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Haiti Earthquake: US Ships Blockade Coast to Thwart Exodus to America
by Bruno Waterfield
Global Research, January 21, 2010
Telegraph - 2010-01-19
US officials have drawn up emergency plans to cope with a mass migration crisis and have cleared spaces in detention or reception centres, including the Navy base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.
The unprecedented air, land and sea operation, dubbed "Vigilant Sentry", was launched as a senior US official compared Haiti's destruction to the aftermath of nuclear warfare. "It is the same as if an atomic bomb had been exploded," said Kenneth Merten, America's ambassador to Port-au-Prince, as officials estimated the numbers of those killed by last weeks earthquake to over 200,000.
As well as providing emergency supplies and medical aid, the USS Carl Vinson, along with a ring of other navy and coast guard vessels, is acting as a deterrent to Haitians who might be driven to make the 681 mile sea crossing to Miami. "The goal is to interdict them at sea and repatriate them," said the US Coast Guard Commander Christopher O'Neil.
Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to Washington, recorded a public information message in Creole warning his countrymen not to "rush on boats to leave the country".
"If you think you will reach the US and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case," he said.
"They will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from."
In response to America's closed door, Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal's President, has offered Haitian descendants of African slaves the chance to resettle in "the land of their ancestors" and offered them plots of land.
"Africa should offer Haitians the chance to return home. It is their right," he said.
US Homeland Security officials said hundreds of immigration detainees have been moved from a South Florida detention centre to clear space for a first wave of Haitians expected to reach America's shores. The plans, first drawn up in 2003, are aimed at avoiding a repeat of previous Haitian refugee influxes in the 1990s and the "Mariel boatlift" when as many as 125,000 Cubans fled to the US 30 years ago.
In 2004, following political upheaval in Haiti over 3,000 Haitians were stopped attempting to reach America and officials are braced for greater numbers following the worst natural disaster in the region for 200 years.
Janet Napolitano, America's Homeland Security Secretary, appealed to Haitians "not to divert our necessary rescue and relief efforts by trying to leave at this point".
Thousands were said to be on the move out of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday as continuing aid shortages and growing street violence drove people from the city to the countryside.
"Prices for food and transport have skyrocketed since last Tuesday and incidents of violence and looting are on the rise as the desperation grows," warned the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Dieumetra Sainmerita, the manager of Port-au-Prince's main bus terminal, said people were selling whatever they had left of value to buy tickets out of the city. "First there were the people who lost their houses. Then there were people who lost relatives. Now the people I see, they are afraid of the thieves trying to steal from them in the night," he said.
Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean called on the international community to help with the evacuation of the capital. "Port-au-Prince is a morgue," he said. "We need to migrate at least two million people."
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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A Haiti Disaster Relief Scenario Was Envisaged by the US Military One Day Before the Earthquake
by Michel Chossudovsky
A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the earthquake.
The holding of pre-disaster simulations pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 11. (Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) -- GovExec.com, complete text of article is contained in Annex)
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of US Southern Command.(SOUTHCOM).
Defined as a "Combat Support Agency", DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the US military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency).
On the day prior to the earthquake, "on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA's technical manager for the agency's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane." (Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)
The Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is a communications-information tool which "links non-government organizations with the United States [government and military] and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts".(Government IT Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15, 2010).
The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. The US military through DISA oversees the information - communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the US military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also "provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts."
There are no details on the nature of the tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM headquarters.
DISA's Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests. There are no reports on the participants involved in the disaster relief scenarios.
One would expect, given DISA's mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti.
The fundamental concept underlying DISA's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is to "Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters, Coalition Partners And NGOs" (Defense Daily, December 19, 2008)
Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in "an advanced stage of readiness". On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier: "After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department's European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.
Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], a lmost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. ( Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) -- GovExec.com emphasis added)
in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA's mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation: " DISA is providing US Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti," said Larry K. Huffman, DISA's Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. "Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM's requirements."
DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations. As DoD's satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort. This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for US Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the US Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts. ( DISA -Press Release, January 2010, undated, emphasis added)
In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto "lead agency" in the US Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the US military. "DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and US forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts" (Ibid)
ANNEX
Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts
By Bob Brewin, Govexec.com 01/15/2010
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?ar...=e_gvetwww
As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.
On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA's technical manager for the agency's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department's European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.
Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.
APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms.
Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafés in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country.
Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation.
Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum.
The Joint Forces Command's Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational "in a matter of hours," said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days.
Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled.
So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days.
FAA warned in an advisory Friday that "due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport," with the exception of international cargo flights, "the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace."
The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned "there is no available fuel" at the Port-au-Prince airport.
Copyright Bob Brewin, Govexec.com, 2010.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17122
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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Why Did We Focus on Securing Haiti Rather Than Helping Haitians?
Here are two possibilities, neither of them flattering.
By Ben Ehrenreich
Posted Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010, at 1:39 PM ET
By the weekend, it was clear that something perverse was going on in Haiti,
something savage and bestial in its lack of concern for human life. I'm not
talking about the earthquake, and certainly not about the so-called
"looting," which I prefer to think of as the autonomously organized
distribution of unjustly hoarded goods. I'm talking about the U.S. relief
effort.
For two days after the quake, despite almost unimaginable destruction, there
were reasons to be optimistic. With a few notable exceptions-Pat Robertson
and David Brooks among them-Americans reacted with extraordinary and
unhesitating generosity of spirit and of purse. Port-au-Prince is not much
farther from Washington, D.C., than, say, New Orleans, and the current
president of the United States, unlike his predecessor, was quick to react
to catastrophe. Taking advantage of "our unique capacity to project power
around the world," President Barack Obama pledged abundant aid and 10,000
troops.
Troops? Port-au-Prince had been leveled by an earthquake, not a barbarian
invasion, but, OK, troops. Maybe they could put down their rifles and, you
know, carry stuff, make themselves useful. At least they could get there
soon: The naval base at Guantanamo was barely 200 miles away.
The Cubans, at least, would show up quickly. It wasn't until Friday, three
days after the quake, that the "supercarrier" USS Carl Vinson, arrived-and
promptly ran out of supplies. "We have communications, we have some command
and control, but we don't have much relief supplies to offer," admitted Rear
Adm. Ted Branch. So what were they doing there?
"Command and control" turned out to be the key words. The U.S. military did
what the U.S. military does. Like a slow-witted, fearful giant, it built a
wall around itself, commandeering the Port-au-Prince airport and
constructing a mini-Green Zone. As thousands of tons of desperately needed
food, water, and medical supplies piled up behind the airport fences-and
thousands of corpses piled up outside them-Defense Secretary Robert Gates
ruled out the possibility of using American aircraft to airdrop supplies:
"An airdrop is simply going to lead to riots," he said. The military's first
priority was to build a "structure for distribution" and "to provide
security." (Four days and many deaths later, the United States began
airdropping aid.)
The TV networks and major papers gamely played along. Forget hunger,
dehydration, gangrene, septicemia-the real concern was "the security
situation," the possibility of chaos, violence, looting. Never mind that the
overwhelming majority of on-the-ground accounts from people who did not have
to answer to editors described Haitians taking care of one another, digging
through rubble with their bare hands, caring for injured loved ones-and
strangers-in the absence of outside help. Even the evidence of "looting"
documented something that looked more like mutual aid: The photograph that
accompanied a Sunday New York Times article reporting "pockets of violence
and anarchy" showed men standing atop the ruins of a store, tossing supplies
to the gathered crowd.
The guiding assumption, though, was that Haitian society was on the very
edge of dissolving into savagery. Suffering from "progress-resistant
cultural influences" (that's David Brooks finding a polite way to call black
people primitive), Haitians were expected to devour one another and, like
wounded dogs, to snap at the hands that fed them. As much as any logistical
bottleneck, the mania for security slowed the distribution of aid.
Air-traffic control in the Haitian capital was outsourced to an Air Force
base in Florida, which, not surprisingly, gave priority to its own pilots.
While the military flew in troops and equipment, planes bearing supplies for
the Red Cross, the World Food Program, and Doctors Without Borders were
rerouted to Santo Domingo in neighboring Dominican Republic. Aid flights
from Mexico, Russia, and France were refused permission to land. On Monday,
the British Daily Telegraph reported, the French minister in charge of
humanitarian aid admitted he had been involved in a "scuffle" with a U.S.
commander in the airport's control tower. According to the Telegraph, it
took the intervention of the United Nations for the United States to agree
to prioritize humanitarian flights over military deliveries.
Meanwhile, much of the aid that was arriving remained at the airport.
Haitians watched American helicopters fly over the capital, commanding and
controlling, but no aid at all was being distributed in most of the city. On
Tuesday, a doctor at a field hospital within site of the runways complained
that five to 10 patients were dying each day for lack of the most basic
medical necessities. "We can look at the supplies sitting there," Alphonse
Edward told Britain's Channel 4 News.
The much-feared descent into anarchy stubbornly refused to materialize. "It
is calm at this time," Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, deputy commander of the U.S.
