Stephen Lendman

Following Haiti's catastrophic January 12, 2010 earthquake, billions of dollars in relief aid were raised. Suffering Haitians got virtually none of it. Hundreds of thousands remain homeless. A cholera emergency still exists.

On June 19, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent said:

"There is a significant probability of a major cholera emergency in Haiti in the coming months but resources have been severely diminished."

Increased numbers of cases were reported in the Artibonite, Nord-Ouest, Nord-Est, Ouest, Gonave island, and homeless camps in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) estimates another 170,000 new cases by end of 2012. Haiti's problems are severe. Deep poverty, deprivation, and unemployment torment millions. Earthquake devastation compounded them. Little relief came. It was stolen for commercial development. It's common practice to divert relief aid to private developers.

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Stephen Lendman

Cholera cripples Haiti, two years after quake: A woman
suffering cholera symptoms is pushed in a wheelbarrow
to a hospital Wednesday in the Cite Soleil slum in Port-
au-Prince. (Ramon Espinosa / Associated Press)

Life in Devastated Haiti
Post-Quake Haiti: One Year Later
Misery and Despair Plague Haitians
Haiti's Cholera Epidemic Sparks Outrage
Haitian Suffering Under Imperial Occupation
Haiti's Cholera Outbreak: A Disease of Poverty
Haiti's Cholera Epidemic: Mounting Illnesses and Deaths, Inadequate Aid

On January 12, 2010, Haiti experienced a calamitous earthquake. Port-au-Prince was devastated. Property destruction and damage were extensive. As many as 300,000 or more died. Many others were injured. Impoverished Haitians enduring crushing hardships lost everything, including loved ones. Two years later, relief efforts belie unaddressed human needs.

A January 11 AFP article headlined, "Haiti quake victims stuck in a time warp," saying:

Port-au-Prince suburb Petionville symbolizes conditions. Around "2,500 people subsist in a crowded public park near open ditches flowing with human waste, a grim scene frozen in time two years after Haiti's earthquake disaster."

Homeless, half-clothed, barefoot children "chase a worn football across a filthy clearing, past puddles of putrid waste water."

Over half a million survivors endure appalling conditions in hundreds of makeshift camps. They remain homeless, struggling to survive.

Billions in promised aid never came. Grandiose visions proved pipe-dreams. Most rubble remains. Reconstruction is inadequate to meet enormous needs.

"The problems facing Haiti are vast, if not insurmountable, in the short term." Hundreds of thousands who lost everything live in legal limbo. Cholera's devastating thousands. Culpable UN Blue Helmets won't accept blame.

Understated reports show 7,000 deaths and over half a million infected. True figures may be double or more. UN Haiti chief humanitarian officer said:

"What we are looking at in Haiti is not just recovery from the earthquake. It's not just dealing with a cholera epidemic. Those came on top of a country which was structurally broken" by neglect, persecution, and exploitive US dominance.

One victim told AFP, "My hope is God, not the leaders of this country" who've done pathetically little to help.

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Anthony Gregory

The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse edited by Marjorie Cohn (New York University Press: 2011), 342 pages.

When I was a child in Reagan’s America, a common theme in Cold War rhetoric was that the Soviets tortured people and detained them without cause, extracted phony confessions through cruel violence, did the unspeakable to detainees who were helpless against the full, heartless weight of the communist state. It was torture as much as any evil that differentiated the bad guys, the commies, from the good guys, the American people and their government. However imperfect the U.S. system was, it had civilized standards rejected by the enemy.

In April 2004, the world was shocked to see photos exposing the torment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, one of Saddam Hussein’s most infamous prisons, which was taken over and used by the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Well, most of the world was shocked. Some, mostly conservative commentators, dismissed or defended the barbarity, even comparing it to frat-boy hazing. Others were disgusted but shrugged it off as the work of a few bad apples, not something that should draw judgment down on the whole of U.S. policy and the brave men and women in uniform. Still others of us were horrified but did not see the mistreatment as any sort of aberration — we expected such torture to occur in a war of aggression, figured we had not seen the worst of it, and even argued that what goes on in America’s domestic prisons easily compares with some of the milder photos dominating the nightly news.

