THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY-MARCH2010

haiti, history


Sunday, 24 January 2010

Dr Jean-Bertrand Aristide Statement on Earthquake

By: Jean-Bertrand Aristide

We thank all the true friends of Haiti, in particular the Government and the people of South Africa for their solidarity with the victims of Haiti.

The concrete action undertaken by Rescue South Africa and Gift of the Givers is a clear expression of ubuntu. Ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris waiting to be rescued.

When we think of their suffering, we feel deeply and profoundly that we should be there, in Haiti, with them, trying our best to prevent death.

To symbolize this readiness we have decided to meet not just anywhere, but here, in the shadow of the Oliver Tambo International Airport. As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the country, moving from misery to poverty with dignity. Friends from around the world have confirmed their willingness to organize an airplane carrying medical supplies, emergency needs and ourselves.

While we cannot wait to be with our sisters and brothers in Haiti, we share the anguish of all Haitians in the Diaspora who are desperate to reach family and loved ones.

Soufrans youn nan nou se soufrans nou tout.

L’Union fait la force. Kouraj! Kenbe! Kenbe!

Youn soutni lòt nan lespri Mèm Amou an.

Our love to the nation now labeled the poorest of the western hemisphere.

However, the spirit of ubuntu that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent Black nation in 1804; helped Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador attain liberty; and inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States’ independence, cannot die. Today this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to rebuild Haiti.

Why Is Haiti So Poor?

   From The Ramparts
                                                                    By Junious Ricardo Stanton
                                                                       

    “From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.   But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti's cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this, USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.   
    This ‘aid’ from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside, predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince, where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren't nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right ‘on top of each other.’   
    Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn't work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however.”
What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be) by Carl Lindskoog  
www.globalresearch.ca



    Following the reports of a devastating 7.0 seismic earthquake on the Haiti side of the island of what used to be called Hispaniola and later San Domingo the corporate mind control and spin apparatus showed around-the-clock scenes of destitution and devastation accompanied by the refrain “Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere and one of the poorest nation in the world.”  Yes Haiti is poor, but have you ever asked yourself why? Keep in mind the overwhelming majority of the people of Haiti are of African ancestry. These Africans were kidnapped and transported to the whole island by Europeans who brought them there to be used as cheap labor beginning in the sixteenth century. But these African have a distinguished reputation for being fiercely independence minded. The Africans on the island originally claimed for Spain by Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) eventually became the crown jewel of the French colonies and was coveted by both the Spanish and British. The Africans were so obsessed with freedom they were able to defeat the British, French and Spanish to win their freedom and declare Haiti a free republic (the first African republic in the Western hemisphere) in 1804.
  
 That monumental feat sent shock waves throughout the world and unnerved the US so much they refused to officially recognize Haiti until 1862! During that time the US instituted and maintained a trade embargo (which is an act of war) against Haiti and pressured France, England and Spain to go along with it until the 1860's. Commerce is the life blood of a nation. When the US and its Western allies conspired to deprive Haiti of international commerce even thought it had the potential to engage in trade and use its natural riches as a source of wealth, they severely undermined Haiti’s economic viability. In a case of supreme hypocrisy the French demanded reparations for lost wealth when the Haitians kicked them out! 
  
 “After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold. For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.”
www.Wonkette.com  The DC Gossip  01-18-10


  
 In addition to the US embargo during the 1800's, the US invaded Haiti in 1914 and stole the gold and money from the Haitian treasury and banks and transported it to the US for “safe keeping.” Yeah they kept it their safes and vaults ! The US also imposed atrocious trade restrictions and a US influenced “Constitution” on Haiti. To make matters worse, the US propped up inept and pliant Quislings and puppets into late in the twentieth century and made loans to Haiti at rates that would make a loan shark blush with envy.  Any time the Haitians resisted a Western neo-colonial agenda, the Europeans and US stomped on them even harder.
  
 In 1996 the IMF, World Bank and USAID imposed draconian loan terms on Haiti. In 2001 the US pressured Western nations to withhold credit from Haiti. Western external pressure forced Haiti to abandon their own agricultural programs, lower tariffs and take in US rice and other imports. Years of deforestation first by the French and later by the Haitians themselves has caused massive soil erosion. This soil erosion has left a country that was once able to at least feed itself destitute and unequipped to sustain a national agricultural program.
  
