Earthquake in Haiti

[Keith Millea]

It hardly merits putting this in with the Haiti earthquake,but things are shaking a bit these days.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/09...17511.html






FRESNO, Calif — A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California Saturday afternoon, shaking buildings south of the Oregon border and knocking out power in several coastal communities.
The powerful quake hit at about 4:27 p.m. PST about 22 miles from Ferndale, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Authorities in the nearby city of Eureka and other area communities said no major injuries have been reported. But several people received minor cuts and scrapes from broken glass at the Bayshore Mall in Eureka, fire spokesman Gary Bird said.
"There are some frayed nerves, but I think we've come through this pretty well for the magnitude of earthquake we've had," he said.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokesman J.D. Guidi said power outages were widespread across most of Humboldt County, affecting about 25,000 customers.
Several traffic lights fell and numerous residents reported water, gas and sewer leaks, Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services spokeswoman Jo Wattle said.
"People have chimneys down, and we're hearing about minor property damage and lots of glassware broken," Wattle said. "People are really shaken up. It was shaking pretty good, then it had a big jolt to it at the end."
According to the USGS, the quake hit at a depth of nearly 10 miles. Eight aftershocks followed in the three hours after the quake, the biggest registering at 6:21 p.m. PST at a magnitude of 4.5.

Police in Ferndale said the earthquake caused stucco to fall off City Hall and broke shop windows, strewing the historic downtown streets with glass shards.

"I thought a tire had blown off my truck because it was so hard to keep control of the vehicle," Officer Lindsey Frank said. "Power lines were swaying, and I could see people in the fields trying to keep their balance."
Televisions tumbled and objects were knocked off walls in Arcata, a small town that's home to Humboldt State University, one resident said.
"The whole town is kind of freaked out right now," said Judd Starks, the kitchen manager at a bar and restaurant known as The Alibi. "All the power is out, people are out walking around."
The quake was felt as far south as Capitola in central California, and as far north as central Oregon, USGS geophysicist Richard Buckmaster said.
The area is about 270 miles north of San Francisco in a coastal area known for periodic earthquakes. In 1964 a tsunami washed away 11 people in Crescent City, 80 miles to the north of Arcata. It is the only tsunami to take lives in the continental United States.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there was no threat of the quake generating a tsunami.
There is a small chance – 5 to 10 percent – of another magnitude-6.5 temblor or larger hitting the area over the next week, but the odds dramatically decrease as time passes, the USGS said.
There's also a 78 percent chance of a strong and potentially damaging aftershock magnitude-5 or larger over the same period. The earthquake probabilities are based on statistical observations of past earthquakes in California and are not predictions, the USGS said.
Dan Bowermaster of San Francisco was with relatives in Eureka when the quake hit, moving the refrigerator in his cousins' home about 3 feet. He said he had been in several moderate and large quakes throughout California but had never felt anything as strong as this one.
"It was extremely unsettling, it was shaking in kind of a circular way," he said.
Sandra Hall, owner of Antiques and Goodies in Eureka, said furniture fell over, nearly all her lamps broke and the handful of customers in her store got a big scare. She said it was the most dramatic quake in the 30 years the store has been open.
"We'll be having a sale on broken china for those who like to do mosaics," she said.


I like this one from the comments section:

"The whole town [Arcata] is kind of freaked out right now," said Judd Starks, the kitchen manager at a bar and restaurant known as The Alibi. "All the power is out, people are out walking around."

So all-in-all there was no effect whatsoever in Arcata. People there are always freaked out and just walking around. [Hint - it is the marijuana growers capital of the USA] :canabis:

[Ruben Mundaca]

About earthquakes in California: I have read that due to fragmented plates conformation, California earthquakes waves dissipated faster and a relativley strong quake causes less or minimal damages. In places where the earth plate is consistent, even smaller movments can cause disasters.

The same 6.5 magnitude can cause a lot of damage in New York, for example. Or a 7 magnitude in Haiti. The quality of the buildings and homes do the rest there.

