| Old Articles | | Sunday, January 17 | | · | Why the US Owes Haiti Billions – The Briefest History |
| · | Shock Therapy? Haiti, Where America Never Learns |
| · | Reparations, not handouts, for Haiti |
| Friday, January 15 | | · | Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out |
| · | Haiti: The Aid Masquerade |
| · | Cuba's Response to Haiti’s Earthquake |
| · | A dirty war in Aden: Britain’s role in Yemen’s history |
| · | Haitian Earthquake Disaster: Made in the USA |
| Thursday, January 14 | | · | Catastrophe in Haiti |
| · | Our Role in Haiti's Plight |
| Wednesday, January 13 | | · | Obama’s Alternate Universe |
| Sunday, January 10 | | · | Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? |
| Friday, January 08 | | · | The Anti-Empire Report: The American Elite |
| Thursday, January 07 | | · | Yemen is latest target in US war |
| Wednesday, January 06 | | · | The 'War on Terror' Has Been About Scaring People, Not Protecting Them |
| Monday, January 04 | | · | Are US Forces Executing Kids in Afghanistan? |
| · | The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning |
| Saturday, January 02 | | · | Breaking With Obama? |
| Tuesday, December 29 | | · | The Iranian Nuke Forgeries: CIA Determines Documents Were Fabricated |
| Thursday, December 24 | | · | President Hugo Chavez on How to Tackle Climate Change |
Older Articles
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 | | War and Terror: Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
Monday, February 08 @ 19:52:59 AST |  By Chris Floyd
February 08, 2010 - chris-floyd.com
The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.
Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it all means. You will not be surprised to hear that the upshot of these big deficits is that neither Obama nor his successors will be able to spend any money on "new domestic initiatives" for years to come. But let's let Sanger, savant and seer, tell it in his own words:
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War and Terror: Liberals Get a War President of Their Very Own
Monday, February 08 @ 19:32:50 AST |  By Murray Polner
February 08, 2010 - hnn.us
Suddenly and surprisingly, we have a Bush-like Obama Doctrine. To the applause of liberal hawks and formerly critical neocons, the president declared in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that the U.S. will continue to wage war—though naturally, only “just” war—anywhere and against anyone it chooses in a never-ending struggle against the forces of evil. His antiwar supporters can take seats on the sidelines. It’s all reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and the prescient George Ball, and afterward Ball and Lyndon Johnson. In the early ’60s, JFK—reluctantly, we are told by his admirers—decided to send 16,000 “trainers” to Vietnam to teach the South Vietnamese how to play soldier and to stop the Communists from sweeping over Southeast Asia. Vast quantities of money and assorted advisers were shipped without accountability to the corrupt gang of thugs running and ruining that country.
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Latin America: Obama's base pact with Colombia accelerates 'dangerous trend'
Tuesday, February 02 @ 21:48:12 AST |  By Sherwood Ross
February 02, 2010
The Obama administration’s pact to use seven Colombian military bases accelerates “a dangerous trend in U.S. hemispheric policy,” an article in The Nation magazine warns.
The White House claims the deal merely formalizes existing military cooperation but the Pentagon’s 2009 budget request said it needed funds to improve one of the bases in order to conduct “full spectrum operations throughout South America” and to “expand expeditionary warfare capability.”
“With a hodgepodge of treaties and projects, such as the International Law Enforcement Academy and the Merida Initiative, Obama is continuing the policies of his predecessors, spending millions to integrate the region’s military, policy, intelligence and even, through Patriot Act-like legislation, judicial systems,” writes historian Greg Grandin, a New York University professor.
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Caribbean: Q & A with the State Department on Haiti
Friday, January 29 @ 14:41:22 AST |  Sending in the Marines
By Judith Scherr
January 29, 2010 - counterpunch.org
The French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet accused the U.S. of “occupying” Haiti rather than helping in the wake of the devastating January 12, 7.0 earthquake. Doctors Without Borders and officials from the Caribbean community expressed similar frustrations, as US military personnel controlling the airport turned away their planes. With just under 20,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Haiti or just off shore, the U.N. military force has augmented its numbers to around 12,000. Still, more than two weeks after the disaster, Haitians lack water, food, medicine, shelter and equipment to dig out those that may still be alive under the rubble.
On January 25 I spoke by phone to Virginia Staab a state department deputy press advisor for Western Hemisphere affairs. I asked about the role of the U.S. and U.N. military forces in post-quake Haiti, and the U.S. reaction to former President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s announcement that he wants to come home [Aristide was ousted in February 2004 by the U.S., France and Canada and exiled in South Africa]. I wanted to know who will rebuild Haiti and how Guantanamo fits into the picture. The transcript that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Caribbean: Media Failures on Haiti: Great Television, Bad Journalism
Monday, January 25 @ 13:47:24 AST | By Robert Jensen
January 25, 2010 - commondreams.org
CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera (but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.
“We don’t know what happened to that little boy,” Cooper says in his report. “All we know now is, there’s blood in the streets.” (To view the CNN story, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Unh4v1lFU0.)
This is great television, but it’s not great journalism. In fact, it’s irresponsible journalism.
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Caribbean: Haiti, Katrina, and Why I Won't Give To Haiti Through the Red Cross
Friday, January 22 @ 06:41:03 AST | By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
January 22, 2010 - blackagendareport.com
What's charitably given isn't always charitably distributed. In 21st century American and its empire, our corporate and military elite wield immense power. Corporate philanthropy serves corporate interests, not human interests, and corporate control over government, culture and media ensure that even funds donated by ordinary citizens can be directed and harvested for elite purposes too.
In the wake of the man-made disaster of Katrina, Americans freely gave tens of millions to the American Red Cross, which used a great deal of it to effectively disperse the population of black New Orleans to the four corners of the continental U.S. Millions more were diverted to their administrative overhead or other projects. But the local Louisiana elites who benefited from the exile of hundreds of thousands of black New Orleans residents were able to use Red Cross funds and personnel to work their will.
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Caribbean: Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux
Friday, January 22 @ 05:12:07 AST | By Cynthia McKinney
January 22, 2010 - globalresearch.ca
President Obama's response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working – saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.
The United States, on the day after the tragedy struck, confirmed that an entire Marine Expeditionary Force was being considered "to help restore order," when the "disorder" had been caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since 1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the bogus reports of chaos and violence that led to the deployment of military assets, including Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted that the people needed food and shelter and the US government sent men with guns. Much to my disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the very beginning, US assistance to Haiti has looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.
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Latin America: Venezuela Steps Up Aid Effort to Haiti, Questions U.S. Military Deployment
Thursday, January 21 @ 12:45:39 AST | By Kiraz Janicke
January 20, 2010 – Venezuelanalysis.com
Venezuela has stepped up its aid effort to Haiti as a second earthquake rocked the Caribbean country again today. This follows a 7.3 magnitude earthquake which destroyed the Haitian capital, port-au-Prince last week leaving at least 75,000 people confirmed dead, 250,000 injured and millions homeless.
Echoing his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel Ortega, who accused the United States of “manipulating the tragedy to install North American troops in Haiti” and French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet who criticised the US role in Haiti, saying the priority was “helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti,” Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez also questioned the US military response to the disaster.
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Caribbean: Haiti’s tragedy: A crime of US imperialism
Thursday, January 21 @ 06:43:03 AST | By Bill Van Auken
January 21, 2010 - wsws.org
The immense death and suffering inflicted upon the people of Haiti by the January 12 earthquake has laid bare a massive international crime by US imperialism, which prepared this catastrophe with a century of oppression and is now attempting to exploit the disaster for its own ends.
The estimated 200,000 who have died, the quarter million or more injured and the three million whose homes have been destroyed are victims not merely of a natural catastrophe. The lack of infrastructure, the poor quality of construction in Port-au-Prince and the impotence of the Haitian government to organize any response are determining factors in this tragedy.
These social conditions are the product of a protracted relationship between Haiti and the United States, which, ever since US Marines occupied the island nation for nearly 20 years beginning in 1915, has treated the country as a de-facto colonial protectorate.
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Caribbean: Legacy of US-Haitian Relations Dating Back to 1804
Wednesday, January 20 @ 15:48:51 AST | By Danny Glover and Amy Goodman
January 20, 2010 - Democracy Now!
Danny Glover is an acclaimed actor, director, producer and longtime friend of Haiti. His directorial debut, Toussaint, focused on the life of François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who became one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined here in New York by the acclaimed actor, director, producer and activist Danny Glover. He's chairman of the board of TransAfrica Forum and executive producer of a new documentary, Soundtrack for a Revolution, that opens Friday.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Danny.
DANNY GLOVER: Thank you very much.
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Caribbean: Misinformation and Racism Hamper Recovery Efforts in Haiti
Wednesday, January 20 @ 10:15:43 AST | Doctor: Misinformation and Racism Have Frozen Recovery Effort at General Hospital in Port-au-Prince
By Democracy Now!
January 19, 2010
"There are no security issues," says Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, reporting from the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, where 1,000 people are in need of operations. Lyon said the reports of violence in the city have been overblown by the media and have affected the delivery of aid and medical services.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Amy Goodman is in Haiti, and we'll be joining her in a few minutes. But first, we turn to a voice from one hospital in Port-au-Prince that was badly destroyed by last week's earthquake. The General Hospital is three blocks from the crumbling National Palace.
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Caribbean: Profiting From Haiti's Crisis
Tuesday, January 19 @ 14:30:55 AST | By Benjamin Dangl
January 19, 2010 - towardfreedom.com
US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, with much of the infrastructure and government services destroyed, Haitians have relied on each other for the relief efforts, working together to pull their neighbors, friends and loved ones from the rubble. One report from IPS News in Haiti explained, "In the day following the quake, there was no widespread violence. Guns, knives and theft weren't seen on the streets, lined only with family after family carrying their belongings. They voiced their anger and frustration with sad songs that echoed throughout the night, not their fists."
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Caribbean: Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti
Monday, January 18 @ 16:11:21 AST | By Stephen Lendman
January 18, 2010
In her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," Naomi Klein explores the myth of free market democracy, explaining how neoliberalism dominates the world with America its main exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere.
As a result, wars are waged, social services cut, public ones privatized, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or in duress to object. Disaster capitalism is triumphant everywhere from post-Soviet Russia to post-apartheid South Africa, occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, Honduras before and after the US-instigated coup, post-tsunami Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, New Orleans post-Katrina, and now heading to Haiti full-throttle after its greatest ever catastrophe. The same scheme always repeats, exploiting people for profits, the prevailing neoliberal idea that "there is no alternative" so grab all you can.
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War and Terror: The Arrogance of Empire, Detailed
Monday, January 18 @ 08:05:04 AST |  By Ron Jacobs
January 18, 2010 - dissidentvoice.org
In the first week of 2010, five US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. The last week of 2009 saw the deaths of eight CIA agents there. Several more Afghan civilians were killed during this period, including the apparent executions of several young boys by persons either in the US military or working with them. In addition, insurgent forces targeted a Karzai government in official in eastern Khost and launched rockets at the site of a future US consulate in Herat. It was reported on January 6, 2010 that the Obama administration was sending 1,000 more US civilian experts to the country to help in so-called reconstruction projects. This news was greeted with skepticism from Afghans both in and out of the government. The Afghan ambassador to the United Nations noted that few Afghans trusted these so-called reconstruction endeavors and that the US might do better if they hired Afghans to do the rebuilding instead of shipping in US citizens to “create parallel structures that would ruin (the Afghan government’s) efforts.” The ambassador must be quite aware that the history of US reconstruction in either Afghanistan or Iraqis is a legacy of corruption, poor construction, and failed endeavors that benefited no one but the foreign companies that garnered the contracts.
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Caribbean: The Lesson of Haiti
Monday, January 18 @ 06:27:11 AST | By Fidel Castro Ruz
January 17, 2010 - Granma
TWO days ago, at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake – measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale – had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.
The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.
Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.
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