 “Virtually since 1492, when Columbus first set foot on the heavily forested island of Hispaniola, the mountainous nation has shed both topsoil and blood—first to the Spanish, who planted sugar, then to the French, who cut down the forests to make room for lucrative coffee, indigo, and tobacco. Even after Haitian slaves revolted in 1804 and threw off the yoke of colonialism, France collected 93 million francs in restitution from its former colony—much of it in timber. Soon after independence, upper-class speculators and planters pushed the peasant classes out of the few fertile valleys and into the steep, forested rural areas, where their shrinking, intensively cultivated plots of maize, beans, and cassava have combined with a growing fuel wood-charcoal industry to exacerbate deforestation and soil loss. Today less than 4 percent of Haiti's forests remain, and in many places the soil has eroded right down to the bedrock. From 1991 to 2002, food production per capita actually fell 30 percent.” Haiti Soil, National Geographic September 2008
   
The ever mischievous US government, on behalf of their corporate buddies, kept up the economic pressure and lobbied their European allies to curtail credit to the cash strapped nation.  “The US convinces several European countries to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in credit and aid and provide the IMF, World Bank, and European Union with ‘vague instructions’ to deny other lines of credit to the impoverished Caribbean country of Haiti. The resumption of aid and credit is made contingent on Haitian President Aristide coming to an agreement with the opposition party, the Democratic Convergence, which is controlled and financed by Haitian and US right-wing interests.”  US-Haiti (1804-2005) History Commons
    
These moves undermined President Aristide’s program for revitalization and forced him to shelve plans for minimum wage increases, land reform, educational and infrastructure improvements.  Eventually the Haitian mulatto  “House Negroes” who collaborated with the US CIA and corporatist interests pressed the US to remove Aristide again, which the US gladly did.
In 2004 the US literally kidnaped Aristide and took him to Africa amidst attacks on the country and his followers by US armed and trained death squads. The UN stepped into the breach supposedly as a “peace keeping” mission but has remained as an occupying force when it was the US that armed and trained the thugs and mercenaries who created a
rein of terror in Haiti in their bid to oust Aristide.
  
 Now there are credible rumors surfacing that there are oil deposits in the Fort Libertie and coastal regions. You know the US wants to get its hands on that. Is the US attempting to secure Haitian Oil? Is that why Obama is sending US troops to Haiti  instead of aid workers, supplies and doctors? In the next few days, months and years we will see continued US-UN occupation, more misery and more dependency; in the name of stability, security and humanitarianism.  Now you know why Haiti is so poor.





HAITI'S GOVERNMENT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- A Haitian government led by a diffident president has been overwhelmed, making it largely invisible since the earthquake throttled the country six days ago.

An aloof politician who was educated abroad, President René Préval has spoken far more to foreign audiences through satellite television than to his own people. Over consecutive days this weekend, Préval, 67, met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But he has yet to visit the vast refugee camp that has risen in the city center alongside the crumbled National Palace, where he once lived.

The U.S. government views Préval, an agronomist by training, as a technocrat largely free of the sharp political ideologies that have divided Haiti for decades. But at a time when tragedy is forcing the country essentially to begin again, Préval's aversion to the public stage has left millions of Haitians wondering whether there is a government at all.

"Clearly, we have not spent enough time with the people," Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, Préval's right-hand man, said in an interview. "But we are overwhelmed. We just can't step back and have a vision for this country. Soon, we hope, the operations will be matched with a strategy for the future."

Bellerive, who has been in office less than two months, acknowledged that "we are not only ourselves victims of the disaster, but also do not have the capacity to do this on our own."

Since the ouster of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, Haiti's elected government has been weak. Largely mistrusted by its people, the government has been unable to lift the country from severe poverty despite billions of dollars in annual international aid.

Préval and his ministers are sitting now at the volatile intersection of a sputtering aid effort and the rising demands of millions of Haitians traumatized by the quake and desperate for basic assistance. The emergency-triage stage will soon give way to long-term planning for how to rebuild a country virtually from scratch.

With most government buildings in precarious condition, Préval and his ministers have decamped to the one-story Judicial Police headquarters on the outskirts of the city. On Sunday morning, a throng of Canadian generals, Spanish aid workers and other foreigners waited there for a turn to see government officials.

Beyond the guards and gates, though, anger among Haitians displaced by the 7.0-magnitude quake is rising quickly. It is directed primarily at Préval's administration.

"We're living here with God alone," said student Dalromy Guerrier, 19, who has moved with his family into a shelter on the sideline at the national soccer stadium, where substitutes usually wait to enter a game. "Is there anyone coming to help?"

Although he has served at the highest ranks of government for nearly two decades, Préval has been known more as a surrogate than as a powerful politician in his own right.

