Earthquake - Haiti

[peaceseeker]

The Destabilization of Haiti: Anatomy of a Military Coup d'Etat
by Michel Chossudovsky

"Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti.

The US Administration ultimately seeks to militarize the Caribbean basin.

The island of Hispaniola is a gateway to the Caribbean basin, strategically located between Cuba to the North West and Venezuela to the South. The militarization of the island, with the establishment of US military bases, is not only intended to put political pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, it is also geared towards the protection of the multibillion dollar narcotics transshipment trade through Haiti, from production sites in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia." (Michel Chossudovsky, The Destabilization of Haiti, Global Research, February 28, 2004)


Author's Preface

This article was written almost six years ago in the last days of February 2004. It was published on February 29th, 2004, on the same day as the US sponsored coup d'Etat, which led to the kidnapping and deportation of the country's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The coup d'Etat had been prepared well in advance. Following consultations behind closed doors in Ottawa in January 2003, the US, with the support of France and Canada took the necessary steps to carry out a Coup d'Etat and forcefully abduct President Aristide.

Barely two weeks following the February 2004 coup d'Etat, a puppet regime was installed by the "international community". In April 2004, a contingent of over 8000 UN "peace-keeping" forces under Brazilian command entered Haiti.

Haiti has been under foreign military occupation for the last six years. In this context, the January 2010 earthquake has provided Washington with a justification to bring in an additonal 10,000 foreign forces into the country. This influx of US combat troops into Haiti reinforces MINUSTAH's "peacekeeping" contingent bringing total occupation forces to more than 20,000.

This article largely focusses on the history of the 2004 US led coup d'Etat, including its preparations. It also outlines the process of economic destabilization under the helm of the IMF and the World Bank which played a key role in the events leading up to the military coup.

There is continuity in both the military and economic agenda. The same IMF-World Bank agenda is now part of Haiti's "reconstruction".

Under the Washington consensus, the proposed reconstruction will not contribute to mobilizing domestic resources, empowering the Haitian people, while rehabilitating the institutions of the State, including health education an essential public services. Quite the opposite: the process of reconstruction is dominated by Haiti's external creditors. An army "foreign investors" including construction conglomerates, mining interests, security firms and mercenary companies have already positioned themselves. The "reconstruction" of Haiti will be financed by a mounting external debt. Lucrative contracts will be handed out to foreign contractors. In all likelihood the country's infrastructure will be rebuilt and immediately privatised. The entire national economy is slated to be handed over to foreign capital.

What is required at this particular juncture is to:

1) support the people of Haiti in their longstanding quest for sovereignty,

2) demand the withdrawal of foreign troops,

3) channel support to Haitian organisations involved in disaster relief,

3) endorse the resistance of the Haitian people to foreign military occupation,

4) support genuine reconstruction initiatives at the grassroots level, which bypass the stranglehold of international creditors and foreign investors.


Michel Chossudovsky, 25 January 2010

[Nebula]

I thought we were keeping conspiracy theories to their own forum.

[peaceseeker]

I thought we were keeping conspiracy theories to their own forum.

Just the facts writerdave...just the facts...something you care not to comprehend.

[Nebula]

This thread is about the earthquake in Haiti, not some nutcases fanciful cronspiracy theory about the takeover of the country.

[peaceseeker]

Here's some more truth for you writerdave...

The Kidnapping of Haiti

By John Pilger
January 27, 2010

'The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.

The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security”. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.” Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power.”

In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W. Bush’s policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700 billion. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup.

For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the “relief effort”: a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. As president, Bush’s relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans’ black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti’s sweatshops.

When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN’s man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as “Mr. Nice Guy … bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land”, Clinton is Haiti’s most notorious privateer, demanding de-regulation of the economy for the benefit of the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed “tourist playground”.

Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington’s “rollback” plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by US-sponsored regimes.

The first rollback success came last year with the coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama’s secret support for the illegal regime carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the US seven military bases to, according to US air force documents, “combat anti-US governments in the region”.

Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama’s next war. On 14 December, researchers at the University of West England published first findings of a ten-year study of the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of the Chavez government, while the majority denigrated Chavez’s extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler.

