USA consollidates hold on Haiti with 12,000 troop invasion

[Peter Lemkin]

They just announced it will soon be 17,000 American Troops. Only 1/6 of those starving and in desperate need of food have yet to get any in Haiti. The number of injured that need medical help is infinitely smaller. We're doing a great job...of what I don't know. :puke:

[Ed Jewett]

Haiti Reality Check-AAR by former Marine…

January 25, 2010 by don

From my good friends Chuck Spinney and COL (USMC ret.) G.I. Wilson. A bottom up solution to disaster relief, leaders on the ground making things happen without all the overhead.
Attached is an important eyewitness assessment of the current situation in Haiti. It was written by William McNulty, William McNulty is a Sgt in the Marine Corps Reserve and when he was a Cpl he already had a MA in John Hopkins…..William has no burning desire to be an officer let alone a LtCol…William likes being accountable, responsible, and getting things done without a whole of PC and fanfare. I am very blessed to know him and like most Marine enlisted I would go with William anywhere… long live the Irish !. S/F Col. GI Wilson USMC Ret
William is a volunteer member of Team Rubicon, a self-financed and self-deployed group of former Marines, soldiers and health care professionals currently providing emergency relief in Haiti. (see web site at http://blog.teamrubiconhaiti.org). McNulty paints a grim picture of condition in Haiti and especially, as he puts it, “… the impotence of western power to deal with disasters/emergencies;for either out of lack of compassion, political correctness, or because the institutions set up to take care of emergencies are so overburdened with layers of bureaucracy that they are ineffective.”
Haiti Reality Check
William McNulty Former Asst Team Lead Team Rubicon January 24, 2010 http://blog.teamrubiconhaiti.org/2010/01...nches.html

Short AAR due to time-constraints…more to follow. I´m currently in Santo Domingo about to hop a flight back to DC. For the last six days I was operating in refugee camps in the worst hit areas of Port au Prince. I was the Asst Team Leader for Team Rubicon, a team of former Marines, soldiers, firefighters, doctors, and nurses operating in the supposed ´denied areas´ of Port au Prince.
We were – and the team continues to be – FIRST RESPONDERS to wounds now over ten days old. First, please follow the Team Rubicon blog. There are some very candid assessments there. The situation is grim.
Once again, we are witnessing the impotence of western power to deal with disasters/emergencies;for either out of lack of compassion, political correctness, or because the institutions set up to take care of emergencies are so overburdened with layers of bureaucracy that they are ineffective.
When the Red Cross told our team not to deploy but to donate money to the Red Cross, we knew something was wrong. When we asked a Red Cross volunteer to start providing water/food to Hatians near our refugee camp, he said they weren´t organized to do so. But continue to give them your money anyways.
Right. It appears to me that senior positions at large aid organizations are guaranteed by long drawn out solutions, incremental progress and maintaining the status quo. Sensationalist journalism prevented aid from getting to Port au Prince. I saw one truck attacked by a hundred or so Hatians throwing rocks. It pulled off a side road and behind my taptap [a jerry rigged pickup truck used as a bus].
I saw one food convoy mobbed outside our field hospital. However, I never saw a Haitian with a machete or a firearm that wasn´t in the military/police. There were no mobs of bandits, the media was wrong. But…if the world doesn´t get there fast, there will be.
People get very desperate without food and water. I would too. But since bureaucratic institutions are reactive, not proactive (by their very nature), the irresponsible journalism and circular reporting of the traditional media made even the military scared to respond in a timely fashion. I was personally told by a friend of mine at SOUTHCOM to not deploy until the security situation improved. He´s a very good friend and good at his job, but couldn´t have been more wrong. He´s responsible for knowing the on-the-ground situation and he didn´t, because the information being sent to him was the same garbage being reported on TV. He told me I would get in the way of the military.
So what should you do?
Follow Team Rubicon´s model. There are hundreds of thousands of Hatians without work but not without assets/skills to help in the rescue process. Hire them! Team Rubicon operated out of local taptaps, a jerry rigged pickup truck turned bus which you can find anywhere. Hatians that speak English and Spanish just as abundant. While other aid organizations waited for their vehicles/interpreters to arrive, we hired people off the streets and put them to work.
Put one Marine/soldier in uniform with a group of doctors and nurses and send them into the refugee camps. We did it. And Team Rubicon continues to do it today. Everywhere you go people will approach you for food, water and jobs. If they get pushy, say you are ´Medi-seen´ which they will understand as doctors. In all situations, the Haitians immediately understood we were there to help and backed off.
Hiring locals gets the local economy moving and reduces the chance of a security situation, as your local drivers/interpreters become dependent and loyal to the team, not to mention they are far more reliable than a GPS when it comes to lines of communication. Self-deploy with a general plan but don´t worry about needing an OPORD. We went in with enough provisions to sustain ourselves for a week. If you fly to Santo Domingo you will find hundreds of people just like Team Rubicon trying to do the same thing. You can join a team there or put together your own.
The point is, do it, because governments and international institutions are failing to do so themselves. Immediately remove anyone in the military chain of command who becomes part of the problem, or move them off base and into town so they can learn the hard way. Readers of Team Rubicon blog are all aware of my run-in with a female major at the airport. Weight standards aside, she deserves no place in a relief effort of this size or the military.
The problem is, the bureaucracy of the American military promotes those who promote the bureaucracy. If you challenge conventional wisdom, you will be considered a trouble maker. In my case, despite my exhaustive explanation, the major couldn´t understand why I would need medical supplies, and why I was wearing portions of my old Marine Corps uniform. Because first and foremost ma´am, they are NOT your supplies, they are mine, and because cammie trousers and boonie covers give me legitimacy and authority with the Haitan people, where there otherwise is none. This is a disaster on a catastrophic scale, and it doesn´t have to be this bad.
Hold your leaders responsible. I will provide more later…have to catch a flight. Distro as you please. Semper fidelis, William McNulty Former Asst Team Lead Team Rubicon blog.teamrubiconhaiti.org



http://donvandergriff.wordpress.com/2010...mment-1459

[Ed Jewett]

The humanitarian myth

Richard Seymour

Richard Seymour, the author of The Liberal Defense of Murder, analyzes the propaganda manufactured to justify U.S. actions in Haiti after the earthquake.

January 25, 2010

WITHIN DAYS of Haiti suffering an earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the U.S. government had sent thousands of 82nd Airborne troops and Marines, alongside the super-carrier USS Carl Vinson.

By this Sunday, a total of more than 20,000 U.S. troops were scheduled to be operating in Haiti, both on land and in the surrounding seas. "We are there for the long term," explained Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The justification for sending troops is that there is a "security" crisis, which soldiers have to deal with in order to facilitate the distribution of aid.

The situation was and remains a needful one. The Haitian interior minister estimates that as many as 200,000 may have died as a result of the quake, and 2 million have been left homeless. Potable water is extremely scarce, and was so even before the quake. Only half a million have found the makeshift camps that provide some food and water, but have such poor sanitation that they are fostering diarrhea. Clinics are overwhelmed by the injured survivors, estimated to number a quarter of a million.

Since the arrival of the troops, however, several aid missions have been prevented from arriving at the airport in Port-au-Prince, that the U.S. has commandeered. France and Caribbean Community have both made their complaints public, as has Médecins Sans Frontières on five separate occasions. UN World Food Program flights were also turned away on two consecutive days. Benoit Leduc, MSF's operations manager in Port-au-Prince, complained that U.S. military flights were being prioritized over aid flights. Now, U.S. ships have encircled Haiti in order to prevent refugees escaping and fleeing to the United States.


Not only has aid been obstructed and escape blocked, but what aid does arrive was at first not being delivered, and then only in small amounts. Some five days after the earthquake struck, BBC News reporter Nick Davis described how aid had just started "trickling through." While aid was arriving in Haiti "in large amounts," some "bottlenecks" prevented the bulk of it from being distributed.
Asked why the U.S. was not using its air power to deliver aid to areas unreachable by road, Defense Secretary Robert Gates maintained that this would result in riots. The writer Nelson Valdes has described how U.S. and UN authorities advised aid workers not to distribute relief independently, as they would be subject to "mob attacks."
Eyewitnesses have repeatedly described how rescue workers are scarce on the ground, and relief nowhere to be seen. Hospitals that are functioning despite the wreckage complain of having no painkillers with which to operate on patients with serious injuries. Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health explained that:

n terms of supplies, in terms of surgeons, in terms of aid relief, the response has been incredibly slow. There are teams of surgeons that have been sent to places that were "more secure," where they have 10 or 20 doctors and 10 patients. We have a thousand people on this campus who are triaged and ready for surgery, but we only have four working [operating rooms], without anesthesia and without pain medications. And we're still struggling to get ourselves up to 24-hour care.

In effect, the U.S. has staged an invasion of Haiti, under the pretext of providing security for humanitarian aid, and in doing so has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid. With Haitians in a desperate condition, and the UN-supervised government in dire straits, Washington has sent the International Monetary Fund to offer a $100 million loan, on the proviso that public wages be frozen.
The "security" operation, meanwhile, proceeds apace. As well as U.S. troops, thousands more UN police have been sent to Haiti. Already, UN troops, alongside the Haitian police, have been responsible for several killings, as they have opened fire on starving earthquake survivors who dared to try to retrieve the means of survival from shops and other locations. The US has also insisted that the Haitian government pass an emergency decree authorizing curfews and martial law. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the decree "would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us."
This process has been facilitated by a flood of alarmist and often racist reporting about "mobs," "looters" and "gangs" causing a "security crisis." A "security crisis" validates a repressive response.
The Haitian police have justified their brutal massacres of "looters"--those securing their right to life in desperate circumstances--by telling the media that thousands of prisoners have escaped from the country's jails, and are running amok, posing a threat to vulnerable citizens. Police have been attempting to whip up fear among earthquake survivors, organising them into vigilantes to attack the escaped prisoners. However, as many as 80 percent of Haiti's prisoners have never been charged with a crime. "Gangs"--in the vernacular of Washington, the White House press corps and Haiti's business lobby, the Group of 184--happens to be a synonym for Lavalas activists.
For all the headlines, moreover, there is strikingly little actual violence taking place. Most of the stories of violence center on episodes of "looting," and most such instances involve desperate people procuring the means of survival. Aid workers also contradict the image of mobs on the attack purveyed by the media and U.S. officials. Abi Weaver, spokesperson for the American Red Cross, confirmed that "we haven't had any security issues at all."
"There are no security issues," said Dr. Evan Lyon. "We've been circulating throughout the city until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning every night, evacuating patients, moving materials. There's no UN guards. There's no US military presence. There's no Haitian police presence. And there's also no violence. There is no insecurity." In fact, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, maintains that there is less violence in Haiti now than before the earthquake.
So if there is no insecurity, and if the US military intervention is actually obstructing aid, what becomes of the pretext for the invasion?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Humanitarian intervention
Notwithstanding this extraordinary performance, many American commentators actually approve of the U.S. response.
Jonathan Dobrer, of the American Jewish University in Bel Air, declared himself "almost sinfully proud of America." Steven Cohen of Columbia University enthused on the liberal Huffington Post that "We Have Reason to be Proud of the American Response in Haiti." New York Times op-ed contributor Jonathan M. Hansen called on the U.S. to go further, and use the Guantánamo gulag as a base for "humanitarian intervention" in Haiti.
Indeed, the label "humanitarian" is regularly applied to U.S. actions in Haiti. It is important to recall, therefore, that the overthrow of Haiti's elected government in 2004 and the subsequent occupation was itself originally cast as a humanitarian intervention of sorts.
Aristide, so the story went, had governed incompetently, his rule characterized by such corruption and violence as to generate countrywide disturbances. In recognition of his inability to govern, he supposedly "resigned" and fled the country. Filling the gap created by the absence of legitimate authority, concerned members of the "international community" prevailed upon the United Nations to send troops into Haiti and facilitate the development of democratic institutions.
Matters are a little more prosaic and grubby than this uplifting scenario would suggest. The U.S. had begun cutting aid programs to Haiti when Aristide was elected with an overwhelming mandate for his second term in 2000. The result was that the national budget was cut in half, and gross domestic product shrank by a quarter in the ensuing period.
The pro-U.S. opposition group, Convergence Démocratique, declared that it would not accept the results and instead began to agitate against the incoming government. Paramilitary attacks, beginning in the summer of 2001, were carried out by former death squad members and organized criminals acting in association with Haiti's business community. Former army personnel such as Guy Philippe, an admirer of Augusto Pinochet, were organized by the U.S. under the rubric of the Fronte pour la Libération et la Reconstruction Nationale (FLRN).
By February 2004, a full-blown insurgency had been launched, and had begun to take control of large parts of the country. None of the Lavalas rulers had military experience, and they were not prepared to arm and mobilize the population.
Aristide, far from being a violent or incompetent ruler as his critics suggest, was eventually defeated because he was not prepared to violently repress an opposition that was explicitly organizing for his overthrow. His administrations had actually been highly effective in a number of areas, despite considerable pressures from the U.S. and the Haitian ruling class.
Lavalas can be credited with reducing infant mortality from 125 to 110 per thousand live births, bringing illiteracy down from 65 percent to 45 percent and slowing the rate of new HIV infections. It was obliged by the U.S. to accept "structural adjustment" programs, but did what it could to soften the blow by maintaining subsidies, implementing some land reforms, and promulgating certain social programs. It legislated against the exploitation of children as unpaid servants in wealthy homes. It reformed the notoriously labyrinthine judiciary and put several death squad members on trial. It also managed to extract some taxes from the rich, in the face of strenuous resistance.
For these humanitarian accomplishments, Aristide had to go. Once the dregs of former genocidaires and the criminal fraternity had wrought sufficient destruction across the country, the U.S. Marine Corps abducted Aristide on September 29, 2004. The initial line given to the press by James Foley, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, was that it was a rescue mission. The U.S. had stepped in, concerned for Aristide's welfare, and he had resigned voluntarily.
As soon as Aristide got hold of a telephone, however, he informed every news outlet that would listen that he had been kidnapped by U.S. forces. He was not permitted to return to Haiti, and an occupation began under a UN mandate, enforced by MINUSTAH troops. A new regime was imposed that locked up political activists and priests, and thousands were killed either by MINUSTAH soldiers directly or by gangs operating under their authority. A study published in The Lancet found that:

[D]uring the 22-month period of the U.S.-backed Interim Government, 8,000 people were murdered in the greater Port-au Prince area alone. Thirty-five thousand women and girls were raped or sexually assaulted, more than half of the victims were children...Those responsible for the human rights abuses include criminals, the police, United Nations peacekeepers and anti-Lavalas gangs.

Meanwhile, the democratic process that the UN was supposed to oversee has resulted in elections in which the country's most popular political party, Lavalas, are not allowed to participate. The recent senatorial and congressional elections saw turnouts depressed to as little as 10 percent as a result. This shambolic process has made life easier for Haiti's ruling class, and the multinationals operating in Haiti, but by no stretch of the imagination is it "humanitarian."
The point of highlighting this background is to note that, contrary to some short-sighted commentary--like Jonathan Dobrer: "We come, we help, and we don't stay"--the U.S. has a bloody recent history in Haiti and a well-defined set of goals in the country, including the desire to finish off Lavalas and create a benevolent investment climate for business.
The belief that the U.S. is behaving in a humanitarian manner in Haiti is at best myopic. At worst, it buys into the racist mythologies about Haiti that have been on prominent display in headlines and news copy for over a week now.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Paternalism and racism
The paternalistic assumptions behind the calls for 'humanitarian intervention' have sometimes been starkly expressed. Thus, the conservative columnist Eric Margolis lauds the history of American colonial rule in Haiti: "[T]he U.S. occupation is looked back on by many Haitians as their "golden age." The Marine Corps proved a fair, efficient, honest administrator and builder. This era was the only time when things worked in Haiti."
Purporting to oppose imperialism, Margolis insists that "genuine humanitarian intervention" is "different," and calls for Haiti to be "temporarily administered by a great power like the U.S. or France." He writes: "U.S. administration of Haiti may be necessary and the only recourse for this benighted nation that cannot seem to govern itself."
Similarly, right-wing New York Times columnist David Brooks, decrying the supposed "progress-resistant cultural influences" that he maintains holds Haiti back, calls for the U.S. to "promote locally-led paternalism." "We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures," he complains. "But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."
To overcome this cultural handicap, Brooks recommends finding gurus who would promote a culture of achievement and responsibility--as opposed to the irresponsible, chaotic, voodoo-ridden culture that he identifies as Haiti's major problem.
It is unnecessary to dignify such caricatures by considering them as empirical hypotheses. However, it should be noted that neither author gives the slightest consideration to the persistent efforts of the U.S. government to frustrate the rise of popular, democratic movements such as Lavalas, nor to the IMF-imposed programs which saw real wages fall by 50 percent between 1980 and 1990, and which resulted in overpopulated slums and a failing rural economy.
Nor do they acknowledge the brutality of the UN occupation. While Margolis acknowledges that America's colonial rule was "sometimes brutal," his understatement is verging on euphemism when he omits to discuss the killing of 15,000 people as Haiti's rebels, known as Cacos, were suppressed.
Nor does he mention the humiliating system of forced labor that was imposed on Haitians under U.S. rule, or the fact that the gendarmerie built up under U.S. occupation became the organized basis for later dictatorships that would blight Haiti. In short, both writers bring to bear astonishingly little understanding of the country whose fate they are discussing so cavalierly.
However, what is of interest in these caricatures is the genus of imperial ideology that they relate to. Margolis is an old-school conservative (he describes himself as an Eisenhower Republican). He recalls in his phrases the manifest-destinarianism of William McKinley, who argued that the conquest and colonization of the Philippines was justified since Filipinos "were unfit for self-government."
In the imperial language of the U.S. and Europe in this period, self-government was conceived of either as a cultural state that only white people had achieved, or as a technology that only white people could use. Woodrow Wilson, the invader of Haiti, explained that the Philippines could not be given self-government by the United States, since "it is a form of character and not a form of constitution." Self-government is a cultural state attained after a period of discipline that "gives people self-possession, self-master, the habit of order."
For Wilson, only the "nobler races"--namely Europeans and white Americans--had achieved that state. Margolis would not be so explicitly racist, but his subtext is not the less subtle for that.
Brooks, though, is a neoconservative. As such, he brings to bear that tradition's paternalism, its concern with developing good patriarchal families, and particularly its culturalist reading of social institutions.
In this view, government and other institutions reflect an accumulation of cultural practices that have survived through generations. Capitalism and liberal democracy are thus the result of cultural influences such as Judeo-Christian values. The ability to govern oneself as a society is also said to be a result of cultural attributes that are generally found to be lacking in America's opponents. These discrete cultures do not necessarily correspond to older notions of 'race', but they perform an analogous function in permitting privileged U.S. commentators to applaud the conquest of other societies.
Thus, at the height of the Vietnam War, the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, argued that it was correct for the U.S. to support a right-wing dictatorship since "South Vietnam, like South Korea, is barely capable of decent self-government under the very best of conditions." Like the Black families that Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously diagnosed as suffering from a "tangle of pathologies," these people lacked the exquisite cultural refinements that made white Americans so successful.
These are exceptionally explicit commentaries. Most of those lauding American actions are unlikely to be as cynical or brazen as Brooks and Margolis. Yet when 20,000 U.S. troops arrive in a wrecked island country, and begin obstructing aid and beefing up "security" while people die in the wreckage of thirst and starvation, only the willfully purblind or those trapped in the assumptions of the "civilizing mission," could construe it as a "humanitarian intervention."


[size=12] :: Article nr. 62555 sent on 25-jan-2010 19:04 ECT
[/SIZE] [size=12][size=12]www.uruknet.info?p=62555

Link: socialistworker.org/2010/01/25/the-humanitarian-myth[/SIZE][/SIZE]

[Ed Jewett]

Freedom Rider: Useless Aid, No Donation Without Agitation


Posted Wed, 01/27/2010 - 01:02 by Margaret Kimberley
[URL="http://tns1.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/freedom-rider-useless-aid"]
[/URL]by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The time has come for a new paradigm: No donation without agitation.” The United States has succeeded in plunging mainstream disaster “relief” into disrepute. “No donations to groups like the Red Cross, who sit on millions of dollars but do nothing but hand out blankets and move victims away from their homes in order to convenience the powerful.” And, especially, no donations to any group associated with George Bush or Bill Clinton.
Freedom Rider: Useless Aid
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Dollars must come with demands of non-interference in Haiti’s affairs and demands of accountability to charitable organizations.”

A telethon hosted by celebrities succeeded in raising more than $57 million in funds for the relief of Haiti earthquake victims. Yet that sum and the many millions more donated by individuals around the world will do little to relieve Haiti’s plight.
Haitians are living in their latest hellish incarnation created by American meddling and the crushing of that nation’s democracy. As long as the United States directs Haiti’s affairs, and empowers a corrupt elite instead of the will of the masses, suffering will continue whether caused by natural or human-made disaster.
The scenes of devastation, death and injury move most human beings first to empathize and then to take some action in order to help. The sad stories tug at the heartstrings and the miraculous tales of survival lift the spirit. However, in the absence of an infrastructure built by Haitians to help Haitians, the images do nothing but create a kind of twisted voyeurism. Bringing change to Haiti should not be the equivalent of gawking at a crash on the side of the highway.

“An illegitimate government whose very existence is opposed by the population is incapable of building new homes or treating the injured.”

Haiti is still ruled by a clique of criminals put in place by the United States government. Lavalas, the party supported by a majority of citizens, is barred from participation in the electoral process that is now a sham. An illegitimate government whose very existence is opposed by the population is incapable of building new homes or treating the injured. Haitians have already begun to scatter throughout the country in search of food and shelter, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to help them.
The sad fact of the matter is that individuals cannot help Haiti or end human suffering anywhere on earth unless their assistance is combined with political action. The dollars must come with demands of non-interference in Haiti’s affairs and demands of accountability to charitable organizations. If the Red Cross doesn’t even spend all of its enormous contributions, as it shamelessly did after the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Asian tsunami, then donors must stop giving before the next disaster strikes.

“The ‘bottleneck’ in Port au Prince was a direct result of the militarization of aid to Haiti.”

If American aid to Haiti comes in the form of military occupation, then even reputable organizations are unable to do their jobs adequately. Doctors Without Borders has had a presence in Haiti for many years, but flights containing 85 tons of their medical supplies were diverted to the Dominican Republic. Precious time was lost in the process of retrieving life saving medicines and equipment from another country.
The much talked about airport “bottleneck” in Port au Prince was a direct result of the militarization of aid to Haiti.The United States army decided who would be permitted to land and who would not. While VIP flights were given priority and created the diversion of medical supplies, the environmental group Greenpeace gave Doctors Without Borders use of a ship to carry less urgent equipment, allowing the medical group to prioritize delivery of its most desperately needed cargo.
It seems cruel to advise against helping human beings in need, but we have seen this movie many times before and we know the ending. The time has come for a new paradigm: “No donation without agitation.” No donations to groups like the Red Cross, who sit on millions of dollars but do nothing but hand out blankets and move victims away from their homes in order to convenience the powerful. No donations must be made to any group headed by a Bush or a Clinton. The old presidents’ old boys club did nothing for the Gulf Coast victims of hurricane Katrina. It would be not only a waste but a terrible wrong to give them another opportunity to collect funds which never seem to be used for people who need it.

“The time has come for a new paradigm: ‘No donation without agitation.’”

This earthquake should be the last instance of easy text message philanthropy. Instead of pressing a few buttons, concerned people should ask questions and make demands. Current and former American presidents should not be allowed to grandstand when their policies made life hell for Haitians in the first place. The first president Bush ousted president Aristide, Clinton restored him to power only after promises of “market reform” and Bush the younger kidnapped him and tossed him out of his country. Yet a Bush and a Clinton now have the nerve to pose for photos and behave as though they are interested in helping the very people they crushed.
There will always be hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes. They are the inevitable results of nature at work. Starvation, illness and displacement are inevitable only if the people who create those conditions are permitted to continue their actions without opposition. It can be a waste to send money, even if the cause is a righteous one. Let us make this the last time we take the easy and useless way out.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.



http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=cont...seless-aid

[Ed Jewett]

Lots of foreign guns and foreign gunmen.

Not much relief.

Video:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/793.html

[Ed Jewett]

Haiti’s Earthquake: Natural or Engineered

by Stephen Lendman / January 29th, 2010
Human activity can cause destructive harm. Columbia University geophysical hazards research scientist, Christian Klose, studies how, including from mining. In a recent paper, he said:
“mining activities disturb the in-situ stress in the upper continental crust and can trigger earthquakes (human-triggered seismicity).”
Past examples are numerous:

• from potash and other mining in Germany since the 19th century;
  
• potash mining in Bulgaria;
  
• copper mining in Silesia;
  
• ore mining in Russia;
  
• coal and other mining in various parts of America, including New York state, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming; and
  
• coal and other mining in China and throughout the world.
  

Klose also says geophysical data suggest that the Zipingpu Dam, a few kilometers from the epicenter of China’s 7.9 magnitude 2008 earthquake, likely triggered it. In a December 2008 presentation at the American Geophysical Union, he explained:
“Several geophysical observations suggest this (quake) was triggered by local and abnormal mass imbalances on the surface of the Earth’s crust. These observations include (1) elastostatic response of the crust to the mass changes, (2) slip distribution of the main rupture, and (3) aftershock distribution.”
A follow-up issue of Science magazine explained further stating:
“the added weight both eased the squeeze on the fault, weakening it, and increased the stress tending to rupture (it). The effect was 25 times that of a year’s worth of natural stress loading from tectonic motions. When the fault did finally rupture, it moved just the way the reservoir loading had encouraged it to….”
Klose also says that two centuries of coal mining triggered the 1989 Newcastle, Australia quake, killing 13 and causing billions of dollars in damage. Data show that increased post-WW II production “dramatic(ally increased) the stress change in the crust,” setting it off and raising questions about how mining operates.
“You have two chances to avoid this, whether you reduce the hazard or reduce the vulnerability – so whether you mine in a more sustainable way or have urban planning in other areas away from the mining regions.”
In addition, Klose estimates that human activity caused one-fourth of Britain’s quakes, not just from mining. An Andrew Alden geology.about.com article headlined, “Earthquakes in a Nutshell” says:
“Earthquakes are natural ground motions caused as the Earth releases energy. The science of earthquakes is seismology (the study of shaking). Earthquake energy comes from the stresses of plate tectonics. As plates move, the rocks on their edges deform and take up strain until the weakest point, a fault, ruptures and releases the strain.”
Five major types of human activity cause them:
(1) Damn construction
Since water is heavier than air, the crust beneath it is greatly stressed, easily setting off shocks that mostly are moderate. University of Alaska seismologist Larry Gedney explained:
“Since the (Hoover Dam) reached its peak of 475 feet in 1939, the level of seismicity has fluctuated in direct response to water level. None of the shocks have been particularly damaging – the largest was about magnitude 5 – but the area had no record of being seismically active.”
Klose says dams cause about one-third of human-caused quakes. No wonder given their global proliferation, 845,000 according to Discover magazine, including 80,000 in America. Hoover Dam is the largest, storing 1.2 trillion cubic feet of water. China’s Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest, holding back 1.4 trillion cubic feet. In 1967, a human-triggered 7.0 magnitude western India quake may have been caused by the Koyna Dam. If so, damns in seismically active areas may be more destructive than believed.
(2) Liquid injection into the ground
In 1951, the US Army constructed Basin F at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to handle 243 million gallons of contaminated liquid chemical wastes in about a 93 acre area. In 1961, another way was chosen — by drilling a 12,000-foot deep well in the Rocky Mountains to inject napalm toxic waste into the earth’s crust. From 1962-1966, 165 million gallons went in, likely triggering regional quakes and getting the Army to shut it down. According to seismologist Dave Wolney:
“If you are doing deep well injection, you are altering the stress on the underlying rocks and at some point, (it) will be relieved by generating an earthquake.”
Klose also worries about carbon dioxide sequestration, a process of compressing CO2 from coal plants and injecting it into underground deposits. They, too, can generate quakes close to cities, as that’s where facilities are located.
(3) Coal mining
Coal provides over half of America’s electricity and an even larger percentage in China. Mines produce millions of tons annually, extract up to a dozen times as much water as coal, and cause huge regional mass changes. They, in turn, increase stress that can cause quakes as explained above. According to Klose, mining produces over half of recorded ones.
(4) Oil and gas drilling
A June 23, 2009 New York Times article headlined, “Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears,” explaining that former oil man, Markus O. Haring, drilled a hole three miles deep in Basel, Switzerland prospecting for clean, renewable energy deep within the earth’s bedrock. On December 8, 2006, an earthquake terrified residents who remembered the devastating one striking the city 650 years earlier.
Haring terminated his project, but a US start-up company, AltaRock Energy, will use the same technology to drill deep into quake-prone areas two hours’ drive north of San Francisco for geothermal energy. The Energy Department backs it with more than $36 million, and several large venture capital firms are involved, despite the risk.
According the the Times:
“The California project is the first of dozens that could be operating in the United States in the next several years, driven by a push to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and the Obama administration’s support for renewable energy. Using the Basel method, it’s hoped a breakthrough can be achieved, even though it’s known that large quakes occur at great depths.”
Three of the largest human-caused ones happened near an Uzbekistan natural gas field, the result of liquid extraction and injection changing its tectonic action. The most severe one registered 7.3, and according to Russian scientists:
“Few will deny that there is a relationship between hydrocarbon recovery and seismic activity, but exactly how strong a relationship exists has yet to be determined.”
In regions with high tectonic activity, like northern California near San Francisco or Haiti around Port-au-Prince, extraction could trigger severe quakes. It’s believed Haiti has significant oil, gas, and other mineral deposits, including gold, copper, and coal. Perhaps drilling around Port-au-Prince bay, the Gulf of La Gonave, and the Island of La Gonave set off the quake, why US occupation and human neglect are related to it, and why America, France, Canada and other nations seek to profit from disaster.
(5) Large building construction
On December 2, 2005 Kate Ravilious’ UK Guardian article headlined, “Skyscraper that may cause earthquakes.” It referred to Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the world’s tallest building at 1,667 feet, weighing 700,000 tons. According to National Taiwan Normal University geologist Cheng Horng Lin, the building’s stress may have reopened an ancient fault. Before its construction, the Taipei basin was very stable with no surface ones. Thereafter, “The number of earthquakes increased to around two micro-earthquakes per year during the construction period (1997-2003). After completion, two larger quakes were registered, strong enough to feel at magnitudes 3.8 and 3.2.”
Lin believes that “the considerable stress might be transferred into the upper crust due to the extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin. Deeper down this may have reopened an old earthquake fault.”
Other experts are more cautious. UCLA quake expert John Vidale says “A building will change the stress on the ground under the building, but this probably won’t reach down to around 10km, the level where earthquakes occur.” Compared with dams, coal mining, oil drilling, and underground waste deposits, skyscrapers cause minor stress to the earth’s surface. Klose shares that view.
Other Earthquake Causes
A January 23, 2010 Pravda online article headlined, “US weapon test aimed at Iran caused Haiti quake,” stating:
“An unconfirmed report by the Russian Northern Fleets says the Haiti earthquake was caused by a flawed US Navy ‘earthquake weapons’ test before (they) could be utilized against Iran. (Something) went ‘horribly wrong’ and caused the catastrophic quake in the Caribbean, the website of Venezuela’s ViVe TV recently reported, citing the Russian report.”
After its release, Hugo Chavez called it a drill, preparing to cause an earthquake in Iran. [According to Athelo News: "All quotes subsequently attributed to Chavez regarding Haiti and earthquake weapons ... none of which was ever uttered by Chavez." -- Ed.] Russia Today said Moscow has the same weapons. The unconfirmed Russian report said America carried out a similar test in the Pacific Ocean, causing a 6.5 magnitude quake near Eureka, CA. No deaths or injuries were reported, but many buildings were damaged.
ViVe said the US Navy may have had “full knowledge” of the test’s damage potential, and speculated it was why Deputy Southern Command General PK Keen was in Haiti when the quake struck, preparing to act in case of a disaster, perhaps an engineered one. In his January 21 Global Research article, Michel Chossudovsky said:
“A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the earthquake (since) pre-disaster simulations pertain(ing) to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti” were conducted.
A “communication-information tool” called the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) “links non-government organizations with the United States (government and military) and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts.”
When the quake struck, TISC was in “an advanced stage of readiness.” The next day, SOUTHCOM implemented the system. “The (DOD’s) Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)” set up a relief effort among “a range of Defense units and various” NGOs and aid groups operating “as part of a carefully planned military operation.” Did DOD have advance knowledge of the quake so could act immediately when it struck? Was the drill’s timing a coincidence or something more sinister?
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the CIA was running “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” Held at the Agency’s Chantilly, Virginia Reconnaissance Office, it simulated a small jet hitting one of its four towers after supposedly experiencing mechanical failure. The media ignored it the way it’s suppressing the January 11 drill. It raises serious questions and great suspicions.
Earlier in October 2000, the Defense Protective Services Police and Pentagon’s Command Emergency Response Team conducted another exercise, simulating a plane striking the Pentagon — called “the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise.” Coincidence again, or were these drills part of readiness planning for 9/11, with advance knowledge of what was coming? Was similar Haiti planning also preparatory to the Pentagon’s militarized takeover? Was the catastrophe natural or engineered, and is there another way to trigger it?
HAARP Technology: High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
HAARP manipulates the atmosphere, climate, and weather for military purposes. Based in Gokona, Alaska, it’s a jointly managed US Air Force/Navy weather warfare program, operating since 1992, yet the HAARP web site explains its purpose as follows:
“HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere (the atmosphere’s upper layer), with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes. (It will be used) to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so that resulting reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site.”
According to Rosalie Bertell, a distinguished scientific expert and president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health:
HAARP functions as “a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet.”
Writing in Earthpulse Press on November 5, 1996, Bertell explained that:
“Military interest in space became intense during and after World War II because of the introduction of rocket science, the companion of nuclear technology…. During this time of intensive atmospheric nuclear testing, explosions at various levels above and below the surface of the earth were tried. Some of the now familiar descriptions of the earth’s protective atmosphere… were based on information gained through stratospheric and ionospheric experimentation.”
Numerous projects preceded HAARP, including:
– Project Argus in 1958 “to assess the impact of high altitude nuclear explosions on radio transmission and radar operations,” and learn more about the geomagnetic field;
– Project Starfish in 1962, using nuclear detonations to disrupt the ionosphere and assess the effects on the earth’s magnetic field;
– SPS: Solar Power Satellite Project in 1968, using Solar Powered Satellites in geostationary orbit 40,000 km above the earth to intercept solar radiation with solar cells that potentially could be environmentally destructive;
– Poker Flat Rocket Launch from 1968 to the present to “understand chemical reactions in the atmosphere associated with global climate change;” perhaps more to influence climate for military purposes;
– Saturn V Rocket in 1975 — due to a malfunction, it burned unusually high in the atmosphere (above 300 km) producing a “large ionospheric hole,” resulting in over a 60% reduction in “total electron content” over a 1,000 km area lasting several hours; all telecommunications over the Atlantic Ocean were disrupted;
– SPS Military Implications in 1978 to develop a satellite-based beam weapon for anti-ballistic missile (ABM) use; also as a mind-control/anti-personnel weapon by affecting the human brain;
– Orbit Maneuvering System in 1981 to study the effect of Shuttle injected gases on the ionosphere; it was learned they could induce holes;
– Innovative Shuttle Experiments in 1985 using gases to create ionospheric holes;
– Mighty Oaks in 1986 to develop x-ray and particle beam weapons;
– Desert Storm in 1991, during which the US deployed an electromagnetic pulse weapon, designed to mimic the electricity flash of a nuclear detonation; and
– HAARP since 1992
Bertell says its:
“related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. (It’s) an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature. (Their) implications (are) alarming. Basic to this project is control of communications, both (their) disruption and reliability in hostile environments. The power wielded by such control is obvious.”
“The ability of the HAARP/Spacelab/rocket combination to deliver very large amounts of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening.” Yet the public is told it’s “a space shield against incoming weapons (or) a devise for repairing the ozone layer.”
By modifying the ionosphere, HAARP can be hugely destructive. Potentially, it can trigger floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis, forest fires, and power blackouts over entire regions. It can disrupt radar, other communications, agriculture, ecology, and financial and other markets. It can use weather to wage war, and perhaps cause earthquakes like the one that struck Haiti.
The UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (1977)
Its Article I states that:
“Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.”
Article II refers to “environmental modification (ENMOD) techniques (as) any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.”
Citing Ecology News, Sourcewatch.org defines environmental warfare as:
“(1) the intentional modification of a system of the natural ecology, such as climate and weather, earth systems such as the ionosphere, magnetosphere, tectonic plate system, and/or the triggering of seismic events (earthquakes);
(2) to cause intentional physical, economic, psycho-social, and physical destruction to an intended target geophysical or population location;” and
“(3) as part of strategic or tactical war.
Environmental war weapons systems can include chemtrails, chemical weapons systems (climate and weather modification) and electromagnetic weapons systems (climate and weather modification; seismic warfare).”
Other definitions are broader, including the use of depleted uranium and other environmentally destructive weapons, practices and techniques.
International standards on environmental protections during armed conflict date back as early as the 1868 Declaration of St. Petersburg. It stated that “the only legitimate object which States should endeavour to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy.”
The 1907 Hague Regulations stressed restraint, saying “The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited,” and the Geneva Conventions (including Protocol I and Common Article 3) defined the principles of international humanitarian law.
In 1973, the US Senate adopted a resolution calling for an international agreement “prohibiting the use of any environmental or geophysical modification activity as a weapon of war….” President Nixon ordered the Defense Department to review the military aspects of weather and other ENMOD techniques.
During the July 1974 summit meeting in Moscow, Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev agreed to hold bilateral talks to achieve “the most effective measures possible to overcome the dangers of the use of environmental modification techniques for military purposes.” Discussions continued in 1974 and 1975, resulting in an agreement on a common approach and language. The 1977 UN Convention followed, ratified 98-0 by the Senate on November 28, 1979. It took effect on January 17, 1980, but was violated thereafter by both sides.
Human environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) can cause irreversible damage. Yet international standards haven’t stopped their development.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM-1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening. Read other articles by Stephen, or visit Stephen's website.
This article was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 9:00am and is filed under Haiti, Military/Militarism, Science/Tech.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/haitis...ngineered/

[Ed Jewett]

The kidnapping of Haiti
28 Jan 2010

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the "swift and crude" appropriation of earthquake-ravaged Haiti by the militarised Obama administration. With George W. Bush attending to the "relief effort" and Bill Clinton the UN's man, The Comedians, Graham Greene's dark novel about exploted Haiti comes to mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Peter Lemkin]

Here is about Haitian Oil...and it also has large amounts of unmined gold.

Oil in Haiti - Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation


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

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

In addition to its architectural charm, it overlooks a splendid bay of turquoise seawater, which sparkles under the bright rays of the tropical sun.



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

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

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."

Occidental side of the Fort

Despite being renovated by ISPAN in the mid' 1990, it is now in a very bad shape. All the balls and most of the canons have been stolen along with most of the cut stones paving its alleys and imported from Nantes, France. They were quite simply stolen by people not fully aware of their illegal act. Moreover, many holes within the fort enclosure are a potential threat to the preservation of the Fort in case of rain.


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.)

[Magda Hassan]

Well, knock me over with a feather. That makes so much more sense. For a moment there I though the US government might have been acting for humanitarian reasons which I knew could not be as they have no idea what altruism/compassion is. Maybe the US geo survey people have been snooping around there too:http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...y.php?f=72

[Peter Lemkin]

Well, knock me over with a feather. That makes so much more sense. For a moment there I though the US government might have been acting for humanitarian reasons which I knew could not be as they have no idea what altruism/compassion is. Maybe the US geo survey people have been snooping around there too:http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...y.php?f=72

Hey, we do act for mere humanitarian reasons - don't you remember: Vietnam, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Iran, Greece, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Laos, Indonesia, Philippines, removal of Aristide twice, Mexico, Dallas, 9-11, Paraguay, Honduras, Cuba, Congo, Sudan, Liberia, New Orleans, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iraq II, and on and on - hey we're there to help where help is needed. Johnny on the spot - kind of a military porta-potty of our hundreds of millions killed since WW2 in our name and for our Oligarchy. And often for oil. Nice picture! I'd also point out that in about 1963 one George DeMorhenshildt - a White Russian Fascist with connections to US Intelligence and Nazi Intelligence and calling himself a Petroleum Geologist was in none other than the isle of Hispanola when his one-time charge LHO was being murdered. He said he was looking for Oil while there.....seems at some point they found it...and it is nice and close too....and have kept it secret, until needed.....to hell with the former slaves there....they are slaves still, de facto.

In June 1963, de Mohrenschildt moved to Haiti, where he and other investors had set up an industrial development enterprise whose work was to include conducting a geological survey of Haiti to plot out oil and geological resources on the island. After Kennedy was assassinated, he testified before the Warren Commission in 1964. On arrival in D.C. he was met and prepped by one Dorothe Mattlack, connected with Lansdale's office. The de Mohrenschildts left Haiti in 1967 and returned to Dallas. Surely all just 'coincidence'....after all...everything is....a Nut from Brazil once told me so. As has been pointed out so many times, it is such a small world when it is intelligence [sic] related.