Archive | Haiti RSS feed for this section

Haiti: 7,565 cholera deaths as of October 4

18 Oct

MSPP has posted cholera statistics for October 1-4 on its Documentation page. In those four days, 749 new daily cases were reported, but the total-cases number rose by 765, to 598,742. Nine deaths were reported, but the total-deaths number rose by ten, to 7,565. As always, I assume the discrepancies are due to late reports being silently folded into the totals.

Curiously, the daily case numbers dropped from 229 on October 1 to just 115 on October 4. Hospitalizations also dropped, from 160 to 78. I have no idea why.

Source

Reconsider Colombus Day 2012

8 Oct

Happy Genocidal Maniac Day!

Five hundred and eighteen years ago, today 12 October, a momentous event happened. The supposed “discovery” by one Cristóbal Colón—also known as Christopher Columbus, landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador and subsequently was labeled the “first” European to take notice of the Americas. Let us consider the supposed discovery. Can one be called a discoverer of a land, which was already populated by most anthropological estimates by at least one hundred million persons? It was not a primitive wilderness this man “discovered.” Rather, it was the work of a people who had no idea exactly how large the Earth was. The Americas in 1492 were already populated and had very large and developed civilizations—the Aztecs, Incas and Iroquois to name a few. They already had hundreds of nations spread across the continent. Rather than enriching these natives as one is lead to believe by Euro-centric history, Columbus and those who followed the trail he blazed have visited upon these peoples nothing but misery, from slavery and disease to outright genocide.

Contrary to the lies most Americans are told about this so-called great discoverer:

  • Columbus is responsible for the murder of millions of Indigenous people.
  • Columbus was a slave trader in Africa before invading America. He began the slave trade in the Americas. One of his first acts was to enslave the Arawak nation, which now extinct. He deserves no holiday, no parades and no statues.
  • Columbus Day celebrates the doctrine of “discovery” – the “legal” process that stole Indigenous peoples’ territories and continues today.
  • Columbus brought a philosophy of domination to the Americas that persists today in the domination of other peoples, domination of the environment, domination of other belief systems and the domination of women by men. Christopher Columbus is responsible for the Spanish colonization of the Western Hemisphere, which foreshadowed a general European colonization of the “New World.”

Columbus Summed Up

His first act of colonization sprang from his desire to establish a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, funded by Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Leon. Containing the modern-day nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he founded the settlement of La Navidad (Christmas) on the north east coast of the island in 1492. The following year, Columbus quickly founded a second settlement further east in present day Dominican Republic, La Isabela, which became the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. The island was inhabited by the Taínos, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples. They were tolerant of Columbus and welcomed his crew as guests. They even helped him construct La Navidad.

From Columbus’ own log, he recorded the following:

“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” (1).

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts” (1).

Colonization of the settlement began the following year, with 1,300 Spaniards arriving under the watch of Christopher Columbus’s younger brother, Bartholomew Columbus. The Spanish began to import African slaves, believing them to be better equipped for manual labor. The Taino population was hastily obliterated from a combination of disease and harsh treatment by their colonial masters. The natives lacked immunity to small pox and entire tribes were wiped out. From an estimated initial population of 250,000 in 1492, the Arawaks had dropped to 14,000 by 1517. From Howard Zinn:

“In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were ‘naked as the day they were born,’ they showed ‘no more embarrassment than animals.’ Columbus later wrote: ‘Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.’

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead” (1).

Conclusion

The day celebrating Columbus was created in 1907. One hundred and three years later, it is time to remove this day celebrating violence, bloodshed and the dispossession and extermination of Indigenous peoples from our calendar. We must actively reject the celebration of Christopher Columbus and his legacy. We must also reject historical misconceptions regarding Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas.

Works Cited:

1)
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

Is the US Poised to Regain Control of Latin America with Regional Proxy Wars Through Colombia?

21 Jun

The Summit of the Americas, Drug Legalization, ‘Asymmetric’ Relations & Security Cooperation

by ANNIE BIRD

The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit’s focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month’s Sixth Summit in Cartagena.

But a new topic made its way into the news from the April 14 and 15 Summit in Cartagena, the call to discuss ‘decriminalization’ of drugs. Strangely, the call was launched by precisely the presidents which have most embraced militarization under the guise of the drug war. Though spearheaded by Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, reportedly a former CIA asset and former general accused of carrying out crimes against humanity, Perez Molina claims he thought of the proposal together with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes on April 15, Presidents Obama and Santos signed the U.S. – Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security Cooperation, an agreement for security cooperation throughout the hemisphere and in West Africa, whose stated objective is to respond to increased insecurity generated by organized crime.

The call for debate on such an important and sensitive topic by Washington’s military allies, while the U.S. launches with them a new regional ‘security’ project is confusing. But it also occurs as the U.S. attempts to challenge a set of popular South American leaders intent on forging an independent Latin America.

U.S. dominance is a sensitive subject in Latin America, and there is very little political capital to be gained from pandering to Washington. To the contrary, those that challenge the U.S. have become extremely popular, which leads to the suspicion that the call from the drug warriors for a debate on “decriminalization” could be a red herring to garner popularity for a new set of U.S. friendly Latin American presidents.

Colombian Host Helps US Retake Center Stage at the Summit

As South American leaders focus on building up a Latin American economic and political block with independence from its northern, English speaking neighbors, the Summits have been the sites of diplomatic tensions.

In 2009, during the last Summit in Trinidad and Tobago, US press reports focused on Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega’s “rant” against U.S. imperialism and reported on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s gift to Obama of the book “The Open Veins of Latin America” as an affront.

Whatever deference to Obama may have been missing in Trinidad and Tobago was more than made up for in Colombia where it was reported that in the ceremonial dinner Obama sat on a raised platform well above the other presidents, who could not be served until Obama arrived and was seated, well over an hour after everyone else.

Miami, the unofficial business capital of Latin America and nerve center of the political network that advance the interests of U.S. based corporations in Latin America was also given the opportunity to again flex its muscles in the context of a Summit in a Summit of corporate CEO’s convoked by the Colombian president of the Inter American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno.

Immersed in his battle with cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did not attend. In the 2005 Summit Chavez pronounced the original summit agenda, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), dead and buried, as Venezuela launched an alternative, the Bolivarian Alliance for Latin America (ALBA).

The only point of North- South tension reported from the Summit was the panel discussion turned debate, facilitated by co-panelist President Santos, between Obama and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, in which Vanity Fair reports that Rousseff referred to the ‘asymmetric relationship’ between the U.S. and Latin America a dozen times.

April 15, Obama and Santos Announce the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security

The diplomatic role Colombia played in restoring the U.S. President’s asymmetric relationship in the Summit was backed up by the signing of a political-military agreement aimed at strengthening the U.S.’s military presence in the region. President Santos, who was Minister of Defense under Alvaro Uribe, and President Obama “on the margins” of the Summit on April 15th signed an agreement to establish the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security.

