Yash Tandon
2010-01-28, Issue 467
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61809
The 'failure of development' is to blame for the devastating effects of the recent earthquake in Haiti, writes Yash Tandon. Calling for democratic institutions accountable to the country's people to be put in place, Tandon argues that Haiti is ‘a microcosm of the disastrous outcome' of ‘development’ policies and the 'destructive effects of foreign interventionist policies’ in the affairs of the South.
Haiti is a tragedy for us all. It is a tragedy for you and me. It is a tragedy for Africa, for the poor countries of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. An earthquake is a global phenomenon, it can happen anywhere. It can happen in the US, in Europe and in Japan. So why then is it so destructive in its effects in the countries of the South? It is because of the failure of development. Haiti is a microcosm of the disastrous outcome of the failed so-called ‘development’ policies of the last thirty years in the South, and the destructive effects of foreign interventionist policies in the affairs of the poor countries of the South – from Somalia to Bangladesh to Haiti.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected president, in his passionate book, The Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization gives a graphic account of what happens when local economies and local initiatives of a poor country like Haiti are subordinated to the will of global finance and corporate power masked by the ideologies of ‘free trade’ and ‘development aid’. ‘In a world oriented only toward profit, it may be difficult for us to hear God's voice among the din and the racket of the moneychangers who have filled the world's temples’, he writes.
He describes how he had to wrestle with his heart and mind to resist the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) that was being forced on him as a condition for donor aid. When he remained faithful to his heart and mind, he was forced out of power. The government that replaced him relented to the pressure of the donors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank (WB). In 2004 in what he described as his ‘kidnapping’ with the connivance of France and the US, he was forced into exile. He was unceremoniously transported first to Jamaica and then, eventually, to South Africa.
The so-called International Community (IC) of the North is organising a conference in Montreal, Canada, for Haiti. It will, for sure, fail to bring development to the people of Haiti for it will put Haiti back under the heel and control of the local power and economic elite which, in turn, is under the control of the very forces that have ruined Haiti’s economy; the IMF/WB imposition of SAPS and the ‘benevolent’ dictatorship of ‘donor aid’. This is behind the present tragedy of Haiti, and this is behind the tragedy of most of Africa, and the poorer nations of the South.
An ‘Alternative International Community’ (AIC) of the South – an ad hoc body that should be set up comprising of individuals and intergovernmental organisations of the South and welfare-oriented organisations of the United Nations such as the FAO and the WHO – should organise its own counter conference in a spirit of genuine solidarity for the people of Haiti. It should aim at putting power in the hands of the people themselves. The initiative can come from, for instance, the government of South Africa, the South Centre in Geneva, or a body of sympathetic non-governmental organisations from the South and the North – or by all of these working in cooperation, under an initiative taken by one of them.
The objectives of the conference should be:
- To identify from among the Haitian population those community organisations and ad hoc groups which may have emerged from the ruins and which are engaged in self-help activities of relief, care of the injured bodies and souls among the survivors, and the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the society and economy
- To help build the capacity of these groups to take charge of the relief assistance now being airlifted, shipped or sent via the Dominican Republic
- To help institutionalise these efforts into a government of the people by putting in place self-governing councils at local levels going up to the apex at the national and state level
- To expose the fake ‘solidarity’ of the Montreal initiative
- To demilitarise the occupation of Haiti that is currently under way by the US and US-led NATO forces
- To join and support Haiti peoples` demand for the return of Aristide, who still remains the beacon of hope for Haiti. He has the support of the poor. He has faith in his people's strength to oppose the domination of donors and the IMF/World Bank, and to put in place democratic institutions that are accountable to the people, and not to the false gods of ‘moneychangers who have filled the world's temples’.
This is a call to all those who are inspired by a humane spirit and who wish to assist our brothers and sisters (‘our families’) in Haiti, from a sense of genuine solidarity.
BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
* Yash Tandon is the former executive director of the South Centre.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME
The God that I - David Comissiong - worship is ‘good’ - all the time! He is a God of perfect goodness - the God that Jesus Christ described as "our Father who art in heaven". He is the perfect Father, immeasurably surpassing in goodness to his children my own father and every other earthly father.
I therefore have never accused the God that I know and worship of committing evil! I have never believed that our heavenly Father wilfully directs earthquakes, hurricanes, armies or slave traders to inflict death, disease, pain, starvation or slavery on innocent babies, children or even adults.
However, there are some people who seem to worship a peculiar kind of god. For example, there is a man in the United States by the name of Pat Robertson who, it appears, worships a god that would inflict death and suffering on totally innocent and blameless new born Haitian children, simply because some obscure Haitian is supposed to have allegedly made a so-called pact with a being called Satan some 230 years ago. Clearly, Pat Robertson’s god and my heavenly Father cannot be one and the same God!
There is also a woman by the name of Janice D. Gibbs who had a letter published in the Nation Newspaper of Monday 25th January 2009, and it appears that she worships a god that would impose punishment and evil consequences on my totally innocent and blameless children and grand children simply because I made a statement which she and her god deemed to be inappropriate. Again, it is clear to me that my God of perfect goodness and Ms Janice Gibbs’ god cannot be one and the same!
I would also like to take this opportunity to inform Janice Gibbs, Pat Robertson and all those who think like them, that if they are looking for the purveyors of evil in Haiti, that they are much more likely to find them among the Christianity - practising mulatto and black elite of Haitian society than among the Vodun-practising segment of the masses of poor black Haitians.
The elite sector of Haitian society is comprised of Roman Catholic Christians who speak French rather than Haitian Creole, and who look to France and Europe for their models and value systems rather than to Africa. For almost 200 years now, this elite - often in complicity with Europeans and North Americans - has exploited and oppressed the Vodun and Christianity practising, Creole speaking, Africa oriented masses of Haiti.
Indeed, on more than one occasion over the past 200 years the Christianity - practising Haitian elite has used the state power at their disposal to organise military-style, violence filled campaigns designed to stamp out the practise of Vodun in Haiti. In the name of religious purity these supposed Christians inflicted murder on thousands of Vodun practitioners. And of course they claimed to be doing so in the name of ‘their’ god!
DAVID A. COMISSIONG
I therefore have never accused the God that I know and worship of committing evil! I have never believed that our heavenly Father wilfully directs earthquakes, hurricanes, armies or slave traders to inflict death, disease, pain, starvation or slavery on innocent babies, children or even adults.
However, there are some people who seem to worship a peculiar kind of god. For example, there is a man in the United States by the name of Pat Robertson who, it appears, worships a god that would inflict death and suffering on totally innocent and blameless new born Haitian children, simply because some obscure Haitian is supposed to have allegedly made a so-called pact with a being called Satan some 230 years ago. Clearly, Pat Robertson’s god and my heavenly Father cannot be one and the same God!
There is also a woman by the name of Janice D. Gibbs who had a letter published in the Nation Newspaper of Monday 25th January 2009, and it appears that she worships a god that would impose punishment and evil consequences on my totally innocent and blameless children and grand children simply because I made a statement which she and her god deemed to be inappropriate. Again, it is clear to me that my God of perfect goodness and Ms Janice Gibbs’ god cannot be one and the same!
I would also like to take this opportunity to inform Janice Gibbs, Pat Robertson and all those who think like them, that if they are looking for the purveyors of evil in Haiti, that they are much more likely to find them among the Christianity - practising mulatto and black elite of Haitian society than among the Vodun-practising segment of the masses of poor black Haitians.
The elite sector of Haitian society is comprised of Roman Catholic Christians who speak French rather than Haitian Creole, and who look to France and Europe for their models and value systems rather than to Africa. For almost 200 years now, this elite - often in complicity with Europeans and North Americans - has exploited and oppressed the Vodun and Christianity practising, Creole speaking, Africa oriented masses of Haiti.
