Out of Ruin, Haiti's Visionaries By Holland Cotter
In a disaster, you focus on lives first, all else later. When the earthquake hit Haiti in January, the news was about the dead and missing, miraculous survivals, towns smashed to bits.
Swiss court: Duvalier family appeals cash freezing By Eliane Engeler
Relatives of Haiti's ex-dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier have appealed a decision by Switzerland to keep frozen at least $4.6 million claimed by the family, a court said Wednesday.
Storm Clouds on Haiti Horizon Threaten Earthquake Refugees
By Kenneth Kidd
With the United Nations and aid agencies still scrambling to provide adequate shelter for those displaced by the earthquake, the potential for a second major crisis looms with the imminent arrival of torrential rains.
What Haitians Want from Americans (And What They Don't)
By Beverly Bell
We asked Haitians in civil society organizations, on the streets, in buses, "What do you want from the U.S.? What help can Americans give Haiti?" Here are some of their answers.
Haiti and the Ugly Side of Debt Relief
In 1803, the slave rebellion in Haiti defeated Bonaparte and 1804 saw the birth of an independent nation. But just 20 years later, France exacted reparations for the loss of its colony totaling $20 billion in today's currency. Between 1957 and 1986, the Duvaliers ruled Haiti with US backing ending in the popular overthrow of Baby Doc, the son. By the time he fled the country, the foreign debt amounted to over $750m. Since then, the debt continued to rise through interest and penalties. Meanwhile the Duvalier family seems to have over $900m in western bank accounts, the subject of a trial currently before the Swiss courts.
Haitian Women Mourn the Dead, Recommit to the Living on International Women's Day By Beverly Bell
All over Haiti on March 8, International Women's Day, women's groups met to honor their dead and raise up their living. As for how to raise up the living, Myriam Merlet, a pioneering feminist who died in the earthquake, once said this: "This society [must] get to a different theory and application of power in all aspects. Of course, it's a utopian dream. But the more people dream, the more likely that power can change. The more people share in the same dream, the more likely we'll achieve it collectively."
HAITI: Stealth Zone By Richard Morse
I first heard the term RED ZONE in reference to the WAR in IRAQ. The term seemed to imply that if you entered the RED ZONE of Iraq and you were an American or if you could be mistaken for an American, then you would either be killed or kidnapped. The other rating I read about was GREEN ZONE which, from the press reports, seemed to imply; a militarily secured area where though you could still be killed or kidnapped or blown up by a roadside bomb, it was less likely to happen. The first time I heard these terms in Haiti was seven or eight years ago when an effort was being made to topple President Aristide's government by an alliance of Haiti's Economic Elites and THE powers in Washington DC.
Haiti copes with a nightmare
Los Angeles filmmaker and environmental educator Dave Chameides traveled to Haiti two weeks after the earthquake as part of a camera crew for a documentary being made about the humanitarian organization Partners in Health. He talked to Cindy Kaffen about what he saw.
Former Jamaica PM addresses St Lucia audience: 'Haiti didn't jump, it was pushed!'
Most people know that Haiti has a long record of being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but most don't know that Haiti was the second country in the hemisphere to free itself from colonialism and the first to abolish slavery. Most people think of voodoo and superstition when they think of Haiti, ignorant of the invaluable wealth that country has brought to Caribbean history, culture and its earliest politics of liberation.
Clean-up effort begins in ruined Port-au-Prince
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visits Haiti on Sunday for the second time since the huge Jan. 12 earthquake, a clean-up operation is slowly beginning in Port-au-Prince. An exclusive report by FRANCE 24.
Haiti's long history of imperialist oppression
The sickening hypocrisy of the US and European powers in their response to the latest calamity in Haiti has a long history that goes back to the French revolution. Haiti became the first Black Republic in 1804 and is has paid the price ever since for having the temerity to fight a war of independence against France to free itself from slavery. Napoleon granted the slaves their freedom only to retract his edict when lobbied by the French slaveowning bourgeoisie.
Haiti's victims still waiting for aid By Roger Annis
It's been more than seven weeks since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and familiar patterns of interference and neglect and by the major powers that dominate the country are firmly entrenched. Notwithstanding heroic efforts by ordinary Haitian people, Haitian government officials and agencies, and many international organizations, a grave health risk hovers over the people residing in the earthquake zone or who have fled beyond it. Meanwhile, the direction of Haiti's reconstruction remains entirely undetermined.