The White House described the agreement as building on, ie. expanding U.S. Colombian security operations from Central America to the whole hemisphere and even Africa. The White House referred to the ‘success,’ without describing specific benchmarks to demonstrate ‘success’, of Operation Martillo, launched last year, partnering the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force- South (JIATF-S) and the Colombian Navy and Air Forces in Central America.

JIATF-S, a unit under the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SouthCom), left Panama for Miami 19 years ago when the U.S. left the Canal Zone. Last year JIATF-S came back to Panama providing “Operational Support” in a newly reopened U.S. military base which serves as the Center of Operations for the Central American System for Regional Integration’s Regional Security Strategy (SICA-COSR).

COSR will most likely be the regional center for the JIATF-S’s C4I border surveillance program, which creates technology canals of radars and other electronic surveillance equipment linked to Colombian and Mexican border control technology.

The White House also mentions that the Colombian National Police are providing assistance and training through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) to all of Central America except Nicaragua, Central America’s only ALBA member since the 2009 military coup in Honduras. In December 2011, Panamanian President Martinelli announced that the US and Colombia were partnering in creating a border control school for the region’s police and military in Panama.

CARSI is being implemented through SICA’s Regional Security Strategy, which is promoted by a ‘group of friends,’ spearheaded by the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington, DC, but which also includes, among others, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Germany. SICA- ESCA is expected to have an annual budget of over US$1 billion, provided by the Group of Friends, mostly in the form of 22 loans from the IADB.

From Central America to the Hemisphere: Biden’s Lunch with Central American Presidents While General Fraser Explained SouthComs Agenda to Congress

In preparation for the 6th Summit of the Americas, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Mexico and Central America on March 4, 5 and 6. He began in Mexico where the State Department’s Merida Initiative partnered with President Felipe Calderon’s drug war in 2006, and has resulted in an estimated 50,000 deaths.

On Tuesday March 6, Biden lunched in Tegucigalpa with all the presidents of Central America mainly to discuss CARSI, the Central American version of the Merida Initiative. The same day the Commander of the US Southern Command, General Fraser, presented his annual address to the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, focusing strongly on Central America.

In the context of Biden’s visit, the US ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, commented that the diminishing engagement of the US in the Middle East means that US Armed Forces can increase their commitments in Central America, a scenario that is already taking shape.

Fraser explained that the US agenda in the hemisphere is stability, and spoke extensively about Central American crime gangs as a threat to stability in the region, which he claimed require a military response and assistance from the State Department in training and funding police forces. Another threat to stability he described were alleged protests and unrest in certain ALBA nations, while he expressed concern about overtures from the Iranian government to Venezuela.

He also asserted that “criminal activities extend into the Venezuelan government,” ironic given Biden’s presence in Honduras where deep implications of government officials and security forces in organized crime, including gangs, have been completely overlooked by the U.S.

The politically charged discourse behind the ‘drug war’ underscores the fact that since 2006 the U.S. has established a massive military presence from Mexico to Colombia, in what looks like a move to insure that the independent governments of South America don’t spread north, and now, apparently, the U.S. and Colombian security agenda is throughout the Hemisphere.

At the 5th Summit of the Americas, the Left Controlled Central America

In 2009 Biden also visited Central America to prepare for the Summit, but the cards were stacked very differently. Left leaning governments, many affiliated with former revolutionary movements, had taken control of Central America through elections.

Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista movement, was president of Nicaragua, firmly staked out in office with a large base of support and a political pact with the opposition. Mauricio Funes of the FMLN political party, born from the revolutionary movement, had just been elected president of El Salvador. Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, who had undertaken his first presidential bid in 1999 as the candidate for another revolutionary movement turned political party, the URNG, brought some URNG associated political figures into his administration.

In Honduras, Manuel Zelaya had led his nation into joining ALBA, and consolidated an overwhelming base of support. Panama was ruled by Martin Torrijos, son of the “leftist” de facto military leader Omar Torrijos (1968-1981) whose 1981 death in a plane crash is widely speculated to have been the work of the CIA. A year before the 5th Summit of the Americas Torrijos had met with Raul Castro in Cuba to discuss signing an energy agreement. Oscar Arias, then President of Costa Rica, though a firm US ally is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and many consider him a moderate.

Central America Turns to the Right, with a Big Push from the North

Just three months after the 2009 Summit, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup broadly understood in Honduras to have been backed by the U.S. government. Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom was succeeded by Otto Perez Molina, a retired general and a firm US ally. Mauricio Funes, an outsider in the FMLN political party, has made many concessions to US interests, particularly in relation to security matters recently sweeping all FLMN aligned appointees from top security positions and replacing them with former military.

Panama’s Torrijos was succeeded by the right wing Ricardo Martinelli, who comes from one of Panama’s oldest economic and political oligarch families, and in Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla is considered right wing and very pro US. Daniel Ortega remains in office, though his 2011 reelection has been the focus of intense criticism from the State Department, former diplomats, and the media.

Political Opportunism: Drug Legalization Call from Guatemala’s Perez Molina

With three months in office, Perez Molina has leapt into the spotlight by promoting a debate around legalization of drugs, donning the hat of reformer as opposed to his previous fame as a former military intelligence chief implicated in war crimes like torture and genocide. Even before Perez Molina assumed office, in December 2010, he surprised all by advancing a call for dialog about the possibility of “depenalization,” ie. legalization, of drugs.

The strangeness of Perez Molina’s position stems from his wholehearted embrace of militarization in the framework of the war on drugs. During the first two months of his presidency his new appointees on repeated occasions have criminalized social protest, stating that those who block highways are backed by organized crime and drug traffickers.

On February 14, 2012 Guatemala’s Vice Minister for Security, former colonel Julio Rivera Clavería, referred to the leaders of the Sasiguan, Cunen indigenous community, which opposes the construction of a hydroelectric dam on their lands by the Italian energy company ENEL, as drug traffickers. On February 14 Sasiguan residents caught three police officers leaving the scene after the destruction of over 50 acres of crops, the latest in a series of actions harassing and intimidating the community. The three were detained and taken to the community’s traditional indigenous leaders. Rivera led a force of 600 soldiers to “rescue” three security guards, accusing community leaders of being drug traffickers.

Perez Molina has also enthusiastically promoted use of the Guatemalan military’s special forces unit, the Kaibiles, in anti-drug policing, while placing Kaibiles in the highest three command positions in the military. On April 6, 2011 Guatemalan Vice Minister of Security Mario Castaneda reported that current and former Kaibles were training members of the Zeta drug gang and participating in drug smuggling, while noting that a series of weapons robberies from military bases in Guatemala and Honduras had benefited Zetas.

