall economy in the wake of the devastating earthquake.
At a time when Haitian commercial banks remain closed, Fonkoze, the Haitian branch of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, mobilized over one weekend to get funds to its members in rural towns as well as Port-au-Prince.
Between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m., last Saturday, January 23, Fonkoze brought in two million dollars in cash from their U.S. bank and distributed it by helicopters to regional offices in the most remote parts of the country.
That got money flowing again. The cash came from Haitians working abroad who had sent funds — called remittances — to their relatives.
Also known as Haiti’s, “Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor,” Fonkoze found a way to get money to its members through the 34 of its 41 branch offices still open after the earthquake. It had a lot of help in high places: the U.S. Secretary of State, top Treasury and Defense Department officials, the Federal Reserve, the Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the Inter-American Development Bank and more.
The operation read like a cloak-and-dagger saga. Anne Hastings, the CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services, was point person on shaping the unorthodox solution. It involved many conference calls to Washington, New York and Miami, as well as intricate strategies with managers on the ground in Haiti who would get the money to the women.
By Friday, January 22, the plan was ready. Remittances from U.S.-based Haitians deposited in Fonkoze’s accounts at City National Bank of New Jersey were sent to JP Morgan Chase in Miami, converted into cash — and packed in office supply boxes. An armored vehicle then transferred the boxes to Homestead Air Force Base.
A C-17 plane, diverted from Langley Air Force Base, landed at Homestead at 3 a.m. Saturday, took on the camouflaged cargo of cash, and flew to Haiti, where the major airport at Port-au-Prince has been under U.S. military control since the earthquake.
Once there, Hastings and two other Fonkoze executives inspected the cash cargo — and called the Pentagon to say so far, so good. Under a military escort, the Fonkoze vehicle loaded with the boxes of cash awaited the two helicopters that could fly the money to 10 designated drop-off locations.
Fonkoze’s Jean-Guy Noel rode with the helicopters as they began deliveries before dawn. Seven hours later, all the cash had been delivered and the helicopters were back in Port-au-Prince. By early afternoon, the cash had been distributed to the 34 Fonkoze branches. Almost immediately, the Fonkoze managers began giving Fonkoze members cash from their relatives, a financial lifeline at a time when the formal banking system is in shambles and remittances sent through it from overseas Haitians remain locked up.
Jennifer Harris, a member of the policy staff of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a memo to Pentagon officials released by Fonkoze, spelled out the implications of the combined State-Defense operation.
“Fonkoze has by far the deepest reach into the country’s rural poor, a remittance network that would take years to recreate from scratch. As people continue to migrate from Port-au-Prince, Fonkoze’s branch network will become even more essential,” she said. “Perhaps most important, unlike the commercial banks, Fonkoze has re-opened many of its branches and has continued to pay out remittances using its cash on hand.”
In essence, she said, the unconventional operation “may well have stabilized the banking system for the country’s most vulnerable population.”
Fonkoze has been operating in Haiti for 15 years. Ninety-nine percent of its members are women. By midweek, it expects all but three of its branches to be open. In the heavily damaged capital city, Fonkoze managers set up shop at a makeshift office in the courtyard next to its damaged headquarters—as hundreds of Haitians lined up to get the money due them.
In addition to micro-lending programs, Fonkoze sponsors major literacy, health care and micro-insurance programs. Its remittances and savings accounts serve more than 200,000 people, making it a significant part of the country’s financial system. Relatives of Fonkoze members working abroad use its conduits to send back money — “that taxi driver in New York City who wants to send fifty dollars to his mother,” says Leigh Carter, Fonkoze USA fundraiser — amounting to $57.7 million last year.
It also serves as a vendor for three other remittance services that still operate after the earthquake: MoneyGram, CAM and Unitransfer. The process is a lifeline for a country where, in 2007, 79 percent of Haitians lived on less than $2 a day and 55 percent lived on half that.
Fonkoze’s micro-lending program has four different levels. The first step is for the poorest of the poor and may involve home repairs and health care, as well as building the confidence of the women as they plan to start a micro-enterprise. Next the women may qualify for small loans — perhaps only $25 — with a short repayment period, while they enroll in literacy classes. In Haiti, more than 50 percent of people are illiterate.
The third level is the core: a “solidarity” group in which friends take out loans together, then morph into credit centers of 30 to 40 women. These women can start out borrowing $75, but if they prosper they can borrow up to $1,300 for six months.
The fourth level focuses on business development. Some women in this group borrow up to $25,000 and are being nurtured to become part of the formal economy, creating jobs in rural areas where there are few employment opportunities.
It isn’t the first time that a micro-lending network of mostly women has taken a lead role in helping rebuild a country’s economy after a natural disaster. In Poland, after a devastating flood in the mid-1990s, the U.S.-backed Fundusz Mikro became the conduit for credit to small businesses, ultimately funneling more than $10 million to rebuild when the central government proved inept and also tone-deaf to the challenge.
Leigh Carter, who broke several vertebrae in her back getting out of the Fonkoze headquarters building during the earthquake and was airlifted out days later, is back at work in Washington. She says multinational economic and financial leaders already are talking to Fonkoze about ways to use their extensive network of micro-lending programs for programs to rebuild the Haitian economic base.
“People are coming to us saying ‘you need to expand your capacity,’” she said.
But first things first: the immediate priority had to be getting cash to its members, throughout Haiti, from their friends and relatives abroad, which in itself expands members ability to survive and rebuild.

Fonkoze has had strong success working with microfinance programs to improve lives of suffering women and their families. This program, Chemen Lavi Miyo, which means “Pathway to a Better Life” in Haitian creole, is testing a new approach to helping those living in extreme poverty to transition into a sustainable way of life. This highly structured and intensive program combines livelihoods and basic support with training and financial management so that at the end of just 18 months, participants will be equipped with the skills and a business plan to move themselves out of poverty. “What we want to demonstrate,” says Anne Hastings, director of the program, is that there is a “proven, replicable, methodology for accompanying people as they struggle to make their way out of these conditions into a …decent standard of living.” Fonkoze is now leading microfinance programs that will help rebuild Port-au-Prince since the devastating 10 January, 2010 earthquake that hit the capital and outlying areas.

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For more information on this topic:
“A graduation pathway for Haiti’s poorest – Lessons learnt from Fonkoze,” Karishma Huda and Anton Simanowitz – The Mastercard Foundation, 29 September, 2009 “The Haiti Earthquake: How microfinance is helping,” – CGAP – Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, World Bank Publications, 27 January, 2010 “Reimagining Microfinance,” Alex Counts, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 13 May, 2008 “Gender and Microlending – Diveristy of Experience,” – Critical Half / Annual Journal 2004, Women for Women International

Monsanto Attacks Haiti With GMO Seeds!

2010-05-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

How shall I oppress thee? Let me count the ways...America, her allies and the corporations who rule her, are forever finding new ways to destroy Haiti and her people. For two hundred years they have frustrated the desire of the Haitian people to be fully independent and free. Now with high tech seeds, a new form of oppression is set loose on Haiti. It means the total subservience of Haiti to Monsanto for the ability to grow crops to feed herself. Monsanto, not Haiti, will determine what will grow and how it will be done, and who will profit from Haiti's agriculture. Read about it here and learn what needs to be done.

Monsanto, Haiti's "New Earthquake"

"A new earthquake" is what Haitian peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be dumping 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds on Haiti, seeds doused with highly toxic fungicides such as thiram, known to be extremely dangerous to farm workers. Hybrid seeds, like GMO seeds (in contrast to Creole heirloom or organic seeds) require lots of water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. In addition if a small farmer tries to save hybrid seeds after harvest, hybrid seeds usually do not "breed true" or grow very well in the second season, forcing the now-indentured peasant to buy seeds from Monsanto or one of the other hybrid/GMO seed monopolies in perpetuity. Monsanto wanted initially to dump GMO seeds on Haiti, but even the corrupt Haitian government knew that this would spark a rebellion, so Monsanto cleverly decided to dump hybrid seeds instead. The Haitian small farmers organization has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

Read More

Learn more on OCA's Millions Against Monsanto campaign page.

Alert of the Week
Monsanto's Poison Pills for Haiti
Take Action in Solidarity with Haitian Farmers Who Vow to Burn Monsanto's Toxic Fungicide-Coated Hybrid Seeds

Since gaining their independence from France more than 200 years ago in a bloody slave uprising, Haitian farmers have wisely protected their seeds and nurtured native crop varieties. They know that true food security is maintained by farmers who save, trade and breed indigenous seeds using traditional organic methods.

As Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive Director of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), wrote earlier this year, "We need to establish seed banks and have silos where we can store our Creole seeds. Local, organic seeds are the basis of food sovereignty. It's urgent that Haitians buy local seeds. ... What's the danger we face today? It's that food aid from USAID and others is getting dumped in the country."

USAID and Monsanto have a poison pill for Haiti, designed to the make the island nation into a slave colony once again, except this time they won't be slaves for France, but rather for Monsanto and corporate agribusiness. Join the Haitian people and the growing global movement of Millions Against Monsanto.

Take Action

You can donate to the distribution of local, organic seeds within Haiti here.

The Imperial Plunder of Haiti

2010-05-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

What is taking place now in Haiti? This article which is a collection of articles seems to paint a dismal picture of the hyenas and jackals moving in to rip apart the carcass of a devastated country which has struggled for 500 years to survive. The international 'aid' community is moving in for the kill as if the quake were not bad enough. According to some reports the major food market in Port au Prince has been burnt down by the government in retaliation for refusing to go along with a scheme to sell aid items on the black market. Thousands are being forcibly removed from tent encampments with no where to go, or moved to UN camps with no facilities.
The nightmare continues.


Preparing Haiti For Exploitation And Plunder
By Stephen Lendman 5-1-10
Over 15 weeks post-quake, Haiti's imperial takeover is proceeding. It began straightaway after the calamity, Haitians victimized by denied aid, appalling repression, and now dispossession of their land, homes, and communities. More on that below.

On April 16, The New York Times carried Reuters and AP reports stating Haiti's parliament approved the participation of foreign investors to rebuild the country, meaning, of course, seize, occupy, own, control, and colonize it for profit, using Haitians as exploited serfs.

AP stated:

"Haiti's soon-to-expire parliament has approved the creation of (an Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission - IHRC) co-chaired by former US President Bill Clinton to oversee billions in post-quake reconstruction aid, the Ministry of Communications said Friday (April 16)."

The vote also extended Haiti's state of emergency for 18 months, leaving the Rene Preval-Jean-Max Bellerive government in charge, effectively a dictatorship like Preval instituted in 1999 by not renewing parliament and ruling by decree pending new elections.

Reuters explained that a March 31 "donors" conference established the IHRC to oversee their investment, Preval to have nominal veto power over commission decisions. In fact, he'll rubber stamp what Washington and corporate interests dictate, supervised by the World Bank, a longstanding imperial tool.

Preval asked, "Do we lose our sovereignty because of the creation of this commission? I think the answer is no."

Except for the Aristide years (1991, 1994 - 96, and 2001 -2004), early in Preval's first term (1996 - 2001), and its brief 1804 liberation, Haiti lacked sovereignty throughout its history. Post-quake, it has even less, its people more than ever in jeopardy with imperial plans to gravely harm them, perhaps exterminate hundreds of thousands through neglect or other means.

Laying Imperial Plans

On March 10, prior to the March 31 "donors" conference, Preval was received at the White House, held a joint press conference, ignored the plight of his people, yet Obama thanked him for "showing great courage and determination," when, in fact, he's been largely invisible, and to date has done nothing to engage Haitians directly, including in their makeshift camps the way Jean-Bertrand Aristide would have done straightaway, with a hands-on approach for long hours daily.

Preval prefers White House photo-ops in deference to power and privilege, increasing, not alleviating his peoples' suffering.

The Predators Ball - Nations Gather in New York for Their Share

The web site www.haiticonference.org announced the:

"International Donors' Conference Toward a New Future for Haiti" explaining:

"The United States and the United Nations (UN), in cooperation with the Government of Haiti, and with the support Brazil, Canada, the European Union, France, and Spain co-hosted" the conference and received "over US $5 billion pledged for Haiti's recovery" - around $1 billion promised by Washington, less than the EU's $1.7 billion and Venezuela's $1.3 billion. In total, however, it's a fraction of what Haitians need, and "redevelopment" won't reach them as it's earmarked for profit-making ventures, not poverty-stricken neighborhoods and essential infrastructure to support them.

A recovery and development roadmap outlined short and longer-term priorities, with participating countries lining up for their take, the lion's share, of course for America, then France and Canada, and what they have in mind is more sweatshops, gentrified elite areas, expanded tourism, free trade zones, and the grand prize - exploiting Haiti's resources, including what's believed to be abundant untapped oil reserves, what US oil giants made plans for decades ago. They intend deep water ports, refineries, and other facilities to fully exploit the treasure, not mentioned in major media reports, now largely silent on Haiti and its long-suffering people.

Ahead of the conference on March 27, a New York Times editorial headlined, "Making Haiti Whole," endorsed it, saying:

It marks "the beginning of the long, slow birth of a new Haiti. Representative of the Haitian government, the United States and other nations and aid organizations will be discussing large, ambitious, farsighted plans," far different ones from what The Times suggests.

On April 28, Reuters headlined, "Lawmakers agree on trade bill to help Haiti," saying:

"Top US lawmakers said on Wednesday they have reached a bipartisan deal to help Haiti rebuild its earthquake-shattered economy by opening the US market to more Haitian clothing and textiles" - to be produced in rebuilt sweatshops, where workers are treated like slaves, not human beings. They pay starvation wages, no benefits, and no overtime for up to 70 hours a week in harsh or hazardous environments. They're inhumane workplaces, dimly lit in stifling heat, with no way to organize for redress or avoid being fired if complain.

Yet according to Congressman Charles Rangel (representing his black Harlem constituents):

"The Haitian garment sector, Haiti's flagship industry, was making important strides prior to the earthquake and helping the country's economy establish a stable foothold. With this legislation, we will help to get the garment sector and Haiti's economy back on that critical trajectory," mindless of how it affects exploited workers.

Mindless also of haitian-truth.org's April 27 report headlined, "Preval Instigated Fire rips through major Haitian market," saying:

"A large incendiary fire" destroyed much of Port-au-Prince's main public market, Marche du Port, affecting hundreds of stalls and two surrounding blocks. UN Blue Helmets (MINUSTAH) were notably absent. Firefighters had inadequate resources, and shopkeepers rushed to save what they could.

One seller, Pierre Elian, said:

"The front of the market place is already burned down. We don't know if the area where we kept our merchandise is also burning, because they won't let us go near it."

Merchants blamed Preval-controlled instigators, saying "recognized gang members were seen pouring gasoline over material to" ignite the blaze - as "political pressure against the poor" who need the food and merchandise to survive.

Patrick Servius, who lost his clothing business, said:

"Preval is angry with us for our refusal to sell relief supplies in our places. These are (donated goods) for the earthquake victims, not for Preval's profits. Now we pay for our patriotism."

They'll soon know what else Preval has in mind. More on that below.

The Next Shoe to Drop - Forced Relocations

On April 7, the Haiti Response Coalition (HRC, a network of urban and rural civil society groups) issued an alert saying:

An encampment of 11,000 Haitians on Saint Louis de Gonzague school land face forced displacement. They've "been offered a plot of land that will hold 500 in a different location. No regard has been given to the fact that the majority of the 11,000 will end up in the street," or that mass forced relocations are coming next.

On April 12, AFP headlined, "Haiti evacuates quake victims camp, faces critics," saying:

"....authorities ramped up moves to forcibly evacuate dozens of tent cities across the capital....After evicting some 7,000 people at the weekend (from the national stadium), the government began the forced removal of a further 10,000" from camps around the city, early steps preceding mass numbers to follow, ahead of preparing the area for redevelopment.

One camp member said he was given a week to leave for Tabarre Issa, a UN camp where there are "No toilets, no showers....there's nothing there."

On April 11, Reuters reported that "Haiti starts moving quake victims to safer refuge," saying:

"Haiti's government and foreign aid agencies started an operation....to move thousands of earthquake survivors," on the pretext of sending them to safer areas ahead of seasonal rains that cause flooding.

On April 29, Los Angeles Times writer Ken Ellingwood headlined, "Tensions rise over Haiti tent camps," saying:

Tensions are "playing out at stadiums, in churchyards and factory lots, almost anywhere there is enough land to pitch a tent. (Authorities face) the tricky task of balancing the needs of more than a million homeless with the urge of many others to resume a more normal life," ignoring the real "urge" for imperial plunder.