A national debate arose out of that scandal. More than one question was pondered: Do these photos depict torture? Is this an anomaly or a systemic problem? Who should be held accountable? Should torture always be illegal?

Over the next few years, more torture controversies came up. The question of whether water-boarding actually constitutes torture was particularly disheartening. Some defenders of the U.S. government said the United States should not and does not torture, but waterboarding doesn’t count. Others said that even if the United States does torture, it is doing so in service of a greater good.

We have actually come to the point where the rhetoric of Reagan’s day no longer holds: American exceptionalists and conservatives no longer claim emphatically that the United States does not and never will torture, as they did before (however disingenuously). An AP poll in June 2009 found that 52 percent of Americans thought torture was justified in some situations — up from only 38 percent in 2005. In Obama’s America, torture is now normalized.

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Stephen Lendman

'Juan Gómez' is an encampment built by Haitians who
crossed into the Dominican Republic in Search of work.

Except briefly after their successful 1804 revolution and under Aristide, Haitians suffered over 500 years of persecution and human misery.

It's ongoing today under America's imperial boot, UN paramilitary occupation, and stealth Duvalierist Michel ("Sweet Micky") Martelly's illegitimate April 2011 election.

With longstanding ties to Haitian elites, militarists, reactionary Duvalierists, and his thuggish Tonton Macoute assassins, Haitians are stuck with him for five years.

He serves Washington and predatory neoliberal interests, not them. As a result, expect hard times getting harder ahead.

On October 17, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Research Associate Courtney Franz headlined, "Leta Restavek: The Suppression of Democracy in Haiti," saying:

UN Blue Helmet MINUSTAH occupiers "suppressed both electoral democracy and free speech in Haiti by organizing fraudulent elections and shutting down peaceful protests, which helped to exclude Haiti's poor majority from participating in the electoral process."

Moreover, Washington's iron fist got Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas and 14 other parties banned to install its favorites. The entire electoral process was unfair, unconstitutional, undemocratic and laughable under standards stretched to look legitimate.

Even despots hold more respectable elections to rubber-stamp their unchallenged rule. Haiti's didn't pass the smell test.

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John Hanrahan

Part of a Nieman Watchdog series, 'Reporting the Endgame'

The national news media almost totally ignore homefront protests of the Afghanistan war, killer drones, torture, and more, regardless of their newsworthiness. By its lack of coverage, isn’t the press thus helping perpetuate an endless war?

Antiwar activists repeatedly stage dramatic acts of civil disobedience in the United States but are almost entirely ignored by mainstream print and broadcast news organizations. During the Vietnam era, press coverage of the fighting and opposition to it at home helped turn public opinion against the war. This time around lack of homefront coverage may be helping keep military involvement continue on and on.

In the past two years, protests of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, killer drones, torture, nuclear weapons and other war-related issues have been carried out at nuclear weapons silos and production facilities, military bases, unmanned drone facilities, major defense contractors’ headquarters and offices, the Nevada Nuclear Test site, nuclear weapons design laboratories, military recruiting centers, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, federal buildings in various states, the U.S. Strategic Air Command, and numerous other war-oriented sites across the country.

The protests don’t begin to approach the level of those during the Vietnam war or in the early years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – but that’s not a reason to ignore them. The fact is, protest is much more widespread than citizens might gauge from coverage in newspapers and television, which seldom report antiwar actions regardless of how significant or newsworthy they may be. As we briefly observed in a previous article:

By ignoring antiwar protests almost totally, editors are treating opposition to the ongoing war in Afghanistan much as they handled the run-up to the war in Iraq: They are missing an important story and contributing to the perception that there is no visible opposition to the U.S. wars and ever-growing military budgets, even as polls show overwhelming support for early U.S. military withdrawal.

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Kathy Kelly
Pulse

The survivor of a drone attack in Pakistan (Daniel Berehulak
Getty Images)

Libby and Jerica are in the front seat of the Prius, and Mary and I are in back. We just left Oklahoma, we’re heading into Shamrock, Texas, and tomorrow we’ll be Indian Springs, Nevada, home of Creech Air Force Base. We’ve been discussing our legal defense.