The Mexico–Guatemala- Colombia Axis: Creating Latin America’s “Independent” Block Favoring Northern Businesses Interests

With his forceful yet polished personality, Perez Molina is quickly projecting regional leadership advancing statements that appear to confront US policy, like that Guatemalan troops are capable of fighting the drug war and that he did not intend to ask for US troop support. Strong words for a man who visited SouthCom together with his vice president and three highest ministerial appointees in November, even before taking office, to pave way for cooperation. In 1994 he was reported by an investigative journalist to have been a CIA asset, and he has been extremely close to the US embassy as his frequent appearances in Wikileaks documents attest.

Perez Molina is an adept politician and there is a lot of political capital to be garnered from appearing to challenge the US in Latin America, especially on drug policy. It is not lost on Latin Americans that the US is the main supplier of weapons to the region’s drug cartels, that it is US and Canadian consumption that drives the drug trade, and that most of the casualties in the US’s drug war are Latin Americans, and their democracies.

The first acting president in Latin America to clearly call for legalization was Colombian President Santos in November 2011, though in August 2011 Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon stated that if the US could not curb consumption it must implement ‘market based solutions’ to the importation of drugs to the States, solutions not involving illegal border crossings.

The Drug War Must End, But Is there a Hidden Agenda?

On February 23, 2009 the Wall Street Journal launched the current legalization debate, publishing a powerful op-ed by former presidents Fernando Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico respectively, asserting that “Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked,” and calling for a review of US led drug war policies, noting that the “alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.”

The US’s drug war in Latin America is criminal and must end. But the call to ‘debate’ drug policy is being advanced by the same US aligned political figures that have most embraced the militarization of the region in the name of the drug war.

The US’s agenda in Latin America is regaining hegemony. But US allies have been lacking political personalities capable of garnering strong support in their home countries. Openness to dialog or even limited reform on drug policy, which appears to challenge Uncle Sam’s agenda, could go a long way in gaining popular support, generating an apparently ‘independent’ block of right leaning political figures to challenge the South American lineup, while continuing security operations to impose transnational business interests through repression and criminalization.

Source

Scientists Conclude UN Soldiers Brought Cholera to Haiti

12 Jan

A man surveys hundreds of bodies of earthquake victims at the morgue in Port-au-Prince, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010.

By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS and RYM MOMTAZ

Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera — a super bug — into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.

 The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 — two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base. “What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible,” said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. “These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease.” 

A photo released on January 14, 2010 from the UN Minustah mission of an aerial view of a flattened shanty town in Port-au-Prince following a devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010.

More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in Boston, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases.

How cholera landed in Haiti has been a politically charged topic for more than a year now, with the United Nations repeatedly refusing to acknowledge any role in the outbreak despite mounting evidence that international peacekeepers were the most likely culprits. The UN has already faced hostility from Haitians who believe peacekeeping troops have abused local residents without consequence. They now face legal action from relatives of victims who have petitioned the UN for restitution. And the cholera charge could further hamper the UN’s ability to work effectively there, two years after the country was hobbled by the earthquake.

A mob of Haitians reach out as goods are thrown from a nearby shop in the downtown business district on January 17, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Over the summer, Assistant Secretary General Anthony Banbury told ABC News that the UN sincerely wanted to know if it played a part in the outbreak, but independent efforts to answer that question had not succeeded. He said the disease could have just as easily been carried by a backpacker or civilian aid worker.

Banbury said the UN, through both its peacekeeping mission and its civilian organizations “are working very hard … to combat the spread of the disease and bring assistance to the people. And that’s what’s important now.”

“The scientists say it can’t be determined for certainty where it came from,” Banbury said. “So we don’t know if it was the U.N. troops or not. That’s the bottom line.”

A UN spokeswoman repeated the answer when asked again last week: “The [scientists] determined it was not possible to be conclusive about how cholera was introduced into Haiti,” said the UN’s Anayansi Lopez.

A Haitian mass grave receives unclaimed, unidentified bodies in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince January 16, 2010.

Scientists Trace Cholera Superbug to UN Peacekeepers

But ABC News has interviewed several top scientists involved in researching the origins of the cholera outbreak, and each expressed little doubt that the UN troop was responsible. The reason: A genetic analysis of the strain found in Haiti matches identically the one involved in an outbreak in Nepal in August and September of 2010; The Nepalese peacekeeping troops deployed for Haiti at precisely that time; Two weeks before the outbreak, Haitians had reported sanitary breakdowns at the Nepalese encampment set along a tributary to the Artibonite River, about 60 miles north of the capital Port Au Prince. The next month, the earliest cases of cholera surfaced in the same remote area, from Haitians who had been drinking and bathing in the river.

“The scientific debate on the origin of cholera in Haiti existed, but it has been resolved by the accumulation of evidence that unfortunately leave no doubt about the implication of the Nepalese contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti,” said French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux, who conducted research on the outbreak for the Centers for Disease Control.

People walk on a debris-covered street in Port-au-Prince January 17, 2010.

Mekalanos agreed, saying the single strongest piece of evidence came from the genetic analysis of the strain, which he said was virtually identical to strains that caused cholera in Nepal around the time that the troops shipped out. Taken in concert with sanitation problems at the Nepalese base, which was located near the epicenter of the outbreak, he said “almost any other explanation I can think of is well behind in confidence to the likelihood that that strain was introduced by UN troops,” he said.

“It’s outrageous for the UN to try to deny responsibility for bringing cholera to Haiti,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, whose group has been monitoring relief efforts in Haiti. “Was it gross negligence on their part? This is one of the questions they won’t have to answer if they can sweep this whole thing under the rug.”

Experts said understanding the origin of the outbreak is important. Louise C. Ivers, an infectious disease specialist and professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, published a paper this week that traced spread of cholera back to the first victim, a mentally ill man who ingested contaminated river water. She witnessed firsthand the destruction it caused as hundreds of villagers started dying from an unfamiliar malady.

Men stand near a burning body left in the street in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010.

“It was overwhelming,” she said. “There were no reported cases in Haiti before 2010, ever. Really people had no idea what was happening. To hear the fear and the suspicions and the lack of understanding about how this was happening is very, very sad. The outbreak put a huge stress on what was already a very fragile health system. I’m afraid it will be a problem for the foreseeable future.”

She said what has made Haiti so vulnerable was a lack of latrines and clean potable water. She said there have been small outbreaks in the Dominican Republic, but nothing on the scale of what hit Haiti because conditions are more modern and sanitary.

Mekalanos said there are steps that the UN and other aid organizations can and should be taking if they are sending workers from an area where cholera is active into a region where it has long been absent. In the future, he said, the UN might consider giving troops a prophylactic dose of antibiotic before deploying. Or they could do more to insure proper sanitary conditions at UN encampments.

Haitian citizens crowd a ship in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010.

With the likelihood that cholera will be part of the landscape in Haiti for decades to come, though, Mekalanos said his hope is that the missteps that brought the ugly strain of the disease from Asia to the west will not repeat and lead to its further spread.

“Cholera is a disease of the impoverished,” he said. “When the standards of living are already at the lowest levels, cholera is a killer of historic proportions. If it spreads to other parts of the world, in those kinds of settings, I fear there will be a very high rate of death.”

