PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Wednesday morning, shaking buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the country’s capital was devastated by an apocalyptic quake.
Continue reading New 6.1-quake hits Haiti, people flee into streets
Category Archives: Haiti
Haiti: Guns or food?
Presence of US troops provides both hope of relief, and fear of continuing legacy of US domination
By Real News
January 18, 2010 – therealnews.com
As aid starts to trickle in, and the extent of the horror becomes known, decisions are already being made that will affect the Haiti that emerges from this. Ansel Herz reports live from Port-Au-Prince on the role that the deployed US troops are playing, while author Peter Hallward weighs in on the role that the US has played in Haiti’s recent history and shares his concerns that post-earthquake Haiti will further cement the domination of the Haitian people by foreigners.
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U.S. troops in Haiti to prevent Aristide’s return
by Wayne Madsen
January 19, 2010 – onlinejournal.com
President Obama, in keeping with his CIA lineage, has permitted the Pentagon under Robert Gates to take charge of the humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti.
As Cuban and Venezuelan field hospitals were already rendering first aid and trauma care to Haitians injured in the mega-quake, Obama was gathered at a White House photo op with Vice President Joe Biden and other Cabinet officers to state that U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft would fly over Haiti to assess the situation from the air. A U.S. P-3 Orion spy plane from Comalapa air base in El Salvador was dispatched to conduct the surveillance operation, an act that was already being accomplished by earth satellites, the images of which were available on Google Maps.
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Haiti slum district hit hard
Please Don’t Superdome Haiti by Michelle Chen
For those who know how race and media intersect in times of crisis, the earthquake in Haiti has probably sent a bump through your pop-cultural seismograph. Now it’s becoming a flashpoint.
Continue reading Haiti slum district hit hard
Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti
By Stephen Lendman
January 18, 2010
In her book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” Naomi Klein explores the myth of free market democracy, explaining how neoliberalism dominates the world with America its main exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere.
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The Rescue Operation’s Priorities in Haiti
Class and Race Fear
By Nelson P. Valdés
January 18, 2010 – counterpunch.org
“The contempt we have been taught to entertain for blacks, make us fear many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience.”
– Alexander Hamilton in letter to John Hay, 1799.“Only those who hate the black population, see hatred in blacks”
– José Martí, Montecristi Manifesto, 1895
The recent earthquakes that have demolished the city of Port au Prince and its surroundings has left Haiti stateless, ever poorer, desperate and in need of long term global assistance. A world-wide rescue operation has been initiated. But, it is questionable to what extent the best interests of the people of Haiti have been and will be considered, in the long run.
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Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control
France, Venezuela, Nicaragua Accuse the US of Occupying Haiti
The United Nations must investigate and clarify the dominant U.S. role in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, a French minister said Monday, claiming that international aid efforts were about helping Haiti, not “occupying” it.
Chavez says U.S. occupying Haiti in name of aid
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused the United States of using the earthquake in Haiti as a pretext to occupy the devastated Caribbean country and offered to send fuel from his OPEC nation.
Clash over Haiti aid flights
Alain Joyandet, French co-operation minister, told reporters at the airport he had protested to Washington via the US ambassador about the US military’s management of the airport where he said a French medical aid flight had been turned away.
Ortega warns of US deployment in Haiti
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country.
“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday.
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Reparations, not handouts, for Haiti
By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2010
SO we cry for Haiti again. Yet another natural disaster, this time an earthquake of horrendous magnitude, has all but flattened what was left of that ‘cussed’ country. In the Caribbean, so full of heart are we, even those who survive barely above the poverty line give, be it cash or clothes or food. But will our generosity, will the US$1 billion or so in help that will flow over the next year make a difference to 4.5 million of seven million people who live on less than US$1 day?
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Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out
By Chris Floyd
January 15, 2010 – chris-floyd.com
Via Mark Crispin Miller, the Center for Constitutional Rights points to some venues for getting help to the people of Haiti: Partners in Health and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. You can find several more in this listing from the New York Times.
I.
The relentlessly maintained, deliberately inflicted political and economic ruin of Haiti has a direct bearing on the amount of death and devastation that the country is suffering today after the earthquake. It will also greatly cripple any recovery from this natural disaster. As detailed below, Washington’s rapacious economic policies have destroyed all attempts to build a sustainable economy in Haiti, driving people off the land and from small communities into packed, dangerous, unhealthy shantytowns, to try to eke out a meager existence in the sweatshops owned by Western elites and their local cronies. All attempts at changing a manifestly unjust society have been ruthlessly suppressed by the direct or collateral hand of Western elites.
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Haiti: The Aid Masquerade
By Kerry Trueman
January 14, 2010 – Green Fork
The horror in Haiti is beyond anything we can imagine in the U.S., but this apocalyptic catastrophe has something in common with Hurricane Katrina; in both cases, a terrible natural disaster was made infinitely worse by human negligence and incompetence. How many thousands of Haitians could have survived the earthquake if the country weren’t crippled by chronic poverty, shoddy infrastructure, environmental degradation and a host of other ills that have plagued Haiti for centuries?
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