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A Nation Cheated in the Name of Profit Must Now Rebuild
We were eating dinner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 when the earthquake struck. As Californians we knew the meaning of the distorted room with plates sliding from the table and pictures tumbling from the wall. We grabbed hands and ran outside. The building held, unlike countless others nearby, and we were uninjured.
We spent the night and next day treating people's wounds in our host's courtyard and in adjoining streets. We used what we had at hand - rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, gauze pads, anti-bacterial soap, Vicodin and splints made from pieces of wood and torn undershirts.
We saw Haitian people pull their fellow citizens out of rubble, construct makeshift shelters and cooperate to secure the necessities of life. We did not see Haitian police or U.N. forces - who had already been mobilized for years - direct traffic, provide supplies or perform any other useful social function. Trained medical care was nonexistent, as was municipal electricity.
Hundreds slept in the street, singing throughout the dark nights. The second night was quieter than the first, until crowds ran up the street because they were afraid the ocean was coming. Our host went out and spoke with them, and eventually they went back down the hill. Throughout, we witnessed no violence.
In the middle of the second day, we piled into a vehicle and headed for the American Embassy. On the way, we were caught in a huge traffic jam caused by a mobbed gas station. Civilians, all men, were yelling, directing vehicles to move as little as an inch one way or the other.
Haitian citizens unraveled the knot without a single scratch to a car or truck. We reached our destination and were evacuated late in the night by military transport.
Remember Loma Prieta in 1989? A 6.9 on the Richter scale compared to 7.0 in Haiti. Fifteen to 20 seconds, while Port-au-Prince lasted an endless 35 to 40 seconds. Loma Prieta's epicenter was about 40 miles from downtown San Francisco, and 11 miles deep.
In Port-au-Prince, the epicenter was half as far, and only eight miles down. By the usual measurements, the Haiti quake was the worst of the two.
But what explains this contrast? Sixty-three deaths in Loma Prieta versus at least 100,000 in Haiti, with the number still rising.
Transpose Loma Prieta to a city with no consistent building standards, no effective primary health care, no reliable electricity, no system to deliver potable water to everyone, and no emergency response system. That is Port-au-Prince.
An earthquake cannot be prevented, but this one was so deadly because of a failure of human will. An hour and a half by air from our shores, the descendants of slaves who built so much American wealth live in these wretched conditions because of economic exploitation and neglect by the United States, the French and the Haitian elite. This is the unconscionable truth that so magnified the dire effects of this temblor.
I write this one week after the quake, and those to whom we have spoken in Haiti have not yet received water, food or medical care from the rescuers. As of the middle of last week, CNN's coverage indicated there were still people within a mile of the airport who had not gotten medical care.
Some planes from Doctors Without Borders and other effective humanitarian providers have been turned away and forced to take a time-consuming route through the Dominican Republic. One Haitian friend has told us people came and took her relatives' names but provided no help.
Why is this? "Security" trumps humanitarian assistance when people are pathologized for being hungry, frightened and in pain. Assessing the need takes precedence over meeting it. People die "stupid deaths," as CNN has put it. And so the thoughtless neglect continues.
As for exploitation, who will profit from the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince? Halliburton, as the company has in the past in Haiti?
Port-au-Prince before the quake was the embodiment of defunded government, privatization or nonexistence of essential services, degradation of public space, and a people cheated out of democracy, all in the name of profit.
The first popularly elected president in Haitian history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, exiled with U.S. complicity, is to this day denied a passport to return to his own country.
This debacle, inconsistent with defining American values, must not be allowed to continue. We owe it to Haiti to rebuild a livable city, using Haitian labor paid a living wage. Otherwise, we compound nature's injury with inexcusable human malice and ineptitude. We can do better than this, and we must.
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Show AllIf adequate "security" from all that security could be supplied Aristide he ought to be returned and face his charges, if any after this disaster. The coup must end.
They need a real leader.
Meanwhile the dying goes on...
American Friends Service Committee http://www.afsc.org/
American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Artists for Peace and Justice: http://www.artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/
NetHope: http://www.nethope.org/
Lambi Fund for Haiti: http://www.lambifund.org/
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/
World Vision International: http://wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf
Care: http://www.care.org/index.asp
MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/
Partners in Health: http://twitter.com/PIH_org
Unicef: http://www.unicef.org/
Doctors Without Borders: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/
Parners in Health: http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
Ofram: http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2010-01-13/large-earthquake-haiti
RN Response Network: https://secure.ga1.org/05/rnrn_relief_fund
National Nurses United has launched a relief effort to send over 7,000 registered nurses to Haiti. There's just one problem: the cost of sending them. Please donate today at www.SendaNurse.org. Every dollar you donate goes toward the resources nurses need to care for the survivors of this tragedy.
Pass it on.
Gary
Looking at the title of the article prior to opening the content I asked myself...does it refer to Haiti or the USA?
The title of the article applies to both.
Why does the author believe the Aristide exile is inconsistent with American values? The US has been doing this world wide ever since Eisenhower approved the CIA overthrow of Iran's democratically elected president 57 years ago (it was Eisenhower's first act when he became president in January 1953).