UN officials said Banbury is currently in Haiti, “actively discussing with the Mission what more the UN can do to help Haiti deal with the outbreak.”

A man points a gun toward a crowd in downtown Port-au-Prince January 15, 2010. The man fired warning shots into the air to prevent looters from ransacking his shop, a Reuters photographer witnessed.

 

Source

Is Haiti’s church hierarchy failing in its mission? Bishop Louis Kébreau’s immoral advice to Martelly

28 Dec

August 18, 2011
by Wadner Pierre

Bishop Louis Kebreau walking in a religious march Dec. 8, 2011. – Photo: Wadner Pierre

Did Bishop Louis Kébreau, president of the Haitian Episcopal Conference, call on Haitian President Martelly to be ruthless and dictatorial?

In an article published on Aug. 11 by the Haitian daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, Bishop Kébreau, a close friend of President Martelly, urged him to put his “Sweet Micky pants on” so as to govern the country. Martelly’s administration has essentially not even begun to function since Parliament refused to accept two of his selections for prime minister.

The upper echelons of the Catholic Church in Haiti and the Vatican have a deplorable history of backing repression. The Vatican, virtually alone in the world, recognized the Cedras military dictatorship of 1991-1994. Recent WikiLeaks have exposed the Vatican’s behind the scenes encouragement of U.S. efforts to undermine democracy in Haiti prior to the 2004 coup. After the coup, the Vatican openly applauded it by saying there was “nothing to regret” about Aristide’s ouster.

To defend his remarks, Bishop Kébreau said on Radio Magik 9 that he was misinterpreted and that there was “no question of repression, no question of dictatorship.” But he added, “If we continue to undress the president we will go nowhere.”

It is extremely unlikely that Bishop Kébreau will be punished by his superiors for his openly partisan intervention in Haitian politics. However, it was Bishop Kébreau himself who supported a letter to suspend the late Father Gerard Jean-Juste in his sacerdotal function in 2006 while imprisoned by the Latortue dictatorship, no less.

The Haitian people, who had fought fiercely for his freedom, welcome their beloved Father Jean-Juste on his release in 2004 from his first stint in prison (above) and again on Nov. 26, 2007, when the charges against him were finally dropped (below). Cruelly punished by both the Haitian government and the church, he was imprisoned again in 2005 when President Latortue feared he would run for president in the 2006 election and he was stripped of his role as pastor of St. Claire’s, where he had fed hundreds of children daily. In prison, he fell gravely ill with leukemia and was eventually released to seek medical treatment in Miami. But the church cut off his health insurance and he died in 2009. – Photo below: Wadner Pierre

Father Jean-Juste was a vocal supporter of Aristide and was suspending from celebrating mass as punishment for being political. While human rights groups around the world, including Amnesty International, called for Jean-Juste’s release, the Catholic Church in Haiti decided that even more punishment was justified.

None of this is surprising for anyone who has followed the involvement of the church in Haiti’s political affairs even before the country’s independence in 1804.

As a former altar boy, I am very disturbed by the declaration of someone of high profile in the church like Bishop Kébreau; but I am not surprised, because powerful clerics like him have always fought against a democratic government in Haiti. They have always been on the side of the elite – about 5 percent of the population.

In December of 2007, while celebrating the 65th anniversary of the consecration of Haiti to Our Lady of Perpetual of Help, Bishop Kébreau made a vague statement urging Rene Preval – then president – to deal with “social injustice.” Of course, Bishop Kébreau did not identify the cause of this “injustice.”

May the leaders of the Catholic Church become, one day, promoters of social justice, not social injustice and despotism. Amen.

Source

A Rape in Haiti

9 Dec

Video Shows UN Troops in Sexual Assault

by MARK WEISBROT

The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), apparently raping an 18-year old Haitian youth. Two of them have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move. Perhaps the most unnerving part of the video is the constant chorus of laughter from the perpetrators; it’s just a big drunken party to them.

ABC News reports that Uruguayan Navy Lieutenant Nicolas Casariego confirmed the authenticity of the video. A medical certificate filed with the court in Port Salut, a southern coastal town where the incident took place, says that the victim was beaten and had injuries consistent with a sexual assault.

The incident is likely to pour more gasoline on the fire of resentment that Haitians have for the UN troops that have occupied their country for more than seven years. There has been a terrible pattern of abuses: in December 2007, more than 100 UN soldiers from Sri Lanka were deported under charges of sexual abuse of under-age girls. In 2005, UN troops invaded Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas in Port-au-Prince, killing as many as 23 people, including children, according to witnesses. After the raid, the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders reported: ”On that day we treated 27 people for gunshot wounds. Of them, around 20 were women under the age of 18.”

Wikileaks cables released in the last week reveal that the Timothy Carney, representing the United States government as the top-ranking diplomat in Haiti in 2006, warned that such raids would “inevitably cause unintended civilian casualties given the crowded conditions and flimsy construction of tightly packed housing in Cité Soleil”. But Washington – showing its lack of respect for human life in Haiti – offered no objections to further raids, which continued into 2006.

And make no mistake about it: the UN occupation of Haiti is really a U.S. occupation – it is no more a multilateral force than George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” that invaded Iraq. And it is hardly more legitimate, either: it was sent there in 2004 after a U.S.-led effort toppled Haiti’s democratically elected government. Far from providing security for Haitians in the aftermath of the coup, MINUSTAH stood by while thousands of Haitians who had supported the elected government were killed, and officials of the constitutional government jailed. Recent Wikileaks cables also confirm that the U.S. government sees MINUSTAH as an instrument of its policy there.

This latest incident could shed some light on the nature of its mission, just as the photos from Abu Ghraib made plain for most of the world the brutality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Images cannot be so easily dismissed or buried as words. And the images from this video are symbolic of what the “international community” has been doing to Haiti since the country won its independence from France in the world’s first successful slave-led revolution.

There is no legitimate reason for a military mission of the United Nations in Haiti. The country has no civil war, and is not the subject of a peace-keeping or post-conflict agreement. And the fact that UN troops are immune from prosecution or legal action in Haiti encourages abuses. The occupying troops don’t speak the language either, which severely limits their capacity for any positive security role; can you imagine how effective a Washington D.C. police force would be if it spoke only Japanese?

To make things even worse, it is now virtually certain that MINUSTAH brought the cholera bacteria to Haiti that has killed more than 6000 Haitians and infected more than 400,000 in the last 10 months. This was an act of gross negligence: there should have been supervision to make sure that fecal waste from UN troops was not dumped into the water supply, given the risks of such a deadly contamination and the known incapacity of Haiti’s water, sanitation, and public health system.

How long can MINUSTAH continue to occupy and abuse Haiti?

Mark Weisbrot is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: the Phony Crisis.

Source

Reconsider Columbus Day 2011

10 Oct

Happy Genocidal Maniac Day!