Imperialist domination and the popular masses in Haiti By Jan Makandal
In consolidating the Haitian dominant classes and their state apparatus, imperialism plays a direct and indirect role in maintaining the dictatorship of the dominant classes on the masses. Imperialism intervenes directly on class struggles in the Haitian social formation. Its principal form of intervention is the consolidation of repression and oppression on the popular masses. Imperialists use many structural apparatus to directly partition and control the popular masses. They use religious apparatus under the control of, mostly, the US embassy. In popular zones, they use all kinds of NGOs, political gangs, drug gangs, smuggling gangs and paramilitary forces to control the popular masses.
US-UN Peace-keepers bring Rwandan Police to Haiti By Ann Garrison
In case anyone needed further evidence that President Paul Kagame's Rwanda is the Pentagon's proxy, 140 Rwandan police are about to undertake special training before heading to Haiti, as reported in the Rwanda New Times, because, according to Rwandan Police Chief Edmund Kayiranga, "Rwanda wants to be involved in promoting peace in other countries" and, if need be, they would send more peacekeepers to other countries.
HAITI: US Marines, With Little to Do, Play Cards and Train for Afghanistan
The US Marines are under the impression that the relief effort has been "scaled back" and that there is little left for them to do. They are spending their remaining days in Haiti playing cards and training for Afghanistan. Here's my short list for how they might busy themselves: dig latrines, construct shelters, distribute food and aid, help with transport of individuals needing follow-up medical care and, maybe, a little rubble removal.
Haiti's Earthquake Victims in Peril By Roger Annis
It's been nearly eight weeks since the devastating earthquake in Haiti and familiar patterns of interference and neglect and by the major powers that dominate the country are firmly entrenched. Notwithstanding heroic efforts of ordinary Haitian people, Haitian government officials and agencies, and many international organizations, a grave health risk hovers over the people residing in the earthquake zone or who have fled beyond it. Meanwhile, the direction of Haiti's reconstruction remains entirely undetermined.
» UN chief sees dangers up-close in Haiti quake camp
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came to Haiti on Sunday to offer assurances of his commitment to a post-earthquake nation that is short of shelter and suffering growing violence in teeming camps for the homeless.
UPDATES: March 13, 2010
Haiti's Fayette Villagers Forgotten at Epicenter By Georgianne Nienaber
Day Three in Haiti began with a planned trip to Leogane, which is always referenced in mainstream media as the epicenter of the epic January 12 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that flattened 90 percent of the town of 120,000, leaving up to 30,000 dead.
Haiti Loses Its Lifeboat By Sheri Fink
The USNS Comfort left Haitian waters this week, declaring the Navy boat's humanitarian mission accomplished. But was it? ProPublica's Sheri Fink on the medical mess left behind.
Haiti: Disaster Capitalism on Steroids By Robert Roth
"Two months after the devastating earthquake, the situation in Haiti is downright criminal," says Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson of the activist network Haiti Action Committee, major western players such as the US are more interested in defending their own geopolitical interests in Haiti than truly helping the hardly hit Caribbean country.
HAITI: Jagdeo rushes to the defence of earthquake devastated Haiti
Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo said Thursday, developed countries are using the charges of corruption against Haiti as an excuse to deny the country aid and accused Caribbean states of accepting too readily the will of the United States. "We have to start to thinking on our own. We need in this region to understand what are our challenges and not be afraid to confront them and to say to the developed world that we need real partnerships in these matters," Jagdeo told journalists as he addressed the question of how to ensure that aid sent to Haiti did not meet with corrupt practices.
HAITI: Caribbean Unites Behind Recovery Plans By Peter Richards
As he travels back to his headquarters in Washington, World Bank president Robert Zoellick must be painfully aware that Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries have very strong feelings on the redevelopment of Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake. Zoellick met with regional leaders on Thursday, the first of the two-day CARICOM intersessional summit. While Haitian President René Préval was not present, Caribbean leaders there pressed for a "designated development fund for Haiti where all the resources which have been pledged by various countries and institutions could be deposited into a special account".
Haitian president at White House: US military occupation to continue By Hiram Lee
Haitian President René Préval met Barack Obama at the White House Wednesday to discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake that killed up to a quarter of a million people. In a private meeting, Préval made an appeal for continued financial support for the relief efforts in his beleaguered country.
Haiti quake deaths were 'avoidable' BBC
Two months after more than 200,000 people died in the Haiti earthquake, there are questions about whether many of the deaths could have been avoided.
A tale of two earthquakes? By Ashley Smith
The world's tectonic plates are always in motion, but in the past two months, they seem to have struck more dramatically than usual. On January 12, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, killing as many as 300,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million people homeless. Then, on February 27, another quake hit southwestern Chile, killing hundreds and leaving more than 2 million people homeless.