[Keith Millea]

That makes sense to me Ruben.A 6.5 quake is a BIG ONE.Thankfully it was centered North of San Francisco.There would have been massive damage in the Bay Area.And yes,the quality of the buildings makes a big difference.California has for at least a decade been retrofitting all bridges and overpasses to make them better able to withstand big quakes.They are changing the base structures so that they have some "play" in them instead of being rigid.This seems to prove your theory.Poor Haiti has no such luck or money.The suffering there must be unimaginable.

[Ed Jewett]

Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out Written by Chris Floyd Wednesday, 13 January 2010 22:36

[Ruben Mundaca]

I allready made my blood donation to Haiti

[Ed Jewett]

[Ed Jewett]

US Threatens Venezuela. Netherlands has Granted US Military Use of its Islands in the Caribbean

by Vonk Netherlands and Hands off Venezuela


The government of the Netherlands recently granted the US military use of its islands in the Caribbean, with the excuse that this is to help in the “war against drugs”. In reality, this is a direct threat to the Chavez government in Venezuela.

In the Dutch media articles have appeared about the “war-mongering” president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who is “preparing a war against Colombia”. Now Chávez has accused the Netherlands of supporting aggression against Venezuela, because the Netherlands has given permission to the American armed forces to use the military bases on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao[1].

In the media Hugo Chávez, as always, has been presented like some “crazy populist”, and of course the “civilised Netherlands” are presented as being totally innocent.

Later Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, said the American military were on Aruba and Curaçao, as part of the “war against drugs”. He remains silent about what is really happening on Aruba and Curaçao.

Authors such as Noam Chomsky and Eva Golinger have pointed out in different articles that the so-called “war against drugs” has nothing to do with any battle against drug smuggling, but has been used for other causes such as fighting against guerrilla movements and the spying of other countries. Since the start of the “war against drugs” there has only been more smuggling and consumption of drugs.

The fact that the Netherlands are participating in this is quite normal, because the Dutch government has a tradition of supporting American imperialism. After Britain the Netherlands are the biggest ally of the U.S. in Western Europe. The cabinet of Prime Minister Balkenende gave political support to the invasion of Iraq that was based completely on lies. Now the Netherlands have troops in Afghanistan, officially to rebuild the country, but in practice to prop up the corrupt regime of Karzai.

The bases on Aruba and Curaçao

In 1999 the Netherlands and the U.S. signed an agreement for the establishment of Forward Operating Locations (FOLs). This meant that the American military could use air force bases on Aruba and Curaçao. While the bases were originally used for operations against drug smuggling and the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC, this changed with the election of George Bush. Venezuela was seen as a threat by then, because it was a beacon of hope for the poor and working people of Latin America. In 2002 there was a CIA-backed coup attempt against the democratically elected Hugo Chávez. Since then there have only been more intrigues against Venezuela.

In 2006 there was a big military exercise by the U.S., Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, France and Canada in the Caribbean, named Joint Caribbean Lion 2006. This exercise was clearly a provocation against Venezuela. After criticisms by the Venezuelan government the then-minister of defence Henk Kamp and some right-wing MPs decided to accuse Chávez of “wanting to conquer the Antilles”. This was based on false statements from the Venezuelan opposition, that stated Chávez claimed everything within 200 miles from the Venezuelan coast as Venezuelan territory, while in that speech Chávez clearly said “12”, and not “200” miles.

Now there is a new conflict. This has everything to do with the recent militarization of Colombia and its seven military bases that have been given to American troops. Venezuela is not talking nonsense as the media keep claiming. Colombia’s military spending now is 5% of its Gross Domestic Product. At the peak of her struggle against the FARC this was 2.5%.

Also the American Fourth Fleet has been stationed back in the Caribbean since 2008. This fleet was disbanded in 1950 after the end of WWII, but now it is back and close to the Venezuelan coast.