Five hundred and eighteen years ago, today 12 October, a momentous event happened. The supposed “discovery” by one Cristóbal Colón—also known as Christopher Columbus, landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador and subsequently was labeled the “first” European to take notice of the Americas. Let us consider the supposed discovery. Can one be called a discoverer of a land, which was already populated by most anthropological estimates by at least one hundred million persons? It was not a primitive wilderness this man “discovered.” Rather, it was the work of a people who had no idea exactly how large the Earth was. The Americas in 1492 were already populated and had very large and developed civilizations—the Aztecs, Incas and Iroquois to name a few. They already had hundreds of nations spread across the continent. Rather than enriching these natives as one is lead to believe by Euro-centric history, Columbus and those who followed the trail he blazed have visited upon these peoples nothing but misery, from slavery and disease to outright genocide.

Contrary to the lies most Americans are told about this so-called great discoverer:

  • Columbus is responsible for the murder of millions of Indigenous people.
  • Columbus was a slave trader in Africa before invading America. He began the slave trade in the Americas. One of his first acts was to enslave the Arawak nation, which now extinct. He deserves no holiday, no parades and no statues.
  • Columbus Day celebrates the doctrine of “discovery” – the “legal” process that stole Indigenous peoples’ territories and continues today.
  • Columbus brought a philosophy of domination to the Americas that persists today in the domination of other peoples, domination of the environment, domination of other belief systems and the domination of women by men. Christopher Columbus is responsible for the Spanish colonization of the Western Hemisphere, which foreshadowed a general European colonization of the “New World.”

Columbus Summed Up

His first act of colonization sprang from his desire to establish a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, funded by Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Leon. Containing the modern-day nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he founded the settlement of La Navidad (Christmas) on the north east coast of the island in 1492. The following year, Columbus quickly founded a second settlement further east in present day Dominican Republic, La Isabela, which became the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. The island was inhabited by the Taínos, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples. They were tolerant of Columbus and welcomed his crew as guests. They even helped him construct La Navidad.

From Columbus’ own log, he recorded the following:

“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” (1).

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts” (1).

Colonization of the settlement began the following year, with 1,300 Spaniards arriving under the watch of Christopher Columbus’s younger brother, Bartholomew Columbus. The Spanish began to import African slaves, believing them to be better equipped for manual labor. The Taino population was hastily obliterated from a combination of disease and harsh treatment by their colonial masters. The natives lacked immunity to small pox and entire tribes were wiped out. From an estimated initial population of 250,000 in 1492, the Arawaks had dropped to 14,000 by 1517. From Howard Zinn:

“In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were ‘naked as the day they were born,’ they showed ‘no more embarrassment than animals.’ Columbus later wrote: ‘Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.’

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead” (1).

Conclusion

The day celebrating Columbus was created in 1907. One hundred and three years later, it is time to remove this day celebrating violence, bloodshed and the dispossession and extermination of Indigenous peoples from our calendar. We must actively reject the celebration of Christopher Columbus and his legacy. We must also reject historical misconceptions regarding Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas.

Works Cited:

1)
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

The Return of Duvalier

7 Feb

Of all the various tinpot dictators that the United States government has supported over the years, very few match up to the notoriety of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti, whom in the manner befitting Nero, laughed as Rome burned. In one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, Papa and Baby Doc lived in extreme decadence and wealth. It is very rare that someone is as successful as the Duvaliers in getting away with openly embezzling millions upon millions of dollars—outright theft from the Haitian people. In one case, Jean-Claude spent three million dollars on his wedding, paid for by the state.

Papa Doc’s personality cult became outrageous. One of the most famous pictures of him has a depiction of Jesus Christ with his hand on Duvalier’s shoulder, accompanied by the caption: “I have chosen him.” Duvalier also has his own version of the Lord’s Prayer. While his father Francois “Papa Doc” masqueraded as the Voodoo god Baron Samedi, claiming to be “one with the loas, Jesus Christ and god himself,” Jean-Claude also had a taste for the distasteful extravagance that marked his father’s regime, obtaining a reputation as a playboy and earning millions from the drug trade.

There can be no doubt that the United States government backed the Duvalier dictatorship. During the Reagan administration and before Duvalier’s ousting by a popular revolt he was viewed as a close ally in the fight against liberation struggles in the Americas. In 1986, when a popular uprising overthrew him, he escaped on a United States Air Force craft to a twenty-four year self-imposed exile in France. On the 18th of January (a date near the anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that killed over 300,000 Haitians), Baby Doc abruptly returned to Haiti. He was arrested and charged with corruption the next day.

Corruption charges alone simply do not do such a wretch justice. For the tens thousands of Haitians executed during his and his father’s reign; justice is nonexistent. In addition to those executed by his nefarious repression are the countless fatalities of capitalism in Haiti, from the five-year-old victim of starvation to the many thousands of Haitians that died from infrastructure failures in shanty towns due to hurricanes and earthquakes, indirectly slain by his corrupt practices.

Opponents of Papa Doc’s regime were “disappeared,” a method also used by the dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. He is also responsible for a heavily disputed number of executions, usually placed at between thirty and sixty thousand. In August 1964, security forces under his command perpetrated the horrific “massacre des Vêpres jérémiennes,” where entire families were wiped out and children were tortured in front of their parents before being killed, including Stéphane Sansericq, a four-year-old boy. The regime of “Baby Doc” was little different than his father’s. When given the title of “President-For-Life” at the age of 19 by his father, Duvalier viewed the Haitian government much like a personal piggy bank to be used to fulfill his wildest decadent pleasures.

Baby Doc’s return is mysterious—he has not stated a believable reason why he suddenly decided to reappear. Some sources have mentioned that the return of the prince of extravagance might be simply a clever ploy to obtain money frozen in Swiss bank accounts. Georgia Congressman and Libertarian candidate for President Bob Barr has already joined Baby Doc’s legal team in an attempt to obtain the money.

Whatever the case for Baby Doc’s return, the many years he has spent outrunning justice and profiting from the suffering of Haitian workers repressed and leeched by his regime makes one thing clear: under imperialism, justice is an idle phrase. In a world where such rulers are able to flee disasters they have created with wealth stolen from the blood and sweat toils of a people, where imperialism is allowed to prop up such people for the advancement of their profit ends, there can be no justice. We need not only do everything in our power to prevent the rise of the Duvaliers of this world, but also to oppose and defeat the imperialist system that breathes life into their criminal regimes. The workers of Haiti and the world are entitled to justice and together, we must stand against the international injustice of imperialism.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Update on Haiti

10 Jan

Just a few days into the new year, the situation in Haiti is dire. One year ago, on January 12th, a magnitude 7.0 ravaged the Caribbean nation, killing an estimated 230,000, and rendering over a million people homeless. While officially, leadership of Haiti falls to President René Garcia Préval and the Haitian government, most authority is exercised by MINUSTAH, the UN Security Council’s occupation force, and the variety of NGOs which have moved into Haiti. Naturally, the United States took a leadership role in the “relief efforts.”