Haiti's constitution recognizes the rights of all citizens to "decent housing, education, food and social security."

The "United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement....reflect and are consistent with international human rights law and international humanitarian law." They:

-- assure "full equality, the same rights and freedoms under international and domestic law as do other persons in their country. They shall not be discriminated against in the enjoyment of any rights and freedoms on the ground that they are internally displaced;

-- shall be observed by all authorities....;

-- (assure) protection and humanitarian assistance from these authorities....without discrimination of any kind....;

-- (guarantee) "the right to be protected against forcible return to or resettlement in any place where their life, safety, liberty, and/or health would be at risk," among other provisions, 30 in all recognizing the needs of displaced people when they're most vulnerable.

TransArica Forum Alert

On April 12, Transafricaforum.org issued a memorandum headlined "Forced IDP Relocations," saying:

"Throughout our network of contacts (on the ground in Haiti), we received a report of a forceful removal of an IDP camp in Caradeux Delas 75, Port-au-Prince. The exact number affected isn't yet known....all reported a complete lack of latrines....no water sources....and no food distributions.

The Refugee Camp community members reported that they did not receive warning before the large Conseil Nationale Equipements (CNE) bulldozers and graters came to their community with Haitian National Police escorts late on Sunday evening (April 4)....threaten(ing) the families with violence if they did not leave their home immediately."

Batons were used, firearms discharged in the air, and their homes were destroyed, by officers, then bulldozers. The process continued for three days and nights. Where those displaced were sent isn't known. The only answer given was they're "now living on the streets."

Around 1.2 million Haitians remain in makeshift tent cities throughout Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas with little aid or concern for their welfare or safety. Now in preparation for redevelopment, hundreds of thousands, perhaps all, will be ordered to move or be forcibly displaced to even grimmer locations, on their own, with little beyond their own ingenuity to survive.

This is Washington's imperial plan, being implemented for exploitation and plunder. This writer's previous article explained Haiti is no stranger to adversity and anguish, having endured over 500 years of oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, extreme poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, and calamities like the January 12 quake killing around 300,000, destroying their homes and belongings, and leaving them vulnerable to imperial plunder of their land, resources and lives - again, on their own, out of luck, and out of major media focus that ignores the greater disaster awaiting them, and the trashing of their human rights and freedoms.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Food Self-Sufficiency for Haiti

2010-04-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Haiti is a perfect example of how globalism and free-trade policies wreck whole countries. How could little Haiti - long a producer of enough rice to feed her own people with some left over for export - compete with low-cost subsidized rice from abroad? Developing countries like Haiti have to have protectionism policies that shield them from unfair foreign competition, otherwise all local agriculture and manufacturing will wither on the vine. That's how Alexander Hamilton set up the American System of economy to break free from the economic shackles imposed by Great Britain, the 'Mother Country'. The policy for Haiti has to be ; "No cheap imports!" That will allow for the development of Hatian agricultlure and economy. Globalism and free trade should be exposed for what they truly are - velvet gloved genocide, without the velvet. The best part of this article of Bill Clinton's confession that it was he, as President, who ruined Haiti's agriculture.

Boost Haiti's Self-Sufficiency by "Buying Local" Rice
07 April 2010
by: The Center for Economic and Policy Research
Washington, D.C. - The international community could, in the words of former President Bill Clinton, help Haiti "become more self-sufficient" by purchasing the entire Haitian rice crop over the next two years for just 2.35 percent of total current committed aid funds. A new issue brief from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) finds that buying up all of Haiti's rice should be close to the amount of food aid for rice that the international community is likely to provide this year, and would provide a tremendous boost to Haitian farmers, who currently are unable to compete with low-cost rice imports from the U.S.
"The international donors have said that they do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past, which have destroyed much of Haiti's agriculture," said Mark Weisbrot, economist and CEPR Co-Director, and lead author of the paper. "It would be very easy and inexpensive for them to keep this promise. Now we will see if they mean it."
There has been a growing recognition that past food aid to Haiti has had a significant negative impact on local food production and contributed to the sharp decline of Haiti's rice sector. Last month, Bill Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that exporting cheap rice to Haiti "was a mistake … I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did."
The paper notes that while there is much that can and should be done to support Haitian agriculture and the rebuilding of the economy, it is most important to immediately reduce the harm caused by imported, subsidized rice. The authors propose that this can be done by having the international community immediately commit to buying Haitian rice for the next two years. Since food aid was 13 percent of the total rice supply last year, and Haitian rice production is about 15 percent of total supply, buying up all of Haiti's rice would be close to the amount of food aid for rice that the international community would be expected to provide this year.
The paper also suggests the aid donors buy the rice at a price that is high enough to encourage local production. Even though this would have to be somewhat higher than an average of past years' market prices, the cost would only be between $62.1million and $82.8 million per year. Since international donors have committed $5.3 billion in aid for the next 18 months, or $3.53 billion annually, the cost of buying Haiti's rice crop would be only 1.76 to 2.35 percent of committed international aid funds.
Since there are funds allocated to bringing in a similar amount of rice in any case, the additional cost of buying the Haitian rice crop would actually be considerably less than the high estimate of $82.8 million, or 2.35 percent of committed funds.
On March 25, former President Clinton and UN special envoy to Haiti told representatives of aid groups: "Every time we spend a dollar in Haiti from now on we have to ask ourselves, 'Does this have a long-term return? Are we helping them become more self-sufficient? ... Are we serious about working ourselves out of a job?"
CEPR maintains a blog, "Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch" that tracks the multinational Haiti relief and reconstruction efforts with an eye towards ensuring that they are oriented toward the most urgent and important needs of the Haitian people, and that aid is not used to undermine Haitians' right to self-

How the US Impoverished Haiti

2010-03-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

The following article give a brief, ie incomplete, history of the economic crisis in Haiti up til 2003. Things have only worsened since then. The earthquake of January 12 dealt the crushing blow. The article makes clear the culpability and responsibility of not just France, but of the United States in whose sphere of influence Haiti lies.

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How the US Impoverished Haiti

http://politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/9249

Author’s update: The horrific disaster that has befallen Haiti is perhaps unprecedented in the Western Hemisphere. Estimates now say that perhaps hundreds of thousands have died as a result of the Jan. 12 earthquake. The media have constantly recited, as a mantra, that Haiti’s weak infrastructure and poor quality of construction account for the large number of deaths. The implication is that Haitians are unable to govern and build a reliable, sustainable society. The truth of the matter is that, left to their own efforts, Haitians would have been more than able to build a reliable democracy with adequate infrastructure. But they have never been allowed to do so – not by Europe and certainly not by the United States. The article below was written in 2003. It attempts to describe how Haiti has been by design maintained as the most impoverished nation in our hemisphere. Contact your congressional representatives and urge them to move Congress to increase aid to Haiti. For more on direct aid and action, go to Haitiaction.net.
Like this earthquake victim, Haiti has been crushed under U.S. exploitation and debt for most of its existence. Though the demand by Haiti for reparations from France is just, it obscures the role the United States played in the process to impoverish Haiti – a role that continues to this day. Today Haiti is a severely indebted country whose debt-to-export ratio is nearly 300 percent, far above what is considered sustainable even by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Both institutions are dominated by the U.S. In 1980 Haiti’s debt was $302 million. Since then it has more than tripled to $1.1 billion, approximately 40 percent of the nation’s gross national product. Last year Haiti paid more in debt service than it did on medical services for the people. Haitian officials say nearly 80 percent of the current debt was accumulated by the regimes of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Papa Doc and Baby Doc. Both regimes operated under the benign gaze of the United States that has had a long and sordid history of keeping Haiti well within its sphere of economic and political influence. It is now well known that the primary source of Haiti’s chronic impoverishment is the reparations it was forced to pay to the former plantation owners who left following the 1804 revolution. Some of the white descendants of the former plantation owners, who now live in New Orleans, still have the indemnity coupons issued by France. So in fact, at least part of the reparations paid by Haiti went toward the development of the United States. In 1825 Haiti was forced to borrow 24 million francs from private French banks to begin paying off the crippling indemnity debt. Haiti only acknowledged this debt in exchange for French recognition of her independence, a principle that would continue to characterize Haiti’s international relationships. These indemnity payments caused continual financial emergencies and political upheavals. In a 51-year period, Haiti had 16 different presidents – new presidents often coming to power at the head of a rebel army.
Nevertheless, Haiti always made the indemnity payments – and, following those, the bank loan payments – on time. The 1915 intervention by the Marines on behalf of U.S. financial interests changed all of that, however. The prelude to the 1915 U.S. intervention began in 1910 when the National Bank of Haiti, founded in 1881 with French capital and entrusted from the start with the administration of the Haitian treasury, disappeared. It was replaced by the financial institution known as the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti. Part of the capital of the new national bank was subscribed by the National City Bank of New York, signaling, for the first time, U.S. interest in the financial affairs of Haiti. The motivation for the original U.S. financial interest in Haiti was the schemes of several U.S. corporations with ties to National City Bank to build a railroad system there. In order for these corporations – including the W.R. Grace Corp. – to protect their investments, they pressured President Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, to find ways to stabilize the Haitian economy, namely by taking a controlling interest in the Haitian custom houses, the main source of revenue for the government. After Secretary of State Bryan was fully briefed on Haiti by his advisers, he exclaimed, “Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French.” Ironically, however, Bryan, a longtime anti-imperialist, was against any exploitative relationship between the U.S. and Haiti or any other nation in the Western Hemisphere. In fact he had long called for canceling the debts of smaller nations as a means by which they could normally grow and develop. Not surprisingly, Bryan’s views were not well received in Washington or on Wall Street. Due to the near total ignorance at the State Department and in Washington generally about Haiti, Bryan was forced to rely on anyone who had first hand information. That person turned out to be Roger L. Farnham, one of the few people thoroughly familiar with Haitian affairs.
Farnham was thoroughly familiar with Haitian affairs because he was vice-president of the National City Bank of New York and of the new National Bank of the Republic of Haiti and president of the National Railway of Haiti. In spite of the secretary of state’s hostility to Wall Street and Farnham’s obvious conflict of interest, Bryan leaned heavily on Farnham for information and advice. As vice president of both National City Bank and the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti, Farnham played a cat and mouse game with the Haitian legislature and president. Alternately, he would threaten direct U.S. intervention or to withhold government funds if they did not turn over control of the Haitian custom houses to National City Bank. In defense of Haitian independence, lawmakers refused at every juncture. Finally, in 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Farnham was able to convince Washington that France and Germany posed direct threats to the U.S. by their presence in Haiti. Each had a small colony of business people there. In December of 1914, Farnham arranged for the U.S. Marines to come ashore at Port Au Prince, march into the new National Bank of Haiti and steal two strongboxes containing $500,000 in Haitian currency and sail to New York, where the money was placed in New York City Bank. This made the Haitian government totally dependent on Farnham for finances with which to operate. The final and immediate decision to intervene in Haiti came in July of 1915 with yet another overthrow of a Haitian president, this time the bloody demise of Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. For the next 19 years, the U.S. Marine Corps wielded supreme authority throughout Haiti, often dispensing medicines and food as mild forms of pacification. Within several years, however, charges of massacres of Haitian peasants were made against the military as Haitians revolted against the road building programs that required forced labor. In one such incident at Fort Reviere, the Marines killed 51 Haitians without sustaining any casualties themselves. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt awarded Major Smedley D. Butler the Congressional Medal of Honor. That’s not unlike the awarding of Medals of Honor to the “heroes” of the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which hundreds of Sioux Native Americans were slaughtered in 1890.
Reports of U.S. military abuses against the Haitians became so widespread that NAACP official James Weldon Johnson headed a delegation to investigate the charges, which they deemed to be true. While the U.S. occupation was not without some successes – the health care system was improved and the currency was stabilized – it was in other economic spheres where the most damage was done. For the entire 19-year duration of the intervention, maximum attention was given to paying off Haiti’s U.S. creditors, with little to no attention given to developing the economy. In 1922 former Marine Brigade Commander John Russell was named High Commissioner of Haiti, a post he held until the final days of the occupation. Under Russell’s influence, all political dissent was stifled and revenue from the custom houses was turned over, often months ahead of schedule, to Haiti’s U.S. bond creditors, who had assumed loans originally extended to Haiti to pay off the French plantation owners’ reparations! By 1929, however, with the Western world’s economic depression and the lowering of living standards throughout Haiti, serious student strikes and worker revolts, combined with Wall Street’s inability to lure serious business investors there, Washington decided it was time to end the military occupation. When then President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Haiti in 1934 to announce the pullout, he was the first head of a foreign nation in Haiti’s history to extend a visit. Despite the American military pullout, U.S. financial administrators continued to dominate the Haitian economy until the final debt on the earlier loans was retired in 1947. Soon after the U.S. withdrew from Haiti, a Black consciousness movement of sorts took hold that was the precursor of the “negritude” movement popularized by Aimee Cesaire and Leopold Senghor. Francois Duvalier, an early believer in “negritude,” came to power in the late 1950s, popularizing ideas that resonated with a population that had withstood a white foreign occupation for many years.
By the time Duvalier grabbed the presidency of the world’s first Black republic established by formerly enslaved peoples, Haiti had experienced more than 150 years of chronic impoverishment and discriminatory lending policies by the world’s leading financial institutions and powers. The economic forecast for Haiti has not improved, even with the democratic election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, since he has been consistently demonized in the U.S. and world press. --Jean Damu is the former western regional representative for N’COBRA, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, and a former member of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, taught Black Studies at the University of New Mexico, has traveled and written extensively in the Caribbean and Africa and currently serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Email him at jdamu2@yahoo.com. This story first appeared in the San Francisco Bay View in 2003.
****************************************************************************************************************************
Mahdi Ibn-Ziyad, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor Philosophy/Religion & Graduate Liberal StudiesRutgers University, Camden, NJRutgers @ Atlantic Cape Community College, Mays Landing, NJziyad@camden.rutgers.eduHonors History Teacher, Camden High School Social Studies, Dept.Chair, PAC/Fundraisers, Camden Education AssociationCEA Rep. District Curriculum and Professional Development Committeesmibnziyad@camden.k12.nj.usHome address:
Box 1906 Camden, NJ 08101; cell 856.655.9488; ibnziyadd@aol.com------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Frederick Douglass' "Philosophy Born of Struggle", 1857"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one ... but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will".

How 10,000 NGO's Helped Haiti Out - out of everything Haiti had

2010-03-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

The following editorial from the Guardian shows who 'helped' Haiti to become the basket case country she has become. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Given the deaths of over 300,000 Haitians in the recent earthquake, and the tens of thousands more who will die because of inadequate shelter and food and other necessities, perhaps an investigation should be undertaken to see which of the 10,000 NGO's could be held culpable in these unnecessary deaths. Certainly Haiti must be considered a crime scene because somebody has committed high crimes for an awful long time. It is time for justice and rebuilding!

Unthinkable? Curb aid in Haiti

long before the earthquake hit, much of Haiti was run not by its government but by NGOs

Editorial

The Guardian,
Saturday 27 March 2010

The role the United States and France played in the impoverishment of Haiti must count among the less glorious achievements of both countries. Successive US presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George Bush, have contributed to the destruction of Haitian agriculture, with the result that Haiti, a natural rice producer, had to import subsidised US rice. This accelerated the flight into the cities, with the cataclysmic consequences witnessed when the earthquake struck. So that when Bill Clinton, now the UN envoy to Haiti, this week questioned whether the aid effort was helping Haiti to become self-sufficient, one had to remind oneself what happened to Haiti under Mr Clinton's presidency. He was, nevertheless, asking the right question. Long before the earthquake hit, much of Haiti was run not by its government but by NGOs. A World Bank study in 2006 counted 10,000 of them alone, the highest per capita concentration in the world. Of those, 800 alone were employed in agriculture, managing $85m of the $91m budgeted for public investment in 2006-07. Disaster relief has merely accelerated this process, and the UN's role has been to co-ordinate 900 NGO groups registered with it. The excuse for circumventing the Haitian government has been either its corruption or its complete absence, but the cure has become worse than the disease. The aid ought to be going to Haitians and their popular movements should decide how to rebuild the country. Foreign agendas for Haiti have not worked.