Such distortion and its attendant servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American corporate media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support.'

http://www.johnpilger.com

[Fancy]

Quebec MDs ask for pay to volunteer in Haiti

Quebec orthopedists heading to Haiti to volunteer in the relief mission are asking the province to pay them $704 per day


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/2 ... z0dqP1MkKX

Doesn't sound right does it?

[peaceseeker]

Two vampires descend on Haiti...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/789.html


Bush & Clinton friends? You better believe it. And Obama is part of the same crowd.

Bush classic: "Channel compassion in a proper direction"

Heaven forbid someone looks at the real problem in Haiti: centuries of vicious outside influence.

[Fancy]

Here's the whole article:

Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc said he's still evaluating a request by some doctors that they be reimbursed $704 per day by the province for volunteer work in Haiti.

Some of the 20 orthopedic specialists interested in the mission have landed in the Caribbean country, where as many as 200,000 people were killed two weeks ago in a massive earthquake.

"We're going take a look at their demands and after we're going to give them an answer," said Bolduc on Wednesday.

"We have to think about that because there are many consequences to the decision because you have many people who work in Haiti and they are volunteers and they are not paid. What does it mean for all these people?" he added.

As of midday Wednesday, the health ministry had only received a request for remuneration from the group representing orthopedists, said Bolduc, who questioned whether this would set a precedent for other specialists groups.

A spokesperson for the Quebec's association of orthopedists said that while doctors are volunteering in Haiti, they still have bills to pay in Quebec.

The offices are still running and the specialists are paying secretaries and taxes, so the government has been asked for help, said association vice-president Dr. Louis Bellemare.

The doctors who are in Haiti will stay, regardless of whether the government agrees to reimburse them, added Bellemare. But if they were paid the $704 base fee they normally receive in Quebec, they might stay longer and more doctors might decide they could afford to go, he added.

The head of Quebec's federation of medical specialists said such a request is appropriate, given the circumstances.

Dr. Gaétan Barrette said firefighters and police officers sent to Haiti are remunerated, and physicians should be too.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/2 ... z0dr9xoeqT

Something to be said for "they might stay longer and more doctors might decide they could afford to go"

[kompili]

Two vampires descend on Haiti...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/789.html


Bush & Clinton friends? You better believe it. And Obama is part of the same crowd.

Bush classic: "Channel compassion in a proper direction"

Heaven forbid someone looks at the real problem in Haiti: centuries of vicious outside influence.

Clinton still has it, doesn't he. He can lie through his teeth without blinking and eye. And Bush talking about them being a trusted source was a real laugh. Two scum balls playing the sympathy card. Sicking.

[peaceseeker]

Haitians dying by the thousands as US escalates military intervention
By Bill Van Auken
22 January 2010

... 'While media reports claim that ever-growing amounts of material aid are coming into the country, reporters on the ground have said that there is still no sign that it is getting into the hands of the overwhelming majority of those who need it.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported Thursday, “Correspondents say the aid that has thus far arrived at the port is being driven for 45 minutes across the city to the airport, where it is piling up and not being distributed to those who need it.”

The BBC continued, “The US and UN World Food Programme insist the distribution of food and water is well under way, but the BBC’s Adam Mynott in Port-au-Prince says many people have still seen no international relief at all.”

Aid organizations have charged that since establishing its unilateral control over the Port-au-Prince airport and the city’s port facilities, and assuming essential governmental powers in Haiti, the US military has given the beefing up of its presence in the country priority over the provision of aid. Doctors Without Borders, for example, has protested that military air traffic controllers have since January 14 refused permission to land to five of its planes carrying 85 tons of medical supplies.

With the Haitian catastrophe now in its 10th day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the response of the Obama administration and the Pentagon, which have made military occupation of the Caribbean nation its first objective, has deepened the immense suffering of millions of injured, homeless and hungry people.' ...