The Netherlands are now playing the role of junior partner of the U.S. in the Caribbean. Different spy planes have been detected above Venezuela. An American Boeing RC-135 has taken off at different times from Curaçao and has been detected over Venezuelan air space.

It is no coincidence this is happening after president Obama asked the Netherlands to keep their troops in Afghanistan for a longer period. A majority of the Dutch people is in favour of a withdrawal of the troops. Prolonging the mission would mean a big loss of popularity for the Dutch government parties. That is why the Dutch government is now trying to find other ways to support American imperialism.

The Socialist Party (SP) is the only party that has asked questions to the government about the intrigues in the Caribbean, and those questions have not been answered. The SP is also the only party against the prolongation of the agreement with the US. This is a start. It has to be made clear that the support to the intrigues of the U.S. and Colombia against Venezuela has to stop!

No support for the intrigues of the U.S. and Colombia!

The right of self-determination for Aruba and the Antilles! There is no self-determination as long as there are American bases on the islands! There is no real self-determination possible without socialism.

Close the American bases on Aruba and Curaçao!

Note

[1] The Netherlands have two overseas areas in the Caribbean, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles. The Antilles consist of Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius and Saba. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao (the so-called ABC-islands) lie between 15 and 50 miles off the Venezuelan coast.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16962

[Ed Jewett]

Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again

Journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.”

Full rush transcript and video at the link

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/na...capitalism

[Ed Jewett]