Haiti Is A Training Ground for US Military

2010-03-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

While in Haiti recently, camped out at the UN compound near the airport, I could not help but notice the massive military presence and activity of US forces. They flew planes, helicopters and operated other heavy noisy equipment 24/7. What was strange was the lack of humanitarian effort. I personally did not see US forces engaged in any relief work. They were just on patrol. I saw them protecting banks. They controlled airport traffic and key roads in Haiti. I kept wondering -"What are all these soldiers here for?"

There was no security problem of major proportions - the Haitian people were very well behaved and peaceful. Remarkable under the circumstances.This article based on information found in 'Stars and Stripes' may provide an answer: Haiti is a training ground for Afghanistan!

US Military Uses Haiti As Training Ground for Afghanistan

A recent report in Stars and Stripes reveals the nature of the US military operation in Haiti. Combat units from Iraq and Afghanistan have been deployed in Haiti under the banner of a humanitarian operation. Conversely, Haiti is also being used as a military training ground for forces without in-theater combat experience.

According to the Stars and Stripes report (March 14, 2010): "Marines deployed to Haiti to render emergency aid following January’s devastating earthquake are already training for the fight in Afghanistan."

Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit who were dispatched to Haiti in the immediate wake of the earthquake are now being deployed in Afghanistan. In fact, the decision to send them to Afghanistan was taken prior to their deployment in Haiti:

"A small group of Marines stormed several small concrete buildings inside the wire at their seashore camp while their comrades played the roles of Afghan insurgents, shouting “bang” as they engaged their opponents in a mock attack. The day before, when Lt Gen Dennis J. Hejlik, commanding general of the II Marine Expeditionary Force visited the Marines on shore, he praised their good work in Haiti and asked them, “What’s next for you when you get home?”

“Afghanistan,” came the reply. As Huey helicopters buzzed overhead, Hejlik talked about the recent Marjah offensive, adding that there would be 20,000 Marines in Afghanistan by summer. “You will join them next spring,” he told the Marines at Carrefour. One of them, Sgt. Timothy Kelly, 23, of Johnston City, Ill., said members of his unit learned about the Afghan mission just before they got orders to head for Haiti."

The training in Haiti "is geared towards close-quarters battle tactics":

“Only a couple [of Marines in Kelly’s squad] have experience in Iraq or Afghanistan,” he said. ...

We have a lot of guys that aren’t going to be here for that Afghan deployment. The ones who are, we might as well get them in the mind-set.

Another Marine at Carrefour, Lance Cpl. Keith Cobb, 23, of Soso, Miss., said the Afghan deployment will be his first time in a war zone. “I want to kill the terrorists and get rid of the bad people, but I would rather be here because I know I’m going home after this,” he said”

Close Quarters Battle (CQB) is fighting involving small combat units "which engage the enemy with personal weapons at very short range". The training imparted in Haiti is to be used in both urban warfare and counterinsurgency operations.

On March 25th, the US military reported that some 2,200 Marines, involved in humanitarian relief in Haiti had been withdrawn from the country.

The Role of The Canadian Military

The Canadian military has adopted a similar pattern. Haiti is used as a launchpad for redeploying combat troops to the Middle East war theater.

Canadian troops initially dispatched to Haiti under a humanitarian mandate are being sent to Afghanistan: "Soldiers of the Royal 22nd Regiment will have only two weeks before they have to switch their focus from providing emergency relief in Haiti to intensive combat training for a tour in Afghanistan, the commander of all Canadian troops overseas says." ( National Post, Febraury 23, 2010). The training of Canadian forces in Haiti, however, is to be imparted in Canada, prior to their redeployment.

Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

Three Presidents in Haiti (video)

2010-03-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

So what are they there to do? Are they the solution or the problem?

What exactly is the Obama plan for the rebuilding of Haiti?

The handshake ?

Maybe it's the Haitian people who should be cleaning off their hands

of the Bush-Clinton slime!

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Clintons Rape Haiti

2010-03-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Remember when we were all perplexed over the appointment of the first black President,Bill Clinton, by the second black President, Barrack Obama, (along with George W Bush), to oversee the Haitian relief effort being mounted by the US government?

Why would Mr Obama do such a thing?

Well, according to a Mr Pumphrey, it's all about the hundreds of millions of Haitian dollars that ends up in the pockets of the Clintons from the privatization of the Haitian phone system.

Did Obama know about that?

What else don't we know about related to the continuing rape of Haiti?

Check out the interview below for the details,

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Clinton Family Pockets Haiti Assets in Telephone Company Privatization, Says Pumphrey
by Glen FordA Black Agenda Radio interview by Glen Ford

Backed by the might of the United States military and their own official positions, the Clinton power couple plus brother-in-law have muscled themselves into the Haitian telephone monopoly. This cozy public-private partnership poses huge conflicts of interest, says Paul Pumphrey, of Brothers and Sisters International – and robs the Haitian people of hundreds of millions in revenues a year. But then, that's what empires are for, isn't it?
Interview, click here:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/clinton-family-pockets-haiti-assets-telephone-company-privatization-says-pumphrey

Report From Haiti

2010-03-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Report from Haiti

(excerpts from a letter to the Hon Minister Louis Farrakhan)

What I expected to do was to go to Haiti and be able to come back with some clear ideas about what to do and how to proceed. Actually, going to Haiti and working for 8 days literally blew my mind. I was not prepared for what I saw. The destruction of property in Haiti is nearly total in the Port au Prince area. All but the most modern buildings are destroyed. One third are reduced to rubble heaps, another third are collapsed and another third are still standing but structurally damaged. I believe less than 1/10^th of the buildings will be salvageable. There is very little heavy machinery available to remove the debris and people are picking through the rubble with bare hands. They are looking for bodies, and personal belongings that have been lost, including money.

The Haitian people are in shock. They are deeply wounded –physically and in spirit. The whole nation is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, as it is now called. Nobody knows the true death toll. It is probably close to half a million. It will continue to rise with the onset of the rainy season. The worst could be ahead of us. Hundreds of thousands are injured and many are permanently disabled and unable to work to earn a living. Many are now amputees in need of physical therapy and rehabilitation, which is not available. There are hundreds of thousands of orphaned children who have no support, no education, or even a place to live.

I worked at a makeshift orphanage on the last day I was there. There were 83 orphans there who had been orphans before the quake. They had lived in 3 separate orphanages that collapsed in the quake. Out of 300 – 400 orphans only these 83 survived. The make shift orphanage was in a cleared out junkyard, with one large yellow tent and several smaller ones. A ‘kitchen’ of sorts was set up in an old rusted out truck bed. I did medical exams and set up a tetanus clinic to try and prevent tetanus (lock-jaw), which is epidemic in Haiti. The children were running around barefoot on broken glass and metal.

Nearly everybody in Port au Prince is homeless. They live in contrived ‘shelters’ made of pieces of plastic and whatever they can find in so-called ‘tent cities’. Only there are hardly any tents. One of biggest needs as the rainy season begins – there are already heavy downpours and flooding- is for tents and other temporary shelters. At least 200,000 tents are needed right away. The Rotary Club has a campaign to get tents into Haiti – they shipped 2000 that I know of.

Most of the people in Port au Prince need to be relocated. They were tricked into leaving their rural homes in the first place under the Clinton Administration. An ‘interpretation’ was made that they could earn more gold for their labor in sweat shops set up in Port au Prince. My understanding is that Haiti was to be made into the new Taiwan – cheap labor for producing export goods. For the most part that never materialized – just like the promises made to Haiti down through history by other American Presidents have never been kept. From Washington, to Lincoln, to FDR, to Obama, they have all been liars when it came to Haiti.

The most vulnerable Haitians should be evacuated to the United States where they can receive the kind of help they need and deserve. Others need to be relocated to other locations inside Haiti – to higher ground to escape the flooding.

The rainy season presents mortal danger to tens of thousands of highly vulnerable and weakened people living in intensely over-crowded conditions. There is no sewage treatment in Haiti. There is no clean up in the makeshift camps. The floodwaters will carry disease far and wide – malaria, typhus, cholera, dengue fever, etc. Many will die unless they are evacuated as soon as possible. It will take many years to rebuild the city and the homes for the people to live in.

There is much Haitian history to learn. And there are all of the political, economic, and cultural issues that are relevant as well. However, I will leave those issues to the scholars who know about such things. We had plenty of scholars on hand at the workshop at Saviour’s Day. While I enjoyed their presentations and learned a lot, to me, in an ongoing crisis emergency like the one in Haiti, everything done has to have a practical survival value. I don’t think the Haitian people need more rhetoric.

It is crucial to recognize the important things that must be done or lives will be lost needlessly. The fact of it is that the magnitude of the tragedy is not due to the earthquake itself, but to the on-going policies of the United States, France and other nations toward Haiti. Hundreds of thousands are dead due to bad and immoral policy.

It is true that the Haitian government has been dysfunctional in this crisis. But when I saw the utter destruction of the National Palace, the symbol of Haitian independence, and the other government buildings, it is clear why the Haitian government’s response is lacking. The government has been crushed. How many government workers are dead or mortally wounded, homeless? Certainly, their documents, equipment and work places no longer exist. There is no communication infrastructure. The government has to be re-organized if that is possible. How long will that take? The US military – along with the UN- has taken over, and is the de facto government. Entrée into or out of Haiti is controlled by the US military.

What role do I see for the Nation of Islam in Haiti? Frankly, I don’t really know. What is needed physically is beyond the physical resources that we have. Adoption of orphans would help. What is needed is the rebuilding of the country from the ground up. What is needed for Haiti is covered in point No. 4 of What the Muslims Want. Maybe our role is a political one – to get the US government to do by Haiti what is required by all that is moral and decent to rectify past injustices that have now been amplified by the devastation of the earthquake.

The government of the United States should:

Undertake an immediate evacuation of perhaps as many as 1 million Haitians to safety and security in Haiti and elsewhere

Undertake the establishment of temporary shelter communities out of the flood plain of Port au Prince

Undertake the building of basic infrastructure in Haiti: roads, ports, sewage and water treatment, and electricity

Undertake the reforestation of Haiti and environmental remediation

Undertake the rebuilding of Port au Prince and other areas, and even the construction of new cities

Undertake the redevelopment of agriculture and industry to reestablish a viable Haitian economy

Undertake to support education and training of the Haitian people

Undertake to immediately dismiss the so-called ‘debt’

Undertake to immediately investigate the more than 10,000 NGO’s - some of which are corrupt and have exploited Haiti’s poverty to their own advantage

Undertake an investigation into the literal enslavement of children and others in Haiti

Undertake to work through the thousands of Haitian-American organizations in the diaspora on behalf of Haiti as a whole

And finally,

To disavow any US interest or intention to expropriate Haiti oil, gold, uranium and other natural and human resources and to investigate the possibility that the US military triggered the earthquake from the HAARP facility in Alaska

The recent discovery of vast oil reserves under the Port au Prince harbor, if developed for the benefit of Haiti, is more than sufficient to elevate Haiti’s economic status and pay for the rebuilding efforts. But the thieves must be held at bay.

True Haiti Death Toll Unknown

2010-03-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

The following article makes ridicule of the Haitian government's attempts at estimating the number of its citizens who perished in the recent 7.0 earthquake. The numbers go up, the numbers go down. No one knows for sure, and perhaps we never will. But we do know those who are living today as survivors and that if strong efforts are not mounted now many of the would-be survivors will be counted among the dead. With the onset of the rainy season in Haiti, shelter from the elements and basic sanitation are essential to prevent the further break out of epidemic diseases. We don't want to be in a position of counting any unnecessary deaths due to inaction.

Will We Ever Know the Haitian Death Toll?

Wednesday 03 March 2010
by: Alfonso Chardy and Jacqueline Charles The Miami Herald
The view from the busy two-lane road is spectacular: tall limestone mountains rising to the east and the turquoise Caribbean shimmering to the west.
But this is no tourist resort. It's the site of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of mass graves where government crews buried tens of thousands of people killed by January's 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
While many of the mass graves are clearly marked with white wooden crosses atop mounds of dirt, the precise number of people buried beneath them may never be known. That's because since the earthquake, the Haitian government has not provided a precise accounting of the number of victims.
The disparate figures that government officials have provided over time cannot be verified. However, accounts by truck drivers who transported many of the bodies and workers who helped bury the victims suggest that official figures may not be incorrect.
Establishing a more precise death count is important for several reasons. It would help quantify the human loss, add historic context to one of the Western Hemisphere's worst disasters and help clarify initial confusion over varying death figures.
Haitian government estimates ranged from 100,000 to 270,000 in the days following the earthquake that crumbled thousands of buildings, including the presidential palace, government ministries, schools, churches, businesses and homes.
A government spokesman told The Miami Herald that more than 200,000 people have already been laid to rest in common graves, but that that figure does not include victims still under the rubble and victims buried privately by families or friends.
At the same time, workers at the Port-au-Prince main cemetery said that dozens of private crypts were reopened for earthquake dead.
Keeping Log
Though some Haitian officials have talked of logbooks listing victims, two government drivers who carried bodies to mass graves in their dump trucks and one worker who helped bury them in Titanyen said they did not see anyone keeping tabs.
The drivers and the worker said the main mass graves were in the Titanyen area, about 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince.
Assad Volcy, a spokesman for the National Palace, said more than 200,000 Haitians have been buried in common graves. He explained that government experts devised a formula to estimate how many quake victims have been buried.
But Volcy said he did not know what the formula was. He promised to obtain an explanation of the formula but he has not.
Asked about multiple conflicting figures cited by the Haitian government in the days and weeks after the earthquake, including one as high as 270,000, Volcy said the figures reflected estimates that rose as officials continued to "count" victims.
Official Numbers
The figure of 270,000, according to the Haitian government, was cited by President René Préval during a meeting in Ecuador in mid-February with South American leaders.
The number was much higher than the first specific death toll of 111,481 issued on Jan. 23.
The next official figure, issued Jan. 24, put the death toll at 150,000. On Feb. 6, the government raised the figure to 212,000. On Feb. 9, the official figure jumped to 230,000.
The next day Préval was quoted as saying 270,000 dead in a communiqué issued in Port-au-Prince, which his government withdrew a few hours later, citing a typo. A short time later, also on Feb.10, a second communiqué was issued changing the figure to 170,000.
In an interview, Volcy said that the varying death tolls reflected rising estimates as officials "counted" more and more dead. But Volcy also could not account for the 60,000-body discrepancy between the Feb. 9 and Feb.10 estimates.
Asked if Haitian officials were confused, Volcy said no.
"There has been no confusion," he said. "Perhaps there was an error, but our estimates have been based on a formula to estimate numbers."
Volcy said that according to the formula, which he could not explain, the number of bodies buried in common graves was more than 200,000. The figure excludes bodies still under the rubble or buried in private funerals, he added.
In an interview, a senior Haitian transportation official said his agency transported at least 170,000 bodies to mass graves in the Titanyen area in the first three weeks after the earthquake.
Jean Gardy Ligonde, technical director of the government-run transportation and construction agency known as Centre National des Equipment or CNE, said that between 80 and 100 dump trucks carried the bodies, with each truck making several trips a day.
"Some trucks carried as few as five bodies, others as many as 20 or 50 or 130," Ligonde said.
Asked if CNE kept precise logbooks listing each body picked up on the street, Ligonde said the agency did not. His statement contradicts that of his boss, Jude Celestin who told The Miami Herald in the days following the quake that CNE workers carried a log with them to keep track of the bodies as they were being loaded into dump trucks.
After the interview, Ligonde called The Miami Herald and said he had been mistaken and that indeed logbooks were kept, but CNE officials said they didn't have them.
Ligonde said he believes the number of dead is higher than the 170,000 CNE trucks carried to the Titanyen area because bodies also were picked up by private dump trucks and dump trucks belonging to Haiti's sanitation department, Service Metropolitain de Collecte de Residus Solides or SMCRS.
Harry Toussaint, the SMCRS coordinator, said in an interview that his agency used 10 of its 14 dump trucks to pick up bodies. He said his trucks also carried the bodies to the Titanyen area.
Toussaint said his trucks made between two and four trips a day carrying at most 50 bodies per truck. Toussaint said SMCRS' involvement in the collection and transportation of bodies lasted only a few days, from about Jan. 14 to about Jan. 19, but added that SMCRS did not keep a precise count of bodies it transported.
Nelis St. Ange, for example, said that in the first two or three weeks after the earthquake, he transported between 100 and 150 bodies on each of the five to six trips he made every day between Port-au-Prince and the mass grave area in Titanyen.
A second driver, Mario Yancy, relayed a similar account.
Yancy and St. Ange said they drove the bodies to open graves dug by other workers in Titanyen, an area of limestone mountains, farms and small seaside motels and bars along the two-lane National Route One from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haïtien in the north.
Maxis Maxime, a farmer in the area who says he helped bury victims, said trucks ferrying bodies came to the open mass graves and dumped bodies in them for about two to three weeks after the earthquake.
"They came in the morning, in the afternoon and in the early evening, day after day, bringing many, many victims," Maxime recalled. "They stopped coming after the third week."
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Floods Hit Haiti

2010-03-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

Haiti is now at the beginning of the rainy season when torrential rains produce yearly floods and mud-slides. This year as a result of the 7.0 magnitude quake that struck January 12, the risk of death during this rainy season has risen to incalculable levels. With at least 1.5 million homeless there is no doubt that unless large scale evacuations are mounted right now, the death toll in Haiti will rise dramatically. Already 13 have died since the rains have begun. Without proper sewage treatment and drainage epidemic disease will soon be raging through the refugee shelter camps that are housing the homeless in less than sanitary and healthy conditions.