Indeed, on more than one occasion over the past 200 years the Christianity - practising Haitian elite has used the state power at their disposal to organise military-style, violence filled campaigns designed to stamp out the practise of Vodun in Haiti. In the name of religious purity these supposed Christians inflicted murder on thousands of Vodun practitioners. And of course they claimed to be doing so in the name of ‘their’ god!
DAVID A. COMISSIONG
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Save Haiti From The Shock Doctrine
The Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP) is appealing to the governments of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the African Union (AU), and the Bolivarian Alternative For Latin America (ALBA) to bestir themselves and make a collective effort to save Haiti from the evil consequences of the ‘Shock Doctrine’ and its associated plague of ‘Disaster Capitalism’!
The term ‘Shock Doctrine’ was coined by the award-winning Canadian author, Naomi Klein, and refers to the doctrine that was developed by the ultra-right wing American economist, Milton Friedman, to the effect that traumatic man made or natural disasters are to be used by conservative capitalist ideologues to impose radical right wing economic and social policies on the disaster struck and traumatised population.
Friedman understood that the extreme right wing capitalist agenda of wholesale privatisation, government deregulation, dismantlement of social programmes, the enthronement of private capital and capitalists, and the opening up of the economy to the full blast of foreign (North American) economic dominance would be resisted by ordinary people concerned about their own welfare, and could only be fully and permanently imposed if the population was in such a traumatised state that it was unable to resist.
Friedman initially experimented with this doctrine during the 1970's, in his capacity as economic advisor to General Pinochet’s tyrranical, authoritarian government, installed in Chile after a brutal coup. In more recent years, Friedman’s acolytes in the United States have sought to apply the doctrine in the context of the 911 terrorist attack on New York City, the American "shock and awe" military attack on Iraq, the tsunami in Sri Lanka and other parts of South East Asia, and the death and devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The modus operandi of the followers of the ‘Shock Doctrine’ is to wait in readines for the next disaster, and once it occurs, to act swiftly and decisively.
Well, a ‘Shock Doctrine’ type of disaster has now erupted in Haiti, and if the initial approach of the United States government to the relief effort is anything to go by, then we need to brace ourselves for an American capatalist ‘shock and awe’ approach to the reconstruction of Haiti.
Just last Tuesday night, Dr Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent, reported on CNN that doctors of several nationalities in Haiti were deprived of the medical supplies required to properly carry out their services and went on to explain that "the huge effort placed on security has supplanted the effort to get essential supplies to the hospitals and doctors in Haiti".
Furthermore, within hours of the earthquake in Haiti, countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and China were successfully sending food, water, medicine and civilian teams of doctors and other specialists to Haiti. On the other hand, the very first reaction of the United States government was to mobilise the US military and to send in thousands of marines and paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division.
And to the consternation of aid agencies all over the world, once the US military had taken control of Haiti’s air and sea ports, getting assistance seemingly became increasingly difficult. Indeed, such well respected aid organisations as ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ and the ‘International Red Cross’ were denied permission to fly their medical teams into the Port-au-Prince airport. These desperately needed medical specialists were forced to land in the Dominican Republic and waste many precious hours and lives as they made the long land journey into Haiti. In addition, even CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial mission was not permitted by the Americans to land in Haiti.
The PEP is very concerned about the ‘games’ that are being played and where they will all end up. Indeed, our concern has been intensified by the knowledge that President Obama has designated USAID as the lead agency in the response to the Hatian crisis, since USAID has a long track record of promoting American capitalist interests in Haiti at the expense of the workers and poor people of Haiti.
We are therefore calling on CARICOM, the AU and ALBA to recognise that they possess a deep kinship with and responsibility towards the people of Haiti and urge them to engage in a strong defence of the independence and sovereignty of Haiti.
