Tag: Haiti

1915- 1934: US Marines arrive & then occupation.

1917: The US wrote Haiti’s ‘Constitution’–  which mainly abolished the previous prohibition on foreign owned land. FDR claimed to have written it.

This document abolished the prohibition on foreign ownership of land-the most essential component of Haitian law. When the newly elected National Assembly refused to pass this document and drafted one of their own preserving this prohibition, it was forcibly dissolved by Gendarmerie commandant Smedley Butler. This constitution was approved by a plebiscite in 1919, in which less than five percent of the population voted. The State Department authorized this plebiscite presuming that “The people casting ballots would be 97% illiterate, ignorant in most cases of what they were voting for.”

The Marines and Gendarmerie initiated an extensive road-building program to enhance their military effectiveness and open the country to U.S investment. Lacking any source of adequate funds, they revived an 1864 Haitian law, discovered by Butler, requiring peasants to perform labor on local roads in lieu of paying a road tax.

– Wikipedia

1921: The Haitian revolt, and the US military kills approximately 15,000.

1946: US backed coup.

1950: US backed coup.

1957- 1987: The Duvalier and Baby Doc era’s :

Duvalier’s paramilitary police, officially the Volunteers for National Security (Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale – VSN) but more commonly known as the Tonton Macoutes, named for a Vodou monster, carried out political murders, beatings, and intimidation. An estimated 30,000 Haitians were killed by his government.

From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier’s son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti’s capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.

http://current.com/items/91920…

1991: The US backs a bloody Coup against Aristide — 5000 die, many disappear.

1993: The US military comes back, this time to put Aristede back in power.  After this, Aristede launches widespread human rights abuses, his associates becoming involved in drug running, etc.

Arbitrary arrest, arbitrary detention, summary executions and police brutality became everyday reality.

2004: The US kidnaps Aristide, and puts in another regime:

On March 1, 2004, US Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), along with Aristide family friend Randall Robinson, reported that Aristide had told them (using a smuggled cellular phone), that he had been forced to resign and abducted from the country by the United States. He claimed to be held hostage by an armed military guard.[16]

Aristide later repeated similar claims, in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on March 16. He was pressured to resign from office by U.S. soldiers and James B. Foley, U.S. Ambassador to Haïti, on February 29. An aircraft provided by the U.S. carried Aristide and his wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide, into exile to the Central African Republic. Goodman asked Aristide if he resigned, and President Aristide replied: “No, I didn’t resign. What some people call ‘resignation’ is a ‘new coup d’état,’ or ‘modern kidnapping.’

……

Some have come forward to support his claim saying they witnessed him being escorted out by American soldiers at gunpoint….

Below are a series of reports from the PBS NewsHour on Jan. 18th 2010 show, the first is of a very heartwarming rescue when all hope should have been gone especially in that pile of rumble once a building. For many the interview with the American Ambassador should be paid close attention to. While everyone would like to see much more rapid rescues and aid supplies to reach those tens of thousands of Haitians who need it so desperately Haiti is one of the many poor countries, not a resort island, where what is needed, like a larger airport or seaport and warehouses, where when extreme devastating natural occurrences aren’t available for such a massive undertaking. Those thousands there as volunteers and more as well as the Haitians understand that.  

As I have already said, I apologize if this is already common knowledge. Tomorrow an international fundraising and solidarity event will be staged. Everyone, everywhere can be involved. If we all step up together, and each of us makes a small contribution, we will make a difference!

Amid accusations that the US Government is using the disaster in Haiti as a pretext to militarily occupy and control the country, and while the deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, has said that he thinks the eventual Haitian death toll from the earthquake will be between 150,000 and 200,000 people, there are now also video reports from on the ground in Haiti of people there seeing more guns than food as the most visible face of ‘humanitarian’ aid efforts, and of starving people being given food containing ‘bugs and worms’:

After some four decades of activism and advocacy by many, many doing much more then I was able to do especially prior to this technology becoming so widespread, but ignoring by the greater majorities, finally the issues of life, and experiences in living, are becoming better understood and more are paying the much needed and long overdue attention, especially related to the children.

just received this email from yuriy at gregpalast.com.  tmc, you can tell your colleague not to worry and thank you for your efforts!

Dear Sharon,

Thank you so much for your swift reply and offer of help. Thankfully

Democracy Now’s producer who left for Haiti is taking the medicine. We

can’t thank you enough.

All the very best,

Yuriy

———

i hope it is not a problem that i posted greg palast’s article in its

entirety (will gladly edit the post if desired).  themomcat who writes

at docudharma.com is in haiti with msf.  she has brought greg’s

request to the attention of an admin in PoP to see if he can help.

her comment is one of the last in the essay. (i linked to the essay but if i include the link it messes up the code in a way that i can’t sort out, so you will have to take my word for it.)