Haiti needs at least 200,000 tents and a massive evacuations of the most vulnerable immediately.

Quake-torn Haiti hit by floods
Heavy rain has caused flooding in Haiti, killing at least 13 and trapping people in their homes and cars
Heavy rain has caused flooding in Haiti, killing at least 13 people as swollen rivers forced people on to roofs and trapped people in cars and homes.
With 1.3 million homeless and many living in makeshift camps with little or no sanitation as a result of January's earthquake, aid agencies have warned of another humanitarian disaster as the rainy season looms.
Several towns and villages in southern Haiti have been flooded since Saturday, a spokesman for the civil emergency unit said. UN troops and Haitian police moved 500 prisoners from a jail in Les Cayes as 1.5 metres of water swamped the coastal city. Witnesses said houses collapsed and people fled for high ground.
"At one point, people had to climb on the roofs of their homes," Joseph Yves-Marie Aubourg, the government's representative in the region, told Reuters. Five people died when their car was carried away, and others on foot were swept away in the torrent.
Les Cayes largely escaped the 12 January quake which devastated Port-au-Prince and killed more than 220,000, according to government figures. Its population was swollen by families fleeing the capital.
The government, the UN, and aid agencies have all raised the alarm about the rainy season, which starts in March or April and continues until autumn.
The scale of Haiti's catastrophe means that even a huge relief effort has not provided adequate shelter to hundreds of thousands of people. There are 415 temporary settlements housing roughly 550,000 quake survivors, according to the Organisation of International Migration. Others are living in rubble or with relatives.
The UN aims to provide every family with two plastic tarpaulins by 1 May. So far about 40% of the 1.3 million in need have received tents, tarpaulins or shelter toolkits, according to the Red Cross. Even if the UN reaches its target, rains could turn camps into disease-ridden swamps.
Already the stench of human waste is overpowering at settlements like Saint-Louis de Gonzague, which has one portable toilet for 10,000 people. Doctors have reported widespread cases of diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever and infections. The big fears are cholera and typhoid.
It took just a few hours of rain one night last month to turn some Port-au-Prince camps into muddy quagmires. The rainy season brings tropical torrents and, from summer, hurricanes.
Nature's deadline has prompted the authorities to try to thin the makeshift camps by registering families whose homes can be swiftly repaired and rebuilt. Others will be encouraged to move in with relatives or friends.

Has the US Military Occupied Haiti?

2010-03-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

The following video details exactly what I saw with my own eyes while on the ground in Haiti. US and UN troops in control of the airports and the streets of Haiti, while ignoring the plight of the Haitian people. They are acting like an occupying force that has taken over the government of Haiti without declaring that to be so. They are turning away aid trying to enter the country. I saw them guarding banks - not delivering food or other aid. The aid is piling up at the airport surrounded by military and razor wire. What's going on? We deserve answers and the Haitian people deserve help.

Was the US Earthquake Weapon Used on Haiti?

2010-02-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

The writer of this blog has long contended that the earthquake in Haiti may not have been a natural event. There is substantial evidence that the 7.0 quake that struck Haiti, killing over 300,000 and wounding many, many more, was a military action, some say by the United States. The Japanese, who have a avid interest in watching out for such acts, having been victimized themselves, detected the signal from the HAARP array in Alaska which may have triggered the Haiti quake 2 days later. What about the Chile quake of 8.8 magnitude? Was it man-made too? Are we now in the era of earthquake warfare? If so, who are the players and what are the stakes? Below is an interview of former Secretary of Defense William Cohen who talks about the reality of such things. Enjoy. Learn. Share.

1997 DoD Briefing: 'Others' can set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely using electromagnetic waves --By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 28 Feb 2010

DoD News Briefing

Presenter: Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen April 28, 1997 8:45 AM EDT

DoD News Briefing: Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen

Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here [*puke*] to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus [OMG! Who would do such a thing?], and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others [LOL] are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.'

Just switch 'yours,' 'others' and 'they' with 'U.S.,' 'U.S.' and 'U.S.' This was in 1997. Imagine, after eight years of George W. Bush turbo-funding these lunatics, with no end to funding in sight... what they can do now. Oh, BTW. See, also, the list of dead scientists.

The most fascinating might be the Harvard scientist, Dr. Don C Wiley, 'one of the foremost infectious disease researchers' in the United States, who 'got dizzy' and his car fell off a bridge in Memphis, TN.

The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found. Now Memphis police are exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder.

That's just a 'we-know-we're-f*cking-with-you-and-there's-not-a-damned-thing-you-can-do-about-it' assassination that any detective on 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' could wrap up in the first half-hour of the episode.

High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program 27 Feb 2010 The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes (such as missile detection). The HAARP program operates a major Arctic facility, known as the HAARP Research Station, on an Air Force owned site near Gakona, Alaska. The most outstanding instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high power transmitter facility operating in the high frequency range. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere... As of 2008, HAARP had incurred around $250 million in tax-funded construction and operating costs.

Click here for full DoD News Transcript.
Credit to Samantha G. on Faceboook for unearthing this briefing.

Permanent URL for this article: http://legitgov.org/DoD_1997_set_off_earthquakes_280210.html

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Utter and Total Destruction in Haiti

2010-02-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

In this short video is revealed the devastating damage done to the heart of Port au Prince in Haiti. It partially answers why the Haitian government did not respond quickly to the disaster as many expected. It shows the total destruction that can not be overcome through mere relief aid by NGO's. It shows clearly that a massive international effort of rebuilding over a prolonged period of time is required. Otherwise many more people will die. The fate of Haiti hangs now in the balance of what the world community decides to do. We have the power and the means in our hands to save. Or we can choose to add the tragedy of human indifference to the destructive nature of the 7.0 earthquake that struck on January 12, 2010.

Muslims In Haiti

2010-02-27T04:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a fascinating account of the largely untold story of muslims playing decisive roles in the history of the Haitian Republic. The article is based on the book,
'Servants of Allah': African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas.

The Muslim Factor in the Haitian Revolution: The Untold History

Monday, February 22, 2010

A reading from Sylvaine Diouf's well received book, "Servants of Allah": African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. Pg. 150-153.

The Muslim Factor in the Haitian Revolution

'What the French did not realize was that their most profitable colony, Saint-Dominique (now Haiti), was fertile ground for Muslim maroons and rebels. The island had always had numerous maroon communities, and an average of a thousand runaways were advertised every year. The notices posted by the plantation owners, who listed the disappeared give a measure of the place of the Muslims among the maroons. Although large numbers of Muslims had been forcibly baptized, some had retained their original names, such as Ayouba, Tamerlan, Aly, Soliman, Lamine, Thisiman, Yaya, Belaly, and Salomon who appear in the notices. Female runaways, such as Fatme, Fatima, and Hayda, are also mentioned.

The Africans fled individually and, more usually, in groups. For instance, twelve Mandingo men, aged twenty-two to twenty-six, fled one night in 1783 from their owner’s house in Port-au-Prince. They were all professionals—masons, carpenters, and bakers.

It is not known if some maroon communities were entirely composed of Muslims, but major communities had Muslim leaders. Yaya, also called Gillot, was a devastating presence in the parishes of Trou and Terrier Rouge, before he was executed in September 1787. In Cul-de-Sac, an African Muslim named Halaou led a veritable army of thousands of maroons.

Part II

These Muslims were well known and feared, but the most famous of the pre-
Revolution maroon leaders was without a doubt Francois Macandal. Macandal was a field hand, employed on a sugar plantation. One day, as he was working the sugar mill, one of his hands got caught on the wheel and had to be severed. As he could no longer cut the cane, he became a cattleman, later running away. For eighteen years Macandal was at large, living in the mountains but making frequent incursions on the plantations to deliver death. He organized a network of devoted followers and taught the slaves how to make poison, which they used against their owners or against other slaves in order to ruin the slaveholders. His reputation was such that a French document of 1758 estimates—with much exaggeration, no doubt—the number of deaths he provoked at 6,000 over three years. In eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, poison was called macandal.

An African born in “Guinea,” Francois Macandal was in all probability a Mandingo. He came from an illustrious family and had been sold to the Europeans as a war captive. He was a Muslim who “had instruction and possessed the Arabic language very well,” emphasized nineteenth-century Haitian historian Thomas Madiou, who gathered information through the veterans of the Haitian Revolution. Macandal was most likely a marabout, for French official documents describe him as being able to predict the future and as having revelations. He was also well known for his skills in amulet making—so much so that gris-gris were called macandals. In addition, he was said to be a prophet, which indicates that he was perceived as having a direct connection to God. Thus besides being a marabout he may have been a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammed; but this is only speculation, as no evidence exists exists to confirm or inform this hypothesis.

Part III

Francois Macandal was much more than simply a maroon leader. He had a long-term plan for the island and saw the maroons as the “center of an organized resistance of the blacks against the whites,” stressed an eighteenth-century French document. He used practical symbolism to explain his vision for Saint-Domingue, Here are the first inhabitants of Saint -Domingue, they were yellow. “Here are the present inhabitants”—and he showed the white handkerchief—“here, at last, are those who will remain the masters of the island; it is the black handkerchief.”

To turn this prophecy into reality, Macandal planned to poison the wells of the city of Cap-Français. Once the slaveholders were dead or in the middle of convulsions, the “old mand from the mountain,” as Macandal was sometimes called, followed by his captains and lieutenants, whould attack the city and kill the remaining whites. Before he could launch his assault, however, a slave betrayed him and he was caught. Tied up in a room with two guards, he somehow managed to escape. If he had killed the men with the pistol that lay on a table between them, Macandal may have been able to remain at large. But he had not. The guards gave the alarm, and he was caught again, this time by dogs.

Part IV

On January 20, 1758, Macandal was burned at the stake. The pole he was tied to collapsed, and the crowd saw this incident as a sign of his immortality. He had told his followers that as he was put to death, he would turn into a fly and fly away. The executioner asked to kill him with a sword as the coup de grâce, but his request was denied by the attorney general. Macandal was tied to a plank and thrown into the fire again.

The maroon leader Macandal can best be described as a marabout-warrior. He used his occult knowledge and his charisma to gain allies to wage war against his enemy, and he participated in the action personally.

Part V

Another popular leader who attained quasi-mythical status in Haitian history was Boukman. Very little is known about him. He was not born in Saint-Domingue but came from Jamaica, smuggled by a British slaver. As a slave, he became professional and rose to the rank of driver, later becoming a coachman. Using a position that allowed him to travel from plantation to plantation, as well as his charismatic personality, he had built a network of followers in the north. He definitely entered Haitian history when he galvanized a large assembly of slaves gathered on the night of August 14, 1791, in a clearing in the forest of Bois-Caiman. During this voodoo ceremony, Boukman launched the general revolt of the slaves with a speech in Creole that has remained famous. He denounced the God of the whites, who asked for crime, whereas the God of the Slaves wanted only good. “But this God who is so good, orders you to seek revenge,” he pounded. “He will direct our arms, he will assist us. Throw away the image of the God of the whites who is thirsty for our tears and listen to freedom which talks to our hearts.”

A week later, two hundred sugar estates and eighteen hundred coffee plantations were destroyed by the slaves, who were said to have cut the throats of a thousand slaveholders. At the beginning of November, Boukman was shot dead by an officer as he was fighting a detachment of the French army with a group of maroons. His severed head was fixed on a pole and exposed on a public square in Cap-Français.

There are indications that Boukman was a Muslim. Coming from Jamaica, he had an English name that was rendered phonetically in French by Boukman or Boukmann; in English, however, it was Bookman. Boukman was a “man of the book,” as the Muslims were referred to even in Africa—in Sierra Leone, for example, explained an English lieutenant, the Mandingo were “Prime Ministers” of every town, and they went “by the name bookman.” It is likely that Boukman was a Jamaican Muslim who had a Koran, and that he got his nickname from this.

Part VI

As many Muslims had done, and would continue to do, he had climbed the echelons of the slaves’ power structure and had reached the top. He was trusted, professional slave. He was also at the top of the slaves’ hierarchy in another way: he was recognized as a priest. He had passed down in history as a voodoo priest, but this does not mean that he was such. Because the Muslim factor largely has been ignored, any religious leader of African origin in the Caribbean has been linked to voodoo or orbeah.

Part VII

There is thus compelling evidence that two major leaders in Haitian history—Macandal and Boukman—were not only Muslims, they did not embark on a jihad, but they were the leaders of the slave population, irrespective of religion. What they provided was military expertise coupled with spiritual and occult assurance that the outcome of the fight would be positive. Both skills were of extreme value, each in its own way; but put together, they conferred on these leaders the aura of mythical figures. Because of their marabout knowledge they could galvanize the masses, push them to action and to surpass themselves.

Other marabouts, and the Muslims in general, played a crucial role in the Haitian revolts and ultimately in the Haitian Revolution through their occult skills, literacy, and military traditions. The marabouts provided protections to the insurgents in the form of gris-gris, as Colonel Malenfant recorded, and the Muslims used Arabic to communicate during uprisings. Through their role and contribution have not been acknowledged, the Muslims were essential in the success of the Haitian Revolution.