The term ‘Shock Doctrine’ was coined by the award-winning Canadian author, Naomi Klein, and refers to the doctrine that was developed by the ultra-right wing American economist, Milton Friedman, to the effect that traumatic man made or natural disasters are to be used by conservative capitalist ideologues to impose radical right wing economic and social policies on the disaster struck and traumatised population.
Friedman understood that the extreme right wing capitalist agenda of wholesale privatisation, government deregulation, dismantlement of social programmes, the enthronement of private capital and capitalists, and the opening up of the economy to the full blast of foreign (North American) economic dominance would be resisted by ordinary people concerned about their own welfare, and could only be fully and permanently imposed if the population was in such a traumatised state that it was unable to resist.
Friedman initially experimented with this doctrine during the 1970's, in his capacity as economic advisor to General Pinochet’s tyrranical, authoritarian government, installed in Chile after a brutal coup. In more recent years, Friedman’s acolytes in the United States have sought to apply the doctrine in the context of the 911 terrorist attack on New York City, the American "shock and awe" military attack on Iraq, the tsunami in Sri Lanka and other parts of South East Asia, and the death and devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The modus operandi of the followers of the ‘Shock Doctrine’ is to wait in readines for the next disaster, and once it occurs, to act swiftly and decisively.
Well, a ‘Shock Doctrine’ type of disaster has now erupted in Haiti, and if the initial approach of the United States government to the relief effort is anything to go by, then we need to brace ourselves for an American capatalist ‘shock and awe’ approach to the reconstruction of Haiti.
Just last Tuesday night, Dr Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent, reported on CNN that doctors of several nationalities in Haiti were deprived of the medical supplies required to properly carry out their services and went on to explain that "the huge effort placed on security has supplanted the effort to get essential supplies to the hospitals and doctors in Haiti".
Furthermore, within hours of the earthquake in Haiti, countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and China were successfully sending food, water, medicine and civilian teams of doctors and other specialists to Haiti. On the other hand, the very first reaction of the United States government was to mobilise the US military and to send in thousands of marines and paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division.
And to the consternation of aid agencies all over the world, once the US military had taken control of Haiti’s air and sea ports, getting assistance seemingly became increasingly difficult. Indeed, such well respected aid organisations as ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ and the ‘International Red Cross’ were denied permission to fly their medical teams into the Port-au-Prince airport. These desperately needed medical specialists were forced to land in the Dominican Republic and waste many precious hours and lives as they made the long land journey into Haiti. In addition, even CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial mission was not permitted by the Americans to land in Haiti.
The PEP is very concerned about the ‘games’ that are being played and where they will all end up. Indeed, our concern has been intensified by the knowledge that President Obama has designated USAID as the lead agency in the response to the Hatian crisis, since USAID has a long track record of promoting American capitalist interests in Haiti at the expense of the workers and poor people of Haiti.
We are therefore calling on CARICOM, the AU and ALBA to recognise that they possess a deep kinship with and responsibility towards the people of Haiti and urge them to engage in a strong defence of the independence and sovereignty of Haiti.
Haiti's Classquake
Haiti's Classquake
By: Jeb Sprague - HaitiAnalysis.com
Just five days prior to the 7.0 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince on January 12th, the Haitian government’s Council of Modernisation of Public Enterprises (CMEP) announced the planned 70% privatization of Teleco, Haiti’s public telephone company.
Today Port-au-Prince lies in ruins, with thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead, entire neighborhoods cut off, many buried alive. Towns across the southern peninsula, such as Léogâne, are said to be in total ruin with an untold number of victims. Haiti’s president, René Préval, and his administration remain largely inept, absent from Port-au-Prince and even the local radio.
At Pont Morin in the Bois Verna section of the capital, Teleco’s office building is badly damaged. One twitter poster in Port-au-Prince on Monday warned local residents to evacuate “After the latest evaluations of the building, they've noticed that the main poles of the structure are damaged.”
With masses of people unable to get critical emergency medical care, water and basic supplies, the lack of local state infrastructure and personnel is plainly apparent.