Catastrophe in Haiti

by Ashley Smith / January 14th, 2010
A devastating earthquake, the worst in 200 years, struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, laying waste to the city and killing untold numbers of people. The quake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, and detonated more than 30 aftershocks, all more than 4.5 in magnitude, through the night and into Wednesday morning.
The earthquake toppled poorly constructed houses, hotels, hospitals and even the capital city’s main political buildings, including the presidential palace. The collapse of so many structures sent a giant cloud into the sky, which hovered over the city, raining dust down onto the wasteland below.
According to some estimates, more than 100,000 people may have died, in a metropolis of 2 million people. Those that survived are living in the streets, afraid to return inside any building that remains standing.
Around the world, Haitians struggled to contact their family and friends in the devastated country. But most could not reach their loved ones since phone lines were down throughout the country.
One person who did reach relatives, Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor and publisher of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times, stated, “People are in shock. They’re afraid to go out in the streets for obvious reasons, and most of them can’t get inside their homes. A lot of people are sitting or sleeping in front of the rubble that used to be their homes.”
President René Préval issued an emergency appeal for humanitarian aid. He described the scene in Port-au-Prince as “unimaginable. Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All the hospitals are packed with people. It’s a catastrophe.”
The weak Préval government was unable to respond to the crisis, and the United Nations — which occupies Haiti with close to 9,000 troops — was completely unprepared to manage the situation. Many UN leaders and troops died in buildings that collapsed, including their own headquarters.
International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said that 3 million out of Haiti’s 9 million people would need international emergency aid in the coming weeks just to survive. The UN, U.S., European Union, Canada and countless non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have promised humanitarian aid.
While most people reacted to the crisis by trying to find a way to help or donate money, Christian Right fanatic Pat Robertson stooped to new depths of racism. He explained that Haitians were cursed because they made a pact with the devil to liberate themselves from their French slave masters in the Haitian revolution two centuries ago.
The corporate media at least reported that shifting tectonic plates along a fault line underneath Port-au-Prince caused the earthquake — and that Haiti’s poverty and the incapacity of the Préval government made the disaster so much worse. But they didn’t delve below the surface.
“The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti,” Canadian Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. “They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why.”
Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city’s mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of two million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster?
To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line — US imperial policy toward Haiti. The US government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.
The fault line of U.S. imperialism interacted with the geological one to turn the natural disaster into a social catastrophe.
During the Cold War, the U.S. supported the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier and then Baby Doc Duvalier — which ruled the country from 1957 to 1986 — as an anti-communist counterweight to Castro’s Cuba nearby.
Under guidance from Washington, Baby Doc Duvalier opened the Haitian economy up to US capital in the 1970s and 1980s. Floods of US agricultural imports destroyed peasant agriculture. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince to labor for pitifully low wages in sweatshops located in US export processing zones.
In the 1980s, masses of Haitians rose up to drive the Duvaliers from power — later, they elected reformer Jean-Bertrand Aristide to be president on a platform of land reform, aid to peasants, reforestation, investment in infrastructure for the people, and increased wages and union rights for sweatshop workers.
The U.S. in turn backed a coup that drove Aristide from power in 1991. Eventually, the elected president was restored to power in 1994 when Bill Clinton sent US troops to the island — but on the condition that he implement the US neoliberal plan — which Haitians called the “plan of death.”
Aristide resisted parts of the US program for Haiti, but implemented other provisions, undermining his hoped-for reforms. Eventually, though, the US grew impatient with Aristide’s failure to obey completely, especially when he demanded $21 billion in reparations during his final year in office. The U.S. imposed an economic embargo that strangled the country, driving peasants and workers even deeper into poverty.
In 2004, Washington collaborated with Haiti’s ruling elite to back death squads that toppled the government, kidnapped and deported Aristide. The United Nations sent troops to occupy the country, and the puppet government of Gérard Latortue was installed to continue Washington’s neoliberal plans.
Latortue’s brief regime was utterly corrupt — he and his cronies pocketed large portions of the $4 billion poured into the country by the U.S. and other powers when they ended their embargo. The regime dismantled the mild reforms Aristide had managed to implement. Thus, the pattern of impoverishment and degradation of the country’s infrastructure accelerated.
In the 2006 elections, the Haitian masses voted in longtime Aristide ally René Préval as president. But Préval has been a weak figure who collaborated with U.S. plans for the country and failed to address the growing social crisis.
In fact, the U.S., UN and other imperial powers effectively bypassed the Préval government and instead poured money into NGOs. “Haiti now has the highest per capita presence of NGOs in the world,” says Yves Engler. The Préval government has become a political fig leaf, behind which the real decisions are made by the imperial powers, and implemented through their chosen international NGOs.
The real state power isn’t the Préval government, but the US-backed United Nations occupation. Under Brazilian leadership, UN forces have protected the rich and collaborated with — or turned a blind eye to — right-wing death squads who terrorize supporters of Aristide and his Lavalas Party.
The occupiers have done nothing to address the poverty, wrecked infrastructure and massive deforestation that have exacerbated the effects of a series of natural disasters — severe hurricanes in 2004 and 2008, and now the Port-au-Prince earthquake.
Instead, they merely police a social catastrophe, and in so doing, have committed the normal crimes characteristic of all police forces. As Dan Beeton wrote in NACLA Report on the Americas, “The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which began its mission in June 2004, has been marred by scandals of killings, rape and other violence by its troops almost since it began.”
First the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have used the coup and social and natural crises to expand the US’s neoliberal economic plans.
Under Obama, the U.S. has granted Haiti $1.2 billion in debt relief, but it hasn’t canceled all of Haiti’s debt — the country still pays huge sums to the Inter-American Development Bank. The debt relief is classic window dressing for Obama’s real Haiti policy, which is the same old Haiti policy.
In close collaboration with the new UN Special Envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton, Obama has pushed for an economic program familiar to much of the rest of the Caribbean — tourism, textile sweatshops and weakening of state control of the economy through privatization and deregulation.
In particular, Clinton has orchestrated a plan for turning the north of Haiti into a tourist playground, as far away as possible from the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince. Clinton lured Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines into investing $55 million to build a pier along the coastline of Labadee, which it has leased until 2050.
From there, Haiti’s tourist industry hopes to lead expeditions to the mountaintop fortress Citadelle and the Palace of Sans Souci, both built by Henri Christophe, one of the leaders of Haiti’s slave revolution. According to the Miami Herald:

The $40 million plan involved transforming the now quaint town of Milot, home to the Citadelle and Palace of Sans Souci ruin, into a vibrant tourist village, with arts and crafts markets, restaurants and stoned streets. Guests would be ferried past a congested Cap-Haïtien to a bay, then transported by bus past peasant plantations. Once in Milot, they would either hike or horseback to the Citadelle . . . named a world heritage site in 1982 . . .
Eco-tourism, archaeological exploration and voyeuristic visits to Vodou rituals are all being touted by Haiti’s struggling boutique tourism industry, as Royal Caribbean plans to bring the world largest cruise ship here, sparking the need for excursions.

So while Pat Robertson denounces Haiti’s great slave revolution as a pact with the devil, Clinton is helping to reduce it to a tourist trap.
At the same time, Clinton’s plans for Haiti include an expansion of the sweatshop industry to take advantage of cheap labor available from the urban masses. The U.S. granted duty-free treatment for Haitian apparel exports to make it easy for sweatshops to return to Haiti.
Clinton celebrated the possibilities of sweatshop development during a whirlwind tour of a textile plant owned and operated by the infamous Cintas Corp. He announced that George Soros had offered $50 million for a new industrial park of sweatshops that could create 25,000 jobs in the garment industry. Clinton explained at a press conference that Haiti’s government could create “more jobs by lowering the cost of doing business, including the cost of rent.”
As TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson told Democracy Now! “That isn’t the kind of investment that Haiti needs. It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient. It needs investment so that it can feed itself.”
One of the reasons why Clinton could be so unabashed in celebrating sweatshops is that the US-backed coup repressed any and all resistance. It got rid of Aristide and his troublesome habit of raising the minimum wage. It banished him from the country, terrorized his remaining allies and barred his political party, Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular in the country, from running for office. The coup regime also attacked union organizers within the sweatshops themselves.
As a result, Clinton could state to business leaders: “Your political risk in Haiti is lower than it has ever been in my lifetime.”
Thus, as previous US presidencies have done before, the Obama administration has worked to aid Haiti’s elite, sponsor international corporations taking advantage of cheap labor, weaken the ability of the Haitian state to regulate the society, and repress any political resistance to that agenda.
These policies led directly to the incapacitated Haitian state, dilapidated infrastructure, poorly constructed buildings and desperate poverty that combined with the hurricanes and now the earthquake to turn natural disasters into social catastrophes.
While everyone should support the current outpouring of aid to help Haiti, no one should do so with political blinders on. As Engler said:

Aid in Haiti has always been used to further imperial interests. This is obvious when you look at how the U.S. and Canada treated the Aristide government in contrast to the coup regime. The U.S. and Canada starved Aristide of almost all aid. But then after the coup, they opened a floodgate of money to back some of the most reactionary forces in Haitian society.