HAITI: The Man Made Disaster

2010-02-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

Haiti Is No Natural Disaster
February 23, 2010 (LPAC)-

-The following article was published in the recently published issue of Nuevo Federalista.
Haiti Is No Natural Disaster
by Carlos Wesley
In October 1989, the U.S. city of San Francisco and its surroundings were slammed by an earthquake measuring a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale. The quake left 63 dead, more than 3,000 wounded, and as many as 12,000 homeless.
Compare this with what happened in Haiti last January 12, when an earthquake of similar magnitude hit that Caribbean island-nation: a quarter of a million dead, the destruction of virtually every building in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, and in a large part of the country, and some 2 million people left without shelter or food.
Clearly, what caused the destruction of Haiti was not the earthquake, but the lack of infrastructure and a solid foundation.
A real reconstruction program
There are two alternatives facing Haiti. One is that proposed by economist Lyndon LaRouche, who on Jan. 30 told a webcast that the U.S. government should sign a treaty with Haiti which, while fully respecting its sovereignty, would rebuild its economy in a manner which would allow it to go forward as a viable nation. "This is a small nation of people which has been subjected to a terrible history, which has been promised and betrayed, promised and betrayed. Never delivered."
Rebuilding Haiti would take a quarter century, at least, said LaRouche. "Many things have to be changed, but the most important thing is the prevailing attitude called fix-it, or patch-it." The U.S. should tell the Haitians, "Okay, you're a small country. We can absorb the burden. We are going to work with you to make sure that you come out of this successfully, as a country that can maintain itself, and survive," he said.
Days earlier, LaRouche had said that the U.S. "has a moral responsibility to respond to this crisis." Further, such assistance would give the United States the added benefit of developing "an improved capacity to address other crises, both abroad" as well as at home in cases like that of Hurricane Katrina. Such an aid program would also give useful jobs to many U.S. youth, who "could function as a complementary labor force to be trained" for emergency situations, and could be the basis for a new Civil Conservation Corps."
A Historical Account
What led Haiti to a state of misery, even before the earthquake hit, was the imposition of increasingly more lethal policies, culminating with globalization, which made Haiti the poorest country in America. Haiti has been the victim of these policies virtually from the moment it won its independence on January 1, 1804—the first country in America to do so, after the United States-and proclaimed itself the first modern republic ruled by blacks. This was achieved after the only successful rebellion of slaves in all of history was carried out under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, and the three great powers in the region—Spain, England and Napoleon's France—were dealt military defeats.
Haiti was never forgiven for this, nor were Haitians forgiven for their decisive support for the American Revolution, nor for their alliance with the best forefathers of the U.S., especially Alexander Hamilton, nor for the fact that their own war of independence made it possible for the United States to obtain Louisiana, doubling its territory in one blow. Nor for the fact that it was thanks to material support provided by Haitians that Simon Bolivar was able to return to the battle for independence of the countries of what was then known as Greater Colombia, after suffering two previous defeats.
Haiti was punished with blockades and quarantines, not only by the imperial powers, but by the ungrateful Bolivarian countries and by the United States itself.
This changed when Abraham Lincoln took over the U.S. presidency in the 1860s, when the U.S. finally extended diplomatic recognition to Haiti, and continued a few years later with the naming of U.S. leader Frederick Douglass as plenipotentiary to that country.
At the end of the 19th century, Haiti was a country which, if not prospering, at least was self-sufficient, and which enjoyed the respect of the concert of nations.
Unfortunately, the negative side of U.S.-Haitian relations resurfaced under racist President Woodrow Wilson, who invaded the country on behalf of Wall Street and City of London interests in 1915, seizing control of customs and launching an occupation, at times brutal, which lasted until 1934, during which hordes of anthropologists arrived to brainwash Haitians into believing that voodoo was their true religion.
But that was not the only problem the Haitians faced. In the Dominican Republic, which shared the island of Hispanola with Haiti, another dictator ruled—Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo, installed through a U.S. occupation, carried out "ethnic cleansing" in 1937 along the border between the two countries, massacring tens of thousands of Haitians.
The U.S. occupation ended when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took over the U.S. presidency. Roosevelt, who was the first U.S. president to ever visit Haiti, launched a "Good Neighbor" era which helped Haiti retake the path toward prosperity.
But upon his death, things worsened once again. With the support of certain factions inside the U.S., Francois Duvalier, a doctor recruited by those same anthropologists and ethnologists and sent to the U.S. for training, imposed a fierce dictatorship, and ruled as the High Priest of Voodoo. At his death, his son Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded him.
Despite this, Haiti continued to be self-sufficient, at least as far as the production of rice, the main staple of the population. But with the fall of Duvalier, the IMF arrived and, in exchange for a small loan of $24.6 million that the country desperately needed to survive the depredations of Duvalier, forced Haiti to lower its protectionist tariffs on rice and other foodstuff. The result was that Haiti was inundated with rice from the U.S., which bankrupted local producers, according to lawyer and scholar Bill Quigly.
In 1991, the former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide took over the Haitian presidency, but was overthrown by the military because of his own lunacy. This served as the pretext for George Bush, Sr. to impose another international embargo against the Haitian people, who were forced to eat even the seeds and bushes of certain exotic plants slated for export, just to avoid starving to death.
The embargo ended when the U.S. once again invaded Haiti in 1994, this time without firing a shot, under Bill Clinton. The bayonets of the U.S. and its allies not only brought Aristide back, but also the demand to privatize everything: electricity, water, the airport, the ports, and even education. And of course, economic sanctions were once again imposed which pauperized the already impoverished Haitian population.
Aristide opposed this, leading—among other things—to a decision by the U.S. government, this time under Bush, Jr. to overthrow him a second time, in 2004. Added to this, the U.S. Coast Guard has maintained a blockade for years to prevent Haitians from fleeing to U.S. refuge.
The Genocidal Alternative
The alternative to LaRouche's plan is the genocidal proposal of British "economist" Paul Collier, who has the support of financier and drug legalizer George Soros. Collier explicitly opposes the development of infrastructure in Haiti, and proposes instead "arranging" for Haiti to be turned into a free-trade manufacturing emporium for the controlled export of the multinationals, using Haitian labor even cheaper than that available in the U.S. In other words, reimposing slavery!
In fact, except for a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the latest crisis in Haiti, the Haitian government has been virtually bypassed by international donors. And, shamelessly, Collier is now in charge of elaborating the United Nation's so-called recovery plans for Haiti.

Relocate One Million Haitians Before the Rains

2010-02-23T18:51:00.000-08:00

LaRouche Calls For Emergency Measures To Relocate A Million Haitians Before The Rainy Season Hits
Lyndon LaRouche
2-23-10

(LPAC)-Lyndon LaRouche issued an urgent call for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to work with the Haitian government to help relocate up to a million Haitians, now homeless and living amid the rubble of shattered Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed some 300,000 Haitians.

The immediate emergency, LaRouche noted, is that the rainy season is upon us, and under current conditions, Port-au-Prince within a month or two will be subjected to floods, hit by mudslides, and become inundated in deadly sewage from the 1.5 million people who are now homeless and destitute in that city. These people have been forced to live in the streets and slums under ramshackle pieces of plastic, and amid human excrement that is not being removed-because there is no ability to do so, nor even a place to take it.

Even before the earthquake, Haiti-long the victim of the globalization and free trade policies of London-centered financial predators-did not have a single sewage treatment plant.

If we do not act, LaRouche stressed, Haiti will soon face conditions in which dengue, cholera, malaria, typhoid and other epidemics will spread, with devastating consequences. Haiti is the image of what awaits all of humanity under the current, bankrupt British-imperial international financial system: it is the face of the New Dark Age. We must stop it in Haiti, if we are to have the moral fitness to survive on this planet.

To prevent another wave of mass deaths and total national disintegration, a bilateral treaty agreement between the United States and Haiti should be promptly reached to evacuate up to a million people from this potentially deadly situation into the United States on an interim basis, and possibly into inland parts of Haiti as well. Under a reasonable Presidency, the U.S. can mobilize the capacity to do that, and we can further use our military capacity, through the Army Corps of Engineers, to either rebuild semi-permanent housing, or reopen military bases with barracks, including those shut down under the BRAC commission.

Full reconstruction in Haiti will take up to 25 years, LaRouche has pointed out, but in the short term it is possible to build new relocation camps and even cities outside of Port-au-Prince, where the essentials of life can be provided: food, water, sanitation, a roof over their heads, and sufficient energy and electricity to make all this possible. Even under a dysfunctional, impeachable President Obama, the United States must act, and act quickly, LaRouche stated.

In his Jan. 30 international webcast, LaRouche responded to a question about Haiti, saying that the United States has to take the kind of approach that Presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt did:

"You cannot apply a band-aid to Haiti. And you can not bring in many other countries, because the objective is, if the country is going to be viable, coming out of this mess, you have to have a sovereign Haiti. So, the contract has to be essentially, a United States treaty agreement, a treaty agreement to re-establish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties...

"[Haiti] is a small nation, of people who have been subjected to all kinds of terrible history; who have been promised this, and betrayed, and promised that, and betrayed, and promised and betrayed. Never delivered. It's in a group of national territories which has also tended to be somewhat of a mess, in one way or the other. So, therefore, it's a model approach: We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive."

Tetanus Clinic in Haiti

2010-02-22T14:03:00.002-08:00

While visiting a make-shift orphanage called 'future' to do intake examinations, I discovered an urgent need. 83 mostly barefoot children running around on a field of stones, metal shards and broken glass that had once been a junk yard but was now where they lived and played. These 83 were the survivors of the collapse of three other orphanages in the earthquake that once housed between 300 and 400 orphans. Only these 83 survived the quake. They were being housed in a few tents and on this day they were having their first hot meal in weeks. So I set up a tetanus clinic right on the spot to see to it that tetanus does not become one of their problems in the future.

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2010-02-22T14:03:00.001-08:00

Haiti: A Vultures' Feast

2010-02-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

The article below is an eye-opener. Beyond the abject misery in the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake that many believe may have been the detonation of a weapon of mass destruction from the HAARP installations in Alaska and Puerto Rico, lies the cold-blooded exploitation of Haiti's people and resources. This is a long tale of unbounded greed and crafty skill at sucking dry the bones of the already destitute that stretches through nearly 5 centuries of agonizing suffering and pain that is unambiguously recorded in the history of the Americas. This latest chapter in that searingly evil history will top all the rest. Right now Haiti is a vulture's banquet table, spread full with all the carrion any fiendish scavenger could hope for. The question must be asked: Was Haiti destroyed by earthquake and now by deliberate genocide in order to secure her confirmed deposits of oil, natural gas, gold, iridium, copper and most valuable of all, slavishly cheap and abundant labor? Is it true that the Marines, the UN Peacekeepers, the corrupt Haitian military and police and more than 10,000 NGO's and other 'aid' organizations are all in league together for the total plunder of Haiti in order to enrich themselves and their controllers? Are they cynically playing 'aid card' to shield the greatest heist in modern history, laughing all the way to the bank over the cries of misery from the Haitian slums? Is that what is going on? Is that the real deal?
Read the article below and decide for yourself.

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Haiti Is Open For Business
By Stephen Lendman2-15-10

In December 1984, Canada's conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney, told the New York Economic Club that "Canada is open for business," meaning US companies were welcome, the two countries would work for greater economic integration, America's sovereignty took precedence of his own, and corporate interests from both countries could operate freely at the expense of most Canadians.

That's always been Haiti's curse, now more than ever. Under American militarized control, Haiti is occupied for profit, its pseudo government largely invisible, and predators aim to cash in to the fullest. On January 21, in his article titled, "Securing disaster in Haiti," Peter Hallward explained, saying:

"....the US-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor. All three tendencies aren't just connected, they are mutually reinforcing. (They'll also) govern the imminent reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken to counteract them."

Post-quake, conditions on the ground are horrific. Three million or more Haitians are affected. Most are displaced and struggling. Essential aid is obstructed and limited. Hundreds of thousands are being removed from the capital, not to help them, to "cleanse" the area for development. The official estimated death toll tops 230,000, over 300,000 are injured, and AP reported (on February 9) that the "Health crisis in Haiti enter(ed) a deadly new phase," the result of "a half-million (or more) people jammed into germ-breeding makeshift camps" where a health emergency is already apparent in the form of malnutrition, diarrheal illnesses, acute respiratory (and other) infections, at least one reported typhoid case, and fears of possible outbreaks of tetanus, measles, TB, malaria, dengue fever, diphtheria, acute flaccid paralysis, meningococcal meningitis, rabies, and other infectious diseases, including water-borne ones, particularly threatening children.

Independent reports cite outbreaks of tetanus, TB, diarrhea, scabies, ringworm and growing depravation, misery and anger, mostly unreported in the mainstream that instead focuses on disease containment and improving conditions. Daily, conditions are worse, not better, threatening a far greater disaster ahead.

Given the widespread depravation, the obstruction of food, clean water, and temporary shelter, and lack of proper sanitation, infectious disease outbreaks may cause biblical levels of more deaths ahead, perhaps raising the toll to from 500,000 - one million Haitians, a scale definable as genocide.

The Genocide Convention defines it as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group (including) causing serious bodily or mental harm (and) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part...."

US forces control everything - Haiti's airport, port facilities, the Presidential Palace, and other strategic locations. They patrol Port-au-Prince streets menacingly with heavy weapons. In late January, police beat people, and UN Blue Helmets fired rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray at hungry Haitians wanting food, a likely precursor to graver confrontations ahead as desperate people seek it to survive. One Haitian told a reporter: "They treat us like animals, they beat us, but we are hungry people."

On February 7, the 19th anniversary of Jean-Bertrand Aristide first inauguration, his supporters commemorated the event as they do every year, calling for his return, denouncing the occupation, condemning the lack of food and other aid, and the corruption exacerbating the problem along with America's obstruction to let desperate people suffer and expire.

A month after the quake, inadequate amounts of everything are being distributed. Residents in poor areas like Cite Soleil have gotten virtually nothing and were in desperate straits pre-disaster. On February 8, thousands marched through Petionville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, denouncing what's occurring throughout stricken areas - mayors and other officials hoarding food and selling it at inflated black market prices, not distributing it to starving Haitians.

One protestor said: "I am hungry, I am dying of hunger. (Mayor) Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn't give us anything."

Haitian-truth.org said Haitian customs agents are charging people arriving with aid fees to deliver it. Otherwise, their supplies will be held indefinitely.

AlJazeera and other sources reported fake coupons being used for free food, to be sold on the black market at inflated prices.

On February 10, AP reported that public and private hospitals are charging patients, UN officials warning free medications won't be sent to ones that do. Christophe Rerat of the UN's Pan American Health Organization said they got about $1 million worth of free drugs, supplied by donations, and all medical care is to be provided without charge. Donated funds are also paying staff.

On February 11, rain and growing frustration sparked spontaneous street protests denouncing President Rene Preval's inaction, calling for Aristide's return, and demanding food, clean water and tents for shelter. Club wielding police met marchers. Scuffles followed. Minor injuries were reported. A sign read: "The rain has soaked us. The MINUSTAH must go. We need help. We need aid."

Shelter from the elements is needed as the rainy season approaches, and with it the greater threat of disease. Reportedly 10,000 tents have arrived, not the 200,000 the government requested and hundreds of thousands more needed.

OCHA reports that 90% of affected Haitians need emergency shelter, over 1.2 million are in "spontaneous settlements," and nearly half a million "have left Port-au-Prince for outlying" areas. Most of them, in fact, have been forced into permanent displacement, the same fate planned for hundreds of thousands more.

Sanitation is a major concern. At most, 5% of needed latrines are available, and the lack of dumping sites for waste is also a huge problem. With the arrival of thousands of people along the Dominican Republic border, "the food security situation, which was already precarious prior to the earthquake, is getting worse...."

The Nutrition Cluster expects the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate to soar given conditions on the ground throughout the country. In addition, months of rain "will increase morbidity rates for childhood diseases while hunger is expected to be especially severe....Delays in incoming stock pipelines must be addressed to ensure a steady influx of needed items."

The problem is relief supplies are warehoused at Haiti's airport, ports and other facilities, not adequately distributed, so willful obstruction is exacerbating the crisis. People are starving. Diseases are becoming epidemics. Everything is in short supply, and OCHA reports only 10% of trauma injuries have been treated.

Yet the web site reliefweb.int shows $569.8 million in relief already donated (as of February 14), or 99% of the appeal's goal and certain to way exceed it. Where has the money gone? Who's getting it, and why hasn't an amount this great delivered significant aid? Disturbing questions demand answers. Why aren't they forthcoming? It's because Haiti is being prepared for plunder, and NGOs, including charities, will get their fair share.

NGOs Defined

The web site ngo.org defines them as follows:

"A non-governmental organization (NGO) is any non-profit, voluntary citizens' group which is organized on a local, national or international level. Task-oriented and driven by people with a common interest, NGOs perform a variety of service and humanitarian policies and encourage political participation through provision of information. Some are organized around specific issues, such as human rights, environment or health. They provide analysis and expertise, serve as early warning mechanisms and help monitor and implement international agreements. Their relationship with offices and agencies of the United Nations system differs depending on their goals, their venue and the mandate of a particular institution."

A paper prepared by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's L. David Brown and Mark H. Moore titled, "Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations" quotes Anna Vakil's five NGO "functional categories: welfare, develop (in the sense of capacity-building), advocacy, development education, and networking or research."

Various other definitions include the following characteristics:

-- local, national or international in scope;

-- non-governmental;

-- non-profit;

-- staffed by unpaid volunteers;

-- non-political; and

-- advancing social, humanitarian objectives.

Some NGOs do. Most don't as James Petras explained on The Lendman News Hour saying most skim 90% of donations for themselves. Some genuinely enhance welfare, support human and civil rights, and mitigate the ravages of disease and repression. The large majority, however, are ideologically biased think tanks or lobby groups, serving a political agenda for profit. They're predators, not humanitarians.

In his December 1997 Monthly Review article titled, "Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America," Petras discussed their early 1970s history under military dictatorships when they actively supported their victims and denounced human rights abuses. Even then, however, their limitations were evident as "they rarely denounced the US and European patrons who financed" them. Nor did they "link the neoliberal economic policies and human rights violations to the new turn in the imperialist system. Obviously" their funding limits their ability to criticize.

Yet as neoliberal regimes "devastat(ed) communities (through) cheap imports, extracting external debt payments, abolishing labor legislation, and creating a" reserve army of cheap labor, NGOs were well funded "to be their 'community face'....intimately related to those at the top and complementing their destructive work with local projects." In other words, NGOs are profiteers with a friendly face acting as predatory capitalism's agents. When they take over, social movements decline, and that's the whole idea for their presence.

