- Continuing live reports from Haiti, Pina over at Flashpoints.
- 'Montreal hosts Haiti aid talks: Activists decry militarization, profiteering, and political exclusion': "When countries like Canada, for example, [and] the United States say...‘We’re spending money to support democracy in Haiti,’ I think that in the end...that’s pure and simple hypocrisy,” said [Patrique] Volny [a member Fanmi Lavalas Montreal]. “Since Canada, the U.S. and France overthrew Haiti’s elected government nearly six years ago, there’s been a continued exclusion of the most popular party from the political process,” said [Yves] Engler. “Haiti’s not going to be rebuilt with the political exclusion of the majority poor of the country.”...Carlo Dade, executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, remained committed to the idea of extending loans to Haiti. “For productive investments, you have to keep the economic discipline in place,” he said...The general consensus among conference’s participants was that the private sector would have a massive role to play in Haiti’s redevelopment. Cannon thanked the private sector for contributing to the aid appeal, and stressed that it “will also play an important role in Haiti’s future.”...Inside the conference, Dade stressed the private sector’s importance in Haiti’s future economy. “Cell phone companies are booming in Haiti,” he said. “We’ve seen foreign investment in garment factories, so people are making good in Haiti.” [more critical reporting of the Montreal Summit at McGill Daily]
- 'Local Leaders Shut Out of Military-Run Relief Efforts': ""They have made many promises, but we don't see the action yet," Salam said, referring to the international community. "We have a lot of people suffering. There is an expectation that help will come." Little food and water has been distributed by the dozens U.S. troops milling about the beach since the earthquake, according to local leaders. "I went there to talk to them," said Jean-Jacob Renee, an English teacher. "They said they are there to set up some tents for themselves, but they did not come with food or water - anything for the people...An analysis by the Associated Press on Wednesday found that 33 cents of every dollar towards emergency aid in Haiti goes to military aid, more than three times the nine cents spent on food." [Ansel Herz, for IPS]
- John Pilger's, 'The Kidnapping of Haiti': "For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the "relief effort": a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene's The Comedians, set in Papa Doc's Haiti. As president, Bush's relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans' black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti's sweatshops." [New Statesman]
- Also over at New Statesman, Peter Hallward penned, "The land that wouldn't lie': "The Haitian people overthrew slavery, uprooted dictators and foreign military rule, and elected a liberation theologian as president. The west has made them pay for their audacity." [TNS, h/t & full version]
- See Haitian journalist, Project Censored Award winner Wadner Pierre's blog.
- Tomorrow (Friday) night, candle light vigil for Haiti across Brooklyn Bridge. [Haiti Liberte]
- ESPN fires former NBA bench warmer Paul Shirley (3 seasons, 3 teams, 1.8 PPG, 6.7 Min PG), after he joined ranks with Limbaugh and Robertson uttering racist, ignorant comments about Haitians. [CBS]
- 'Context to catastrophe: A large part of the suffering of Haiti now is due to US efforts to keep the country down writes Curtis Doebbler: "Ironically, one of Haiti's best known native sons -- Jean Baptiste Point du Sable -- founded the city of Chicago, Illinois in the United States; the city from which US President Barack Obama hails. Perhaps this will serve as inspiration for the US government led by President Obama to break with the past and to help Haitian people to develop freely. This would mean the US embracing instead of rejecting Haitian self-determination." [For Al-Ahram]
- 'U.S. to Blame for Haiti?' [Ted Rall for Fort Worth Weekly]
- Perspective on Latin American reaction to Haiti's disaster, 'Haiti: Race, Colonialism, and Univision': When the Haitians aren’t criminalized on the Spanish networks, they are infantilized, also in racist and stereotypical ways...While watching the Univision telethon I heard Don Francisco say at
least half a dozen times how “forgotten” Haiti was. This to me is like
saying Columbus fucking “discovered” America. Haiti is not some
mythical place that suddenly appeared in the Caribbean as the result of
violent seismic shift. It has been for thousands of years, evolving,