Instead of investing in social programs and government infrastructure that could have helped care for the people of Port-au-Prince, especially following such a natural disaster, Haiti’s government has long been pressured by the United States and International Financial Institutions to sell off its infrastructure, to shut down government sponsored soup kitchens, to lower tariffs that might benefit the rural economy.
The demographic trend in Haiti over the last few decade’s showcases the impact of capitalist globalization: the movement of rural folks to slums in Port-au-Prince, often perched in large clumps precariously on hillsides.
"Slums begin with bad geology,” writer and historian Mike Davis explains. In his book Planet of Slums, Davis describes the explosion of slum communities in today's era of global capitalism. Billions have no choice but to live in close proximity to environmental and geological disaster, Davis explains.
In mid-2007, Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre and I wrote a piece for IPS (Inter Press Service) that investigated the gutting of Haiti’s public telephone company. We interviewed public sector workers laid off in droves. The government’s plan was to reduce Teleco employees from 3,293 to less than one thousand. By 2010 Préval’s appointed heads of Teleco had terminated employment for two-thirds of the workers at the company. During his first term in office from 1996-2001, Préval had already sold off the government’s Minoterie flourmill and public cement company.
Préval now follows through with the Cadre de Coopération Intérimaire (CCI), a macro-economic adjustment program formulated by his unelected predecessor (the interim regime of Gerard Latortue), along with international donor institutions and local sub-grantee groups. Privatization has been one plank of neoliberalism in Haiti.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Haiti was pressured to lower tariffs on foreign rice, bringing down the few protections in place for its local economy. With a lack of opportunity in the countryside, migration to the nation’s capital intensified. Hundreds of thousands took up residence in poorly constructed shantytowns, many in hillside slums such as Carrefour.
Using the worn-out rhetoric of nationalism to draw attention away from the implementation of policies favorable to global capitalism, government functionaries in Haiti have worked closely with IFI, NGO and governmental advisors and experts from abroad. For those Haitian politicians unwilling to go along with these plans, the brute force of coup d’états, economic embargo and reoccurring civil society training missions from abroad have reinforced the “right way” to govern.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Haitian state evaporated. Police searched for their own loved-ones, as government ministries and UN bases lay in ruins, many top officials now dead under tons of fallen concrete.
Widely criticized for failing in the days following the quake to visit or speak out on the radio to the neighborhoods of the capital in turmoil, Préval and other aloof Haitian government leaders have been encamped at a police station on the cities edge meeting with foreign leaders and journalists. On Tuesday Préval went to Santo Domingo in the neighboring Dominican Republic to confer further with aid officials.
The Washington Post explained “The U.S. government views Préval, an agronomist by training, as a technocrat largely free of the sharp political ideologies that have divided Haiti for decades. But at a time when tragedy is forcing the country essentially to begin again, Préval's aversion to the public stage has left millions of Haitians wondering whether there is a government at all.”
Hundreds of journalists have streamed into Port-au-Prince, while the U.S. military has set up base-camp at the damaged national airport with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the ground. Giving priority to unloading heavy weaponry, U.S. forces have turned away a number of large planes carrying medical and rescue equipment, prompting protests from France, Venezuela and the Médecins sans frontières.
International media outlets show images of Haitians digging with pieces of concrete at collapsed buildings. But over the days the cries of loved ones buried below have slowly fallen silent.
Other media have begun to show images of poor people in the capital's downtown searching for food, calling them "looters", when in fact mass starvation is setting in. This occurs as shotgun-wielding security guards attempt to cordon off the rubble of some of the larger markets.
Given the past decades of forced austerity measures imposed upon Haiti, it has been nearly impossible for the country to build up a larger government, one with more capacity to deal with emergencies, to support social investment projects, soup kitchens, or even improved slum housing. The overthrown Aristide government, 2001-2004, though severely crippled by aid embargoes and elite-backed death squads and opposition groups, had refused privatization, instituted a national program of soup kitchens and literacy centers, and even constructed a few blocks of improved slum housing in the capital (as covered at the time in an article by the former government newspaper L’Union).