The son of a former Haitian agriculture minister forced to flee the Duvalier regime, Préval grew up outside his country. He studied business and biology in Belgium and Italy and even worked as a waiter in Brooklyn before returning to Haiti in the early 1980s to work in the government.

He also opened a bakery here in the capital. Through his charitable bread donations, Préval came to know Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a spellbinding liberation priest who preached against the Duvalier dictatorship.

In 1990, Aristide became Haiti's first elected leader, and he named Préval prime minister. Over the next 14 years, Aristide was ousted by a military coup, returned to power, reelected and then ousted again in 2004.

Préval was along for much of the rocky ride, following Aristide as president in 1996 and again in 2006. But he has distanced himself from Aristide's Lavalas party, which in Creole means "a cleansing flood," and he has governed more moderately -- to the frustration of much of his mentor's impoverished constituency.

He imposed economic austerity measures in his first term, including the privatization of some government services, which drew criticism for primarily benefiting Haiti's elite. But unemployment fell. Préval also championed the trials of military and police officials accused of human rights violations, a first in Haiti.

Many of Haiti's poor supported his reelection in 2006, mostly because they thought it would lead to Aristide's return from South African exile. A day after the earthquake, Aristide reiterated his desire to come back. His return would give the country a highly visible leader but would also inject a divisive political element into recovery efforts, making it unlikely that Préval would welcome him.

Rich and poor alike say Préval's administration is riddled with corruption. Many Haitians now express the conflicting impulse to see their government in action at a time of crisis while wanting to make sure it is denied access to international aid for fear it will be stolen.

Mario Viau, the owner of Signal FM, a major radio station based in the wealthy hillside community of Petionville, said he sent his employees out into the city to search for a government official to speak on the air. None could be found.

He then appealed over the radio for an official to visit his station and deliver public service announcements, ranging from how to find a missing relative to how to dispose of a dead body. What he received was a representative from Préval's office, who delivered a taped message from the president urging calm.

"We didn't feel like we had a government," Viau said. "But I wanted to put some kind of government on the radio. We have a president who doesn't like to talk at all."

Along Camus Street, a strip of cinder-block houses that begins at a school and ends at the cemetery, Alberthe Gordard gathered her bedding from the street one recent morning.

"My house," she said, pointing to a gingerbread façade listing far to the left.

Like her neighbors, Gordard and her two young children are sleeping head-to-toe in the street, blocked off by rubble and piles of trash. She gathers water from an open spigot in a plastic jug that once contained antifreeze, but it is not clean enough to drink.

"I'm hungry," she said. "We haven't seen anyone from the government. They have left us to this."

Correspondent William Booth contributed to this report from Petionville, Haiti.


Haitian-American priorities(issued prior to the earthquake)

1. Grant TPS to Haitians

Stop the United States’ unequal immigration treatment of Haitian refugees, grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and work permits to Haitian nationals in the U.S. with a specification to stop all deportations until Haiti has recovered from the ravages of hurricanes, floods and instability. Haitians in the United States should receive equal treatment and protection under all the immigration laws. Four tropical storms and hurricanes battered Haiti during last year’s harvest season, killing almost 1,000 people nationwide, decimating Haiti’s agriculture and causing $1 billion in damage to irrigation, bridges and roads. Haiti qualifies for Temporary Protected Status and should be granted this disaster relief.

But the U.S. has never granted Haitians TPS, which permits short-term residency to nationals from countries that are enduring political or environmental turbulence. In 2002 the Bush administration renewed TPS for Nicaraguan and Honduran immigrants owing to Hurricane Mitch in 1998. At this point, Haiti is in much worse shape than Central Americans were at the time. The damage in Haiti is worse than three times the damage left after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. In Haiti, mudslides still cover entire towns. Houses are flooded. Schools have collapsed on children and people are starving. It’s inhumane to deport Haitians back to Haiti under these devastating conditions, where they will find no home, no employment, no food, no personal safety and security.

2. End the UN military occupation

The U.N. troops in Haiti are paid $601.58 million per year and have been in Haiti for four years. That is $50.13 million per month, $1.64 million per day. Yet, during the recent floods and hurricane season in Haiti, the Haitian president had to call for help from the international community. Wasn’t that help already in Haiti, to the tune of 9,000 U.N. – MINUSTAH – troops already cashing in $1.64 million per day? Why are they there, if incapable of providing emergency help? If they had not one amphibious unit or temporary bridge, no caravan of trucks or equipment to reach Haitians in distress, what use are they to the people of Haiti? Are their war tanks, heavy artillery, guns and military presence in Haiti making Haitians more secure, more safe, more free, more prosperous, better nourished, educated and healthier than before they landed four years ago? No.