The United States has a long history of interfering in Haiti’s affairs. In 1911, Haiti experienced a period of political chaos in the form of a long series of assassinations, coups, and counter-coups. Acting on behalf of U.S. corporate interests, who feared for the safety of their assets, the U.S. government sent the military in to occupy Haiti. Within the 20 months of active resistance to the occupation, 2,250 Haitian natives were killed.

The occupation lasted until 1934, when the last troops were pulled out and control was handed back to a government in which political and economic power was concentrated within the hands of a mulatto ruling class. The U.S. continued to influence Haitian politics throughout the 20th century, propping up the dictatorships of “Papa” and “Baby” Doc Duvalier, and overthrowing two democratically-elected leftist governments headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in both 1991 and 2004. Almost a century later, and in the middle of another period of tumult, U.S. imperialism, under the humanitarian facade of the UN mission, has returned to Haiti to solidify their control over the country and its resources. Much criticism has been directed at MINUSTAH for prioritizing the security of government and private capital over more basic issues of health and personal security. According to Reuters, the response was “limited to handling security and looking for looters,” and there are multiple reports of UN Peacekeepers being responsible for civilian casualties after using heavy-handed measures to arrest criminals and gang leaders (1).

While MINUSTAH will spare no expense to protect the security of capital from “looters” and street gangs, less priority is given to countering sexual violence against Haitian women, which has seen a rapid increase in the year following the earthquake. With many of them living in makeshift tent cities, with little to no police protection, women are frequent victims of rape.  According to local organization Commission of Women Victims for Victims, more than 250 cases of rape were reported within the first 150 days after the earthquake (2).

Likewise, little has been done to help alleviate the nation’s cholera epidemic, which began to spread in October 2010, and has since killed 3,333 people and infected an additional 150,000. While the UN attempted to raise money for a response program to counter the rapid spread of the disease, so far they have only raised $44 million out of $172 million, or 25% of their goal (3). Again, this illustrates the fact that the priorities of MINUSTAH are to serve the interests of capital first, with that of ordinary Haitians in a distant second.

This current debacle in Haiti reflects a larger trend within capitalism itself. Within the system of capitalism, the bourgeoisie have always taken advantage of catastrophic events such as wars and national disasters to expand their markets. It is within these periods of disaster that capitalists seize the opportunity to redraw borders and re-divide the spoils amongst themselves. Therefore, if Haiti is to receive genuine humanitarian resistance, it cannot come in the form it presently comes in, i.e. a militarized occupation by U.N. peacekeepers.

Sources:

1)
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/reuters-report-slams-minustah/

2)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/07/3108648.htm?section=world

3)
http://www.smh.com.au/world/un-haiti-donations-shameful-20110107-19iu3.html

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reconsider Columbus Day

12 Oct

Happy Genocidal Maniac Day!

Five hundred and eighteen years ago, today 12 October, a momentous event happened. The supposed “discovery” by one Cristóbal Colón—also known as Christopher Columbus, landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador and subsequently was labeled the “first” European to take notice of the Americas. Let us consider the supposed discovery. Can one be called a discoverer of a land, which was already populated by most anthropological estimates by at least one hundred million persons? It was not a primitive wilderness this man “discovered.” Rather, it was the work of a people who had no idea exactly how large the Earth was. The Americas in 1492 were already populated and had very large and developed civilizations—the Aztecs, Incas and Iroquois to name a few. They already had hundreds of nations spread across the continent. Rather than enriching these natives as one is lead to believe by Euro-centric history, Columbus and those who followed the trail he blazed have visited upon these peoples nothing but misery, from slavery and disease to outright genocide.

Contrary to the lies most Americans are told about this so-called great discoverer:

  • Columbus is responsible for the murder of millions of Indigenous people.
  • Columbus was a slave trader in Africa before invading America. He began the slave trade in the Americas. One of his first acts was to enslave the Arawak nation, which now extinct. He deserves no holiday, no parades and no statues.
  • Columbus Day celebrates the doctrine of “discovery” – the “legal” process that stole Indigenous peoples’ territories and continues today.
  • Columbus brought a philosophy of domination to the Americas that persists today in the domination of other peoples, domination of the environment, domination of other belief systems and the domination of women by men. Christopher Columbus is responsible for the Spanish colonization of the Western Hemisphere, which foreshadowed a general European colonization of the “New World.”

Columbus Summed Up

His first act of colonization sprang from his desire to establish a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, funded by Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Leon. Containing the modern-day nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he founded the settlement of La Navidad (Christmas) on the north east coast of the island in 1492. The following year, Columbus quickly founded a second settlement further east in present day Dominican Republic, La Isabela, which became the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. The island was inhabited by the Taínos, one of the indigenous Arawak peoples. They were tolerant of Columbus and welcomed his crew as guests. They even helped him construct La Navidad.

From Columbus’ own log, he recorded the following:

“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want” (1).

“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts” (1).

Colonization of the settlement began the following year, with 1,300 Spaniards arriving under the watch of Christopher Columbus’s younger brother, Bartholomew Columbus. The Spanish began to import African slaves, believing them to be better equipped for manual labor. The Taino population was hastily obliterated from a combination of disease and harsh treatment by their colonial masters. The natives lacked immunity to small pox and entire tribes were wiped out. From an estimated initial population of 250,000 in 1492, the Arawaks had dropped to 14,000 by 1517. From Howard Zinn:

“In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were ‘naked as the day they were born,’ they showed ‘no more embarrassment than animals.’ Columbus later wrote: ‘Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.’

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead” (1).

Conclusion

The day celebrating Columbus was created in 1907. One hundred and three years later, it is time to remove this day celebrating violence, bloodshed and the dispossession and extermination of Indigenous peoples from our calendar. We must actively reject the celebration of Christopher Columbus and his legacy. We must also reject historical misconceptions regarding Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas.

Works Cited:

1)
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

American Party of Labor Condemns US Occupation of the Republic of Haiti

21 Jan

The So-Called "Looters" Fighting For Survival While Their Country is Occupied

The American Party of Labor on Thursday condemned the recent deployment of more than 10,000 US soldiers and military personnel to the Republic of Haiti following last week’s devastating earthquake. The American Party of Labor considers the deployment of over 10,000 soldiers of the United States armed forces, including the seizure of Haiti’s central airport in the capital Port-au-Prince by US paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division last Friday an indefensible act of military aggression and provocation aimed only at exacerbating the current crisis gripping Haiti in the wake of the deadly earthquake which rocked the island-nation last week.

Unfortunately, this unprovoked militaristic response towards the people of Haiti is not without historical precedent. From 1915 to 1934, the United States occupied the Republic of Haiti, seizing control over the organs of civilian government as well as the country’s economic assets. More recently, under the former administrations of US Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, the United States government played a leading role in the attempts to overthrow then Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide; only finally succeeding in this objective in a US-sponsored coup d’état in 2004.