Troops fire on starving crowds in Haiti
By Patrick Martin
28 January 2010

... 'Meanwhile an extraordinary denunciation of the Obama administration’s conduct in Haiti was published in the Wall Street Journal, issued by three New York City doctors, Soumitra R. Eachempati, incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and Dean Lorich and David Helfet, orthopedic surgeons and colleagues of Dr. Eachempati at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Their statement appeared under the headline, “Haiti: Obama’s Katrina, Many post-quake deaths could have been prevented.” The three doctors, who were among the first to reach Haiti after the quake, wrote that the delays imposed by the US military on relief groups entering the county “proved tragic. Upon our arrival at the Haiti Community Hospital we found scores of patients with pus dripping out of open fractures and crush injuries. Some wounds were already infested with maggots. Approximately one-third of the victims were children. Most of the patients already had life-threatening infections, and all were dehydrated. Many had been waiting in the hospital compound for days without water, antibiotics or even pain medicine. The hospital smelled of infected, rotting limbs.”

They continued: “The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the US government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more…. Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of US and international soldiers standing around aimlessly.”

[rookie314]

The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment.

What a crock. Why don't you ask real questions like, where are the Chinese, Russians, French, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Indians, Swedes, Finns, Danes, Dutch, Poles, etc.?

When the fan gets covered in it, the Americans will be there and they always are. Why don't you go complain about someone who does nothing (i.e. the French).

[Liberty and Truth]

This is just like the tsunami - everyone in the UN was crying about how the world wasn't responding, meanwhile the US had an aircraft carrier off the coast of Banda Aceh within 48 hours ferrying in doctors and medical supplies and treating the wounded - where was the rest of the world? Where was the Middle East in supporting their Muslim brothers? No where to be found. The World Health Organization did nothing but put out mournful calls about disease and starvation, meanwhile the US and Canada rolled up their sleeves and started helping people. I am so sick of idiots dumping on the countries actually doing work while ignoring the loser countries that do nothing.

[grammafreddy]

This is just like the tsunami - everyone in the UN was crying about how the world wasn't responding, meanwhile the US had an aircraft carrier off the coast of Banda Aceh within 48 hours ferrying in doctors and medical supplies and treating the wounded - where was the rest of the world? Where was the Middle East in supporting their Muslim brothers? No where to be found. The World Health Organization did nothing but put out mournful calls about disease and starvation, meanwhile the US and Canada rolled up their sleeves and started helping people. I am so sick of idiots dumping on the countries actually doing work while ignoring the loser countries that do nothing.

Maybe you (generic) need to ask the question ... WHY were Canada, France, China and the US so quick to help?

[Liberty and Truth]

This is just like the tsunami - everyone in the UN was crying about how the world wasn't responding, meanwhile the US had an aircraft carrier off the coast of Banda Aceh within 48 hours ferrying in doctors and medical supplies and treating the wounded - where was the rest of the world? Where was the Middle East in supporting their Muslim brothers? No where to be found. The World Health Organization did nothing but put out mournful calls about disease and starvation, meanwhile the US and Canada rolled up their sleeves and started helping people. I am so sick of idiots dumping on the countries actually doing work while ignoring the loser countries that do nothing.

Maybe you (generic) need to ask the question ... WHY were Canada, France, China and the US so quick to help?

I can't speak for any other country other than Canada - but I am assuming its the same reason we are quick to help everytime there is a crisis - be it a flood in Winnipeg or an earthquake in Haiti - because Canadians are per capita the biggest givers and contributors on earth, whenever there is a catastrophe. I say that having actually been around the world a bit so I have some experience with this. Makes me damn proud to be a Canadian and damn angry that some conspiracy weirdos want to attribute our efforts to some idiotic pursuit of resources as they can't comprehend why we're so darn nice and good and caring. Well we are - deal with it.

[glassmaster]

I can't speak for any other country other than Canada - but I am assuming its the same reason we are quick to help everytime there is a crisis - be it a flood in Winnipeg or an earthquake in Haiti - because Canadians are per capita the biggest givers and contributors on earth, whenever there is a catastrophe. I say that having actually been around the world a bit so I have some experience with this. Makes me damn proud to be a Canadian and damn angry that some conspiracy weirdos want to attribute our efforts to some idiotic pursuit of resources as they can't comprehend why we're so darn nice and good and caring. Well we are - deal with it.

Very well said Liberty and Truth. Couldn't have said it better myself.