Nearly all have entrenched bureaucracies, highly paid officials, secret operational rules, and undisclosed financing sources and amounts, mostly from domestic or foreign nations whose interests they serve, including for PR, intelligence, or population control, not providing humanitarian services.

They all claim non-profit status, yet operate unethically, collude with governments or business interests, profit handsomely, own unrelated businesses, and exploit people they claim to serve. In many countries, they're the preferred choice for Western aid and emergency relief, providing cover for an imperial agenda and cashing in handsomely, especially after disasters like wars and their aftermath, floods, famines and earthquakes.

Haiti is called "the Republic of NGOs," with over 10,000 operating (according to World Bank estimates) for its nine million people, the highest per capita presence worldwide in all sectors of activity and society, many with sizable budgets. Yet their numbers beg the question. With that abundant firepower, why is Haiti the poorest country in the hemisphere, one of the poorest in the world, and one of the most oppressed? Why were so many Haitians starving pre-quake? Why now are conditions catastrophic and worsening?

NGO proliferation mirrored the atrophy of Haiti's government, providing cover for imperial interests with UN paramilitary and now US combat troop occupiers for enforcement, Haitians, of course, suffering as they have for over 500 years.

Profiteering from Misery

In his book titled, "Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking," Timothy Schwartz recounts an "anthropologist's personal story of working with foreign aid agencies (the NGO network) and discovering that fraud, greed, corruption, apathy, and political agendas permeate the industry," part of the reason behind Haiti's institutionalized oppression, poverty and misery.

According to Haitian lawyer/activist Marguerite Laurent:

"It's laughably idealistic to wish for accountability, honesty, grace and dignity from the folks at USAID, World Bank, the Christian missions and those 'doing good' in Haiti for more than a-half century now," when, in fact, most come to exploit, seeking profits, not a desire to provide humanitarian services.

"Schwartz's book unveils paradoxes and lots of critical data on foreign aid, mission schools, orphanages, and the world's major multinational charities working in Haiti." He reveals a nation "you'll not read about in current mainstream books and papers on Haiti." Nor through the major media that ignore over 500 years of enslavement, colonization, serfdom, severe exploitation and oppression, and brutalizing misery, the last two centuries under US domination.

The book is an "inside story," said Schwartz, about "fraud, greed, corruption, and apathy, and political agendas (as well as a) story of failed agriculture, health and credit projects; violent struggles for control over aid money; corrupt orphanage owners, pastors, and missionaries; the nepotistic manipulation of research funds; economically counterproductive food relief programs that undermine the Haitian agricultural economy; and the disastrous effects of economic engineering by foreign governments and international aid organizations (like USAID, World Bank and others), and the multinational corporate charities....in their service (like CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and many others) that have programs spread across the globe, moving in response not only to disasters and need, but political agendas and economic opportunity."

He saw it for over 10 years, researching and living in Haiti. He stresses not wanting to damage charity providers, just those in it for personal gain, not people they profess to help.

"At the level of individuals and NGOS, the lack of fiscal accountability is manifest in the enrichment of the custodians of the money - pastors and directors of NGOs, schools and orphanages - and the redirection of charity toward middle and upper class Haitians," the very ones who don't need it. At governmental levels, "Charity is manipulated to serve political ends."

Without accountability, corruption gets embedded, aid is distorted, and ends up doing more harm than good, precisely according to plan. For example, Haiti's School for Jesus Christ of America "was a nest of elites (disdaining) and spurn(ing) the impoverished peasants, fishermen, and slum dwellers, (calling) them ignorant and uncivilized, as subhuman, who called them dan wouj (red teeth) and pye pete (cracked fee)...."

"The impoverished children in the Hamlet could not get medical care," and what they got was poor quality for exorbitant fees. At the same time, elite children were treated free and their education paid for, using funds meant for the poor. Visiting missionaries called the school administrators "dedicated spreaders of biblical truth, somehow holier than ordinary Christians, closer to God, better than the rest of us." In fact, they're predators, profiteering from Haiti's poor and living lavishly at their expense. Their mission, in fact, is bogus. "Helping the poor? The hell they were!"

CARE is no different, "a perversion of American charitable ideals with its false claims to be aiding the 'poorest of the poor' when what it was really doing was throwing exquisite banquets at plush hotels while carrying out US political policy in the interest of international venture capitalists and industrialists."

Child Trafficking in Haiti

This section deals with abducted children for profit, not Haiti's century-long Restavek system covered in an earlier article titled, "Child Slavery in Haiti." Under it, impoverished families send one or more of their children to live with wealthier or less poor ones in return for food, shelter, education, and a better life in return for performing tasks as servants. They, in fact, become de facto slaves subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

Trafficking children for profit is another matter, another scam. Operatives representing orphanages or adoption agencies approach poor families, offer money, promise their children will be well cared for and educated, then disappear them. None are ever heard from again.

According to Schwartz:

"Not one of the families ever received a single letter from the agency or from any of the adoptive parents. An SOS (Enfants Without Frontiers) employee obtained the address of (one) parent organization in Paris but, when they called, the person who answered the phone said that the agency had moved and left no forwarding address."

Schwartz visited "every single orphanage in the Province as well as Gonaives. They all look like scams to (him. He didn't want to) write a report saying the orphanages are all scams," but, in fact, they are, preying on impoverished families.

The problem, however, is far greater. World Vision and Compassion International sponsor 58,500 Haitian children. Christian Aid Missions (CAM) 10,000, the Haiti Baptist Mission 57,800, and many other NGOs run similar operations, trafficking children for profit or diverting funds for the poor to elite ones or their pockets. "....think about all the money that must be collected and never even gets there....So many people at these orphanages are outright lying. Most of the children are not orphans."

Schwartz's "dismay with charity and development was growing. (His) job wasn't over." He investigated further and found other alarming surprises, "shatter(ing) any remaining faith (he) had in foreign aid to Haiti." Under militarized control, perhaps much worse is underway, with hundreds of millions of donor aid likely stolen and thousands of predatory NGOs and other profiteers grabbing it.

The recent report about 10 Americans detained (likely to be released pending further investigation and perhaps absolved altogether) for illegally trying to spirit 33 children from Haiti is just the tip of a global problem, one very much affecting Haiti. This longstanding practice is now way accelerated with thousands of children separated from parents, enabling abductors to pass them off as orphans and sell them for profit.

Overall, UNICEF calls human trafficking "one of the most lucrative and fastest growing transnational crimes, generat(ing) approximately up to $10 billion per year," affecting many millions of victims, mostly women and children. In 2005, the International Labour Organization estimated from 980,000 - 1.25 million children trafficked annually, mostly for:

"domestic labour, commercial sexual exploitation, agricultural work, drug couriering, organized begging, child soldiering and exploitative or slavery-like practices in the informal economy."

The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (called the Palermo Protocol or Trafficking Protocol) defines the practice as follows in Article 3:

"Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs...."

Under this definition, abductions for sale or transfer to prospective parents are criminal acts - "illicit adoptions" according to UNICEF stating:

"An increase in demand for adoption has helped to propel the unlawful trafficking of babies and young children. Sometimes (parents) from developing countries sell their baby or young child, at other times" infants are stolen.

UNICEF conservatively estimates at least 2,000 Haitian children are trafficked annually to the Dominican Republic alone, and, post-quake, confirmed that 15 or more disappeared from area hospitals, likely victims of abductors. In addition, adoption applications soared, from 10 a month earlier to dozens daily, one agency saying it's gotten over 1,000 requests to adopt Haitian children.

With many thousands alone and vulnerable, they're easy pickings for traffickers - for non-Haitian prospective parents, forced labor, commercial sex, or other illicit purposes.

On January 27, Time.com writers Tim Padgett and Bobby Ghosh highlighted the problem in their article titled, "Human Predators Stalk Haiit's Vulnerable Kids."

They cited one instance of a "Toyota pickup truck cruising the debris-cluttered streets of Leogane," offering children food, getting them in the pickup and disappearing, all of them abduction victims. According to UNICEF, "Traffickers fish in pools of vulnerability, and we've rarely if ever seen one like this."

Haiti is now occupied. Under Fourth Geneva, its children, including orphans, are protected persons and can't be moved for any reason. According to international law expert Francis Boyle, doing so "is a serious war crime," yet America may be aiding and abetting the guilty, even though it's (nominally) committed to combatting the practice, and the US 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act calls "trafficking in persons....a transnational crime with national implications."

The law enhanced earlier penalties, added new protections, and provided victims various benefits and services. It also established a cabinet-level federal interagency task force and federal program to provide them. Under US and international law, Washington recognizes the grievousness of this crime. In practice perhaps it's another matter given America's global lawlessness, including illegally occupying Haiti and stealing its sovereignty.

Private Military Contractors (PMCs) See a Bonanza in Haiti

They're mercenaries, paramilitaries, hired guns, unprincipled, in it for the money, and go anywhere to find it. They're unregulated, unchecked, free from criminal or civil accountability, and are licensed to kill and get away with it. Wherever they're deployed, they're feared for good reason, and they're heading to Haiti. Xe Services (formerly Blackwater USA) is already there. Jeremy Scahil, author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army calls them a:

"shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world (accustomed) to operating with worry or legal consequences (with) remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus...."

Many PMCs belong to the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA). Immediately after the quake, its web site (ipoaworld.org) 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. If you would like more information about IPOA and its member companies, you can read more here."

A list of services and member companies followed. Unexplained was their dark side.

In his January 19 Nation magazine article titled, "US Mercenaries Set Sights on Haiti," Scahill said to expect "a lot of (disaster profiteering) in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. (It's) kicking into full gear in Haiti," and arrivals signal the kinds of terrorizing common wherever these professional killers are deployed.

Exploiting Haiti's Resources

In October 2009, Marguerite Laurent, exposed the key reason for exploiting Haiti, easier under occupation and hundreds of thousands of Haitians removed from where huge oil deposits likely exist and other development is planned. In 2008, an estimated 20 billion barrels were found in deep water off Cuba. Haitian resources are believed to be far greater, and they've been known about for decades.

In a 2004 article titled, "Oil in Haiti," George Michel explained that:

"Since time immemorial, it has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels of the two states that share the island of (Hispaniola - Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and the surrounding waters that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. No one knows why they are still untapped." Why is with abundant Middle East and other resources, they weren't needed. Ahead they will be, so maybe now's the time to exploit them.

"Since the early twentieth century, the physical and political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir....near the source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better known today as the River Thomonde."

Oil also exists "in the Dominican plain of Azua, a short distance north of the Dominican Republic in the town of Azua." The field was operating earlier in the last century, producing up to 60,000 barrels daily. In 1982, more significantly, "a huge oil field offshore at the coast of (the Dominican Republic's) Barahona" province was discovered, but left untapped.

In Haiti and offshore, geological evidence shows oil reserves at "the Bay of Cayes, Les Cayes and between Ile a Vache." The Dunn Plantation papers as well as George Michel confirm that Haiti is oil rich.

Laurent says:

"big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to (exploit Haiti's resources and use its) deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve US and Caribbean ports."

No wonder Washington has its fifth largest embassy in Port-au-Prince after Iraq (the largest anywhere on 104 acres, costing at least $592 million to build), China, Afghanistan and Germany.

Haiti is a strategic resource for its cheap labor, but mostly its exploitable resources, including, oil and gas, gold, copper, diamonds, iridium, and zirconium as well as deep water ports at Fort Liberte and elsewhere.

In February 2004, removing Jean-Bertrand Aristide and exiling him was step one, followed by a coup d'etat government, UN paramilitary "peacekeepers," and an elected one, subservient to Washington, opening Haiti to greater plunder, including privatizing state-owned companies, exploiting its cheap labor even more, letting unwanted portions perish, and developing its resources.

Now the occupation and, according to Laurent, US-France-Canada balkanization for resource exploitation, Washington wanting the South, including Port-au-Prince, La Gonaive island, offshore to the West, Les Cayes, the southern peninsula and offshore waters. Around 20,000 US Marines and paratroupers arrived for the duration, to ensure Haiti is open for business for the usual corporate interests, and to ensure none of its wealth is shared with the poor - how Haitians have always been treated for over 500 years, except for the brief interregnum under Artistide and short period after becoming the first free and independent Black republic.

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.

Haiti Kanaval 2010

2010-02-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

This video somewhat captures the spirit of 'Haiti Kanaval Past'. The Earthquake of 2010 has changed the joy and mirthfulness seen here to somber mourning and a careful, but hopeful expectation for a rebuilt Haiti in the future. One sign of recovery for Haiti will be the regained ability to celebrate Haiti Kanaval in the old way again. That may be a long way off.

In Haiti, Carnival is Replaced by Mourning
Monday 15 February 2010
by: Jacqueline Charles

The Miami Herald
It is a manifestation of the Haitian spirit, the enduring buoyancy and optimism that has guided Haiti for more than 200 years.
For as long as anyone can remember, carnival or kanaval has taken place. Until this year. Haiti carnival has now become a wake.
As quake-struck Haitians ended three days of national mourning and fasting Sunday, the satirical drumbeats of the traditional "meringues" ridiculing politicians and rivaling musicians that would have marked the beginning of the three-day carnival have been silenced.
They have been replaced with strings of sorrow, and cries to rise from the rubble and move forward -- avanse -- as Haiti continues to mourn its 200,000-plus dead: fallen artists, struggling neighbors, loving family, inspiring leaders.
Carnival would have ended Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.
"Is Haiti finished? I say, No, No. We have to rise again," Miami-based T-Vice sings in Nou Pap Lage (We Won't Give Up). "Don't be discouraged. I have faith, I have hope, the Haitian people will find victory. Together we shall overcome."
If Haiti's pre-Lent colorful street party has always been the barometer of the Caribbean nation's ailing temperatures, then its cancellation by the government is a sign that the country barely has a pulse. Even if the spirit is willing, Haitians in Miami and on the island say the heart is just too crushed to cooperate.
"Are we broken? Yes," said Eric Gaillard, a devoted carnival reveler who captured on video the horror and screams of a collapsing capital from the balcony of his house in Port-au-Prince's Pacot residential neighborhood. "The worst: there is no leadership. The government is not providing strong guidelines. It's not giving us a vision of hope, saying 'Haitian people, Port-au-Prince is destroyed, we are going to construct again. We have a plan, be patient with us.'"
Just as reggae and rhythm and blues artists have recorded tributes chronicling the destruction and despair following the Jan. 12, 7.0-magnitude earthquake, so have many Haitian artists.
Instead of preparing to perform live on the Champs de Mars, they are releasing their songs on iTunes, posting them on Facebook and YouTube and handing them to Haitian deejays to fill the airwaves -- and to help raise money for charities.
The dark cloud cast by the quake stretches from the empty carnival viewing stands lining the rubble-strewn streets of downtown Port-au-Prince to the empty dance halls of Miami, quieted since the quake.
"I don't think anybody's heart is on the music," Michel Martelly, Haiti's charismatic konpa king best known to fans as Sweet Micky, said from his Port-au-Prince home, where he and his wife Sophia were preparing to distribute food to the ravaged Bel-Air neighborhood, a stone's throw from the crumbled presidential palace.
"The dimension of this tragedy is beyond peoples' imagination."
In Miami when the earthquake struck and unable to reach his wife, Martelly grabbed son Olivier, called in Haitian-born rapper Black Dada and saxophonist Jowee Omicil to help him capture the dispiriting moment in song.
"From far, I see my peoples dying. From far, I hear the kids, they're crying. They have no place to go," Olivier sings in English as his famous father and Black Dada pipe in: "What's going on? Put your heads together. What's going on."
Trying to make sense of the tragedy, they sing, "Tell me what we did to end up like this....Show me a sign from above. All I want to do is stop this misery."
In recent days, Haiti's political and religious leaders have called on Haitians to be strong, put their heads together to build a new society.
Ironically, this year's carnival theme was "Building a New Path."
"It was the first time I had my carnival song ready a month early," said T-Vice lead singer Roberto Martino, who was in the group's Miami recording studio, minutes from recording his voice tracks, when word of the quake hit. "There was such a positive vibe before the quake, everything was moving forward in the country."
Like many, he can't recall ever a time when carnival was canceled. Not through the coup d'etats, perennial political unrest or economic hard times; not even in 2005, when musicians and fans were dodging bullets from warring thugs in front of the presidential palace.
"This is supposed to be the most festive time out of the whole year for the Haitian people; a time when they forget about their misery, forget about everything. Now, they have to think 100 times more about their problems," Martino said. "There is no tomorrow, no hope. That is how the people are looking at it now."
But even as life in Haiti seems to hopelessly stand still, musicians and instruments remain buried in the rubble, and the Champs de Mars bursts with tens of thousands of homeless rather than hundreds of thousands of revelers, some like Miami musician Ralph Cassagnol see a lining of hope. He ponders this year's carnival theme to which his group Mawon penned its carnival tune Avancé. The song, written a month before the quake, seems especially appropriate now as Haitians, battered and broken, look for deliverance in another kind of way.
"There's no time to talk. There's no time to play around. What's happened has happened. It's our time to move forward. We have a country to save," Mawon's seven-piece band sings. "Don't look back. There are no more tears left to cry."
"We've been through a lot of pain," Cassagnol said from Miami, where Mawon has been doing concert fundraisers to aid Haiti and plans to donate proceeds from the single to charities working to help Haitians recover.
"If we keep looking back we'll never move forward," he said. "We have to let the shedding of tears be done during the mourning period. Let's get that emotion out and move forward."
All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

The Haiti Interview on BlogTalkRadio - WBCN NETWORK

2010-02-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

Last night I did a two hour interview with Dennis Speed on WBCN blog radio concerning Haiti. The show was called 'Everything Politics' and was listened to by over 338,000 people. It was a lengthy report of my recent visit to Haiti as a medical aid worker and as an observer with an eye towards what must be done to continue the needed relief efforts and the rebuilding of Haiti.