growing, surviving and beyond surviving over there and here, wherever
your here is. If you never saw it before, you weren’t paying attention." [VivirLatino]
- 'SLAMjamz artists create HAITI relief album': "To show and step up as both a symbol of how quickly a label works in this digital century as well as contributing the gift of music to help those in need, SLAMjamz has helped in creating an album to help those in need of relief from the earthquake in HAITI. The earthquake has devastated the nation. In response a multi track album has been assembled and produced by DJ Johnny JUICE Rosado including Chuck D, KYLE JASON, PROFESSOR GRIFF, HEET MOB, Studdahman connect DONIQUE and the representative blazing 'Knockin' on the Lord's Back Door' by Haitian MCS , HI COUP." [SLAMjamz.com]
- 'Bill Moyers: Haiti's Problems Are Rooted in Its Colonial Legacy': "Despite what Pat Robertson and David Brooks tell you, Haiti's devastation is the product of Western domination -- not regressive social norms or Satanism." [AlterNet]
- 'Security hysteria feeding the fight for food': "The Canadian military, too, is here to provide security as well as clean-up operations and medical help. These soldiers are more conspicuously armed today, on day 11, than they were two days ago. Canadian Navy Lieutenant Anthony Francis tells me on January 22 that they’re having few security problems. Locals, he says, “are very cooperative.” He goes on to explain that “the first day, we had 9mms and long guns. But it was determined that it was too aggressive a posture. It was scaring people away.” [Tim Schwartz, reporting for Now from the epicentre of the earthquake's wrath, in Leogane]
- Outsiders believe this island nation is a land of bandits. Blame the NGOs for the “looting": "This is about “loot,” free stuff, something there for the taking, an unearned resource that has no apparent owner. Haitians have another name for it. They call it “piyay,” materials to be pillaged, and it usually refers to goods from blan, who for more than five decades have been inundating Haiti with food, used clothes and other aid. Most outsiders have been conditioned to believe that anarchic Haiti is a land of bandits, but all the evidence suggests the contrary, at least compared with New York City or Washington, DC...Outsiders aghast at the behaviour of Haitians should look deeply at the behaviour of the individuals, institutions and governments that have wantonly, and never with follow-up accountability, rained aid down on Haiti." [Second of two from Schwartz for Now]
- The Michael Slate [Radio] Show: "The American Dream in Haiti: Mass Murder, Systemic Pillaging and Christian Fascism": "Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, on the fact that the death toll did not have to be so huge in Haiti and that the US will not - and cannot- do any good in Haiti today; Jeb Sprague, journalist, on what capitalism's plunder of Haiti had to do with the earthquake toll; Rob Boston, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on the most dangerous man in America - Pat Robertson." [via Radio4All]
- IMF loans Haiti $114 million, says sweatshops running at 80 per cent capacity. [Reuters]
- Another Counterpunch 3-fer: "Bill Quigley's 'Haitians are Helping Haitians,' Tonya Golash-Boza's 'Sensationalizing Suffering: Struggling for Dignity and Survival in Haiti,' and Wajahat Ali's "Unexpected Partners: Muslims Helping Haiti.'
- Last but not least, Howard Zinn on Haiti, published the day before he died: "Haiti is one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. foreign policy because Haiti is a neighbor (as is Cuba, where a similar relationship has persisted) and we have treated Haiti with cruelty all through our history. When it became the first independent black Republic in this hemisphere, defeating the Napoleonic army, the administration of Thomas Jefferson (ironically, author of our Declaration of Independence) refused to recognize it. And in the early 20th century, repeated Marine excursions to put down rebellions, and in 1916, the supposed "idealist" and proclaimer of "self-determination" Woodrow Wilson sent an occupation army, killing several thousand Haitians who would not accept our rule. The occupation lasted eighteen years. And since then, as you note, support of the Duvalier dictatorship. And hostility to Aristide the first democratically elected president. And for some time now, strangling Haiti economically, and ruining its rice crop for the benefit of U.S. exporters. If we weren't spending hundreds of billions on stupid wars, we could have made much of Port-Au-Prince less vulnerable to natural disasters. [TruthOut]