Haiti
Over One Million People Remain Homeless in Haiti: U.S. Boasts of its “Model Response”
- Category: Haiti
By Bill Quigley 
Despite the fact that over a million people remained homeless in Haiti one month after the earthquake, the US Ambassador to Haiti, Ken Merten, is quoted at a State Department briefing on February 12, saying “In terms of humanitarian aid delivery…frankly, it’s working really well, and I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we’ve been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake.”
What? Haiti is a model of how the international government and donor community should respond to an earthquake? The Ambassador must be overworked and need some R&R. Look at the facts.
More...
Rescue & Care, Not Military Occupation!
- Category: Haiti
By Debra Sweet 
World Can’t Wait leader Elaine Brower joins delegation to Haiti
Millions of people have watched in horror as the people in Haiti have struggled to survive and aid trickles in. We are very proud that Elaine Brower, a New Yorker on the World Can't Wait Steering Committee, plans to travel to Haiti next week, taking aid she's gathered, and finding out from the people what they need from us. From her blog:
"Our purpose is to spend time with the people in the City of Port au-Prince, but also those who have been relocated from the main city area into the countryside. We will be carrying large quantities of our own aid, consisting of food items, powdered milk, rice, bandages, antibacterial wash, infant formula, women's feminine protection, cleansing wipes, and many other items that are badly needed by the victims of the quake in its aftermath.
Haiti - Still Starving After 23 Days
- Category: Haiti
By Bill Quigley 
You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti.
Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.
Twenty three days after the earthquake jolted Haiti and killed over 200,000 people, as many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.
For Haiti: Food and Medical Supplies - not Troops and Guns!
- Category: Haiti
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An article in the New York Times on January 30 reported that the U.S. government “Has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday. The military flights … usually carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds ended (January 27), after Governor Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of their care”.
A political dispute over who will pay. A stalemate. Flights suspended. The result? Children with crushed rib cages, people with shattered spines, fractured skulls, severed limbs hanging on by flaps of skin and tendon – all left to die in Haiti.
This is the coldhearted calculation of the people running the American empire.
The following brief compilation of some basic facts and figures by Richie Marini of World Can’t Wait/New York illustrates in a basic outline the priorities of the U.S. government.
See Also Haiti, Hell and Hope, by Bill Quigley; and Useless Aid - No Donation without Agitation, by Margaret Kimberley
Haiti: Hell And Hope
- Category: Haiti
By Bill Quigley
Smoke and flames rose from the sidewalk. A white man took pictures. Slowing down, my breath left me. The fire was a corpse. Leg bones sticking out of the flames.
Port au Prince police headquarters is gone, already bulldozed. A nearby college is pancaked. Government buildings are destroyed. Stores fallen down. Tens of thousands of buildings destroyed. Hundreds of thousands homeless. Giant piles of concrete, rebar, metal pipes, plastic pipes, doors and wires.
Corpses are still inside many of the mountains of rubble. No estimates of how many thousands of people are dead inside. Electrical poles bend over streets, held up by braids of thick black wires. On some side streets the wires are still down in the street.
Useless Aid: No Donation Without Agitation
- Category: Haiti
By Margaret Kimberley _150_113.jpg)
“The time has come for a new paradigm: No donation without agitation.” The United States has succeeded in plunging mainstream disaster “relief” into disrepute. “No donations to groups like the Red Cross, who sit on millions of dollars but do nothing but hand out blankets and move victims away from their homes in order to convenience the powerful.” And, especially, no donations to any group associated with George Bush or Bill Clinton.
A telethon hosted by celebrities succeeded in raising more than $57 million in funds for the relief of Haiti earthquake victims. Yet that sum and the many millions more donated by individuals around the world will do little to relieve Haiti’s plight.
Haitians are living in their latest hellish incarnation created by American meddling and the crushing of that nation’s democracy. As long as the United States directs Haiti’s affairs, and empowers a corrupt elite instead of the will of the masses, suffering will continue whether caused by natural or human-made disaster.
To Haiti from US: Rescue & Care, Not Occupation!
- Category: Haiti
From the Steering Committee of World Can’t Wait _150_84.jpg)
A Haitian lawyer says; "Haiti needs 12,000 doctors, Obama sent 12,000 troops to help us to death." American transport planes fly over Haiti with loudspeakers, telling the one million homeless people that if they leave by boat, they will be stopped by the Coast Guard and sent to Guantanamo Bay, now notorious for torturing Muslim men. International medical volunteers tell of unconscionable delays because the US military commandeered the airport to move troops in, turning away doctors, and delaying for days a full mobile hospital from Doctors Without Borders. .01% of what the US spends each year on occupying Iraq & Afghanistan ($100 million) is not enough for Haiti, already impoverished by 200 years of colonialism, and devastated by 2008's hurricanes.
We demand that US immigration restrictions be lifted now, and injured Haitians be given medical visas so that hospitals can treat their injuries.
We demand that US immigration restrictions be lifted now, and injured Haitians be given medical visas so that hospitals can treat their injuries.
Special Haiti Resource page here
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Why So Many People Died in the Earthquake... And Why the U.S. Can Do No Good in Haiti
- Category: Haiti
by Li Onesto
This article originally appeared on the Revolution website.
Think about it: A whole city that once had a population of two million people. Now there is mile after mile of buildings collapsed after a huge earthquake. Many, many bodies are sandwiched between layers of heavy concrete slabs lying in huge heaps.
But there are also many people, perhaps thousands, still alive, trapped inside, crying out. For days help from the outside still hasn't arrived and desperate relatives continue to dig at the rubble with their bare hands. Amazingly, even after three days, human voices are still emanating from the ruins. But then, there are fewer and they are softer. Eventually a deafening quiet surrounds the crumbled buildings as the city of Port-au-Prince becomes a vast tomb.
Haiti 2010: An Unwelcome Katrina Déjà vu
- Category: Haiti
By Cynthia McKinney
President Obama's response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers.
Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working--saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.
SEE ALSO, WHY THE U.S. OWES HAITI BILLIONS, BY BILL QUIGLEY
The U.S. in Haiti: A Century of Domination and Misery
- Category: Haiti
This article originally appeared on the site for Revolution newspaper.
In the wake of the earthquake, the U.S. is posing as the greatest friend of Haiti. But the whole history of the U.S. in Haiti shows just the opposite.
Haiti