Click on the link below to hear the complete 2 hour show.

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

BlogTalkRadio - WBCN NETWORK

Tb and HIV in Haiti and Our Enlightened Self Interest

2010-02-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

The followiing article from the New York Times highlights one of the best reasons for a forceful and thorough intervention of a humanitarian nature into Haiti - drug resistant Tuberculosis. We do not need a breeding ground for deadly Tb anywhere in the Western hemisphere, or anywhere in the world. Haiti, which has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, also has one of the highest Tb infection rates as well. Combine those two and you have the makings of a real apocalypse. Sqaulid living conditions, mal-nutition little to no medical care, poverty all combine to make for an explosive biological holocost -a holocost that is prevenable now- if we act now! We must mount a rescue effort for Haiti on the scale of a full military action in a time of war. We have to get in there, clean up the mess the earthquake and bad policy produced and start with basic rebuilding of the infra-structure now. Let's get the people out of the streets into proper shelters, let us get them fed nutritious meals, clean water, provide the medical attention needed and evacuate those who need specialized attention not available locally. This is something a great power like the United States can do, and should do, immediately and without delay. The cost of humanitarian intervention is meager compared to the costly intervention of war - such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We could deploy hundreds of thousands of our unemployed youth and adults to help the Haitian people rebuild their country. It would also help us to rebuild the moral fiber of this country in the bargain. We should do this now without fail, or suffer the consequences later on.

TUBERCULOSIS - HAITI: POST-EARTHQUAKE
Date: Fri 5 Feb 2010

Source: The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/world/americas/06tuberculosis.html?hp

At a fly-infested clinic hastily erected alongside the rubble of the only tuberculosis sanatorium in this country, Pierre-Louis Monfort is a lonely man in a crowded room. Haiti has the highest tuberculosis rate in the Americas, and health experts say it is about to drastically increase. But amid the ramshackle remains of the hospital where the country's most infected patients used to live, Mr Monfort runs the clinic alone, facing a vastness of unmet need that is as clear as the desperation on the faces around the room.

"I'm drowning," said Mr Monfort, 52, flanked by a line of people waiting for pills as he emptied a bedpan full of blood. All of the hospital's 50 other nurses and 20 doctors died in the earthquake or have refused to return to work out of fear for the building's safety or preoccupation with their own problems, he said. Mr Monfort joked that the earthquake had earned him a promotion from a staff nurse at the sanatorium to its new executive director.

In normal times, Haiti sees about 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Among infectious diseases, it is the country's 2nd most common killer, after AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. The situation has gone from bad to worse because the earthquake set off a dangerous diaspora. Most of the sanatorium's several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment,experts say.

At the city's General Hospital, Dr Megan Coffee said, "This right here is what is going to be devastating in 6 months," and she pointed to several tuberculosis patients thought to have a resistant strain of the disease who were quarantined in a fenced-off blue tent. "Someone needs to go and help Monfort, or we are all going to be in big trouble."

A further complication is that definitively diagnosing tuberculosis takes weeks. So doctors are instead left to rely on conspicuous symptoms like night sweats, severe coughing and weight loss. "But look around," Dr Coffee said. "Everyone is thin, everyone is coughing from the dust and everyone is sweating from the heat."

Dr Richar D'Meza, the coordinator for tuberculosis for the Haitian Ministry of Health, said his office and the World Health Organization had begun stockpiling tuberculosis medicines. "We are very concerned about a resistant strain, but we are also getting ready," he said, adding that he is assembling medical teams to begin entering tent camps to survey for the disease. "This will begin soon," he said. "We will get help to these people soon."

For Mr Monfort, it is not soon enough. He scavenges the rubble daily for medicines and needles. He sterilizes needles using bleach and then reuses the bleach to clean the floors. In his cramped clinic, 8 of the sickest and most contagious patients lay on brown- and red-stained beds. He said he had lost count of how many more were sleeping in other pockets alongside the hospital. Hundreds come daily to pick up medicine. Outside the clinic, the air is thick with the sickening smell of rotting bodies. Occasionally a breeze carried a waft of char from small cooking fires nearby, offering a respite from the stench and the flies.

Mr Monfort began to explain that his biggest problem was a lack of food. Suddenly a huge crash shook the clinic. A patient screamed. Everyone stood still, eyes darting. A man outside yelled that another section of the hospital had collapsed. People looking for materials to build huts had pulled wood pilings from a section of the hospital roof, which then fell as the scavengers leapt to safety, the man said. Mr Monfort looked to the ground silently as if the weight of his lonely responsibility had just come crashing down. "These people are dying and in pain here," he said. "And no one seems to care."

The dire scene at Mr Monfort's clinic speaks to a larger concern: as hospitals and medical staff are overrun by people with acute conditions, patients who were previously getting treatment for cancer, HIV, and other chronic or infectious diseases have been pushed aside and no longer have access to care.

At the Champ de Mars, [a man] sat on a curb, one shoe missing, his blue polo shirt torn, his head cupped in his hands. "I have TB, and I am also supposed to get dialysis every other day," he said, explaining that he was a doctor's assistant before the earthquake and meticulous about his treatments. "I have not had dialysis in 3 weeks, and I feel my blood is rotting from inside." Waving his hand over a sea of tents and tarpaulins, he added, "It is like this country."

Back at the clinic, Mr Monfort struggled to fix an IV that had missed the vein and was painfully pumping fluids under a patient's skin. Another ghost of a man hobbled to the doorway on crutches, moaning for help. "Please wait, please wait," Mr Monfort said in a tense whisper. The biggest source of stress, Mr Monfort said, is that his 3 children and wife are living on the street because the earthquake destroyed their home. His wife begs him daily to stay with them. Instead, unpaid and without a mask or gloves to wear, he walks to the sanatorium each day at 6 am and stays until 8 p.m. when most of the patients drift to sleep. "Why don't you just leave us to die?" asked [a patient]. Mr. Monfort looked offended by the notion. But he did not answer and the question seemed to stick with him.

The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus once wrote that there was a type of suffering so intense that, even in our sleep, it bores into the heart until eventually, "in our own despair, against our will," it taps into a terrible wisdom. After several minutes in silence, Mr Monfort spoke of that wisdom. He referred to it as a "strange hope" that had sprung from the suffering of his patients and the loss and abandonment of his fellow staff members. "These people here are dying, but they keep me alive," he said. "I know they are hurting more than me and not complaining. So," he said, handing another walk-in patient a packet of pills, "I must continue."

Byline: Ian Urbina

Tb and HIV facts in Haiti
Haiti has the highest per capita tuberculosis (TB) burden in the Latin America and Caribbean region. After HIV/AIDS, TB is the country�s greatest infectious cause of mortality in both youth and adults (6,814 deaths in 2007). Haiti is among the eight priority countries identified by the Pan American Health Organization for TB control in the region. According to the World Health Organization�s (WHO�s) 2009 Global Tuberculosis Control Report, Haiti had and estimated 29,333 new TB cases in 2007. Of these, 53 percent were new pulmonary sputum smear-positive (SS+) cases. Although Haiti falls short of the WHO targets of 70 percent case detection and 85 percent treatment success rates, the DOTS (the internationally recommended strategy for TB control) case detection rate rose from 37 percent to 49 percent between 2003 and 2007. The DOTS treatment success rate was 82 percent in 2006, a slight increase from 78 percent in 2003. DOTS coverage fell to 70 percent in 2007 compared with 91 percent in 2006, though it was still above the 2005 level of 55 percent. However, in some highly dense metropolitan settings, such as areas in Port-au-Prince, coverage can be as low as 13 percent. The most populated department in Haiti, Ouest (West), has 34 percent of the country�s population but only 25 percent coverage.
Since 1998, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has supported the DOTS strategy in order to strengthen the national TB program, the Programme National de Lutte contre la Tuberculose (PNLT), and approved national guidelines and norms for TB control in 2002. However, the program lacks political and financial support from the government, and there is a lack of skilled technical human resources at the central level of the PNLT. A major problem in combating TB is that co-infection with HIV can run as high as 30 percent in some urban areas. Strong stigma and cultural barriers attached to TB also interfere with case detection and adherence to treatment. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB has increased from 1.4 percent in 2004 to 1.8 percent in 2007. In partnership with three USAID-supported nongovernmental organizations, the MOH has taken steps to implement DOTS clinics in all 10 geographical departments in Haiti.

Haiti Death Toll Past 200,000

2010-02-05T10:50:00.001-08:00

Here are the latest statistics for the Haiti earthquake. 200,000 dead and counting, roughly 2% of the population declared dead. Many more of the dead will go uncounted because they were buried by family in backyards and are not a part of any official tally. Also people who died in collapsed building have not been pulled out for counting purposes. They are left in place and an estimated number is given for statistical purposes. The whole population is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. They have seen and experienced death and destruction on a scale that is unimaginable. The pain physical and emotional in beyond belief and will continue for many years and will undoubtedly shape the world view of the survivors.

Haiti earthquake: death toll reaches 200,000
The death toll in the Haiti quake has swelled to 200,000, as angry protests over the slow arrival of aid erupted on the rubble-strewn streets. 04 Feb 2010

A mother sits next her child, who lost a leg in the Haiti earthquake, at a field hospital in Port-au-Prince Photo: AFP / GETTY
More than three weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, prime minister Jean Max Bellerive said his tiny Caribbean nation had been ravaged by "a disaster on a planetary scale" and detailed the tragic toll suffered by his people.
"There are more than 200,000 people who have been clearly identified as people who are dead," he said, adding that another 300,000 injured had been treated, 250,000 homes had been destroyed and 30,000 businesses lost. At least 4,000 amputations have also been carried out due to horrific crush injuries -- a shocking figure which is likely to strain the impoverished nation's already meager resources for years to come.

Mr Bellerive said he has proposed the formation of an "emergency government" in Haiti to focus on the crisis, but insisted that the authorities, devastated as their ranks have been by the disaster, remained "in control of the situation."
Despite a massive aid operation, a lack of coordination and the sheer extent of the damage have hampered the distribution of food and water leading to mounting tensions among a million people left homeless.
"The Haitian government has done nothing for us, it has not given us any work. It has not given us the food we need," Sandrac Baptiste said bitterly as she left her makeshift tent to join angry demonstrations.
In separate protests after a tense night when shots were fired in the ruined capital Port-au-Prince, some 300 people gathered outside the mayor's office in the once upscale Petionville neighborhood.
"If the police fire on us, we are going to set things ablaze," one of the protesters shouted, raising a cement block above his head.
Another 200 protesters marched toward the US embassy, crying out for food and aid, and about 50 protestors also gathered late Tuesday outside the police headquarters where the Haitian government of President Rene Preval is temporarily installed. "Down with Preval," demonstrators shouted at the president who has only spoken to the people a few times since the disaster struck.
Meanwhile, a group of US Christians were to learn whether they would be charged with trying to illegally take children out of the quake-stricken nation. The 10 Americans from the Idaho-based Baptist group New Life Children's Refuge have been detained in Haiti since the weekend after they tried to take some 33 children out of the country to neighboring Dominican Republic.

Haitian Fight Song

2010-02-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

Here is bassist Charles Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song", a fitting anthem for the struggle now going on for basic survival and rebuilding in Haiti.

Enjoy.

The 'Future Orphanage' of Haiti

2010-02-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

This little boy is a resident of a newly founded orphanage -only 4 days old- set up in a cleared field that was a junk yard by an American Scientologist team headed by Cindy Love who invited me to visit to do medical evaluations. The orphanage is called "Future Orphanage" because it houses some of Haiti's future citizens and leaders. This little boy is one of 84 that had been found wandering the streets of Port au Prince after their previous orphanage had collapsed during the quake. You see, 83 of the 84 were orphans before the quake! Of the 300 in the orphanage before the quake, only 83 are accounted for. The rest are presumed buried in the rubble of their destroyed orphanage. This little boy has a big plate of beans and rice which is the first food he has had in days. I was there on the first day of operation of the makeshift kitchen which is housed in the steel trailer of a truck. Some of the children got belly aches - too much food, too soon. I observed them as energetic and lively despite it all. I saw them willing to share their food with others, even one boy, the 84th orphan named Peterson, taking food from the camp to people he knew on the street.

Peterson is a newly orphaned boy, who used to sell water on the dangerous streets of Port au Prince before the quake. A day or two before the quake, Peterson was struck by a bus that broke his leg. While in the hospital the quake struck killing his mother and father and his sisters and brothers. His whole family was wiped out. He survived because he was away form home in the hospital. Peterson is an awesome young man who is a natural leader among the other children. He looks out for them as best he can. And somehow he continues to smile a bit and even run and play like the child he is.

The 'Future Orphanage' is not a structure. It is one big yellow tent for classes and meetings. I used it for medical examinations of some of the children and for setting up a tetanus inoculation center. The children sleep in 7 Shelter Logic tents that are designed to house 10 people. There is a well for water on the property and a long bench along a cider block wall where they sit to eat their meals. A bond fire is built at night because there are no lights, no electricity, no running water, no bathrooms. Understand that a generator has been donated and that should help with the power problem. Two Scientology Volunteer Ministers are busy constructing picnic tables for them the children to eat at and to begin academic classes. Their ages range from 2 years to 14 years as far as can be determined.

Some may question why I who have been a strong anti-vaccine advocate would organize and conduct an anti-tetanus program for these orphans. When I looked around the yard where they were running and playing, I noticed all kinds of broken glass and pieces of metal everywhere and half of the children had no shoes. Tetanus, or lock-jaw, is epidemic in Haiti and can result in deaths. The risk of the vaccine is small compared to the risk of tetanus under these extreme circumstances. It was an easy decision to make.

An Emblem of Heroism In Haiti

2010-02-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

Walking through the dusty debris of Port au Prince in the aftermath of the great 7.0 earthquake that hit January 12th was more than a little surreal and depressing. For the most part, people are trying to go about their daily business of survival on the basic level with grim stoic faces. The population is in shock and will be so for a long time to come. There are no smiles or much laughter on the streets, but there is a resilience and dignity that is pervasive. Pictured to the right is a man that I encountered in a area of Port au Prince called Delmar. He was moving fast, shirtless and ram-rod straight with a Haitian flag somehow strapped to his back and flapping proudly over his head. He had a warrior spirit about him. He was even defiant in the face of overwhelming adversity. He looked like he was going to win over a mere 7.0 earthquake. Who knows his story? Who knows his loss? Or where he is headed so swiftly, so proudly. But I take him as emblematic of the whole Haitian people and nation. They are fierce in their determination to live, to survive, to thrive and prosper no matter what.