We should therefore agitate against any attempt by the U.S. and other powers to use this crisis to further impose their program on a prostrate country.
We should also be wary of the role of international NGOs. While many NGOs are trying to address the crisis, the U.S. and other governments are funneling aid to them in order to undermine Haitians’ democratic right to self-determination. The international NGOs are unaccountable to either the Haitian state or Haitian population. So the aid funneled through them further weakens what little hold Haitians have on their own society.
The Obama administration should also immediately lift the ban against Aristide’s return to Haiti, as well as the political ban on his party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participating in the electoral process. After all, a known drug criminal and coup leader, Guy Philippe, and his Front for National Reconstruction (FRN) party has been allowed to participate in the electoral process. Aristide and his party, by contrast, are still the most popular political force in the country and should have the right to participate in an open and fair vote.
The U.S. should also stop deportations of Haitians who have fled their crisis-torn country and grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitian refugees. That would allow any Haitians who have fled the political and social crisis since the coup, the hurricanes and now the earthquake to remain legally in the U.S.
On top of that, we must demand that the U.S. stop imposing its neoliberal plans. The U.S. has plundered Haitian society for decades. Instead of Haiti owing any debt to the U.S., other countries or international financial institutions, the reverse is the case. The U.S., France, Canada and the UN owe the people of Haiti reparations to redress the imperial plunder of the country.
With these funds and political space, Haitians would be finally able to begin shaping their own political and economic future–the dream of the great slave revolution 200 years ago.
What You Can Do
The American solidarity organization Haiti Action is committed to raising money for Haiti’s grassroots movement — including labor unions, women’s groups, educators and human rights activists, support committees for prisoners, and agricultural cooperatives — to distribute to those in need.
You can make a donation to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund online.
Ashley Smith is a writer and activist from Burlington, Vermont. He writes frequently for Socialist Worker and the International Socialist Review. He can be reached at ashley05401@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Ashley, or visit Ashley's website.
This article was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 10:02am and is filed under "Aid", Colonialism, Democracy, Haiti, Neoliberalism.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/catastrophe-in-haiti/

[Peter Lemkin]

Here is a whole hour on Haiti and well done!

Haiti was in a state of disaster [thanks mostly to U.S. Policy] before this...now....complete ruin. Even the Presidential Palace collapsed. Also, I noted [other's wouldn't have caught it, I'm sure] did the hotel that the CIA used to run its ops out of...my parents, who volunteered at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti [far in the interior] discovered this spook-spot by accident when they stayed a night on their way in from the USA. So one good collapse - the rest a total disaster! While the USA is finally helping out with material things, it is too late for those buried under the rubble and I'm sure bringing all those US soldiers into Haiti [won't be the first time!] will only secure secret US control over the Nation further. Under Bush we kidnapped and flew out of the county the duly elected and popular President Aristide - and have refused to let him back. So much for they hate us for our Democracy. We don't have it in our own country and we damn well make sure we stamp it out elsewhere when we find it.

----------------------
AMY GOODMAN: We have now with us on the line Ali Lutz, who is the Haiti program coordinator for the group Partners in Health that has clinics throughout Haiti.

Ali, talk about the situation of aid.

ALI LUTZ: Good morning, Amy. Thank you.

The situation in Haiti is obviously extremely dire. And we are trying to get supplies and medical personnel into Port-au-Prince and to the clinics that Partners in Health helps run throughout the country to support the response, because obviously our colleagues in Haiti, our doctors, nurses, surgeons, they’re dealing with their own families during this tragedy and doing the best that they can also to help the victims.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ali, in your contacts to get aid in, who, as far as you can tell right now, is in charge in Haiti? I know the US military now is in charge of the airport. But who do go to to try to get permission to bring your materials in?

AMY GOODMAN: Ali, are you there?

JUAN GONZALEZ: I think we’ve lost her there.

AMY GOODMAN: The problems with Skype here. Well, we’ll go back to Ali Lutz after this conversation.

But just before the program, I spoke with Randall Robinson. He’s the founder and past president of TransAfrica. He’s currently a visiting law professor at Pennsylvania State University, though he goes home to Saint Kitts tomorrow, where he lives. His most recent book is An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. I began by just asking for his thoughts about the crisis right now in Haiti.

RANDALL ROBINSON: It’s important, in trying to find ways to help, to be generous and to give, and to give generously. I would like to commend President Obama for his strong and fast response of a commitment of $100 million. Operations are already underway. I think the world is being incredibly generous, as I understand the pace of things to be at this point, the pace of giving. But, of course, as many lives as can possibly be salvaged need to be salvaged as quickly as possible, and I have every reason to believe that the administration and others are doing the very best that they can. As a private citizen, it’s my responsibility, and our general responsibility, to support every effort that’s being made to save lives in Haiti.