End the U.N. military occupation. Haiti needs development, infrastructure assistance, poverty reduction assistance and tractors – not tanks and guns. Community policing, not war soldiers.

3. Cancel immediately and without conditions all Haiti debt to international financial institutions, including old Duvalier-dictatorship debts

Haiti is suffering famine, the repercussions of the 2004 U.S.-supported coup d’etat and the ravages of the greatest natural disaster in remembered history, three times greater than the Katrina damage. Yet, instead of using its resources to provide relief for its people, Haiti is forced to pay out in excess of $1 million per month to foreign banks.

4. Begin reciprocal trade

Stop failed policies and trading through the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.AID), churches and predator NGOs. A great portion of food aid from such entities does not reach the intended beneficiaries in Haiti and instead ends up for sale in the marketplace. Start fair trading with Haiti and supporting grassroots, indigenous Haiti capacity building organizations. U.S. AID denies Haitian sovereignty and progress by blocking, declining and subverting any direct assistance to empower the Haitian government while engineering so that the majority of Haiti’s national budget – provided by the international community as a consequence of the 2004 Bush-U.S.AID regime change – is currently managed by its approved non-governmental organizations. For instance, some 800 NGOs control part of the budget, thoroughly undermining the state’s ability to deal with the famine and food crisis.

Direct that the U.S. re-orientate its resource allocation to Haiti to trade with the Haitian government, not, in effect, with U.S.AID, foreign NGOs, churches and charities in the name of Haitians. For this U.S. foreign policy effectively forms a shadow government enchaining Haiti that undermines Haiti’s sovereignty, emboldens and empowers NGOs with no public responsibility or accountability to Haitians or Haiti’s long term well-being.

It is in the best interest of the United States to directly support Haitian democracy, good governance, development, self-reliance and self-sufficiency. This cannot be done if the Haitian government has to compete with foreign funded NGOs and charities that are not elected or accountable to the people of Haiti, but are predatory and promoting dependency and their own organizations’ interests for self-perpetuation in Haiti.

To effectively support grassroots, indigenous Haiti capacity building organizations, the U.S. Congress must demand greater fiscal accountability, transparency and quantifiable evidence of sustainable development achievements, from reform projects designed, supervised and financed through U.S.AID and their subcontractors, corporate consultants and charity workers using federal funds in Haiti. And, in particular, these new Haiti foreign assistance guidelines should ensure that food and other aid actually reaches its intended beneficiaries and does not end up for sale in the open market or stay in Washington or be used in Haiti mostly on administrative salaries, fees and expenses for U.S.AID’s political benefactors, shipping companies and nonprofits.

5. Void grossly unfair free trade deals

Stop grossly unfair free trade deals and ineffective initiatives such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative Investment Support (OPIC) or the Special Export Zones (SEZ) under the Hope Act, which bans trade unions to protect workers’ rights, or other such agreements – pummeling, bullying and beating Haiti into the dust of misery, debt and poverty. And, instead, support Haitian food production and domestic manufacturing, job creation, public works projects, sustainable development and a good working culture that values human rights. After the storm emergency, calibrate food aid so to assist and not further destroy Haiti’s food production.

Support post storm rebuilding and reconstruction of environmentally degraded areas. Invest in Haitian-led projects to built flood barriers and better drainage as in La Gonave; support food sovereignty, energy and reforestation, such as planting of fruit trees for food, capital building and trade and use of indigenous Haiti plants, such as Jatropha, for biofuel energy. In the process of providing crisis assistance, the U.S. must promote Haitian self-reliance wherever possible instead of the cycle of dependency. For instance, instead of water purification tablets, add also, whenever possible, the more long term and permanent bio-sand filters apparatus that will last forever and purify toxic water on a continual, not just a one-time basis.

6. Support the institutionalization of the rule of law

The new U.S. Congress and president should support the institutionalization of Haitian laws, not “democracy enhancement” projects through U.S. AID, IRI or NED that promote coups d’etat, instability and financial colonialism and containment-in-poverty in Haiti through neo-liberalism – “free trade,” “globalization” and other such “privatization” schemes.

Every time the United States supports the destabilization of a duly elected government, it visits enormous economic pressures and political turmoil upon Haiti. The turmoil and pressures undermine Haitian justice, participatory democracy, self sufficiency, sovereignty and self-determination and promote insecurity, debt, dependency, foreign domination, injustice, a rise in fleeing refugees and a structural containment-in-poverty. This instability has widespread and deep and disturbing repercussions. It keeps Haiti underdeveloped, dependent and contained-in-poverty.

7. Encourage maximum leveraging of Diaspora remittances

The Haitian Diaspora invests $2 billion per year in Haiti. That investment is destroyed, diluted and undermined when it must be used to bury family members killed in political turmoil or kidnapped in the chaos of anarchy and instability that follows coups d’etat or to move and help rebuild the family of a relative or friend traumatized by the U.N. soldiers’ rapes, molestation, arbitrary detention and indefinite incarcerations of their children, relatives and friends in Haiti. Instead, families should be able to use those funds to buy books for their children and relatives to go to school, supplies to carry out a viable family business or seeds to plant next year’s harvest, or to invest remittances in Haiti’s tourism, schools, reforestation, agriculture, road construction, flood barriers, communication, energy, sanitation or health needs. Moreover, when the U.S. deports an income earner to storm-ravaged and starving Haiti, this decreases remittances and further impoverishes family members who depended on the remittances from family members abroad. Diaspora remittances are the most effective and direct aid to the Haitian poor in Haiti.

Conclusion

The Obama candidacy promised change and a return to the rule of law and diplomacy as opposed to U.S. pre-emptive strikes, war, terror and torture to attain perceived U.S. foreign policy interests in the world. Candidate Obama promised human rights, workers’ rights, environmental protection and reciprocal trade. To grant Haitians TPS, end the U.N. military occupation, assist Haiti with poverty reduction, domestic agricultural investments and community policing, and cancel unfair debt to international financial institutions – all those initiatives would support stability and participatory democracy, stop the flow of refugees and illegal immigration and meet the policy interests of the United States.

For further information, see the complete policy statement at “What Haitian Americans Ask of the New U.S. Congress and President.”

Marguerite “Ezili Danto” Laurent, Esq. MargueriteEzili Danto Laurent, Esq.Marguerite Laurent, an activist attorney, award winning playwright, performance poet, dancer and actor born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, founded and chairs the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, supporting and working cooperatively with Haitian grassroots organizations promoting the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. Visit her website at www.margueritelaurent.com or email erzilidanto@yahoo.com.

May 15, 2009

Hundreds rally to protest planned deportation of 30,000 Haitians

by Francesca Guerrier, Haiti Liberte

Haitians rally in Pompano Beach for TPS (Temporary Protected Status) instead of deportation for 30,000 of their countrymen. The remittances sent home to Haiti from the U.S. comprise nearly 30 percent of Haiti’s economy. The NAACP is pressing President Obama to grant TPS. Haitians rally in Pompano Beach for TPS (Temporary Protected Status) instead of deportation for 30,000 of their countrymen. The remittances sent home to Haiti from the U.S. comprise nearly 30 percent of Haiti’s economy. The NAACP is pressing President Obama to grant TPS.Pompano Beach, Fla.

Over 500 demonstrators gathered in front of the remote immigrant detention jail known as the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, last month to demand that the Obama administration stop the threatened deportation of some 30,000 Haitians back to their strife and storm battered country.

The rally was boisterous but peaceful and well-organized. The crowd demanded TPS (Temporary Protected Status) for Haitians, which was previously denied by the Bush administration. TPS has been granted in recent years to nine countries plagued by war or natural disasters: El Salvador, Honduras, Liberia, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. It allows refugees from those countries to live and work legally in the U.S. The designation is effective for a minimum of six months and a maximum of 18 months.

After four storms in August and September 2008 brought widespread death and destruction to Haiti, the U.S. government suspended Haitian deportations for three months. But expulsions resumed after Dec. 5, sending dozens of Haitians back to their homeland since then. Between January and December 2008, 1,024 Haitians were repatriated, said Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.

In February, U.S. immigration officials announced that 30,299 Haitians were subject to immediate deportation back to Haiti.

Jonel Lemy, a Haitian-American lawyer with the Haitian Lawyers Association, told the Sun Sentinel that he has seen an increase in deportation cases in the last six months, even taking the three month reprieve into account.

“Arrests are up,” Lemy said. “People are being arrested as they drop their kids off at school or on their way to work.”

Evelyn, a Haitian immigrant, wears a permanent tracking device while she awaits a decision from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on whether she will be deported back to Haiti or allowed to stay with her 5-year-old daughter, who was born in the U.S. – Photo: Sandra C. Roa, New York Times Institute Evelyn, a Haitian immigrant, wears a permanent tracking device while she awaits a decision from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on whether she will be deported back to Haiti or allowed to stay with her 5-year-old daughter, who was born in the U.S. – Photo: Sandra C. Roa, New York Times InstituteOf the 30,000 Haitians with deportation orders against them, 600 are in detention centers and 260 are allowed to stay at home and in their communities, although their movements are monitored with ankle bracelet transmitters.

Haitian President René Préval, who has also asked Washington to grant TPS to Haitians in the U.S., has effectively blocked deportations by having his government refuse to grant would-be deportees travel documents.

“President Obama, the time has arrived to right this wrong,” said Marleine Bastien to the crowd.

The world capitalist crisis and soaring jobless rate in the U.S. put great pressure on Obama to deport undocumented workers, as right-wing politicians urge. But Obama has lots of political capital to lose with Haitian-Americans, one of his power bases, if their undocumented compatriots are deported. Conversely, his administration gains lots of easy political capital if it grants TPS, a very short-term measure which does nothing to address the fundamental injustice of U.S. immigration restrictions and their enforcement.

Clearly, many in the crowd had high hopes that their continued mobilization would sway the Obama administration to grant the TPS that the Bush administration denied. “We will continue to protest and take our message to Washington, and we expect President Obama to support us,” lawyer Jonel Lemy said.

© Haiti Liberte, a newspaper distributed in Haiti, France, Canada and the U.S. and headquartered in Brooklyn, encourages reprints. Email editor@haitiliberte.com.

WHAT IS BEING SAID TODAY:

University professor Peter Hallward, writing in the Guardian Unlimited, criticized Washington for its responsibility in creating the suffering it is now pledging to alleviate in Haiti. "Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) ‘from absolute misery to a dignified poverty’ has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies. Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smoldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilization and pacification force in the country."

Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti told Hallward of the root causes for the overpopulation of neighborhoods in the city of Port-au-Prince that were hit so hard by the earthquake. "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labor force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses." Unnatural crises such as this made the earthquake much more devastating.

On January 14, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced a $100 million loan to Haitito help with relief efforts. However, Richard Kim at The Nation wrote that this loan was added onto $165 million in debt made up of loans with conditions "including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low." This new $100 million loan has the same conditions. Kim writes, "in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms."

The last thing Haiti needs at this point is more debt; what it needs is grants. As Kim wrote, according to a report from the The Center for International Policy, in 2003 "Haiti spent $57.4 million to service its debt, while total foreign assistance for education, health care and other services was a mere $39.21 million."

In the midst of the suffering and anguish following the earthquake, many Haitians came together to console and help each other. Journalist David Wilson, in Haiti during the time of the earthquake, wrote of the singing that followed the disaster. "Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o'clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital." A young Haitian American commented to Wilson on the singing, "Haitians are different," he said. "People in other countries wouldn't do this. It's a sense of community."

If these elements of the "relief" efforts continue in this exploitative vein, it is this community that will likely be crushed even further by disaster capitalism and imperialism.

While international leaders and institutions are speaking about how many soldiers and dollars they are committing to Haiti, it is important to note that what Haiti needs is doctors not soldiers, grants not loans, a stronger public sector rather than a wholesale privatization, and critical solidarity with grassroots organizations and people to support the self-determination of the country. Bendangl@gmail.com 

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NO SHOCK DOCTRINE FOR HAITI
For those who have not yet read Naomi Klein's award winning "Shock Doctrine", or attended my "Political Economy" classes, Johann Hari's below column is a must read to firstly understand the tactics of the IMF [and World Bank] in instances of a military coup, a massacre, or a natural disaster like the 7.0 R quake in Haiti on January 12: and secondly to celebrate the success of the petition "No Shock Doctrine for Haiti".Again saluting Naomi Klein for her opening of world eyes, and Johann Hari for his daily efforts in the London Independent - Lynette ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Formatted, illustrated version of "There's real hope from Haiti and it's not what you expect", together with earlier comments from Naomi and her Nation colleague Richard Kim on the "No Shock Doctrine for Haiti Petition", at:

http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2405/59/ from Lynette Dumble

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-theres-real-hope-
from-haiti-and-its-not-what-you-expect-1889958.html

The Independent ~ London ~ Friday February 5, 2010
By Johann Hari:
There's real hope from Haiti and it's not what you expect When people live so close to the edge, even small price increases can break them

In the weeks after a disaster like the Haiti earthquake, journalists always search for an upbeat twist to the tale. You know it by now – the baby found alive after a week under wreckage. But this time, a shaft of light has parted the rubble and the corpses and the unshakeable grief that could last for years. In the middle of the Haitian people's nightmare, a system that has kept hundreds of millions like them poor and broken might just have shown its first fracture.To understand what has happened, you have to delve into a long-suppressed history – one you are not supposed to hear. Since the 1970s, we have been told that the gospel of the Free Market has rolled out across the world because the People demand it. We have been informed that free elections will lead ineluctably to people choosing to roll back the state, privatise the essentials of life, and leave the rich to work their magic for us all. We have seen these trends wash across the world because ordinary people believe they offer the best possible system.

 

There's just one snag: it's not true. In reality, this gospel has proved impossible to impose in any democracy. Few politicians have believed in its core tenets more than Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – yet at the end of their long terms, after bitter battles, the proportion of GDP spent by the state remained the same. Why?Because these doctrines are extremely unpopular, and wherever they are tried, they are fiercely resisted. There are majorities in every free country for a mixed economy, where markets are counter-balanced by a strong and active state. The gospel spread across the poor world because their governments were given no choice. In her masterpiece The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows how these policies were forced on the world's poor against their will. Sometimes rich governments did it simply by killing the elected leaders and installing a servile dictator, as in Chile. Usually the methods were more subtle.

One of the most marked came in the form of "loans" from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF would approach poor countries and offer them desperately needed cash. But from the 1970s on, they would, in return, require the countries to introduce "structural adjustments" to their economy. The medicine was always the same: end all subsidies for the poor, slash state spending on health and education, deregulate your financial sector, throw your markets open.

Here's a typical example of what happened next. In Malawi, the country's soil had become badly depleted, so the government decided to subsidise fertiliser for farmers. When the IMF and World Bank came in, they called this "a market distortion", and ordered Malawi to stop at once. They did. So the country's crops failed, and famine scythed through the population. Tens of thousands starved to death. The Malawian government eventually listened to the cries of its people, kicked out the IMF, and reintroduced the subsidies – and the famine stopped that year. The country is now an exporter of food again.

When people are living so close to the edge, even small increases in prices can break them. The IMF systematically disregards the fact that every country that has lifted itself out of poverty has done the opposite of its commands. For example, South Korea went from poverty to plenty in just two generations by protecting and heavily subsiding its industries and jacking up state subsidies – to the IMF's horror.

Even Professor Jeffrey Sachs – one of their former lackeys – calls the IMF "the Typhoid Mary of emerging markets, spreading recessions in country after country". So why do they carry on like this? Primarily, it is because IMF programmes work very well – for the rich. They ensure that we get access to the cheapest possible labour and can help ourselves to the glistening resources that inexplicably ended up under their soil. The serve-the-rich ideology that caused our economy to crash in 2008 has been crashing poor countries for a long time. But there's a sting.

After decades of ordering poor countries to slash subsidies and state spending, the IMF reacted to the recession by urging rich countries ... to spend a fortune subsidising the banks, and to increase state spending. They wouldn't dream of drinking the medicine they have been serving out to the poor for so long. It's not as if the IMF has learned from its mistakes: it has just forced countries from El Salvador to Ukraine to Pakistan to sign deals committing themselves to leave the state inert in the face of severe external shocks to their economies. No: the IMF only imposes its deadly prescriptions on those too weak and too distant to matter.Here's where Haiti comes in. The IMF agenda has often been forced on populations when they are least able to resist – after a military coup, a massacre, or a natural disaster. For example, the people of Thailand fought for years against clearing their locals off their beaches to make way for holiday resorts, and voted against the privatisation of water and electricity. But immediately after the tsunami, both were pushed through.

After the earthquake, something similar was poised to happen to Haiti. The IMF announced a $100m loan, stapled on to an earlier loan, which requires Haiti to raise electricity prices, and freeze wages for the public-sector workers who are needed to rebuild the country. So when people emerged from the rubble, they would find an economy rigged even more heavily against them. There is no doubt about what the Haitian people would think: they know the IMF. Until 1994, the country at least grew its own staple crop: rice. But the IMF came in and ordered the government to cut its rice tariff from 35 per cent to 3 per cent. Suddenly the market was flooded with rice grown in the US by hugely subsidised farmers, and Haiti's rice farmers went bust. Hundreds of thousands swelled to the slum-cities and sweat shops of Port-au-Prince, where they built mud huts – and were buried in 2010. The IMF reduced the country from self-sufficiency to dependency, in a move known locally as "the Plan of Death". It was one of the external political earthquakes that made this natural earthquake far more deadly.

But something new and startling happened this month. For the first time, the IMF was stopped from shafting a poor country – by a rebellion here in the rich world. Hours after the quake, a Facebook group called "No Shock Doctrine For Haiti" had tens of thousands of members, and orchestrated a petition to the IMF of over 150,000 signatures demanding the loan become a no-strings grant. After Naomi Klein's mega-selling exposé, there was a vigilant public who wanted to see that the money they were donating to charity was not going to be cancelled out by the IMF. And it worked. The IMF backed down. It publicly renounced its conditions – and even said it would work to cancel Haiti's entire debt. This is the first sign that exposing and opposing the IMF's agenda works. Klein says it is "unprecedented in my experience, and shows that public pressure in moments of disaster can seriously subvert shock doctrine tactics." Of course, the IMF needs to be watched vigilantly. Already it seems to be rolling back some of its panicked initial rhetoric and saying that "beyond the emergency phase" it may go back to business as usual. Very powerful interests want the IMF to continue to dance to their tune.

But thanks to all the ordinary Europeans and Americans who pushed back, Haiti will not be IMF-ed up now, in its darkest hour. Not this time. Not these people. Not again. These should be the first baby-steps of a campaign to finally stop the IMF's poverty-promoting machine steam-rolling across continents. On the political Richter scale, that would mark a 7.0 – for the causes of democracy and justice.


The Haitian Religion

Voodoo

The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits.

One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit.

It is an honor to be entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit. In Haiti these rituals are commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion.

"One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100 percent voodoo," said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for over a decade.

In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo as an officially recognized religion.

"It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is," said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Voodoo doesn't have a sacred text, a church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is very similar culturally."

Ancient Traditions

Voodoo, meaning "spirit," may be one of the world's oldest ancestral, nature-honoring traditions, according to Mamaissii Vivian Dansi Hounon, a member of OATH, the Organization of African Traditional Healers in Martinez, Georgia.

Some anthropologists estimate that voodoo's roots in Benin—formerly Dahomey—West Africa may go back 6,000 years. Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide.

At a voodoo ceremony, believers gather outdoors to make contact with the Loa, any of a pantheon of spirits who have various functions running the universe, much like Greek gods. There is also a responsibility to care for beloved and deified family spirits and to honor a chief god, Bondieu.

Messages From the Spirits

During the ceremony, the houngan or mambo—priest or priestess—sacrifices a sanctified chicken or other animal to the Loa. Participants then ask the spirits for advice or help with problems. More than half the requests are for health.

It is said that the Loa sometimes communicate prophecies, advice, or warnings while the believer is possessed. Other messages are sent through the priest or priestess, or sometimes come later in dreams.

These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to "feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. "It's not the killing of the animals that matters," Corbett said. "It's the transfer of life energy back to the Loa."

Each of the spirits has a distinct identity. Some are loving and good, while others are capricious or demanding. Haitians believe that the Loa most often express their displeasure by making people sick.

Black Magic?

In the West voodoo has been portrayed in zombie movies and popular books as dark and evil, a cult of devil worship dominated by black magic, human sacrifice, and pin-stuck voodoo dolls—none of which exist in the voodoo practices that originated in Benin.

In Haiti voodoo began as an underground activity. During the 1700s thousands of West African slaves were shipped to Haiti to work on French plantations.

The slaves were baptized as Roman Catholics upon their arrival in the West Indies. Their traditional African religious practices were viewed as a threat to the colonial system and were forbidden. Practitioners were imprisoned, whipped, or hung.

But the slaves continued to practice in secret while attending masses. What emerged was a religion that the colonialists thought was Catholicism—but they were outfoxed.

Hybrid Rituals

It was easy to meld the two faiths, because there are many similarities between Roman Catholicism and voodoo, Corbett said. Both venerate a supreme being and believe in the existence of invisible evil spirits or demons and in an afterlife.

Each religion also focuses its ceremonies around a center point—an altar in Catholicism, a pole or tree in voodoo. Their services include symbolic or actual rituals of sacrifice and consumption of flesh and blood, Corbett noted.

Many of the Loa resemble Christian saints, endowed with similar responsibilities or attributes. For example, Legba, an old man, is said to open the gates between Earth and the world of the Loa, much like St. Peter traditionally throws wide the gates to heaven.

But there are differences. Westerners tend to believe in free will and personal choice. Not so in voodoo.

"The Haitian people have a view of the world that is unimaginably different from ours," Corbett said. The Loa are believed to determine our lives to an astonishing degree, he explains, and they are always present in great numbers: There might be two people in a room, but there are also 20 Loa.

"Our view is dominated by physical, touchable reality. In Haiti the spirits are as real as your wife or your dog," Corbett said.

Like any other religious practice, voodoo brings great benefits, explains Warberg, the photographer. "Participation in voodoo ritual reaffirms one's relationships with ancestors, personal history, community relationships—and the cosmos. Voodoo is a way of life," she said.