Southern Command, admitted to the AP on Monday. "Those who live and work
here . tell me that the level of violence that we see right now is below
pre-earthquake levels." He announced that four-four, in a city of more than
2 million-aid-distribution points had been set up on the sixth day of the
crisis.
So what happened? Why the mad rush to command and control, with all its
ultimately murderous consequences? Why the paranoid focus on security above
saving lives? Clearly, President Obama failed to learn one of the basic
lessons taught by Hurricane Katrina: You can't solve a humanitarian problem
by throwing guns at it. Before the president had finished insisting that "my
national security team understands that I will not put up with any excuses,"
Haiti's fate was sealed. National security teams prioritize national
security, an amorphous and expensive notion that has little to do with
keeping Haitian citizens alive.
This leaves the more disturbing question of why the Obama administration
chose to respond as if they were there to confront an insurgency, rather
than to clear rubble and distribute antibiotics and MREs. The beginning of
an answer can be found in what Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in
Hell, calls "elite panic"-the conviction of the powerful that their own
Hobbesian corporate ethic is innate in all of us, that in the absence of
centralized authority, only cannibalism can reign.
But the danger of hunger-crazed mobs never came up after the 2004 Pacific
tsunami, and no one mentions security when tornados and floods wipe out
swaths of the American Midwest. This suggests two possibilities, neither of
them flattering. The first is that the administration had strategic reasons
for sending 10,000 troops that had little to do with disaster relief. This
is the explanation favored by the Latin American left and, given the United
States' history of invasion and occupation in Haiti (and in the Dominican
Republic and Cuba and Nicaragua and Grenada and Panama), it is difficult to
dismiss. Only time will tell what "reconstruction" means.
Another answer lies closer to home. New Orleans and Port-au-Prince have one
obvious thing in common: The majority of both cities' residents are black
and poor. White people who are not poor have been known, when confronted
with black people who are, to start locking their car doors and muttering
about their security. It doesn't matter what color our president is. Even
when it is ostensibly doing good, the U.S. government can be racist, and, in
an entirely civil and bureaucratic fashion, savagely cruel.
Ben Ehrenreich, a journalist and novelist based in Los Angeles, is the
author of The Suitors. He reported from Haiti in 2006 for L.A. Weekly.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2242078/
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"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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On October 25, 2005, I wrote an article for Online Journal, headlined Is it the weather or government terror, detailing government manipulation of weather, including earthquakes, for terror and destruction, mentioning that “your local weatherman was surely not up to pointing this out,” and adding “let me help with the forecast, past, present and long-range. Well, déjà vu all over again seems to have struck in Haiti on January 12.
When I wrote that article, I was disturbed over the effects of Katrina, on August 25, 2005, not to mention the Indonesian tsunami preceding it on December 26, 2004. It seemed to me it would take a helluva lot more than the weatherman to explain such cosmic events within a year, four months and a day. Today, I ask you to read my first article to familiarize yourself with HAARP, the acronym for the government’s High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which is about more than weather, but rather US Weapons of Meteorological Mass Destruction.
As I write that, I can hear the sirens of “conspiracy theory” going off on the airwaves as if a thief had broken into the dark hole of the Pentagon and was filling his pockets with all the secrets of these darker ops. Well, perhaps.
HAARP, as you will read in more detail, can shock the upper atmosphere with both a focused and navigable electromagnetic bolt. The ionosphere is the electrically charged sphere that surrounds the earth’s upper atmosphere, about 40 to 60 miles above the earth’s surface. Take a look also at the excellent Haiti Earthquake Raises HAARP Controversy at the phoenixaquua.blogspot, so you don’t think it’s just me thinking this. In fact, you can see filmed examples of how HAARP works, and how it has worked on Haiti.
You will particularly enjoy this article’s film clip of Pat Robertson’s analysis of the Haitian earthquake. Pat believes it’s due to the victory of the Haitians in their rebellion over Napoleon and the French in 1801. Their victory, he claims, was due to a pact the Haitians made with the Devil. And this pact, Pat iterates, haunts them to this day. This is a man who ran for president of the US, is the owner of a chain of TV and radio stations, and a leader of the Machiavellian Dominionists sect of Conservative Christianity. But I digress and I’m dizzy from this one.
HAARP has always been referred to by the US government as a tool for researching weather, but in fact has been developed and used by the military for Department of Defense purposes. This dark side of HAARP has been played down for obvious reasons, but Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning have done an excellent expose of this “Military Pandora’s Box” in their book, Angel’s Don’t Play This Harp. There as an excellent summary of the book at this site. It debunks the notion that HAARP is no different than other ionospheric heaters operating safely through the world in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Tromso, Norway, and the former Soviet Union.
Yet a 1990 government document claims that the radio frequency (RF) power bolt can drive the ionosphere to “unnatural” activities. Quoting the authors . . .”at the highest HF powers available in the West, the instabilities commonly studied are approaching their maximum RF energy dissipative capability, beyond which the plasma process will ‘runaway’ until the next limiting factor is reached.” The program operates out the University of Alaska Fairbanks (in Sarah Palin-land), providing a ground-based “Star Wars” technology, offering a relatively inexpensive defense shield.
But the University also boasts about the most mind-boggling geophysical manipulations since nuclear bombs of which HAARP is capable. It’s based on the work of electrical genius Nicholas Tesla and the work and patents of Texas’ physicist Bernard Eastlund. The military has deliberately underestimated the deadly possibilities of this uber technology, most pointedly in this case to create earthquakes with the generation of bolts of electrical power aimed at specific targets.
In fact, HAARP’s potential for havoc drew the attention of none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NSA adviser to Jimmy Carter, science advisor to President Johnson, and political advisor to President Obama.
More than 25 years ago, when Brzezinski was a professor at Columbia University, he wrote, “Political strategists are tempted to exploit research on the brain and human behavior [another strange purpose HAARP can be put to]. Geophysicist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, a specialist in problems of warfare, says accurately-timed, artificially-excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain legions of the earth . . . in this way one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period.”
He capped this statement with “no matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages, to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades.” Let me tell you, dear readers, it’s here.
As of 1970, Brzezinski predicted HAARP could be used for “a more controlled and directed society” linked to technology. This society would be dominated by an elite group which impresses voters by allegedly superior scientific know-how.” Furthermore, Dr. Strangelove states, “Unhindered by the restrains of traditional liberal values, this elite [the New World Order of today] would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control. Technical and scientific momentum would then feed on the situation it exploits.”
And thus spake Brzezinski, who also predicted that it would take an inciting incident like Pearl Harbor (i.e., 9/11) to engage the normally peaceful American population to go to war on a march for world hegemony (i.e., The War on Terror). And he was spot on.
Zbig is not afraid, in fact, is lauded for thinking down avenues that would make most of us shiver with disgust. Regrettably, his forecasts tend to prove accurate, because they inspire the worst people to do the worst things. And so, these “tools for the elite” and their temptation to use them increases incredibly. The policies to use them are in place. As to the “stepping stones” that could be used to reach this highly controlled techno-society, Brezinski expected them to be “persisting social crisis” and the use of mass media to gain the public’s confidence. Again, he’s spot on.
Way back in 1966, Professor Gordon J.F. MacDonald, then associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UC, Los Angeles, was a member of President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee and later a member of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality. He actually wrote a chapter called “How to Wreck the Environment” in his book, Unless Peace Comes. Of course, this came at the height of the Vietnam brutality. Given the aura of violence similar to today’s, Gordon described in his chapter, among other things, “polar ice cap melting or destabilization, ozone depletion techniques,earthquake engineering [italics mine], ocean wave control and brain wave manipulation using the planet’s energy fields.”
The outstanding peculiarity of the Haitian earthquake is that it devastated Haiti, which is the western part of the larger island of Hispaniola, while the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic, suffered some aftershocks but remained relatively unscathed, hotels operating, business booming, flights coming in and out. If this isn’t pinpoint targeting of an earthquake, it is a very strange, yet to be explained phenomena.
For the “official” statistics of the event, see the Tectonics of the Haitian earthquake by Chris Rowan at scienceblogs.com. Despite the fact that Rowan sees this as a “strike-slip in the Caribbean Plate with the crust on each side of the fault moving horizontally relative to the other side,” and so on, I still feel that the pinpointing of Haiti is not just another predictable earthquake. But read Chris’s full explanation. A bolt of HAARP energy could have caused that “strike-slip.”
What is far more interesting to note is an article from nextgov.com (Technology And The Business of Government), Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts, which was published last Friday but refers to a disaster relief drill that took place on Monday, January 11, a day before the earthquake. I quote, “As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernment agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.
“On Monday, [January 11, before the earthquake] Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday, Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system [itlaics mine]. On Wednesday [the day after the earthquake], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.
“The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies . . .”
You’ll pardon my paranoia, but this is identical to drills being set up the day before 9/11/01 by FEMA in NYC on 9/10/01 and NORAD.