Wow, the Haitian President can't get a passport to go to Haiti. Sounds like there has been just a wee bit too much foreign intervention and exploitation in Haiti. A President not being able to get a passport so he can go to his own country is just a little over the top, don't you think? Why hasn’t Hillary Clinton taken care of this,? laugh out loud.
So in the wake of gross interference the people of the intervening countries are financially on the hook when disasters strike and the losses are magnified due to the interventions? Apparently so. Technically, earthquake donations can be thought of as payments to offset the extra Quake damage and loss due to the effects of the excessive intervention.
Nice summary here but the author is squeamish about mentioning that Haitian dissenters, who for one thing wanted to have a government much more ready for a Quake, have simply been murdered by their government over the years with many more dissenters imprisoned, at least until the Quake freed them.
Meanwhile, the actual Haitian government installed by foreigners was quite content to range from counterproductive to deadly in normal times, and then was completely irrelevant and worthless after a big Quake.
I actually prefer the irrelevant version to the counterproductive version.
"We owe it to Haiti to rebuild a livable city." Aye, but who will live in it, and how will they make a living there? Using Hiatian labor to rebuild (as didn't happen in New Orleans) is but the beginning of this. When Haiti is re-build, what will its people find? My local paper carries today a syndicated story from the Washington Post citing Obama's call for expanded donations and a mass rehabilitation of the country that will take years to complete.
The article also cites the Rand Corporation "global health director" to the effect that the crisis presents new "opportunities" for total rebuilding and mentions that former Presidents Clinton and Bush have been dispatched to Haiti to begin the planning for redevelopment. If the notorious Rand Corp, most of whose "think tanking" has centered around thinking of ways of maintaining "security," and the two ex-Presidents who presided over the last 16 years of neo-liberal plundering of Haiti in the interest of American corporations, are to be the harbingers of this development, God help the "new" Haiti that will arise from the rubble of the old one.
Yes, the "new" will certainly be different than the old one, but in HUMAN terms, how much better will it be?
My guess is that this "new" Haiti will be very like the one planned for Sri Lanka after the tsumani there---or for New Orleans after Katrina--a gentrification of the economy based on a tourist industry that sweeps aside the same Haitian people who have been impoverished by global market destructive forces like the "free trade" that dumped U.S. rice in Haiti and deprived Haitian farmers of a livelihood. Unless you're a bartender, tour guide, sex worker or a costumed native dancer, or perhaps a cook, gardener or nanny for the wealthy of the world who will re-locate in this "new" Haiti, you'll be out of luck. And just as in Sri Lanka, where they cleared the beaches of poor people to allow for waterfront "development," those who are swept aside will be "relocated" in barracks which will attract the "security" attention of American firms already salivating over prospects of new policing contracts in the country.
Yes, Haiti will be rebuilt and it will be different than the "old" one, but in HUMAN terms, how much better will it be?
The Haitian Ambassador was impressive. Their puppet President seems like a douchebag.
"This debacle, inconsistent with defining American values"
Our Empire is corrupt beyond all hope save a mass rebelion, and this lady is so self-absorbed as to feel it had values. Add to this the fact that she had the opportunity to stay and help, but had higher priorities then saving lives, and a clear picture do we have of why America is totally void of values.
If your government is making deals with the U.S. government and U.S. corporations you are going to be very poor and in danger unless you are one of the rich already, or almost there.
I worked the disaster in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Hugo in 1989. There were 200,000 homeless after that and the reasons were the same as in Haiti.
Puerto Rico, a nation of 5 million or so and with an average annual income of $1200 or so, rich compared to Haiti, had 9 building inspectors. Wind and wave damages are no where near as devastating as earthquakes, but the engineering principles to buildings withstanding natures forces are the same.
What does that mean? Simple, there is virtually no building inspection program to assure safe building either in Puerto Rico or Haiti. If there was an earthquake in Puerto Rico, there would be a large death toll also, and, last look, they are a Commonwealth of the United States. The United States has the Uniform Building Code, the Southern Building Code and other regional codes. These codes and their enforcement must be applied or the rebuilding of Haiti just means that this disaster will happen again.
God help the countries that America helps, either through colonization, government overthrow or 'aid'.
>>What does that mean? Simple, there is virtually no building inspection program to assure safe building either in Puerto Rico or Haiti. If there was an earthquake in Puerto Rico, there would be a large death toll also, and, last look, they are a Commonwealth of the United States. The United States has the Uniform Building Code, the Southern Building Code and other regional codes. These codes and their enforcement must be applied or the rebuilding of Haiti just means that this disaster will happen again.
The Uniform Building code and inspectors are all functions of Government. Liberatarians woul dhave us believe that these regulations are all impediments to freedom and economic growth.
Haiti is another example of "Smaller Government is better Government" in action.
What would have happened if the GOP and Big Landholders had not overthrown President Aristede?
Surely Empire USA would be no more.
The danger of a good example that in this hemisphere most never be, and that is why an invasion of Venezuela we are very soon to see.
Excellent article, though I must confess that I expected it to be about the United States.
Maybe "Cheated, Robbed, and Repeatedly Raped and Beaten at Gunpoint" would clarify.
That is the way you and I see it, but the dear lady is an “Officer of the Court,” and could be disbarred for expressing the need for a forceful and immediate overthrow of all our government, which is embodied in all our Courts.