AMY GOODMAN: Word is now President Préval has said they’ve just burned—buried 7,000 bodies in a mass grave, but the most important thing right now is the search equipment, to go in and to save people who are just hanging on, perhaps who have been crushed, who are hidden in the rubble. And yet, that has yet to come. Some word is there’s a lot of aid at the airport not able to get through, and then other aid just hasn’t come.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, that’s not surprising. It’s hard for things to function when virtually all of the infrastructure has been destroyed. The Haitian government is unable to function, I would imagine, because it’s under the same burden that all Haitians are under. The President’s home has been destroyed. It’s hard to get from point A to point B, because the roads are blocked, petrol is not available. Heavy equipment is not yet available.

But in the spirit of konbit, the Haitian Creole word for “collaboration and cooperation,” Haitians are doing everything they can. They are resilient, industrious, courageous people. They’re doing everything they can to save the lives of their fellows, and they’re doing it, thus far, with very little, because it’s taking a while for that kind of assistance to materialize.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has tapped President Clinton and former President George W. Bush to coordinate the aid relief to Haiti. I was wondering your thoughts on that.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Amy, I’m, of course, troubled by that. I don’t think this is the time—neither the time nor the place to discuss those things that have troubled me for a long time in the history of American policy towards Haiti. Now the focus must be upon the rescue efforts that are underway to save lives.

But I hope that this experience, this disaster, causes American media to take a keener look at Haiti, at the Haitian people, at their wonderful creativity, at their art, at their culture, and what they’ve had to bear. It has been described to the American people as a problem of their own making. Well, that’s simply not the case. Haiti has been, of course, put upon by outside powers for its whole post-slavery history, from 1804 up until the present.

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.

But in the last analysis, I hope that American media will not just continue to—the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why? What distinguishes Haiti from the rest of the Caribbean? Why are the other countries, like the country in which I live, Saint Kitts, middle-income and successful countries, and Haiti is mired in economic despair? What happened? And who’s had a hand in it? If Haiti has been under a series of serial dictatorship, who armed the dictators? There are other hands in Haiti’s problem. Of course Haiti is responsible for some of its own failures, but probably not principally responsible. We need to know that. We need to be told the whole story of these wonderful, resilient, courageous and industrious people. And we have not been told that. I would hope that this would be an opportunity for doing so.

AMY GOODMAN: In talking about President Bush, while most people may not know the role the US played in the ouster of President Aristide February 29th, 2004, probably what would come to mind when there’s any discussion of relief efforts is Katrina.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes. The problem of what happened in February 2004 continues. We had democracy in Haiti, and that democracy was blighted by the Bush administration. And now President Aristide’s party is prohibited from participating in the electoral process. His party is the largest party in Haiti. And why should we be so afraid to let his party participate? If Haitian people don’t want them, they won’t vote for them. That is the very essence of democracy, that people get a chance to stand for election, and the electorate gets a chance to make a decision. But we have obstructed that process in Haiti. We have done that under the Clinton administration, under the Bush administration, and that continues under the Obama administration. And that is indeed unfortunate. I am imploring American media to examine this in whole part, in ways that media have failed to do so up until now.

AMY GOODMAN: This history, the two crises, the natural catastrophe that is the earthquake, that the Red Cross is now saying they believe perhaps up to 50,000 people have died—and we’re not talking about, you know, just what has happened in the past, but what is currently happening. Who was just quoted? Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, the retired general who took charge of relief efforts in New Orleans, said that aid should have arrived, that said the US military should have arrived in earthquake-devastated Haiti twenty-four hours earlier. Of course, as we know, people trapped under rubble, every minute counts.

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I’m not in a position to comment on that. I simply can’t make an assessment of how fast or how slowly they arrived or how soon they should have arrived. And so, I will withhold comment on that.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it make you nervous to hear about US soldiers on Haitian soil? If you can share a little more of the history of the United States and Haiti—or do you think this isn’t the time to talk, for example, about 1915 to 1934, the first US Marine occupation, and then—

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I should think it would—I should think, Amy, it would make Haitians nervous under these circumstances. Of course, I’m sure that they are, understandably, quite happy to see assistance from any quarter.