Child Slavery in Haiti

2010-02-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

One of the big stories out of Haiti in the midst of earthquake relief is the one about 10 Christian missionaries from Utah who were caught transporting a group of Haitian 'orphans' across the border into the Dominican Republic. It turns out that the orphans were not orphans at all and had been taken from their parents and home villages with the 'promise of a better life' with the missionaries. As shocking as this is to most of us, the fact is, it is not a rare event. It is part of what is really child slavery in Haiti and in many parts of the world where children are exploited because of their poverty and used as domestic slaves and in some instances industrial or farm workers, prostitutes and even soldiers. Childhood slavery practices in Haiti have been under scrutiny for a long time, but nothing much has been done to change things in favor of the exploited children and families. Perhaps the spotlight shining now on the 10 Christian missionaries will help eliminate the abhorrent practice from Haiti and elsewhere.

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

Child Slavery In Haiti

By Stephen Lendman2-4-10

In November 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognizing "that in all countries in the world, there are children living in exceptionally difficult conditions, and that such children need special consideration." Then in May 2000, the General Assembly adopted an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

In 1990, the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography with a mandate to investigate the problem and submit reports to the General Assembly.

Today, Gulnara Shahinian holds the post, and on June 10, 2009 addressed Haiti's Restaveks, a century-old system under which impoverished families, mostly rural and unable to adequately provide for their children, send them to live with wealthier or less poor ones in return for food, shelter, education, and a better life in return for tasks performed as servants - de facto slaves subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

Some as young as three are beaten, forced to do anything asked, request nothing, speak only when spoken to, display no emotion, and receive none of the benefits parents expected, just exploitation and mistreatment that's often severe. Too often it's from relatives as poor families often send their children to live with those better able to provide care, yet they seldom do.

Haiti's poor also use them to help with domestic and other chores, and some work for homeless families under the worst of conditions, including nothing to eat for days, harder work, greater abuse, at times whippings leaving scars, getting attacked by rats in their sleep or street predators any time, and being easy prey for kidnappers who seize them for prostitution or forced labor, internally or abroad.

On July 10, 2009, Shahinian released a report titled, "Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including the Right to Development" covering contemporary forms of slavery that affect adults and children.

She called it a global issue in traditional and emerging forms that haven't been sufficiently addressed. She also found that where laws on forced labor exist, enforcement is limited, and "very few policies and programmes....address bonded labour." They should given its scale worldwide, affecting an estimated 27 million people conservatively and very likely many more as much of the problem is unreported.

In March 2009, this writer addressed it in an article titled, "Modern Slavery in America." It's disturbing and pervasive despite US laws prohibiting all forms of human trafficking through statutes created or strengthened by the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) providing for imprisonment for up to 20 years or longer as well as other penalties. Other laws were also enacted, including the 2003 Protect Act to end child exploitation.

Yet slavery exists in different forms, affecting farm workers, domestic help, factory and other sweatshop labor, restaurant and hotel work, guest workers on US military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and most of all for prostitution and sex services that exploit children as well as adults.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as follows:

"....all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself (or herself) voluntarily."

Forced child labor is:

"(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;

(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;

(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties; (and)

(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children."

The Free the Slaves.net's definition is being "forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away."

Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

If sweatshop wage slavery is included, the problem is far greater, affecting many hundreds of millions of exploited workers globally, including a 2004 UNICEF estimate of about 218 million children performing labor (other than domestic), some as young as five, many in forced bondage, the majority doing hazardous work, and governments doing little or nothing to protect them.

On December 29, 1994, Haiti ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under its provisions, authorities issue reports on the problem as required, but little else. Until he was ousted, however, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide addressed it. He created a special Haitian National Police child protection unit, and in 2003, got a new law passed prohibiting child domestic labor, mostly as Restaveks. Other legislation also passed banning trafficking in persons, a longstanding problem affecting adults as well.

Except for measures under Aristide, Haiti did little before or after his tenure to curb the problem, claiming a lack of resources. Instead, it established a hotline for children and others to report abuses, has a minimal staff, gets about 200 requests a year, visits homes for educational purposes, advises violators to stop their practices, occasionally removes abused children, but barely addresses the problem Shahinian called tantamount to slavery and condemned.

After a nine-day visit in early June, she said Haiti's Restavek system:

"deprives children of their family environment and violates their most basis rights such as the rights to education, health and food as well as subjecting them to multiple forms of abuse including economic exploitation, sexual violence and corporal punishment, violating their fundamental right to protection from all forms of violence."

She condemned professional recruiters who exploit children for financial gain and called for establishing a National Commission to eliminate the problem. She recommended registering all of them, providing alternative income generating programs for poor families, compulsory free primary education, and training for government officials to address the issue. Under the current Preval government, practically nothing has been done so far.

In June 2009, the US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report called Haiti a:

"Special Case for the fourth consecutive year as the new government formed in September 2008 has not yet been able to address the significant challenges facing the country, including human trafficking."

Urging its government "to take immediate action to address its serious trafficking-in-persons problems," it was silent about America's role in ousting Aristide and the fascist regime it installed. In collusion with Haitian elites, the result has been rampant oppression, sham elections, destruction of the majority democratic opposition, jails overflowing with political prisoners, and ending the beneficial political, economic and social changes Haitians briefly enjoyed.

Now the State Department calls Haiti a:

"source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Haitian women, men, and children are trafficked into the Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, the United States, Europe, Canada, and Jamaica for exploitation in domestic service, agriculture, and construction....Several NGOs noted a sharp increase in the number of Haitian children trafficked for sex and labor to the Dominican Republic and The Bahamas during 2008," the majority being Restaveks, including those trafficked internally.

Dismissed and runaway Restaveks comprise "a significant proportion of the large number of street children, who frequently are forced to work in prostitution or street crime by violent criminal gangs. Women and girls from the Dominican Republic are trafficked into Haiti for commercial sexual exploitation."

Some Haitians in the Dominican Republic, The Bahamas and America become virtual slaves as forced labor on sugar-cane plantations, in agriculture and construction. To a large degree, America bears major responsibility, yet is silent and initiates no change.

The Restavek Foundation

Founder Jean-Robert Cadet was once one himself, "endur(ing) years of physical and emotional abuse as a domestic slave until he received access to education -first in Haiti and later in the United States."

He now addresses the problem on his web site (restavekfreedom.org) and by speaking at colleges and universities throughout America and to government organizations globally. He also uses his foundation to help trapped children, providing them opportunities for education, paying for their tuition, uniforms and books, feeding them once a day, monitoring their health and well-being, and restoring their dignity.

His mission is to end Haitian child slavery and give hope to those enslaved. The Restavek Foundation "invest(s) in Haiti so that Haiti will allow us to invest in the children" - through a network of over 500 advocates across the country acting as a "voice for the voiceless."

In the aftermath of Haiti's quake, the Foundation is providing food and other essentials to areas not reached by others. They need help and ask for donations on their web site.

Post-Quake Child Trafficking

On February 1, New York Times writer Ginger Thompson headlined, "Case Stokes Haiti's Fear for Children, and Itself," reporting that, on January 29, 10 Americans were detained at the Dominican border for illegally trying to spirit 33 children from the country.

"The 10 Americans, the authorities said, had crossed the line." Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive called them "kidnappers (who) knew what they were doing was wrong." National Judicial Police chief, Frantz Thermilus, said: "What surprises me is that these people would never do something like this in their own country." He's wrong as the US is beset with adult and child trafficking, and the problem is global.

Affiliated with two Idaho-based Baptist churches, the excuse given rings hollow, saying that: "God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that. Our hearts were in the right place."

They were headed for a Dominican Republic orphanage, existing only on paper, later to be "adopted" by US Evangelical Christian families. When stopped at the border, Haitian agents found them packed inside a bus. None had passports, and no documents authorized their transfer.

SOS Children's Villages ran the Port-au-Prince orphanage where they were temporarily placed. Its regional director, Patricia Vargas, told Agence France Presse that "The majority of these children have families. Some of the older ones said their parents are alive, and some gave an address and phone number." One eight-year child said "I am not an orphan. I still have my parents." The Haitian Social Ministry confirmed that so did others. On January 30, SOS Villages was asked to help under the circumstances.

Its officials accused the Idaho group of taking "children under false pretenses. The allegations have to be thoroughly investigated but the Haitian police consider this incident as organized child trafficking."

Laura Silsby heads the groups as CEO of a Boise-based online shopping web site called personalshopper.com. Last November, it filed papers with Idaho authorities to establish the New Life Children's Refuge, ostensibly as an NGO. As part of their "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission," they plan a Dominican Republic orphanage for up to 200 children, earmarked for US adoptions, conversion to Evangelical Christianity, and apparent extremist indoctrination, given Silsby's admission that Sarah Palin and the Manhattan Initiative are two of her favorites, the latter a right-wing Evangelical group opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

Although one scheme was stopped, UNICEF says, pre and post-quake, documented evidence shows many Haitian child abductions, including from hospitals, orphanages, and the street where so many are vulnerable.

The agency explained that pre-quake, Haiti had about 380,000 orphaned children. The number now is incalculable, but the message is clear. Many are on their own own to find food, shelter and medical care, making them vulnerable to traffickers for profit and exploitation.

In 2000, the UN adopted the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, then in 2003, its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. Under its provisions, trafficking is illegal, defined as:

"Trafficking in persons (by) the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation."

Exploitation is defined, "at a minimum," to include "prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs."

Anyone under 18 is considered a child, and State Parties are called on to adopt laws or other measures "to establish criminal offences" under the Convention. Haiti hasn't done so, leaving its children vulnerable to trafficking and other abuses.

Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) Report on Child Trafficking in Haiti

In November 2009, PADF published a report titled, "Lost Childhoods in Haiti: Quantifying Child Trafficking, Restaveks & Victims of Violence." It's a disturbing picture of "extremely poor children who are sent to other homes to work as unpaid domestic servants," and end up being beaten, sexually assaulted, and exploited by host families. Later, in their teens, "they are commonly tossed to the streets to fend for themselves and become victims of other types of abuses" because Haitian labor laws require employers to pay domestic workers over aged 15.

PADF studied the problem through "the largest field survey on human rights violations, with an emphasis on child trafficking, abuse and violence." It conducted 1,458 personal interviews in troubled urban neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haitien, Gonaives, Saint-Marc and Petit-Goave and learned the following:

-- children are moving from impoverished households to less poor ones;

-- in urban areas, an estimated 225,000 children are Restaveks, two-thirds of them girls;

-- the impoverished Cite Soleil Port-au-Prince neighborhood had the highest percentage of Restavek children - 44%;

-- families in the southern peninsula communities of Les Cayes, Jacmel, Jeremie and Leogane supply the most Restaveks to Port-au-Prince;

-- some children sent to host families for education aren't classified as Restaveks, but perform similar duties;

-- more than 7% of urban households report incidents of rape, murder, kidnapping, or gang involvement, but the true number is likely higher as many incidents go unreported; and

--Port-au-Prince households had over double the amount in other cities (16%).

Over 30% of surveyed households have Restavek children, affecting 16% of all children and 22% of them treated that way. Overall, study findings show Restaveks aren't solely a rural phenomenon given the high proportion of urban households with them.

The majority of urban ones were born in rural Haiti, but urban households comprise the largest recruitment destination. All regions supply them, the most important being southern peninsula rural areas. In addition, many households take in children as school borders, the vast majority treated like Restaveks without the label, and some families with them also send their own children to live with host families in return for services performed.

Kinship is a prime and more socially acceptable recruiting source. However, family ties may camouflage poor treatment when children are away during the school year. They traditionally do household chores at home, but as Restaveks far more in an abusive environment.

PADF cited other issues, including:

-- growing numbers of street children forced to beg to survive;

-- young women (including underage adolescents) recruited for prostitution;

-- Restavek cross-border trafficking to the Dominican Republic, including for sex;

-- kidnappings to sell children and women into bondage; and

-- violence in urban neighborhoods, including organized murder, rape, other physical assaults, and kidnappings committed by the Haitian National Police, UN MINUSTAH peacekeepers, other armed "authorities," and politically partisan gangs.

PADF Summary of Key Findings

An "astonishing high percentage" of surveyed children live with host families - 32% and 30% of surveyed households had Restaveks present. Other findings included:

-- 16% of all surveyed children were placed as Restaveks, and 22% were treated that way, including 44% in Cite Soleil;

-- two-thirds of Restaveks are girls;

-- poverty is the root cause of Restavek placements;

-- a significant minority of Restavek households placed their own children with host families; yet kinship ties don't shield them from abusive treatment, even for those sent only for the school year;

-- "the magnitude of the intra-urban movement of children within....metropolitan area(s) is (a) significant new development;"

-- most urban Restaveks were born in rural areas, but in Port-au-Prince, other households are the largest single source; thus Restavek recruitment no longer can be viewed solely as a rural to urban phenomenon;

-- other victimization forms include rape, murder, kidnapping, and cross-border trafficking; and

-- most abused victims don't seek help from authorities because little is available, including in court.

Public Policy and Haitian Law

Haitian law doesn't specifically prohibit trafficking internally or cross-border, so seeking judicial redress is futile, and the police child protection unit doesn't pursue these cases because statutory restrictions don't exist.

Nonetheless, in March 2009, the Haitian parliament ratified (but doesn't enforce) the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols on human trafficking and smuggling. The parliament is also considering a human trafficking law, but real social change was never before achieved, except under Aristide. Haitians have been oppressed for over 500 years. The current government has done nothing to change things, and now can't under occupation.

A Final Comment

Given their overwhelming hardships, the last thing Haitians needed was the January 12 quake (the most destructive in the region in 170 years), affecting Port-au-Prince, surrounding areas, and other parts of the country, devastating the capital, killing many thousands, injuring many more, and disrupting the lives of three million or more people, adding to their crushing burden.

Many tens of thousands lost everything left stranded on their own, given the lack of essential aid most still aren't getting. Everything is in shambles. Rubble is everywhere. The National Cathedral, Palace of Justice, and Supreme Court collapsed. So did hotels, other municipal buildings, business structures, schools and hospitals.

People still wander the streets dazed, searching for loved ones. The National Palace was heavily damaged, now under US control as a command center. So was UN headquarters, and many of its employees remain missing. In the wealthy Petionville neighborhood, a hospital, ministry building and private homes collapsed. So did other buildings across the capital and in rural communities like Leogane. Jacmel in the southeast also sustained major damage.

The Parliament collapsed. So did public buildings and hospitals, and those functioning are packed with victims or others queued outside waiting for treatment. The World Food Program (WFP) reached only 100,000 people as of January 31. On February 2, targeted vaccinations will begin that, according to the world's foremost authority, Dr. Viera Scheibner, will exacerbate, not lessen the communicable disease problem as vaccines often cause the diseases they're designed to prevent.

Enough food, clean drinking water and medical care remain urgent problems, the US occupation force doing nothing to help and actually obstructing aid deliveries by restricting incoming humanitarian flights and letting supplies stack up undelivered at the airport it controls. As a result, vital shipments are reaching a fraction of the millions who need them.

In its latest February 1 report, OCHA said hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians need shelter provisions. Poor sanitation greatly increases the risk of communicable diseases and remains a huge challenge, and virtually all essential needs are in short supply.

It added:

"Preliminary results from Port-au-Prince found that 93 percent of people surveyed said there was no adequate lighting; 93 percent said there were no latrines for women and men; 41 percent said the level of security was acceptable and 29 percent said it was very poor. The preliminary findings confirm that food, water, sanitation, health and shelter are the areas with the most urgent needs."

Before the tragedy, most Haitians had no running water, electricity, sanitation, or other public services leaving them on their own, virtually out of luck, and now out of it entirely with relief expected only for the privileged, not them beyond lip service and bare essentials, way short of what's needed.

It's an old story for some of the most abused, exploited, and neglected people anywhere, mostly by their powerful northern neighbor allied with Haitian economic elites; names like Acra, Apaid, Baussan, Biglo, Boulos, Brandt, Coles, Kouri, Loukas, Madsen, Mevs, Nadal, Sada, Vital, Vorbes, and other influential bourgeoisie interests exploiting their own people for profit.

Hundreds of thousands around the country are still coping with the damage that summer 2008 storms caused leaving them without food, clean water, other essentials, and around 70,000 homes destroyed. Gonaives, Haiti's third largest city became uninhabitable. Most of Haiti's livestock and food crops were destroyed as well as farm tools and seeds for replanting. Irrigation systems were demolished, and buildings throughout the country collapsed or were damaged, many severely. Now this, affecting Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas with the overall toll yet to be assessed.

For poor Haitians, it's already known. Decimated by unimaginable hardships and depravation, they're on their own and out of luck because of the callous disregard for their lives and well-being - and their country now occupied for the duration.

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.