The political truth is that Haiti has historically been a thorn in the side of those from the US and Europe, who would exploit its natural resources and dare to genocide its people. See Wiki’s History of Haiti, which opens by with the tale of Christopher Columbus, colonizer extraordinaire, naming the entire island, Hispaniola.
From the very beginning, Wiki notes, “Following the arrival of Europeans, Haiti’s indigenous population suffered near-extinction, in possibly the worst case of depopulation in the Americas. A commonly accepted hypothesis attributes the high mortality of this colony in part to Old World diseases to which the natives had no immunity. The colonists also killed a considerable number of the natives both directly and indirectly by enslavement and murder.” And so the die was cast.
And, as Wayne Madsen reports, U.S. troops in Haiti to prevent Aristide’s return, “President Obama, in keeping with his CIA lineage, has permitted the Pentagon under Robert Gates to take charge of the humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti.
“As Cuban and Venezuelan field hospitals were already rendering first aid and trauma care to Haitians injured in the mega-quake, Obama was gathered at a White House photo op with Vice President Joe Biden and other Cabinet officers to state that U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft would fly over Haiti to assess the situation from the air. A U.S. P-3 Orion spy plane from Comalapa air base in El Salvador was dispatched to conduct the surveillance operation, an act that was already being accomplished by earth satellites, the images of which were available on Google Maps.
“As Obama was garnering praise from such sycophantic White House outlets as the largely-discredited Washington Post, a 37-person Icelandic search-and-rescue team was pulling trapped earthquake victims from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. Iceland, a nation bankrupted by Obama’s banker pals on Wall Street and in the City of London, was able to react in a way that the slumbering and oafish dying super-power, the United States, could not — with action aimed at providing immediate assistance to the Haitian people . . .” Read the full article for all the details.
Madsen was not the only one to comment that in the middle of this havoc the US seems more set on occupying Haiti with its Army than delivering relief aid. Press TV reports that Nicaraguan President Ortega warns of US deployment in Haiti. He stated, “What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday ”The Pentagon says it has deployed more than 10,000 soldiers in Haiti to help victims of Tuesday’s earthquake.
”This is while US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division took control of the main airport in the capital Port-au-Prince on Friday three days after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake brought death and misery to the impoverished nation.”
Said Press TV, ”The leftist Nicaraguan president denounced Washington’s move in deploying military forces in Haiti, saying ‘It seems that the bases (on Latin America) are not sufficient.’
”’There is no logic that US troops landed in Haiti. Haiti seeks humanitarian aid, not troops. It would be madness if we all began to send troops to Haiti,’ said Ortega.”
Given Nicaragua’s horrific experiences with the US and the Contras, his doubts, as Madsen’s, are to be seriously considered. Back then, we had Reagan and Bush I pulling the strings, which eventually exploded into the Iran-Contra debacle, which attempted to continue New World Order advancement from Central America to the Middle East. So what has changed?
Bottom line, am I asking you to blame anyone slipping on a banana peel to be the result of HAARP’s cataclysmic power? No, I’m not. But I am asking you to pursue the given links and seriously consider the possibility of HAARP’s ability to produce this highly targeted mega-earthquake. It is one more weapon in theUS arsenal. And the more you know, the better to discern the big picture. All you have you to lose are your political chains and the specter of Zbigniew Brzezinski and his clones.
Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.
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Despite criticism for the US military presence in quake-stricken Haiti, Washington says it has a long-term plan to stay in the country.
“W e are there for the long term, this is not something that will be resolved quickly and easily,” US Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff said on Thursday.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Hang on, Haiti
I'm working hard on an article re the sorry history of America's interventions in Haiti. But I felt compelled to write and share this short version as well, in limerick form.
Hang on, Haiti
America's got Haiti's back
Or so you will read on the rack
But if truth be told
The public's been rolled
America's got Haiti back
We occupied them once before
For years til 1934
We left them untethered
While bankers still feathered
Their nests off the backs of the poor
Our record's been jaded, at best
Their leaders served at our behest
We propped up their beast
And abducted their priest
While businesses paid off the rest
If none of this makes sense to you
You know what you now have to do
Just open your eyes
And your heart to great size
And let history enter through
Please learn from mistakes of the past
And from wisdom the Haitians amassed
If their truths we'd heed
They may yet succeed
And win their true freedom, at last.
posted by Real History Lisa at 5:19 PM - Permanent Link -
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Disasters are Big Business
by William Bowles
![[Image: 17143.jpg]](http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures/17143.jpg)
I am staggered. There are 10,000 ‘NGOs’ (Non-Governmental Organizations) in Haiti, one for every 900 inhabitants and each one of them has no doubt at least one Westerner working within, yet aside from the Cuban health workers, it seems they could do nothing until the gringos arrived with their Blackhawks and nuclear-tipped aircraft carrier and of course, the 82nd Airborne, paying yet another ‘visit’ to this benighted and super-exploited land to ’secure’ the place for the locust storm of aid to come (too late for too many).
Now I’ve never been a fan of ‘NGOs’ not only because my own experience with them has been less than edifying but because they are the direct result of ‘benign neglect’ on the part of the state. In other words they initially appeared to fill a void left when states washed their hands of the mess they’d left behind or they just ditched their responsibilities.
But unlike governments who are, in theory anyway, answerable to their electorate, ‘NGOs’ are answerable to no one. They are not elected, they are not representative. In their way they are more like neo-colonial ‘stand-ins’ for the former colonizers, at least at the ‘social services’ end of things. Well, it seems many of the 10,000 have been tested and found wanting.
Now this is not say that there aren’t thousands, even tens of thousands of people who genuinely want to help (Brits have so far donated more than £30 million to Haiti Relief) but compare the role of the Cuban medical teams with most of the other ‘NGOs’ working in Haiti, all ten thousand of them. The Cubans have the direct backing of the Cuban state with all that that entails. Moreover, they were able to draw on their own experiences with disasters to which Cuba is no stranger and react immediately and effectively (not that you’d have seen it reported much on your TV screens but they were first on the scene).
I have no idea how many people in the ‘developed’ world owe their living to other people’s misfortunes but it surely must run into millions and given that the most advanced of the capitalist states now have largely ‘service’ economies under which I assume ‘NGOs’ fall, disasters make a major contribution to their economies.
The Media: Old habits die hard
Integral to this is the media’s vested interest in disasters (the bigger they are, the more profitable they are) and moreover, putting the right ‘spin’ on how the disasters are presented to the captive, metropolitan audience is absolutely vital as we have witnessed with the media’s ‘take’ on the Haitian catastrophe. So much so that questions are now being asked about the role the media played in stopping aid from getting in because it kept hyping the ‘violence’, ‘looting’ and ‘armed gangs’ aspect of the disaster.[1]
Just compare the media coverage of the Tsunami in Asia in 2004 with that of Haiti. Did we see daily headlines about the problem of ‘security’ or ‘looting’, or ‘armed gangs’ following the devastating Tsunami? No we did not. But why the enormous difference in the media coverage of these two, equally cataclysmic events?
The problem for the media is that they have already demonized the people of Haiti, not only through historically-rooted, racist myths about for example, ‘Voodoo’ (actually Voodun, an animist/ancestor-worship religion that came from West Africa with the slaves), but the way contemporary events in Haiti have been presented to Western audiences. You know the stuff, ‘gangs’, drugs, violence, the Ton-Ton Macoute, marxists, revolutionary priests, ‘failed state’, corruption, ‘dictators’ and dictators. This is the picture the media/state have presented to us. They made it so.
There is no history, no mention of our, that is Western culpability in the inability of the Haitian state to survive intact, let alone thrive and prosper after such a disaster. This is what the US, Canada and France have turned Haiti into: nothing more than a source of cheap labour for US offshore manufacturing and some tourism (who amazingly, still arrived just after the quake struck and took up residence.
“As surviving Haitians fought over scraps of food, luxury cruise ship passengers frolicked heedlessly Monday at a resort just 81 miles from the misery transfixing the world. Royal Caribbean’s gigantic 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas stopped at a north Haiti beach so tourists could parasail, snorkel and chow down on barbecue. The tourists went ashore at Labadee, a lavish and heavily guarded private beach leased by the cruise line where passengers bounce on trampolines, sip cocktails in a hammock and shop at an ersatz “native market.” — ‘Royal Caribbean cruise ships such as Navigator of the Seas still escorting vacationers to Haiti’ , New York Daily News, 19 January, 2010.
Haiti, formerly one of the richest of the Caribbean nations, has been denuded of its forests, import substitution (imposed by the IMF and the World Bank) bankrupted the rural population who were forced to relocate to the cities in order to survive, hence the scale of carnage. US-backed/sponsored/instigated coups litter the country’s history as well as long term military occupation. The West have turned Haiti into a ‘basket-case’ unable to respond in any meaningful way not only to the catastrophe but to care for its citizens. This is the West’s legacy, never mind its ‘largesse’ after the fact. This too is Business.