Those small but welcome measures are a thing of the past. The repression of attempts by the people to have a say through democratic means and the forced subjugation of the local economy to global capitalism parallels the assumption of power by elites disconnected from the people they govern. These are the technocratic elites that Sociologist William I. Robinson in his book A Theory of Global Capitalism refers to as “transnationalised fractions of local dominant groups in the South…sometimes termed a ‘modernizing bourgeoisie’, who have overseen sweeping processes of social and economic restructuring and integration into the global economy and society.” Out from the ashes, do not be surprised if the Haitian people refuse to accept this.
Geographer Kenneth Hewitt coined the term 'classquake' in examining the 1976 earthquake in Guatemala that cost the lives of 23,000 people, because of the accuracy with which it struck down the poor. The classquake in Haiti today is much worse, compounded by decades of capitalist globalization and U.S. intervention.
---
Jeb Sprague received a Project Censored Award in 2008 for an article he published with the Inter Press Service (IPS) from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Visit his university website: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~jhsprague/
By: Jeb Sprague - HaitiAnalysis.com
Just five days prior to the 7.0 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince on January 12th, the Haitian government’s Council of Modernisation of Public Enterprises (CMEP) announced the planned 70% privatization of Teleco, Haiti’s public telephone company.
Today Port-au-Prince lies in ruins, with thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead, entire neighborhoods cut off, many buried alive. Towns across the southern peninsula, such as Léogâne, are said to be in total ruin with an untold number of victims. Haiti’s president, René Préval, and his administration remain largely inept, absent from Port-au-Prince and even the local radio.
At Pont Morin in the Bois Verna section of the capital, Teleco’s office building is badly damaged. One twitter poster in Port-au-Prince on Monday warned local residents to evacuate “After the latest evaluations of the building, they've noticed that the main poles of the structure are damaged.”
With masses of people unable to get critical emergency medical care, water and basic supplies, the lack of local state infrastructure and personnel is plainly apparent.
Instead of investing in social programs and government infrastructure that could have helped care for the people of Port-au-Prince, especially following such a natural disaster, Haiti’s government has long been pressured by the United States and International Financial Institutions to sell off its infrastructure, to shut down government sponsored soup kitchens, to lower tariffs that might benefit the rural economy.
The demographic trend in Haiti over the last few decade’s showcases the impact of capitalist globalization: the movement of rural folks to slums in Port-au-Prince, often perched in large clumps precariously on hillsides.
"Slums begin with bad geology,” writer and historian Mike Davis explains. In his book Planet of Slums, Davis describes the explosion of slum communities in today's era of global capitalism. Billions have no choice but to live in close proximity to environmental and geological disaster, Davis explains.
In mid-2007, Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre and I wrote a piece for IPS (Inter Press Service) that investigated the gutting of Haiti’s public telephone company. We interviewed public sector workers laid off in droves. The government’s plan was to reduce Teleco employees from 3,293 to less than one thousand. By 2010 Préval’s appointed heads of Teleco had terminated employment for two-thirds of the workers at the company. During his first term in office from 1996-2001, Préval had already sold off the government’s Minoterie flourmill and public cement company.
Préval now follows through with the Cadre de Coopération Intérimaire (CCI), a macro-economic adjustment program formulated by his unelected predecessor (the interim regime of Gerard Latortue), along with international donor institutions and local sub-grantee groups. Privatization has been one plank of neoliberalism in Haiti.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Haiti was pressured to lower tariffs on foreign rice, bringing down the few protections in place for its local economy. With a lack of opportunity in the countryside, migration to the nation’s capital intensified. Hundreds of thousands took up residence in poorly constructed shantytowns, many in hillside slums such as Carrefour.