Why Haiti is called a "predatory democracy" By Al Calloway
A well-established formula that Haiti's mulatto elite employ to exercise power is called politique de doublure ("government of the understudy.") In this paradigm, black presidents, high-ranking army officers and a tiny black elite are in "power," while the mulatto politicians pull the strings from behind the scenes. Charles Arthur and Michael Dash, editors of the book Libéte: A Haiti Anthology report that, "This system barely masked a continuing and deep-seated social antipathy between mulatto and black elites."
Haiti's Excluded By Reed Lindsay
Ruth Derilus had seen her share of tragedy. A 33-year-old iron-willed social worker trained by Haiti's Papay Peasant Movement, she twice helped organize relief efforts when massive floods devastated the city of Gonaïves and the surrounding countryside. In September 2004 she worked with women's and youth groups after Tropical Storm Jeanne killed more than 3,000 people. Four years later, she lost her home when a second deluge, unleashed by Tropical Storm Hanna and augmented by Hurricane Ike, once again brought the city to its knees. Ruth kept on going, working to organize rice farmers whose crops had been destroyed.
The Sanitation Crisis in Port-au-Prince By Sasha Kramer
I have been out of touch for the past several weeks. Every day is like a lifetime and at the end we just collapse into bed after a cold shower, and in the morning we sit up and look out at the camp spread before us and the whirlwind begins again. But most of us have managed to hold on to our sanity, tethering our minds to our work. As the weeks go by the city begins to look more familiar, the shattered buildings have become a part of my mindscape and there are moments when I barely notice them. People wind through the traffic jams and the streets are lined with vendors, people who have left the camps during the day to return to their old sites along the street, sitting in front of their crumbled homes selling fried food and soaps. Children run around the camps in packs and their laughter filters through my pillows.
IMF Imperialism in Haiti By Wade McManus
The international lending institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is at work again with its one trick pony show. This Western imperialist machine's gears continue to manufacture "rapidly developing" economies. Many of the globe's poorest nations have accused the IMF of spreading a new form of colonialism, one not necessarily controlled by military force, but like a puppet connected to strings. To gain power and influence the IMF offers extremely impoverished and disaster stricken nations loans they can't afford to refuse.
Aristide victimized by 'big lie' purveyors By Ajamu Nangwaya
The disinformation and character assassination campaign against Dr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas movement has been relentless and intense. The only "crimes" they committed were to create social and economic programs to help Haiti's poor.
U.S. doctors leave Haiti as Cubans expand care By Cindy Jaquith
With thousands in Haiti still in critical need of medical care, the U.S. government is pulling out the doctors it is responsible for. Meanwhile, the Cuban government is expanding its medical mission to Haiti and urging doctors from other countries to join it.
Clinton-Bush Pick "Board" to Run Their Haiti Aid Fund – A Lot of Old Cronies and at least One Dunce
The obvious problem is that the Board is comprised of all former government officials. It is headed by a former national security advisor who helped establish the Millenium Challenge Corp. which says quite a bit about the Fund's priorities. The Board also includes Bush' s former head of the USAID, an agency that did about as much as possible to screw up pre-earthquake Haiti, including the coup against President Aristide. And, on top of all this, did they have to appoint former Republican Senator, Dr. Bill Frist, as well?
Haitians still desperate for help By AlJazeera English
Two months after a massive earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti and left the Caribbean island in ruins, the country's president travelled to the US seeking billions of dollars in aid.
Haiti's 'orphans' kept from parents By AlJazeera English
Eight of the 10 Christian missionaries that were detained in Haiti after they illegally tried to take 33 Haitian children across the border - following January's devastating earthquake - have been freed and are now back at home in the US. They were released after some parents of the Haitian children came forward to the court admitting that they willingly gave away their children to the US missionary group in hopes of providing them "a better life".
Haiti: A Truly Astounding Gift By Sam Isaac Edwards
In the western hemisphere there exists but one small populational subset that is equally as poor and equally as needy as those who now inhabit Port au Prince. It is the half million or so Hondurans who live on the Moskita Coast, a geographically isolated region of the Honduran jungle along the border with Nicarauga.
Haiti: The Camp That Vanished By Ansel Herz
Perched near the top of a steep hill, the fractured pink walls of Villa Manrese overlook the rest of the capital city. Both ends of the three-story compound have collapsed, spilling into mounds of rubble. The first floor was pulverised into a layer of dust. There are still bodies inside.