All of the above and more, underpins the way the media approaches a culture that has been under Western assault for two hundred and six years (since 1804 when the first free Black Republic in the (Western) world was declared).[2]
Is it any wonder therefore that it dare not go down the road that challenges the misconception that Western intervention is anything other than ‘humanitarian’ and because ‘we feel your pain’.[3]
The way media handles all things Haitian is perhaps exemplified by the issue of the Haitian ‘orphans’ being stolen by the West. I first came across a reference to it as a single sentence in a BBC piece and I referred to it at the time. The BBC piece just mentioned it in passing, but today, four days later the BBC ran a major news item on the issue (see below).
I found it incredible at the time and I find it even more incredible now that serious questions are not being asked by the media. How come virtually at the beginning of the catastrophe, with the airport barely functioning and/or crowded with planes, one hundred or so ‘orphans’ were whipped out, apparently to the US and Holland? The operation was surely pre-planned, how could it be otherwise?[4]
Yet the thefts continue with European countries cueing up to get their share of ‘orphans’. And it seems judging by the overall tone of the BBC’s piece, it doesn’t see anything wrong with idea. However, others are less sanguine:
“Bringing children into the US either by airlift or new adoption during a time of national emergency can open the door for fraud, abuse and trafficking” — Joint Council on International Children’s Services, a US advocacy group
“Orphan children charity, SOS Children’s Villages, has condemned media reports claiming that Haiti could be left with one million orphaned children as a result of the recent earthquake.
“SOS, the world’s largest orphaned children charity, says that the figures are massively exaggerated to generate big headlines and irresponsible as it presents a false impression of the real needs on the ground.
“SOS claims that providing for every orphaned child is possible and inflating the numbers can lead to orphaned children being unnecessarily removed from an area before extended families and best interests can be considered.
“The charity cites a similar over-reaction by the media to the Asian Tsumani in 2004 when reports were published of over 1.5 million affected children, “most orphans”, whereas the final total was around 5,000.”” — ‘SOS CONDEMNS MEDIA SENSATIONALISM OVER INFLATED HAITI ORPHAN ‘CRISIS’ , 19 January, 2010[5]
It seems Black Haitian babies are okay to ‘import’ to no doubt loving parents but not when they’re all growed up and able to make their own way there, as the cordon sanitaire being assembled around Haiti shows.[6]
Notes
6. “The unprecedented air, land and sea operation, dubbed “Vigilant Sentry”, was launched as a senior US official compared Haiti’s destruction to the aftermath of nuclear warfare.
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Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US Occupation
by Marguerite Laurent
This article was first published in October 2009.[URL="http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/oil_sites.html#stoprelease"]
Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery - an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers[/URL] - 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 paperabout the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.
Ezili's HLLN underlines these two papers on Haiti's oil resources and the works of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin in order to provide a view one will not find in the mainstream media nor anywhere else as to the economic and strategic reasons the US has constructed its fifth largest embassy in the world - fifth only besides the US embassy in China, Iraq, Iran and Germany - in tiny Haiti, post the 2004 Haiti Bush regime change.
The facts outlined in the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, considered together, reasonably unveil part of the hidden reasons UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, is giving the UN occupation a facelift so that its troops stay in Haiti for the duration.
Ezili's HLLN has consistently maintained, since the beginning of the 2004 Bush regime change in Haiti, that the 2004 US invasion of Haiti used UN troops as its military proxy to avoid the charge of imperialism and racism. We have also consistently maintained that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is not about protecting Haitian rights, security, stability or long-term domestic development but about returning the Washington Chimeres/[gangsters] - the traditional Haitian Oligarchs - to power, establishing free trade not fair trade, the Chicago-boys' death plan, neoliberal policies, keeping the minimum wage at slave wage levels, plundering Haiti's natural resources and riches, not to mention using the location benefit that Haiti lies between Cuba and Venezuela. Two countries the US has unsuccessfuly orchestrated regime changes in and continues to pursue. In the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, we find and deploy further details as to why the US is in Haiti with this attempted Bill Clinton facelift to the UN's continued occupations.
For, no matter the disguise or media spins it's also about Haiti's oil reserves, and about securing Haiti's deep-water ports as transshipment location for oil or for tank sites to store crude oil without interference from a democratic government beholden to its informed population's welfare. (See Reynold's deep water port in Miragoane/ NIPDEVCO property- scroll to photos in middle of the page.)
In Haiti, between 1994 to 2004 when the people had a voice in government, there was an intense grassroots movement to figure out how to exploit Haiti's resources. There was a plan, where in the book "Investing In People: Lavalas White Book under the direction of Jean-Betrand Aristide (Investir Dans L'Humain), the Haitian majority "were not only told where the resources were, but that -- they did not have the skills and technology to actually extract the gold, to extract the oil."
The Aristide/Lavalas plan, as I've articulated in the Haiti's Riches Interview, was "to engage in some sort of private/public partnership. Where both the Haitian people's interest would be taken care of and of course the private interest would take their profits. But I think it was around that time we had St. Genevieve saying they did not like the Haitian government. Obviously, they didn't like this plan. They don't like the Haitian people to know where their resources are. But in this book, it was the first time in Haitian history, it was written in Kreyòl and in French. And there was a national discussion all over the radio in Haiti with respect to all these various resources of Haiti, where they were located, and how the Haitian government was intending on trying to build sustainable development through those resources. So that's what you had before the 2004 Bush regime change/Coup D'etat in Haiti. With the Coup D'etat now, though the people know where these resources are because this book exists, they don't know who these foreign companies are. What they're profit margins are. What the environmental protection rules and regulations to protect them are. Many folks, for instance, in the North talk about losing their property, having people come in with guns and taking over their property. So that's where we are." ( Haiti's Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti.)
The mainstream media, owned by the multinational companies fleecing Haiti, certainly won't lay out for public consumption that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is to secure Haiti's oil, strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves)��, lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world's wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies. (See, Map showing some of Haiti's mining and mineral wealth, including five oil sites in Haiti; Oil in Haiti by Dr. Georges Michel; Excerpt from the Dunn Plantation paper; Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin; There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals, and Is UN proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti).
In fact, the current Haitian authority-under-the-US/UN-occupation that is in charge of regulating exploration licenses and mining in Haiti does not explain, in any relevant or systematic manner, to the Haitian majority about the companies buying up, post 2004, Haiti's deep water ports, what their profit shares with the Haitian nation are, where are the accounting of said shares owed to the people of Haiti, nor explain the environmental effects of the massive excavations of Haiti's mountains and waters going on right now. Instead, the Director of Mining in Haiti blithely maintains that " further research will be necessary to confirm the existence of oil in Haiti."
In an excerpt taken from the article posted Oct 9, 2000 by Bob Perdue entitled " Lonnie Dunn, third owner of the Dauphin plantation," we learn that:
"On November 8, 1973, Martha C. Carbone, American Embassy, Port-au-Prince, sent a letter to the Office of Fuels and Energy, Department of State, in which she stated that the Government of Haiti "...had before it proposals from eight different groups to establish a trans-shipment port for petroleum in one or more of the Haitian deep water ports. Some of the projects include construction of a refinery...." She further commented that the Embassy was acquainted with three firms: Ingram Corporation of New Orleans, Southern California Gas Company and Williams Chemical Corporation of Florida.. (According to John Moseley, the New Orleans company was probably "Ingraham", not Ingram.)
In the November 6, 1972 issue of Oil and Gas Journal, Leo B. Aalund commented in his article "Vast Flight of Refining Capacity from U.S. Looms",.: "Finally, 'Baby Doc' Duvalier's Haiti is participating with a group that wants to build a transshipment terminal off Fort Liberte, Haiti". One of the proposals referred to by Carbone was undoubtedly submitted by Dunn interests.
Additionally, we learn from this article that "Lonnie Dunn who owned the Dauphin plantation "planned to straighten and widen the entrance to the [Fort Liberte] bay so that super tankers could be brought in and the cargo distributed to smaller tankers for transfer to U.S. and Caribbean ports that could not accommodate large ships..." ( Photo of Fort Liberte, Haiti).
We've put on the Ezili's HLLN website the other relevant portions of this paper that talks about the corporate eye the US has had, for decades, on Fort Liberte in Haiti as an ideal deep water port for the multinationals to establish an oil refinery.
In the 50s and 60s there was little need for Haiti's ports or oil as the Middle Eastern monopoly was gushing dollars galore. No need for these oil monopolies to undercut themselves by putting more oil on the market to cut their profits. Manipulated scarcity thy name is profit! or, did I mean capitalism?
But the oil embargo of the 70s, the advent of OPEC, the rise of the Venezuelan factor, the Gulf Crisis followed by the Iraq war for oil, all has made Haiti a better bet for the three-piece suits and their military mercernaries called "Western governments", yep, a way easier place to pillage and plunder behind the "bringing democracy" or "humanitarian aid" public covers.