But it was in 1915 that Woodrow Wilson, of course, with a force of American Marines, invaded and occupied Haiti until 1934. They seized land, redistributed it to American corporations, took control of the country, ran the country, collected customs duties for that period of time, and ran the country as if it were an American possession.

But this has marked the relationship since Toussaint L’Ouverture and an army of ex-slaves overthrew French rule in 1804. The French exacted, of course, reparations from the new free black republic of Haiti, bankrupting the country. The Vatican didn’t recognize Haiti until the 1860s. The Western nations of the world, responding to a call for isolation and embargo from Thomas Jefferson, imposed sanctions on Haiti that lasted until the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, of course followed in the twentieth century by President Wilson’s occupation and then by the dictatorial blight of Duvaliers, Papa and son, and all of the other military generals that, of course, were armed by the United States.

And so, Haiti’s plight up until this point has been, in some significant way, attributable to bad and painful American, French and Western policy that some believe is caused or described, motivated by Toussaint L’Ouverture’s victory over Napoleon. The French have never forgiven the Haitian people for this.

AMY GOODMAN: Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said he’s ready to return to help rebuild his country in the wake of the devastating earthquake. Why can’t he just return?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, the—I’m not sure what the stated American policy is, but of course the Bush administration policy was to forbid his return. But any obstruction of his return by any power would constitute a violation of international law, a violation of the UN Charter, a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a violation of any number of major UN human rights conventions. You cannot restrict people either from leaving their country—citizens, either from leaving their country or returning to their country. He has every right to return home, should he want to. And one would hope that no administration, the American administration nor any other, would stand in the way of his passage home.

AMY GOODMAN: A few nights ago, Naomi Klein was in New York, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and she quoted a Heritage Foundation press release that came out very soon after the earthquake, talking about this being an opportunity. That is the question, whether it is an opportunity, she said, of the corporate vultures hovering over Haiti, waiting to descend and restructure Haiti, or an opportunity for progressive Haitians to rebuild their own country, to rebuild Haiti. What are your thoughts about this?

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, it’s an opportunity, I think, for the American people to, at long last, learn the full truth about Haiti and about our relationship with Haiti. They’ve known—they’ve been caused to know very little about it. And I think progress—a new beginning starts with the truth. That is a truth that has been suppressed for all of these many years. The American people know almost nothing about what happened in 2004, about the abduction of President Aristide, about the destruction of Haiti’s democracy as a result of the efforts of both the United States and the French government. We need to know that.

And in the last analysis, Haitians have at their disposal a vigorous, creative, industrious and successful community in the United States, in France, in Canada. The Haitian diaspora is very much engaged with Haiti. They need to be given an opportunity to help Haiti rebuild itself.

We need to go away from what we’ve been doing in support, a sort of an unconditional support, for wealthy Haitians that are running sweatshops in the country, that pay people appallingly low wages. That is not the way to any bright future for Haiti. And that is the—of course, the idea that former President Clinton has been advancing for Haiti. I think it is sad. It can’t work. It won’t work. It will brew a further resentment of the United States.

And I think that the only way we can move ahead constructively with Haiti is to begin by telling the full story of our relationship with Haiti since 1804, what happened in the nineteenth century and what has happened in the twentieth century, so that Americans will understand at long last that Haiti’s misery is largely not of its own making. They will learn of a Haitian people who are quite different from those who have been described to them. And I think it is at that point we can make the beginning that we need to make and that is rooted in a policy that is constructive and sensitive and caring and productive for the United States, as well as for the Haitian people.


AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, founder and past president of TransAfrica. He fasted almost until death years ago under the Clinton administration to try to get President Clinton to close Guantanamo. In that case, it was to close Guantanamo so that Haitian refugees who were trying to escape the coup in Haiti were able to come into the United States. Randall Robinson’s latest book is called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.