Tag Archives: Disaster

Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Haiti: The Aid Masquerade

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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?
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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.
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Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

Our Role in Haiti’s Plight

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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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Caribbean, Haiti, International, USA

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

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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.
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