The Latin American Solidarity Centre (Ireland) calls for solidarity with the Haitian people

by Damien Moran Thu Jan 14, 2010 22:46

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It took me a while to convince myself on he above title. Afterall, any close look at Haiti's history reveals misfortune after misfortune. And despite the fact that it has been 9 years since I did 3 months voluntary work there, I have not forgotten how proud the Haitians were of the fact that they successfully rebelled against and defeated the French, and in 1804 became the first free black republic.

I had endured 16 years of the Irish education system but had heard nothing about this history and it's significance. So when people hail Obama their liberal knight in 'green armour', maybe it's time to step back and appreciate what struggles the Haitians have gone through to keep their heads above water. From being sold by their own people, transported across the Atlantic, forced to work on plantations and abandon their identity, betrayed by their own leaders, suffering numerous military interventions from the US, drug and human raffickers, the list of shit they have put up with is endless.

Haiti is a land of hard workers, great dancers, generous spirits, talented artists, exquisite musicians, articulate social justice campaigners, and the amazingly rich and fascinating traditions of voodoo. And much, much more.

Haitians have never put up with suppression or natural disasters lying down. And it is their innate ability to conquer hardship and survive that will see them through this latest tragedy. My deepest condolences go out to those Haitians currently living in Ireland and desperately trying to get in touch with loved ones. If we all contribute a little, in whatever way that is, it will lighten the burden they must now carry.

More personal reflections below:

by Ted Rall Thu Jan 14, 2010 23:47

Why the Blood Is On Our Hands

As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: "Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere..."

Gee, I wonder how that happened?

You'd think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich.

How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d'état against every democratically elected president they ever had?

It's an important question. An earthquake isn't just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn't kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince.

"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," notes Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. "In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."

When a pile of cinderblocks falls on you, your odds of survival are long. Even if you miraculously survive, a poor country like Haiti doesn't have the equipment, communications infrastructure or emergency service personnel to pull you out of the rubble in time. And if your neighbors get you out, there's no ambulance to take you to the hospital—or doctor to treat you once you get there.

Earthquakes are random events. How many people they kill is predetermined. In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.

So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

The story begins in 1910, when a U.S. State Department-National City Bank of New York (now called Citibank) consortium bought the Banque National d'Haïti—Haiti's only commercial bank and its national treasury—in effect transferring Haiti's debts to the Americans. Five years later, President Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to occupy the country in order to keep tabs on "our" investment.

From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. Marines imposed harsh military occupation, murdered Haitians patriots and diverted 40 percent of Haiti's gross domestic product to U.S. bankers. Haitians were banned from government jobs. Ambitious Haitians were shunted into the puppet military, setting the stage for a half-century of U.S.-backed military dictatorship.

The U.S. kept control of Haiti's finances until 1947.

Still—why should Haitians complain? Sure, we stole 40 percent of Haiti's national wealth for 32 years. But we let them keep 60 percent.

Whiners.

Despite having been bled dry by American bankers and generals, civil disorder prevailed until 1957, when the CIA installed President-for-Life François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Duvalier's brutal Tonton Macoutes paramilitary goon squads murdered at least 30,000 Haitians and drove educated people to flee into exile. But think of the cup as half-full: fewer people in the population means fewer people competing for the same jobs!

Upon Papa Doc's death in 1971, the torch passed to his even more dissolute 19-year-old son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The U.S., cool to Papa Doc in his later years, quickly warmed back up to his kleptomaniacal playboy heir. As the U.S. poured in arms and trained his army as a supposed anti-communist bulwark against Castro's Cuba, Baby Doc stole an estimated $300 to $800 million from the national treasury, according to Transparency International. The money was placed in personal accounts in Switzerland and elsewhere.

Under U.S. influence, Baby Doc virtually eliminated import tariffs for U.S. goods. Soon Haiti was awash predatory agricultural imports dumped by American firms. Domestic rice farmers went bankrupt. A nation that had been agriculturally self-sustaining collapsed. Farms were abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of farmers migrated to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince.

The Duvalier era, 29 years in all, came to an end in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan ordered U.S. forces to whisk Baby Doc to exile in France, saving him from a popular uprising.

Once again, Haitians should thank Americans. Duvalierism was "tough love." Forcing Haitians to make do without their national treasury was our nice way or encouraging them to work harder, to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Or, in this case, flipflops.