Serendipitously with Haiti's 2004 Bush-the-son Regime Change, a follow up to the 1991 Bush-the-father's military coup, we find, flurries of Congressional "discussions" about off-shore drillings in preparation, perhaps, to the eventual "revelation" as written in the Dunn paper years ago, that "there is a need for supertankers that require deep-water ports which are not readily available along the U.S. East Coast - nor ...welcome...for environmental and other consideration will (not) permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that will be required."
We underline that Haiti is an ideal dumping ground for the US/Canada/France and now Brazil, because environmental, human rights and health issues and other considerations in the US and in these other countries, would probably not permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that new explorations of oil in this hemisphere will required. So, why not pick the most militarily defenseless country in the Western Hemisphere and dot it with such unsafe initiatives behind a UN multi-national "humanitarian" mask and fatherly Bill Clinton's snowy white hair and smiling face?
It is relevant to note here that most of Haiti's major deep water ports have been privatized since the Bush 2004 regime change in Haiti. It is also relevant to note here what I wrote last year in the piece titled Is the UN military proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti: "If there's substantial oil and gas reserves in Haiti, the US/Euro genocide and crimes against the Haitian population has not yet begun. Ayisyen leve zye nou anwo, kenbe red. Nou fèk komanse goumen. (Read again, John Maxwell's Is there oil in Haiti.)
The revelations of Dr. Georges Michel and the Dunn Plantation papers seem to positively answer the question that there is substantail oil reserves in Haiti. And our Ezili Dantò Witness Project information is that it's indeed being tapped and contracted out, but not for the benefit of Haitians or Haiti's authentic development. That's why there was a need to marginalize the Haitian masses through the ouster of Haiti's democratically elected Aristide government and put in the UN guns and UN occupation that today masks the US/Euros' (with a piece to the new power that is Brazil) securing Haiti's oil and gas reserves and other mineral riches such as gold, copper, diamond and underwater treasures. ( Majescor and SACG Discover a New Copper-Gold in Haiti, Oct. 6, 2009; See, Haiti's Riches and There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals.)
Today, the US and Euros say they are happy with Haiti's "security gains" and "stable" government. To wit: the last elections the US/UN presided over in Haiti excluded Haiti's majority party from participation. Haiti's jails are filled, indefinitely detained without trial or hearings, since 2004, with thousands upon thousands of community organizers, poor civilians and political dissenters that the UN/US label "gangsters." Site Soley has been "pacified." There are more NGOs and charitable organizations - about 10,000 - in Haiti then in any where in the world since 2004 and the Haitian people are a million times worst off than they were before this US/NGO civilization (otherwise also known as the "International Community") and their thugs, thieves and corporate death squads came and disenfranchised nine million blacks. Food prices are so high, some resort to eating dirt in the form of cookies to assuage Clorox hunger.
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, the head of Haiti's largest human rights organization was disappeared in 2007 in UN occupied Haiti with no investigation done. Between 2004 and 2006 under the Western occupation, first by the US Marines then the UN multinational troops headed by Brazil, from 14,000 to 20,000 Haitians, mostly who opposed the occupation and regime change, were slaughtered with total impunity. More Haitian children are out of school today in 2009 than before the US/NGO "civilization" came post 2004. Under the US-imposed Boca Raton regime ,Haiti's Supreme Court was fired and brand new and paid-for judges, without any Constitutional authority inherited from the people of Haiti's mandate, took the place of the legitimate judges and law officers and are still metering out paid-for rulings in 2009 under the UN occupation and international community's tutelage.
And, as a matter of power, privilege, inequity and the violence of neocolonialism, white-sex abusers and pedophiles are having a hay day and human trafficking of Haiti children are at an all-time high. It is no revelation that in the stakes of corruption in Haiti or in Africa that a great many of the foreign NGOs along with their bourgeois/elite/pastors/priests and others are destroying poor children's life with absolute impunity while being painted as "saints" in their press back home the better to raise more funds to masturbate on Black pain some more.
Yet, Special UN Envoy, Bill Clinton, tells us "I am serving the next two years as a US Special Envoy to Haiti...This is the best chance in my lifetime that Haitians have ever had to escape the chains of their past..." The former President added, "If Haiti pulls out of this it will be in no small measure because of the efforts of non-governmental organizations."
What that means is perhaps this is the Haitian subcontractors, ruling oligarchs and US/Euro military industrial complexes' best chance to finally impose their chains on Haiti for good. Tap Haiti's oil, keep it so poor it will be grateful for slave wages at sweatshops. Let sexual tourism and the white sex-abusers do as they will. Transfer quickly more Haiti properties to foreigners and render the "good" Haitians as maids, butlers and servants in US/Euro-owned Haiti tourist resorts like the rest of the Caribbean. Militarize Haiti so that dissent is not possible even as a thought. That's perhaps UN Envoy, Bill Clinton's "best chance in my lifetime" scenario for Haiti. Nothing else makes sense. (See, HLLN comment on new IMF figures indicating Haiti is no longer the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and Does the Western economic calculation of wealth fit Haiti -fit Dessalines idea of wealth distribution?NO! and Comparing crime, poverty and violence in the rest of the Hemisphere to Haiti and Pointing Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth and The Western vs the Real Narrative on Haiti and No other national group anywhere in the world sends more money home than Haitians living abroad.)
Going shopping in Haiti:
"It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. ---- Emma Goldman
Though they exist and form the exception to the rule, there are very few Paul Farmers, Margaret Trosts or Bill Quigleys in the Haitian world. And even amongst "the exceptions," the number whittles down to almost zero in terms of foreign heroes who can be expected to go the lifetime-distance without making "unusual alliances" or joining the status quo that vies for the soul of Black folks. Few who would HEAR, Lila Watson who said, "If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." This sort of thinking that inspires self-reliance not dependency and provide the respectful conditions for those in great need to, in liberty, dignity and identify, realize their own needs is not what compels the International Community in Haiti right now.
For, in the age of humanitarian imperialism, globalization, financial colonialism and neocolonial-violence obfuscated behind forced assimilation and cultural imperialism, what exactly do some whites or modern missionaries go shopping in Haiti for: sex, self-esteem, adulation, fun, challenge, adventure, the boost in serotonin-consumption, to exploit cheap labor, plunder Haiti's natural resources, for self-improvement, recovery, to use Haiti as in excuse to raise funds for their salaries and living expenses to live the old Dixie's planters' life with exploitation black sex on tap, or as an easy way to gain international expert credentials in any field and move up the socio-economic ladder at home and/or for securing the good tropical lifestyle with mountain and oceanfront houses, the waiters, maids, gardeners and seafood they couldn't obtain as easily in their Euro/US countries where they are the majority, ordinary, can’t use the white privilege inheritance without some scrutiny and are not as exotic and special as in neocolonial devastated Haiti. It’s all hidden, of course, behind the mask of being good humanitarians, altruistic charity workers and helping Haitians. (See also, Ezili Dantò Reviews Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking (a book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D.); The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose ; Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues; UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children; The-To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti Forum 2009; I am the History of Rape: HLLN Letter to UN asking for investigative reports on UN soldier's rapes in Haiti; and, Proposed solutions to create a new paradigm.)
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, political and social commentator, author and human rights attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in the USA. For more go to Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò website at http://www.ezilidanto.com
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Haiti: Bonanza for Foreign Mining Companies
Interview with Marguerite Laurent / Ezili Dantò
by Chris Scott
![[Image: 17165.jpg]](http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures/17165.jpg)
Global Research, January 23, 2010
CKUT - 2009-04-29
Chris Scott: This is Chris Scott for CKUT radio 90.3 FM Montreal interviewing Ms. Marguerite Laurent[/Ezili Dantò] of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN).
Ms. Laurent welcome to the program.
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Chris Scott: Thanks.
We wanted to talk today... and I understand your organization has been following the issue of foreign mining companies coming to Haiti and prospecting.
Especially in the North of Haiti.
There are now at least three Canadian companies prospecting for gold and copper in Northeast Haiti and two of these companies have really expanded their operations within this past year. Why the rush to start mining in Haiti right now or to start prospecting in Haiti, right now, in the middle of a recession of all things?
Ezili Dantò: Well perhaps because Haiti right now is under occupation and the people, their voice is not being heard.
This is a very good time for foreign companies to be granted concessions, because the folks in office are not representing the people of Haiti.
Chris Scott: And I guess you've talked about the fact that these companies obviously, they look for what they call a "secure business climate." For presumably a low regulatory environment.
Can you describe a bit more for listeners what the situation is for regulation in Haiti right now?
Because Haiti does have officially an elected government, but the country is also under occupation.
What happens on the ground?
Who makes the decisions?
Who calls the shots?
Ezili Dantò: Well, technically with regards to mining there is this thing called the Bureau of Mines [and Energy] and its under the Ministry of Public Works in Haiti.
But what folks have to understand is the history of what's been going on with respect to Haiti.
Between 1991 and 1994 there was a Coup d'etat.