The state of Nevada has charged Libby and me, along with twelve others, with criminal trespass onto the base. On April 9, 2009, after a ten-day vigil outside the air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive targeted assassination program. Our trial date is set for September 14.

Creech is one of several homes of the U.S. military’s aerial drone program. U.S. Air Force personnel there pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. The different kinds of drone include the “Predator” and the “Reaper.” The Obama administration favors a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special Operations raids to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever Al Qaeda presence exists in these countries. As the U.S. accelerates this campaign, we hear from UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, who suggests that U.S. citizens may be asleep at the wheel, oblivious to clear violations of international law which we have real obligations to prevent (or at the very least discuss). Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near Ground Zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small “ground zeroes” in multiple locales on an everyday basis.

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Stephen Lendman

Katrina Anniversary. People hold up a banner with names of
those Killed in Hurricane Katrina in front of the Industrial Canal
flood wall during a public commemoration of the fifth anniversary
of Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans
Sunday, Aug. 29, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

[Hurricane Katrina Pictures] August 29, 2005, a day of infamy remembered less for the storm, catastrophic floods and destruction, and more as a metaphor for disaster capitalism, exploiting security threats, "terror" attacks, economic meltdowns, and "natural" disasters like Katrina.

It turned this aging senior into a writer and radio host, furious over federal, state and local authorities using it to reward business at the expense of New Orleans' poor Blacks. Five years later, their lives remain in disarray through no fault of their own.

Levies protecting their neighborhoods were left weak, vulnerable to fail as they did, then Congressman Richard Baker (R. LA) saying, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it but God did," with considerable willful negligence help.

Malik Rahim, (New Orleans) Common Ground Relief (CGR) co-founder said:

"They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line."

Blank is beautiful. Ethnic cleansing was long-planned, the scheme, of course, to erase poor neighborhoods, replacing them with upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land, New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro saying, "we (now) have a clean (slate) to start (over and take advantage of) big opportunities."

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Stephen Lendman

The WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diaries" provided documented evidence of America's out-of-control lawlessness, including Special Forces death squads (Task Force 373) extrajudicially murdering or capturing suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda figures, many hundreds or perhaps thousands on a so-called Jpel (joint prioritized effects) list, also willfully killing civilian men, women and children, the London Times Kabul-based Jerome Starkey reporting earlier on these crimes, suppressed in US media accounts, presenting an embedded view of the war, omitting the targeting of Americans until then Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged it in February, explaining that:

CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads have been authorized to kill US citizens abroad, suspected of terrorist involvement, Blair saying:

hink that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," the criteria being "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved. We don't target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it," based on suspicions, not evidence.

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Bill Quigley

It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.

The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated that when a long train of abuses by those in power evidence a design to reduce the rights of people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the peoples right, in fact their duty to engage in a revolution.

Martin Luther King, Jr., said forty three years ago next month that it was time for a radical revolution of values in the United States. He preached “a true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” It is clearer than ever that now is the time for radical change.

Look at what our current system has brought us and ask if it is time for a revolution?

Over 2.8 million people lost their homes in 2009 to foreclosure or bank repossessions – nearly 8000 each day – higher numbers than the last two years when millions of others also lost their homes. At the same time, the government bailed out Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the auto industry and enacted the troubled asset (TARP) program with $1.7 trillion of our money.

Wall Street then awarded itself over $20 billion in bonuses in 2009 alone, an average bonus on top of pay of $123,000. At the same time, over 17 million people are jobless right now. Millions more are working part-time when they want and need to be working full-time. Yet the current system allows one single U.S. Senator to stop unemployment and Medicare benefits being paid to millions.

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Marguerite Laurent

This article was first published in October 2009.

[Located in the North-Eastern part of Haiti and abounding with tourist sites, Fort-Liberté is a city where the first declaration of Haiti's independence took place on November 29, 1803. It has one of the most captivating historical sites in the area called Fort Dauphin known today as Fort-Liberté. This fort was built around 1731 under the command of Louis XV, king of France, and its ruins are the greatest evidences of its genius designers who chose the most strategic point to built it in order to fight off upcoming invaders.]

Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery – an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers – Another economic reason for the ouster of President Aristide and current UN occupation (Haiti’s Riches:Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti)

There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.

There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti’s deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paper about the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.

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