Web of Democracy's Haiti earthquake aftermath round-up for January 29-31. Updates as/when necessary. Note: mainstream media coverage is slowing down to a trickle, but this website will continue to follow events closely.
- Mumia Abu-Jamal, 'Haiti's Suffering': "s we near two weeks after the devastating earthquake and terrifying aftershocks in Port-au-Prince and Zacmel, Haiti, we face the inevitable media wall, that closes up, unless a story emerges of such surprise and delight that it's able to shine through. For the media light, by it's very nature, must move on -- to the new, to the odd, to the freaky...But long before the earthquake of Jan. 12th, Haiti has been exposed to unique and vicious attacks for centuries, for daring to fight for, and win, Black freedom.Many people are amazed that Haitians are being found alive, after being buried under tons of rubble, for 10,11,12 days, with no food or water. I too shared that feeling. Be we forget that poverty and food insecurity in Haiti has meant the average Haitian ate only one meal every 2 -- or 3 -- days!..They've deserved far more than they've received. They breathed freedom into the lungs, not only of Blacks, but of millions of Latin Americans who chafed under Spanish colonial rule. They deserve wellness, health, self determination, prosperity, justice and peace. For 200 years, they've received none of this." [ZNet]
- Isabel Macdonald writes, ''New Haiti,' Same Corporate Interests': "In the wake of the earthquake that has killed more than 100,000 people in Haiti, the foreign ministers of several countries calling themselves the "Friends of Haiti" met on Monday in Montreal to discuss plans for "building a new Haiti."...However, the Latin American countries of ALBA--the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas--who held a counter-conference, and several grassroots Haiti solidarity organizations, who organized protests outside the conference, expressed skepticism that the "Friends of Haiti" and the international financial institutions would work to further the interests of ordinary Haitians." [The Nation]
- New video from Ansel Herz, 'Mistrusting of Their Government and UN, Haitians Place Their Hopes In US Troops, Aristide 29 Jan2010.' [MediaHacker]
- Bay Area Haitian-American activist Pierre Labossiere, 'This is Criminal': "I understand that what is going down on the ground right now is criminal. It has been beautiful the way that people have responded. I mean I’m overwhelmed by the response of the public here in the Bay Area and throughout the nation. I mean it is beautiful, people to people solidarity. It moves me, and I’ve shared that with brothas and sistas in Haiti, and they are moved. However, they have told me that all of those resources – the food, the water, the medicine, the medical supplies that they so desperately need – it is stuck at the airport and it is not being given to the people. So people are scrounging. Today, again, I spoke just before the show, I wanted to verify what was going on, and they told me, “Look, they are not providing us with anything, not distributing the food, the medical supplies or the water that people so desperately need.”[SFBayView]
- Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis interviews Haitian PM Jean-Max Bellerive [Al Jazeera]
- Unsurprisingly, Wyclef's uncle, coup supporter, and rabid anti-Lavalas Haitian Ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, was hosted by the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. He was joined on a panel by neo-con Thomas Donnelly, the CSIS think tanks, Johanna Mendelson Forman (former USAID functionary), coup-architect and the Bush administration's assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega, Robert Perito from the humanitarian imperialist United States 'Peace' Institute, and AEI's Tim Sullivan. [Video of the panel can be viewed here, high/lowlights of which will be posted shortly] (Joseph is among those calling for a "Marshall Plan for Haiti...led by the U.S."
- Right wing columnist Max Borders advocates 'shock doctrine' for Haiti
- James Kunder, former USAID official, now of the imperialist German Marshall Fund think tank/'democracy' promoter, uses the Haiti disaster as an opportunity to advocate for a 'humanitarian NATO.'
