Category Archives: Haiti

Cuba is Missing… From US Reports on the International Response to Haiti’s Earthquake

By Dave Lindorff
January 15, 2010 – thiscantbehappening.net

HaitiThere are only two US media outlets that have reported on Cuba’s response to the deadly 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti. One was Fox News, which claimed, wrongly, that the Cubans were absent from the list of neighboring Caribbean countries providing aid. The other was the Christian Science Monitor (a respected news organization that recently shut down its print edition), which reported correctly that Cuba had dispatched 30 doctors to the stricken nation.
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Catastrophe in Haiti

By Ashley Smith
January 14, 2010 – socialistworker.org

HaitiA devastating earthquake, the worst in 200 years, struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, laying waste to the city and killing untold numbers of people. The quake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, and detonated more than 30 aftershocks, all more than 4.5 in magnitude, through the night and into Wednesday morning.

The earthquake toppled poorly constructed houses, hotels, hospitals and even the capital city’s main political buildings, including the presidential palace. The collapse of so many structures sent a giant cloud into the sky, which hovered over the city, raining dust down onto the wasteland below.
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Our Role in Haiti’s Plight

If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it

By Peter Hallward
January 13, 2010 – guardian.co.uk

HaitiAny large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti’s capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it’s no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.
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7.0 Earthquake Devastates Haiti

Haiti earthquake aftermath

Wyclef Jean, Fellow Celebs Solicit Support for Haiti

Photos

Large Number Of UN Staff Missing After Haiti Quake -Official

Hundreds feared dead in Haiti earthquake

7.0 quake hits Haiti, hospital collapses
A strong earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday, where a hospital collapsed and people were screaming for help. The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles west from Port-au-Prince, the USGS said. (Jan. 12)
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Report says 225,000 Haiti children work as slaves

By Evens Sanon and Jonathan M. Katz
Associated Press writer © 2009 The Associated Press

HaitiPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Poverty has forced at least 225,000 children in Haiti’s cities into slavery as unpaid household servants, far more than previously thought, a report said Tuesday.

The Pan American Development Foundation’s report also said some of those children — mostly young girls — suffer sexual, psychological and physical abuse while toiling in extreme hardship.

Full Article : chron.com

Cry, the Unforgiven Country: Obama’s ‘Continuity’ in Haiti

The area of Bas-Ravine, in the northern part of Haiti
The area of Bas-Ravine, in the northern part of Haiti
Photo taken by Rémi Kaupp wikipedia.org

By Chris Floyd
April 28, 2009 – chris-floyd.com

Haiti has been a cursed nation throughout its existence. As I noted in a piece in 2004:

Exactly two hundred years ago, Haitian slaves overthrew their French masters — the first successful national slave revolt in history. What Spartacus dreamed of doing, the Haitian slaves actually accomplished. It was a tremendous achievement — and the white West has never forgiven them for it.

In order to win international recognition for their new country, Haiti was forced to pay “reparations” to the slaveowners – a crushing burden of debt they were still paying off at the end of the 19th century. The United States, which refused to recognize the country for more than 60 years, invaded Haiti in 1915, primarily to open it up to “foreign ownership of local concerns.” After 19 years of occupation, the Americans backed a series of bloodthirsty dictatorships to protect these “foreign owners.” And still it goes on.

It certainly does — even under the “enlightened” foreign policy of Barack Obama. As John Caruso reports (in separate pieces in A Distant Ocean and A Tiny Revolution), Obama and his “superstar” secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, are loudly championing the latest egregious, brutal farce that Washington and the West have foisted upon the uppity natives of Haiti.
Continue reading Cry, the Unforgiven Country: Obama’s ‘Continuity’ in Haiti