It was - 91 was the first Coup d'etat against President Jean Betrand Aristide and in those times, foreign companies, whenever, during Coup D'etats they get lots of concessions and so forth.
In terms of Haitian mineral rights and gold and bauxite, all the various minerals of Haiti.
I mean people don't think of those things about Haiti.
And this is one of those things my organization want folks to understand.
That the UN is not in Haiti, the US is not in Haiti, Canadians are not in Haiti for humanitarian goals or because they care about Haitian rights.
There is an economic track.
And so I'd like to be able to explain to your audience that in terms of the economic track.
Haiti has various sites, especially in the North, where in terms of Canadian companies, were talking about St. Genevieve, were talking about Eurasian Minerals, were talking about right now the new one that just came which is called Majescor.
Those are the three we are aware of. That doesn't mean there are not others.
But around the 1970s and 1980s there was a survey[s] -[1975 - Kennecott Exploration/1978 - Penarroya Exploration], a geological survey done by the UNDP [1983 - The United Nations Development Program], and they actually also put together a document [for the Haitian government] with respect to what is available in these areas.
In these areas now that are being mined by Eurasian Minerals; that are being mined by St. Genevieve up in the Trou du Nord up in the North and Northeast of Haiti.
These companies, specifically St. Genevieve, came into Haiti in 1997 and that was under the Lavalas government of President Preval.
And they got a [minimum] 25 year contract.
Now, when they got that contract with regards to Haiti this was during a time when the grassroots had their voice.
They knew what the resources were in Haiti and they felt entitled to share in the profits.
We have information where St. Genevieve was talking about how, you know, the Aristide government was not amenable to what it was doing in Haiti.
[Editor's Note: "Steve Lachapelle – a Quebec lawyer who is now chair of the board of the company, called St. Genevieve Haiti – says employees were threatened at gunpoint by partisans of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The president at the time, René Préval, once an ally of Aristide, was elected for a second term last year, but Lachapelle says he has renewed confidence in the Haitian leader."] But now, these companies are having a great time. Once the Coup d'Etat had happened in 2004. There is no longer a worry about the people.
Because the people, their voices are not being heard.
Although we have an elected government that was... excuse me, an elected President.
The rest of the folks are Coup d'etat folks that have been left over or they are the folks that the parliamentary elections where the people really concentrated just on trying to get themselves out of, between 2004 and 2006, intense, intense repression.
Trying to get a government, or a president that they thought would represent them. But the Preval government is effectively at the moment a puppet government that's under occupation.
So, that's why you see the most exploration licenses being given out. In January, Eurasian Minerals, a Canadian company got 27 licenses.
We know that in 2005, during the Latortue imposed government, after the coup d'etat, that St. Genevieve they reaffirmed their license.
Now, in terms of regulations, what should people think about, when - if a company says they are having problems with the democratically elected government in 1997, but in 2006, excuse me, in 2005 after that government has been ousted, their contract, their 25 year contract is being reaffirmed and now they are having a great relationship with the occupiers of Haiti.
What folks should understand is this, now I don't have the specifics with regards to the St. Genevieve contract, this Canadian company.
But I do know that they have, they're up there in the North and Northeast.
Folks should understand, that when a Coup d'etat happens like the one that happened in 2004. And these folks that came in from the Dominican Republic who are supported by the United States and all these Neocons who wanted to get President Aristide out, the first thing that happens is that all the archives are destroyed; set fire to all the original archives, so that the elites, and the foreign companies who may owe money to the Haitian people, the Haitian government, they sometimes get away scot-free when the new imposed government comes on without paying anything.
So who knows what data from the first contract under Preval was taken out with regards to this 25 year contract that's St. Genevieve's.
Nobody knows.
All we know is that the St. Genevieve company reaffirmed its contract under the occupation and added five more additional permits.
So, in terms of regulation, what happens, nobody knows.
The Bureau des Mines...
I'll give you an example, the head of the Bureau [of Mines] is Mr. Anglade.
And around that same time he talked about, not mining companies, but there was an issue where there was an underwater exploration in Ile-à-Vache, which is an island in Haiti, somehow there was a dispute between the company and the Bureau des Mines and what happened was, out of the blue, someone, somewhere decided to move the contract away from the Bureau des Mines and put it into the Minister of Culture.
[See, The General Director of the Bureau of Mines and Energy struck by the announcement of the plunder at the sea-beds of Ile-à-Vaches ].
So these are some of the weaknesses of the Haitian regulatory system.
Number one you have these Coup D'etats, where what was done when there was a government of the people, we don't know what was reaffirmed in 2005 under the occupation.
Also we don't know who is regulating whether the properties [property owners] are being paid for that these people are excavating.
Whether the laws that require Haitian ownerships are being followed.
Because a lot of times these foreign companies have enough leverage to just buy a name, a Haitian elite, a person, give them some money.
And, in effect, who is going to... there is no serious enforcement of those subsidiaries they have to do that have Haitian participation.
Also, the Bureau of Mines with the various chaos going on; who is going to look at these contracts and enforce, for instance, whatever the guarantees were that the underground water, or the surrounding farming areas, or the air pollution, what happens, cause everybody knows the environmental devastation that happens with mining, the chemicals that are used in the air. Obviously, everybody also knows the wind levels when Haiti has hurricanes.
Like the devastating hurricane we just had recently that leveled the whole of Gonaives.
What happens when oxidation and all these various chemicals get, you know, travel up in the air. Who will be responsible?
Will these foreign companies have any responsibly for the health hazards that may happen?
We know because we are under occupation that there is frankly no regulatory framework that will enforce laws or even contracts.
These contracts, the so-called conventions with the Bureau of Mines, that St. Genevieve, Eurasian or Majescor have, the people of Haiti don't know about them. That's basically what's happening.
If there is, for instance, the guarantee that once they have dug up these mines and so forth that they are not going to leave the area devastated.
That there are some sort of reparations fixing the area, and if there are some damages, that there is some sort of money put aside for those damages.
Nobody knows any of this stuff.
Chris Scott: You mentioned earlier in your talking that some UN personnel, or peace-keepers I guess, with the MINUSTAH have actually been providing logistical support and in some cases been providing security to these mining operations in some of these remote areas.
Is that true?
Ezili Dantò: Absolutely.
We have reports all of the time, we have this project in Haiti called the Ezili Dantò Witness Project, we get reports from the various locals.
The latest one, a couple of months ago, was in Port-au-Prince, where we were told, that the UN soldiers came in, now I have to say, that most Haitians, they'll call anyone a UN soldier, if you have a gun, it could be some geologist or someone at a private security.
The point is, the UN soldier come in, they cordon off the area, put big containers in. And folks tell us that they can't see what is being dug [up], they can't see what's going on. They might stay in that area for a month, they might stay for a few days. Whatever they are doing, the folks that are the authorities cannot explain to their constituents what's going on. And so that's one of the things that's been happening all over Haiti.
All over Haiti.
I have an example of somewhere in the North, a mayor there that I spoke to a while ago, basically said to me; UN troops came into his town, started digging, cordoning off areas, and when he went to them with a delegation of the townspeople, and said, I don't know what you are doing here, I am the mayor I'm the authority here. They said, well listen, we have authority from Port-au-Prince.
And they didn't produce any sort of paperwork.
So do these foreign companies actually have the consent of the people at the moment ?
I would say they don't, for doing what they are doing.
Chris Scott: Is it your sense that the laws, in terms of environmental protection, in protecting communities that are near mining operations, is it your understanding that the laws just aren't applied?
Or is it the problem that the laws just don't exist?
Or do we even know at this point?
Ezili Dantò: The laws exist.
Whether they're adequate?
We don't know. Whether they're being applied?
That we know, they are not being applied.
Because if the people themselves don't know what's going on. And if the people themselves don't know what their rights are, or who the folks that are coming in are. Then that means, whatever those laws are, the mayor can't, you know, say that this X, Y and Z law requires that you get in touch with me first, that I know what's going on, that I am able to protect my people.
But none of that happens.
So whatever the law is, and I know that on paper there are certain environmental laws that Haiti has. But on paper.
Just like on paper there's supposed to be some sort of Haitian participation.
But, you know, it's all window dressing.
At the end of the day, they're not being enforced.
And as I said, ways of not enforcing it is destroying the archives.
So that nobody knows who owes what, or nobody knows... and then redo the data. Redo it under occupation.
So, that's basically it.
But folks have to understand, the Haitian people had experiences before, with let's say, the bauxite, where Reynolds Aluminum was in Haiti for a long, long time and after they left the place was just a crater.
The people wanted to know... I mean, we didn't benefit.
Chris Scott: What years are we talking about?
[Editor's Note: Reynolds Aluminum was in Haiti for over 20-years and closed and abandoned its bauxite mine in 1982. Click here for some photos of the old Reynolds Aluminum facility, dock, port, airport in Miragaone, Haiti and info on the 2004 purchase of the old Reynolds facility during the UN occupation and return of the wealthy elite's rule of Haiti.]
Ezili Dantò: I mean, it was in the seventies.
So now when, see there was an education process in Haiti.
For the first time we had a democratically elected government.
And I remember that in 1999 when President Aristide was campaigning, for his second term, for the first time the people were given what this Lavalas party was going to do and it was called the "White Book." And in that book there was a list of all the various minerals and sites.
And it's on my website.
There is a map that shows where the various minerals are. So that between 1991 and 1994 [Note: - 1991 to 1994 are the dates of the first coup d'etat, this date here should instead be "between 1994 to 2004"] when the people had a voice in government, there was an intense grassroots movement to figure out how they could use Haiti's resources.
There was a plan, where the Lavalas government, not only told the people where the resources were, but that -- they did not have the skills and technology to actually extract the gold, to extract the oil...
Their plan was they were going to engage in some sort of private/public partnership.
Where both the people's interest would be taken care of and of course the private interest would take their profits.
But I think it was around that time we had St. Genevieve saying they did not like the Haitian government.
Obviously, they didn't like this plan. They don't like the Haitian people to know where their resources are. But in this book, it was the first time in Haitian history, it was done in Kreyòl and in French.
And there was a national discussion all over the radio with respect to all these various resources, where they were located, and how the government was intending on trying to build sustainable development through those resources.
So that's what you had before the Coup D'etat.
With the Coup D'etat now, though the people know where these resources are because this book exists, they don't know who these foreign companies are. What they're profit margins are. What the environmental protection rules and regulations to protect them are. Many folks, for instance, in the North talk about losing their property, having people come in with guns and taking over their property.
So that's where we are.
Chris Scott: Ms. Laurent, you're a lawyer.
You, I understand work on this full time. And I understand its a big, big, big problem.
But do you, are you able to do something in terms of the Lawyers Network?
Are you able to go and do access for information request?
Or something similar?
Are you able to actually go on site and get some information or take testimony from people.
How does someone who works on this full time try to shed light on what's actually going on?
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò: Well, number one, one of our biggest challenges is to tell the world that the powers that are in Haiti at the moment are not there to so-call "protect Haitian security." They are there securing an economic track.
They are there trying to secure their privatization, their neo-liberal agenda, their sweatshops and their use of Haitian resources for their major conglomerates, and Haiti's oil resources.
And as I said five [oil] sites, and that's not even including stuff that's in water [offshore.] So that Haitians are aware of with respect to own country.
[Editor's Note: For instance, Cuban territorial waters flow into Haiti waters.
See, Cuba oil/gas prospects and contract with Brazil for offshore drilling].
We, as an organization spend most of our time actually trying to uncover the information.
We have asked the Bureau of Mines for, let's say, the contracts.
We are ignored, obviously.
We'd like to see the conventions that has to be signed, between the companies, like St. Genevieve and the Bureau des Mines and Energy in Haiti.
We don't get those things.
We are pushing, obviously the various political figures, that are interested in the people's rights, to ask for these contracts.
To find out what's going on. So that's one of the things that we do. But the primary stuff is just to establish that Haiti has resources.
I mean, the colonial narrative is that Haiti is so poor, its a beggar country, and it doesn't have any resources that possibly Canada and these Canadian companies could want to go into Haiti and excavate for. So that's why programs like yours are so important.
Because we get to tell the world that Haiti has gold. As a matter of fact, you know, there was an article that talked about Haiti is littered with gold. That Haiti has copper.
That Haiti has silver.
That Haiti has all these various oil sites.
That behind the UN gun, something is happening.
Chris Scott: Yeah. And maybe, you could just tell us just to make it explicit, the people that you're dealing with, that you are communicating with in the North of Haiti and elsewhere.
What are the concerns they have about the way exploitation is being done?
In terms of having their properties trampled, I can understand that very clearly.
But in terms of some of the longer term, some of the environmental affects, what have they communicated to you?
Ezili Dantò: Well you know, the kind of interesting thing is that, a lot of the folks, they don't know. They really don't know, some of them, that the extraction of gold and copper and so forth has this cyanide process, or this process that when it hits the wind, you have all the various poisons in the air that will cause public hell. The geologist, the Haitian geologists knows.
And they publish papers and we're working with them, in terms of the educational process, to let the folks know, you know, all the chemicals for instance deep in the veins of the rock when those chemicals go and they seep through, you have this possibility of, you know...
Haiti is a country that's so fragile already.
Everyone knows that deforestation is a problem.
Everyone knows that the last hurricanes destroyed the whole city of Gonaives.
Which is almost about 350, 000 people were rendered virtually homeless.
There was a billion dollars in damage and this was because of the deforestation.
But imagine now that you have companies digging into the mountains of Haiti and leaving these craters and leaving these...
Chris Scott: Toxic chemicals.
Ezili Dantò... lethal sorts of illnesses, to the farmland, livestock, the water, the air that the extraction process will, you know, the leaking cyanide and other chemicals used in the extraction process will affect nearby farmland and the livestock and so forth.
So we don't have any reports yet with respect to those things.
As I said, you know, our resources are very limited.
What folks have been talking to us about are the UN coming in and cordoning of areas, or the "blan" coming in (they call foreigners' blan) coming in, and setting up their various mining operations.
That's what we've been told. We have not gotten information about livestock devastation right now. Because, everything is sort of...
We think things are at a small scale right now. [Editor's Note: Mining Haiti's mountains for extraction of raw materials for the construction industry is at a bigger scale and some of it has been steadily going on since before the 1980s, with perhaps Haiti-people orientated oversight/questions posed, only during the 1994-2004 people's governments.
The digging up of Haiti post-Bush Regime Change/Coup D'etat companies has intensified.
But it is the poor Haitian peasants use of charcoal for fuel that is primarily blamed for Haiti's soil erosion and deforestation].
We don't know to what extent that they've actually started their [gold/copper/silver...] excavation processes.
Because everything is cordoned off, Haitian's can't see in. That's really all I can say with respect to what's going on. We can't, we don't know what's going on inside.
All we know is that areas that Haitians were able to travel and go to, right now they cannot go to those areas.
So in terms of soil contamination...
I can say though, that we have noticed and folks in Haiti understand the difference between 2004 when this coup d'etat happened.
As I was saying, we had an empowered constituency of Haitians and grassroots organizations from 1994-2004, and there was sort of an impasse because there was a fight between the companies who had gotten their concessions and the people in congress in Haiti there was just an impasse.
Because there was a big discussion as to what these companies were going to be doing and how this was going to benefit sustainable development.
But there is no such discussion now.
Right now, all we know is that these companies are getting contract after contracts and the places are being cordoned off. And we can see between the 2004 and the 2008 hurricanes, the actual granite, the actual mudcake on the people's faces.
You can see the difference between a mudslide in 2004 and how much it's intensified in 2008. We can see the degradation.
And its happening because of the digging up of Haiti.
Because in addition to these Canadian companies, there are other companies that are digging up Haiti, for construction materials and limestone and all this other stuff - marble.
Haitian marble is on the international market a very important and its pure. The purity of these resources in Haiti.
The grade of them is so high. Minerals in Haiti the grade of it is so high. Because Haiti is one of the oldest land mass in the Americas.
And because Haiti is a land of mountains after mountains, that's [part of ] what Ayiti [Haiti] means, you have all these minerals inside of these mountains.
Our concerns of course is what's going to happen to the ground water.
What's going to happen to the air?
What's going to happen to the people?
What are the profits?
You know... and what guarantee do the people have that there is going to be any sustainable development, beyond some temporary jobs for miners?
Because we know in the process of gold and copper mining they need a lot of water.
Haitians wonder, where are they going to get them from. Are they going to build these dams. Who's going to enforce that there's no big accident, like that happened in 2000 in Romania, where one of these mining companies just leaked out these chemicals into the river.
The Artibonnite river is not that far. And it's where Haiti's breadbasket is. If that's contaminated, what are we going to do?
But there's no discussion of any of this in Haiti right now. Whereas under the democratic government there was intense discussion of these issues.
Chris Scott: If Haiti regains its sovereignty at some point in the future.
What is the way forward?
In terms of mining it, you'd still be dealing with these companies which are very cynical.
They'll try to get the best deal they can and damn the consequences.
Will the sovereign Haitian government still have to deal with these companies?
Will they try to mine in some way on their own?
Will they deal with companies like Cuba, perhaps, who have a different experience with dealing with foreign capital?
What is the way forward for Haiti from here on in?
Ezili Dantò: Well, the way forward, number one, is for Haiti to get back its sovereignty.
And I think there was an intense discussion between 1994-2004 and I think this discussion needs to be put back, that's what democracy is about.
I think that the plans the Lavalas folks had in their White Book, where there is a just partnership between the private sector and the public and the government.
So that the skills necessary, for instance, to do safe extraction are applied, and to protect the people are applied - with the understanding that a private company is going to want its profits, but also with the understanding that the Haitian people have an interest.
Right now the only thing that anybody is dealing with is the profit of the foreign companies, nothing with respect to the interests of the Haitian people for sustainable development, for health, for their right in terms of the ownership of the property.
There's none of that. We obviously need to have an engagement with the private sector who have the skills and the technology to extract these minerals, but in such a way that the voices of the people are heard.
That the environment is protected.
That there's guarantees, financial guarantees, that if something happens these companies will be liable.
They can't just jump off and go someplace else and leave some sort of a degradation.
But I think you are correct, with respect to, its been done its being done in difference places.
And we have to look at those places.
We have to look at folks who are friendlier to human development.
I think that's what the White Book was called: "investment in humans and the environment." [Note: The actual book title is - Investir Dans L'Humain: Livre Blanc de Fanmi Lavalas sous la Direction de Jean-Bertrand Aristide].
And Cuba, Venezuela and these folks who seem to be interested in their human capital are good partners.
And could be good partners for us at some point in time. Yes, I think that is something...
'Cause right now, there is a need, for instance, for fuel in order to run these mining companies.
What are they using?
And how are they using it?
If we can leverage this into infrastructure for the larger surrounding community, then that would be good. Not just these companies come in, they build a dam that only they use for their extraction process and so forth and the community is left with no development.
But if we can have an integrated holistic system where they come in and there is a development plan for sustainable development for sustainable economic jobs that are going to be beyond this arena - for water, clean water, for electricity.
Something where we work in partnership is what I think the Haitian people want. It's what they need. It's not that they don't want to see foreign companies in Haiti, it's that they don't want the companies to manipulate, so that you know every time we take one step forward, they bring us three steps back with a coup d'etat, destroy all the work that was done that put in some protection for the people, and then go back to just their profits.
Chris Scott: We were speaking to Marguerite Laurent[/Ezili Dantò] with the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network in New York City I believe. Yes. That's correct.
Is there anything else you'd want to add before we finish the interview Ms. Laurent?
Marguerite Laruent/Ezili Dantò: Yes, folks who are interested in really understanding the counter-colonial narrative, that's what we specialize in. And especially we want folks to know that Haiti has resources.
That it's because of these resources that you have companies like Eurasian Minerals, St. Genevieve, Majescor... and you have the Ottawa Initiative that's basically is being played out today, where the Haitian President is like third or fourth in line in terms of who has anything to say anything about Haiti.
Seems the first person in line these days is Ban Ki-moon and then Paul Collier and whoever comes in from the international community that somebody calls expert.
And so we want Haiti's sovereignty back. We want Haitian resources to be used in such a way that it helps with long term Haitian development.
And we want the folks to understand that there are five oil sites that have been documented with regards to Haiti.
We want the folks to understand that there are reports from the UN that says that Haiti is littered with gold and copper and marble and limestone.
And that there are various projects going on right now behind these UN guns. And nobody knows what is going on because there is no transparency.
There is no representation for the Haitian people.
Chris Scott: Ok. Thank you very much. And we'll definitely be speaking to you about this sometime in the future.
Thank you Ms. Laurent.
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò: Thank you very much.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=17165
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The Myth of Haiti’s Lawless Streets
Catherine and News & Commentary,
January 25, 2010 at 10:01 pm
![[Image: men_carry_-water_300x218_.jpg]](http://solari.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/men_carry_-water_300x218_.jpg)
By Inigo Gilmore
As a member of the media covering the tragedy in Haiti, it’s with a sense of alarm and astonishment that I’ve witnessed how some senior aid officials have argued for withholding aid of the utmost urgency because of sensational claims about violence and insecurity, which appear to be based more on fantasy than reality.
John O’Shea, who runs the well-known Irish aid agency Goal, has joined this chorus, telling the Guardian he couldn’t get his trucks from the Dominican Republic to Haiti because he had no guarantees his drivers wouldn’t be “macheted to death on the way down”. He added that Goal has no plans to deploy its much-needed doctors and nurses on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
links into the story below...
The myth of Haiti's lawless streets
To withhold aid because of the 'security situation' is a miserable excuse for agencies' failure to deliver desperately needed help
![[Image: A-man-carries-an-injured--001.jpg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/1/20/1263986388753/A-man-carries-an-injured--001.jpg) A man carries an injured child in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, six days after the earthquake. Photograph: Emiliano Larizza/Contrasto / eyevine
As a member of the media covering the tragedy in Haiti, it's with a sense of alarm and astonishment that I've witnessed how some senior aid officials have argued for withholding aid of the utmost urgency because of sensational claims about violence and insecurity, which appear to be based more on fantasy than reality.
John O'Shea, who runs the well-known Irish aid agency Goal, has joined this chorus, telling the Guardian he couldn't get his trucks from the Dominican Republic to Haiti because he had no guarantees his drivers wouldn't be "macheted to death on the way down". He added that Goal has no plans to deploy its much-needed doctors and nurses on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
From what I've observed, such chilling claims do not match the reality on the ground; and by trumpeting a distorted and sensational picture about the violence, some senior aid officials may be culpable of undermining the very aid effort they are supposed to be promoting. When I traveled into Haiti's disaster zone last week from the Dominican Republic, I did so alone and on a bus, whose passengers were mostly Haitians, including some living in the US. Since then, whether on the road to Port-au-Prince or within the city, I have not witnessed anyone wielding a gun, a machete or a club of any kind. Nor have I witnessed an act of violence. (I have seen one badly wounded man who had been shot in circumstances which were unclear and who was eventually rescued by US soldiers after an American reporter sought help.)
Any violence is localised and sporadic; the situation is desperate yet not dangerous in general. Crucially, it's not a war zone; it's a disaster zone – and there appears to have been little attempt to distinguish carefully between destructive acts of criminality and the behaviour of starving people helping themselves to what they can forage. For Haitians and many of those trying to help them, the overriding sentiment is that a massive catastrophe on this scale shouldn't have to wait for aid because blanket security is the absolute priority.
Moreover hundreds of journalists, volunteers from churches and private individuals have traveled in from the Dominican Republic, some of them bringing in desperately needed aid. From what I know, not a single person who has attempted to provide assistance to the people of Port-au-Prince, including medics, has run into any serious trouble.
En route to Port-au-Prince I met David Pierre-Louis, a 31-year-old Haitian-American, who had come to find his mother and bring much needed medical supplies. Happily, he found her alive and well, and later, she and a local nurse used the medicine David brought all the way from Seattle to set up a makeshift clinic on a street near her shattered home.
David, who runs a jazz club in Seattle, is now trying to fill the void by sending in his own medical supplies paid for by donations from the Haitian-American community and other concerned Americans. He told me: "Haitians here cannot understand why they're not getting help, especially as the way the violence is portrayed is not right. The people are unhappy that there's been no assistance but do you see them rioting in the streets? No.
"People are hungry and needy and yet they're being portrayed as savages. Aid is not getting there quick enough and that's sad because the solution is right there and we have the power to do it." John O'Shea has shown in the past that his aid agency has the power to do it. Yet this time, while the Irish people have generously donated more than 1m euros to Goal for their Haiti operations, the agency has yet to swing into action. While announcing that they hope to start some limited food distribution in one location in Port-au-Prince, O'Shea is insisting on a change in the security situation first before their operation can be rolled out, medics and all.
There are some real security issues in Port-au-Prince but some of the more alarming images and incidents portrayed in the media must be seen for what they are, and in context. Reports about marauding, machete-wielding gangs taking over Port-au-Prince are very wide of the mark. The people are welcoming and helpful to those who come to help them and, if anything, go out of their way to ensure you are safe.
Last weekend, in the park near the destroyed presidential palace, which has become a makeshift refugee camp for tens of thousands, we meet three Cuban doctors and nurses. They were working alone, without an escort, and they were treating a large group of injured men women and children, who calmly waited their turn. That night, on the other side of the park, I saw a group of homeless queueing patiently to collect water in plastic containers. No one was harassing them, and there was no sign of any of the criminal gangs that supposedly now rule the streets.
I can see no reason why, with some concerted pressure and a little coordination, aid agencies like Goal cannot deploy securely into the heart of Port–au-Prince, with their clinics and food distribution outlets. With thousands of the injured living in close quarters at makeshift camps, the rapid deployment of medical care is still paramount.
Of all the disasters I've covered in recent years, the response to this has perhaps been the most perplexing, and disastrous in itself. From the Haitian perspective, if anyone is dragging their feet it's the aid agencies. One thing is clear: if aid agencies do not quickly roll out a coordinated and comprehensive response, then not only will many more die, but the deteriorating security situation, which is being talked up so much, may perhaps become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So John O'Shea, if you are reading this, I put down this challenge to you: if you are prepared, in the next few days, to bring an aid van or truck to the Dominican/Haitian border, I will travel with it into Port-au-Prince. I will even help you to distribute the aid.
The Haitian people need help now, not excuses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...y-security
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
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![[Image: inigo.jpg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/1/20/1263999413815/inigo.jpg)