In light of these developments, the American Party of Labor therefore calls for the immediate and complete withdrawal of all US military personnel from Haiti. Because of its history, Haiti has little infrastructure with which to combat this catastrophe. The Haitian people need medical help and emergency clean-up assistance, not thousands of foreign soldiers. Further, we call for the cancellation of Haitian foreign debt and the adoption of a “Hands Off Haiti” policy after the current crisis in Haiti has passed.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Earthquake Disaster & Imperialism in Haiti

15 Jan

A History of Colonialism

On Tuesday, the 12th of January 2010, the Republic of Haiti was struck by a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake, which hit its capital city directly. The death toll may exceed 100,000 in one of the most violent earthquakes to hit the Caribbean in 200 years. The Republic of Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. While this event is tragic, and has undoubtedly killed thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Haitians, the American Party of Labor must point out that the causations of the extreme poverty, political instability and a whole host of other problems encountered by the Haitians is a direct result of imperialism, first by France and Spain and then by the United States of America in the 20th and 21st centuries. To do this, we must bring attention to the causations of the poverty, political instability and why furthering “aid” to Haiti outside of the realms of developmental and emergency medical and clean-up assistance will only result in further poverty, further political instability and ultimately result in the next natural disaster being even worse than this one.

The Origins of Poverty & Lack of Development

Firstly, Haiti is a country which is quite rich in natural beauty and though it has limited natural resources, it should not have the abject and absolute poverty which currently exists under capitalist organization. What has caused this poverty? In 1801 when the first Haitian Republic was proclaimed as a result of a slave revolt, the Republic was required to pay reparations to their former imperialist slave masters the French. Prior to the slave revolt, Haiti, then known as Santo Dominique, was the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere. These reparations were the first in a long chain of oppressions by imperialist nations, including the US, which have befallen Haiti throughout its history as an independent state.

Add to this the fact that throughout most of the 19th century, Western countries in the Americas and in Europe especially refused to acknowledge Haiti or trade with it. This resulted in the growth of a national debt which Haiti could never hope to pay off through its colonial-style productions of cash-crops: sugar and later rice.

This has also prevented the construction of vital public infrastructure necessary for the further development of productive processes to move from a semi-feudal state to an industrial state—whether under a capitalist economic system (private or state) or a socialist economic system. This has lead to a “brain drain” in Haiti of those who managed to get educated in spite of the lack of infrastructure.

Moving on into the 20th century, Haiti changed its main crop from sugar to rice, which could be eaten domestically. Western powers have consistently tried to undermine the Haitian agricultural economy by use of food “aid.” Most recently this has manifested itself under the last four administrations of the US government (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) in the literal dumping of cheap if not free subsidized US grain on the Haitian food markets at the very same time when Haitian crops come in.

Given that Haiti has had consistent political instability, which we will address below, this has resulted in an undercutting of price on the Haitian food markets of Haitian-produced food in favor of US-and-Western-produced food. This reduces the income generated by the sale of food by Haitian farmers and causes them to be forced off their land and moved to cities such as Port-Au-Prince.

Political Instability & Foreign Occupation

Haiti has, since its slave rebellion and declaration of independence, been the subject of interventions by the French, Spanish and Americans. Indeed, the existence of the Dominican Republic is the result of Spanish intervention trying to wrest the whole of Hispaniola back into Spanish Possession. The French have tried numerous times to stage coups in Haiti. In the 20th century, the US occupied Haiti from 1915-1932 and staged coups under Bush the I to remove Aristide. Under Bush II coups were also staged to remove Aristide. Any national leader in Haiti which has attempted to secure for Haiti political and economic independence has been subjected to a coup or direct foreign intervention into the natural development of the Haitian Nation.

Implications of the Earthquake

All these things taken together leads one to conclude that the earthquake in Haiti which would have happened anyway was made thousands of times worse by interventionism and Western imperial capitalism. Haiti’s long-time existence as a colony for superpowers and imperialist nations has prevented it from developing to help prevent and contain the disaster. The removal of the Haitian peasantry from their lands in the rural areas of Haiti has resulted in them moving to the cities in search of employment. The political instability caused by Western imperialism has prevented the construction of public infrastructure and the establishment of building codes, resulting in the houses of the poor Haitians newly moved to the cities to not be re-enforced as most are actually constructed out of cheap materials such as concrete. Furthermore, since most of the cities have spread out as much as the landscape will allow, by the time the peasantry was driven off their land they were forced to build on hillsides and areas where liquefaction is prevalent.

Conclusion

The exacerbation of the casualties and damage that would have occurred naturally due to a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake was multiplied by a factor of 50 if not more than that. The American Party of Labor must call for the end of foreign aid and imperialist interventions in the Republic of Haiti after the initial emergency clean-up and medical assistance. Further we call for the cancellation of Haitian foreign debt and a “Hands Off Haiti” policy after this emergency has passed.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Imperialist War

26 Jun

Imperialism: the invasion, occupation and conquering of sovereign nations by foreign powers for capitalist interests and profit.

Six Years of War

The sixth anniversary of the imperialist war has now passed. What gave the motivation to write this work was the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by United States Coalition forces. The imperialist American government with George Bush and now with Barack Obama at the head preaches endlessly about “peace” and “human rights” while they ruthlessly invade and plunder other countries, slaughtering millions to feed the jaws of their American Empire and the businesses which form its blood. They talk of promoting “democracy” while they continue to carry on their wars of aggression against peaceful peoples. We can’t limit ourselves to simply “condemning” these horrendous acts: it is better to be able to explain them.

Protest and anger in itself may help the people endure their woes, but they do not help them understand their causes or struggle to get rid of them and prevent their reoccurrence. By explaining the reasons for the war we can help to motivate popular uprisings and resistance, eventually leading to a revolution, in order to see that such bloody events never occur again.

In the case of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it is all the more important we understand why the war took place and what its interests are. The issue at hand is to judge what the United States, Britain and the UN have become today, since it was chiefly the U.S. and its “allies” which carried out this invasion. Over 1,000,000 people are now dead, and these are Iraqi people who have already suffered a U.S. starvation blockade that killed over 500,000, many of them children, as well as the regime of Saddam Hussein, a CIA puppet. Thousands of Iraqis are imprisoned, many of them tortured by American troops. Over 4,500 American soldiers have died.The unprovoked invasions of other nations in wars of aggression violate every kind of international law and common morality. President Obama has promised to withdraw a meager portion of the over 100,000 (at the time of this writing) troops stationed in Iraq, and then only over a period of three months, and then only to redeploy another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The working people must realize this is hardly “ending the war”; it is hardly even dialing it down. Even if all troops were pulled out tomorrow, the harm has been done—the destroyed nation is now under the thumb of international capital. Why has all this happened? What motivation do the American leaders have for these horrendous killings?