- 'Bad press in Haiti: Why the focus on looting?' [Globe & Mail Q&A with Rebecca Solnit]
- 'Feisty Haitian President rejects talk of U.S. domination': '"This is a distraction," he said stiffly when asked if he was worried the Haitian government is being usurped by the earthquake relief efforts of the United States. "You have your ideological problems. Resolve it yourself. We are talking about people suffering. You are talking about politics."...He insisted the Haitian government is facing a natural disaster far greater than any before and that it had no option but to ask the United States to step in and run the Port-au-Prince airport and the sea port..."The U.S. has enough problems in the world," Mr. Insulza [Seg-General of the OAS] said, concluding the Americans have no interest in taking over Haiti. "When there is an emergency, everyone tries to help. ... Did the Europeans lose their sovereignty under the Marshall Plan?"...When one reporter started asking about sweatshops that manufacture clothing, and whether the government planned to rebuild the economy on that basis, Mr. Préval responded by talking about the need to build bridges and roads and to locate more factories outside Port-au-Prince." [Globe and Mail]
- Adoptees of color roundtable statement on Haiti: "We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires." [Adoptees of Color]
- The other day, we drew your attention to Nikolas Kozloff's ill-informed piece that parroted Fox News, claiming that Chavez said the U.S. deliberately set off the earthquake with some sort of tectonic device. Now, presumably in response to understandable outcry, Kozloff has written a mea cupla of sorts, "Hugo Chávez has said a lot of wacky things over the years, but it may be that I erred in a recent column when I reported that the Venezuelan president had declared the U.S. guilty of causing the earthquake in Haiti through use of a secret weapon... I hold myself to high standards and if this particular story turns out to be false, as it appears to be, I hold myself responsible for my words and hereby retract the relevant sections of my report." [More, including tsk-tsking of 'the left' over lack of 'independent responsibility' for taking Chavez to task for various "wild claims" over the years, at Counterpunch]
- The Indypendent's 'Haiti: How to turn Disaster into Catastrophe' [w/cool illustrations]
- 'The U.S. Game in Latin America': "US interference in the politics of Haiti and Honduras is only the latest example of its long-term manipulations in Latin America." [Weisbrot in The Guardian]
- In contrast with the Guardian's commentary section, Latin American correspondent Rory Carroll is known to tow the doctrinal line (ie. usually in Venezuela). Having arrived in Haiti, he's attempted to provide a 'balanced' look at whether Haiti's sovereignty has "taken a back seat as US takes command," and/or whether this might be a good thing that Haitians embrace. Following the standard formula, Carroll also whitewashes the bloody, U.S./Canada/France-Haitian elite coup against Aristide in 2004, referring to it as merely "political upheaval." [The Guardian; more de facto Pentagon propaganda here and here from WaPo's embeds]
- In another interesting distortion of the events of 2004, CanWest's Norma Greenaway discusses whether or not Haiti's de facto trustees can now summon the "political will" to save the "basket case" once and for all. Greenaway puts a positive spin on the bloody coup: "The earthquake has wiped out marginal progress Haiti had enjoyed on the security, political and economic fronts since 2004 when — in the aftermath of the coup that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power — the United Nations, American and European international development banks, Canada and other countries signed on to the Interim Co-operation Framework." A moment later, she quotes Carlo Dade, who fondly recalls that the coup period "was a crucial moment, everyone was on the same page" (not in planning or consolidating the coup, but in 'helping' Haiti). Foreign involvement in the coup (and 3+ year destabilization that preceded it) is unworthy of mention; to the contrary, since the "coup" was indicative of "marginal progress," everything that proceeded from it was laudable. Equally, no mention that the "aftermath" of the coup involved thousands of murders, illegal roundups of Lavalas, and the exclusion of Haiti's largest party from the political process, all at the behest of the foreigners then running the country. [CanWest, 'Could Haiti's heart-wrenching misfortune be a turning point?']
- 'Photos of drinking, grinning aid mission doctors cause uproar' [CNN]
- 'Police resort to violence in bid to help distribute aid in Haiti' [New Zealand Herald]
- 'U.S. Suspends Haitian airlift in Cost Dispute': "The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday." [New York Times]