Using the worn-out rhetoric of nationalism to draw attention away from the implementation of policies favorable to global capitalism, government functionaries in Haiti have worked closely with IFI, NGO and governmental advisors and experts from abroad. For those Haitian politicians unwilling to go along with these plans, the brute force of coup d’états, economic embargo and reoccurring civil society training missions from abroad have reinforced the “right way” to govern.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, the Haitian state evaporated. Police searched for their own loved-ones, as government ministries and UN bases lay in ruins, many top officials now dead under tons of fallen concrete.
Widely criticized for failing in the days following the quake to visit or speak out on the radio to the neighborhoods of the capital in turmoil, Préval and other aloof Haitian government leaders have been encamped at a police station on the cities edge meeting with foreign leaders and journalists. On Tuesday Préval went to Santo Domingo in the neighboring Dominican Republic to confer further with aid officials.
The Washington Post explained “The U.S. government views Préval, an agronomist by training, as a technocrat largely free of the sharp political ideologies that have divided Haiti for decades. But at a time when tragedy is forcing the country essentially to begin again, Préval's aversion to the public stage has left millions of Haitians wondering whether there is a government at all.”
Hundreds of journalists have streamed into Port-au-Prince, while the U.S. military has set up base-camp at the damaged national airport with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the ground. Giving priority to unloading heavy weaponry, U.S. forces have turned away a number of large planes carrying medical and rescue equipment, prompting protests from France, Venezuela and the Médecins sans frontières.
International media outlets show images of Haitians digging with pieces of concrete at collapsed buildings. But over the days the cries of loved ones buried below have slowly fallen silent.
Other media have begun to show images of poor people in the capital's downtown searching for food, calling them "looters", when in fact mass starvation is setting in. This occurs as shotgun-wielding security guards attempt to cordon off the rubble of some of the larger markets.
Given the past decades of forced austerity measures imposed upon Haiti, it has been nearly impossible for the country to build up a larger government, one with more capacity to deal with emergencies, to support social investment projects, soup kitchens, or even improved slum housing. The overthrown Aristide government, 2001-2004, though severely crippled by aid embargoes and elite-backed death squads and opposition groups, had refused privatization, instituted a national program of soup kitchens and literacy centers, and even constructed a few blocks of improved slum housing in the capital (as covered at the time in an article by the former government newspaper L’Union).
Those small but welcome measures are a thing of the past. The repression of attempts by the people to have a say through democratic means and the forced subjugation of the local economy to global capitalism parallels the assumption of power by elites disconnected from the people they govern. These are the technocratic elites that Sociologist William I. Robinson in his book A Theory of Global Capitalism refers to as “transnationalised fractions of local dominant groups in the South…sometimes termed a ‘modernizing bourgeoisie’, who have overseen sweeping processes of social and economic restructuring and integration into the global economy and society.” Out from the ashes, do not be surprised if the Haitian people refuse to accept this.
Geographer Kenneth Hewitt coined the term 'classquake' in examining the 1976 earthquake in Guatemala that cost the lives of 23,000 people, because of the accuracy with which it struck down the poor. The classquake in Haiti today is much worse, compounded by decades of capitalist globalization and U.S. intervention.
---
Jeb Sprague received a Project Censored Award in 2008 for an article he published with the Inter Press Service (IPS) from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Visit his university website: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~jhsprague/
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Haiti's Relief Fund
Dear Brothers and SistersThe Clement Payne Movement has established a HAITI RELIEF FUND at the Broad Street Branch of RBTT Bank.
The account number is 1-4717070.
All funds that we collect will be used to send emergency supplies to Haiti.
At this stage, we are focusing on medicines and related medical supplies.
Since we are members of the Assembly of Caribbean Peoples and the Caribbean Pan-African Network, we have associates in Haiti and also in the Dominican Republic to whom we can funnel the supplies.
The Dominican Republic is important because it is via or through the Dominican Republic that the first sets of supplies reached Haiti.
Please give generously.
DAVID A. COMISSIONG
President
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
