Tag Archives: USA

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control

5 Comments

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.
Continue reading Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control →

Caribbean, CARICOM, Haiti, International, USA

Reparations, not handouts, for Haiti

12 Comments

By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2010

HaitiSO 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?
Continue reading Reparations, not handouts, for Haiti →

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out

2 Comments

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.

HaitiThe 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.
Continue reading Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out →

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Haiti: The Aid Masquerade

9 Comments

By Kerry Trueman
January 14, 2010 – Green Fork

HaitiThe 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?
Continue reading Haiti: The Aid Masquerade →

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

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.
Continue reading Catastrophe in Haiti →

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Our Role in Haiti’s Plight

2 Comments

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.
Continue reading Our Role in Haiti’s Plight →

International, USA

The American Elite

2 Comments

By William Blum
January 6th, 2010 – killinghope.org

1900 Campaign poster for the Republican PartyLincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".
Continue reading The American Elite →

International, Latin America, USA

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on How to Tackle Climate Change: “We Must Go from Capitalism to Socialism”

December 23rd 2009
by Amy Goodman – Democracy Now!
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog

President Hugo ChavezVenezuelan President Hugo Chavez spared no criticism of the climate conference in Copenhagen. At a joint news conference he held with the Bolivian president Evo Morales on Friday afternoon—this was before President Obama announced the accord—Chavez called the proceedings undemocratic and accused world leaders of only seeking a face-saving agreement. He described President Obama as having won the “Nobel war prize” and said the world still smelled of sulfur, referring to his comments about President Bush at the United Nations last year. Well, shortly after the news conference, I caught up with President Chavez for a few minutes.
Continue reading Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on How to Tackle Climate Change: “We Must Go from Capitalism to Socialism” →

International, Race and Identity

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”?

21 Comments

By Annalee Newitz
December 18, 2009 – http://io9.com

The Movie "Avatar"Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it’s about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers…
Continue reading When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like “Avatar”? →

International, Politics, USA

Obama Pledges Action With Or Without Climate Deal

United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark

President Barack Obama — December 18, 2009

President Barack Obama spoke on the last day of climate talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The President called on all major economies to put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions and turn the corner on climate change.
Continue reading Obama Pledges Action With Or Without Climate Deal →