Anyway.

The U.S. has been all about tough love ever since. We twice deposed the populist and popular democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The second time, in 2004, we even gave him a free flight to the Central African Republic! (He says the CIA kidnapped him, but whatever.) Hey, he needed a rest. And it was kind of us to support a new government formed by former Tonton Macoutes.

Yet, despite everything we've done for Haiti, they're still a fourth-world failed state on a fault line.

And still, we haven't given up. American companies like Disney generously pay wages to their sweatshop workers of 28 cents an hour.

What more do these ingrates want?

(Ted Rall is the author, with Pablo G. Callejo, of the new graphic memoir "The Year of Loving Dangerously." He is also the author of the Gen X manifesto "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids." His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL

by iosaf Sat Jan 16, 2010 21:02

Naomi Klein has been well listened to as she suggests that Haiti now stands to be a victim of the "shock doctrine" she well explained in her work & reconstruction and aid will be tied to restructuring requirements of the international institutions of the anglosaxon capitalist empire. But that as many are commenting on social networks seems to underestimate the damage already systematically done to Haiti not only in the last century but more importantly the last half decade. In the last year one of the other poorest states of the Americas, Honduras held our attention as it demonstrated a new kind of coup d'etat which many in LASC concurred was more likely to follow the path of attrition than the bloody round-ups and carnage of the 20th century operation Condor overthrows.

Pat Robertson reaction to the Haiti calamity is now well known : he decided that the Tousaint L'ouverture had made a voodoo pact with satan to win his victory against Napoleon. We all wer aghast (as usual) BUT we perhaps missed how well targetted his words were (as usual) and how well they resonated in right wing minds. Not just in the US media have i since read comments and background analysis on Haiti's problems which don't come from a million miles away from Robertson rant. The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times writing for the British rightwing have spoken of the curse on Haiti. The radio voice of the US republican party has called for his flock to think twice before giving money to the Obama white house Haiti fund arguing that the presidency which died impaled on the hubris of its own optimism will only serve its own agenda with that aid.

on this website and in this community of readers and activists we understand damn well whose pacts and deals have ensured that Haiti remained without basic services, infrastructure, human rights or even credible electoral franchise.........................During the Honduras crisis I showed in many articles and links that the agenda of the American empire there as in Haiti though in Obama's backyard really has nothing to do with him. Haiti's voodoo and New Orlean's jazz are merchandise of Dixie.

We know that the coup d'etat or debacle or kerfuffle which saw Aristide leave began a long haul of attrition which meant that Haiti would have to do exactly what the World Bank, IMF and others wanted it to . The state which was listed as the most unstable in the world in 2009 second only to Zimbabwe (indicating the state has no real meaning) has last night (our time) signed over its airport in perpetuity to the USAF. that's because they can get aid in quicker if it's their airport. Jolly good stuff. We ought know that the shock doctrine articulated by Naomi Klein has in fact been done to Haiti already.

So to what level can they take it? Oh we hear about the poor civilians desperate for aid building barricades of corpses in the street. Even if we only saw 3 photographs syndicated in European media and mostly shown in Italy of orderly enough piles of dead bodies. That's what you do with dead bodies when there are so many - you pile them up and you dig a big hole and drop them in. If you're in a city piling them up is easier than digging a big hole............. So the Haitian prime minister who now speaks of 250,000 dead has also spoken of 15,000+ corpses cleared from the streets (piles of dead which were interpreted as barricades ) and the US and even Irish media talk of 200 escaped convicts and the breakdown of law and order............

What law and order do you get in the officially most failed state on the planet second only to Zimbabwe for 2009 and more comfortably tying with Somalia for the last five years?

Aye indeed.- the UN police force don't go tobaggoning down the hill sides of Haiti.

But if I began this by wondering how far Robertson's evil words could go in smoke screening the plans of Dixie for Haiti - I'd just like to jump up the ancient francophone Louisianne to New Orleans, where no aid arrived, where the marines took the airport, where Robertson blamed a pact with satan for the flood & where 800 escaped convicts were blamed for the breakdown of law and order.....................

Haiti has fallen completely now as a state and the only thing its people can or ought do is get out. Ah!!!! but during the attrition they were discouraged from crossing into the Dominican Republic or even crossing the sea................