The Present War is a Capitalist War111

The answer is that this sort of aggression is not a recent development, but rather the logical conclusion of the capitalist system, and a repeat of what has been going on for centuries. Each year for the past 226 years, the US has been engaged in conflict somewhere in the world. Its state institutions, such as the CIA, have been responsible for setting up many bloody dictatorships throughout the world, including the ones of Mobutu, Park Chung-Hee, Suharto, Pinochet, the Shah of Iran—the list simply goes on. It has set up these oppressive military governments in order to make the work force and home markets of these countries were ripe for exploitation by American capitalism.In this age of economic instability and rising global tensions however, such “light” techniques such as setting up puppet governments are no longer enough to make sure that the hundreds of millions of people in African, Asian and Latin American nations stay firmly under the iron heel of capitalism. The imperialists have now resorted to outright occupation and open, declared warfare in violation of every law that the bourgeoisie themselves have claimed to uphold. Through the use of bloody violence, bombing, illegal weapons, networks of spies and now outright occupation, the US is trying, unsuccessfully, to crush any nations that threaten its desire for global conquest.

Just as the unprovoked wars of aggression against Haiti, Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Libya and many others were waged chiefly to safeguard the interests of capitalism, so is the present war. After the September 11th attacks by former CIA asset Osama bin Laden, the U.S. undertook a “War on Terror” against whomever it so chooses to label as a “terrorist.” This quickly resulted in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, in which America installed a former Unocal executive, Hamid Karzai, as president. He immediately began construction on the extremely profitable natural gas and oil pipeline.

Capitalism Needs War to Surviveimpkills

On the basis of the capitalist need for new markets, subjugated nations and the ever-present greed for oil, what we have seen the US do since 1960 is a deliberate attempt to economically sabotage through sanctions, blockades and oftentimes outright bombing and warfare, the nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan which resist its domination. Coalitions of other capitalist and imperialist nations such as the United Nations have always either supported these conflicts or have raised minor vocal objections while never taking concrete action against the US.The US and the NATO bloc are the sole world powers left. They are seeking to secure as many economic and political advantages as possible through the use of massive violence. The US has equipped itself with an excuse for intervention anywhere in the world by announcing that it has the right to invade any sovereign nation it feels is a threat. The recent air strikes in Pakistan and the smart missiles fired into Yemen (both of which killed alleged “terrorists”) illustrate this point. The US has already told nations like Syria and Iran that they could be next.

The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, like the many wars before them, happened because of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism in which more savage methods of oppression are needed in order for the ruling class to hold onto power. The root cause of these wars is the system of capitalism, which needs warfare to survive. The world cannot know peace until capitalism is overthrown, until the imperialist government is defeated and capitalism is done away with.

Tags: , ,

US Strategy in Latin America was Wrong

15 May

Three years ago I wrote an article arguing that the political changes sweeping across Latin America were epoch-making and probably irreversible, and that they would fundamentally alter the relationship between the region and the United States. Some of the most important economic causes of the region’s shift to the left – including the unprecedented long-term growth failure since 1980 – were unrecognised then and remain mostly unacknowledged to this day.

At the time, Washington’s stated strategy was to isolate Venezuela from its neighbours. This was before the election of additional left governments in Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay and El Salvador. I argued that this strategy was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what was happening in the region, and that it would only succeed in isolating the United States from its southern neighbours.

All this has come to pass, but more interestingly, for the first time we have an acknowledgement of this failure from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. At a press conference last Friday, she said in response to a question about Venezuela:

“When we look around the world, actually, we see a number of countries and leaders – Chávez is one of them but not the only one – who, over the last eight years, has become more and more negative and oppositional to the United States. … The prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to … turn them into international pariahs. It didn’t work.”

This is a remarkable confession, and it didn’t get a fraction of the attention it deserved. Clinton did not name the countries, but in Latin America, Bolivia would have to be included as a country where Washington has incurred resentment by supporting opposition movements against President Evo Morales. And of course there is the 47-year failure of the embargo against Cuba:

“We’re facing an almost united front against the United States regarding Cuba. Every country, even those with whom we are closest, is just saying you’ve got to change.”

She didn’t mention that they are also saying that Washington must change its policy toward Venezuela. President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has consistently defended Hugo Chávez, has told Barack Obama as much and reportedly counselled him at the Summit of the Americas not to listen to his advisers – most of whom have appeared to seek continued hostility toward Venezuela and possibly Bolivia.

It is remarkable that pressure for a reality-based view of the world has had to come from the south, and says a lot about the state of civil society in the US. How is it that nobody from our leading foreign policy institutions could have figured this out years ago? On Cuba, there has been dissent – partly because there are powerful business interests that want access to the island, and partly because 47 years of failure is a long time even for slow learners.

But on Venezuela, the primary focus of US foreign policy in the hemisphere for the past seven years, there has been an overwhelming consensus of fantasy and hype. Chávez is the only democratically elected leader in the world, facing a media that is still overwhelmingly controlled by his political opposition, to be successfully maligned as a “dictator”. And a threat to the US – what exactly has he done to the US, anyway, other than provide a $100m annual subsidy to poor people here for heating oil?

n1269993204_241831_9587

The sad reality is that while the US has at least some civil society organisations that can present an independent view to the public on domestic issues, on foreign policy issues we are much more like Russia. The vast majority of expert opinion on foreign policy that is allowed access to major media in the US consists of government officials, former government officials or people who or are otherwise influenced by the government. This is one reason why it was so easy to invade Iraq and so difficult to get out of there or out of Afghanistan – in spite of the American public’s long-standing lack of enthusiasm for sending combat troops overseas.

Hillary Clinton also took note that Russia, Iran and China are gaining economic and political influence in Latin America, and recognised that we are operating in “a multi-polar world.” This is also obvious – China has recently invested billions in Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and Ecuador, and agreed to a $10bn currency swap arrangement with Argentina. This week China also passed the US as the number one recipient of Brazilian exports. But Clinton’s recognition of a “multi-polar world” is unusual and probably unprecedented for a US secretary of state.

The signals from Washington remain mixed. The state department last week took another gratuitous swipe at Venezuela, listing the country as a “terrorist safe haven”, among other unsubstantiated allegations. (A few days later, Venezuela deported five Colombian guerillas to their home country). Obama’s top economic adviser Larry Summers recently made a point of saying that Argentina would not qualify for the IMF’s flexible credit line, from which Mexico had just received a $47bn commitment.

Washington is the IMF’s principal overseer. Mexico and Brazil also each have access to a $30bn currency swap arrangement with the US Federal Reserve. These are large commitments, and a reminder that Washington is still using its clout in a time of crisis to play political favourites, rather than contributing to regional balance of payments support.

But Clinton’s unprecedented reality-based remarks are an indication that she and Obama may have taken home some important lessons from their conversations with other presidents at the Summit of the Americas on 22 April. Such new thinking would be long overdue.

Source: 
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/07-10

Tags: , ,

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 144 other followers

%d bloggers like this: