Haiti: WTF?

in other news: my friend B's Haitian boyfriend is back in the states safe and sound. i had really thought he was gonna be there for months, so this was a happy turn of events

How about them Christian baby stealers eh?

was under the impression that pts weren't allowed to come up to the states due to immigration issues

― avatar 2: the na'vi ending story (gbx), Monday, February 1, 2010

That's what I had first heard also. But then they seemed to bend the rules slightly and allowed some patients (whose info they were carefully keeping track of, so they can send 'em back) to go to Florida hospitals. I wish the Feds would just step up and pay for it---they can carefully monitor the folks and then send 'em back when they have recovered (since politically they have to do that to prevent a mass exodus that's not conducted legally via immigration rules). The problem is that in some Haitian hospitals there's not enough room for both surgery, incoming patients, and recovering patients. Germ and disease-wise, it's not good to have all these groups together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/americas/01airlift.html?th&emc=th

They seem to have worked things out:

from the NYT article-

The White House said patients were being identified for transfer and evaluated by doctors to ensure that they can handle the flights. In addition, the White House said that the government was arranging for in-flight care for children in need, and that Florida was designating which hospitals could receive the influx of patients. Mr. Vietor said the flights would probably evacuate “a couple hundred of the most severely injured patients.”

Ultimately, though, evacuations are not a long-term solution to the problem. Dr. Barth A. Green, co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group that has been evacuating patients, said the American government has decided to create “a world-class trauma hospital” at the Port-au-Prince airport along with private relief groups. At the same time, a 250-bed hospital for post-operative care and rehabilitation will be completed, and after that a second 250-bed facility for rehabilitation.

“Things are the way they should be again,” he said. “We’re in sync. We are going to show Haiti what we are capable of.”

i've avoided the rush limbaugh-type comments on the haiti situation. until now, when my sister-in-law had a five-minute meltdown:

• we need to help haiti now, but we've helped them enough;
• we've been pouring money into haiti since before 1900, and it's never helped;
• the courty's leaders are corrupt;
• they killed all the white people after slavery was abolished;
• there was a shameful media frenzy when pres. clinton visited;
• the capital is a "s--thole," all b/c of the people's innate characteristics/behaviors.

barf

now i'm looking for material online to investigate her "points." i'm sure i won't bother discussing it with her, but now i'm motivated to read up on the subject. any tips/links to useful websites appreciated.

oh no, they killed their oppressors! truly unheard-of levels of savagery.

Daniel

I read Ned Sublette's e-mail newsletter. He wrote books including Cuba and Its Music(which also discusses Haiti)and the Year Before the Flood (one of 2 books about New Orleans he has written) and he just mentioned "Laurent Dubois's book Avengers of the New World, which besides presenting the clearest explanation of the twists and turns of the Haitian Revolution is a model of how to write history for a general reader" . Dubois also teaches at Duke and his syllabus might be online. There are several other books out about Haiti.

Here's a recent op-ed that summarizes some of Haiti's history

http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/civil-religion/economy/2010/01/haitian-history-beyond-robertson-and-limbaugh/

thanks! finally stopped fuming about my sister-in-law's comments. read a few articles, which led me to two books about haiti that i'm buying. the article you linked to is fascinating. i'm especially curious about the link between IMF loans -- and the opening of markets they force as consideration for the loan -- and the damage done to haiti's agricultural system. the video link embedded in the article hopefully will provide more detail on that topic.

As I understand it, some blame the economic policies forced on Haiti to get them out of debt with messing up the local economy and sending farmers and others out of rural areas into P o P. Forests and such got stripped and destroyed by desperate Haitians and environmental and economic problems accelerated.

^^^^haven't read the article yet (thanks!), but my impression has been that IMF/WB bailouts have generally lead to devastating economic policies.

this is a vague and probably inaccurate take, but from what i understand: Haiti (and other poor countries) get loan money, with heavy strings attached. generally those involve a) conversion to an export economy and b) lowering of tariffs on foreign imports. if a country doesn't have much in the way of exportable resources, it will "export" its labor by allowing foreign companies to manufacture in-country. the situation can then get so lop-sided to the point where imported food is considerably cheaper than what is produced locally, and arable land is devoted to either commercial products (tobacco, cotton, sugar) or the meanest subsistence. export/service economies produce the trade that is necessary to pay down loan balances, but not at a rate or amplitude to make any progress. superimpose gov't corruption and mismanagement, and the debt gets even larger.

...but i'm cribbing that from, like, naomi klein and other lefties, so ymmv

Yep, just saw that Ned Sublette forwarded Naomi's latest Haiti piece from the Nation, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DtwkTS9mq8

Sean Penn (who has done a hell of a lot there, it seems) on the cosmetic nature of NGO work in Haiti:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11127

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/08/06/wyclef-jean-announces-presidential-bid-sean-penn-reacts-on-lar/

wyclef jean runs for pres, sean penn oh snap

like how is it possible that he won't win, is what i want to know

this is going to be trainwreck

has a pop star ever become a dictator before?

bono had a secret ceremony at the UN like five years ago iirc

has a pop star ever become a dictator before?

Michael Jackson almost

lol

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/opinion/07blow.html?hp

If you haven't heard, there's a cholera epidemic, if you want to contribute to your favorite relevant charity.

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti.html

Baby Doc back in Haiti

hmm

Mesdames et messieurs, the new president of Haiti:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEgcP1_fMzg

from the BBC: "On Sunday, President Michel Martelly said he had reached a deal with the opposition to hold long-delayed elections . . . But the left-wing Fanmi Lavalas, which has been at the forefront of anti-government protests, was not part of the agreement."

http://otherworldsarepossible.org/five-years-after-earthquake-haiti-sad-state-democracy-and-human-rights

http://www.thenation.com/article/can-haitis-corrupt-president-hold-on-to-power/

Michel Martelly is trying to impose a successor amid widespread public anger at government repression and failure to rebuild after the earthquake.....

In another week or so, Haiti could explode, and the disastrous American policy of supporting the country’s violent and corrupt president will be a big part of the reason. Michel Martelly, prevented from continuing in office by term limits, is trying to impose a successor, and the United States has not spoken out against his ruthless, undemocratic strategy. On or after November 3, Haiti will announce the top two finishers in the first election round, held on October 25, and if Martelly’s man is one of them, thousands of enraged citizens will surge into the streets.

The United States is already widely blamed here for supporting Martelly, and the ambassador until recently, Pamela White, is singled out bitterly and publicly for her alleged closeness to him.

The mainstream US press, which was here en masse after the January 2010 earthquake, is ignoring this latest acute crisis. With few exceptions, the American media have also not reported on the nearly complete failure of the international rebuilding effort, a shameful record for which Bill and Hillary Clinton have considerable responsibility.

Michel Martelly

He was kinda entertaining as Haitian pop performer Lil Mickey, when I saw him near W. DC years ago

From 2011... crimes of our fave Foundation:

It is hard to imagine a better case study of the very opposite approach than the Clinton trailers. In response to questions about what due diligence the foundation did to ensure the safety of the trailers it purchased for use as hurricane shelters, the Clinton Foundation initially insisted that the most appropriate person to speak to was a Haitian employee of Clinton’s UN Office. When Graham, the foundation’s COO, finally agreed to talk about the project on the record, she denied that the foundation had been responsible for any due diligence regarding its own project, claiming that those responsible were a "panel of experts," including one point person from the foundation, Greg Milne, and representatives of other organizations. (Milne referred all questions to the foundation’s press office.) The Clinton Foundation agreed to furnish documentation of who was on this panel but by press time had not done so.

Graham said that the staff of the Clinton Foundation—which has for more than a year publicized the "hurricane shelters" that "President Clinton" built in Léogâne—are "not experts" in hurricane shelter construction. She claimed the same "panel of experts" would have been responsible for due diligence to ensure air quality of the shelters whose secondary purpose was as classrooms.

Explaining Bill Clinton’s rationale for the trailers, which were installed at the tail end of the 2010 hurricane season, Conille said, "It was not meant to be sustainable. It was meant because we didn’t want to have dead people in September." According to Conille, Clinton was deeply troubled by what would happen to the women and children in case of a serious storm—and as the former president felt that "no one" was doing anything about the issue, he took the lead himself. Moreover, Clinton didn’t want to have his new "hurricane shelters" sitting empty while schoolchildren had classes in tents, Conille added.

Yet according to Maddalena, given the high rate of formaldehyde found in one of the classrooms, and the children’s headaches, "they’d be better off studying outside under a tarp."

Wall, the former OCHA spokeswoman, responded by e-mail, "We all knew that that project was misconceived from the start, a classic example of aid designed from a distance with no understanding of ground level realities or needs. It has had a predictably long and unhappy history from the start."

https://www.thenation.com/article/shelters-clinton-built/

Detail on the indictment of Guy Philippe:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/haitian-national-charged-international-narcotics-and-money-laundering-conspiracy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-38525651

Will be interesting, if it comes to trial, to see what he says about his relationship with the US at the time of the coup - which also overlaps with the time of some of the alleged drug trade activity.

https://www.apnews.com/2dba9cf693594bfc8fd2f432e7207704

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Protesters have stoned the Haitian president’s home and clashed with police, leaving at least one demonstrator dead in the third straight day of demonstrations against economic mismanagement and corruption.

Organizers pledged more protests for Sunday, increasing pressure on President Jovenel Moise, who is calling for negotiations with his opposition.

A crowd of thousands protested in downtown Port-au-Prince Saturday, and an Associated Press journalist saw at least one fatally shot, apparently by nearby police. Protesters in the Petionville neighborhood blocked the road to Moise’s house and stoned his property after guards protecting a Moise ally hit a woman’s car and beat her near the president’s house.

Protesters are angry about skyrocketing inflation and the government’s failure to prosecute embezzlement from a multi-billion Venezuelan program that sent discounted oil to Haiti.

Another camera angle of protests in Port au Prince, #Haiti today. pic.twitter.com/8dIsEUjXmL

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 7, 2019

BREAKING: The President of Haiti, Jovenel Moise has been assassinated at his private residence, his wife also wounded in the attack.#NBSUpdates pic.twitter.com/JGbYbVgxsZ

— Daniel Lutaaya (@DanielLutaaya) July 7, 2021

A “commando group with Spanish-speaking elements” being blamed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/haiti-president-jovenel-moise-reportedly-assassinated

This has the potential to be very bad if the US tries to pin it on Venezuela.

Official line from the government is that they were mercenaries.

The Colombian government has apparently confirmed that some of the mercs arrested are former soldiers.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/09/colombia-haiti-guns-for-hire-assassination?

There are claims in the Colombian press that the ex-soldiers were hired by Moise because he didn’t trust his guards and some only arrived after the assassination had taken place.

The plot to assassinate Haitian President Jovenel Moïse ran through South Florida, according to statements of captured Colombians who said they were hired by a Miami-area security firm.https://t.co/551RqWIm7s

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) July 10, 2021

Relevant commentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ55CEm6wpY