_______________________________________________

TheMomCat, if you are reading greg palast has a favor to ask.  don’t know if you can help him, but i will bold the section at the beginning and the one at the end so that you won’t have to read the whole thing if you don’t have time.  

also, i don’t know if i am violating copyright by posting this whole thing.  i am going to do it and then check the faq.  if i have to edit, i will gladly, but think it reads better in its entirety so will take a chance for the moment.  palast reveals much i was not aware of both re the current disaster and the history of haiti – and the obama/gate’s failure to send help immediately.  he is scathing with the contrast with bankrupt iceland.  we have sunk to such a despicable low.

The right testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian holocaust

Blackwater before drinking water

by Greg Palast

1/17/10

1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost

immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On

Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States

promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to

the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?

2. There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have

been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine

to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My

sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?”

Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in ‘a few days'”?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5. Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I don’t know how this

government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it

has.” We know Gates doesn’t know.

6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to

ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and

more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It’s all still there.

Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for

emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science

Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and

water and start evacuating people.” Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7. Send in the Marines. That’s America’s response. That’s what

we’re good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up

after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed – without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8. But don’t worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully

equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field,

deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three

tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water

purifying capability. They’re from Iceland.

9. Gates wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no

“structure … to provide security.” For Gates, appointed by Bush and

allowed to hang around by Obama, it’s security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on

the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of

Hispaniola. It’s treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican

Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan

Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson

reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the

beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.

11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure,

from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two

fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that

the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off?

Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That

dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship,

which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an

estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity

of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo

militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was

easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000

opponents of the regime.)

12. What Papa and Baby didn’t run off with, the IMF finished off through

its “austerity” plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo

orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that

cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.

13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a

priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF’s austerity

diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW

Bush, deposed him.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was

George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected

President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby

Bush.

14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere,

worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold

colony known as New England. Haiti’s wealth was in black gold: slaves.

But then the slaves rebelled – and have been paying for it ever since.

From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to

reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their

slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians,

France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.

15. Secretary Gates tells us, “There are just some certain facts of life

that affect how quickly you can do some of these things.” The Navy’s

hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!

16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her

other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure

medicines. That’s a fact of life too, Mr. President.

***

Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend’s

medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into

or near Port-au-Prince, please contact [2] [email protected] immediately.

Urgently recommended reading – The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.

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Article printed from Greg Palast: http://www.gregpalast.com

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Frederic Podoux/Getty Images

We are on the brink…so we are told and so we will see as the photographs roll in from Haiti, images of death, destruction, survival, conflict, and despair.  

We are ready, as they will paint a whole people as thugs and thieves and we will consume these images with a shake of the head. These descriptions will come from all sources, whether believed to be “left” or “right,” “objective” or Fox.

But we remember Katrina. We remember the power of the photograph and the greater power of seeing behind the image. Experiencing the visual content in light of the context.

Latest video news about Haiti from English Al-Jazeera

(3 very short videos posted at YouTube today January 17, 2010)

The United Nations says Haiti’s earthquake is the worst disaster it has ever had to deal with.

Aid is now pouring in, with a steady flow of relief getting through the nation’s only airport.

The World Food Programme says it expects to feed a million people. But survivors say help is not happening fast enough as dead bodies lie scattered on the capital’s streets.

Tarek Bazley reports.

I left here

and walked into a real “shit storm”. (sigh). It’s getting worse here but the US Army has sent in troops to “maintain order and provide security” They are honoring our restrictions about weapons in our compounds, clinics and hospitals (such as they are). There is one hospital in Cite Soliel that relatively intact, working on getting fuel to keep the generator running to power the OR and post-op. The World Food Program’s warehouses were looted. USAID has been helpful in coordinating with me on a location for the tent hospital, an area close to the airport is being cleared as e speak. I expect that the final death toll will be over 100,000.

There is still no electricity in most of the city outside the airport. There is NO running water. That is a major problem. There is a shortage of fuel to run generators. We have solar powered inverters for the small stuff like recharging cell phones, lap tops and other small electronic devices. The airport has no jet fuel, so flights coming in MUST have enough fuel for their return flight.

The minute we think we have a handle on one problem, a dozen others pop up.

I have several organizational meeting with our head of mission and the USAID, who have taken charge, for better or worse. I’m seeking out some place to get washed (BIG problem) but there is REAL coffee, Yeah!

I’m dealing mostly with logistics, an occasional medical issue but I have others here to take care of any patients. Catch up with you later. Thanks to you, NPK, buhdy (I hope he’s feeling better)and everyone for their great essays and support (moral and financial). Love you all, TMC

I’m posting this now since I suspect TMC’s time to interact with us will be brief and intermittent and I’m sure it’s a subject of general interest.