Haiti: Hillary Wants Elections Soon, But There is One Little Problem ...
and it has to do with the fact that in the two previous elections (February and June 2009), the Haitian electoral commission, disallowed candidates from the largest party in Haiti, Lavalas, from appearing on the ballot. Lavalas is the party started by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and is supported by the overwhelming majority of Haiti's poor. Keeping Lavalas candidates off the ballot is the only way to prevent Lavals candidates from winning elections. Lavalas voters boycotted last year's elections and, as any poll worker can testify, waiting for people to show up to vote was like watching paint dry. For more info, see Kevin Pina's article, Boycott Shuts Down Haiti Elections.
» U.S. Tells Haitian Elections Will Ensure More Global Aid
Haitian President Rene Preval meets with President Obama tomorrow to thank him for the more than $700 million the U.S. sent to the island after the Jan. 12 earthquake, but he's also here to be put on notice that the world expects timely elections to be held next year.
UPDATES: March 08, 2010
Haiti medics struggling to cope By Aljazeera
Two months after the an earthquake killed more than 220,000 people in Haiti, many international doctors are heading home. Medical care is increasingly left in the hands of Haitian doctors and nurses. Many of them have not been paid for weeks, and they are struggling to replace the medical professionals who were killed in the quake.
Clearing the Rubble, Including the Old Plan for Haiti By Mark Schuller
Yesterday was the Oscars. Last year's Best Actor Sean Penn made the morning's headlines, donating a million dollars to Haiti's relief / reconstruction effort. Collectively U.S. citizens have donated $1 billion so far. Two questions arise: one, which I and many others have asked numerous times, where is this money being spent, how, and what plan? A second, related question is where Haiti will get the funds for the rest of the effort conservatively estimated at $16 billion.
Haitian Women Mourn the Dead and Recommit to the Living (International Women's Day Part 1) By Beverly Bell
All over Haiti on March 8, International Women's Day, women's groups will meet to honor their dead and raise up their living. As for how to raise up the living, Myriam Merlet, a pioneering feminist who died in the earthquake once said this: "This society [must] get to a different theory and application of power in all aspects.
U.S. to Haitians: Stay Home and Bear the Burden
By Todd Miller
Five days after the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, an air force cargo plane flew one of the first missions of the U.S. military's aid effort. The plane flew for five hours over the devastated country broadcasting the loud, prerecorded voice of Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, in Creole: "If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case. They will intercept you right in the water and send you back home where you came from."
Haiti's Grasses of Ginen
By Beverly Bell
The downtown, around Grand Rue in the old part of the city, looks like a modern-day variant of Pompei. Nothing but ruins. Here the tall buildings didn't even pancake; they just crumbled.
Give Haiti control over its recovery
By Monika Kalra Varma and Loune Viaud
Since January's devastating earthquake in Haiti, well-meaning experts have proposed an abundance of short-term and long-term recovery solutions. They ask why aid delivery has been so slow, why previous development plans for Haiti have rarely been successful, and why billions of dollars in funding over decades have not improved conditions for the most impoverished people in our hemisphere.
When It Rains in Haiti, It Pours Demonstrators
No one knows it better than Kevin Pina, journalist and documentary filmmaker, and author of the following article about a recent demonstration in Port-au-Prince after a rain. What Kevin knows is that a camera is the best weapon. The Haitian National Police, under the eye of the camera, are amazingly restrained. Before they shove a protester, they check to see if the camera is pointed at them. And, in a confrontation between Haitian National Police and demonstrators when cameras are not around? Severe beatings, summary executions, and UN "peacekeepers" serving as lookouts.
Writing Off Sovereignty By Darren Ell
In the five weeks following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Quebec's mainstream French-language media focused a considerable amount of attention on the devastated nation. What follows is a critical look at the opinions expressed by columnists during this time. Their ideas on three themes are examined: (1) The Reconstruction Process; (2) Haiti's poverty; and (3) Attitudes towards former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his party, Fanmi Lavalas.
Haiti Earthquake aid should go to Haiti's popular organizations, not to contractors or NGOs By Keane Bhatt Noam Chomsky Post-Earthquake interview
For decades, Noam Chomsky has been an analyst and activist working in support of the Haitian people. In addition to his revolutionary linguistics career at MIT, he has written, lectured and protested against injustice for 40 years. He is co-author, along with Paul Farmer and Amy Goodman of "Getting Haiti Right This Time: The U.S. and the Coup." His analysis "The Tragedy of Haiti" from his 1993 book Year 501: The Conquest Continues is available for free online. This interview was conducted in late February 2010 by phone and email. It was first published in ¡Reclama! magazine. The interviewer thanks Peter Hallward for his kind assistance.
» Cuban Cultural Brigade to Arrive in Haiti
Marta Machado Brigade headed by prestigious Cuban plastic artist Alexis Leyva (Kcho) is expected in this city. The brigade will perform cultural activities in the settlements where the quake victims live.
